"...You're kind of contributing to it though," Shavri mutters, mostly to herself, while looking determinedly down at the path. 

There are about ten seconds of blessed silence - Keiran's huddle seems to have taken their conversation to Mindspeech, in fact, there are a lot of Mindspeech-y looks going around. 

"Belrun?" Vanyel says cautiously. "Do you, er - what's the thing that you wish we could do now instead of, um, this?" 

"Um, I guess I wish we could - sleep on it and reconvene in a smaller group in the morning -?"

"We thought Van might have a dream tonight, no?" Katha points out. "Given the logistical delay of letters, if we have to arrange a Gate location, plausibly we'd want to settle that before Van goes to sleep." 

"How does it help anything if he has a dream after I've been sent back instead?"

"I assume she meant I could pick a Gate location with Leareth," Vanyel says wearily. "Although I'm pretty likely not to get the dream tonight, I mean, it's only ever happened once that it was two nights in a row." 

"You could settle a Gate location without committing to use it, maybe? Tell him you might send me home tomorrow but maybe not -?"

"Savil, this is a bad idea - we talked about this, it's one thing to trust Van to turn his back and not talk to Leareth at all, and another to hand him a possibly sensitive and fraught negotiation like this!" 

"I was kind of worried - Van, ke'chara, are you up for this? You really haven't been sleeping very well–"

"That isn't the point!" Aaaand they're off again. 

"Guys?" says Belrun after it's been a minute.

Savil makes a sort of calming-down gesture with her hands, which has little effect. "We were talking about whether or not it's important to make a decision tonight, right - obviously it'd be good if we didn't have to and could sleep on it..." 

"I think I should stay at least a few more days, even if you don't want to have more meetings in that time, or meetings with Heralds in attendance, or meetings without Tantras in particular glowering at me, because -"

"I don't see how mandatory Tantras glowering helps anyone," Savil mutters. "Is it even feasible to do meetings without Heralds at all - hmm..." 

"No? That's stupid?" 

"I mean, I could do it, my Companion isn't talking to me anyway." 

Scowl. 

Worried look. "Van, ke'chara, apparently the limits on how bad it can get are a lot worse than 'not speaking'..." 

"- because there's -" Nobody's listening. She'd Mindspeak somebody but there is not obviously anyone who can take control of this situation even if she thinks of the perfect thing to say.

Eventually Tantras spins around and fixes his eyes on her. "Well? Is this accomplishing everything you hoped? I mean, I assume throwing the Heralds into complete chaos is pretty convenient for Leareth." 

"I didn't want -"

"Tran! Belrun, sorry - Tran, can you just–"

"I mean," Katha says quietly, "I'm not sure it matters if she was planning this specifically - it'd be weirdly specific - it's still happening." 

Tantras and Shavri now seem to be very distracted, locking eyes with each other and presumably Mindspeaking. 

"Can't we please just -"

They obviously can't just. They're still talking over each other layers deep and now she can't even catch the odd word in some of the subconversations.

She could try to walk off, go back to her room, see what they say in the morning. That would - look hostile, she's not supposed to slip their leash, and even if she brought Chalan - staring in horror at the shambles of his national government - and the other guard along it'd look bad, they might panic and attack her.

She could give up. Stand here, answer questions if any are ever posed without half a dozen more sentences heaped over them at the same time, maintain her blue halo that is doing so fucking little to verify her good intentions here, let them send her home to huddle in the circle of Leareth's arms and not be in so much fucking pain and - what, circle back and try again? How's that going to work out? Abandon this whole country of half a million people to violent conquest? Convince Leareth to do something else, maybe, but what else, she doesn't know how to blow up the moon, at least if they conquer Valdemar they don't immediately have to start slaughtering people, they have a few centuries to build a really nice empire and if at the end of it they no longer need to throw ten million people into the meatgrinder they will still have a really nice empire and -

No, however geopolitically she's tempted to think now, the war represents a real cost, Valdemar has allies, the gods have tricks, it will be protracted and ugly and people will die and the current best proof of concept for ever getting them back again might, optimistically, turn them into horses who dimly remember eating cake, that's hopes piled on fantasies piled on dreams, she can't just give up averting this war as a bad job and go home even though she aches.

Isn't there anyone sane around? Okay, Chalan is sane, but he's overwhelmed. He thinks very highly of Heralds and a lot of them are currently squabbling like chickens right before his eyes and they'll all think he's biased anyway -

:Amshalan? Are you awake?: