Tense, glaring silence. 

"Honestly," the woman introduced earlier as Herald-Mage Sandra says, "it seems like some of the problem is that this is a very unwieldy size of meeting and we should have a smaller one." 

"...That's probably a good idea." Savil looks very reluctant about it, though.

There's another long silence, with the sorts of looks back and forth that often indicate Mindspeech asides. 

"Savil has the most context on Van's side of this," Shavri says finally. "So I would propose she meets with you tomorrow, Belrun," meaningful glance in Savil's direction, "perhaps with a non-Herald present - myself and maybe Melody as well? She's pretty good at, er, making conversations that would otherwise be very tense and unproductive go better." 

"I'm really not sure that's a plus!" This time, Tran does stand. "And, honestly, I would not put it past Leareth to have some plan where he invades and gets Belrun out safely, so I'm not sure this visit should be as reassuring as you all seem to think." 

"...conversations not being tense and unproductive isn't a plus? Who benefits from conversations being tense and unproductive? - he doesn't to my knowledge have a plan to extract me but I suppose that doesn't prove that much about whether one exists."

Tran just glowers wordlessly at her. 

Shavri looks at him, a Mindspeech-y sort of look, and eventually glances back at Belrun. "I...think...the concern here is that...if the conversation is tense and unproductive because you're relaying Leareth's points which are wrong but very eloquent and convincing, then the tension is doing useful work, there? I think a number of us are worried about - well, basically about it being unsafe to engage, here, because of the persuasiveness thing." She frowns. "I don't think that's a knockdown argument, in my opinion we have to engage in order to have any hope of not ending up at war, and ending up at war seems very bad, just..." 

"We shouldn't negotiate with monsters," Tantras says flatly. "I don't feel like this is complicated." 

"Tran," Savil says sharply, "this is really not helping." 

"Look," Sandra snaps, "can we all just calm down for thirty seconds, please, this is giving me a headache." 

Belrun puts her head in her hands and waits for what she hopes is at least thirty seconds, counting her heartbeats.

"I'm not supernaturally persuasive," she says. "I'm a twenty-two-year-old microbiologist from the University of Petras who picked up an injured stranger and Healed him and took long enough about it that by the time I had a chance to think we were irreversibly lifebonded, and I'm trying to deal with that. You made peace with Karse and Karse actually invaded Valdemar."

"That's exactly what I've been saying," Shavri mutters wearily. 

Savil frowns briefly at her before turning back to Belrun. "I apologize. It's been a stressful few weeks and a lot of us are very tired and snappy. I think the best idea at this point is to call it a night, get some sleep, and meet with a smaller group in the morning." 

"Okay." She stands up, wobbles, reaches for her dad's arm to steady herself.

They head out. 

...A while later, Shavri comes jogging to catch up. "Belrun? May we speak for a bit?" 

"Yeah?"

Shavri waits until they've reached Belrun's room. 

"You've probably noticed that there's a lot of, er, prickliness right now," she says. She seems self-conscious; her hand keeps going to the hilt of a sword mysteriously buckled over her Healers' robes. "I'm - sort of taking this upon myself right now, honestly, I haven't checked with Randi or anything. But I think it'll help if you have some of that context." 

Belrun sits. "It was sure something. I appreciate your mitigating presence."

Shavri leans against the wall.

"Part of the awkwardness is timing. Do you know any of the context around Vanyel's, um, use of blood-magic in Sunhame?" 

"I've heard bits. Just from Vanyel, I don't know much about his reception elsewhere besides 'bad'."

"It's kind of variable. Savil - knew for a while, she was there, so she's probably the calmest about that part, although the more recent aspect has her pretty badly shaken. I...pretty much just think what he did was justified? Obviously he should've fessed up right away, would've been way less awkward for Randi, but, I mean, the soldiers were already dead men walking. Anyway. Tran is - taking it extremely personally. He's the sort of person who thinks there should be clear bright lines, you know?" 

"I can't say that I do know."

"...Not really that sort of person, huh? You know, that makes sense, if you are the sort of person who'd end up lifebonded to Leareth. I guess I wouldn't know how compatible you'd actually have to be for a lifebond to work." 

"It's unclear. Apparently enough that they didn't try it centuries ago. I have my differences with Leareth but I get where he's coming from? Also he's pretty receptive to criticism."