I don't think there was much else. 

The planned reason for stopping by was directions.

Time of Macalaure's next sufficiently distracting concert?

Elenya. 

All right.

No guarantees on how many ghosts there even are, or that have already faded, or any potential snag I don't know about, but hopefully we'll have some idea then.

If you could leave some of the enhanced weapons here if it does work, I would appreciate it.

Of course.

I guess Elenya might not be the best time to bring someone to learn the song for control of the elements, since the time was picked for Macalaure being busy. That did get less important anyway now that there's more than one type of magic contributing.

I'm very relieved to hear it.

Greenhouses can have increased amounts of ambient magic. One nontrivially replaceable fire spirit so the cheap-as-dirt ice ones don't freeze everything, with all of them running power through nothing in particular. With luck something relevant might turn up.

Thanks for stopping by. As before you can send as much in the way of our regards as they'll tolerate.

You're welcome. Until Elenya, then.

See you then. 

And privately, Findekano -

Findekano sighs. How to phrase it so it's not a lie - Amber, can you tell Maitimo that I said to tell him I swore never to speak to him again? 

Permanently? It might be more believable to say just for today; he's the poorly thought-out oath guy here.

He knows you can't lie and must have guessed by now I can't lie so if you say that I said to tell him that I think it'll take him long enough to work out that it could still be a lie that I'll get the satisfaction of seeing his face first.

Oh, so you're not aiming to have him believe it?

He knows me too well.

That's fine, then.

Findekáno doesn't want to talk to you. He says to tell you he swore he never would.

His expression is suitably interesting. He looks like he's been punched, and then his face goes very still in a mouth-ajar expression of utter agony, and then goes coldly neutral. And then he raises an eyebrow and says he can ask you to tell me the sky is blue if he wants, can't he?

The rules are a bit fuzzy. In fact, I don't think I've ever met a practitioner who couldn't say the sky is blue if they tried hard and believed in themselves.

See you Elenya.

See you then.

Maitimo did apparently ensure that his people don't try to watch them leave; getting into the air takes barely any stealth at all.

That was interesting.

Yeah. On several counts.

What are you thinking of?

Right now, partly the fact that I might actually have just run out of things I was trying to hide from him. Partly that they collectively expected the Enemy to send some amount of force other than "enough." And mostly that last bit. I know you said he wasn't important to you, but the converse is obviously not true.

They're overconfident. If they won back the whole continent in twelve days it probably fuelled their overconfidence.

Maitimo wouldn't ever have spoken to me again if everything had gone as he wanted. I don't think he's as good an actor as that but maybe he is. 

Maybe.