Two questions about Salvage and Discard

a) With salvage, say you already had the max 9 novas in your vault, can you salvage 6 novas, taking you to 15 which is more than your original off-element allowance?
b) Say it's round 4, so 20 discard for loss. If your deck only has 18 non-pillar/pend cards, do you discard the excess from vault? or are you saved those discards?