She returns to her usual pastimes. Gardening, sorcery lessons. Planning an assault on the court of the Queen.

Leareth goes through several drafts of a letter to the King of Valdemar and eventually gets it condensed down to a short, straightforward description of his idea. He would like one of his mages to meet the Herald they choose to send first, to verify that they're alone (with their Companion) and being truthful about their Gifts/lack thereof. He suggests they can, at that point, question the mage under Truth Spell to verify Leareth's intentions, which implicitly gives them an opportunity to bug out if the situation looks suspicious. Once he has confirmation, Leareth will Gate over and answer their questions. 

The Heralds receive and discuss this letter. 

On the one hand: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

On the other hand: it's objectively not risking that much to recall a random minimally-Gifted Herald from one of the borders, who doesn't know much about Valdemar's plans, and send them north still without context to cast a first-level Truth Spell and read off a list of questions. If Leareth betrays them and captures said Herald, Leareth won't learn anything he can't already have learned from having goddamned Vanyel in his hands. And, of course, the upside of getting confirmation is high. 

"I think we should send Herald Lores." 

"You have got to be goddamned kidding me. You know what he's like." 

"I do. I think he can handle this fine. We tell him it's a critical diplomatic mission, of the greatest importance, and we're selecting him because of his diplomatic experience in Lineas, plus the fact that he's been there for decades and so has less important intelligence to give away if he's captured, and for the same reason we can't brief him on all the context, since that would defeat the point. He'll be flattered. Then we give him a script of questions to read off exactly, and ask him to write down the answers exactly. He won't expect to know what's going on because of the part where we can't afford to brief him, so he shouldn't feel out of his depth, which is when he really digs in his heels. He won't be creative about asking followup questions but if we plan the script well that shouldn't matter." 

"And if Leareth betrays us and kidnaps him then we can survive the loss." 

Randi had not been planning to say that part out loud. 

"Is there literally no one else you can think of." 

"Let's go down the list of Heralds on circuit, I guess." 

They go back and forth on this for a while. The problem is that most of the weakly Gifted Heralds, like Keiran and Katha, are in much more sensitive positions than Lores, because Heralds with weak Gifts are more likely to be assigned to diplomatic positions or Haven-based positions. There are a few recently-graduated Heralds on circuit who only have Mindspeech, but since they're recently graduated, they actually know a lot more intel on Valdemar than Lores, who's spent only a few days out of the last decade in Haven. 

"He knows some things about Lineas," Savil points out. "Like the Heartstone - er, he might not actually know what it's called and such, he's not a mage and he's incredibly incurious, but Leareth could piece it together." 

"Leareth already has Vanyel, who knows a lot more. In the case we're worried about, which is - hopefully not what's going on - we have to assume he's already pulled everything out of Van's mind." 

"Guess that's fair." She looks so unhappy about it. 

The next morning, a letter is Fetched into place at the drop point via a relay of Fetchers from Haven. (Valdemar's Herald-Mindspeakers have far greater range than Mindspeakers in most places, it's posited that this is because Companions can strengthen Gifts during training and help boost them in emergencies, and it's also true that Valdemar has Fetchers with greater range than is usually expected. And a letter isn't heavy.) 

Leareth reads it, and then goes to see if Woodlark is awake and has an idea of what he wants to say.

Woodlark wants the world to GO AWAY. 

If the world is not going to be polite enough to do that, he wants Promise to be there too, even though she's kind of redundant now that the plan is for Leareth to go. Promise is less scary than Leareth. 

(Leareth thinks the latter claim is not true at all, actually, but he doesn't say that.) 

He goes up to Promise's tree to see if she's up yet and if she's willing to come down and be there while Vanyel Truth Spells himself and says some things to be relayed. 

"If he wants me there, I guess, though I'm not sure what I add."

"I think he finds you less intimidating than he finds me, although really it ought be the opposite." 

"But if we're both there how does that help?"

"So he can look at your face and focus on that instead of my face? Perhaps he found you comforting when you talked to him yesterday and so has that association now, that is something that happens for humans, I am not sure if it does for fairies." 

"I have encountered it in fiction."

"Well, anyway, he asked for you so presumably he thinks it will help somehow." Leareth starts heading back down to Woodlark's room. 

She'll come along.

Woodlark hugs his knees to his chest and stares at Promise's chin while ignoring the entire corner of the room Leareth is in. He casts a Truth Spell on himself; it takes him a minute to concentrate well enough; and then he reads off from a sheet of paper in a flat toneless voice. The blue halo remains in place.  

"I have been talking to Leareth in the Foresight dream for about fourteen years. The last Groveborn told us not to tell anyone. Recently," he can't remember the exact day because what are days even, "I had a dream with Leareth where he said he was cancelling the invasion plan, acknowledged he would need to prove it. I d-didn't say anything because I couldn't think of how to explain it. Then we got word from k'Treva and I had another dream with Leareth and I shouted at him. I assume he sent Promise to k'Treva because of that, and I was there, you probably have her account of what we talked about. She - said some things to my Companion - we were talking about it after and - had a fight - I don't really understand it but she was mad about what Leareth thought and was mad at me for thinking it was reasonable. She said she couldn't be around me and ran away but she was going to tell the Groveborn first. I - panicked and Gated north to leave a message for Leareth because it seemed like things might go very out of control and he d-deserved to know. In the scenario where he's trying to cooperate with us. I didn't really mean to have him Gate me north but I didn't - not mean to do that? I was in a bad state and I didn't have a plan. I don't think it's accurate at all that he kidnapped me. I've been treated very well here. I'm very useless though so it d-doesn't seem like there's much reason to come back. I'm sorry." 

He falls silent. The blue halo is still there, unfaltering. 

"Should we bring the paper along -"