She can't scry for wayward children or matters of honor unless maybe she overhears someone mention them. She can only sort of scry for old debts or mistresses, at least ledgers exist and she can find, say, all the people who visited someone's bedroom. If there's something people in the Fire Nation military say or do when they're interacting with superiors or subordinates she can scry for that.

All of the foot-or-bigger instances of that symbol in the world? She doesn't know without looking if that'll be just a few things or hundreds. She can find them if there's hundreds or thousands but listing them and describing their surroundings could be tedious and she might need the door open to keep checking, she doesn't have a perfect memory. But she can look at the locations he suspects of having things at them, those will be easy.

She can tell him the exact chemical composition of the tea but how it relates to all those words for subtle flavors is lost on her. Maybe if it comes in a box with those words on the label? Maybe if the guy drinks it and then talks about how it tasted? Maybe Varrin would like to treat her to samples of a dozen kinds of tea and explain which subtle flavors are in which one?

He'll want her to try to identify chains of commands but it won't be as neat as a ledger. There are formal salutes and ceremonies and stuff.

It'll be thousands. Maybe three feet or bigger.

The shape and color of the leaves?

She can at least give him a bunch of examples of people who salute other people. It might not be exhaustive and she might not be able to get everyone's names.

She can find every three-feet-or-bigger Fire Nation symbol and describe tea leaf shapes and colors.

Cool. They can do this when he's done with background research and writing and organizing parts of the reports it'll all go into.

How much is all this gonna run him? He has to trade off intelligence against otherworldly supplies and books, see. And does she need any ice sculptures?

She suggests a figure. It's a lot more than she'd be able to charge in Har but still probably worth it if he's not looking at some spectacularly useful supplies and books.

She has no idea what she would do with an ice sculpture but she's open to hearing how they're unexpectedly useful.

"People seem to like pretty things, that's all. Unless you come down on that price by about a fifth I'll only want, like, half of what we discussed. Kinda hard to be sure it won't outdated by the time we can use the info anyway."

"Yeah, I can go down that far. ...Can you do an ice sculpture globe showing the lost continents?"

"If you can give me a map, sure! You'll want to get Valanda to stop it from melting, of course. How big of one?"

She takes a map from her stack of reading material. "I want it about this big," she holds her hands like she's holding a globe between them.

Valanda, who's been eavesdropping, comes without being called.

"Bar, can I get some buckets of water?"

They appear. He arranges them on the floor and starts not-quite-dancing. The water flows to his command, flow and refreeze, flow and refreeze.

After he's already started, he names a price that's actually reasonably low and says, "I'll mark out land masses by frosting up the ice - the rest will be clear, all the way through. I could try something with dye instead if you want - maybe dye the whole thing slightly blue, for the oceans? - but I'm still kind of experimenting with that. Right now I'm just doing the basic shape..."

And indeed, a sphere on a thin pillar with a circular base is starting to form.

"Frosting it sounds great. Can you do elevation? It wouldn't be to scale but it would be nice if the mountains stuck out more."

"Yeah, I can do elevation... Frosting it is... Sure..."

Waterbending on this level apparently requires great focus. He's pretty distracted. The sphere and base smooth out, tiny bumps and ridges shimmering away until there is a perfect crystal sphere.

He takes a couple of deep breaths and a look at the map and starts on the first continent, tiny flowing motions of one hand and a few fingers applying a thin streamer of water to the surface of the sphere. It freezes on, raising frosted ice out of the clear, smooth 'sea'.

...Yeah okay she's changed her mind. She doesn't want an ice sculpture. Maybe two. Maybe three. They'll have to be small ones but...

If he'll make more after this she wants little ones, another globe with the most recent supercontinent and a statue of a belul king who lived centuries and centuries ago.

He'll make more! If she pays him. The belul king will require a lot of careful tiny detail work and is more expensive.

(He is under the impression that the belul king some kind of spirit, and the resulting style is a bit ethereal and gives off an impression of hidden power, of a sort of understated majesty.)

The colored dyes might work well on that one, too, would she rather he try it or just use the same frosting technique?

"Try the dyes!"

Streaks of black and brown and red and white, from the pointy ears to the deep-looking crystal eyes to the legs and paws to the long fluffy tail - the ice does 'sleek' better than 'fluffy' so he mostly sticks to that. The ancient (tiny, furry) king is posed sitting, tail halfway curled around his back legs, head high and staring off into the middle distance regally.

"I do like ice sculpting. It's way more fun when you have a way to get 'em to not melt."

"You made him look so powerful! I bet he'd like that if he could see it."

"Thank you! Humans and animals are popular subjects for ice sculpture contests because of all the fiddly details. Glad to know I'm not rusty or anything."

"Wish I could see one of your contests! They sound fun."

"I mean, you totally can see one next time I open the door, not like I could stop you. Or would want to."

"...I'm listening but I've got a good contract and no one's trying to kill me at home. Got something better than that?"

"No, I mean, like, you could look at the last Moon Festival."

"Not if you don't want the door open very long."

"Ah, right. We'd be glad to have you - or another information mage to be honest, or probably one of most kinds of mage - and you'll be rich by our standards. But there's a war on. And thinking about it, I can't trust you wouldn't end up working for the Fire Nation, anyway..."

"And I'm happy in Ira Sani. Are you ready for me to look again or still thinking?"