Meanwhile: 

Jisa is BORED.

Melody cancelled their lessons for TWO DAYS in a row - and, when Jisa came to find her at Healers' and ask if she could please just sit quietly and watch her when she does whatever it is she's so busy with, Melody SNAPPED at her. She never does that. It's weird. 

Also her mama and papa are both really busy, and her Uncle Van cancelled having tea with her and rescheduled for today and then cancelled it again. And she's still very bored but now she's also starting to be kind of worried that something is wrong. 

After her morning lessons, she slips away from her governess - she doesn't like Beri, Beri is boring - and she spends a while running around talking to all the Palace servants she can find. 

She learns that there were MYSTERIOUS HORSES that ran up very fast to the city! Everyone's talking about it! It's because of the war in Iftel. Jisa thinks the war is kind of exciting even though Uncle Van would probably look very sad and tired if she said that and so would Papa. 

After a candlemark of asking everyone questions, she learns that the mysterious horses were MAGIC and not real, and that they were bringing some important people from the country that's fighting Iftel. The servants are all running around making sure the rooms being prepared for them are nice enough. 

...That's very intriguing. Especially because they're being put in the fancy guest wing, which is far away from the rest of the Palace but also Jisa happens to know that the shielding against Thoughtsensing is on the outside of the roof and not actually the ceiling. And there's an attic. And a drainpipe. And Jisa is very good at climbing, even if Mama says it's not ladylike... 

She forges off on her secret mission. 

The Bardic Collegium is seething with gossip.

...Well, it always is, but right now especially so. There's a new war going on - always fodder for songs - and Bards, unlike Heralds, might actually be allowed into Iftel. It is absolutely unfair that Stef can't go just because he's ""only eleven"". 

And now! There are important visitors from the other country! The one attacking Iftel! It didn't take Stef very long at all to figure out where the important visitors are going to be staying.

Stealing some page uniforms is taking a bit longer, because Stef's roommate Medren is a party pooper and it's taking a lot of convincing to get him to help. 

This is an incredibly bad idea and it's so against the rules and they're going to be in an unbelievable amount of trouble with Bard Breda if they get caught. 

There is also no way in the world that he can convince Stef not to, and it'll be even worse if he lets his reckless, idiotic, inexplicably charming roommate go off and do it by himself. 

This is how that always goes and it's getting old, but Medren sighs. "...All right. Fine. I know some of the pages, maybe we won't have to steal anything if we ask nicely." 

Oh, good, perfect! 

It turns out to be shockingly easy to arrange. Everyone is very busy and frantic because Queen Karis is unexpectedly visiting and the Heralds are having constant emergency meetings and somehow there's also something going on at Healers' that no one seems to know any details about but that involves the servants not being allowed into an entire wing of the building and needing to do all sorts of annoying workarounds to access the storeroom at the end of that hall. Anyway, everyone's schedules are in disarray. The page Medren is acquainted with would be delighted to lend his uniform and his friend's uniform in exchange for GOSSIP. 

Stef trades twenty minutes of current gossip from Bardic, including a rundown on all of the different conflicting rumours, even the very implausible ones, and he promises more of it once they've gone and learned a bit more about the diplomatic visitors. 

(Even Stef doesn't have quite enough guts to sneak into the chambers of the Queen of Karse, or try to eavesdrop on a secret Heraldic meeting. He makes a mental note of the mysterious bustle at Healers', though.) 

They do not sneak over. They collect some plausible items to bring - vases of flowers, sure, why not, seems like something fancy important visitors should have - and they walk over like they have every right to be there. 

Jisa sneaks through the gardens without anyone stopping her, and then climbs the drainpipe. She has a bit of a tense moment when a gardener almost sees her and she has to use a teeny tiny push of Mindhealing and a slightly larger push of Projective Empathy to distract him until she can reach the eaves and the attic-window. 

It takes a while to get it open without making too much noise, and she bangs her elbow in the process, and then the attic itself is FULL OF DUST and there are SPIDERWEBS. Her gown is getting filthy and Mama will be mad– actually, Mama will probably be gone all day again and won't even notice. So it's fine. 

She makes a thumping noise on the attic rafters, slipping down from the window, but it's not that loud and there's a plaster below. She keeps her balance and also holds her breath so she won't sneeze. 

And she stretches out her Othersenses. Who can she feel, down there? 

Two of the people she can feel are Stef and Medren! They've just emerged from the servants' back-room and staircase, and are setting vases of flowers in semi-random locations and seeing if there are any conversations they can overhear or if the visitors left any of their things sitting around. Stef is so smug about this plan. 

Medren slightly wants to sink into the ground from sheer embarrassment and it'll be even worse if they get caught. 

The three Chelish agents are sitting in their accommodations. They have rolled out a gorgeous floor mat for prayer, and one is praying; the other two are quietly reading some Ifteli books.

Rude of them, not to have interesting conversations where some hopeful young spies can listen in! 

They can only draw out the flower arrangement for so long before it looks suspicious, so eventually Stef lets Medren catch his eye and pull him back into the servants’ staircase. At which point, of course, they can hover there for a while. 

Aww, whoever that boy is, he’s funny and Jisa likes him. 

…Can she get through with Thoughtsensing and read what the visitors are thinking about? Especially the one praying. She’s curious if they pray the same way as people do to Kernos or Astera, here.

They're oddly hard to read with Thoughtsensing! They're not like fully-shielded mages, they're doing something different - it's sort of like their mind is pointed away from her or something - but it still makes it hard to get anything more than a glancing sense of their mind.

One of them goes and gets the flowers that Stef puts various places, and repositions them around the room, talking to the other one in an unfamiliar language.

That's so annoying! It means that putting more effort in doesn't even help that much! 

...Well, she has other kinds of Sight. Empathy, for one, she can tell how they're feeling. And her Mindhealing Sight is a little bit blurry, from this far away, but she can wriggle across the rafters to get as close as possible, and then see if there's anything she can guess from what their gardens look like. 

They're feeling tense, impatient; the one lost in prayer feels...something weird? Something Jisa has never felt in her entire life? Self-abnegation and smallness-but-not-powerlessness, like being a drop in a wave that will crash over a continent.

Their gardens are weird. The plants are thick and healthy, but - inward-angled, pruned carefully away from most directions gardens grow in. All three gardens are walled, and the walls are thick and high.

Jisa lies on her tummy on the rafters for a while, the dust tickling her nose, and spends a while trying to sort of twist her Thoughtsensing sideways, to get the occasional glimpse of surface thoughts. 

Eventually she's bored, and also starting to get a headache. 

Stef is getting bored, too, and hiding in the narrow stairwell with his ear pressed to the door isn't very comfortable, but he doesn't want to b the first to admit that they're not learning nearly as much interesting gossip as they hoped. 

"Psst," Medren whispers eventually in his ear. "I don't think we're going to get anything else and if we stay here we'll get caught." 

Fiiiiiiiiiine. 

They're leaving! 

Jisa creeps back across the rafters as fast as she can and heads for the window. She makes a much louder clattering noise than she intended to, in the process of wiggling back through headfirst and then sort of half-falling onto the eaves. 

Aaaack what was that??? 

Jisa freezes and holds perfectly still, stretching out her Empathy as hard as she can to try to guess if any of the people inside heard and are going to investigate. 

They did hear! They're startled, but - not really suspicious. One opens the window to look out.

Jisa is still up on the roof, and Medren and Stef are hiding in a bush, so there's nothing to see. 

Jisa waits anxiously until the person at the window goes away, and then shimmies down the drainpipe. It's harder on the way back down, mostly because her hands are by now covered in a disgusting mix of attic-dust and nervous sweat. Wiping them on her gown barely helps because it's all dusty too. 

And then she sticks her head behind the bush. "What are you doing here?" 

What? 

There's a tiny, filthy girl who looks about eight, wearing a gown that was probably nice before it got completely covered in dust. 

"There's a spiderweb in your hair," Stef says casually. 

"Eeeek!" Jisa yelps, and then clamps a hand over her mouth because they're still not that far away from the garden. "- Can you help me get it out please please please? ....Were you spying too?" 

Medren, unlike his idiotic roommate, knows how to be a gentleman. He can extract the spiderweb from the little girl's braids. 

...She reminds him of someone, he thinks. He can't quite put his finger on it, though.