"I agree. We are bringing them one of our logs too, I'm doing a lasting heating enchantment on it, hopefully that will give ... something for the winter. I'll see if they can communicate anything else we could do when we go." Lucifer will be there to make a good show for Nott, and maybe secretly to also do a good thing, but Istredd will try his best to go the compassionate route. They are limited in what they can do.

"If they won't pay Yenna for her work, they're definitely not going to pay me." Yennefer teaches people on a higher level and she also has two assistants of her own, and they are probably paid. But she is not. Istredd always uses his familial nickname of her when around friends, but he is more careful to call her Yennefer or the Lady Yennefer in Thorne Castle. "She got more access in exchange. Maybe that's how I get the same to certain texts."

It's about proving himself skilled and useful and knowledgeable first. He wants to get access to the books about other forms of magic. He'd like to get more about the history of the continent too, more than what they allow. "That's what mages do in my sphere. We don't get paid, we get knowledge or power or both."