"Well, one thing I know about Leareth is that he and Vicky aren't on speaking terms. He too has apparently been set on fire."

"What? Wait. How do you know that?" 

"I can conjure everything he's ever written."

"...Huh." 

A pause. 

"- Then you definitely know a whole lot more than you're saying. All right, fine, maybe you don't owe Valdemar anything, but...why don't you want to tell us? Seems like we could help each other out, here." 

"I don't know nearly as much as I'd like because he's very good at codes. Also, I've got him talking, and I want to see what he says, and reporting on all his everything to third parties might shut him up."

"I mean, you don't have to tell him that you're reporting it to third parties. Right?"

"He... has spies? Who I have yet to identify because he is very good at codes."

"Hmmff." It's tempting to snap at him, but Cam does, in fact, have an inconveniently good point here. "Right, so you're...hoping he'll tell you more in the longer term if he feels you're keeping his confidences? I guess that makes some sense, though it's– well, none of us like being left in the dark. Especially when nothing that's been happening makes any sense." 

"I will inform you if anything concrete and urgently relevant to Valdemar comes up, assuming there isn't some other emergency demanding my attention or some other compelling reason to do otherwise."

Nod. "We appreciate it." Savil doesn't look totally happy with this, but she doesn't press further. 

They reach the meeting room. 

Randi is already there, sitting down and looking incredibly exhausted. 

He lifts his head. "Cam? Are you, er, all right?"

"I'm fine. Jisa was really shaken up and Van is hospitalized and Karis looks catatonic, but I'm fine."

"...Well, phew, that's one good thing. I wasn't sure if, er, being violently un-summoned like that was bad for apsels?" 

"Doesn't do a thing but send me home."

Nod. 

"So someone - or something - wanted to get rid of you, yes? Maybe literally Vkandis, given the, er, incident earlier with the priest in Sunhame?" 

"Yeah, I suspect Vkandis, given that Karis is among his partisans and he's previously been hostile to me."

Randi exchanges a dark look with Tantras, who's just slipped into the room to join them. 

Who clears his throat. "Er, is it just me who's feeling really uncomfortable right now about how Vkandis has, well, an entire country? With an army that's already been attacking Valdemar?" 

"I'm pretty uncomfortable about that! I could evacuate everybody if I had to but it'd be a huge project. I think we should figure out who is going to summon me instead of Jisa and get that person off the planet and hopefully that will do the trick."

"...I guess our plan for allying with Karis to take back Karse is out now? Given that..." Handwave. 

Savil doesn't say anything, just looks very cranky about this fact. 

"Cam? Are you willing to reconsider your position on helping us with the war more directly, given - all this?" 

"...I mean, Vkandis is hostile, very much so, but he's not the entire nation of Karse, he's not even their actual head of state. What kind of help do you have in mind?"

"Well, I was doing some reading about - siege tactics, roughly. Physical defences. This wouldn't ever work without something like your powers, but - I mean, could you just build us a giant wall or something? If we had a way to prevent the Karsite troops from getting across on foot to raid us constantly... They might still Gate parties across, but they've lost a lot of mages as casualties too, we could probably manage to hold them off..." 

"Giant wall! Sure, I can get you a giant wall."