A momentary pause of surprise. "It sounds like two colors to me. If you want to bribe the emperor to help me, teaching from a mage like that is everything I could ask for."

"Works for me. Do you want to wait here until the retinue arrives, which will be... probably in a week or so, or for me to pick you and your son up to carry off to where they're camping outside my castle? It'd be a trip of several hours, but I can manage it in one night. ... I am very strong and fast, and don't tire from exertion."

She thinks for a minute.

"Wait here. It's safer close to the caves."

"All right. And can I talk about you to them, explain the situation? ... Maybe ask them for better food than a vampire can scrounge up on her own? I have been doing my best, but really, you should be eating better..."

"...If you're sure the emperor won't want to hang me or return me to my master."

"I don't have to explain where you are when I talk about you, now do I. So if he goes 'No, actually, that's illegal,' and wants to kill or return you, he will not know where you are, and furthermore have an angry vampire to deal with. And probably an angry couple of mages, too, the two from Tortall did not seem to like slavery at all."

"You are welcome to talk to the Emperor, then. I will stay in the cave where it is safe."

Nod!

"Thank you for your trust in me. I haven't told them about you or anything, just said I had stuff to do during the night. Is there anything major that you're missing that you need, now that I can ask you questions?"

"Nursemaids." A short laugh. "Do you have anything for sleep or wakefulness? Keeping Uday comfortable is tiring even without going for food."

"Hmmm. If I knew something like that, I've long forgotten it, sorry. Vampires don't sleep, I can't test it."

"A cradle for Uday would be helpful? Beyond that... I will surely curse myself for a fool for forgetting something but I do not know what."

"A cradle... all right, I think I can do that. I'll stick around for a while yet, so you have time." Scrub, scrub, doing laundry is so much better than being stuck outside unable to help.

"Thank you." She gestures to Uday, now mostly back to sleep in her arms, as best as she can. "He is sometimes inconvenient."

She will eventually need to spend the night getting as much sleep as she can, unless Iovetra has something else to ask with her new ability to communicate.

"I expect so. Fortunate for him that he is very cute," says Iovetra, because, well, he is.

The only thing she wants to do is hand over the healing supplies directly to Afra, now that she can explain when and where to use everything. Nothing complicated, just 'this is a topical painkiller,' and 'this is a general one,' and a couple healing potions, with instructions on how to avoid overdose. Otherwise, she'll let the young mother get some sleep. Happy to have done her laundry for her, she'll bring a cradle tomorrow night.

Then she gives a little wave, and disappears. Returning to her castle is much faster than running all the way back.

Iovetra leaves with Afra's thanks, and assurance she will be careful with the healing supplies.

Her castle is near Kaddar's camp on one side, and otherwise untouched. Sand trails from the dunes in the minor breezes which flow through the desert. Owls hunt the rodents which in turn seek out any food they can find. At least today, she can see no hyenas from the castle.

She walks her castle through making a cradle, checks on her garden, then starts writing instructions for how to make the ignilos solution that is the second half of the fertilizer. Once she has a manuscript written up, she can have her castle make copies for distribution at Kaddar's discretion.

Then, since she still has some time before the humans are up, she'll also write up a formula for a healing potion. It's not, technically, the best that she could make, because it's made with the expectation that one does not have a stocked laboratory and a magic castle.

Eventually, the humans are up, and she can go say hi, and show off her tidy alchemy instructions!

The humans are preparing for the day's travel! They're up somewhat before the sun rises, the magic lights and dim light of early dawn providing enough light to prepare everything. The horses will stay asleep until they need to set out.

Alchemy instructions are appreciated. Kaddar... cannot do very much with them right this instant. He (typically Numair, but Numair is resting right now and will only be supplying power in a supporting capacity) will be farspeaking with Thak City in two days, but giving them instructions then wouldn't do much without the flowers. Perhaps everything will have to wait until Iovetra or Daine or someone else has the time to bring flowers to places. Oh well.

She does want the instructions looked over for legibility to a layman, please! While she was trying her best to write for one, she literally does not recall when most of these concepts (like 'concentrate' or 'aerate') were not fundamental to her. But otherwise, yeah, she's just preparing for the future.

Do... the humans want help preparing for the day's travel? She can carry very heavy things, she's stronger than she looks.

The humans have done this every day they weren't in a village for the past several months. They have it down to a routine by now. Her intervention is unnecessary.

Or at least, that would be the case if she wasn't asking for someone to check over her instructions. The second guard from yesterday volunteers to examine it for comprehensibility. He's spent time around mages but he isn't Gifted or a noble himself, so he might be the right amount of trained. If Iovetra can handle his normal packing duties, he has the time to examine her work.

Sure, that's fair. She thanks him for his assistance and gets to doing his job. Packing duties! Can a layman with superpowers not mess it up too much if she tries really hard, let's all find out together!

The instructions are pretty comprehensive, but not utterly without flaw. The guard's proofreading will bear fruit, which is to say, revisions. (Iovetra is pleased about revisions. Revisions means that it's improving!)

There is some stumbling over her as she tries to incorporate herself into a well-oiled operation, but nothing particularly bad. Super-strength can make up for the lost time without issue.

Eventually the guard returns her instruction set with some notes — he knows every word, of course, but some of the phrasings are strange, some of the words are things he has hear one or two times, and he can't figure out how this step here is intended to physically work, are you supposed to boil this liquid without getting any droplets on your skin? How do you stay so far away from it and still take it off the heat quickly, and how do you know when it's been exactly three and a half minutes anyway? The rest seems mostly sensible, and receives his approval.

Hooray! Super strength and being helpful!

And: what good feedback this is. In order: boil in a covered (but not sealed! because that could explode!) container, use tongs, and, what a good question, she uses her castle for keeping time but can probably figure out a clock that'll do it. Thank you very much for your feedback, this was extremely helpful and Iovetra is honestly delighted. She'll go add in revisions, and then maybe also a list of tools and materials used, all tidy and up in front to make sure it's understood.

She will also mention to Kaddar that she has a request to make of him as Emperor of Carthak, but there is some explanation to it and it can happen at his discretion, no rush, it's not a flaming emergency.

Huh! He has never seen a real alchemist's lab, and some of that is probably not new. (Can you really boil things covered like that? Won't they boil over? Maybe cooking with medium-quality equipment is not a perfect analogy for alchemy.) If she wants instructions which anyone can understand, she should rotate through the guards, maybe Shiban over there would be a good second pass. (His name is Gashiya, did he ever introduce himself? Probably not.)

Kaddar is apparently not permitted to perform most of the preparation duties, presumably on account of being emperor. If she can talk as they travel, he is available within an hour.

It is a pleasure to know his name properly, Gashiya, thank you for your assistance in this and other matters!

She's perfectly happy to talk as they travel, and until then will be doing a mix of being helpful, and getting her writing looked at by people with more context.

And then, when the emperor is free to be spoken to, she opens with:

"So I kind of went and made a friend before meeting you, and she is in a quite frankly horrific living situation. I would like to help her out of it. Part of that horrific living situation is as a result of being an escaped slave, and part of that is also doing some stealing to keep herself and her son alive. Can I request a pardon for her, or, like, throw opals at the situation until it goes away?"