And if she had been expecting anyone probably she wouldn't have been expecting a tattooed young woman with silver hair holding a shockingly ugly baby.

She definitely would not.

"How did you do that?" she asks because that question is slightly faster to articulate than what are you doing here and are you going to matter to the war.

Oh, I walked into a monster, says the woman after a moment, after checking that her ugly baby is okay.

That clarifies almost nothing and now she has more questions. So many more questions. "Where did you come from and are you really talking in my head or am I imagining that?" are the ones she asks first.

I don't speak your language so I'm doing this instead. I came from Angband.

"I have never heard of Angband. Are you reading my mind? Are there other magic things you can do?"

Yeah I am. And I know some magic songs.

Well, now her mind is filled with internal screaming very briefly until she pushes through it and gets completely calm.

"One of our neighbors just declared war on us. Rumor has it they intend to destroy our government and our way of life." Rumor also has it that they plan to spare the civilians, or maybe sacrifice them to Azan's gods, or - well, the rumors are sort of confused. "I am sure an ability like that would be extremely useful if you wanted to help us protect ourselves. In exchange I expect we'll find things to offer you - I don't know what exactly you want, of course." But she could probably have jewelry or slaves or clothing or food or a house. Could Azan outbid them? Teru has no incentive to entertain any arguments that they could, but they might not want to, they seem alien and hard to negotiate with.

I guess I could do that?

"Good. I can find a soldier - the ones in my family might not have gone too far yet, or if that doesn't work I'll go to the city garrison - can you wait right here? Do you need anything faster than it'd take me to run across town and back?"

I don't know how fast your species is. Or how big your town is.

"I am not going to take more than a twentieth of a day and probably less. The sun might move about this much on the floor before I get back." She gestures, and pictures pretty clearly how the light from the windows moves. "Will you be okay that long?"

I don't know what a sun is but I think I can wait as long as you're thinking.

"Good. I'll be right back, don't wander off or - anything." Don't do unspecified alien things to her cousins, except she doesn't have any idea what things, and it'd be rude, and anyway it doesn't matter very much what comes out of her mouth. She runs. She assumes she'll get out of range at some point but she doesn't know when that point will be. (She does not, in fact, get out of range.)

She'll be back as soon as she can but that'll still be a while. In the meantime there's a little to look at and a a lot to eavesdrop on, if their visitor is so inclined.

Beka settles the baby on her shoulder and looks around and listens to sounds and minds.

They have books, in the room where Beka is, but there's no way she can read them. They've put less effort into aesthetics than any elf society but they have put effort in, painting the walls an unobjectionable color and getting chairs with canvas seats in complementary colors with geometric patterns.

There are a couple of kids in the courtyard, wondering where Teru's off to in such a hurry, and beyond that - well, the entire city. It's not a happy city. People have said a lot of goodbyes recently, and still are as the last few people finish packing, the soldiers to go to war and their wives and sisters and mothers to go stay in the capital to keep them exactly as safe as Sesat itself. But that's not most of it. There are slaves here, who know it's not off-limits to torture them to death, and there are poor people and sick people and people who aren't either but know that's temporary. There's a lot of discussion of whether foreign soldiers might target the crops in the nearby fields, and how long the city can last under siege. There's someone optimistic about the market for his swords; there's someone jubilant because she's opening her flower shop today and it's what she's always wanted; there's someone hoping he's not coming down with anything. There's someone praying, with no expectation that any god is actually going to answer.

Teru finds a group of men just outside the city finishing up checking that there's nothing wrong with their chariot; there are four of them and they're waiting for one more. She interrupts.

"I have a thing that might mean the difference between victory and defeat in the war," she says. "I need to show someone who can do something about that."

The captain frowns at her but the archer vouches for her. (Because he's her brother, which is why she came to him first.) They leave the other two to wait with the chariot and head back with Teru. Faster, actually, once she's told them where to go, but they pause at the courtyard gate to wait for her to catch up. (Teru's brother talks to the kids a bit while they wait.)

It's not, in fact, very long before the door opens again and Teru shows the others inside. They're all very confused, and two of them are surprised to see the baby. All three of them are pretty sure it's their job to make a good impression and be polite somehow and none of them have any idea how to do that.

"Hello," says the captain.

Hello replies Beka, who has been eavesdropping on the happy florist since first noticing her because that's the nicest part of this very nice place that isn't even slightly Angband.

(Then by now she'll know a lot about renting commercial property in Leopard Hill and recognize a lot of local flowers.)

"I hear you're, um, new to Sesat and might be interested in getting involved in the war. What can you tell me about that?"

I'm from Angband? And I got here by walking into a monster. It seems nice. Teru thought I should do war stuff because I can read minds.

That sounds very dangerous and she should definitely stay away from the king and - really most people - they need to figure out her range but she could lie about it, or in fact she could be lying about this. "Can you? What number am I thinking of?" Purple. The correct answer is purple. If the correct answer were a number, it wouldn't be a very good test.

(Valan meanwhile immediately worries she'll find out his father was a slave and then determinedly starts thinking about flowers of no strategic importance.)

Um, purple.

Well, it's... promising that she's considering helping with the war and not just trying to take over - at least not openly but frankly he doesn't care as long as there's plausible deniability and she's not worse than what they have. "That might be spectacularly useful - what's your range? What would you want in exchange?"

It depends how well I know people. I think I can hear most of this town from here? I mostly just want to have a place to live with my baby and like food and stuff. Also flowers. There are flowers here, people keep thinking about them, and she wants them.

If they win they can probably get her a house with space for a flower garden and send someone in to plant the flowers and watch the baby, he thinks, it'd be expensive but that's within the normal range of lifestyles for a soldier. - Also, eek, what a range. They'll have to figure out logistics for taking her to the front - there'll be rumors if she goes with them alone, they could maybe bring Teru along but then they'd have seven people on the team two of whom are women. Plus the baby.

"Well, how are you hoping this might work?"

...I dunno, I didn't have a plan or anything.

"Well, the way you'd be most useful to us is if you helped us figure out what the Azanis are planning so we can surprise them and avoid ambushes, so we'd want you at the front for that. Unless you have other magic up your sleeve that would be better?"

I have magic songs. For healing and sleep and looking like the same species as the baby and stuff.

He wonders if that means the baby is adopted and then shuts that line of thinking down as probably rude.

"Healing also sounds useful. And... how does the sleep song work?"

She's not adopted, I'm a transitional species. The song works by... me singing it and people going to sleep? I can leave people out so I don't fall asleep myself in the middle of a verse.

So she can just about handle herself, assuming she can sing them to sleep faster than the Azanis can shoot her. It's unfortunate that they probably can't keep the baby in the capital.

"So it sounds like there are a lot of different ways you could leverage your magic powers here. The best you could do is sneak into Azan and read the king's mind, but that would probably be dangerous. It would be... safer to heal soldiers. Safer still to stay here and heal people in town, assuming we can win." If they lose then she should probably run if she can and otherwise die, the Azanis do take slaves and they maim them. There are rumors they don't take civilians as slaves, but there are also rumors they might want civilians for human sacrifices.

I don't mind healing soldiers, she says after some consideration.

"That sounds extremely useful. We'll have to... figure out who can be allowed near a mind-reader - is there a way to stop you, by the way?"

Yeah but I think it takes a while to learn.

"Maybe you could start teaching us on the way and in a while we'll know. It seems important." She probably can't be convinced to do this to help them protect themselves from her but maybe other people have the same ability and he expects she could want to protect Sesat from those people.

I don't think anybody else is coming.

She's sort of making this difficult and he's not sure if it's on purpose - anything she says might be a lie but if she claimed to explain how to keep their thoughts secret then people would have the option to act like they believe her, whereas this way there's not much room to avoid pushing back without looking cowardly. She's acting like she's going to make a bid for the throne or at least refuse to be subject to any hierarchy, and that makes sense but wow does he ever not want that. This line of thought is quick and only partly conscious, and as he notices himself thinking about it he sets it aside because thinking about it while she's reading his mind is obviously pointless.

"Right. Well. You can come help us win the war and then, I guess, find somewhere for your garden - maybe you can take the land for it from Azan," he suggests, which would put her at least as far from the capital as she is now and very far from Leopard Hill. "What arrangements should we make for the baby in the mean time?" He expects this question to be fraught but it's not like they can just have a baby with them.

(Teru and Valan, without access to the thoughts she's reacting to, are confused. Teru generates a few hypotheses, one of them correct, and is concerned; Valan refuses to think too much or be concerned near a mind-reader.)

I'm not going to give her to somebody else!

"Do you think you can keep her safe at the front?"

I've never been to one before.

If she'd said she was sure he'd have bought it, given all the magic. But absent a compelling reason to think otherwise, he really thinks they should not take the baby there. He thinks she should agree with that much, even though she will definitely not want to agree to the usual setup.

"Hm. Is the range for the healing the same as for the mind-reading?"

...I guess that depends on how well you hear? - okay you don't hear too well so it's much closer range.

"I think maybe at this point we should stop and reassess - I only knew about the mind-reading when I suggested getting involved in the war, but healing is valuable everywhere." Maybe less so in Azan where they maim people! That would be convenient if true so she's going to avoid entertaining any counterarguments. "Maybe it makes more sense for - I forgot to ask your name, sorry, I'm Teru - "

I never earned a name. In Angband you have to earn them.

Like how slaves don't have names? Except the bar is clearly higher, since this person is, well, realistically only not going to rule Sesat because her ambitions are so small. Maybe they just really object to taking names away, so they don't name babies just in case? She hopes it's not a problem that people here have names by default.

"Huh. Uh, I think it might make more sense for you to move to somewhere that isn't a city, maybe on the coast, and work as a doctor for whoever will come to you, and reassess if we actually seem to be losing. Given that you want to keep the baby with you and we have other spies and don't have other magic healers."

Okay, that sounds fine. Is it a long walk?

"Yes." Mora could do it in a day but Teru might not and would rather not try. She's assuming their immigrant is faster than her, since she's taller, but not that much faster, since she at least sort of looks human. "Walking isn't the only way to get there, if you can ride a horse or if you want to be carried. I can arrange that and you can pay me back for it later?"

Okay, thank you! I think I could figure out a horse.

"I can go get one - " how much might the stranger be offended by the implication that she'd have a reason to want to be left alone with the soldiers (Teru is not sure exactly how much token resistance women in Angband are supposed to put up about safeguarding their virtue and it could easily be more than anyone in Sesat bothers with) and how much might she be offended by the implication that she couldn't just put them to sleep if she were bothered? It's hard to even begin to guess. " - as soon as you and Mora have worked out how someone can get in touch with you if they need you after all, and then I can show you the way." Escort the stranger so she stays far from the capital the whole time, that is.

Beka doesn't really know how to engage with those thoughts! Okay. Is this far enough away that I won't be able to hear if Mora thinks at me?

"Well, we have a minimum for your range but I don't think we're very clear on the maximum. Where are the furthest people you can hear right now?"

(Ten miles to the south there are people on their way to the capital, nearly there; the city itself isn't quite in range but it's close. Ten miles to the north is in Iral; there's a restaurant with a view of the ocean, where people who don't care very much about the answer are taking bets on how long the war between Sesat and Azan will last. Ten miles to the west is out in the ocean and no ship happens to be right there right now. Ten miles to the east is a nondescript farm in Iral near its border with Sesat where people are thinking about their work and their romantic drama and not about where exactly they are.)

I could hear the baby a hundred miles off probably but I don't know anybody here well enough to hear more than a couple miles away yet.

All three of them assume this is an underestimate but - she's answering at all, and she might never run into anything important enough to reveal her extra range for, and if she did she'd have to own up to lying, so Mora is optimistic that she wants to at least maintain the pretense of not trying to conquer them. He's going to pretend to buy it.

"In that case, you'll almost definitely be too far to hear me most of the time. We could send a messenger if we knew where to find you - at least to within a couple miles - so you should send someone to find us and let us know once you've gotten settled somewhere."

(Meanwhile Valan is alarmed but tucks that away to contemplate when he's several miles away and instead contemplates when plants have whorls versus spirals and what might happen if they did things some other way. Teru tries to figure out whether she can ascertain anything about the actual range from this and concludes that she can't be sure but it's probably finite.)

I really don't know it more exactly! I'm the only person of my species I've ever met and the other ones with osanwë are better at it and I don't know what parts of Angband are how far from other parts.

Mora doesn't think that's much evidence but it's important if she's telling the truth, and he's mostly outwardly engaging with the world where she's telling the truth right now, so he thinks about how they could test it. But he's stuck, a bit, on how normally he would worry about proposing tests in case it got in the way of someone's plausible deniability, and now he can't really avoid it...

Valan on the other hand stops puzzling over plant parts and starts trying to model the stranger's past and trying to figure out who she is. He tries to avoid examining his reasons for this in too much detail but he thinks whether she has ideals and if so what they are is the most important question they have any chance of answering today. "Is there more we should know about Angband and people where you come from?"

I don't think they're coming after me. A couple other people went in the monster and none of them are here, so it didn't send us all to the same place. So I'm not going to worry about that.

That's a very surprising answer. It suggests she doesn't think Angband has any technology, or any she knows how to make, that she hasn't already seen here. It suggests she doesn't think Angband has any social customs worth talking about, even though she can't possibly have seen much of Sesati society. And if she just missed it - if he imagines missing Sesat and getting involved in a war somewhere else, yeah, he wouldn't reminisce, but he'd probably say something more like it's not useful right now and not I'm not going to worry about that. So for being a complete non-answer that might be the single most revealing thing she's said.

(Valan thinks she's a former serf and most of his uncertainty is in how exactly her society is shaped and whether all the aspects of serfdom go together there. Mora isn't sure but wonders if she's secretly a slave. Teru is leaning toward thinking she's some kind of soldier, but she's not sure either.)

"As long as Sesat stands and you stand with us you'll be welcome here."

(Mora thinks this is an incredibly stupid thing to say, given they're literally right now fighting a war over runaways, but opts not to speak up about it.)

Thanks. She smooches her baby on the head.

The soldiers will head out. Teru will also head out, to get horses, and Beka can either wait here or follow her. Teru's preference is to be able to keep an eye on her on the way but she recognizes that the idea that she could actually keep Beka from doing anything she shouldn't is extremely optimistic.

Beka will go with Teru! She hums on the way.

Teru appreciates the humming. She's glad she doesn't have to interrupt it to say so. There are other things she could be thinking about but she's putting off panicking about all of this and running through all the things she wants to keep secret until later and it's good to have something else to focus on.

Some of the people they pass stare and wonder who Beka is and where she came from. Someone thinks it's really weird that wherever she's from they use tattoos to make people look better instead of worse.

A lot of the places they pass along the way were designed to at least try to appeal to sensibilities that at least resemble those of elves. The stables weren't, but at least no one was specifically trying to make them torturously ugly.

Beka likes it here for the most part. She listens to the tattoo-related thoughts curiously.

If she can pick up on the underlying assumptions behind the surface thoughts, or if she listens to other minds too, she can learn that usually tattoos are used to mark slaves, who - to oversimplify a little - are for forced labor and suffering and denied nice things insofar as that's possible here.

Teru gets them some horses and asks someone to look in on her cousins while she's gone. She - isn't sure what kind of help Beka might need, being new to riding, but her first instinct is to just try thinking through how it works and see if that's enough.

That will do the trick all right. Beka sits on the horse and holds the reins with one hand and the baby with the other.

Then - off they go. She tries to keep near the border, where more of the people in range of the mind-reading will be in Iral. Not just because she's trying to protect her people from having their minds read but because there's probably some chance Beka would bother to tell her if Iral were about to attack.

She's trying not to be afraid and not to think anything incriminating or interesting but she's starting to do a worse job of that, getting anxious and briefly entertaining the thought of convincing Beka to help her take over Sesat and getting more anxious because that's not something she wants Beka to hear her thinking, at least not yet...

Most of what's between them and the coast is farmland. Some of the people working in the fields have the sort of tattoos that mark them as slaves here.

Beka looks at her, sometimes, when she has thoughts about how she doesn't want Beka to hear her thoughts, but doesn't comment on them. She does say Whose slaves are those? once, about a batch of them picking vegetables.

She notices the looking and it makes the mind-reading even more salient and she starts thinking even more about how much she wishes this weren't happening.

The question about the slaves is a nice distraction. Or, really, it's a distraction, which makes it nice. Teru speculates about that based on who owns land around here - her mental map is a little vague, more so as they get farther out. One of the soldiers who'll be with Valan and Mora has an uncle who owns a lot of land around here, or there's Zatar's family. There are minor freeholders but this farm looks too big to be some nobody's. Of course, it's not certain the slaves belong here, they could be rented. Why do you ask?

Tattoos aren't a slave thing in Angband. Melkor's in charge of everything. But it seemed like different people had them here.

What are the slaves thinking.

One of them is worried that they're falling behind and going to be punished for it, one of them is ruminating on how her girlfriend slighted her, one of them (the girlfriend) is distracting herself from romantic drama by paying attention to the beauty of nature all around them, and one is just thinking I want to die over and over.

The claim about Melkor parses as a complete non-sequitur to Teru. She guesses Melkor is their king, or something, but lots of people listen to kings without being slaves, and she has no information on Melkor's tattoo opinions. Yeah, you're doing something totally different with yours. Do they commemorate things you're proud of?

No, they just cover up the scars some.

She's very curious and confused about several aspects of that but can't get all of it into well-articulated questions. Is that normal there?

It... kind of seems nicer, to only ever make people look nicer, instead of disfiguring them on purpose. Makes her sort of sad about Sesat.

Lots of people have tattoos. Usually not for scars, specifically, but because they want them.

She wonders what kind of tattoos she'd want if wanting tattoos were the done thing. She toys with some mental images - maybe a bird or a leopard? It feels weird to think about. She sort of hopes they're going to have a conversation about artistic tattoo designs because that would be a nice completely inconsequential distraction that wouldn't involve constructing plans for how someone with Beka's abilities could take over Sesat at all.

I don't especially want to take over Sesat?

That's very reassuring if it's true, and still a little reassuring as a lie to bother telling. Although... Teru cuts off a train of thought about whether it's also a bad thing if the Star-of-Stars hires Beka to read everyone's minds to keep order. I mostly believe you but I don't really understand not wanting that.

I don't know what I'd do with it. Also it sounds dangerous to try.

Everything's dangerous. And she's not wrong that it's one of the more dangerous things to do but - maybe not if it's impossible to sneak up on her. (...So maybe the trick for hiding thoughts is simple and the kind of thing you can just tell is true once you've run into it, so that actually lots of people will be able to sneak up on her soon. Maybe that's why she still thinks it's dangerous. That or it's just that she needs to sleep sometimes.)

Not knowing what to do with a country is - really constrained ambition. Teru doesn't know anyone like that. Are serfs like that? Maybe? Ruling a country would mean being able to demand a house be built exactly to her specifications. It would mean being able to order five people to take babysitting shifts. Teru would want it because... if there's not enough food for everyone, the Star-of-Stars isn't one of the ones who starves. The Star-of-Stars never has to worry about kissing up to people, and conversely, everyone respects him. No one is going to order the Star-of-Stars killed - or, well, they might, that's how assassination works, but he's not definitely hostage to his brother's good behavior every time there's a war. And she could change all the laws she doesn't like and offer her family nice things. But for any goal she could possibly have, more power would make it easier to achieve.

Should she be entertaining this train of thought? Absolutely not. But she's running low on willpower, and anyway, if her safety is based on Beka not realizing obvious things then she isn't safe and she might as well find out now.

I dunno, I'd rather just raise my baby and not worry about all that.

Sure. Okay. Well, at least Teru's best pitch for it didn't change anything. That's good. And given that, it's definitely time for a change of subject. Maybe the tattoos? Or... Could I learn to do magic or is it something you're born with?

I don't actually know. Maybe songs would work for you.

That sounds worth trying. She wants to look like the baby! If it's temporary. And she wants to heal people, too. How do we test it?

I can teach you a song, once I'm settled in. Are you a good singer?

She's just okay. Better than Valan, worse than their aunt and older cousin. If it takes being a good singer she's willing to put in the time and effort to become one but it would take time and effort.

It might not work if you're not very good. She starts singing. She's very good.

She is not that good. Maybe Beka could show her how singing like that works the same way she showed Beka how riding works? Teru has no idea if it's the sort of skill where practice would still be important if she understood the theory.

Beka can try that! Here is a bunch of vague procedural knowhow about how to sing.

That... seems... helpful? Sort of? She can't do that yet but now she has some idea what exactly it is she's not doing yet. She'll have to actually train, then.

Thank you. I will probably need to arrange real lessons at some point; do you teach?

I never tried. Orcs don't like to sing.

I'm sure I can find someone who's taught this before. Humans do like singing and I'm sure we'll like it even more when we can do magic with it.

She wonders if there's a song for keeping thoughts private or what.

I don't think so but I don't know them all. You could write one.

She'd like that. But first she has to learn to sing at all.

But if it's not a song and it is self-teachable, what is the trick... Beka seems unlikely to lie about it - she told them about the mind-reading, after all, and she's probably sincere about not aiming for conquest - but she might just refuse to confirm or deny - no, she can't do that, because this is how she can communicate with people.

You'll tell me if I figure it out, right?

I guess I'll tell you if I can't hear you?

Thanks.

She buys that. She mulls the problem over. They're using a sound metaphor - hearing thoughts - so maybe what she needs to do is imagine her mind being surrounded with soft stuff that doesn't conduct sound very well? Or - she thinks about what else might work, but while she thinks about that she's already testing her first guess.

You got kind of quiet.

Only kind of?

Hmm. She could... locate all her thoughts on an island too far out to sea for anyone to hear her from shore?

I think it probably takes practice but you're basically on the right track.

Then she'll keep practicing.

They pass soldiers not heading south because they're protecting another border, and more fields, and farmers who aren't slaves, and another town that's nearly surrounded by blooming rock cress. As they pass the town, Teru speeds up to avoid having the people in mental earshot for too long, stops trying to hide her thoughts, and contemplates the strategic reasons for the flowers. The plants are edible and too low for a human to hide in. That seems at least adjacent to the kind of thing Beka might be interested in and she's trying to be a nice distraction while there are so many other people nearby.

Are the flowers PRETTY?

Signs point to yes.

She picks some and pokes them into her braid.

Beka is pretty. A home with some flowers seemed like a kind of pathetic ambition before but suddenly it seems - not any less small, but the same kind of small as a starving person who just wants food. She seems like she should have flowers, and fancier flowers than this, and flowers that match her color scheme better...

Beka resumes singing happily.

It's kind of startling how many different ways Beka is pretty or likes pretty things or seems more at home with prettiness. At this point Teru is starting to be confused that Beka's not also wearing the most beautiful clothes she's ever seen, but maybe she just couldn't get nice fabrics and dyes in Angband or didn't have time.

Onward. The beach has flowers of its own. Not all of which are in bloom this time of year but that just means there's stuff to look forward to later, right?

Start scouting around here for a nice spot to put your house. There'll be a tradeoff between it being in an awkward or unstable spot or it displacing some farmland or it being further from Iral or further inland or something, but if you don't need it big we should be able to arrange something.

(Her idea of a house that's not big is very small indeed, about enough space to lie down in either direction. She figures keeping one baby doesn't require much room and a nicer house directly trades off against garden space.)

Okay!

Beka slides down from the horse and starts... jogging, if you can call it that when it's a jog in gait but faster than Teru could run flat out. Looking for a nice place to put a house and flowers.

It'll depend somewhat on how much construction knowhow she can import and how much she would mind having to redo the place. There's an old ruin that's barely shelter, all jagged half-rotten wood and lichen and mushrooms and the occasional scrap of paint; it could be... maybe less fixed and more remade. Besides that there's a stretch of sand, a huge rocky outcrop with tide pools, a lightly managed forest that gives way to an orchard. There's a fort to the northeast and a different fort slightly further to the north; there's eventually a port town to the southwest, but it's not close.

She likes the dilapidated shack! Mushrooms and all! She tastes one.

That would be a mistake if she were a human but she isn't a human.

I can try to figure out if anyone owns that place. I can't imagine it'll cost much to buy it off them, I can probably lend you enough to cover it.

How does that work, buying things?

She's not sure if the confusion is about trade in general or currency in particular but she can contemplate both those concepts one after the other.

And people'll pay me to sing healing and then I give you the same amount of money? Okay.

Yep! I guess we'll need to figure out how much you should charge for healing.

Normally there'd be interest, and something for the time she's going to have to spend traveling to the capital to explain this to the king and arranging for someone to tell Valan and his crew where to find Beka. But she's not going to ask for that, for a number of reasons, like the fact that Beka came to them in need and the fact that having someone like Beka around is tremendously useful for Sesat.

How much do you think I should charge?

Not her field but she has the advantage of having ever interacted with Sesat's economy before. She still hasn't seen the healing in action but she can come up with some suggestions for prices for different ways it could work.

Also, we should figure out what to tell people in general and what I should tell the king.

How do you tell people in general a thing?

I could mention it along the way, or I could pay someone to stop by every town and read a message from me, or both. Or you could do it but you'd be alarming.

Oh. I probably should avoid alarming people.

People will be alarmed to know you can read minds. If we hide it now but it comes out later that'll be even more alarming, but there's a possibility no one overheard us and Valan and Mora won't tell. She thinks they will tell their chariot crew but maybe not and maybe it won't go farther than that, and she thinks they were probably overheard by the kids if no one else, but she's not sure of any of that.

Won't it be obvious when I talk to anybody?

Wouldn't be surprising if people guessed from that. I think it's not like it'd sound any weirder to say you can talk like that but only understand people when they talk out loud, but yeah, you probably couldn't fool everyone and it really only takes one...

Still leaves details like her range and how to hide from her and that it's possible to hide from her, not to mention her other magic songs.

Well, I guess I'll hope no one is alarmed enough to make a lot of trouble.

Something's odd about how conflict-averse Beka is but Teru can't articulate even to herself what's so odd about it.

I can tell the king everything if you want. No secrets, then?

Nothing I've told you is secret, I think.