Leareth is sitting at a writing-desk, by himself. It doesn't look like what he's working on is military orders; no maps, no lists of troops. He's writing a letter.

It's always hard to read Leareth's emotions from his face, but he looks kind of worried. 

:Got him: Yfandes informs the others, triumphantly. :Guess I'm better at scrying than you, Van. He's acting quite innocuously right now but I'm going to keep watching: 

She doesn't try to read his mind, even though that would be quite helpful, he's sure to be shielded and it would mean giving away her presence. Instead, she tries to read the letter over his shoulder. 

This particular letter is in a language she can't read, and it's not long. Leareth finishes it shortly later, and folds it up, and then gets out a piece of fine, high-quality paper and starts a new note. This one is in some sort of code. 

She shares her senses with Vanyel. :Recognize it?: 

"Yes, that's one of his ciphers, some of the books in the cave that one time were using it. I can't read it, though." 

She keeps watching. 

Leareth finishes the coded letter, and then looks up as someone else enters the room. 

"Still waiting on the full spy-reports from Haven," the man says in Rethwellani, which fortunately both Yfandes and Vanyel speak, "but - we're fairly sure Herald Vanyel isn't there. The Heralds seem quite concerned about it."

"Reasonable of them. It is rather alarming." A slight sigh. "This is not incompatible with the hypothesis that he is delusional, I suppose, since he might have run off. Nonetheless, it is some evidence against, I think, since his Companion would surely have tried to intervene and to inform the Heralds." 

"Have you made any progress on the spell?" 

"Some. It is a long way from completion, and I am not sure it can work at all without further contact from him and some amount of cooperation." 

"...You're worried about him." 

"Of course. It is actually more alarming if he is truly in another world with unknown laws of magic. I fear for his safety there." 

"I'll tell Nayoki to update you on her progress whenever she's done today." And the man leaves. 

A faint frown-line appears between Leareth's brows. He stares into the distance for a moment, then keeps writing. 

Yfandes keeps watching, but while he's not doing anything that interesting, she relays what she's overheard to the others. :It really doesn't sound like he's about to attack? It sounds like he's worried about Vanyel and wants to make sure he's all right. He's working on some sort of spell, I'm not sure if it's just to search for Vanyel or actually to travel to other worlds - either one is pretty scary, but he thinks he'd need Vanyel's cooperation to get it to work: 

"So we probably need to fight the guy but we're not rushing over to prevent an invasion this week?"

"We probably need to fight him. I–" Vanyel reaches absently for Yfandes' neck. "I'm not sure of it? If he's actually telling the truth about everything he wants and is trying to achieve, then I don't know that I want to fight him. The trouble is I don't know if he's just trying to manipulate me. There was never any way to check. But..." 

:But we're spying on him right now, and he must have no idea or he'd be doing everything he could to prevent it, and definitely wouldn't be having sensitive conversations with his spymaster in front of us: 

Vanyel stares into the distance, speculative. 

"I'm wondering," he says finally, "if there's any way to, er, grab a specific person from over there, with your magic? I'm more powerful than him one-on-one, even without all of your help, and - if I could ask him a few questions under Truth Spell then I could find out for sure." 

" - there are a couple of ways to do that. Most of them a little bit risky but - there are various ways to reduce the risk, and if he couldn't take us in a straight fight then it's considerably less risky."

"We should grab him when he's asleep, if we're going to do it. He probably sleeps with shields on him, but it makes it more likely we can get him without weapons, and I can maybe equip myself with more of your world's magical artifacts for protection - although I'm not rolling in gold right now, and I don't think we should wait too long. Anyway, I'm pretty sure he can't take just me in a straight fight, shield-talisman or not, I'm - kind of ridiculously powerful even by my world's standards." 

"If we can do it at all we can do it into an antimagic field. We should check that works normally on your kind of sorcerer but assuming it does - he'd be just a normal human."

"We should check that, but - sure, that'd do it." 

"That's gonna be expensive to check, right -"