Cam returns to the bio lab and knocks out some more gene driving till Keiran wants to talk walls. He checks his mail over a snack of peanut butter pretzels.

Shortly before dawn he has a new message from Leareth! 

...For some reason Leareth is - very politely and non-pushily - asking if Cam has any information that he's willing to share on Herald-Mage Vanyel's current status and wellbeing. He doesn't say why. 

I'll let him know you're worried! He'll probably find that very reassuring.

Drops a message into Vanyel's phone about it, not that he expects that to get to Van very fast.

Vanyel is currently semiconscious; he's on a lot of pain medication, and the drugs the Healers gave him once Cam's doses wore off have stronger sedative side effects. 

He does, however, have the phone nearby; he asked for it as soon as he was awake, and has been meaning to try to contact Cam and confirm that he's okay, he just keeps being too sleepy to figure out the directions for using the unfamiliar technology. 

Jisa, having bounced out of bed at the crack of dawn and snuck over to Healers' to see her Uncle Van, has been sitting at his bedside and quietly chattering to him about her new favourite video games. 

"- Oh! I think Cam might be trying to talk to you!" Jisa has read all the instructions on how the phone works! She picks it up and peers at the screen - what does it say? 

Ughhh. Vanyel drags his eyelids open. "Jisa? Pass me that." 

"Here!" That's fine! Jisa is a very fast reader! And she can sneak a few more peeks while she's showing Vanyel how to make the phone work! 

The message reads Leareth asked after you in a way that I'm sure was in no way motivated by anything other than sincere concern for your welfare! Get well soon :)

That's weird and confusing! Jisa will keep an ear out for that name now, though! (And her Thoughtsensing out, too, the grownups aren't used to her having Mindspeech and they don't always remember to keep it private and directionally shielded when she's in the room.) 

Vanyel peers blearily at the message. 

...Oh, gods, that's so awkward. As if having the dream last night, when he was incredibly out of it on poppy-syrup, wasn't already mortifying enough! Leareth had clearly been trying to pump him for information on something - and had dropped hints about events 'west', but Vanyel had no idea what that was about, and also no idea how much Leareth already knew about Cam. He had mostly clammed up and kept changing the subject rather than play the verbal sparring game with Leareth when he was in no state to keep up. 

Given that he probably did a terrible job of acting like nothing was wrong, it's not surprising that Leareth noticed something seemed off, but it's still so embarrassing. (Vanyel is, in fact, pretty sure that Leareth has no interest in him coming to any harm. And is just...being a mother-hen? Humiliating.) 

He fumbles for a while before figuring out the phone keyboard and replying. With some typos.

[Tell him Im fine adn he shoulnd't worry]

...really?

Vanyel is WAY too out of it to keep track of certain facts with ramifications, such as: Cam not knowing about the conversations part of his Foresight dream, and thus has zero context to make sense of the fact that Leareth is probably genuinely worried for Vanyel's wellbeing.

He's remembering a particular conversation they had, once, in a chill quiet snowscape, when he was almost as groggy as last night just from sheer sleep deprivation. Leareth, speaking up as though he had read Vanyel's mind and emotions.

I know it can feel like there is nothing but ugliness, like there is nothing worth salvaging from a world that is so desperately broken. But there is, Herald Vanyel.

I look at the stars, and I remember that there are so many lights in the world, who are worth saving, and we cannot save all of them – from the very beginning, it was too late to save all of them – but we can still save some. It is never too late for that.

In a world of lights, you burn brighter than most. I cannot wish to see that extinguished.

There are tears in Vanyel's eyes now, which is really not helping with anything.

[its fine] he taps out to Cam, barely able to read what he's typing on the awkwardly small screen. [he doenst wantto kill me]

I really do not understand you people's approach to infosec! How about you rethink this when sober.

Whatever. He'll go back to sleep, then. 

And shortly after that, Keiran is ready for their meeting! 

"Hey Keiran! I'm going to screen share you what I can see from up here of the Valdemar/Karse border - I can get higher resolution, too, zoom in on things to make sure I'm not making a wall under somebody or damming a river or whatever. What do you folks want in the way of apertures for later trade, maintainability standards, etcetera?"

Keiran oohs and aahs appropriately about the aerial view, and adds notes to the maps she's been working with so far. Which, presumably, Cam can just conjure copies of, rather than screensharing and looking over her shoulder.

She's put quite a lot of thought into which materials will be maintainable later on without Cam's help - brick and mortar would be her default idea but she's curious to hear his options and whether any of them can be made the normal way with materials available in Valdemar. She's also thought about what to do with rivers. They'll probably want to run the Terilee through a tunnel or something? It's a major river and very close to a major road and Horn has been a focus of attack. Fortunately the direction of flow has Karse downstream, making it harder for Karsite spies or raiders to sneak in that way.

There's a lot of material to cover, for nearly two hundred miles of border, but Keiran is very organized and they can probably cover it in less than an hour. 

Brick and mortar is a solid choice for repairability concerns, though he will adapt the exact design a little to increase earthquake and weathering tolerance unless there's some magical reason not to. He can do an arch over the Terilee, and more minor rivers, and have gates that require cooperation on both sides of the wall to open at suitable road sites for once everyone's chilled out.

"Jaysen will be pleased about the gates," Keiran says cheerfully as they're wrapping up. "When Tran was talking up this plan to all of us, he was grumpy about how it'd affect trade. Given that the shortest trade route to Seejay from here goes through Karse. Anyway, thank you for your help on this. It's very much appreciated." 

"You're welcome. Anything last-minute before I start putting that up?"

"How likely are you to, er, squish people by accident? We've sent word out to pull our scouts back from the area where the wall is going, but the placement is still in Valdemaran territory - don't want it to look like we're nabbing their land by doing this - and it's possible not everyone got the word yet." 

"I'm going to build the wall from the bottom up, not drop it into place, and I'm going to do it a half-mile or so at a time, looking closely enough that I'd see anybody who's not heavily camouflaged. If someone is heavily camouflaged and doesn't move when a wall starts growing under them, they might wind up stuck on top of the wall, or fall off it, but I'm going to make it ten feet high to start and then go back and add more a bit faster, so it shouldn't kill anybody even under those unlikely conditions."

"- Oh, good, that seems unlikely to cause issues - unless someone's being very stupid about situational awareness, and I'd at least like to think we train that out of the Guard recruits. Shouldn't be any civilians left in that region."

She smiles at him. "I think that's all, then. Let us know if any problems come up with it? I think probably the Karsites will be too, er, off-balance to try to stop you, but depending on how long it takes, I don't know." 

"I don't think they have orbital capabilities," he says dryly. "I should be done in a candlemark unless something weird happens, which, in two hundred miles, isn't that unlikely, so budget two?"

"Will do! Er, should I try calling you again if we haven't heard anything by then?"