"Makes sense." And he forwards Maurabel's comments to Kalana.

Kalana has a few more questions (if it's important that it be dark, how dark, what's the lighting on campus like? If someone is injured what are prospects for solving that with magic?) and Maurabel has answers (some torches, some magical lighting objects, but it's still dark enough for there to be lots of places suitable for shadow-walking at night, as long as they aren't stuck right under a light stone; magical healing is pretty good, Shine for healed-or-dead-in-the-next-five-minutes emergencies one per elemental in any reasonable amount of time, Lightning for that but you have to wait more than five minutes to get to a Shine and also one per elemental, Ice for that but you think you could fix it without Shine in particular, Earth for smallish patch jobs - Fire's for youth and infection and Water's for disease and not directly relevant.)

"Will the elementals do healing for us -"

"Penumbra can but that's drawing on the same reserves she'd use to do shadow-walking, Shine healing is expensive. I have some Earth and I know how to use it - no humans have enough Shine or Lightning to use those for healing. Uh, same caveats as basically everything else, regarding elemental willingness, but probably at least some of them would."

"Okay. Want to visit Cene first or do this first?"

"Is the rainforest still useful if I die?"

"We would probably have enough leverage to put it to the use you intended if there were still prospects of planets. What happens to the elementals we rescue if you die -"

"You'd still need a mage to hold them but -" She tugs her necklace out of her shirt. "If you have these you can hang on to them till you find someone to do that, if you can, you just won't be able to let them do stuff on your own. Penumbra will still be about as free as she is now unless another mage gets this one, so will any elementals whose amulets I manage to touch, any you steal yourselves will have whatever their last constraints were stuck that way."

"Do you take off all the constraints when you touch it?"

"Can't, some of them are built in. I used to comply with school minimums too, but Penumbra's looser than that."

"Okay. Worst-case we'll get the necklaces and scout for another mage who can unrestrict them."

"Once they have them they can do anything they want. You have to be sure of them."

"Understood."

Sigh. "I hope this works."

"Yeah. Since the rainforest might be relevant either way, do you want to go to Cene first? Or afterwards?"

"First."

Anitam arranges with Cene a three-day trip for Maurabel to see Cene and the offered rainforest.

And she will go ahead and take a plane because that's interesting and Penumbra can save her magic.

Anitam plans the school retrieval operation for once she returns.

She comes back without incident loaded up with souvenirs and an entire case of Cene's finest berry-jam-filled chocolates.

Anitami reds say they have reason to believe that Biyani reds would not mind very much if the aliens happened to stir up horrendous chaos in the course of rescuing some kids.

She lets Maurabel know this, a bit reluctantly.

"I kind of don't want to stir up horrendous chaos."

"Yeah, me neither. I think what they probably mean is that there's some kind of plan for if the situation holding the kids hostage was disrupted but it might not be a plan we like."

"Is there a way to find out?"