:- Oh, are elementals here immortal?: She...isn't actually sure that the elemental spirits she knows about are? She's very confused. 

:Yes:

Jisa follows the man at a distance, so he won't notice her. 

:Oh. Um, anyway, I still want to try to free you? And all the others if I can? But I need to take a step back and be smart about it. Can I ask you more questions later if I think of them?: 

:Guess so: He sounds pretty depressed.

All right. Think. She needs to be smart about it and do some actual planning. 

What would Van do. 

...Vanyel would be absurdly powerful at it and use half a dozen Gifts she doesn't have, which isn't really fair. 

Van is also good at strategy, though, he's an advisor to her father. Jisa has had lots of conversations with the King about policy, actually. She has no excuse to be this terrible at having plans, she just hasn't been trying to think. 

She looks around for a more comfortable place to sit than a stone wall, where she can think for a while undisturbed. 

She could sit under that tree, there's some grass there. She could sit on somebody's porch steps.

Jisa takes the spot under the tree, it seems like someone might try to talk to her if she just waltzes up to their porch. 

She stares into space for a long time. It keeps feeling like her brain is bouncing off rocks. 

- Eventually she sighs. She needs to know things, and the elementals are slaves and have no reason to trust her so it's not that surprising they aren't entirely helpful. And she can't ask the locals because she doesn't speak the language and they don't know what Mindspeech is, and/or it doesn't even work on them. 

Reading their thoughts is very unethical but slavery is ALSO very unethical so probably that cancels out, right? 

What would Van... Well, if he was going to do an unethical thing to win, he would at least be efficient about it. Reading random people's thoughts isn't efficient. 

She searches again for the mind of the Stone she failed to rescue, over at the university. 

He is being haggled over. The university wants the discount on account of his having just killed somebody.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaah Jisa feels so bad about that. And so stupid. She was such an idiot, trying basically the same plan a second time and hoping it would work. Why can't she have Fetching. Van would use that to steal the amulet. 

:Hello?: she says. :I want to know who's in charge of this city and where they live: 

:I've never been to the mayor's house: says Stone, as his new amulet is handed over to the university elemental rental person.

:- I'll try to find it anyway, thank you:

And Jisa starts scrying high above the city again, looking for the most upscale part of the city, and for particularly fancy houses there, probably the mayor would live in a nice house right? 

Most of the architecture is unfamiliar and unimpressive compared to what there is in Valdemar, but there is a nice section with houses that look new and probably magically constructed, made of wood and stone and glass and metal.

Well, if she goes there at least she can select for rich people, who might know more things even if they're not the mayor. Jisa gets up and trudges in that direction, and once she's reached the newer probably-magically-constructed houses, she starts hunting for minds to read. 

People are mostly going to bed, except the ones who have magic lights, which isn't all of them even here. It's getting dark. She can find the mayor, because apparently his wife thinks it's hot to talk a whole lot about how he's the mayor in bed.

At least now she knows. Probably the mayor is not thinking any interesting thoughts about running the city while in bed with his wife, though, and Jisa doesn't actually want to read the thoughts he is thinking. 

She looks around for a place near his house where she can hide and sleep. 

He has a garden. There's an elemental and a mage supervising the elemental in there, working on the plants with the last light of the day.

:Hello: Jisa says to the elemental, hiding out of the mage's view. :My name is Jisa and I'm from far away and I want to figure out how to rescue you and the others who're slaves. If I hide and sleep here tonight, can you not tell anyone? Also I wondered if you know things about how the city is run and all, since you work at the mayor's house: 

:I don't have to tell anyone, if she doesn't see you herself. But I don't just work here, my owner visits a lot of gardens and farms:

:Oh, all right. Er, could you warn me if she sees me?: Jisa, hidden under an illusion, looks for a place where she can curl up in the cover of some tall plants or something and put up wards. 

:Okay:

The mage finishes using the elemental on the garden, and then they leave.

Hopefully no one else will come do more garden work in the middle of the night. Jisa puts up her wards and curls into a ball in part of the garden where she isn't very visible even minus the illusion, and tries to sleep. 

Nobody interrupts her. There are some deliveries to the house before dawn but they're not that loud. At sunrise everyone gets up.

Jisa creeps out of the garden too, and moves a house down and sits under a tree, and then she looks for the mayor's mind again and reads his thoughts. 

The Appointee will be visiting today, they have to make sure the darkroom is ready for him. He has a stack of paper - paper is such a useful invention! - delivered to update him on everything going on in Casox from yesterday. People are still using copper in the market, good, they're supposed to. Rixo isn't near enough the sea to benefit from a seashells and salt based money system but if you just regulate the Adamants copper's still fine. Somebody... freed their elemental in the middle of the street?? Doesn't everyone with an elemental know that kills you by now? Street's damaged, impassable to carts. Needs someone with a Stone to fix it. Elemental was recaptured and sold to the school, that's good.

Jisa wants to know more about these regulations on Adamants, presumably a kind of elemental that can - forge coins, maybe? 

Does the man notice if she very very cautiously probes his mind a bit, poking at that train of thought?