"Ha. You'd better, he gets so absorbed. Good luck with everything. Er, want us to call you back when we've talked to Karis?" 

"You can write me if it isn't urgent, then I can get to it whenever there's a natural break in what I'm doing."

"Sounds good!" 

Elsewhere, Vanyel is propped up in his bed at Healers', absently watching Jisa show off her prowess at some sort of game that - according to her scattered explanation of it - involves jumping between floating platforms and catching balls or something. From the outside it mostly just looks like her bopping around, froglike, somehow avoiding any walls or other obstacles. He's kind of in awe at her energy. 

He glances down at the paper in his hands. One of the Farseers, curious, drew out some pictures of the decorations on what everyone is already calling King Randale's Great Wall, though Randi neither built it nor came up with the idea. Some are clearly just meant to be pretty, but this one, he's curious about. There's a certain mathematical regularity to it, but it doesn't jus repeat itself - it feels like there's information there, far beyond his reach - 

- maybe not beyond Leareth's reach? 

Vanyel is desperately tempted to message Cam and ask if he did that on purpose as some sort of secret message to Leareth. Or just to - tease him? It's not like sending private messages to Leareth would present any difficulty to Cam. 

Separately, he only learned about Highjorune a candlemark ago, once he was alert enough that Shavri let Tran in for a briefing, and he is incandescently furious with Leareth about it. What the hell. He really wishes he hadn't missed the dream opportunity to yell at Leareth about it. Which, come to think of it, was probably one of the things Leareth was fishing for. The other, of course, being Cam. 

Cam is apparently TALKING to Leareth, and Vanyel is dying with curiosity to know more about that too, but even if the dream shows up again tonight he can't afford to ask Leareth directly, when he doesn't know what the man already knows... 

Maybe that's not the key question here, though. Maybe the part that really matters, right now, is what Cam knows. 

Vanyel has spent the last - gods, eleven years - trying to figure Leareth out. Dancing their careful, dangerous dance, as the whole time Leareth is presumably trying to turn Vanyel to his own side, and he can't ever trust the man but, even so, he respects him. But fundamentally one of the problems is that Leareth holds all the cards, Leareth is the source of everything Vanyel knows about him - except for the few occasions when he's guessed on his own that a particular old book was actually written by some previous incarnation, and even then, those guesses are based on an understanding of the man filtered through what Leareth has said and which books he's pointed Vanyel at before... 

Cam, however, has an outside perspective. Cam could presumably read everything Leareth has ever written, and may already be working on that. 

- though Cam is also starting from whatever the Star-Eyed Goddess chose to tell him, and Vanyel...is realizing, now that it's baldly in front of him, that he doesn't trust that source any more than he trusts Leareth himself. 

Goddamnit. 

There are way too many pieces here and his head hurts, despite all the painkillers loaded into his system. 

Cam doesn't know about his conversations. Telling him is an irreversible decision, and might result in everything blowing up, if Cam decides he's obligated to tell the Heralds. Though maybe he wouldn't? Certainly he doesn't seem to, in general, feel obligated to share information around. 

It's a gamble, and it's the sort of thing he would normally talk through with Yfandes, but Yfandes has been...weird, lately. He tried to talk to her briefly about whatever in all hells Vkandis was aiming for, with Karis; he remembers the glow in her eyes, the ineffable sense of some vast Power moving through her, in the instant before the dagger pierced his chest (damn it he's such an idiot, why wasn't he shielding, just because he was in his own bedroom in the Palace safe in Haven and Karis is was an ally...). Anyway. Yfandes was clearly uncomfortable, responding in monosyllables and pulling away, and he gave up. He's shielding her from his surface thoughts right now.

Whatever's going on here, she...isn't able to think about it, for some reason that Vanyel, himself, doesn't want to think about too hard. 

All right. Decision time. Is he going to lie here all day ruminating, or is he going to confess to Cam, and see what else he can learn? 

After several minutes of gnawing on it and steeling himself - and then checking his shields again - he reaches for the phone that Cam gave him, and fumbles to navigate to his messages. 

....Oh gods. 

He doesn't even remember sending that message! It's full of misspellings! Gah. Why didn't Yfandes stop him– probably because it was really early and she was asleep. 

Oh well. No harm done, probably, except to his dignity. 

Vanyel checks that Jisa is still thoroughly absorbed in her game, and then taps out a message to Cam. 

[I need to talk to you privately about Leareth.]

[Is this private enough? Won't help if someone steals your phone.]

Vanyel starts to answer, then gives Jisa a very suspicious look. 

[Is there a way to make the messages in code or something]

[How tricky a code do you have in mind?]

[Just needs to stop Jisa from snooping] 

[Not too hard, I'm a bit out of it]

[I'll walk you through how to passcode protect the messages.] Cam does this.

Vanyel follows the instructions. He's getting a little more comfortable using the phone keyboard, though it's still slower going than writing by hand. 

All right. Moment of truth. 

[I haven't been fully honest about my Foresight dream. The other Heralds don't know either. So I would appreciate if you could keep this to yourself?]

He grits his teeth and waits. 

[Uh, sure, unless you're dreaming about an apocalypse that I can solve with material objects or astrogation knowhow or something.]

[No. It's a lucid dream. For both of us. I can talk to Leareth in it. We've been talking for eleven years]

[He's trying to convince me that he wants to improve the world]

[I don't know if I believe him, but he's not just a warlord] 

[He recommends me books that he wrote in past lives. He's really smart. A lot of his work does seem like he's trying to help people]

[I think he cares about me. He doesn't want to kill me] 

[He would anyway if I got in the way of his plans]

[Whatever they are] 

[He's very confusing and it seems important to understand what he wants] 

[He has definitely murdered people, I did some forensics and he keeps popping up as the owner of various bodies that previously had different owners.]

[He's murdered a lot more people than just that] 

Vanyel does not elaborate. 

[Probably, but 'murdered by' is not a conjurable parameter so I haven't checked. I feel like many people who believe they mean to help the world commit murder and virtually no one who will actually manage to be aimed at helping the world does.]

.....Ouch. 

[I've killed a lot more people than that too] Vanyel can't quite stop himself from typing out. 

[And if I had to list the people who have done the most good in the world most of them wouldn't be soldiers, but I'm not actually here to pass judgment, I'm just skeptical of Leareth's humanitarian motivations. Talk is cheap, eleven years of it less so but still.]

Vanyel isn't sure what else he could possibly have expected, but he suddenly doesn't want to be having this conversation at ALL and regrets starting it. 

Focus. His hurt feelings - and the sea of regrets they remind him of - aren't the point, here. 

[He's taught me magic. Things that made me stronger. That's less cheap] 

[I guess the important question is whether he would stop murdering people, if he thought there was a better way to fix things] 

[I think whatever he was planning might be a lot bigger than conquering Valdemar to make an empire. I don't know what but maybe you could find out] 

[I can try. Thanks for the heads up. Do you in fact want me to report to him on how you're doing? You were on a lot of drugs at the time.]

[I was also on a lot of drugs when I talked to him in the dream last night] 

[I bet he really is worried about me. He probably doesn't know all of what happened] 

Vanyel takes a deep breath (ouch), and tries to actually think it through. 

[Tell me if this doesn't make sense, but I think we have the upper hand over him now? If he wanted to harm Valdemar you could stop him. So I don't think it costs us too much to tell him what happened to me. I'm really curious how he responds]