Temperance composes a letter to send home explaining the concept of a printing press and then goes to sleep. She wakes up early and starts doing magic research on her own. Comparing what she knows and what the book tells her. She has a late lunch and then remembers to actually send her letter.
That done she sits in the library and proceeds with her research. She ate enough at lunch that she decides to skip dinner and wait for Kaede while reading.
And here's Kaede. She looks up at Temperance, smiles agreeably, and gets back to the book.
"I brought dinner," Temperance announces (it somehow didn't spill all over the floor during the action).
She puts the dinner on the table and uses metamancy to dislodge the effect from Kaede.
She blinks, looks around, tries to knock Temperance out with a spell, notices she has no mana, and instead lunges for her.
"Ah, it's me, Temperance! I am here to help!" She says trying to hold Kaede still with a spell.
She is held. Then she is not held. She doesn't lunge again, though. "I have no idea what you're talking about." She looks at Felix, and now the effect is gone from him, too.
Temperance reverts back to her true shape. "Another metamancer got you and was holding you hostage. But I managed to get in."
Felix blinks in confusion and then accelerates.
"Kaedearewecapableofjustleaving?"
She accelerates too. "I don't know, I don't know who she is or what's going on—he stole our lifeforce, too, we can't accelerate forever—I have no mana—and neither does she that's weird how did she cast a spell without mana—"
They are going fast enough that she is unable to accelerate herself (through magery, not sorcery) before they have stopped talking, but she gets some of it. "We've met before. I think he made you forget me. We were supposed to meet and you never showed up."
She squints. "Why would he make us forget you? Who are you, why can't I see your mana?"
"Maybe by accident? I don't think he knew I existed. Uh, I am Temperance, we met when you left the sorcery book in Laokab."
"You left one because you wanted to spread the word around. I was already curious about what the new magic effect on the entire world was and I was trying to figure it out, so I noticed that you had an absurd amount of lifeforce and was curious. ...Speaking of which. I hope you understand this as a gesture of good faith and that I am not your enemy."
She hands her Jinte's battery ring.
"That does make a lot more sense than having just the one book." She decelerates, taking the ring. "—I don't remember any sorcery. I don't remember any sorcery—how are we going to build the portal back—"
Felix hugs her. "We will find a way. Someone did the first time around and we can too. We have all the time in the world for that."
"Uh, not to be insensitive, but we should consider the threat of the evil metamancer that brainwashed you?"
"The High Consul. Fuck, he knows who I am. I wasn't careful enough—tell me everything, from the moment we first met until now."
"If you think it's safe? He is knocked out in the ceiling of a room," she starts telling everything. She describes the moment when Kaede asked to "spread the word" around on sorcery as "realizing Kaede was possibly the best person of all time."
That brings a small smile to her face, but she's serious again by the time Temperance gets to the present.
"Okay, that was definitely phe Bez—I wonder if he has an actual motive of just bought into the whole Vinkar thing—anyway, he has places to be, he can't be gone for this long without his absence being noted—we need a showdown. A very public one, to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt to the public that he's a metamancer."
"He's not publicly a mage of any kind, so if he uses any magic in public that will already be a red flag. Plus the fact that we disappeared into our room a few days into our stay here, mysteriously, and then this girl that knows sorcery came to our rescue—we need to convince the other diplomats."
"I could try playing the role of the second sorcery book author, but I don't actually have the power you described. Does he know sorcery? I didn't sense any from him."
"Only stuff he learnt from the book, we... forgot..." Pause. "I think I was the one who erased our memories." She shakes her head. "Anyway. You don't, but you're a metamancer, so it comes down to the same, doesn't it? You can fake it."
"Is she likely to find another metamancer that might contest this information?"
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