"Maybe 'evil' was not the right word. I...think I am working toward something he would understand, if I could afford to explain it." Shrug. "Not that it really matters, right now, since I cannot do that."

She has the absurd temptation to hug him again. "Do you want me to talk to him? Or to avoid doing so?"

"I would not ask you to seek him out in particular, especially since most of the questions I would want answered would be incredibly suspicious to ask, but if the opportunity arises naturally for conversation, then - yes, I would be curious to hear your impression of him."

(Probably her impression would be incredibly Asmodean. Poor Vanyel. Leareth can't imagine that he comes across well to that particular framework. Still. It could be informative.)

"Do you have a recommendation on where I should say I'm from? If I cast magic in front of them it'll be obvious I'm from another world but that might make lots more fuss than I want, and I could make a dagger of Tongues and then not use magic in their presence and pretend I speak the language normally."

"Oh, yes, I would prefer you avoid fuss." He frowns at her. "Ethnically you could plausibly be from Ruvan, I think. South of Karse, but no one in Valdemar will know too much about it so they will not expect you to know more than you do. And of course you have that spell to disguise yourself, too."

"Yes, but not all day, so it'd be better to look only a normal amount of foreign in my default clothes."

"We can provide you with clothes that match what would be worn in Ruvan, just in case any of the Heralds would know, which probably they will not."

"Thank you. And I assume you'll make it impossible for me to tell them anything I'm not supposed to tell them, but things I'm not supposed to tell them include..."

"...Ideally, do not tell them anything about me or about magic from your world. I am not going to make hiding everything about your magic a compulsion, though, I assume your judgement agrees with mine here that drawing attention is much more likely to make them want to arrest and question you, but if you are caught using it then the least suspicious route out might be to offer some minimal explanation until you can get away. I absolutely do not want you to reveal any specifics of my operations and resources that you have observed, though, or anything about the god plan even at the highest level, and those I will include in the secrecy compulsion. ...The standard way those are set up means that if someone else spontaneously offers a fact that you know is true, you are not compelled to deny it or pretend you have no idea, since that kind of deception is not actually something most people are any good at." His eyes narrow slightly. "You perhaps being an exception."

"...it seems dumb to try to do anything important while bad at deception. ...I guess lots of your people here are, like, Calib."

"Yes. For research in particular I recruit the brightest and most curious people I can, who...in this world at least, tend not to be the most practiced at social deception, the best strategy there is to make sure the subject never comes up such that they need to lie about it. Honestly, though, you may be better at lying than I am."

"Do you ever have to lie? You're - almost a god."

"...To be honest, I hate lying. One of the upsides of operating more openly, as I am now, is that I rarely have cause to lie outright, and concealing information bothers me less, I think I am adequate at that."

She nods, processing that. "I'll - let you know when I have the magic item ready, then."

"Thank you." He's curious about her reaction, just then, but doesn't ask, just nods to her and heads out.

She gets back to work. 

It takes her another two weeks to have a permanent Magic Aura on her shield-talisman from Leareth and to have double-checked her one-off teleport and to have the rest of her projects and notes organized so if she does get killed or imprisoned they have good odds of reconstructing everything eventually.

She lets Leareth know this.

"All right. Good. I will arrange a Gate to just outside Westmark - that is a town twenty miles north of the current Valdemaran border, but the road from there ought be safe enough. There is really just the one road, you want to follow it due south. I will get you a detailed map anyway, of course."

And then he looks at her for a moment, his face still but warmth in his eyes; it looks like he's maybe having the inexplicable urge to hug her as well, though if so it's not clear he's noticed this fact.

Her read is that he thinks she's hot but is a very singleminded person and also maybe doesn't quite parse all other humans as the same kind of entity he is. If he had thought about it more he'd also probably have other reservations but she bets he hasn't even considered it enough to generate them.

She does not hug him. 

She nods and thanks him and leaves her notes and goes.

Leareth's mage delivers her through another Gate to an anonymous patch of packed-dirt road. It's not raining right now but it looks like the sky is considering it. There's a field nearby, maybe barley, which appears to have very recently been harvested. It was still winter in the north when she first arrived; it's early autumn now, by the look of it.

"Westmark is that way," the mage points out for her, "and you'll want to go straight through and follow the side road until it joins the main road at the fork, and then keep following the main road south. Once you hit the Valdemaran border it'll be paved. There'll be a Guard post. I don't know if you were planning to talk to them or just go invisible for it?"

"I'm claiming to be coming from the south so I think I'll be invisible." She studies the area carefully, so she can remember it to aim a Teleport later.

"Well, good luck! We'll have someone camping out around here for whenever you come back and need collecting."

"Thank you." 

It feels...almost suspicious, that Leareth trusts her with this, but. He's not risking too much. He has all her notes. And - she ought to be pretty good at this. 

She summons a Phantom Steed, and has it set off at a gallop. Being a phantom it won't get tired; she will, but for a while it's actually exhilarating, to be outdoors and moving and, at least in a fashion, free.

She makes herself and her steed invisible to pass the guard post, and then keeps going, until the sun is starting to set and she is sore and exhausted and weirdly happy. She makes an Extended Rope Trick to sleep in.

In the morning there are birds chirping and the sun is weakly making itself known through a bank of cloud, and there's some actual traffic on the road - which is in fact paved, very nicely, in some sort of smooth stone that seems out of place with the visible local tech level.

Because mages are really good at earthworking. She's jealous. 

She doesn't have enough invisibility to evade all traffic but hopefully she can beat word of her to the city by most of a week. Normal horses cannot go twelve hours a day at a gallop.

The locals she passes at a gallop do give her some curious looks but that's all. Leareth told her that she should particularly avoid or make sure to look unobtrusive in front of people in white riding white horses, that'd be Herald-Companion pairs and they have access to Mindspeakers with long range. She only sees one, though, and they're off the road in a town.

Halfway through the second day it starts drizzling, then raining in earnest.