"...I assume you have them somewhere secure? They can stay there and we can go there."

:Savil?:

:Heh. You think we’ve got the faintest chance of keeping them here against their will? …But, sure. They’re being very conciliatory to us. My Work Room, five minutes?:

It’ll take less time than that to walk over. 

“Sure, Savil says I can bring you over once she finishes up in a few minutes.”

"Thank you. What is the state of relations between your people and Leareth's?"

“- Is that relevant to you right now?”

"Well, you kidnapped one of our soldiers in an effort to kidnap Leareth, so it seems relevant to us."

"Well. Leareth had been planning to take his army and invade us. So I wouldn't say Valdemar is on good terms with him, no. The people he sent for this are cooperating, though. So I guess they don't want us to start a war over the recent incident." 

"They arrived with Jisa? Under a flag of truce - do you have that concept -"

"Not with a literal flag, but - yes, approximately. They consented to be questioned under Truth Spell. I'm not sure how much they know about Leareth's operations in general, though, would've been smart of him to send people who didn't know that much." 

"...if he had reason to believe Valdemar would seize his envoys and try to use mind-control to force them to divulge state secrets, I suppose."

This is such an incredibly baffling point for them to be making right now!

"- Well, given that we agreed to help the Tayledras capture him and interrogate him with mind control, and - given what we know him to have done to our people on our territory in the past - I absolutely cannot think why he wouldn't have expected us to do that. ...To be clear, we have no diplomatic relationship of any kind with Leareth's faction. Which isn't even a country." 

"Has he captured and interrogated envoys?"

...Are they treating this as some kind of special category? 

"We hadn't sent any. Due to not having the faintest idea where he's set up. He's done things that caused a lot more harm than that, though. I don't particularly want to get into the details with you right now." 

The Chelish diplomats have such expressionless faces. "I see. Thank you."

"We are planning to let them leave after this," Tran says tonelessly. (He is NOT going to add that this is because there's no way they can hold Leareth's people against their will.) "We don't, in fact, want a war with Leareth's faction over this. I think we're being quite cooperative here, actually - Karse used to straight-up murder our envoys." 

"Yes, that's been communicated. I am glad you do not do that here," says the envoy.

Well. Tran still has no idea what to make of that entire interaction. 

- He's a very strong Thoughtsenser. Much stronger than Melody. Maybe he'll have his own go at getting past any of their shields? 

He can read the man he's speaking to. The man's feelings are - mostly pitying. It's really, really apparent that this society just doesn't have Law, and no one here would recognize it if it came up to them and rapped them on the nose. And that's a hard thing to change - the missionaries will likely be reasonably successful at converting people to Asmodeanism, they usually are, but Law is a thing best transmitted by states and institutions, hard for missionaries to carry, especially if their own safety is at stake -

- and it sure would be nice if the Chelish envoys could have more assurance of their own safety than they do -

- they are interested in talking to Leareth's people if only to determine if they are also like this. The report said Leareth was Lawful Evil.

Huh. 

That's...the sort of thing Vanyel would probably want to talk about for six candlemarks straight and then write an entire treatise on. Tran mostly doesn't feel like he has time to try to figure it out, though. 

"Well, let's go over, anyway." 

They leave the guest quarters and start walking, Delian coming out to walk by Tran's side. 

Savil is in her old Work Room with the six people Leareth sent as...guards? For Jisa?

Not that a Work Room will stop any of them from leaving. If they really wanted they could pull in Melody, except that Savil wouldn't have put it past Leareth to have somehow equipped this party with shields against Mindhealing. 

She answers Tran's knock, unlocks the door and lets him in. Nods to the Chelish envoys, also completely expressionless. 

Ebet rises from the stool hastily brought into the Work Room. "So you're the - representatives from the other country, that initially captured Leareth? - I should inform you that we captured two of your soldiers while attempting to rescue him. We're holding them in - an undisclosed location, currently." 

"Aspex Hulien, delegate to the court of Her Majesty Abrogail Thrune II. Our nation is called Cheliax. It is my sincere hope that the idea is so objectionable I'll cause offense merely by asking, but did you offer their immortal souls to any of the local gods?"

"What?" Ebet - who did not have a chance to get filled in fully on Leareth's adventures related to the Star-Eyed Goddess in particular - blinks at him. "Can you even do that?" 

He shakes his head. "It's rather unclear to us! If you haven't been attempting it, though, then I am sure the matter of their return can be negotiated in due course, once we know each other better and once we've established better lines of communication and shared expectations about how treaties work."