:It did! I think they're still holding onto some doubts about our story, but - a lot of it might be just that it's hard to absorb. Since this entire situation is ridiculous. Anyway, I - think we managed to get off on a footing where it hasn't even occurred to them to be suspicious of, well, me and Van's integrity as a Herald-Companion pair. Honestly it helps that we don't have a Groveborn right now to press me on lots of difficult questions. ...I mean, it might have been helpful if Taver were still around and could have explained the dreams with Leareth a week ago, but this way did mean we got to present it on our terms. I think they understand why Van wouldn't've been comfortable sharing that over a crystal ball that might not be completely secure, it's sensitive, which - means they blame us less for not explaining sooner: 

:No one even brought up the part about me using blood-magic: Vanyel adds to both Yfandes and Fazil. :I'm sure Savil told Randi and he must've been furious, but - I guess it's less important than the fact that Leareth wants to find his other self in a different world and help them take back a country from Hell: 

:There is kind of a lot going on.:

Shavri walks them over to the guest wing without speaking much. They've been given adjacent rooms. 

"Ring for a servant if you need anything," Shavri says tiredly. "Van, you can go back to your own room if you want, but you're also welcome to stay nearer Fazil."

Vanyel glances back at Fazil. "...I'll think about it. Here is fine for now." :If I go to the Heralds' wing then way too many people are going to try to talk to me: 

:Well, you're welcome to stay here, I don't have any plans. I'll probably just read.:

Then Vanyel will go flop in his temporary guest-room until Melody shows up to search his mind for compulsions.

Lunch arrives if they want it?

Lunch seems good.

And a candlemark after that, Melody arrives.

Vanyel lets her in, with both relief and trepidation. 

"Van. Good to have you back." She sits down. "I was briefed on things a while ago due to, er, being pulled in when Savil informed Randi about your using blood-magic at Sunhame." 

"Oh." Pause. "I was surprised no one asked me about that in our debrief meeting earlier." 

"Sounds like they had bigger things to worry about." She tilts her head, frowns at him. Her hands move restlessly, unnecessarily smoothing her robes. "Honestly, you don't really look like you've been taking care of yourself." 

Sigh. "Van. What happened? ...I - can promise not to tell the King, if it's a personal thing and you think it's not relevant to the bigger-picture situation. He might ask me questions but only under first-level Truth Spell. We had an argument about that and I won." 

Ten minutes later, Vanyel tentatively Mindtouches Fazil. :Melody, er, extracted the whole story with Yfandes from me. She promised not to tell Randi and she agrees it doesn't seem relevant anyway now that 'Fandes is back, but - she wants to talk to you about what happened during that time period, because I was really not paying attention to much: 

:Oh. Uh, sure.:

:We're right next door to you, if you can just come over?: 

So he heads on over. It is very odd how these people think that not telling their superiors things will definitely not get them into deadly amounts of trouble but it's none of his business probably.

Melody introduces herself. 

"To be clear, Van and I are talking about whether or not we ought to proactively tell King Randale about what happened with Yfandes, since it may just fail to come up in further discussions. Especially if, as I'm expecting, I don't find any evidence of Leareth having put compulsions on Vanyel, I didn't think it was likely from the start but they still want me to check. I don't think that whatever happened with Yfandes is evidence of compulsions on Vanyel, and I also don't think it's a negative statement about Vanyel's character." Pause. "But you can sense someone's character directly, right, at least if it about how Lawful or how Good someone is. Did either of their alignments change, when this happened?" 

"Uh, Yfandes joined him in Neutral Good. She was Lawful before this."

"Huh." Melody is silent for thirty seconds, thinking. "...Do you have any idea what that actually means?" 

"...if I had to guess, I would guess that Companions are - meant to hold Heralds to a particular code, no matter what. And she decided not to do that anymore, because she found a place where the code seemed wrong. And Law is fairly all-or-nothing, you can't go "I will hold to this code except wait no not that bit I disagree with it" - so, not Lawful anymore. Still Good."

"Right. Ugh. Either of you have a sense of where she thought the code was wrong? I'm going to talk to her directly after this, probably, but - well, outside perspectives are good too."