And there's the question he's been trying not to think about.

When acting, he should try to serve the Emperor. Thoughts are not actions; compulsions that specify thoughts specify thoughts. He can honestly think about this question.

On the other hand, lowering his shields is an action, and so is speaking words. If he says that he doesn't want to be loyal to the Emperor - who, while not a disaster, since he came to power the empire's had excellent progress on urban repair and agricultural productivity, significant growth in the registered population, and military victory, is also not exactly loyal-to-the-Empire-above-himself the way Janos is - that would be an action opposed to the Emperor's wishes, and Janos would instead be compelled to take an action that is not that one, such as lying or counting primes in his head.

Technically speaking, he could extremely dramatically freeze, refraining from taking actions, and hope Vanyel gets the hint. On the other hand, loyalty to the person is not, actually, causing him any trouble; insofar as the person has any goals other than 'survive', which is totally out of Janos's ability to affect, his chief goal is to see the Empire succeed. This is also Janos's chief goal, admittedly not for quite the same definition of Empire or succeed, and so they're quite well matched up.

And, also, if he needs to deal with another Mindhealing block-disaster, he's going to scream.

:I think removing the compulsion would be a bad idea, at least at present:

And if Vanyel wants to remove the seventh compulsion, Vanyel is going to be really surprised to learn that Janos can make horizontal Gates under the chair he's sitting on.

Vanyel nods, looking unperturbed. :Of course. I understand not wanting to mess with things any more right now, and - needing to have some time to figure out what you want here. I don't like the Empire, but it's not your fault you were born there and I don't think it's our right to break anything that you're using and that doesn't present an immediate threat to either of us:

(He's pretty sure that Janos was genuinely considering the question, which seems like a good sign. He also suspects that Janos is more conflicted about it than he's letting on. That's fine, too.) 

:Right. I promised you some more history of Valdemar today, didn't I? I think it'll make more sense to you once I explain, but - before I do that, I'm actually really curious what you think so far. It's not often that we get the opportunity to hear a true outside perspective on our kingdom: 

:I appreciate it:

... He could lie, but he's honestly not sure how it serves his purposes.

:I think your story cannot be true unless there is a central piece missing. I have no good guesses as to what plausible piece could possibly fit: In approximate order of probability, his least bad guesses are "Vanyel's just being lied to," "magic lost in Cestil's crisis," "the gods are scarier than I thought," and "Vanyel's lying to me." "The power of horse breeding" is in fact somewhere below "the knife was poisoned and I am having very exciting hallucinations" on the list.

Vanyel nods. Smiles a little. :I can't blame you for not guessing. I think most Valdemarans forget exactly how odd we must seem, to an outside perspective, but - I wouldn't have guessed it, in your position:

He takes a deep breath, and braces himself for some kind of reaction, he's not sure yet what it will be. 

:King Valdemar was, as far as we can tell, a very competent and thoughtful monarch, who cared a lot about the wellbeing of his subjects, and the future of the Kingdom. And - had some concerns, because as you mentioned, the Emperor he lived under was - not an ideal ruler. So - he prayed. To every god whose name he knew. And, I suspect to everyone's shock, his prayer was answered. He got a miracle: 

Pause. 

:Yfandes?: 

:Heya: the horse says to Janos, in Mindspeech that feels almost exactly like a human's, with only the faintest background hint of - something else. Something bright and steely-blue and alien. :I'm Herald Vanyel's Companion. All Heralds are Chosen by one of us. We form a bond with them, and - help them stay on track, guide and support them in being good leaders. ...I don't normally talk directly to anyone but Vanyel or the other Companions, but this situation is already unusual:

Vanyel stretches his arm out, and Yfandes reaches with her neck over the stall door and nuzzles his fingers. 

:So. I hope that explains some of the missing pieces. I imagine you have a lot of questions: 

This is concerning, and Janos is going to take a moment, come up with a full list of questions, and decide what his priorities are and exactly how much of a crisis Duke Valdemar got his people into before taking any panic-inspired decisions of any form whatsoever.

(That his instincts tell him that Vanyel and his magic horse genuinely care about each other is not helping.)

Priority One: Learn more.

:Hello:, he sends to the Companion. Then, to both of them: :And, yes, a great many. You say the Heralds are chosen by the Companions, and that the Companions attempt to keep them on track, and that this - on track nature - helps prevent civil wars? Do you know to what tools it functions through? Careful selection of Heralds: - if they can just magically scan for competence they would be the envy of the nation, though he has no idea if they do that instead of scanning for 'serves the divine mastermind's plans' - :ordinary persuasion, or supernatural processes? Or something outside my categories?:

Vanyel is frowning. :I’m - not sure if it would be trivial to separate those. And I do genuinely think that the ethics training is a part of it: Glance at Yfandes. :Though - enforced by the fact that if a Herald ever does anything really bad for Valdemar, they’re risking repudiation by their Companion. Heralds…don’t generally survive that: 

:It almost never gets to that point!: Yfandes clarifies quickly. :A couple of times in our entire history. But, yes, that plus the selection is why Heralds can trust one another as much as they do. Which is a big piece of why the succession tends to go as smoothly as it does:

He's going to try to avoid jumping to any conclusions, especially not the obvious conclusion, which is that the entire official Valdemaran hierarchy is a puppet of a secretive clique of MAGIC HORSES.

:I see. This all makes sense. And this bond ensures the relationship is always close?: He pauses. :What... priorities do Companions usually have? What actions do they tend to support their Heralds in, and what - other than internal conflict - do they discourage them from?:

:It doesn't usually feel like they're steering that much, honestly? At least, not in a way that's in conflict with what I want anyway. Yfandes mostly - looks out for me, makes sure I'm taking care of myself: he rolls his eyes slightly, :and she's there to talk through things if I'm not sure what to do in a situation? And the Companions talk a lot with each other, which helps the Heralds stay organized without having to put as much of our attention into scheduling meetings and remembering to go: 

No response on the bond, but other than that, Vanyel's first statement opens two possibilities: Either the Companions are, in fact, mostly steering their Heralds via selection, or, much more likely, they're good at steering. People rarely enjoy feeling like they're being steered.

:She sounds extremely helpful: He smiles at Yfandes. (No reason to tick off the secret masterminds of Valdemar, let alone the Heralds' support staff.)

His second comment suggests, again, 'good at steering.' :I follow so far: The problem is that all of this is a minefield; he has no idea what (in his worst-case scenario) would tick off the secret rulers of Valdemar. The Empire mostly doesn't talk about gods, and Janos is only now wondering if this was a gigantic weakness in his otherwise excellent education. :Do you know anything more of how the Companions came to be, or the nature of the god that -: created them? empowered them? :blessed you with them, other than its visible benevolence?:

Oddly, Vanyel grimaces at the word 'blessed', before quickly controlling his face. 

His Companion gives him an opaque look. 

:We don't: Vanyel says slowly. :We don't even know which god. I...think the gods may not be very good at communication: 

Vanyel does not like gods, even though he very much likes his God-given magic horse. This is fascinating.

(Or he is a spectacularly good actor and Actor-Vanyel wants Janos to think Role-Vanyel does not like gods, but Janos is not taking this theory especially seriously, it's just that you always want an 'an extremely elaborate lie is being set up' subroutine running in the back of your mind, if you're from the Eastern Empire...)

More than that. Vanyel does not like gods and he expects most people in his society not to agree with this belief and this means that it is a valuable tie between him and Janos, not-liking-gods, and although drawing anti-god statements out of Janos would be a perfectly good thing for Actor-Vanyel to do, he has not gotten the impression that Valdemar was a nest of lies, let alone one good enough to beat his instincts, and sometimes you need to roll the dice.

(None of this takes very long to think; Janos was not completely deluding himself, when his life plan required playing the Fourth Game well enough to be emperor, even though he knew the odds were never in his favor.)

:In the Eastern Empire, we say that the gods serve divine interests, and humans serve human interests, and these are only rarely the same. But the Empire has seen very fewer benevolent miracles than you have, and so we might say differently if we had Companions:

There. Position established. And the next step is to change the topic - 

:How are Heralds selected? Is it purely on the basis of - mental compatibility - or is it also gifts, intelligence, diligence...:

:Hmm: Vanyel considers this in thoughtful silence for ten seconds or so. :I think 'mental compatibility' - a specific Companion getting a Call to Choose a child - is often because of things like intelligence and diligence? And - altruism, being the sort of person who wants to dedicate their life to serving Valdemar. It calls for a lot of sacrifices: 

(Again, a brief flicker of unhappiness in his expression, quickly smoothed away.) 

:And Gifts, yes. Not all Heralds are strongly Gifted - I'd say maybe half are? There are a lot of Heralds with weak Gifts that weren't active yet when they were Chosen; it seems plausible that something to do with the Companion-bond, or maybe just with having a Companion Mindspeaking you and in your head constantly, tends to awaken Gifts that might not have otherwise. Our King isn't strongly Gifted, for example; he's got a tiny bit of Mindspeech, enough to reach his Companion, it's stretching it just for strong Mindspeakers to talk to him in the same room. Maybe a quarter of Heralds are only able to Mindspeak with their Companions: 

He frowns. :Not all Heralds are Gifted, but - most strongly Gifted people are Heralds? Especially mages. Mages who aren't Chosen are very rare: 

He nods along to Vanyel's points as he understands them, thinking carefully. So it's trading off between 'the sort of person who will keep Heraldic culture appropriate' - altruism, internal loyalty - and 'the sort of person who will be a resource-asset to the Heralds', maintaining a careful balance between retaining enough unified culture to keep everyone sharing a purpose and ethic, and being able to recruit all the country's talented people into their ruling clique. Fascinating. (The Emperor would give his left hand to have a magical power to sense competence and loyalty; Janos would also toss in his right leg.) He's putting together a picture of how this all works, and it's a truly interesting system...

(For a moment he wishes he could talk to Cendas about this, see what the old man had to say, or even Sorim or Ceyvan. Valdemar's playing a different game, and understanding it might be the most important thing he can do here...)

... There's just one thing he doesn't understand, though he might want to ask a few more questions, first, to see if he can lure out the information he needs; he can think of possible explanations that don't mean the Companions have sold the country out.

:All of this makes sense: And seems potentially very good. :In that case, the remaining questions I can think of are - can you tell me more about the Call? Do you know who sends it? And can I ask what role the Valdemaran nobility have, in this government? Are they all Heralds? Is the King?:

(He could ask 'do they have nobles', he's seen places that don't, but mostly those places don't have towns or cities, either. Hereditary landholding aristocrats who believe they deserve to rule purely by right of birth seem to come with division of labor, like diseases and wild dogs.)

:We don't know that much about it. It's not something the Companions decide, themselves, it happens to them. Possibly something to do with the Web - er, I think I mentioned that yesterday? It's the ward system that covers all of Valdemar. King Valdemar built it, and it's possible that was part of the miracle he requested although it's not very well documented: 

Pause. 

:Yes, we have a Council of nobles as well as the Heraldic leadership. The monarchy is hereditary, but with the caveat that the monarch - King or Queen, we've had both - always has to be a Herald, so sometimes if no direct offspring are Chosen, it goes to a cousin or other relative. The Council votes on most new laws or policies; the monarch has a veto on the outcome of those votes, but rarely uses it: 

He makes a note to properly worry about the giant miracle-created country-wide ward system later - that seems like the sort of thing that could have very large effects either way - and pay more attention, instead, to the fact, that he critically misestimated Valdemar, back when he was optimistically assuming that it was secretly controlled by magic horses.

Because it is not secretly ruled by a clique of magic horses. It is ruled by, if you are optimistic, a god with no more reason to care about human flourishing than a farmer has to care about the flourishing of the mice in his barn, and, if you are pessimistic, a magic spell created by a god-with-no-more-reason-to-care-about-human-flourishing-than, which has since been running on automatic for the last eight hundred years. On the positive side, this means that the likely-opposition is less likely to be prepared for him; on the negative side, this means that he cannot just talk to and cooperate with the likely-potential-opposition, which will probably have its goals met better if the country it secretly controls is wealthier.

All right. Let's not get ahead of himself. For all he knows, the Heralds are just too altruistic to spend money on luxuries for themselves, and the country actually is at least four times as rich as the Eastern Empire, the way it ought to be.

:All right, I continue to follow this, and I think I'm getting something of a picture of your civilization. I'm sure a number of my guesses are wrong, but I can't think of any questions to ask to distinguish between possibilities at the moment. That are safe to ask. At some point, if you have time, I'd like to look at your yearly census records, and any other information you have about rates of child mortality, average lifespans, literacy rates and average farm yields per acre; I have some predictions based on what I've seen so far and I'm curious if they're borne out:

And then he pauses, not making that into a dismissal at all but simply a wait for a response, and waits to see why Royal Advisor Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron wanted to talk to him badly enough to do so while injured, because he has some trouble believing it was just to answer some of his questions.

That is the most Leareth-flavored request Vanyel has ever heard from a person who isn't Leareth! It's really impressive! And kind of scary! 

(He really needs to make sure that whatever happens, Janos ends up feeling cooperative toward Valdemar and inclined to work with their goals rather than against them. In hindsight, handling the compulsions the way they did was a huge risk. Leareth wouldn't have been angry about being treated that way, and Vanyel doesn't think that Janos will hold a grudge either, but that's a lot of weight to put on what was fundamentally a guess. And if Janos does end up inclined to scheme against them, he'll run circles around the Heralds with no effort at all.) 

:I suspect our census records are less detailed than yours: he admits. :I've been hoping to study some of that myself, but - then the war happened: Sigh. :Anyway. If that's all your questions for right now, then I want to ask a bit about your plans for the next while. Do your existing loyalties: compulsions, that is, :conflict with helping Valdemar in our war? - Also I would definitely understand if you need to know more about Karse in order to decide that: 

Okay, that's the most disturbing thing anyone in Valdemar has said. Magic horses, godly curses, sure, those shift the equilibrium, but is Vanyel saying that they have no idea about any of his statistics questions because the only way they could know those answers would be if a royal-advisor-who-is-also-an-Adept happened to want to study them, and that otherwise they would never know that? Even if they wanted to put him off, they could at least say 'I don't have the numbers at my fingertips but I can bring you someone who does', or something!

:I understand why your project was delayed; even your total population and yearly tax revenue would help, here: (not great proxies, but better than literally nothing) :but I don't think it's too urgent; it would just help keep my estimate of your kingdom accurate:

:My existing loyalties have no conflict with helping Valdemar. I came here because I thought -: (this is safe to say, Vanyel knows his compulsions, and he's going to need to give something and in this case it ought to be his heart) :- that the most effective way to help the Empire and the cause it was founded for would be to try to assist the development of other civilizations sharing its goals - the long-term flourishing of humanity - with which it could, long-term, cooperate and trade. However, while I do intend to repay you for saving me, I don't know if I ought to commit to hostile acts against Karse, yet; I'd like to know more about Karse and the nature of the war before I commit to siding with Valdemar too aggressively: Honestly, if it weren't for the godly control he'd throw himself into supporting Valdemar immediately, but his model of Vanyel suggests that he really ought to display some moral reluctance, even though he's starting to suspect that he already has enough of a start here to make it the right place to begin building the Western Empire.

(Incidentally, he uses the exact same word that Leareth does for 'flourishing', or at least something that translates identically in Mindspeech.)

The Eastern Empire has a goal of WHAT. 

- arguing with Janos that actually his homeland is incredibly evil is not going to help Vanyel's cause, here.

(Also, he can tell that Janos is unimpressed with something. Probably related to the lack of good census data. Vanyel cannot really blame him, and - from what he knows, Valdemar genuinely is poorer. Vanyel five years ago would have said in a heartbeat that this was because Valdemar is trying to treat its citizens well and fairly, rather than make its elites wealthy, but...it feels more complicated than that, now.) 

:I'm glad to hear that: he says, choosing each word carefully. :I - share that goal. And - to be honest, I think the Empire made a huge mistake, in driving someone like you away: That much, at least, he feels comfortable saying, and it might be something to build on later. :Even in times of war, we need to worry about the ongoing administration of our Kingdom, and I'm sure that King Randale would be delighted to hear your advice on non-war matters: 

And that is why this is the right place to start.