Scyelen really appreciates that he has no idea how much.

"If I know Siesta, I doubt it would take her an entire night to finish whatever settling in she is doing," Scyelen says, managing not to stumble over her words, if just barely. "I have no urgent business this day, myself. Would it be acceptable to wait until she is available?"

"Wait, you say? Hm. Hm. I suppose that is your prerogative. Please, be welcome. I'm quite sure you're correct, and the girl won't be long."

With that, they are escorted from the Count's study and into a sitting room. They are not brought any refreshments.

Raafi doesn't speak immediately, once they're alone. He certainly doesn't look happy about the situation, though.

Scyelen tries not to fidget as the seconds crawl by.

He doesn't leave her bored long. "He's got no intention of letting us see her, I'm pretty sure."

"We don't... know that..." she says weakly.

No, he's right. "This isn't a good sign."

"No, it's not."

"I have a spell that should lead us to her, or we can go talk to the headmaster or something."

Scyelen is very uncomfortable with this plan but, "I distract the guard, you use the spell and sneak off to find and talk to her?"

"That should work," he nods. "Let me get out some magic for it."

He has a cloak, for himself, that makes people's eyes slide off of him a bit when he's still and quiet, and a potion for her. "This helps with figuring out how to talk to people and get them to do what you want," he explains of it. "It only lasts for a few minutes. I have more if we need them later - not a lot, but some."

Scyelen double-takes at the offered potion, her eyes very wide.

She takes it from him, though, staring at it and then at him. Well she did already know he had various exotic mind-healing stuff, this isn't that different, she supposes.

"Okay, I'll, um," she gestures towards her mouth with the potion. Then, after a brief pause, actually drinks the potion.

It only takes a moment for the potion to kick in, with an odd sense of intuition - not of what the people around her are thinking, exactly, but of the ways they could think, and what she could say or do - what tone to take, how to move, how to stand - to get them to think one thing or another.

Raafi stands by the door, waiting for an opening to sneak out.

This is pretty heady.

She glances at Raafi briefly, but using his own potion on him, well, that would probably be rude.

She thinks for a moment, then she takes off one of her shoes and pushes it underneath a heavy ottoman.

She steps out into the hall.

The guard outside the sitting room is bored, and kind of antsy, which makes it easy to convince him to come inside and help her retrieve her shoe. The guard's eyes flick around to find Raafi, confirming his presence the once, before ceasing to track him.

And out he goes, back down the hall the way they came, looking for an unobtrusive spot to cast his spell.

Unobtrusive spots are available. Count Mott has a fair few guards but his manor is very large and there are plenty of places to go unseen.

Good. He casts: the spell he's using can't target people, but can give him the direction and rough distance to any object he's touched, for a little while; hopefully Siesta is still wearing the necklace he gave her.

It would appear that she is. The necklace is that way, moving slightly, top floor, north wing.

Off he goes.

The quantity of guards increases, here.

The room Siesta is in appears to be adjacent to the study they met Mott in earlier. The doors are guarded... but this unguarded room has a balcony, and so does the room Siesta is in, right next to it.

Why is she guarded like that, it's pretty bizarre.

He has rings for jumping and climbing skill in his belt; he puts them on and traverses the balconies.

It turns out they're not guarding Siesta herself.

They're guarding Mott, who is in the room with her.

Siesta stands in view of the balcony, dressed in a new, noticeably more flattering maid uniform. Mott is 'inspecting' her, circling around her with a genial leer. He stops behind her to sniff her hair and grope her. Siesta herself appears flustered and put-upon, but not entirely unreceptive.

As tempting as it is to do something that would inevitably start a war, he really shouldn't. He stays very still.

Siesta fidgets uncomfortably while Mott takes his liberties, but he doesn't escalate much further than he already has.

Eventually, he leaves her be and returns to his study. The guards out in the hall move away with him.

He gives her a minute, both to see how she reacts once she's alone and to make it less obvious that he saw all that, in case she'd rather he hadn't.

Once she's alone Siesta seems a bit subdued, but calm enough.

He taps on the balcony door to be let in.

"Hey, sweetheart." He's a little subdued, too, and obviously worried.