"They trust me not zero, I don't think they trust me that much. Or trust that it'd be up to me if it were actually important. I'll try."

"If we get a bunch of helpfully inclined Shadows and the kids happen to be somewhere dark we could get them out."

"Why don't you get to that right now, and I'll tell our reds to tell Biyan's reds that there might be a way to get the kids out safely without even any chaos."

Nod.

Penumbra takes soldiers and their gear to a wooded area not too far from the school for them to run it if they find themselves needing to do so, but not easily found by random travelers; the Amentans have scent-masking chemicals so they won't be found with dogs as Penumbra takes them back home one by one afterwards. They send a squad of eight, which takes more than a week, then Maurabel. They study some phrases in the local language so they'll be able to yell at people and attempt to soothe elementals. They wait till Penumbra is full up on magic.

She can shadow-walk them all at once, after it's full dark and the moon has set.

Only a handful of elementals are checked out this late at night, but their barracks is guarded. Soldiers and Penumbra and Maurabel have hearing protection against the sonic thing, and the guards go down except for one who has some sort of applicable ward; that one they hit with a net gun and a cocktail of four knockout drugs in the hope that at least one works on humans and if any of them are poison Maurabel can water-heal him in time to save him. He's out but not before he has time to yell. Some lights come on in the dormitories and the study tower.

The checkout clerk is still keeled over from the noise but grabbed some amulets before being completely overcome with the need to twitch on the floor and dry-heave. Elementals are standing over him, interrupted in his attempt to force them to heal him. They can't help her but she can reach between their legs, pull the necklaces out of his hand and clear them, get the rest out of the safe, murmur quick to some of the Shadows.

Shadows go out to the soldiers who are standing ready to interfere if anyone wakes up enough to come bother them, which is looking likely - there's someone with a Fire, there's someone holding a lantern -

Shadows bring soldiers and Maurabel in a total of three trips back to their camp. They have stolen twenty-two elementals.

They trickle back to Anitam, Maurabel first, elementals after. The Shadows and Shines can share some power with Penumbra so she doesn't take a whole month to bring everyone where they're going.

Anitam welcomes them with nice hotel rooms and a wide array of tasty foods and people to confirm they are not under any orders except the ones that can't be cleared and to answer any questions.

The elementals kind of cluster around Maurabel and are nervous of the Amentans, but eventually spread out into their own rooms and confirm in the languages Kefin learned a little of that they're still amuleted but not worse than that.

Oh good. Do they know whether there's a way to safely set them entirely free?

A few of them have been temporarily free before being recaptured and totally murdered the people who let them go. It was a very intense experience, being suddenly free, and then all of a sudden, murder had happened. They don't want to hurt Maurabel but there is no telling what might happen.

The plan is to wait until Maurabel is old, then, is that okay?

They'll live. ...since they're immortal.

And how does Biyan feel about the announcement that treatment of reds will be considered in applications for planets once Anitam and Cene get theirs and that the rainforest is accessible to send reds to.

Planets will not help them if their insane awful reds stop work and cause a PLAGUE or just outright MURDER THEM ALL.

Seems like maybe if they sent all the kids to the rainforest as a show of good faith their reds would be less hostile.

The kids are the only thing holding their insane, awful reds back! Their reds are insane and awful.

Will they be sending them to the rainforest once the replacements are trained.

Why does the alien even care about (insane, awful) reds?

The aliens don't find reds gross because of being aliens and so they find holding children hostage to be objectionable.

But they are, in addition to being red, insane and awful.

The aliens will be on much better terms with Biyan if they get credible assurance that Biyan is going to send the reds to the rainforest once the training is done, and that the kids are unharmed in the meantime. 

Maybe she is making that up.

She forwards the conversation to Maurabel.

She's not making that up. I am not going to bother being upset about things that happened before I got here, but now I'm telling you that planets take a while and if you want one before somebody else has seconds you should stop doing awful things to reds. I have some rainforest they can be in if you can't handle them yourselves.

"If Penumbra would be willing to go check on the hostage kids -"

"I don't know where they are," says Penumbra.

Do Biyan reds maybe have any idea.