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When Vanyel is ready for the mad science tour, he shows him the monkeys. "They're monkeys," she feels it necessary to clarify. "I know they look very human at this point, because the whole point of them is that I'm going to move into one if I ever die, but they're not people, and I have forbidden the staff to name them. I could move into one now if I had to but I'd like to get one actually looking like me in particular first, and I want to stick more Gifts into them, I got Fetching out of some Changesquirrels but further work is needed." She shows him the mice, too. "Do you suppose Jisa'd like a winged mouse? What's her favorite color?" She shows him all her microbiology eggs. "That's a flu sample from the recent plague! I remembered to take one. Those there are other flus. The white eggs have more-alive microbes and the brown eggs have less-alive kinds - there's a cold one of the staff mages had a few months ago, there's food poisoning, there's the most common kind from healthy intestines - you could get your Sight this fine, you know, I don't do heavy Healing-Gift use apart from Sight for this work."
"I'd have to talk logistics with some people. I can copy straight out of you as long as I'm doing Bardic too, it's the hooking the painkiller Gift onto something other than Bardic that I'd want to test in an animal first. Just means whoever wants the Gift will need to be able to carry a tune and pass my Bardic quiz."
She fishes it out of the stack and hands it to him. It was clearly written by someone who thinks Bardic use is very sketchy but she has taken cultural competency notes since the first draft so it's not too conspicuous.
Stef totally knows all the "right" answers on this quiz! (He's not stupid and he is perceptive and knowing the rules is important to not getting in lots of trouble. 'Knows' is, however, different from 'agrees with' or 'cares about especially'.)
"That's pretty good," he says, noncommittally, once he's looked through all of it. "Breda'd approve of it."
"If she'd like to look at it too she can. I don't actually think the ability to do painkilling introduces any more ethical complications - I guess if you combined it with something else like Healing it'd let you cover up murder but that's such a weird edge case and I already ask people who want to be Healers about that kind of thing - so I don't think I have to edit the quiz for people who want your added Gift."
Stef nods, looking thoughtful and distracted. "I'll tell her she should come look."
"I'm done looking at your brain now," she adds. "Though I'll need to have it as a reference the first couple times I implant the Gift."
"Sure! You can just send a note to the Bardic-trainees tent and ask me to come," and he gives her directions to it.
"'Course." He bows to her, courteously, and then runs off, grinning.
The rest of the morning consists of more people asking about Gifts and some Palace work teams showing up asking what they should be doing.
She can answer questions and suggest tasks and, if anyone's rustled up a pile of cash, implant Gifts!
Half a dozen people who made it out of the fires with their cash have rustled up piles of it for this purpose!
Tantras comes to find her around lunchtime. "Any thoughts on when you and Leareth will be ready for a Council meeting?"
"My priority working on him is in fact getting him able to get up and about so possibly tomorrow morning! What's the agenda, I'd like to prep notes."
"Explain what just happened, with the Heartstone, and why it involved Haven burning down. And then vote on a timeline for the transition of power, and maybe some specific rebuilding proposals if we have any written up already, but that's a bonus not a must-have."
"Cool, I'll get that ready. Thanks for doing the legwork on setting that up."
She collects money, finds the seneschal to take care of it, works on Leareth, writes up notes for the meeting. "Do you suppose we should angle for queening me before building the avatar? Also how would you explain the thing exactly, I'm coming up with things too flippant to say in a formal meeting. 'The Star-Eyed committed murder and was sentenced to exile and set some fires on her way out...'"
"- I think that will confuse them more than necessary, yes. Hmm. It seems worth explaining what changed, between the time that Vanyel made the Heartstone in the first place and when we stole it from Her at great cost. Mostly that change is Valdemar's choice to ally with us, which inevitably brought them into conflict with the gods. I...am not sure how the Council is going to feel about their kingdom picking fights with gods, though it helps that the Shadowgod seems to be on our side, which would make that relevant to bring up."
"Relevant that the Shadowgod seems to be the primary Companion-backing force, too. Hm - if people get anxious about having neighbors at our throats, what else can I trot out besides your not-really-a-country and Rethwellan ad nauseum, what god has remit over, oh, Hardorn?"
"It is actually not that obvious, but - probably a local pair of gods, known as the Earth-Father and Sky-Mother. I have not faced particular interference there in the past, they seem low intervention."
"So we can be friends with Hardorn, presumably, and not just threatened in three directions. Should we mention the avatar project?"