She orders two people's worth of breakfast - hot cereal with fruit, fried eggs, buttery toast, on a hexed platter to keep it warm, the palace is practically lousy with expensive hexes - and nibbles slowly on her half while she goes over yesterday's notes and what still remains to be done.
She has drafted a letter to her great-aunt (who is, after all, a countess and related to her and occasionally inclined to remember this, and may be able to help in some ways with some things - the loan of this property in the moors, these words in those ears, her recommendation on who to hire for this project) for review by her husband before she sends it, and begun to tediously pick apart some of the incoming mail full of requests and separate out the sincere from the strategic from the insane, by the time Edarial is likely to so much as wander out of his bedroom.
Edarial's caught off guard by Iobel's presence here. "Er, hello."
"Someone nearly drowned in a canal while blind drunk and wants them all fenced. Someone - here, I wrote summaries of all of it," Iobel says, pushing one of her ever-present notebooks at him; this one's in plaintext. "The most interesting one is probably the person whose familiar has run away and who wants her dragged back."
Then, back to work. They get to skip patronizing entirely, he will go right to where they were yesterday with helpful explanations and how he was planning to approach the problem, along with reasons why some of the things she suggests won't work. Worded nicely.
After it's been a while and there is a lull in the rhythm between tasks she sends Cricket to see if the visitors need anything, or prefer this time to other possible times for further spellcasting.
"We should pick a place for them to put the portal, too."
"I am working on teleportation, but I certainly can't guarantee having it done anytime soon, let alone in a form that keeps all the features I'm designing," sighs Iobel. "The dungeon didn't look terribly full when we visited Nataliem... but then we'd have to pass him on our way to and from every time. Is there an obscure tower, maybe? Does anyone use the south one for anything?"
"The south one's for guest overflow, but other than that, no. I'll take that over Nataliem - we should ask if it's possible to put it on something portable or easily hidden. I don't know the rules of their portals well enough. Should we go ask them, once Cricket returns?"
"... I don't think I can manage to make a spell to translate every language except Cricket's anytime soon. It's not built that way, I'd have to teach it how to specify a certain language from the others and it would be something of a nightmare," Adarin says apologetically. "Sorry."
He looks at Edarial. "Iobel and your familiar can translate for you, if you don't want the spell?"
"Well, this is just going to work out beautifully, isn't it," says Iobel before Cricket can reply. "Kitty, why don't you go - bother the cooks for cream. You remember how to say 'cream'? It's cream -" She repeats the word a few times as she puts Cricket out of the guest room and then closes the door.
He produces the book of cheat sheets, turns it to the right page, and offers it to her.
"This is - not directly adaptable because there's too much reference to things a spellchart would have to break down into component parts, but the format is sort of promising if you have spells that don't refer to things like languages that spellbinders can't take as givens."
"I have to specify it every time. It's more flexible, but kind of annoying."
"It sounds it. But you don't have charge time, so there's that. Charge time and duration are both luck per spell for us. I have a flying spell that has a completely stupid ratio between the two - it's otherwise perfect but I never use it because it takes too long and doesn't last long enough."
"Oh - we get exactly six spells a day, every spellbinder exactly six. But if we cast an entire day's batch all at once we can make something permanently magical. There's a fountain on the grounds that will heal any familiar immersed in the water, for example - although we don't know how to make more of those anymore, the chart's been lost - and that's a hex. The palace is climate-controlled and plumbed and in some rooms lit with hexes, too, although most people can't afford that many. Anybody can be a spellbinder but not everybody can fit a hex into their head."
"Did I forget to mention that? I did, didn't I. I have an artifact that dispenses absolute truth! But it stops working if I take it out of Chamomile. I can work it through my portal bag from wherever, but it doesn't know about things outside Chamomile regardless. It's super useful for narrowing down spell research, though, even though it's cryptic - Adarin made me things to help read it, but it's just meanings, no grammar and it's bad at numbers and doesn't really do long sentences."
"...whatever further largesse you're attempting to bestow I assume I'm all for it. My best current idea for a portal is to put it on a hinged plane of wood on the ceiling to take down as needed and put back up, perhaps with some kind of decorative canopy between it and potential observers, when it wasn't in use."
"Yeah, trail mix and unadorned bagels and stuff gets old after a while. Probably safe to assume we match there unless you have anything culturally specific and also weird? Stay away from things fermented, very aged, containing any currently living things or air-breathing arthropods, more than modest amounts of spicy, or like - really strongly flavored in any way."
"I think he is terrible," says Cricket, lashing his tail. "He ignored a tiny rebellion in his own home even though they kidnapped several people and I left lots of marks on one of them. He didn't talk to Iobel enough for her to find out what was going on until he tried to start a conversation about having babies with her even though if he touches her without her wanting it I will shred him." Cricket displays a pawful of claws. "He acted like she was stupid when she was first trying to do queen things even though she is very very smart so smart the smartest. And he has not apologized, I know, I know what Marlese is for 'sorry', Iobel made me learn it years and years ago. He has said the word but it was not about the whole thing, I asked her, she does not lie, Iobel is good."
"Nah, I think it's only something like - one in three, one in four? - people who bind their familiars, and most of those don't learn more than a handful of simple utility spells. Raney knows a first-aid thing for her students and one to cool things off in the summer and that's about ninety percent of what she uses most days."
"It's not for everyone. Sometimes it's people not getting along with their spirit animals, sometimes it's a lack of desire or capacity, sometimes fear of unmaking. Personally I think I would have bound Berathyme even if I didn't like her, but not everyone would. Spirit animals are easier to ignore than familiars."
"It's considered a reasonably weighty decision. I did it when I was a child and so did Edarial, but by the time most people feel ready to make weighty decisions they're old enough to have just a little trouble understanding or even waking up their spirit animals to chat. And if you can't learn the spells and don't want the familiar..." She shrugs.
"Yyyyes. I revisit the question occasionally and have consistently come down on the side of 'the unfortunate dependence of familiar on potential binder does not oblige the binder to take responsibility for and risks on behalf of a familiar against their will' - but yeah, it's not great."
"There are some theories that they get recycled - reincarnated, except without necessarily any better chances of properly incarnating the second time - but I think this is mostly wishful thinking; I've never heard of a spirit animal claiming to remember being someone else's."