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.)

There's a whole line of butlers here to clean up breakfast, refill the fruit basket, deliver more paper and a greater variety of ink and pens, take away the old potted plant, refill the water pitcher, exchange the towel, switch in a new chamber pot, bring a new potted plant, bring a small bowl of cornbread sticks - oh no the new plant is leaking - grab the new paper away from the puddle, clean up the mess, call out for another fresh towel -

Get rid of that plant! Subtly!

- and calmly pick up the new plant to take it away...

The soil in the pot now clearly shows an Elvish word written phonetically.

Unfortunately, Rafiik has been prioritizing learning vocabulary rather than the local system of writing. He does have a pretty good memory, though, and can use the Force to improve his recall of this in particular. First, though: "What word is that?" he asks Mirana.

"It says 'apple', which means" are they lying about it?

One problem is that Rafiik might leave and ask people outside of their control. 

The bigger problem is that the message is mostly not the word itself, but the whole situation where someone dramatically communicated something to him.

Oh good, lying is exhausting. "A kind of fruit."

"Huh." That doesn't sound very plausible.

"Is this a good time for me to go for a walk? And I want to..." he uses the sand table to explain the concept of cleaning... "I want to go for a walk and clean myself. And maybe do katas first."

"Sure..." The water and towel are right there; she points at them and licks her shoulder demonstratively. "There's a room with a very big bowl of water if you want to get very wet and stay wet for a while? We could walk there and then you clean yourself there? If you touched something that is going to hurt you and might hurt other people, there's a room for cleaning that. It's a long walk but we can help you go there faster than walking."

"No, I'm fine - I can do a Force thing for that if it happens but it didn't happen. I want to be clean when I meet the other Jedi. The room with the big bowl sounds good."

The butler who delivered the plant is innocent and was observing the plant the whole time. He got it from an underbutler whose first meeting with an Emperor is a bit intimidating, but she's innocent too. She got it from the gardener, whom she describes as a catfolk with black fur, pale yellow eyes, large ears, a wide chin and nose - yeah, that's either the gardener Tolesli Ratkeeper or a very good imposter. And he (whoever he is) is gone now. Guards! After him!