"I would like in the abstract to be immortal but please check with me about the some kind of cost before getting me any of the ways of becoming immortal that you know of for my birthday."

"I will keep that in mind; most of them would require your cooperation to set up in any case." 

Leareth heads out. He puts about six layers of passive wards in expanding circles around Belrun's dorm room; they shouldn't bother anyone and if any gods do have plots literally scheduled for tonight then it ought to give him enough time to Gate in before anyone can reach her.

With slightly less ambient distraction, he tries to write out the pros and cons of telling her everything about his plans. She has a good point about it being kind of unfair and objectionable not to, on the other hand, he would probably think that anyway because he is unavoidably biased here. Lifebonds. 

She sits up in a controlled simmer of despairing fury for another two candlemarks and then goes to sleep!

Nothing tries to kill her or blow up her dorm building overnight! 

Good.

In the morning she cancels everything. No class, no office hours, would anyone like five points of extra credit to make sure none of her eggs are trying to start a plague today thanks. She gets her next door neighbor to bring breakfast. She has a great many emotions all over a great many sheets of paper. She shows up at "Arvad's" inn.

He feels her coming and heads out front to meet her. This is possibly the one, single, convenient thing so far. 

"Good morning." She seems to be trying not to look directly at him.

Avoiding looking at her doesn't make her presence much less distracting but it maybe helps at all. "So. Do you wish to go look at my supplies and notes cache near town, or see if there are any coded messages I can decode for you at the Temple of Astera?" 

"Temple's closer, I asked and there's one six blocks that way." She points.

They can head over to the temple!

"...Oh, right, I remembered. I gave you a false name before, in the infirmary, and it seems only polite to rectify that now, though Arvad is in fact a name I have gone by. The name I currently go by is Leareth, though." 

"Oh. Well, it's more aesthetic, at any rate."

"Thank you." Why does he care if she likes his name this is not important. 

They get to the temple. Leareth goes in and asks to see their library, and gives the librarian a passphrase, which gets him a more senior priest a few minutes later, to whom he gives several additional code phrases, and this earns him a very surprised look but also some correspondence, they've got a couple non-urgent letters that were waiting to be picked up by someone locally. Convenient, he'll get his mail faster too.

They are in code. "Where would be a good place to sit down and decipher these properly?" 

"We passed a park? I don't know what your privacy standards are here."

"I can do privacy with magic." He's mostly counting on the fact that nobody in the city knows who he is and that if something happens he can Gate them out in about five seconds. 

"You didn't seem to think so yesterday in the library." But she sets off parkward.

"It is much easier if people are not going to end up sitting five feet away. Also I hope this will be quick and I can show you the result in writing." Also he's feeling slightly less paranoid now that it's been overnight and there hasn't been a murder attempt on either of them. He surveys the park - if it's mostly empty that's fine, if it's very crowded he would rather find somewhere different. 

There is a nice empty bench to be had. She leaves six inches between them when she sits on it.

Leareth makes sure there's no one within ten feet, and puts up several different variants of privacy spell, which is probably overkill but whatever. He decodes one of the letters, writes it out in Rethwellani. It's short and not sensitive, good, he knows it's about the number of graduates of various mage-schools in Rethwellan this year, but to Belrun it won't be at all obvious what it's about, except that it clearly is a real letter that's about something. 

He shows her. 

She attempts to figure out how the code works so it's clear he's not just making something up on the spot.

Leareth considers explaining just enough that she can do the first few words herself, and then decides to sit back and see if she can get it on her own. She's clearly very smart and he will be impressed if she can. 

She can do this with sufficient margin notes.

All right, wow, that is very impressive and kind of terrifying, it's not one of the really secure codes because this is a very mundane message but still, she could probably get that too if you gave her weeks and the resources for it - and that's not even her field, she's a Healer who studies diseases by growing them in eggs, and, and–

Leareth is fairly sure that this is not just the lifebond talking and all of that is objectively impressive, especially in someone who is only in her early twenties, but he's not completely sure. Also all the shields in the world aren't going to stop him leaking some amount of 'wow!' through the lifebond to her. 

"Wait, were you having me do this part because you thought it'd be cool if I could extrapolate your cipher? I thought it was so I could be sure you were actually decoding letters held by the Temple of Astera and not just doing extemporaneous composition."

"I mean, I assumed you had a reason for wanting to do it other than showing off, and that is a sensible one, but that does not mean it is not additionally impressive." 

"Okay. Sorry. Generally kind of touchy."