More of the Acts sounds good.

Nothing disastrous happens before the first wave of the Nap Stack is up!

Savil emerges with more bounce in her step than she's had in weeks. She's still tired on some level, but - almost entirely in an emotional sense, really, and even that is easier to bear now that her head is clear. She trades off with Katri, who goes in with Kellan. 

...They need to be thinking about shutting down the Web. She's worried that the Web is going to object and it doesn't seem very logistically feasible to evacuate Haven in preparation, especially if the Star-Eyed correctly sees interfering with this as a way to delay them, but - she should talk with Vanyel. As privately as possible, in case that makes the slightest difference. 

Treven comes up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. 

First up is meeting properly with Randi to do a full, thorough report on everything he's been doing for the last week, because Randi is going to be taking back over on the next Council meeting scheduled for tonight. It's likely to be an awfully eventful Council meeting; they're planning to announce Blai's vision about the Ifteli invasion, as well as the part where Leareth nearly died trying to get Jisa out safely from an Iftel-back attack. 

He miiiiiiisses Jisa, desperately, but - they're adults, they can cope. Or at least he'd better be able to cope, because it's about to get worse. Randi is sending him to Rethwellan again, by Gate (cast by one of Leareth's people, since they're not sure they trust White Winds anymore). His mission is to open a much more forthright negotiation with Queen Lythiaren than the last time, and renegotiate whether and how much Rethwellan can commit to helping them with defense against Iftel and maybe also Karse. He's not looking forward to this at all but it's undeniably important, and it should at least be a faster mission than the last one. 

Dara rotates in for her own nap. 

Afterward she is going to have the WORST mission, which is going to a neutral location outside the Web, a town in Hardorn near the border of both other countries - apparently Leareth has contacts in Hardorn because of course he does and his people were able to help arrange that on short notice?? - to meet the Ifteli high priest and attempt diplomacy. She feels pretty doomy about this working, but it's clearly worth trying and she at least mostly doesn't expect it to go badly in a way that involves surprise gryphons. 

Shavri also joins the next round of naps. Randi is not particularly behind on sleep, but she is. 

Vanyel spends a candlemark crying on Stef while being snuggled and sung to, which feels like it actually helps a lot more than sleep would. He would consider trying to grab a slot in the last wave but it's going to conflict with the Council meeting and he should be there and play Demonsbane to intimidate anyone being difficult. 

He meets with Savil about the Web, and then with Randi to report fully on the events since he left Haven the most recent time. Though apparently Seldan beat him to it by backchanneling information to all the Companions of the Senior Circle Heralds, so it's mostly redundant. 

...Someone needs to meet with Lord Withen Ashkevron to discuss the Council meeting content before it happens; he's a valuable person to have on-side, the conservative faction listens to him. Vanyel suspects that normally he would run as fast as he could in the other direction, but this time he volunteers himself. He's not sure why it seems so much less agonizing now. Maybe because Withen doesn't look at him with that awful carefully disguised sympathy that all the Heralds have. 

Sitting in on Blai reading the Acts does not take up Seldan's full concentration and he can do SO much backchanneling. He'll also interrupt every so often to update Blai on events and decisions as they happen. 

He's not actually sure if there are decisions gated on the Council meeting, so much as "the Heralds are trying to do less of the thing where they tell the Council the absolute bare minimum about Leareth, guaranteeing that it will come as a baffling shock to everyone when they turn around and claim that the entire war they were anticipating with him was a mistake." Blai is not invited. No one can stop Seldan from listening in via the other Companions, though. 

Surely the... other Companions... could stop him... if that were actually important to anyone? (Why is their national security approach "horse conspiracy".)

They could shield him out - and it sounds like the Senior Circle did keep the whole Leareth affair secret from the other Companions for a long time - but they don’t, usually. Now that he's a Companion himself, he's starting to see why it works that way. There is such a spectacular amount of backchannel communication at all times. A lot of it doesn't immediately get passed on directly to the Heralds of the relevant Companions, but it means that it's much faster and smoother to get everyone looped in when it's necessary. 

Anyway, in this case it's not important to keep Blai out of the loop! Things will probably go better if Blai is in the loop! He's not formally invited because it would be yet another thing to explain and because he doesn't speak the language, but the contents of the meeting are basically all things he already knows. 

He doesn't object to this specific instance of being kept in the loop, he's just kind of baffled by the overall pattern of looping-in and -out decisionmaking he observes.

Valdemar's entire government is based on the existence of miraculous magical telepathic horses and this is objectively speaking a pretty bizarre way to run your government but, once that's the system you've picked, it doesn't seem additionally surprising that the approach to national security can be described as a "horse conspiracy". It feels like it would take a lot of effort on the part of the Heralds themselves to make it not that, and it hasn't (yet) led to the kind of problems that would prompt the Heralds to push back. 

(Also, selfishly, Seldan finds being part of the horse conspiracy delightful.) 

Oh no is Seldan going to be bereft of his horse conspiracy when they go to Golarion. He sounded pretty excited to go to another planet before but it doesn't have any horse conspiracies that Blai knows about.

It'll be an adjustment! He'll definitely miss some things about it. But he somehow really doubts they're going to be bored in Golarion, which is what would make it genuinely unpleasant. Being north in Leareth's base was also fine, he wasn't bored at all, and Golarion seems like it also has, well, a lot going on. 

Yes. Specifically it has a constitutional convention ordered by the queen's archmage party member going on. It sounds dreadful but Blai is not commanded to like it.

...Will Blai be upset if Seldan thinks that sounds like it could be a huge amount of fun for him personally? Getting a spot at the table to shape the future of a government! Oh, it's probably going to be full of people who are infuriatingly wrong about how a government ought to be run, but Seldan would have lived a very different life if he didn't find it on some level enjoyable to win arguments with infuriatingly wrong people. It makes sense that Blai is dreading it, Blai does not seem very much like Seldan in that respect. 

Since Blai has to do it anyway it is in fact quite relieving to plan to do it with Seldan helping excitedly in the back of his head the whole time!

Oh good!!! 

...Anyway it continues to sound like things in Haven are going about as well as they can expect. Maybe the Heralds are sufficiently firm on not waking anyone in the Nap Stack that the Star-Eyed isn't bothering to manufacture emergencies about it because it wouldn't work. Does Blai want a turn to nap with the third wave of people? 

That is probably in principle a good idea but in practice he feels sufficiently awkward about sharing a stall with somebody else's Companion that he's not sure he could in fact sleep that way, he's not tired enough that he can be confident it would outweigh the dismay.

Fair enough. Seldan doesn't think it's a great idea for both of them to be uninterruptible at the same time, and the space in the barn isn't unlimited enough for it to really make sense for Seldan to park himself in a stall with Blai and take up space without intending to actually sleep. Honestly this is pretty uncomfortable for a lot of the Heralds too and some of them - Heralds not on the Senior Circle who aren't quite as sleep-deprived to begin with - have been declining it on those grounds.

The last wave of people may end up being half Healers and support staff who don't have Companions anyway, so if Blai would feel more comfortable sharing a mattress in a stall with Melody or something, he could do that in another two candlemarks? Though, like, pretty understandable if the problem is that he wants to sleep with Seldan there, this is a very common experience for new Heralds. 

(Seldan is fine with the amount of sleep he's had today and was not really planning to sleep and leave Blai without his company.) 

Blai thinks he can sleep sans Seldan and near Melody. This is culturally weird for him but in the direction where he'd expect Melody to object, not where it bothers him directly.

There are probably also male Healers or support staff he could share with, Melody is just the first person he was able to confirm is grabbing a nap in the last wave, doesn't have a Companion, and is willing to share a mattress with Blai. 

Anyway, that's in a couple of candlemarks. They can read some more of the acts, eat supper, and then head back over to the stables? 

Works for him.

Then Seldan can learn some more facts about Iomedae! In between he updates Blai that Dara, having benefited enormously from the equivalent of a full night's sleep, has now successively been dispatched to Random Small Town In Hardorn to do diplomacy. 

And then a couple of hours later, after Blai has eaten supper, he can come out and rejoin Seldan and the Leareth-mage-entourage and they'll make their way back across the Palace grounds to the stables? 

Out he comes to be toted to the stable.

It's fully dark now, but for once it's actually stopped snowing, and the sky is even clear enough for there to be some moonlight. It's not a long trip, down the nicely cleared path and crossing one of the half-dozen bridges over the Terilee river and then past Companions' Field to the stables. Seldan is enjoying being outside with Blai on his back, though Blai's Endure Elements has now worn off so he's not going to dawdle.