This does not make Vanyel look less alarmed. :What, and he's agreeing to do that?: 

Yes.

:...Um, wow? That's really good, I guess. And impressive. That was an excellent speech you gave and also I almost pissed myself, you – are scary when you're mad: 

- oh dear, I'm sorry. I am really being terrible about crisp professional boundaries with you, although I guess I don't think any of my books specifically recommended against having patients present while one threatens to trap a third party's soul in a jar.

:I mean, honestly the fact that he listened to you should be reassuring rather than scary. I'm just trying to get my brain to catch up to that from the part where there are two extremely powerful people who look like they might be about to fight each other in a cafeteria: 

Regardless of whether you should objectively be scared I'm sorry to have scared you.

He gives her a shaky smile. :Apology accepted: 

:Shall we go look at some deployment maps, then?: Leareth suggests. 

Bella nods at him and picks up her dinner plate to bring along. It floats through the air beside her.

Leareth brings her to a meeting-room with a good-sized long table in it, stops on the way to Mindspeak with some people; by the time they get there, someone else is bringing in a map and unfolding it, and a different scholar arrives shortly later with some books. 

"This is the list of people," he says. It's written up sort of like a ledger. "Not sorted by who has compulsions in place, but it should be marked in here," he points out one of the columns, "and specified whether it was voluntary – current setup is that some areas require a standard compulsion as a sort of oath of office, if a person wishes to volunteer for that department. The Eastern Empire uses them this way."

He ducks his head. "I...am willing to stop this practice, even though it makes it near-certain that something will leak that would not have otherwise, but I would appreciate if you ask my people how they feel about it. Some of the personnel groups are mainly from places such as the Eastern Empire, and expect this practice as a way to trust their colleagues." 

"I'm tentatively okay with voluntary ones as long as they don't, uh, self-protect, make it impossible for people to decide they want to have them removed so they can change jobs or whatever."

"The voluntary ones should not work like that in my setup – it is stupid to hamstring your most talented researchers by preventing them from using their judgement on where their work is most valuable. However, you are welcome to judge this for yourself; I am guessing that your powers give you some ability to see whether a compulsion is self-protecting?" 

"Uh, yes, but I'd have to go looking around in someone's head and since you'd have to be involved at some remove with finding me a volunteer to do that to anyway I don't know that it's actually worth it - it only helps in the case where the compulsion self-protects and you don't know it does that, which you can rule out by looking at whether they do in fact sometimes change jobs."

"They do – I can show you the personnel-transfer records..." He turns, presumably says something in Mindspeech to the scholar hovering helpfully nearby. They dart off. 

"If I were you I'd be wondering how this squares with making the gryphons land, are you?"

"My assumption is that this is not something you preferred to do at all, but you wished not to be killed - and let all of the Healers around you die - even less, and are willing to make exceptions even to what is clearly a very, very strong policy if it is obviously necessary. Self-defence is a general exception to a number of moral policies. Is that about right?" 

"Ish. I don't know how Melody's version worked but mine would have been very narrow - in particular if you'd walked up to a gryphon and asked them about how they felt about being stuck on the ground they would have been able to think about it normally - and also it would have worn off on its own in a couple of days if anything had happened to interfere with me removing it earlier."

"I am guessing it is possible with your arts to do a version which is less narrow, and that less ethical people than you do, back in your own world?" 

"Yes. People in my world commonly do many horrifying things. Of course, defenses against them are also commoner."

"Understood. I notice you also recommended that Melody use her Gift, when I asked her. Her version is in fact much less narrow, and does not as far as I know wear off on its own, though I suppose a different Mindhealer here could reverse it. You must trust her ethics on this matter." 

"We talk shop, insofar as patient confidentiality allows, and also I expected to be able to undo what she did if it wasn't originally intended to be both permanent and hopelessly confusing."

"Fair enough."

The scholar gets back with another book; this one, flipped open, has records of senior people who transferred between positions, including back and forth from departments where voluntary compulsions against sabotaging the work were requested in order to have access. 

She wants to check against rates of mobility between non-compulsed positions.

They are lower. But the difference almost entirely vanishes when comparing only the very senior personnel who would actually be in the running to end up at the very secret stations and also have lower mobility overall. Or between facilities that are the same general level of secrecy, but some with sub-projects that are harder for a single agent to deliberately sabotage, or that take different precautions against it other than compulsions. 

She surreptitiously offloads some of the math to persons back in Valinor. "This looks all right and would have been hard to mock up on short notice."