Kilchas glowers at the ceiling. 

:- I'm sure enough. I can dismiss him home anytime I feel like, right? And whatever he's done, I won't be in danger from him - if he killed me he'd just get himself kicked out again. And this is ridiculous, we can't sit here and talk about this for candlemarks - just look at her!: He jerks his chin at Jisa, still sobbing in a heap on the floor. :I'm going to draw the circle out again and call him back here. All right?: 

Tran doesn't object out loud. He doesn't say anything, in fact, just paces while Kilchas tries the pen on the floor, realizes it doesn't work, and tracks down a bit of chalk to carefully copy out the circle on the paper. 

He's being so careful. It takes him another two or three minutes of work. All in all, almost five minutes elapse between Cam's dismissal and the re-summoning. 

(Possibly he should bring the sobbing child back to her mother, but one, Shavri is busy, and two, that would mean explaining the current situation to Shavri, and Tran is incredibly not in the mood for trying that.) 

As soon as the circle's done Cam reappears. "Oh thank goodness, I was worried for a minute there - I should've made you a spare, it's possible to do these in an unsafe order - hey Jisa here I am -" Scoop.

Jisa attaches herself firmly to Cam with all four limbs, still sobbing. "Cam you PROMISED and then you DIDN'T -" 

Tran, arms folded, is watching Cam with a deeply suspicious expression. 

"I'm sorry, kiddo! I answered the circle as soon as it was complete, I didn't have any other way to get here." Pat pat.

Even Tran doesn't quite have the heart to interrupt the tearful reunion. He fidgets. 

Eventually, when it looks like Jisa is definitely not planning to let go anytime soon, he sighs, and reaches out carefully with Mindspeech. 

:Cam. I think you owe us some explanations. Highjorune?: 

Note. Why do people keep saying I owe you explanations? I have no idea what your political relationship with anyone in Highjorune is and have not agreed to be on your payroll as a spy.

Tran reads the note. Glowers at Cam. 

:They share a border with us! The last time they got into a war, it had all sorts of spillover -: 

He stops himself. That's not actually the key point, here. Goddamnit it, Vanyel would be so much better at choosing the right words for this... 

Tran doesn't do this often, but. :Taver. Help?: 

Taver can give him a script. This isn't normally the kind of thing he does, either, but the situation is a mess and his Chosen needs him. 

Tran takes another deep breath, and tries to take Taver's bullet points and turn them into Mindspeech. It's still hard. 

:Look. We know something awful just happened there, because we sent in agents when it looked like things were heating up. And...I'm pretty damned sure you knew. I saw your screen. And I, just - whether or not you owe us anything, if you keep things from us then we've got to wonder if you're hiding something, right - if you've, er, if you've got plans that you know we would object to if we knew -:

A pause. This is really terrifying to say, because - well, Cam could kill him without thinking about it, if he wanted to - but Taver doesn't think Cam is their enemy. Taver thinks that Cam is as off-balance as any of them, and missing context on everything about how Valdemar works, and that telling him their true worries with help... 

(And Taver is already passing on some discreet Mindspeech messages, to other Companions far away, in case something does happen to Tran in the next few minutes.) 

:I'm sorry, I don't mean any offence, but - we don't know much about you as a person, and - what happened in Highjorune - we know you're powerful to have done it yourself. And you're talking to Leareth and don't want to tell us anything about that, so we've...got to wonder, what he might ask you for - what you might do to earn his trust: 

Okay, I can see why that would be concerning. I was spying on Leareth's Highjorune-related plans; he was, it looked from his correspondence, trying to intervene to have it *not* go off, but then somebody didn't follow their instructions, and it did. I don't think anybody died, and I don't think it will spill over here. I broke some windows and removed the offending artifact from this gravity well and hustled some people to the nearest concentration of healers.

Tran is about to react to this by snapping something angry - he's not even sure what, yet, he's just FRUSTRATED and it's tempting to find the nearest target for that frustration - but Taver interrupts with another consideration. 

:- Right. Er, have you told Leareth about this? If he really was trying to shut it down and then someone working for him disobeyed orders, he'd want to know, probably: 

(And his reaction might be informative as to whether he really was trying to have whatever-it-was not go off. According to Taver, anyway. Tran isn't sure what exactly would help him tell the difference, especially if Cam still isn't willing to share any of his correspondence with Leareth.) 

I've been a bit otherwise occupied! I'm not telling him hardly anything, I'm just responding uninformatively to what he tells me and encouraging him to keep writing.

:Hmm. Guess that makes sense. Um, since you know we're not evil, are you willing to tell us anything else you know about what happened over there? Ma– a couple of our Heralds are on site trying to clean things up, and in their message to the Mindspeech relay it sounded like no one had any idea what was going on: 

Do you really do international politics on a basis of "people who are not evil get to know whatever they want through any channels that are convenient"? Is that conventional on this planet?

:It's pretty normal for allies to tell each other things! And given that we just went to all this effort to find you a new summoner who didn't mind going to space or risking being murdered, I reckon we should count!: 

I suppose you already have spies there anyway. There was some manner of cursed artifact that kept generating nasty little monsters, and I grabbed everybody in their path and dumped them at Healers', and encased the artifact in a sphere of very durable metal and sent it into space where it can't hurt anybody.

Tran blinks. :...Huh. Cursed artifact. That'd explain the magic residue Mardic mentioned. You're sure the spell-artifact is gone and it can't start happening again?: 

Yeah, it's in space and after some time it will fall into the sun.

:...Whoa. Guess that's one way to handle that problem: 

Tran shivers. Given all his current uncertainties, it's...not exactly reassuring, the reminder of exactly how powerful Cam is. 

:Anyway. Thank you for, er, being on top of things and preventing it from going a lot worse. Mardic and Donni should be able to handle the rest. I - suppose the next thing here is to, um, get Jisa handed back to one of her parents, and then you and Kilchas can head up to space where you're safe from...interference: 

"Do you guys need anything before we're off? I guess I should get you backup circles, to be stored in multiple locations redundantly, and also something for me to talk to Keiran with about the wall?"

"Right. All that makes sense. Maybe you'd better talk to Keiran briefly, make sure she knows how to use it? I can have her come over here if that's easiest."