Tantras heads for the back, starts searching for a particular box. 

"Um." Shavri glances over at the young Herald working. "Is it - all right if I use Mindspeech?" 

"If you can avoid accidentally reading anything I don't try to tell you, sure."

"...I'm not sure I can avoid reading anything if I'm trying to read your answers with Thoughtsensing, but I can avoid reading anything period and you can just answer without being too informative?" 

"Let's go with that."

"Right." 

She closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath. 

:...The King is seriously ill with - something. We don't know what. We don't know how to cure it, or if it's possible. It's not showing many symptoms yet but it's getting worse over time. I haven't told him yet. No one else knows but Vanyel and Tantras. It...seemed like you noticed something, though? When he came in?: 

"Not enough to go on," Cam says, after a moment of considering whether responses are oblique enough.

:But you studied medicine, right? What would you do next, if you were treating him and wanted to find out more?: 

"Investigate conjured samples. Screening questions."

:- Would you be willing to help us with that?: 

"Uh, it might not be priority one but in principle sure."

:Fair enough. It's not that urgent? Whatever the illness is, it's not fast. But - Valdemar is going to have a lot of political problems, if it gets worse down the line. Randi doesn't currently have an heir: 

"Why not?"

:It's, er. Complicated. ...His father died before he could inherit. Randi wasn't supposed to be King until decades from now: 

Shavri doesn't seem very enthused to talk about it. 

"Is it that Jisa's a girl -?"

:No! It's not that at all. Randi's grandmother was Queen, we're not - Valdemar's been about half and half, historically, when it wasn't two married co-consorts. It's just...:

She half turns away. Stares at the floor. :Jisa isn't his legitimate daughter. Randi and I never married. We're lifebonded, but...I...: Shrug. :They wanted him available for political marriages, and I didn't - I would never want to be a monarch. I don't want to force my daughter down that path: 

"...that does complicate things but I'm not sure what good the availability does if it's not being, uh, employed for the conventional purpose."

:Don't ask me, I'm not the Council. Er, they were working on arranging something - a marriage to a Karsite princess - but the talks for it were happening about six months before Elspeth died and the Karsites immediately started a war. It fell through: 

"I see. Uh, anyway, I can try the thing with the samples and microscopes at some point but not until I don't think anyone is imminently going to, like, starve."

:That makes sense. Thank you:

She nods to him, and turns to head out. 

Herald Tantras is still digging around for maps. He has a couple of rolled-up canvases tucked under his arm already, though. 

"I could just put this entire library on my computer," Cam mentions. "If that would save you some time. Is it all in the one alphabet?"

Tantras blinks, looks up. "- Er, almost all? There are a decent chunk of books in Rethwellani, they have some scholarly academies there and a lot of schools of magic. But they use the same script as Valdemaran." 

"Cool, I'll just teach my computer the alphabet and I'll be good to go." He inputs the Valdemaran script into it.

Tantras stops hunting for maps, and watches in fascination instead.