((This thread has a potential to get all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, since Tranquillina has invited any and all magi to take some kind of action by sending Loys to inform the magi of how she's handling Cumhachd. Roberto might take this as notice to try and evict her, despite his conversation with Stultus, and anyone else can get involved. They may go to her, they may go to Cumhachd, it doesn't matter to me. Just make sure that there's liberal quoting going on so we know what's being responded to. Magi who go and seek Cumhachd out might get paused in action, until other things get resolved, depending on how much is going on. I'll try and match up the timing of events, so if you're vague about them, it could also be helpful. For example someone could be going to Cumhachd, while she's visiting Marcus, as that represents a relatively significant chunk of time...))
(( I'm trying to stay the heck out of it. I'm very trying. Er... I mean... I'm trying very hard. ))
(( EDIT: humphs at JL. Well, fine, be that way...))
Stultus was going to write a note, he really was. But it occurred to him that he'd have to shlep all the way down the mountain just to find a servant to deliver said note, so he might as well talk to Tranquillina directly and save his right hand for better things. (Drawing thaumic diagrams for the Mentem spell he's designing, of course. Get your mind out of the gutter.)
Accordingly, he shows up at Tranquillina's doorstep and asks to see the maga.
"She's out, sir..." stammers Choiniere. "Visiting master Marcus, I believe."
"That's all right," replies the dwarf, planting himself in one of the chairs in the visiting room and pulling out a wax tablet and a stylus. "I'll wait."
((Cool, a little comic timing thrown in for light relief ... even though Stultus arrives in Tranquillina's suite before she returns, it's already been determined that she used Leap of Homecoming to return directly to her inner sanctum. So she started the whole eavesdrop-on-Loys spell in the back room, not realizing that Stultus was even out there. She'll probably start on fixing the Arcane Connection too ... Stultus might be there until dinnertime 
))
Here's what Tranquillina overhears: (Cumhachd in red, Loys in blue)
This is a painful process. Maybe that's why she didn't do it.
I don't care, she was just using me.
People get used all of the time, dear boy. What makes you think I'm not using you?
But I'm choosing to do this, you're not forcing me.
Maybe I've manipulated you into making this choice?
I don't understand, why would you tell me all about this, and then back out now?
Because until now your life has been easy. After we start, it will become much harder, and there will be times you question why you even did this.
It hasn't been as easy as you think it has, Cumhachd.
You can't imagine how hard it is going to get. You think Eskil and Stultus had an easy time of it? Stultus had been kicked around and called names for years, and was toughened up for the process. Eskil had a loving home and came to me well educated, she assumed that what I offered her was access to unlimited knowledge. And it is, but the price for learning is quite high. Eskil found herself unwilling to pay for it in the way I required. From the moment we start this process, I own you for 15 years. You eat what I tell you to eat, you sleep when I tell you to sleep, and you cease to enjoy many of the privileges you have enjoyed as Eskil's lab assistant. I don't require a lab assistant, I require much more than that.
I'm ready. And I realize what I'm doing, and I realize that either she was keeping this from me for her own purposes, or she just didn't care.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Her own desires cloud her observations, but then again, you are naturally gently gifted. I won't have to work hard to give that to you, like I did with Stultus.
I don't understand, but I expect I will.
Indeed, you will come to understand that, and so much more, in time.
A chair being moved and footsteps can be heard then, from what sounds like a different angle coming from behind Loys, Very well. I claim you as my apprentice.
Loys screams in pain as Cumhachd begins opening his Arts.
((How long will Tranquillina continue to listen?))
(( Sure, whatever works. 
))
((this whole post OOC)) Tranquillina's not much good at D: Concentration anyway; I'm pretty sure that this shocking twist will end the spell, possibly even knocking her out of her chair.
This is going to make her ... furious, but that's not exactly right. This is about the deepest humiliation she could imagine: her first mater, waltzing in and in less than a week realizing something crucially important that had eluded Tranquillina for five years. And (in her eyes) then Cumhachd takes the action that would make her look as bad as possible. Yoinking a bright Gifted man out from under her, on the doorstep of her own covenant! This might, to understate the matter, cause a setback to any planned negotiation for a truce between them 
From the player's perspective, I could have sworn I had Loys tested for the Gift back when he was introduced. But I searched the forum pretty thoroughly, and I must be making that up. (Maybe I rolled some dice offline or something....) Viscaria definitely suggested testing him for the Gift. Noting Tranquillina's defensive reaction, I suppose it's consistent to think that she never actually did so. (She's not really ready for an apprentice anyway, looking at her Arts.)
Anyway, clearly there's a dramatic story unfolding now, and there's no reason to derail that. I just feel a little dumb (that's nothing next to how Tranquillina feels!).
In the dark: Tranquillina sits on the floor for a Diameter, than another at least. Her throat is dry and irritated; she has to blink frequently; the sides of her jaw are sore. The stone floor is icy against her knuckles. There's a pounding in her head, as if memories of her own first days as an apprentice, suddenly taking physical form in her bloodstream, are swelling up the veins in her temple. A soft, piteous moan comes from somewhere in the tiny room.
Eventually Tranquillina snaps her head around to the right (not that she can see the cloth with Cumhachd's saliva in her lab, nor the intervening wall for that matter). She stands up swiftly, banging her knee on the reading table. She feels her way to the door into her small hallway, then limps the four strides to the door leading out to her receiving room, which she hurls open. There is a circle inscribed on the floor, the doorway its diameter; bent over low, Tranquillina readies herself to place a ward upon it. As she begins to walk its circumference, she calls out to the servant stationed outside in the hall, her voice loud but shaking noticeably: "Choiniere! Bring a meal here, I shall not go out this eve. Indeed, for the next - "
But at that moment, a small sound or a peripheral sight brings Stultus's presence to her attention. As if thrown back by a spell, Tranquillina collapses against the wall with a yelp. She squeezes her eyes and breathes rapidly in and out, her arms shaking. "What - do you want?!" she yells, her voice pitched high and shrill. With her torso bent diagonally across the baseboard and her gaze darting about wildly, she is the perfect picture of a cornered animal.
Stultus had, of course, spent the time rehearsing all the various ways the conversation could go -- and, of course, Tranquillina promptly managed to knock all his plans into a cocked hat. She appeared from completely the wrong direction, and her appearance startles him quite badly: for a moment all he can manage is an incoherent "What? How the hell did you..."
Thankfully, the door chooses this exact moment to creak open, Choiniere's startled face appearing within, and the interruption gives Stultus the second or so to gather his wits. He looks up at the servant. "You heard your mistress. Bring a meal, please." His voice is level, as if to say 'there is nothing wrong, no reason to panic'.
He turns back to Tranquillina as the door closes again. "I came here," he explains gently, "to tell you what I think Cumhachd's next move will be. I've seen her dance this dance before; I can predict the next pirouette. However, at the moment, all I want is to know is what's wrong, and whether -- and how -- I can help."
((Start right off with a Folk Ken roll: Per 2 + Folk Ken (opinion of her) 4 + stress die 6 = 12. I think that's definitely good enough to read Stultus's sincerity ... even though she's not at her best, to put it mildly.))
Letting her eyes fall shut beneath a troubled brow, Tranquillina leans her head back against the wall. She tries to clear her throat, but it turns instead into a coughing fit that wracks her body. The painful hacking echoes in the otherwise silent room. Eventually she gets her body under control, save for a short series of sniffles. With a heavy sigh, she contorts her torso and moves hand over hand to turn it until her head is farther away from the wall than her legs. For a dismal moment, it almost looks like she is going to crawl across the floor. But she tenses up her whole body and pushes herself up to a standing position; coughing again a few times, she shuffles rigidly over to the nearest chair and places her left hand on the corner of its back. With its support safely reached, she seems to shrink a full inch, her body sagging from the strain.
She squeezes her eyes shut again, panting towards the floor. Then, in a low-pitched voice almost too quiet to be heard, she finally responds: "Start a fire. - please. If you would...."
Tranquillina steers herself around to the front of the chair like an elderly maid, lowering herself onto its comfortable cushion. With a shaky voice and hand, she uses a Rego cantrip to summon a throw from the long couch opposite her; she lifts her legs up onto a footstool and wraps the throw around them. It takes a while for her to stop shivering.
Stultus nods, and ambles over to the fireplace, going down on his knees in front of it. It takes him a while to build the fire up -- he's doing it the mundane way, and the coals are refusing to flare back into life, and he loses his grip on a piece of firewood at one point, and, and, and... and Tranquillina may well realize that he's using the fire-building to give her time to compose herself while his back is turned.
He finally finishes, wipes his hands with a cloth and pulls a chair closer to Tranquillina's, clambering back into it. "So."
((fit this into the timeline where ever you wish JL))
Korvin, dressed in his business robes, makes his way across the bridge and into the regio. He knocks on the door to the villa and announces himself.
We'll do it while Tranquillina is with Marcus.
Korvin notes a sanctum marker is outside the villa's door.
"Korvin, how delightful for you to come visit me. I must say that you and your covenant have made me feel so welcome. Cumhachd says that with such a straight face and warm smile that Korvin can't quite fathom the meaning. "And young Loys here, is such a delight. Eskil has done an adequate job to seeing to his education. I would invite you in, but you'll observe I have been forced to place a sanctum marker on this villa. I apologize for that, and I intended to send you a note about the necessity, as Eskil and two of her grogs just walked in, without so much as a knock on the door. She became difficult to talk to so, I had to excuse her from the villa."
If she notes any concern on Korvin's face about the sanctum marker, "It isn't my intention to be as a guttersnipe, and suckle from the largess of Mons Electi. No, I intend to pay my way. Pay for the use of this villa, the food and fuel. Tell me, you're familiar with the Rhine, aren't you? She waits for a nod from Korvin, and continues, "They have those peregrinatores, tell me, do you have provisions for people like that? That describes my situation, now."
(( Crap. Korvin was the one magus Stultus had doubts about with regards to that move... ))
Korvin looks a bit perplexed at the sanctum marker until Cumhachd explains it. Of course. I apologize that it was necessary for your privacy. Your House sometimes has that effect on people. The tribunal has nothing as formal as a peregrinatore. You may stay here as a coenobite. Like Marcus. You are permitted to attend our council meetings and have a say but not a vote.[1] I will inform the Redcaps of your current residence.
Part of my visit was to attempt to determine if the length of you stay might be known? The reasons are purely selfish for the Covenant. You see we may be the permanent site of Normandy's Tribunal and thus we would need this villa in 5 years.
[1] I think this is what we do with Marcus. If not I reserve the right to edit :mrgreen:
Yeah, Marcus is a Protected Guest. He shows up to council meetings if the mood strikes. He performs occasional services to the covenant as a way to pay his way.
"Oh, I don't need to attend council meetings. I think that might be too much for dear Eskil. But with regards to this villa, I chose it to be a bit out of the way, and it was my understanding that you built expecting a large gathering of people from outside the Tribunal, because of the Lotharingian issue and the timing so close to the Grand Tribunal. Do you really think I'll be in the way when Tribunal arrives?" Her argument has a certain logic to it. Facilities were built for excess capacity due to the number of magi predicted to attend from other Tribunals.
"One last thing. I have enough vis to pay for it, would it be possible to cast an Aegis around this villa? Regios sometimes have unwanted residents who poke their heads in, and it would be worth it to me to not have to bother with them. I'd need some assistance since I don't know the spell, of course, everyone from Mons Electi should participate, too. A simple fourth magnitude Aegis should be enough for my needs, but I'll pay for whatever version someone at the covenant knows and can cast. Just want it to keep the pests away."
"And now, since we have formalized my status, and presuming I can consider this villa to be inviolate, I will relocate my sanctum marker further within the structure, so I can allow visitors in, and we don't have to carry on like vagabonds in the street. Is that agreeable?
Without really waiting for Korvin to respond, she calls into the villa, "Loys, I'll be staying here longer, please make the sanctum marker outside the door to my lab, and when you're done with that, erase the one out here."
"Yes, Cumhachd, right away."
Turning back to Korvin "He's such a sweet young man. Did you want to wait while he does this, and then I can invite you inside for some refreshment?"
((And technically, there is a Tribunal in 1229.2, to determine whether Mons Electi will be the permanent spot or if it will go to another covenant, as before. We can work it out OOC, and treat it as fait accompli and not try and do another Tribunal thread so soon. There wouldn't be any competitions at this special Tribunal, just discuss the issue, vote and go.))
Very well. For now but if we get more guests than expected, you will have to move. I'm sure we can find a nice room for you for a season if it came to that.
I will be able to do that for you but I will bring it up to the council to see if Isen or Jacques could also do it. Our Aegis spells cover a larger area than normal so they will be more expensive than a mag4 spell. Even though the protection will be just mag 4. It will work for now until someone can learn the spell without the size difference.
No. That is all for now. I will be in touch.
When Korvin returns, he visits or leaves a note to everyone telling them of Cumhachd status and of her sanctum marker. He will also inform the next Redcap of her presents at Mon Electi.
((Someone needs to make a Survival roll! 
))
The lengthy span of time that the fire takes to get started is fine by Tranquillina (who doesn't really analyze whether Stultus might be doing it intentionally: she'll take anything that's not another brand new crisis right now). She does her best not to flinch away when Stultus pulls the chair closer. Unfortunately, her best is pretty lame right now, so the flinch is quite noticeable; a corner of her mind idly observes that Stultus told her not to mask her reactions anyway, so maybe it's fine.
Tranquillina knows how social interactions work: she asked a favor of him, he obliged, then he said "So", which means it's her turn to speak. And she does want to speak, or at least she wants speaking to be a thing that makes her feel better (not that she can really envision what feeling better feels like, any more), or at the very least she wants to take things that are inside her and purge them and maybe spoken words would form a suitable vector for that eviction, or at the very, very least, breaking the silence would mean changing something and really, when everything is as terrible as it could possibly be, then changing anything must be good, logically speaking. But the problem is figuring out what to say. (She nods a couple of times, to try to indicate to Stultus that she does know it's her turn to talk, because so far he could be forgiven for thinking that she missed her cue.) The recent wound, namely Loys's apprenticeship, is too raw to think about, let alone talk about - and anyway, she can't really admit to that knowledge yet, due to the methods she employed to gain it.
So she sits there, not knowing what to say, and the fire is crackling and that sound and its heat are trying their best to comfort her, and the little magus is sitting there patiently, seeming quite willing to give her as much time as she needs, but surely he is judging her from her silence and suddenly she can't not speak any longer so she says the first thing that comes into her mind, which has really been present in her mind every moment for the past week or so, and actually this could well be the right person to answer it anyway, but mostly it's time that it was said, was acknowledged. "Why is she here, Stultus." she says. She hopes grammar will make the question clear, since she doesn't have the energy to add an interrogative inflection to the end of the sentence. "Why ... is she even here." She takes a long, moist breath in through her nose; her eyes flick ever so briefly to him but she is nowhere near being able to meet his gaze.
Stultus regards Tranquillina for a very long moment. There are very, very many things he could say in answer to that question, but in his judgment Tranquillina isn't ready to hear most of them. So he settles for the absolute literal truth. It's almost certainly not what Tranquillina actually asked, but he believes it's the only answer she is in a space to comprehend. "I don't know, Tranquillina," he answers, voice quiet and slow. "Not exactly. I have some educated guesses, mind you, but they are just that -- guesses."
((This might be a short-lived conversation, if Tranquillina isn't willing to divulge what just happened to Loys and Stultus doesn't deem her ready to hear what he has to say. But we'll give it one more shot ))
"By all means, guess away," Tranquillina allows. In fact, her enunciation is so poor that Stultus doesn't really catch her exact words, but her one-armed invitational gesture makes the intent clear, although the effect is broken somewhat by her sudden sneeze. "I can only assume that her favorite puppy finally died from being kicked one too many times, and she remembered what a satisfying target I made." Can't she move on to torturing Loys, she hopes uncharitably.