She spends the rest of the time before the delegation is prepared to go sitting outside at the Skyvault, looking at it with various lens combinations and taking fascinated notes, and spending time with her fiancée-and-a-half.
She's ready to leave when the rest of the wizard-visiting party is.
Sigh. Hiking through the forest was more fun with Sherlock and Tony along.
She strikes up a conversation with the diplomat. "Have you worked with wizards before?"
"There's always a magician or two somewhere working on infiltrating them, for completely undiplomatic purposes of course, but I've never been interested in going undercover," says Bella. "I only know a few things about wizard magic, and of course I have to heavily adapt it to work for me."
"Well, the group we're visiting sent out one of the wizards' wives to meet us. Some wizard magical principles can be used by anybody - like me - but in its pure form it only works for boys with wizard fathers. They usually marry each other's daughters but sometimes they're more exogamous about it. They don't mix in a family way with practitioners of other kinds of magic - a few magicians have married them to get an in, but they have to pretend not to know any magic to get any wizards interested. They have a general philosophy that wouldn't make that particularly compatible with the stealing their staffs do. Which is usually automatic, but when I looked last time, all the wizards there had suppressed the absorption. Wizards - at least usual wizards, I'm not sure about these ones - don't think there is a better use for magic than sitting in a staff ready to power a spell a wizard wants to cast. They're kind of paranoid and self-important."
With her moccasins on, she can safely read-and-walk as long as she looks up to course correct twice a page. She doesn't attempt further conversation with the diplomat during the journey. And she lets him take the lead, when they reach the wizards; apart from putting her spectacles on she doesn't do anything.
The wizards either don't notice the party standing outside their caves, or choose not to send out an interlocutor this time.
There are some wizards, and some wizards' wives, and some children, milling around. There's a smokeless fire with a stewpot simmering on top of it, and an adult wizard is carving a long piece of wood, perhaps into a staff, while a couple of little ones look on. One of the wizards looks the diplomat's way and there begins to be a general whispering among the cave inhabitants and cessation of activity that is not "look nervously at diplomat".
Bella has seen to her satisfaction that they're still not absorbing any but stray, unused magic. She murmurs to the diplomat, "Their staffs are behaving themselves."
"...My name is Cantha," offers the spokeswife, in apparent hope that this will help move things along.
"We don't think think the other wizards will think to look for us here," Cantha says.
"And why are you hiding from other wizards?" Bella asks.
"There's been a - a schism in the Society. We're by far the smaller faction. So we're hiding."
"P-procedures for choosing new Head Wizards, and some things about magic I don't understand myself, and relations with other - groups, and some other things. We're the Reformists," she adds helpfully.
"How come you don't have a Head Reformist Wizard who's talking for your group instead of you?" inquires Bella.
"We had one. My husband died before we got here," says Cantha quietly. "We haven't elected a replacement yet."
"Oh. I'm sorry," murmurs Bella. "Other wizards?"
"Yes. Orthodox wizards."
"Shortly before the last time I was here, the princesses and I encountered another wizard. One of yours?"
Cantha shakes her head, alarmed. "We're all of ours that are left. We saw the others fall, and it was more than those few days ago. He was in the forest? They're looking for us here?"
"Well, he was interrupted," Bella says, "and we're not sure if his presence had to do with you or not."
"It must have," murmurs Cantha. "We were the first to risk entering the forest in nearly a century."
"I can see that the staffs here aren't stealing magic."
"That would have been noticed," Cantha says without thinking, and then she adds, "...And it would be harmful. To the forest."
Bella nods. "Stray wisps like they're taking are fine, I have an object that does something similar, but what are you planning to do if the Orthodox wizards find you?"
"We - haven't thought that far ahead," Cantha says, glancing around at the wizards uncertainly. "It might be that they wouldn't want to be noticed themselves, and wouldn't have any advantage over us."
"But they'd also have plenty of time to charge up and choose the timing," Bella says. "There'd be a massacre, and it sounds like you were already massacred."
"...You're probably right, but we don't have any other options, where were we supposed to go, who were we supposed to get help from? All the kingdoms on the continent kill wizards on sight or are friendly with the Orthodox leadership."
"You'd have more magic to play with between you if the women among you were allowed to cultivate witchwells and donate some or do their own spells," comments Bella.
Cantha blinks at her. "...That is in fact one point of disagreement between us and Orthodox wizards, but not one that we've put into practice."
Cantha turns back to her. "You're a witch," she says.
"Not exactly."
Cantha's eyes narrow. "Sorceress?"
"Same answer."
Cantha purses her lips. "Magician."
"Yes."
"So you could help us with the witchwells so we wouldn't be so collectively powerless."
"Possibly," demurs Bella. "I'd need to think about it. I have other projects and I'm staying at the castle, which is some days' travel away."
"We would be interested in - exchanging knowledge," Cantha says, "if you happened to have the time for it."
"Thank you," says Bella, noncommittal but smiling.
Cantha shakes her head. "We've been able to find everything we need, thank you."
And that really does seem to be it.
The delegation turns around and starts tromping home.
Bella feels pretty pleased with herself.
"Well, we went to the cave, and no one seemed to know how to start, and so I asked the wizards a few questions and then the diplomat picked up from there and gave them the list of laws and customs and so on," says Bella. "Oh, and unless you object or I have too much else on my plate, I might teach the wizards' wives to cultivate witchwells so they don't have to be parasitic on anyone else for their magical energy, in exchange for some straight information about wizardry that didn't have to be gotten by subterfuge."
"Thanks," says Bella. "I did want to run the witching idea by you, though, since it wouldn't just mean that they wouldn't have to be parasitic, it'd also mean handing them a fair amount of magical power to work with - not just the wizards who'd have witch donors, but the new witches themselves - and I'm not sure how far you want to trust them, even if they have an apparently consistent political philosophy that would put them on the outs with the rest of the Society of Wizards."