Savil chuckles. "You know, Dara is pretty bright. If this were happening two years from now then I'm sure she'd be running half the show. I can sound Rolan out about it." 

"Thank you."

"You're welcome! Hmm. Another piece here is knowing what our timeline is. Has Leareth told you when he would be making a decision on what to do, here?" 

"We didn't give, uh, my stay here, an end date."

"I am guessing you'll be very sad if you have to stay here for the next six months, though." Frown. "Also I assume Leareth would be upset although honestly that's hard to picture. But probably it's not in our interest to stress him out any more than the bare minimum." 

"He's not the sort of person who acts rashly in response to stress. But he doesn't like being far apart either."

"Can't blame him. We're grateful that he's willing to put up with that for the sake of maybe not going to war." 

"He's aware wars are bad. Also he's gotten fond of Vanyel."

"I assume that would not get in his way if he decided murdering Vanyel was the best path to reach his goal." 

"No. It's just, that isn't from a deficit of fondness."

"Hmm. What's your sense of how motivated Leareth is to negotiate rather than fight, here?"

"Can you rephrase the question?"

"...All right. Different question, I guess. In your judgement, is he at all likely to decide to surprise attack without telling us he's giving up on negotiating?" 

"I guess I can't rule it out if he has an extraction plan that doesn't require my foreknowledge, but I was not privy to any plans for extracting me and don't think he'd risk me."

"Did he give you any specific goals to achieve - or signs to look out for that talks weren't likely to work, I guess, not that I necessarily expect you to tell me the latter." 

"It was pretty open-ended on both counts."

Savil nods. Thinks hard for a while. 

"...What's the sort of thing that you would need to hear from us, either in order to just resolve this or to feel reassured that it's on a good path to to that," she says slowly. 

"Uh, either I need enough confidence in you to tell you what the plan is - I'd need to hear that from Leareth myself after explaining my reasoning to him - or I guess you could convince me and through me him that you'd like to help us blow up the moon. Or I guess I could learn that you'd be very difficult to conquer and hold compared to his projections."

"Hmm. Is the conversation about, er, blowing up the moon, one we could even have without the first thing. It seems relevant what the benefits are of blowing up the moon, which can also be achieved by holding territory, and I'm not sure how sensitive that piece would be." 

"I actually can tell you that part. It's a pretty big deal, if you want to sit down or anything?"

Savil glances at Shavri. "Um, sure. Go on." 

Shavri gets out some paper to take notes. 

"You know the Cataclysm?"

"We heard the debrief from Vanyel on what you told him in the dream," Savil says neutrally. 

"Looking at another one of those in a few hundred years if nobody does anything and it's gotta be a big anything."