"I didn't realize they were waiting until you mentioned that you could tell there were people outside, and once I acknowledged them they came in. They didn't want to disturb you by coming in at a bad time."

Eilha nods.

He's going to be one of those people who gets weird about luxury, isn't he? He didn't seem the type before...

He doesn't seem to think that that's a good answer. "It's okay to knock," he tells Eilha, with a demonstration, "next time." And he'll have to pay more attention to his surroundings from now on.

She smiles slightly. "Understood, thank you."

"What's wrong?"

"Probably someone said to you, be good to Jedi, they're..." can he explain 'important' with the help of the sand table without losing the thread of the conversation, no he probably can't; he shakes his head instead. "That's not... you don't need to. Nothing bad is going to happen to you if I'm unhappy."

That's very sweet and also she doesn't believe him.

Mostly.

What does he mean? Is he a person she can believe?

Coming from her housechief, er, coming from the chief of a new household that she was marrying into, yeah, she'd believe it. 

Coming from a town councilor, no, they'd just be saying words. 

Coming from the head butler of a shrine she just transferred to...hm, she'd have to ask around. There's no one she can ask about Rafiik.

Coming from a visiting ambassador, illthrift no, that's not just a lie but a command to lie in return, force herself to relax, and still arrange to please them. 

Coming from an elph, yes, absolutely. Elves, at least titled Lei elves, do not lie. The Lei empire has lasted a thousand years. They have burnt the trust of their friends and servants and allies and enemies, made every mistake, wasted every kind of opportunity - and they learn from their experience. Their word is precious.

Which of those is Rafiik?

She kind of likes him.

She kind of wants to ask, even if she's a creation of the Sith, raised to destroy the Jedi like a swarm of ravenous pests whose name she's forgetting, her very nature offensive to him? (There hasn't been a swarm of ravenous pests in Lei for decades, but she's heard stories. Locusts, that was one of them.)

And then he'd kill her, but not because she made him unhappy. Because of being a creation of the Sith, etc.

Oh, there is something she can ask.

If it goes badly, well, her friends will have learned something from her sacrifice.

She holds back a nervous giggle.

"Why should I believe you?" 

"I'm not..." He pauses, sighs, relaxes the tension in his shoulders. "I'm sorry. You've been good to me and if you want to keep doing that," he shrugs. "But no Jedi is supposed to ask for this. I think you haven't seen a Jedi before and you're doing what somebody told you. If your Jedi asked for this, that's bad, and I will try to fix it."

Dangerous words, if the other Jedi existed, overheard, and objected to being 'fixed'. She smiles at him.

Huh. And that, class of cadets who he is never actually going to teach but it's nice to imagine, that's why we don't just have driders handle everything.

Okay, back up and think this through. What they ultimately need is safety. One way to be safe is to get rid of Rafiik. That might require attracting the Sith. They need to learn more about Jedi.

When they planned to use an actor, they were thinking that Jedi were ['breeders'] humans, and that Rafiik expected one to be in charge. That's all wrong. Jedi are secretive, not ostentatious.

The fake Jedi is not likely to convince Rafiik to move on, and might provoke him. They should delay that meeting.

What do they do with the time? Learn everything they can. Prepare to fight.

With that in mind, Mirana should keep asking questions.

"'Fix' it? What does the Force do when you fix things?"

"I didn't mean I'd use the Force. When I go back to my planet I will tell the Jedi who tell all the Jedi what to do, and if the Jedi here is doing something bad they'll tell them to stop, or make them stop."

"How do the Jedi who tell all the Jedi what to do... How do they know what they should do? When a Jedi says something about another Jedi?"

"The Jedi who tell all the Jedi what to do are the council. I don't know all of how they know? They talk about it together and they ask the Force, and maybe they send a few Jedi to go learn things and tell them. If they don't already know about this they'll send Jedi to see it. If you want to make sure they know something you can tell me and I'll tell them."

"What does the Force say? Like... this is good or bad, this Jedi is good or bad, this Jedi's words are good or bad, or correct or not, the Jedi 'council' is good or bad...?

And how does the Force know what to say?"

"It can say all of those," he nods. "The Force knows because that's the kind of thing the Force is."

She wants to ask about the Sith - does the Force talk to them too, or about them - but that's too dangerous.

"Does the Force ever say something that isn't correct?"

"No, the same way I can look at these stones," a couple of the game pieces left on the table after they were used in yesterday's explanations, "and see, this one is white, this one is black. The Force is like a person a little bit, but it's not like a person that way."

"Hm, like a person who has seen everything. If you show me a leaf and ask what it is, I might know or I might not. I might ask myself, have I seen a drawing of that leaf? Did I eat one for lunch? I might think, it's some sort of squash - round vegetable - and go ask someone else who works with squash. And again, maybe they know, maybe they don't, maybe they ask themself questions. But if you show a person who has seen everything, they know. They don't ask questions. They just know..."

"Yeah, like that."

The metahuman has returned! And he's working with the Lei. That's all Tolesi knows, and that's enough.

He won't be able to get close to the metahuman. He doesn't even know the location. But a diplomat's suite was prepared in a hurry half a cycle ago, and it's almost time to exchange its decorative plant.

He selects a new plant, one with a wide pot. It's not pretty enough for a diplomat, but even if someone notices hopefully they'll just think there was a mix-up. He removes the soil, which damages the roots, but it doesn't need to survive long.

The bottom of the pot has a hole for drainage. When a plant goes on duty, normally he screws a stone plug into the hole. He needs something different here: a plug that fits loosely and is a little too long, so that when the pot is placed on a flat surface, the plug will slip upwards into the pot and open a gap. He's not a werewolf and can't ask anyone for help, but he has some gravel and eventually finds a chunk that works.

He surrounds the loose plug with the biggest pieces of rock, then fills the rest of the pot with gravel that gets gradually finer towards the top, ending with a thin layer of soil. 

Two kinds of soil, which look the same when soaking wet, but distinct otherwise, which he can use to write a simple message.

Earlier, he tried to check with his handler via the usual rendezvous with a kitsune in the deep tunnels under the shrine, but there was a vampire wandering around. He'll have to decide by himself.

He writes a single word, fills the pot with water, double checks the mechanism, fills the pot again, and hands it off to an underbutler.

A butler knocks on the door.

Rafiik goes to open it. (They all know to knock now! He'll have to ask Mirana later how they're communicating without him noticing, that's pretty neat that they can pull it off without electricity.)