"It's not - I don't think I should go back to make them less upset, it's just that I might have important strategic information and so it'd be my duty to make sure they have it too?" 

"...you could put it in a letter? Or I guess if you think somebody else'd read it you could put it in more code than usual?"

"But they might not– Right, this is coming back to the same problem as before, the Truth Spell thing. I guess - it's probably better to send a letter than not do that? And if they want to question me under Truth Spell to make sure I'm not lying, maybe I'll feel more up for it later." 

"Can you truth spell yourself? You could do that and tell me you did that and I could report that you did that."

"Oh, um, I - don't know? Never tested it. I guess I can try and you can tell me if it works." 

"Sure. What will I notice?"

"Um, a blue halo around my head, but I guess I could just be saying whatever I want, and you don't have mage-sight to check it's real, you could ask someone else to confirm if you want to." 

"I don't have mage-sight. I could see if it makes a harmonic ripple but an illusion could do that too. But we can see if you get a halo and then someone can come confirm and then I can be your witness next trip."

Vanyel attempts to cast a Truth Spell on himself. 

Blue halo! 

"I see it!"

"Oh. Good." He sounds unenthused about it. 

"Something wrong?"

He blinks at her, then waves a hand vaguely. "Nothing that wasn't already wrong this whole time." 

"Okay, well, I can go find somebody with mage-sight whenever you know what you want to say."

"I, er, might need some time to think about that, I - hard to focus right now, I can't remember what the point of this was. Maybe I need to sleep." 

"Okay. Have a nice nap."

She lets herself out.

Leareth finds her a little while later and asks for an update. 

Which she can supply. She has some brief notes so she can hit all the major points.

"All right. So the current plan is that Vanyel will say some things under his own Truth Spell to you, which I can confirm with mage-sight, and then you would be able to confirm this under Truth Spell later to the Heralds?" Frown. "It is definitely evidence for them, but might not be conclusive, since I could still be lying about my mage-sight results. I suppose Vanyel could Truth Spell me as well, but that would still be fakeable if both of us were in on it. Which is something the Heralds might in fact be concerned about, given the givens." Sigh. "It is probably still worth doing." 

"Yeah. It seems silly but whatever he's so afraid of having happen if he goes back clearly looms very large. I guess if the Heralds are likely to be worried about you and Woodlark collaborating I could order Sunspring to check for me? And then I'd be able to personally guarantee it."

"We can do that. This - still feels like a suboptimal workaround we are trying instead of solving whatever makes Woodlark feel uncomfortable going back? But I model most of his issue as being that he is very depressed and so doing anything seems overwhelming and hard, which is difficult to address." 

"Doing anything including explaining the problem so I can understand it, yeah. Wish I knew where his Companion was."

"Would there be any way of using knowing her name to find her? If Woodlark were willing to share it, I mean, but he could reassure himself of your friendly intent with Truth Spell." 

"No, if that were doable I'd be much more concerned about Thorn!"