"It doesn't play well with previously stolen elementals rumoring my existence all over the place, honestly."

"Right. Hmm. There have got to be more humans like you - maybe ones who aren't mages, it might be easier to notice if you're not benefitting -"

"If you just need a human for this my parents are okay - I mean, they weren't going to crusade about elementals but they wouldn't go out of their way to be awful to them if I explained what I was doing, which I have - but you need an actual mage who can be like yes observe I have magic and can totally control that elemental you want to sell me for Ridiculous Amounts Of Salt."

"Are we going to crash the salt market?"

"I don't know enough about it to say."

Sigh. "Okay. Let me know if you think of anything else useful here."

"I will."

They find an island with a cave in it on Maurabel's home planet. They set up there for the longish haul. They steal a private collection and another school collection, with an Adamant acting as Maurabel's bodyguard. A couple of soldiers are casualties in the second school raid, dead before any Shines can get to them. They get a lot of elementals free and Penumbra starts taking them to Amenta, one at a time.

Anitam understands more about elementals and has a place set up for them on a mountain lake with food and people to confirm that they are not being ordered.

The mountain lake is nice and fewer of these fuck off to the rainforest from it. Maurabel is not making them do stuff.

Oh good. 

Yup.

Satellite photography, radar supervising airspace, birdwatchers, seismic sensors, the personnel of a geothermal energy plant, weather metrics, and beachgoers notice, uh... stuff.

...stuff.

Yes. Uh, elementals... starting to exist? Out of nowhere?

That sure is stuff.

Does Maurabel know or do any of the elementals know if this is the same way elementals started existing back in her world. 

...also the rate is much higher than it must be in her world if there are only hundreds in her world and they live forever, does anyone have guesses about that.

"Uh, we'd be less good at noticing them, there's that - we don't have history that far back and elementals aren't all that sociable, they'll have small groups but don't form civilizations, so they wouldn't know if they were first -"

"How recent could they plausibly be - we've got eight so far -"

"I know one who is personally hundreds of years old... our years."

" - if we assume that on Amenta they're born in bursts like Amentans it could maybe not represent a higher rate."

"Is it spring where they were?"

He looks it up. " - not all of them, no."

"I dunno about that then. ...at least nobody here can amulet them. Unless you start throwing mages too, and even then maybe they'll have the decency not to."

"Is there a straightforward way to check?"

"For mages? Not that I know of till they start doing little magic."

"That a mage has captured an elemental, I mean."

"Oh. Other mages can tell and so can Glasses and glass hybrids."