"Fair enough. I will try very hard not to get murdered because it would be inconvenient and also make you sad." 

"And kill a dude."

"...Also that, yes. I already try very hard not to get murdered and that is a reason, but now I have an additional reason of it making you sad, although - I am really not sure where I would put any more paranoia about not being murdered, short of never leaving a safe bunker up north, so perhaps I cannot." 

"I should probably tell the dean I will not be available to teach microbio again next term today. I should possibly tell him I need to cancel the rest of the term."

"Perhaps you can tell him that you had something come up that may necessitate dropping the rest of the term, to give him more warning, and then we can discuss it in more depth before making a final decision?" 

"Yeah, okay." Sigh. "After breakfast I need to check my eggs and then prep for today's class, I can wing it occasionally but I used up my winging it last time. You can audit the class if you want, nobody ever checks whether people are signed up to do that or not."

"I would like that." He's surprisingly eager to see what Belrun is like when she's teaching. "And I can tell you the rest of my history with Vanyel now, unless you would prefer I try to cover some of it over breakfast." 

"If you can finish clarifying before the porridge is done don't let me stop you."

There's kind of a lot of clarifying. Leareth starts at the beginning, with, well, the fact that his original plan involved invading Valdemar, and that about fourteen years ago he began having a dream-vision - mysteriously, he doesn't even have Foresight - about a Herald meeting him to kill him. 

He initially put a bounty on Vanyel's head. Not intending to kill him, he just wanted to have any idea what was going on. 

"...did you try sending him a letter first or jump straight to kidnap attempts?"

"I tried sending a messenger to give him a message, I thought he would be in Haven, but apparently he was not in town at the time and nobody my spies at the time could actually obtain rumours from knew where he was." 

"I guess that would complicate things. I take it you did not successfully kidnap him."

"...No, I did not. I think he went to the Pelagirs, which are rather impassable even to bounty hunters. In any case, about a year later it very unexpectedly became a lucid dream and we started out with some very awkward conversations. He would have been seventeen at the time." 

"And now you give him advice and trade songs?"

"It took some time and another accidental murder attempt to reach that point. ...To clarify, I set up a number of contingency plots to assassinate him if I decided I wished to, and then apparently the instructions to shut down one of them did not successfully get passed along – but since the assassin in question was his family's priest and he never goes home, this went unknown to both of us for over a decade. It was quite embarrassing. He was understandably miffed about it although he is shockingly difficult to kill." 

"That does sound... embarrassing's one word for it, I guess. So since it's a Foresight dream can you alter its contents by making different plans? - also if I'm there how did you not know who I am."

"The dream setting has never changed despite both of our plans being very different as a direct result of its existence, so, I guess that no. And, I had wondered who you were! The dream was originally quite vague – I know that you are here, that I have given you kind of an absurd number of artifacts to keep you safe and also comfortable, and I know that you are important for some reason, but not your name, let alone the rest. I had been assuming you were a person I would end up recruiting much later." 

"Well, I was very comfortable, but there goes my plan to leave myself notes. I wonder what would be in the notebook that must be included - there has to be one, I always have one -"

"A very intriguing question!" 

"I guess I'll check when - or I suppose if - it happens again. How often -?"

"Every two to four weeks on average, in the past. More likely to happen when I have just learned something new, or he has. I suppose you count." 

"Huh. Is this whole deal god-mediated, or... what?"

Dark look. "Most likely. Vanyel and I are both very confused about what the gods are hoping to accomplish with it, though, given that the two of us speaking does not seem to actually help with the goal of causing him to murder me." 

"One could ask the same question about, uh, us. Do they definitely all hate you? I mean, Astera doesn't seem to mind you using her hierarchy for mail service."

"Some seem much closer to neutral. Astera is a minor deity relative to most of the others and does not appear inclined to interfere with that system."