Vanyel is so impressed! Jisa's favourite colour right now is blue but she changes her mind on that every so often at this age. 

"Do you think it'd be useful for me to learn to use my Sight on the microbes?" he asks her. "It's interesting, I can see the life-force, for the more-alive ones I mean, I just can't get in close enough to see the individual ones." 

Belrun will send Vanyel back with a purplish-blue one, then, she separates it out into a portable cage. The boy ones have to be held separately anyway, it won't be any lonelier. "It's useful for knowing what they are - you can know when you've got a cold or a flu, that tells you how much to throw at it and how aggressively to isolate. That stuff," she points at the food poisoning, "is out of a person after about a day, and people are relieved to know that even if they're very unhappy while they've got it. Plus you can check your food for it if you're suspicious, even a little bit can get you if you're vulnerable for any reason and a little doesn't stay that way, if I keep feeding those as much as they can eat they'll each divide in half every ten minutes."

"Wow! I almost feel like they should count as more alive than me, by some definitions." 

"No, no, you're a whole lot bigger - you are trillions of times bigger, actually, each cell of you that's actually you and not a microbe along for the ride is way bigger than a microbe, and they're so small, and I multiplied it out once with the volume of a person and you have probably thirty-something trillion cells plus all your microbial passengers."

"Whoa. That's incredible." Vanyel looks awed. 

- then his expression dims a little. "Guess that's why blood-magic is so powerful. Though it's not just about the number of living cells, you can get some from animals but it's orders of magnitude less..." 

"How many orders of magnitude."

"- Gods, I don't remember exactly, Leareth mentioned it offhand once. Think it depends on the animal, size and also intelligence, and it drops off really steeply with intelligence, Leareth thought the number of, say, chickens you'd have to kill to match one human would be both logistically infeasible and also actually morally worse, their lives are still worth something even if they're - less people - than humans are. I think there's a book somewhere with tables, from tests he did..." 

"If I boil that egg right now," she says, pointing at one, "will you tell me if you can get anything off it."

"What, off the microbes in it? Um, sure, I can try - I don't know if it'll work, though, it's very faint and they don't have minds at all." 

"Three, two, one." Egg in the water.

Vanyel concentrates hard. "I think I–" He makes a face. "Sorry, I thought - it seemed like maybe there was something there to get, but I couldn't aim close enough where it was, my Sight isn't very accurate on that, er, scale. It might help if..." Sigh. "You don't do concert-Sight, do you." 

"Just with Leareth." :Leareth can you come here for a minute:

:I will be right there - what is it?: He's picking up on the urgency in her mindvoice, though it doesn't sound like she's distressed, exactly. 

:I want to test something, Van tried but it might want concert-Sight:

Leareth arrives. He parts his shields just enough to mesh his Othersenses with hers, without brushing her thoughts at all. :All right, what is it?: 

:I'm going to kill an eggful of microbes. See if you can get any blood-magic off them:

And she sacrifices a second egg.

Leareth's control over his mage-gift is much finer than Vanyel's, and sharing Belrun's Sight, he can reach in with mental 'hands' to exactly where a very large number of very tiny microbes are dying. 

:- Not nothing: he reports, after a few seconds. :I think. It is - a negligible amount, just barely at what my channels can feel at all, but - I think it was not nothing:

His eyes are alight with amazement, and hope. 

"That kind of microbe can double every ten minutes," she says. "I don't let the eggs get very full because if I do they release a lot of gas and break the shells but if you had open vats you could kill them by the quadrillion and they'd bounce back in ten minutes."

Leareth's eyes are very focused, calculating. "How many were in that egg - order of magnitude - how many in total could you fit in an area of vats within, oh, a fifty-yard radius - could possibly train mages to aim their Sight at that range - what do they eat, how much of it..." 

"They'll eat almost anything - they grow especially well on meat but you can find them on any food you leave standing around long enough - that egg had about fifty million of 'em. There might be a better kind, gut bacteria are slower but only by a factor of two and don't make the egg-exploding gas, there are so many kinds, we can find one that works for whatever constraints if we look hard enough -"

Leareth is motionless for another few seconds, and then turns and picks Belrun up and swings her around, kissing her. :This is incredible! You are incredible! Eighteen hundred years and I never had any idea...: 

She's cackling madly as she's swung, beaming.

Cackling madly is completely appropriate! 

Vanyel smirks at them. "Adorable. You're both adorable. I did not ever think I would apply that word to Leareth, and yet." 

"What we are is brilliant and we can blow up the moon!!!"

"You are! You're both brilliant." 

It takes Leareth a while to calm down enough that he puts Belrun's feet back on the floor. "I love you. The gods do not know it yet but they should be even more terrified of you than of me." 

Cackling!

"All right. We should sit down and discuss this and figure out how long we would need to prepare for it. Belrun, you saw Vanyel in the lab, in Foresight - I am concerned that other Powers might also see this in Foresight, and I do not wish to give them any more time than I must to move against us." 

"Right - how did you guys make out discussing the Heartstone, by the by -"

"I'm really terrified of the prospect of actually doing this, but Leareth thought we could pull it off." 

Leareth nods his agreement. 

"Okay, so, food poisoning - I should name it something else, it'll be weird to have huge vats of food poisoning and run a ton of magic on it and still be calling it food poisoning - here's what I know about it, anyway -" She pulls out all her notes on it to generate estimates of what conditions it will need, how much food, what temperatures.

Leareth sketches out the beginnings of a plan. "I think we could manage everything for the first two stages of a god in the north, in terms of space and supply logistics. The difficulty is going to be training all of my mages to use their Sight in the appropriate way to even locate the power, which I think means that first I will need to learn to do so alone, without your trained Healing-Sight to guide me. It is much more - diffuse a release of energy, which makes it very difficult to capture without that precise aim." 

"If we can get the Heartstone," Vanyel points out, "will we be able to work in Valdemar too? If we think Shadowgod isn't opposed to this? ...Honestly it makes a lot of sense for Them to be less opposed to this version!" 

"I'm less opposed to this version too! Yeah, I think we should assume that working in Valdemar sans Heartstone is safe."

"Inconveniently, I do not think we can channel the power needed for the Heartstone takeover from the other side of the mountains, and I also doubt the Star-Eyed will allow us to get away with staging a large number of vats of slime onsite." 

"Inconvenient. And I assume it would be too risky to just get it out of the Heartstone itself."

"Ideally we will also get the power in the Heartstone itself, afterward! They have an enormous capacity to hold energy, and that part of the container should remain. However, at the start it is under Her control, and we will need an amount of power nearly equal to what it contains - a hundred people worth of blood-magic, or the equivalent in vats of slime, in order to push Her out." 

"How much of that can you get from nodes?"

"Maybe five to ten percent. The nearby network of nodes is just not going to be dense enough." 

"Okay. You've got units, right, for how much mage energy something is?"

"Yes. We need at least fifty thousand aellae and it would be good to have more, for safety; the usual range for an Adept skilled with blood-magic is five hundred to a thousand aellae. We will need to do some calibration on how much can be obtained from a vat of your microbes; the quantity in the egg was not large enough for me to be confident that I can estimate it better than 'not zero.'" 

"Okay, I'm going to go get some raw chicken from the kitchen and infect it and see what I can get."

"Just to check, none of us are at risk of becoming ill from this unless we eat it, correct - or touch it and then touch something we eat later, I suppose, we are probably better off making sure not to touch it at all. Do you want some sort of container to put it in?" 

"My protocol is never touch it at all but that's an abundance of caution and me happening to be a Fetcher. The gas it gives off smells bad, I didn't get sick from being near an exploded egg but that could have been luck, it'd be a good idea to have better ventilation for large amounts - but again, this stuff grows on any food left out long enough, if you wouldn't expect being near old raw chicken to hurt you under normal circumstances it still won't when I'm just doing a smaller-scale exploratory investigation. A container'd be good."

Leareth gets her a glass container and a wooden lid to go over it. 

She puts a few slabs of chicken in there, draws a diagram of where she's placing initial colonies, puts up a sign about NOT EATING THE CHICKEN. "I'm putting ten to start in each spot, this end will be warmer near the boiling water, we'll see what it likes best."

Vanyel watches curiously. "You can see what you're doing? I can't see anything there at all, yet." 

"Yeah, I can. Though you'll be able to see big colonies before you can see individual ones. You might find your progress more encouraging if you looked at, oh, bread dough? Because that has a pretty high concentration of all one kind of microbe so you'll be able to see it before you're down to single cells. Or your intestines but I remember you're a little squeamish."

Based on Vanyel's expression, he would in fact prefer not to look at his own intestines. 

"I am curious when I will be able to sense just the life-force, without Healing-Sight. Probably it will not be for a while, though, and sitting here staring at it would be boring." 

"Well, if we come back in a day then if the colonies are happy they will have a whole lot more."

"All right." He stands up, and waits until Belrun has stowed away the not-for-eating chicken experiment before scooping her up. "We should celebrate or something." 

"Celebrate how? I guess the kitchen could bake us a fancy cake."

"The traditional Herald method of celebration usually involves getting drunk, but neither of you seem like the type? I guess I could do the part where everyone wants me to play bawdy drinking songs, but without the drinking." 

"Yeah, I don't drink unless the water's very lively and that's the handiest way to kill it, then I hold it down to as little alcohol as possible. I would be happy to hear some songs."

Vanyel happily gets out his lute and plays some songs! 

He starts trying to compose a song on the spot about Belrun's exploits. She seems like the sort of person who would enjoy that rather than find it the most embarrassing thing in the world, which is how he would feel. 

Leareth thinks it's delightful. 

So does Belrun!

They enjoy themselves with Vanyel for a few candlemarks; some of Leareth's staff come out as well to congratulate them, Belrun in particular, and ask her lots of questions about her research. 

She is always game to chatter about her research especially when it's gonna save ten million people!

She gets many, many congratulations, other people drink toasts to her, and eventually Leareth, losing patience, bids everyone goodnight and then scoops Belrun up and carries her back to their room for some further, private celebrating. 

This is the best day ever and she is very pleased to celebrate it.

The next morning Leareth is awake before Belrun. He lies there snuggling her and waiting impatiently for her to wake up too so they can go check on her disgusting (delightful) raw chicken food-poisoning colonies. 

She stops in the middle of the word "mellifluosity" and kisses him good morning and bounces out of bed.

"I am so curious if I will be able to see them now!" He follows her. 

The colonies have not quite been doubling every ten minutes, but they have grown a lot.

Leareth can't quite pick out what must still be a very tiny, faint mage-energy signature from their life-force, but maybe if he hops onto Belrun's Sight first...? 

There they are!

Perfect! 

He tries to pick out the same signature with his own mage-sight, showing her too, and he thinks he can, but the real test will be whether he still sees anything when he drops out of rapport with her. 

...He can! Just barely, though, and he has a lot more skill with mage-sight than, well, just about anyone else in the world; he keeps a lot of that sort of procedural skill for magic, even across lives. 

"There'll be more when we scale it up."

Nod. "If they can grow very, very densely on some sort of medium, I think it would be easier to train my mages on it." 

"We can try lots of stuff. Maybe there's a way to make meat a more useful shape, but I can't think of one off the top of my head - something sort of densely spongy, lots of surface area -"

"Meat sponge. What a concept." Leareth frowns. "Dip honeycomb in meat slurry? That sounds disgusting. Or perhaps I could figure out some kind of spongy material, and then saturate that in very finely pureed meat..." 

"Sugar actually inhibits microbes! Mold likes it but I'm not sure even mold likes honey."

"How odd! It is so delicious for humans. Well, we can figure out some spongy substance that is not sugar-containing. Maybe layers of cheesecloth?" 

"Might work really well! Gods, this is going to be so disgusting!"

"Appallingly so! I think we would want tanks with frames of some sort inside, to pin successive layers of cheesecloth and hold them apart, and then maybe pour the slurry through from the top, I do not think anyone wants the job of pinning the cheesecloth in place if it is already, er, meat-juiced." 

"Yeah, no, that would not be popular or advisable. We might be getting ahead of ourselves, though, we should try small scale variants of lots of things - outdoors, various places, in case different stuff works in different climates - and see where it grows best. Also we'll want a less fuel-intensive way to kill them by the trillion than boiling."

"It can probably be done directly with magic. There is a spell for making 'lively' water safe to drink - though of course the density would have to be enough that much more power was obtained from it than the energy cost to kill them in the first place."

"Maybe they could be in a weather barrier somewhere cold and it could come down to kill them?"

"Clever! If we wished to do this in Haven it would have to be wintertime, then... What temperature range would kill them?" 

"Being inside a block of ice does it but I haven't tested a lot of intermediate temperatures."

"Well, we can test it here with reverse weather-barriers. It would be preferable if they all died quickly, that was the advantage of boiling." He looks thoughtful. "Hmm. I wonder if it is possible for a mage to learn how to directly pull the life-force from them, which would kill them and release much more energy." 

"Is that doable with larger targets?"

"Technically. It is difficult, so not usually how blood-magic is done." 

"If it becomes possible to generate mage-energy with kitchen scraps it might be a more valuable skill."

"Indeed. I will try it once we have a more high-density setup that allows me to actually get a measurable reading of mage-energy output." 

And then Leareth has to kiss Belrun again because she's amazing. 

Eeeeeee!

The frequency of occasions when Leareth absolutely has to stop what he's doing and kiss Belrun due to her amazingness is slightly slowing down his work, but he does by midway through the day have a design for the meat-slurried cheesecloth setup, and various weather barriers and reverse weather barriers that they can use to test the ideal temperature for growth.

Also he can send people to obtain different kinds of meat, and maybe branch out to other nutrient-dense foods too, to see which one the microbes find tastiest? 

"Especially if they can use waste, like discard cooking grease, that'd be ideal."

Leareth's kitchen staff are somewhat weirded out by being handed the task of collecting a dozen types of kitchen waste, pureeing them into fine slurry, and bringing containers of it to Belrun's lab, but they attack the project with enthusiasm. 

"I wonder if you could use the same kind of Healing you did on the monkeys to make them like a particularly convenient food source," Leareth muses. "I suppose it might be harder since they are so tiny...?" 

"Ooh. Ooh, I don't know if I can but I can sure try. I'll try getting them to like eggs, first, proof of concept in my standard setup so I'm not changing a lot of things at once, but if I can do that I can probably make them like whatever's convenient."

"Well, just tell us whatever you need to do your tests and we will make sure you are supplied with it." 

"I will!"

She writes out a research roadmap with branching paths depending on how promising things are, re-writes it all more neatly once it has clarified her thinking on the matter, gets underway with as many parallelizable early steps as possible. Kisses Leareth a lot.

Leareth helps Belrun with everything he can, acts as a sounding board, tries watching everything they grow with mage-sight until he can pick out the faint life-force of the microbe colonies unaided.

They grow and grow and grow! They looooove raw chicken.

They can have raw chicken! 

How about greasy chicken-carcass broth? That can be made from kitchen waste. 

They will eat that too. Belrun peers at them all and encourages the other Healers to get their sight honed fine enough to help.

With practice, more and more of them are getting the hang of it. 

Some of Leareth's other mages are also figuring out how to find the colonies with mage-sight alone, now that they're growing faster and bigger. 

It turns out that if they kill only some of the microbes in a colony, the remaining ones will happily cannibalize their remains, which will cut down a lot on how much they'll have to feed them!

Convenient! 

Once Belrun has a particularly dense set of colonies growing eagerly on raw-chicken-saturated cheesecloths in a tank-frame, Leareth can try killing them all at once and actually measure the power generated. 

She is ready with an estimate of how many microbes this is and how long it will take them to recolonize the glop up to the same strength again.

Leareth uses a reverse weather-barrier to yank heat from the air and instantly bring everything in it to well below zero. (The air around himself and Belrun is suddenly a lot warmer and steamier.) 

He gathers the energy released as the microbes die by the trillions, and feeds it through his channels - and through his measurement apparatus. 

"...Maybe five aellae?" he guesses. "But I did not get all of it, I think with more practice I could get ten. Which means...right now it is fifty to a hundred times less 'dense' than blood-magic, for a container of this size. We would need at least five thousand of these for the Heartstone, assuming all of my mages can learn to extract the energy with full efficiency." 

"And can they?"

"We can find out where they are at now." 

None of Leareth's mages are even near where Leareth himself is, it turns out, they can get maaaaybe half an aella to one aella per large frame. (The frames are also a lot bigger and heavier than a person, though of course less than half of it by weight is actually microbes.)

Leareth assigns them to practice concert-Sight with the Healers. 

"We can also let them grow longer than this, as we find out better conditions we'll get closer to the ten minute doubling time and then maintaining them more populated will make sense."

"That would be very good. I am not sure if it would take them years of practice to obtain the same efficiency that I can." 

"Well, they can work on that and I can work on getting more microbes and we'll meet in the middle."

Vanyel should maybe learn how to do it too? He's really bad at normal blood-magic though, having only ever done it the one time in an emergency and then gotten in tons of trouble about it. 

"That's what practicing on definitively morally worthless microbes is for!" she says. "More people knowing how to use 'em seems good to me."

"That's a good point." 

Vanyel gives it a try! He's even worse at it than the worst of Leareth's mages! This is incredibly embarrassing, it's mostly because the strength of his Gift means he's relied more on brute force than fine control, so none of his habits are optimized for this. 

He practices a lot and improves slowly. 

Leareth's kitchen staff keep supplying Belrun with different variants of food-slurry, either purpose made or recycled scraps. 

She keeps very meticulous notes on what they do well on, filling in a great big chart of a combinatorial explosion of conditions and strains and foods.

It is a delightful chart and she gets kissed about it when Leareth sees it. 

"I love how excited you get about research."

"This research is objectively extremely exciting and valuable. Also it reminds me that you are great and I am so lucky to be working with you." 

"Hey, I didn't say you were wrong."

Kiss. 

Leareth keeps practicing, the number of microbes they can cram into one of the giant vats rises, and he can eke out ten aellae from it pretty reliably. 

"We should probably officially tell Valdemar that we know how to blow up the moon now and they don't have to experience background dread, if they were."

"- We should! I wished to wait until we had done a little more in-depth research so that I was certain, but I am fairly certain it will be possible, and in years not decades." 

"I guess I don't know how dread-y they are. We can ask Van."

"Certainly. I will go find him." 

Vanyel is easily findable. 

"I don't think most of the Senior Circle is going around with deep background dread," he says, slowly. "Er, not of you, anyway. The bits about the gods are making people pretty nervous. I do think it'd - be a weight off everyone's mind. Also, does it mean it's safe to tell everyone your actual plan now?" 

"I would really rather not tell more than a handful of additional people until we are ready to move on it. For operational security, more than because I fear how they will respond, though - it would also still be a shock to absorb, I think, and would mean implicitly revealing what I had previously be planning to do." 

"Not all the Companions are jailbroken, if nothing else, so we shouldn't have it yelled from rooftops, but getting a little help - especially from anyone who might be competent to work on the project in some capacity - maybe."

"I'll think about it. I guess the two of you still can't come down, but I could go back and be the one to tell Randi? And maybe Savil and Sandra, they seem like the best people to help with the project itself." 

"Seems reasonable enough to me, assuming their Companions won't tell all their friends."

"Yfandes thinks she can have a chat with them first and extract a promise that they won't."

"Sounds good to me."

"We can Gate you back to Haven. With the sleep trick, if you wish - I am actually very curious why that works so much better than the drugs, you were barely in pain afterward." 

"Huh, that's a good point. I don't know. I was a lot more thoroughly out, but you'd still expect it to hurt the same amount afterward." 

"Yeah, it's pretty weird. I know somebody who studies nerve pain and nerve pain is weird as heck but not in quite that way..."

"It is weird. I guess it's not really pain in my body, exactly? It's in my mage-channels, which - aren't quite in the same space as the rest of me, which is why most Healers can't do anything about it. I don't know why that'd make the Healing-sleep prevent it as well as numbing it at the time, though." 

"Huh. Only Healer-Mage I've ever met is, uh, you."

"Tayledras Healing-Adepts have both. And it's not that rare for a mage to have a weak secondary Healing-Gift; Herald-Mage Jaysen did too, he died in the war; but usually not strong enough for serious Healing work. Moondance was the only one who could fix my channels after my Gifts awakened." 

"But he didn't know what was up with the Gate allergy?"

"Not that he explained to me? I think Lancir predicted I'd have it - he was the Queen's Own and a Mindhealer, he died years ago - and, come to think of it, I don't actually know why. I could ask Savil if she ever asked him." 

"Well, we can put you to sleep this time since that works."

It does! It works fine to get Vanyel to Haven, at which point some meetings can be had. 

He contacts Leareth with the communication spell to convey that he's made it in safely, Yfandes is sounding out the relevant Companions on secret-keeping, meetings are being scheduled for later, and - guess what? They have some really good news! 

(Leareth immediately relays this to Belrun.) <Yes, what is it> 

What is the really good news?

<Dara made it back from Iftel! Crossed the border check no problem, though they searched her thoroughly, but they always do that. She's delighted with herself, apparently their investment in expensive Seejay spices was a very solid one and they made back double what they put into it even subtracting the travel costs - they traveled cheap. She was very confused to be immediately Gated back to Haven. Do you, er, want her brought north so you can explain the plan yourself?> 

If Dara would be willing Belrun would like that!

<I'll talk to her. Probably won't get back to you before tonight> 

"I am very relieved to hear she is all right and also feeling somewhat paranoid," Leareth says to Belrun. "I am not sure yet what unfortunate outcome to be paranoid of, but..." 

"I guess if she comes by we can ask her if she has converted to Vkandis-worship or has any souvenirs?"

"Yes. And maybe ask her to search her things for items that might have been placed without her knowledge - actually I should just tell Vanyel that she should not pack the same belongings or clothing for this trip. You can do a Truth Spell, right?" 

"I have never actually done it but in principle I believe so." :Amshalan, how do I do a Truth Spell?:

:You concentrate like this, visualize a blue cloud with eyes - recite this rhyme nine times...: Amshalan walks her through the full instructions for a Truth Spell. It's not all that complicated. 

"Now I know how."

"Perfect!" He kisses the top of her head. "I am trying to think through what other precautions to take. ...Possibly we should ask them to check her for any compulsions, before sending her north?" 

"She'll probably wonder what the fuss is about but we can just tell her, so sure."

"...I hope she is not upset about being dragged into this. Though my impression of her, from what you said, is that she might instead be pleased and excited." 

"Yeah, I'm betting on pleased and excited."

"A good trait to have in a Queen, I think." 

"She's not that much younger than me and I'm planning to be immortal so perhaps it won't come up but it'd let her do a lot of what she was originally, uh, hired for, and it seems good to have somebody down for the heir position even if it doesn't look urgent."

"I agree." 

And he can pass on instructions to Vanyel about the various precautions to take with Dara before he arranges a Gate north for her. 

Vanyel, a while later, confirms that Dara is very confused but taking it with good grace and mostly curious. Melody confirmed she's not under any compulsions - or any god-mind-control, it's fortunate Melody has experience with that - and does not seem to have any planted artifacts among her possessions, though they keep all of it in Haven anyway. Including all her gold. Dara is annoyed about that part and Randi, apparently, eventually placates her by trading her back exactly the same amount of gold and silver from the treasury reserves. 

Randi is very good.

Randi is very good! 

They're going to wait for Vanyel's meetings with the relevant people and Companions, and then the plan is for him and Dara to come back north together. 

Leareth is very slightly nervous about how said meetings are going to go. It mostly doesn't distract him from his work, though. Or from kissing Belrun every time she does something impressive and delightful. 

She is up to a pretty impressive rate on that if he likes incremental improvements in their state of information and technical skill about growing microbes.

He does! 

Meetings happen in Haven. For now the only people being briefed are Randi, Shavri, Savil, Sandra, and of course Dara.  

Afterward, Vanyel contacts Leareth again. <We did it. Er, meeting where I told people about blowing up the moon, I mean. Quick version is it went fine, though that might've just been because people were too shocked to venture opinions just yet. Except Dara. She thinks it's amazing> 

Leareth relays this by Mindspeech to Belrun in her lab. 

:Man, I really like Dara:

"So do I! She sounds so, hmm - so non-stressful. I would not feel it was fraught and delicate explaining complicated reasoning about our choices of plans to her." 

When Dara arrives Belrun is there to receive her.

Vanyel is still waking up properly from his Healing-sleep transport. 

Dara is a bit distracted trying to make sure he's all right, but she looks up at Belrun. "I'm so glad to see you again! I heard some of what's going on and it sounds really exciting but Van said you had more and also I'm still incredibly confused!" 

"Well, what'd Van tell you? The communication spell's pretty sparse, I don't exactly have a transcript."

"That Leareth has been planning to make a god for a while - which makes perfect sense, since all the existing ones are awful and also will just ruin things instead of talking to him - and he needed a lot of power and you just discovered you can murder food poisoning to get it? Van didn't say what the plan was before that and no one else asked but I assume it was something a lot more horrible than murdering food poisoning which doesn't have feelings and honestly deserves to be dead because it's bad." 

"Well, I mean, if we're specifically breeding the food poisoning I think its own level of desert if it ever had any is not in the picture, but yes, the original idea was much, much worse. Though we do think the Shadowgod might be relatively friendly."

"Huh! That's interesting, why do you think that? ...It didn't come up at the meeting at all." 

"Rolan talked to Them. When everyone was very panicked about the flu and the scandal - I don't know how much you followed that, I guess you were away." 

She makes a slight face at the mention of Rolan. "Not much. I'd like to hear more about it." 

"We should get you properly settled and - oh, we did wish to ask you a few questions about Iftel under Truth Spell, first. Belrun?" 

"Yeah, one sec -" Rhymerhymerhyme.

Blue halo! 

"Dara, while you were there, did you talk to anyone who asked you questions about Valdemar's political state, and particularly about Belrun and I?" 

"What? No! Er, I mean, the topic of where I'm from did sometimes come up, at inns and such, but not with important people, and I always played dumb anyway, they don't let Heralds in so I figured I had better not let anyone find out I'd - been Chosen at one point. My roommate who came with me doesn't know I used to be a trainee. She must be so confused right now." 

"Did anyone ask you questions about your background, or seem to pay extra attention to you?" 

"Er, a little? But mostly they asked about the academy in Rethwellan and about our trip down to Seejay on the holiday break, they thought those were very exotic. Valdemar hardly came up at all." 

"Did you visit any temples to Vkandis or interact with any priests or religious figures?" 

"No. Temples are boring."

"Was your interaction with the barrier-shield around the country notable in any way?" 

"I don't think so? I mean, I don't know what it's supposed to be like. It poked me a lot, felt like being turned inside out, it was really weird. I think it wanted to know why I was there, and I was there to sell some spices and also see another country and have a good story afterward, and it seemed satisfied with that." 

Leareth nods, apparently satisfied. 

"I want you to spend five minutes - actually five, I will time it - thinking very carefully about everything that happened while you were in Iftel, and whether any of your interactions could have been plots by agents serving Vkandis to harm me and Belrun or our interests." 

He goes to get an hourglass. 

Dara nods, and then closes her eyes, frowning intently. 

Belrun has been taking notes. She leans on Leareth while they wait.

Eventually the hourglass runs out, Leareth clears his throat, and Dara looks up. 

"I...can't think of anything," she says slowly. "Which could be just because I'm dumb and missing something." 

"Sending you to Iftel may not have been the work of Vkandis at all, though. In fact, given that you were in Rethwellan and then Valdemar, it seems almost more likely that if a god-coincidence were involved, it was the Shadowgod's plan." 

"But we don't know what the Shadowgod would want out of it either... did you learn anything interesting there? Is it hard to remember what happened the same way it's hard for people to remember Iftel exists?"

"A little! I was worried about that, I thought it'd be really sad if I didn't even remember my good story, so I kept a diary. Which the border guard read. All of it! He seemed to think it was fine, though, it was mostly just which towns had rich nobles who liked different kinds of fancy spices, so I'd be able to plan better if I ever go on another run." Sigh. "Which I guess I won't, I know too many state secrets to risk it now." 

"Wow, rude. There still might be something useful in it, I guess, if you don't mind us reading it?"

"No, I don't. It might help jog my memory too. I don't have it on me, though, Van told me not to bring any of my things." 

Sigh. "Sorry, Leareth." 

"It is not your fault I gave you very clear instructions and you followed them. I suppose we should ask that someone in Haven copy it - if that is all right with you, Dara - and then have the copy brought here." 

"Fine with me, it's really a boring diary. I suppose it says things like which inns had attractive barkeeps, if someone's prudish that might bother them, but it doesn't bother me who reads about it." 

"Well, even if it's not likely it's worth a check, it turned out to be worth a check to bring Vanyel to my lab and explain all my research on the strength of some god-information."

"Right, and that's how you had the idea about using microbes for blood-magic?" 

"Yes. I really had all the pieces I needed to think of it already but I didn't till I was trying to summarize."

"I'll pass that on to Savil." Vanyel ducks out to one side so he can concentrate on the communication spell. 

"I guess I should put my things away, and then maybe you can tell me the other secret thing and why they Gated me back from the border in such a hurry?" 

Leareth glances at Belrun. "Yes, of course. We can show you to a room." 

Belrun dismisses the Truth Spell. "This way!"

Vanyel catches up with them just as Dara is finishing up stowing her travel-bag in her new room. "Told Savil, someone can pick it up tomorrow." 

"Thank you. We can go meet and discuss the other piece, now."

He leads them to one of the meeting rooms and ushers Dara in. 

"Besides that Leareth's planning to build a god, what'd they tell you?"

"I found out from about six different sources of gossip that you're going to be Queen maybe? Before Randi told me properly." 

"That's the plan! Anyway, I can't have kids, so the question of who my heir should be came up."

"...Oh? And?" 

"And I thought of you! It's similar to the, uh, job you were hired for and only dismissed from under highly irregular circumstances that don't speak negatively to your character, and also I'm pretty young for a Queen and if I wind up having to ostensibly adopt someone to heirify them it would be better for them to be at least somewhat younger than me even though I am not in fact old enough to be your mom."

"You'd be a really cool mom though." Dara is thoughtfully quiet for a bit. "Really? You think I'd - be a good Queen?" 

"I'm planning to be immortal and am not going to guarantee you I'll step down! But if it comes up, sure."

"And would I be able to do interesting work helping you, even if I don't actually become Queen ever?" 

"Sure, there's lots to do - people seem a bit stretched thin, honestly. Even if Rolan decides to go draft another teenager I think there'd be plenty of work, and I have advised him against it."

"That makes sense. I should probably think about it, but..." And then she jumps in the air and squeals. "It'd be so neat though!" 

"I know, right?"

"I think you two are crazy, but you're welcome to it." 

"Honestly I think you're the weird one, all my friends wanted to pretend we were princesses when I was little." 

"Yup. I had a crown made of sticks."

"My sister only ever wanted to play soldiers, she hated the entire concept of princesses. Anyway. Congratulations, Dara." He offers her a hug. 

Hug! Dara is so happy! 

Aww. 

"Someone may decide to make a fuss about you not having a Companion," Belrun warns. "Assuming of course that we can't hit Rolan over the head with the concept of the Star-Eyed endangering Valdemar hard enough to jailbreak him, though it seemed like that was maybe almost happening when everybody had the flu."

Dara winces. "I - don't know - gods, that would be so awkward. I was really incredibly mad at him for a while." 

"Yeah, I don't blame you at all. He's going to be sort of unavoidably around, whether or not anything, uh, weird happens."

"Is he actually being more helpful now? Van said so but..." She trails off. 

"My opinion is that he is still extremely frustrating, but he is also trying quite hard." 

"Yeah, he talked to the Shadowgod when he got fed up about the annoying coincidences around the plague, and then brought me and Leareth and Amshalan all into the blue place to look at what he got out of Them and then repeated stuff we thought was important at the time and then forgot, which turned out to be really, really helpful."

"Wow, um, that's really good for him." She frowns. "And - you think he might come and want me back, if he does - manage to jailbreak himself?" 

"I do not have specific indications in that direction and reasoning about what gods want is weird but - it seems like insofar as the Shadowgod could probably see that it would occur to me to ask you, and the Shadowgod is the god the Companions primarily answer to, They might have a solution to the resulting inelegance? I can't remotely promise it's a good solution because I'm pretty sure They also did our lifebond and wedged me into my situation with Amshalan, and I encourage you to tell Rolan to go fuck himself if you want to, but if you don't..."

"I'll, um, think about it." 

"Yeah. I am excited to have you aboard in whatever capacity without Rolan's involvement, it's just sort of a dangling thread, you know?"

"That makes sense." 

"Good."

Dara shuffles her feet. "So, is there anything I can do to help with what you're working on now?" 

"You don't have the Gifts we're leaning on but if you want to feed microbes gross sludge you can do that!"

"Oooh! What sort of gross sludge do they eat?" 

"We're trying different kinds to see what works best!"

"Would you like a tour?" 

Dara would love a tour! 

Then she can see lots of places where microbes are even though she cannot see the microbes.

Vanyel points out that Dara is a Mindspeaker; Belrun can't do concert-Sight with her, but Vanyel himself is nearly to the point that he can see the microbes, and he can definitely see the big clusters of them, so he's happy to show her. 

Cooooool!!!

"And you really get magic by killing them?" 

"Still not in especially large quantities, but we are improving at efficiency there. And, of course, there is no particular downside to simply growing more of them, aside from the fact that it is somewhat disgusting." 

Dara seems pretty unbothered by the grossness and is happy to take on slop-pouring duties. 

Microbes microbes microbes. (Ventilation problems. The microbes are gassy.)

Dara, it turns out, has a surprising talent for sketching out engineering solutions to problems, and designs a ventilation setup that even Leareth is impressed with. 

Dara is a very useful person!

She's trying very hard to be useful, it seems like their work is the most important thing happening anywhere right now! 

Savil needed longer to wrap up in Haven, but she Gates over a couple of days later with Sandra, and also with the copy they had made of Dara's travel diary. 

"Morning! How are you two doing?"

"Not bad! How's everything going up here with your work?" 

"I'm very pleased with it! There's lots more slog through the ick of science to go, of course."

"Vanyel definitely had lots to say about the ick part! He's kind of squeamish though." 

"He is, but it's legitimately very gross."

...After seeing the vats, Savil is fully in agreement with Belrun on that claim. 

She has a much easier time mastering the mage-sight side of it than Vanyel did, possibly because of her decades of additional experience. 

Sandra is mostly interested in helping design the ventilation and transport and such. 

"Should we go through the diary?" Dara asks Belrun once the new arrivals have been shown around and are settled in on helpful work. 

"Yes, let's." Which random Ifteli did Dara consider hot, inquiring minds want to know things that aren't but might be near that.

Some highlights of Dara's diary: 

First town: had an innkeeper who was clearly cheating on his wife with the barmaids and tried to hit on her, Not Cool, he was fat and not attractive at all. He did buy some spices off her though so she was polite to him. Also she met an attractive man who said he was training for the Games this year, melee division, it was a family tradition, his father had risen quite high before retiring. 

"Games?"

"Games..." Dara frowns, obviously thinking hard. "Gods, he must've told me about it, he really liked the sound of his own voice. It was...some sort of contest, there was a big annual thing but he was competing locally - he did say his father never made it to the finals but scored well enough to be quite famous, he led a division..." 

"Contest of what?"

"Oh, the actual competition was fighting, he told me all about his melee combat training." 

"Huh. Sounds dangerous."

"Apparently people die! Mostly just at national level. I remember thinking it seemed like an even more bloodyminded pastime than cockfighting, but I don't think he's the only one who talked about it, I got the sense it was popular for people to lay wagers on who would win this year at a given level." 

"I guess now and then somebody dies trying to swim across a lake or something too. Still." She turns a page.

Further highlights of Dara's travel diary: 

She met a catperson! Well, a giant cat, looked sort of like a mountain cougar, but he talked in Mindspeech and he was sitting in a tavern with all the other people in the tavern, having his friend throw his dice for him because he didn't have hands. No one else seemed to think this was weird at all. 

"That's neat! I've met vanishingly few nonhuman people besides Companions."

"Hmm, there was something...I'm trying to remember... Maybe it'll come up later on." 

Further excerpts: 

Dara hooks up with an attractive man in a town that's preparing to host this year's Games for its province. Dara's journal dwells for a few bullet points on all of his excellent features, such as his dreamy blue eyes and his very attractive arm hair. He's the mayor's cousin and works a job in logistics; he says it's important they do a good job because his cousin is up for re-election this year. He complains about the headache of arranging accommodations for the gryphon wing. 

"Gryphon wing." 

"Did you see gryphons or just hear about them?"

"I can't remember, let me think..." Dara frowns for a while. "I saw one at a distance. And some flying overhead at one point, the locals said they were responding to a crime report, I think. Huh, it's bizarre how that didn't seem interesting until now!" 

"You thought they might be extinct, right?" Belrun asks Leareth.

"I had not been sure. There was a surviving colony to the far west at one point, but I do not ever go there anymore, the gods are unreasonable." 

"They really are." Page turn.

Dara sat in on an argument about politics in a tavern, which nearly turned into a brawl. She thought it was great fun. There was a debate over whether the winner of the past year's Games, a gryphon whose name she never caught, did or did not have a personal grudge against the High Priest because of some drama involving the high priest's second cousin once removed and a gambling scandal. 

"Not surprising they have a high priest - I wonder if they communicate with the Karsite church at all..."

"I would've expected to hear Karis mention it at least once, but maybe not, if she also gets hit by the thing where Iftel seems very boring." 

"Dara, I just wanted to say that this is very valuable intelligence. I am amazed that you managed to sneak spy notes past the border guards, probably because their eyes glazed over on the fluff about dreamy blue eyes and they did not actually read as far as the interesting bits." 

"It's good to know but it's not clear to me yet why it was worth a huge row of coincidences to get."

"We should go through the rest and then see if there is something to be read between the lines." 

Dara passes through her first big city! There's a parade in the streets with people throwing confetti at the division winners of the Games, and everyone getting drunk in the streets. Dara spectates an argument about tactics, makes a few points that one of the arguers finds impressive, plays this into a hookup with someone who brags that he nearly made the division platoon-squad and thinks he'll make it next year. Claims his ambition is to make semifinals and hope to stay in charge of a company for a few years, it's easier to keep that position at the regional level. 

"Like a military company or do they just organize their police that way? Iftel hasn't - I think I would have been able to recall after all my practice by now if Iftel had been in any military engagements ever. They have a fuckoff giant force shield and nobody remembers they exist! Who would they be fighting?"

Dara scrunches up her face. "I don't know. Probably because it seemed uninteresting at the time and I was instead interested in his abs. To be fair he had really good abs." 

"I'll take your word for it." Read read.

Back to smaller local towns. Lots of vineyards and wineries. A mayoral candidate running for re-election, likely to lose because it came out he had maybe been rigging the local Games hosted in his town by bribing the judges, which is super illegal, and there was a huge scandal about it. 

Different town. Political argument over funding for the Games versus infrastructure, apparently a longstanding debate, though a difficult one to resolve because funding for the highest level winners and their armies is enshrined in law. 

Leareth is frowning. 

"I'm getting the sense the - game armies thing is important, but for what, a normal sport probably wouldn't have the force of law behind it..."

"Right, it's interesting - I didn't find it interesting at the time, which is so dumb, I hate that entire thing, it's my brain! But - people acted like it was just as important as the elections. Talked about it kind of the same way, I think?" 

Leareth glances at Belrun, then returns his eyes to Dara. "As though it were a selection process for leadership?" 

"- And fame and renown, mostly, the winners were really popular, seemed like they were household names although of course now I can't remember any! But...no, it didn't seem like just a sport, even if people had a lot of fun spectating and betting on it." 

"The mayors and so on, were they - Games veterans -"

"Hrrm. I think some of them? I got the impression that it helped for getting elected, having competed at a regional level and done all right, but I think most competitors at a higher level basically did that for their living." 

"Hm." Page-turn.

More notes on spice-loving local landholders and attractive stablehands. One of said stablehands worked at a stable that hosted the cavalry division for the Vineyards of Glory province. 

"Kind of a stupid name for a province."

"All their place-names are like that." Dara rolls her eyes. 

"I am getting the sense," Leareth says, slowly and carefully, "that if one wished to have an army, in a country that has always been at peace and has no real military engagements in its entire history, disguising it as a prestigious national sport would not be the worst method." 

"They could certainly be turned into an army on short notice if they aren't one already."

"Eek." 

"I am not exactly delighted by this fact! Though it is certainly much better to know or suspect it than to be caught entirely by surprise. They have gryphon cavalry, then?" 

"I...think so... Gods, I was so incurious about it, I can't believe myself. But someone had mentioned logistics for hosting a gryphon...wing? I guess that's a reasonable name for it. Don't know how many gryphons are in a wing but I'll try to remember what he said about the accommodations. Hmm, they were taking over the old town hall for it, so - maybe a lot of gryphons." 

"How big is a gryphon, how big is the town hall..."

"I don't really know how big a gryphon is! Never saw one up close. The town hall was... Maybe ten of this room long, four wide? Big tall roof too." 

"If they have not diverged too far from Urtho's original gryphons, they are somewhat larger than a human. Up to three yards tall, and they can reach an eight-yard wingspan. Though they need less indoor space than one would think, given that, they are not too clumsy walking on their hind legs and their wings fold up out of the way." 

"Huh, I always imagined them as quadrupeds. That's, what, a few dozen - and probably there are more units that size?"

"I saw a statue of one in a town and it was upright, it looked like its front limbs were more like bird-claws, but I suppose they might do better walking around on all fours anyway. Mostly they apparently tend to be claustrophobic in places that don't have big high ceilings." 

Belrun nods. Reads on.

There's not that much more of interest, though there is at one point a mention of meeting a mage who was retired from competing in the Games at the district level and had made some money this year betting on which company would win, because he had insider knowledge on their mages. 

"It is certainly better to know that they have combat mages, even if the combat is sort of pretend." 

"Are we getting this intel just for our information or because Iftel's actually liable to attack us?"

"I wish I was more sure of the answer to that question. I suppose we could ask Rolan to ask the Shadowgod about it, but somehow I doubt we will get a comprehensible answer. At least not until after I have attempted to give Them a better communication avatar, if They agree to it and we can pull it off." 

She nods. "Well, we can, uh, make sure the Web is ready to report on gryphons flying in, I guess."

Vanyel grimaces. "I'm - not sure it is, by default? Not unless they're using magic, I don't think they're inherently magical enough to register and we hadn't previously been worried about the attack vector of 'very large birds flying'. I suppose I can fiddle with the alarm settings..." 

"Don't the cleverer alarms rely on the Heartstone, though?" 

"If the Heartstone is big enough to hold a god-chunk that can do that, it will presumably still be big enough after we've taken it from the Star-Eyed and then we can stick a homemade one in there if it's gone stupid without Her? I'm guessing, perhaps there's some magey reason that doesn't work."

"No, I think that ought to be workable, though it would be simplest to insert our homemade god-chunk at the same time as we knock out Hers. The only trouble is that we are not ready to do it yet, in terms of having our power source in a transportable and usable state and enough mages with the skill to channel it." 

"How long will the second thing take?"

"I think at least - three, maybe even six months, unless I do another recruiting round to get more mages in total, and that would be time-consuming in itself." 

"I'm going to see how long the microbes take to die if I don't feed them. If they can last a while that way we can construct relatively portable little containers of them, full of an initial batch of food and growing till it runs out."

"That makes sense. I do think we could transport a large number of them quickly, with Gates and magic to help carry them through." 

Nod nod.

"Well, we'd better get back to work."

"I should probably make a trip back to Haven and at least try tweaking the Web alarms to catch gryphons, we don't know for sure that the Star-Eyed would interfere directly–" 

"It would possibly reveal that we know about Iftel's army, though." 

"And She and Vkandis were probably working together last time Leareth died."

"Yes." Slight shiver, and he reaches to put his arm around Belrun. "I - suppose it might act as a deterrent, if She thought an attack was less likely to catch us unawares, but...on balance I think we should hold off on revealing it. I will think on it further." 

"Mmm." 

Belrun leans into the encircling arm, pats his hand.

They get back to work. Leareth still slips by to kiss Belrun fairly often, though it's just as often because he's worrying about Vkandis' gryphon cavalry and wants reassurance as it is because she's being excellent. 

Vanyel gets the hang of killing microbes and extracting their life-energies as power, and he can do a lot at once. He's also very comfortable with concert-work so he tutors Leareth's mages, who are improving a bit faster than Leareth's median prediction. 

Belrun does SCIENCE. But a lot of the work is just assembling containers and feeding microbes and seeing about how many there are in various containers and that can be delegated so some of her SCIENCE is done trying to stuff Gifts into monkeys.

It's tricky! Even once Vanyel confirms that she's given them Fetching and he can see the channels, the monkeys seem unable to use it, except occasionally completely at random. 

"I suspect you need to give them the corresponding brain region that a Gifted person has," Leareth muses. "Nayoki would be able to See it directly, I think - perhaps she could concert-See it with me and then I could share the result with you?" 

"Good idea!"

Nayoki is called in. 

Leareth suggests they grab Vanyel as a test Fetcher (he minds much less having Mindhealers examine him than Belrun does.) 

Sure! Vanyel will happily Fetch a ball across the room and back a few times, and do the floating-around rather than teleporting kind of Fetching with it too. 

It's nice to see Van cheery.

Once they've done a few test runs, Leareth drops out of rapport with Nayoki so that he can instead be in rapport with Belrun and show her the memories of which bread-bits in Vanyel's mind moved or lit up when he was Fetching. 

"Nayoki, your metaphor is weird," Belrun mutters, taking notes with a lot of swoops and half-drawn diagrams.

"That is what everyone tells me." 

"Sorry, I know you didn't pick it." She's practicing on her less valuable nonwinged monkeys; the winged ones have similar brains so the experience will carry over.

It's a lot tricker working with monkey brains than with mice brains, there's more complexity there to get hooked up to wrong, but she does eventually get monkeys that both have Fetching channels and keep accidentally using them. They are so confused about this development! 

Poor confused monkeys!

Now she has to figure out how to get other Gifts in there. Healing, say, though she'll want their enclosure warded so they can't accidentally kill themselves with it. Is that doable?

The channels aren't any harder to add, but getting the brain region right seems a lot harder. One of Leareth's Healers speculates that Healing involves Sight and manipulation of it which is more complicated to interpret than Fetching and touchsight, not too different in principle from moving objects with hands. 

Well, monkeys can see. And most people don't even use touchsight, not consciously. She will work at it. Being able to make Healers on-demand would be pretty amazing.

"I wonder if a limiting factor is that monkeys cannot talk to explain what they are doing, and Fetching is very obvious whereas Healing may be less externally visible so your assistants are not sure when they are doing it? We could transfer an Animal Mindspeaker over here to attempt communication with them about it." 

"Ooh, that's a good idea."

An Animal Mindspeaker can be obtained! His name is Rastan and he adores the monkeys, says they're far better conversationalists than any animals he's read or communicated with before. It turns out that the ones she was working with do in fact have Healing-Sight, at least some of them, and were using their Gifts in small ways, but often clumsily enough that it hurt, either themselves or another monkey, and then they would be anxious about doing it again. He's not a Healer so he doesn't know how to give them lessons directly, but if Belrun can observe, he can try to relay instructions into monkeythoughts. 

She will attempt to teach monkeys to use their Healing, just enough that she can tell if the Gift came through right.

They can totally be taught to Heal small cuts and scrapes on themselves and their friends! It seems like they struggle with the finesse required to do any more internal kinds of Healing (and also they're all healthy right now anyway), which is fine for her purposes, they may just not be clever enough to learn multiple Healing techniques, since they are after all still monkeys even if they look disconcertingly human. 

These ones don't look human so much! Since she can't expect Gifts to reliably pass on to offspring she wants to have plenty of experience in the technique and then apply it in its complete form to a "finished" monkey, but the unfinished monkeys are relatively expendable test subjects.

Can she make Mindspeaking, Thoughtsensing monkeys? That's her own full complement of Gifts handled if she can but Rastan will be necessary to find out if it's been managed!

She can! Though giving monkeys Thoughtsensing-type channels plus the best approximation that can be made to how the human brain area for it works still results in something more like Empathy plus some sense-sharing, since monkeys don't have language and don't think in a very speechlike way. The monkeys are all over it, though! They seem to find it delightful and Rastan claims they're now chattering constantly with bursts of emotion and pictures through each other's eyes. 

Aww, that's cute!

What else can she cram into a monkey.

Vanyel's happy to be a test subject for all of his Gifts! The remaining ones are Farsight, Foresight (though he's not sure the monkey will be very enthused about that, or able to use it in testable ways), Bardic, Empathy, Firestarting (perhaps also ill-advised), and mage-gift.

"Can monkeys even sing?" he muses. 

"The more heavily edited ones probably could, normal monkeys can't make human vocalizations but I want to be able to talk even when I'm possessing a winged monkey," she says. "These ones nah. I think I'd probably skip it anyway, gives me the creeps. Same with Empathy. And you're right about Firestarting and Foresight but Farsight and mage-gift and, heh, Rastan's right here with Animal Mindspeech..."

Farsight turns out to be really easy. The brain area for it is less complex and mostly just links directly to the standard area for processing vision, and the monkeys, with a bit of instruction from Rastan, find it very straightforward to use. 

Rastan informs her that they think it's hilarious to spy on the rest of the facility, especially the dining hall, and gossip about it; his translation of monkey gossip is pretty cryptic but they definitely have opinions on who should hook up with who. They should probably shield any areas they don't want monkeys spectating, but he's in favour of letting them peek at the dining hall, it gives them more enrichment and helps them not to get bored in captivity. 

Sounds good to her! She lets Leareth know about monkey spies.

Oh no that's so cute and silly. Do they have opinions on whether Leareth and Belrun should be hooking up? 

Whether or not they do, they shouldn't get to confirm their suspicions!

Their bedroom is already shielded against Farsight (in addition to the shielding on the outside of the building, which helpfully keeps the monkeys from looking further afield, in addition to keeping spies out, but doesn't protect the dining hall from the monkeys or vice versa.) He'll pass on that perhaps his other staff should consider shielding their bedrooms too if they want to avoid being the subject of monkey gossip. 

Next: monkey mages!

For the first time, getting the monkeys hooked up to mage-channels is tricky even with Leareth's advice and concert-Sight.