They don't seem to notice, or at least they don't react. 

This one he can't even toggle off and on, because that would require it having a receiver; instead it will just be off for the next hour and on forever after that. 

He tries not to pointlessly worry in the meantime. 

Do they have an update from Savil about what happened in Highjorune?

Vanyel still hasn't been very communicative, but with quite a lot of pressing and coaxing him, he eventually said that Yfandes apparently took issue with his wanting to reason about whether Leareth was right to fight the gods for trying to keep Velgarth primitive, and stormed out, and then - he was very upset and some things happened as a result. 

Nobody in the entire kingdom can find Yfandes right now. Some context is that Companions can repudiate their Heralds, for breaking the Heraldic standards of ethics, and they're definitely worried right now that Yfandes might be in the process of repudiating Van, but according to the Groveborn she hasn't yet.

No one has any idea what to think of it. Or do. 

The Heraldic standards of ethics include an oath not to fight the gods? Or - not to consider fighting the gods? Not fighting the gods make sense but holding people to an oath not to consider it seems - unwise.

The official Heraldic oath and the standards taught have no mention of this! Nobody understands why it's apparently such a big deal. Although, well, it has been noted by others, including Savil herself, that various other Companions are also kind of restless about the topic being brought up. 

(Savil mostly finds it too weird and surreal to think about properly.) 

If the gods object to the alliance with Leareth is there a known avenue through which they'd communicate their objections? He would be delighted to hear their reasoning.

Huh. The only one they're really aware of is prophetic dreams, and no one's mentioned any. Companions sometimes get gut feelings on things, which may or may not be Foresight, but none of the Companions are actually getting strong bad feelings about Leareth helping Matirin with the war.

...they don't have, like, a place where you can take petitions or anything? 

Nnnno, Savil has never heard of that - maybe the priesthood of Karse can petition Vkandis? But she hasn't heard of any miracles happening in Valdemar proper in the past many centuries, and doesn't think the gods here tend to answer prayers. 

- one second. Correction from Vanyel: apparently he suspects he yelled at the Star-Eyed Goddess once? He doesn't remember much of it, though, and also seems really traumatized about it, so probably this shouldn't be a first-line consideration. 

...Correction from Vanyel again, apparently the avatar of Death talks to him? When he almost dies, that is, which has happened kind of often. 

Matirin is so confused. And so - lonely - he wants his father, he wants Finleran, he wants to have anything other than shadow puppets inside his own head to argue with -

<What do you think we should do.>

< - are you serious.>

<Yes.>

<Give the blind guy morph.>

<...that is not even in the space of actions I'm considering! Also we don't know if the Heralds are on the right side of their war and morph is very powerful and it'd be very illegal and we're already on good terms with Valdemar.>

<Well, you asked an extremely broad question. If you mean what do I think we should do with Leareth and his army, uh, yeah I think we should take it. He can mind-control the Yeerks to betray the other Yeerks, see how they like it, have the whole war wrapped up inside a couple of years, we don't have to kill billions of people, sounds good.>

<He might betray us.>

<So we don't get the chance to kill five billion people? What a damned shame that would be! Matirin, we're losing. We're going to lose. If we don't win on Earth I don't think we'll win anywhere else, either. Especially not since who even fucking knows what shape the fleet's in, now that ->

<I don't think it's unsalvageable.>

<It's pretty fucking bad.>

<If he sells us out to the Yeerks then it really is over. We'll have sentenced the whole galaxy to be enslaved forever. When I could've just - stayed here, tried to get Cayaldwin to modify the morph cube so it takes the right bits of Gifts, trained a bunch of Gifted mages...we'd be too late for Earth, I think, realistically, but there's more at stake than that.>

<I agree that it makes sense to be really careful about that. Which is what you are doing. I definitely don't think you should do less of it. But - if you're not sure, maybe figure out how to be someone he doesn't want to betray to the Yeerks, you know? People do that for reasons, right?>

This was actually somewhat helpful but left him even more agitated than before. He paces. When it's been an hour he goes to listen in on the bug even though there are people doing that who'll send him a summary and get his attention if there's anything interesting.

There is mostly silence. Someone asks a slightly muffled question that sounds like it's probably referring to scrying the ship. The answer is noncommittal and bored, something something about shields. 

More silence. 

Something is saying hopefully that if Leareth takes much longer to think then the return letter dropoff will be after they're done their shift. 

Probably hanging around listening to mostly-silence isn't helpful either. 

Be someone they don't want to betray to Yeerks. Half the problem here is that he doesn't know what kind of person this man wouldn't want to betray. 

He paces.

And the person left to listen in on the microphone will hear: 

Some fragmentary bits of desultory conversation. Complaining about how everyone is pulling extra hours right now, dealing with all the changes in orders due to Leareth re-evaluating all his plans. There are some speculations on what his endgame is, here, whether he's going to angle for a formal alliance with Valdemar now - they know he's close with Vanyel, "insofar as the man is close with anyone," someone mutters, and the gossip turns to wondering how in all hells Vanyel got hurt, Leareth seemed genuinely distressed about this and sent off some orders to the agents on site in Highjorune to figure out what happened. 

Leareth decides on his reply before the person in question goes off shift. His voice is heard very briefly, asking that it be delivered now, and then there are footsteps. A conversation heard between two other people - surprise, at the speed and strength of Leareth's reaction to the aliens' arrival. "The man could always pivot on a coin-edge," someone is saying. "Reckon he's right, he's generally right." Someone else says that he's sure going out on a limb here and it's probably worth it, Leareth never does anything without thinking it through, but gods they hope the aliens don't turn out to be evil and trying to trick the humans.