"Shavri should run this by Randi tomorrow and get his final opinion," Savil says. "However, given that 'build Sing' is not something that's going to happen tomorrow, and also that the initial materials you need are pretty modest, I am fairly confident that we can just help." 

"Cool, thanks."

Then maybe Tarinda can be shown to a guest room and they can all go to bed? 

Suits her fine.

In the morning, she gets a note delivered to her door by a page. King Randale would like to meet with her. 

"Which way do I go?"

If she's ready now he could walk her over? 

Works for her!

Then, shortly afterward, she will get to meet King Randale of Valdemar! 

It's immediately apparent that he's seriously ill. He's not old, maybe in his early thirties, but his skin is papery, his hair thin and almost colourless. His eyes are bright and alert, though. 

A young man of maybe sixteen, with flaming red hair that clashes badly with his crimson tunic, is quietly playing the lute and humming in the back of the room. 

"Tarinda." The King doesn't bother to stand, but does extend his arm to her. "Shavri gave me the highlights." Sideways glance at the young man, then he switches to Jkathan. "You understand this, right?" He waits for her nod. "Right. Anyway. You - want to do something not dissimilar to, er, a plan belonging to someone else I won't name here, to make everything good via creating a god. Except you can do it with just machines, somehow." 

Handshake. "Yeah, that's about the size of it. Uh. I don't think I can get it done in time for you but maybe some of what I have on me plus... magic of some kind... would work?"

"I've had the benefit of the best Healers in the Kingdom for years." He sounds matter-of-fact about it. "I'm not sure if this world has any other magic to offer - guess it's possible the person I mentioned does, but for obvious reasons we have not asked. I don't know what you have on you." 

"I don't get sick. If I get injured it'll heal. It's complicated but I could point someone to a pocket of the substance that does most of the work and they could take a sample to study. It's personalized for me though, they'd have to do something to make it work for you."

"That's a very generous offer. I think Shavri would take you up on a sample to study. She's one of the best Healers in the entire Kingdom. Anyway. You want to do this and you need some initial resources to set up, which at least most of the Heralds seem to be in favour of giving you even if we really need more time to think about the final result." 

"That's understandable."

Stef is very irritated that they've switched to a language he doesn't know, presumably on purpose; he's trying to hide it and mostly succeeding. 

"What you've asked for is modest enough that I'm happy to sign off on Valdemar providing it. Er, there had also been a mention of Vanyel wanting to float the idea by - our nameless person, in hypothetical and without the detail that it's non-magical. I - am feeling very uncertain on whether that's a good idea. What do you think?" 

"I want to get Sing done as fast as possible. Also apparently his idea will kill ten million people and I wouldn't want him to get started on that before I'm done!"

"...Yes. It would be an upside for everyone if we can redirect him into something less destructive. And Vanyel seems to have come back from his mission more rather than less convinced that he's sincere about wanting to fix problems. And - gods, I can imagine a story in which he's right, that the current state of our world is unacceptable and needs to change and no one else was trying to change it. Until you turned up, that is." 

"The current state of your world is obviously unacceptable!"

He looks at her for a long time, thoughtful. "Then it seems like you and him agree on something, which none of the rest of us - tried to notice." 

"I know from, like, history books, that it's hard to notice from inside? My job when I'm working is acclimating people who were frozen before or during the Quiet War in a way Sing can reverse and to me they all seem horrifically traumatized but they don't think of themselves that way."

Randi nods. He still doesn't seem to quite know what to think. 

"Could we do that here?" he says finally. "It must be - easier, to freeze people in a way where they can be woken up again later, than making Sing, if it was being done earlier." 

"Yeah, if you want to haul recently dead people with intact brains up a mountain or something that doesn't always work because sometimes there's too much damage from ice but it'll probably save some of them."