“Do you want me to refill your plate?"

She licked her lips and nodded before offering her own nearly clean plate for him.

“Thanks. I figured you'd probably want to talk to some magical experts, like the human mages. So, I asked Rudd about the human lands and it sounds kinda like a freakin' political mess. It's supposed to be an empire, but there are five realms within it, and the high lords of each realm all just love stabbing each other in the back to get any advantage in power that they can. The stonking huge war in the north isn't helping matters either. From what I could gather, you'd need to request an audience with the Grand Archmage in the Imperial City.

Problem is that folks just don’t request an audience with that guy. The high lords are largely kept at bay by the emperor's near total control of the mages, and he doesn't let them enter the political arena. How does he do this? Well, he keeps them mostly locked up in a ginormous freakin' tower in the middle of a huge Lake. Anyone caught crossing the lake without the emperor's permission gets shot full of arrows on sight."

Gregory aggressively stabbed a few pieces of roasted bird with his fork and unceremoniously dumped them onto his plate.

“Because it's not Like I thought it might be easy, right?" he growled.

“Well, there are others out there who wield magic who aren't in the tower. And as luck would have it, there's a guy who lives here in

Embervine. Human, and a little nuts if the stories about him are to be believed. But I was thinking of maybe going to him first? And when we get the ring we should probably let Valise take a look at it for a while until she's certain it's not going to randomly immolate everyone near it on a whim."

“Now that is an exceptionally good idea, Jan. If this guy turns out to be a dead end though, how exactly do you get permission to cross that lake to get to the tower?"

“Well, a high Lord can make a formal request for a meeting overseen by one of the emperor's servants. Or you could make friends with the imperial family, but that's not all that easy these days by all accounts. The emperor is very old, and doesn't get out of bed much."

“Dammit.”

“Hey! You're pretty young and you wouldn't get out of bed much if you didn't have asses to kick."

“And whose fault's that?"

She smirked as he turned and settled a fully re-stocked plate of food in front of her.

"Ok, fine. You might be able to get an audience with the emperor if you could get Grolfir to request it. The alliance between humans and orcs began in the imperial city, and by all accounts the empire actually wants to keep the orcs on good terms. It's the other realms where there's a lot of anti-orc sentiment. Particularly in Uldrin, which isn't helped by the fact that Embervine and Uldrin share a hell of a long border with each other."

“Well, let's worry about playing politics when we come to it. Although with that being said, I think you should probably take point in all of that."

"Me?" Janette's jaw fell open to the point where she dribbled a little bit of fruit juice.

“Yeah, you. You clearly know more about all this than anyone else, except maybe Rudd. And, I like the guy, but Rudd isn't someone I'd want in charge of any important diplomatic meetings. At least not when there's alcohol available within ten square miles."

“B-but-" Janette tried to protest whilst wiping up the fruit juice and managed to bite her Lip in the process.

“Jan, I know you don't know how to fight yet, but the truth is that you're one of the most psychologically intimidating people I know. You can make friends when you want to, and after being treated like one of your enemies for years, I can't say I envy them too much. I've actually been thinking about this for a while, and I guess you could say that me letting you handle the investigation into Wren was kind of a test.