That last one sounds maybe most relevant; she pulls it. "Do you want one, I can turn pages -"

"I'll take that one." It's a shorter primer on Predain's history in general, less intimidating for Skan's current reading level, which is...fine, but he still isn't a fan of books that are mostly pages full of very small dense text and don't have ANY architectural diagrams in them. 

She pulls that too and opens it for him and begins to read her own.

Predain has had a lot of civil wars and smaller-scale conflicts! Way more than the history textbook about Tantara mention. There have been several bloody succession crises in its four-hundred-year history as a kingdom, and it also sounds like there are semi-constant family feuds between nearby landholders, or conflicts between different ethnic groups. In particular there are some arid steppe areas that, while ostensibly part of the country, don't really have much rule of law at all; they're inhabited by several different clans of nomadic herding peoples, who spend a lot of time raiding and killing each other and are likely to respond with violence to any outsiders entering their land. Predain also has a long history of being less able than Tantara at maintaining the security of its roads and river trade routes; merchants consider it advisable to always hire mercenary guards, including a mage, when passing through. 

The local-scale conflicts have varied over time depending on how strong the central government was at the time, and in particular were at a lull from about a hundred and twenty until fifty years ago, but since then (at least according to the book, last updated twenty years ago), there have been less popular kings, local revolts, a mild succession crisis, and several multi-year droughts, all together leading to a resurgence in banditry. Some criminal rings from the east are suspected to have taken advantage of this to snatch or buy kidnapped locals for the slave trade further south, especially Gifted but untrained children, but this is unconfirmed since the actual government of Predain is apparently uninterested in confirming it. 

Wow, that does sound very scary. What's in Skan's book?

It's a less detailed skim of the entire history, starting from the founding - which happened initially as an alliance between several major landholdings, followed by an expansionist period of conquering nearby territories, mixed with several coups between the original families angling for the position of greatest power - and covering up until about fifty years ago. Predain has had one border war with Tantara, two hundred and fifty years ago, during which they conquered some territory, which was later given back under a different administration as part of a formal treaty with the then-King of Tantara fifty years later. (This was during a major drought and famine, during which Tantara provided aid to starving people in Predain.) They've had several more wars with Utanz, a small mountainous kingdom to the west. They have a larger standing army than Tantara, but one that's mostly been wielded in internal civil conflicts. They've also been invaded on a couple of occasions from the north, by several different tribes of nomadic horse-riding peoples, though the last of those was a hundred and fifty years ago, ending in some sort of bizarre ritual exchange of hostages and a marriage; at this point they've built a wall to secure their northern border and have it thoroughly guarded.

There's a chapter on the Predain College of Chirurgeons, one of the best-known academies of medicine in the world and the only one that focuses mainly on training un-Gifted doctors. 

That explains all the medicine books! But this has been a lot of reading and now it is lunchtime.

Skan bounces along beside her. "What do you think?" 

"I think it does sound like it might be scary to grow up there, so maybe he'll calm down when he's been here longer."

"That makess ssensse -" Skan stops, tries again, this time with more attention to minimizing the gryphon-accent. "That makes sensse." 

Scritch scritch. "I'm not sure everyone's been very welcoming to him though. Apparently some gryphons swooped at him to scare him when he first showed up! And people pretend they're going to throw stuff at him, and his roommates tease."

Skan hisses. "There are gryphonss who think it'ss very funny! To mock touristss and visitorss that way." 

"That's so mean though! What if they never saw a gryphon before, they'd think gryphons were all mean."

"They musst think that'ss funny too." 

"They need better senses of humor."

"Sso do hiss roommatess!" Skan seems a little defensive. "Gryphonss are not the only oness who have bad sensses of humour sometimess." 

"I know that but how will he find out, if the first gryphons he met were mean and he himself happens to be a human?"

"- I could be friendss with him?" Skan scuffs his claws at the marble floor. "I guess he might be too sscared of me." 

"Yeah, I asked him yesterday if he wanted me to call you over and ask if you could carry both of us - we wound up walking to my house. He said no, but I don't know if it was that or something else."

"Mmm." And now Skan is out of attention span for conversation and instead starts trying to leap at the ceiling lights (they're mage-light crystals half enclosed in the ceiling and fairly indestructible, fortunately.) 

Cute.

She collects her lunch at the dining hall. Looks around to see if Ma'ar is there.

Ma'ar doesn't seem to be there. 

Maybe he'll have lunch later. Or already had it, even. Omnomnom. Maybe she should teach him Mindspeech protocol so he can poke her if he wants words or something, and then she can back off after that. She heads for his room.

He's not there. One of the roommates answers the door and gives her an odd look. "Looking for your boyfriend?" Snicker. 

Eyeroll. "Can you tell me where Ma'ar is?"