"Huh?" 

"Stand-in for coming up with a replacement for the 'invade Valdemar' step of the secret plan that I made up for quick reference when I was talking to Savil."

"Interesting. I guess that's a helpful thing to have, to talk about hypotheticals." He yawns. "Sorry. Oh, by the way, I've been un-uninvited from meetings! Although I think I might not be at the first one today because Tran will be there and we, er, don't do well in the same room right now." 

"He doesn't like me either but I suppose he wouldn't care to be skipping all the meetings I'm in."

Bitter chuckle. "No. Anyway, er, did you at least sleep a bit better last night?" 

"Not great but better, yeah, thank you."

"Mmm, that's good. Anyway, sorry for barging in on you like that - I almost told you in the middle of the night but Yfandes thought you probably wouldn't thank me for that." 

"I would have said 'thank you' but objectively it wouldn't have done me any good. Thank you for telling me now."

"You're welcome. Er, I did take notes on the conversation - it wasn't that useful a conversation, Leareth was so distracted - but I can make you a copy and bring it when I see you later today?" 

"I'd appreciate that."

"Will do. I'll see you later." He heads out. 

Belrun hugs her dad. She looks at the various littlest bits of her own blood and draws their shapes; she's not sure when she'll be interrupted and unlike a random other organism she'd have to stop looking at and lose forever, she can always look at blood again and eventually find a similar part to finish observing whatever she was looking at.

And a while later Herald-Trainee Dara shows up to collect her. "We're having a meeting with me, Savil, Katha, and Tantras, and afterward you'll meet with Vanyel and some other set of people." 

"Okay. Thank you." Belrun follows her.

Tantras is sitting in the meeting-room waiting for them. He doesn't look hostile the way he did before, though he also avoids looking directly at Belrun. 

Savil looks like someone who didn't sleep especially well. "Come on in. We don't have that much of an agenda for today but I think Dara had some ideas? You should start with anything that's come up in the interim, though." 

"Vanyel had a dream with Leareth and - I didn't - so there's that - I don't think it impinges directly but if I am in a conspicuously bad mood that's why."

"Oh." Savil looks like she maybe wants to add more and can't decide what. Finally she just shakes her head. "I'm sorry, that's - I can see why it's upsetting. Anyway. Dara?" 

"I think we maybe should try to have some hypothetical kind of conversation about gods," Dara says. "I think it's going to be really hard to talk about directly because of - you know, the thing. But if we can talk about blowing up the moon instead of whatever that's a metaphor for, and that makes it easier, maybe we could try to do that here as well. I don't really know how to start though." 

"Hm. - okay, I think I've got -

Let's suppose there's a normal human person who openly wields profound power over not one but two countries, fairly big ones too; they also have ordinary government structures but anyone from either country will if asked about this normal human person be like 'oh, him, yeah, we obey his rules, we respect his authority, our government does too'. One of these countries is formally allied with Valdemar! In fact, a member of its government married into the family a while ago to secure the alliance, this in spite of the fact that the country doesn't allow Heralds including his wife within its borders, Valdemar has no intelligence presence there to follow up on whether they're complying with the terms of international friendship on their end, and also there is a spell over the whole country to prevent anyone from finding any of this weird or interesting, that affects everyone, including the royal family this government representative married into.

The other country under the sway of this normal human person with two countries up and invades Valdemar, with his sigil on their banners all the while. The first country does literally nothing about this the entire time. The normal human person doesn't say anything about the invasion either way, or about this use of his symbols, or about any of the casualties or atrocities that take place during the entire war, though at the end, when it's all mopped up with a new government in charge of that country of his, he does decide to conspicuously grant his blessing to the figurehead of the winning side after the dust is all settled.

What would you say is your opinion of this normal human person and his stance on Valdemar and his management of his countries?"

Savil is giving her a very suspicious look. 

Tantras just looks deeply confused. "That seems very unrealistic? I don't see how a person could do that. Even if they wanted to be that evil." 

"For the sake of argument let's assume this was achieved by normal human politics and fancy magery, somehow, and evaluate from there." But she does write down 'even if they wanted to be that evil' in her notebook.

Now Savil looks suspicious and also incredibly uncomfortable! 

Dara gives Tantras a faintly exasperated look. "You're talking about Vkandis, aren't you. ...Wait, what's the other country? I really should know who we have alliances with... Or is it more hypothetical than that and actually it's something other than an alliance or not even about Valdemar specifically?"