Promise listens carefully - she hasn't had a chance to take notes in fifty years, she's all right at memorization now. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"About the shrine? No, I think that is all." 

"About anything."

The woman blinks at her. "...'Anything' is very broad. I - cannot think of more things right now." Mostly this is because she's very nervous and feeling put on the spot. 

"Okay. Uh, thank you. You can see yourselves home."

And she flies back to the staircase and goes down.

Leareth is in the dining hall talking to some of his people, and turns when he sees her. "So?" 

"I have been taught how to make a shrine and it might work to command her to consecrate it. I didn't authorize constructing one prophylactically since it seems you might not like that."

"I see. Thank you. I - would not have been upset with you, if you had, it seems important that you can speak with Her - I assume that is why a shrine is helpful? And it would not give Her much local power. Nonetheless, I would be quite uneasy about a shrine existing anywhere near me." 

"That's why, yes."

Nod. "Anything else I ought to know?" 

"They should be going home any minute, or maybe already left, I don't know."

"I will scry the site in a few minutes and check. Thank you." Leareth smiles, tight and brief. "If that is all, I should let you go on having your break and not doing things." 

"Thanks. - where would I find drawing supplies?"

"...I have no idea, I do not normally work from here much." Leareth glances around, waves at a man just getting up from his table. "Dasher," they all have nicknames now too, "can you help Promise find drawing supplies?" 

"Yes, of course." Dasher smiles at Promise. He doesn't seem nervous, just very curious. 

Promise will follow Dasher to wherever drawing supplies may be and collect some and take them back to her room. And draw.

Nobody bothers her, except that Sapphire and Leaf, and Sunspring once she's back, take turns waiting at the dining hall for her, and then discreetly knocking on her door if she doesn't emerge for mealtimes. 

It transpires that Promise draws plants, lots of them, very prettily, and papers her room with them, and prefers to eat twice a day.

That works fine for them, Leaf and Sapphire can trade off since Sunspring is very busy. They're impressed by the drawings, and friendly with her whenever they interact for meals but don't press her for conversation. 

Leareth also seems very busy. He's around on and off, and nods to Promise when he sees her in the dining hall but doesn't initiate any conversation. 

She decompresses. She reads books. She will be quite content to do this for weeks.

Leareth works on dismantling decades worth of operations, and sending agents to double-check that the contingency plans he's cancelled are, in fact, now inactive. 

...And a couple of nights in, he finds himself in a snowy desolate waste, with an army behind him, facing a man in tattered Heraldic Whites standing at the mouth of a pass sliced through the mountain itself, impossibly deep and straight, carved with blood-magic. (There's no other way to do a working on that scale without leaving ripples in the patterns of mage-energy across half the continent.) 

"Herald Vanyel," he says. 

"Leareth." After a beat, Vanyel starts walking towards him. 

Leareth stays where he is. He's thought about what to say, a lot, he expected this would happen, but he still doesn't have a script. 

"You're quiet today," Vanyel remarks, casting a heat-spell and making himself a snow-stool.