"Even magical things?"

"Haven't tried. It wouldn't work on another daeva."

"Do you think you could do it to many things at once? Could you do it precisely enough to target a helmet or a cloak without killing the person wearing it?"

He's adding items to the list. 

"As long as I could pay attention to them all I guess? Not reliably if the person were moving, though I probably wouldn't do worse than nick their ear or miss a bit of the cloak or something, I do have practice with precise targeting for medication delivery. If they were holding still sure."

"And what was the thing you just did? I can tell it's conjuration, but I can't think of a conjuration spell that would do a thing like that." 

"Oh, I was conjuring extremely small amounts of air in between all the parts of the book. It's called interpolation."

"That's fascinating – probably our wizards could figure out a spell for that. – I'm getting distracted again. There are people who are more qualified than me to figure out all the theory implications." 

"But are they going to try to read my mind, is the question."

"I'm trying to figure out who to tell about you first in order to ensure you won't happen. – That's wrong, I'm trying to figure out who to tell about you first in order to make it most likely you'll feel disposed to collaborate with us, making sure nobody tries to read your mind is an important consideration there but not the only one."

Lucien is the obvious choice. Lucien always keeps his word, Lucien is as honest as the day is long, Lucien radiates goodness so intensely Élie sometimes wonders why the Inheritor didn't choose him when they were both fourteen – but Lucien's so paranoid, these days. And there are rather a lot of people who'd hold it against Élie if he told Lucien without telling them. Enough that he'd be hard-pressed not to make it all public. And of course he trusts the public – the People – to advocate for their own interests, to grow in reason, to rise up under the heavy burden of government – but not to keep their mouths shut. Élie's no good at it himself. And Cheliax can't know. 

"Should we in fact be... here? We could, like, go somewhere that is not currently experiencing this historical event, come back later with some more stuff sorted out."

" – I'd also like to see you answer some questions under a truth spell."  

"This doesn't work by reading my mind at all?"

"Just makes you temporarily unable to lie." 

"...yeah, okay. Modulo reasonable durations of 'temporarily' and being able to refuse to answer if you start to ask me weirdly personal questions."

"I can't cast this spell myself. That's why I need to decide who else to bring in." 

Cam doesn't need to know that zone of truth is a second circle spell and that Élie's pathetic. 

"Ah. Is this the sort of thing where you want to decide on it without any input from me?"

"Well, it mostly depends on political considerations you have no context on." 

"Gotcha. Any more reading recommendations so I can leave you be while you mull that over?"