Most of the shield-talismans aren't fundamentally new uses of magic, though a lot of the designs are different from the Imperial standard; the talisman against Thoughtsensing, in particular, is made pretty differently. There are a number of talismans that are probably meant to go together and trade narrowness of effect for efficiency – a person wearing the full set would be shielded against a wider range of possible magical attacks and not-exactly-attacks than the Empire's standard artifacts allow, and for a much longer duration before the power reservoirs ran down. (This is generally not the tradeoff the Empire picks in their artifact designs; they have a lot of mages, but not enough artifact-making specialists to provide everyone important with a full dozen talismans.) 

There's a talisman that would make a person invisible to scrying. There's one that would make them, or rather their magical signature or mind, not a valid Gate search-target (for the tiny fraction of Adepts skilled enough to aim a Gate search-spell at a person they've met before.) 

Very few of the records are in the Imperial language! Most are in cipher, or rather half a dozen different ciphers. Some of the very oldest records are in archaic Tantaran or archaic Kaled'a'in. Some of the books that aren't about Leareth's life per se, and are just works that he wrote as a scholar in other lifetimes under other names, are in whatever language was the local scholar's tongue at the time. Mostly that means Rethwellani. 

The talismans take some time to puzzle out, but when they do the Adepts are generally shocked and puzzled. This suggests -

"Not a person," one of them explains to the governor, "but a tradition, different from our own and significantly more sophisticated than the work of any of the known barbarian mage-traditions."

And the ciphers will take some time to break... and this doesn't even get into the question of the gate-search target, which took Janos's top people quite some time to identify because most of them didn't know what the thing it was supposed to be blocking was. (Janos would have had less trouble than them learning that, though he is of course shamefully undertrained by the standards of first-rate imperial Adepts, because he at least knows what the top tier can do even when he has trouble with it himself, but there's only one of Janos and he has a province to govern.)

"He's real."

"You don't still think -"

"It's theoretically possible but tremendously unlikely, and if it is we're going to know it is very soon." Because the Emperor will land on them like a ton of bricks shortly, before they decrypt the ciphers, because making a sufficiently vast quantity of ciphered material that was coherent with the rest of it would be out of the Emperor's budget. "I've written a report to the Emperor, Gated a copy it to Morthan -" one of their classmates who Janos trusts to forward it if he mysteriously disappears "- and he'll send it on in a week if I haven't cancelled it. This matters, and His Imperial Majesty needs to be informed, but at the point where an entirely separate magical tradition that isn't centuries behind us exists, that is something that we cannot simply fake."

He sighs. "That's the thing about it. We're the best. Nobody but us could fake this, and I frankly don't think we could fake this. So -"

... Seiran is inclined to trust Janos, because he basically trusts Janos. But.

He's not sure the Emperor ought to get his hands on an immortal he's just going to stop thinking about that or anything related to that.

Janos will do what best serves the Emperor and the Empire. It is, fundamentally, what he is.

They leave him alone for a long time. Someone is guarding the door, and they bring him food when he asks for it, but it seems like the Imperial official doesn't intend to continue questioning him until after they follow up on his information. 

Leareth tries to use the time to think. It still mostly feels like he's in too much of an information void to think productively or make more than the sketchiest plans, but it would be stupid to waste the time entirely. 

They're letting him do a lot of steering. And - treating him fairly respectfully, compared to how they could be playing it; there's been a minimum of veiled threats, let alone seriously impairing compulsions. Which, whatever else it means, would seem to imply that they expect to get more of what they want if he's more in control and incentivized to cooperate? 

They're definitely not acting on maximal paranoia, even though they must be worried that this is someone's plot; the Empire he knew wasn't a place where anyone could afford not to worry about that. That's - got to be taking a risk, from their point of view? 

They probably don't want the Emperor's close attention. In most time periods, for most Emperors and most provincial officials, the Emperor's attention would not have been in their interest. And Leareth is fairly sure his chances are better dealing with them than if they send him to Jacona. They're still going to be under compulsions of loyalty to the Emperor's person, which makes it inconvenient that Leareth remembers approximately nothing about the current Emperor. That's something to navigate. 

What does he want, from this starting position? 

Access to the ciphered records that they're hopefully in the process of retrieving would be nice. He probably has notes on how to contact his organization. ...He probably can't follow them himself, even if he can sneak it around the compulsions, his mage-gift is too limited right now to do most things. Which means he needs to angle for them to do it for him. Ideally by convincing them it's in their interest - trying to trick them is risky and also he...would rather not, if he has an alternative, when they're fundamentally approaching this cooperatively. 

...Should he tell them the truth about what he's working on? He won't have a choice if they ask directly, but it seems not that likely they will. He - probably wants a better read on the Imperial official before he decides how to present it, at least, but he should be trying to lay the groundwork... 

There is some amount of thinking-in-circles happening, not helped by the lack of paper to write on. (He could theoretically ask for pen and paper, but he's almost certainly being watched via scry, and writing in cipher feels like it would take more mental effort than he has the energy for right now.) He...will allow himself a short nap, maybe, if they're still leaving him alone for it. Everything else will have better odds of going well if he's less exhausted. 

Well, while Leareth is napping, the people Janos has put on codebreaking wish to report that breaking the codes will take a while.

Unfortunately Janos is not personally a codebreaker and also has a day job.

Could the Emperor have subverted them to report this? Of course. He's the Emperor.

Time to talk to the immortal/actor again, then.

Once Dalan wakes up, Avannar will want to talk to him again!

(They're trying to avoid using terms like "governor". Calling him "Janos" will hurt his interests because it makes him sound like a mortal man and calling him "military and civil governor" will tell the prisoner just what he's dealing with. Best not to leak.)

Leareth has noticed that they're avoiding telling him anything very informative about who the Imperial official who's been talking to him actually is! He could probably narrow it down a lot better if he could remember things, not that he's very sure what he would do with that information.

He is of course available and willing to meet with "Avannar" again. And will try to gauge from the man's face, when he walks in, whether they did in fact successfully find a records cache at the specified location, and if so how he's taking it. 

Janos is good at hiding his facial expressions, that being a key survival skill in the Eastern Empire, but emotional control has always been one of his weaknesses and it's not that difficult to conclude that he's taking Leareth very seriously indeed.

"We've located your cache, and are interested in hearing you make your case."

(Janos is still considering both the 'spy' and 'immortal' hypotheses. Both of them are tremendously unlikely, but he hasn't thought of a third, and so he's - balancing the possibilities.)

(Either way, the kid is good. His intuition says he's more maneuvering than trying to deceive him, and his intuition is usually good, but...)

Leareth nods. ...Doesn't ask if anyone was injured in the process, it's sort of a fraught question to ask and he thinks it's not necessarily in the Imperial official's interests to answer it, whether the answer is 'yes' or 'no'. 

"I have been working on a very long term project. I believe that if I succeed, it would indirectly help the Empire's interests enormously, by solving the opposition you face from the gods. This - is a particularly delicate time to be out of touch, which leaves me suspicious that there was a godplot to make it difficult for me to leave the Empire, giving Them an opportunity to steer events without my interference. Obviously what I want is to return to my previous work as quickly as possible; my main operations are far north and west of here, past Hardorn. My immediate aim is to convey to you that letting me leave will not harm your interests or the interests of the Emperor and Empire. As far as I know, my previous work did not involve any political plots internal to the Empire, and certainly I had no way of knowing that I would die at the time I did - I was taking many precautions against it, it was implausible bad luck - or that I would come back in this particular body." 

He takes a deep breath. 

"I will be able to answer more of your questions with access to my records. Most of them will be in cipher. I would be willing to trade access to some of the documents for showing your people how to decode them." 

Janos does not respect the gods enough to hate them. He's certainly aware that gods exist, and of course they order their cultists to oppose the Empire, but the Empire has bigger problems than gods, like civil wars and barbarian rebellions and political corruption. He can understand and respect the sort of man who devotes his life to opposing the gods, in the same way as he can understand the sort of man who devotes his life to fixing the clogs in the Jaconan sewer system, but he's really not one of them.

(He has not yet noticed the felt but unconscious confusion about why an immortal would devote himself to this task, possibly because of the limited extent to which he buys the premise inherent to the world Dalan claims he lives in now.)

He feels some sympathy for Dalan, though years of experience in the Empire has partially quenched it. It's obviously unfortunate that people who want to serve as allies and trade partners to the Empire instead get conscripted into the army or the mage-corps; also, it's a necessity for building a functional civilization. He can believe (especially with Compulsions and his instincts backing them up) the kid is attempting to negotiate with him fairly...

... But, equally, he isn't the one in charge here. The Emperor is. He is merely the Emperor's delegate. If this situation is a test... he still thinks "I am trying to learn as much as I can before passing it on" is reasonable. And if it is real... 

"An interesting offer." The records are enchanted so that the paper holds up after a rest of centuries. Are they also enchanted so they have traps that will cut the boy's compulsions or Gate him halfway across the country? Depends on how good the person laying the spells was. And when faced with the option to test your strength against an enemy's - "We can provide you with copies of the records under these terms."

Don't take it.

(You absolutely cannot hide a set-spell to raise a Gate, or even just the search-spell to link up to an existing permanent Gate-terminus, on a piece of paper, let alone expect to conceal it under the signature of a preservation-spell. The amount of stored power called for would be glaringly obvious. But you could, maybe, hide a trap-spell to snip compulsions. Leareth has no idea whether or not his past self actually did that, or whether any compulsion-cutting traps are local to the cache room that they almost certainly won't let him access directly, but he can respect the paranoia.) 

Copies are fine. Since copying is presumably time-consuming, they could prioritize the first pages of a number of documents, so he can quickly figure out what records are where and which ones it makes sense to prioritize looking at. (He's not delighted about also giving them that information, but it doesn't seem like he has much of a choice.) 

He doesn't see how this is a trap and is perfectly happy to do that. (Copying is time-consuming in man-hours, but the work can be done by many men in parallel, and Janos's scribes don't need to be cleared if they can't read the code they're decrypting.)

Leareth will wait. He's happy to answer questions, if the Imperial official has any, but he's not going to try to jump ahead further in his explanation and make more implausible claims before he can provide evidence for them. 

"Then we'll take care of that." He raises an eyebrow. "I am curious, though. It's been eighteen hundred years since the Cataclysm, correct?" He'll wait for a nod. "What's the chief thing we're missing, that we had back then?" He thinks this is one of these questions that is both very interesting if you ask an immortal and if you ask an absurdly elaborate fake the Emperor made to test your loyalty.