"You want to be early?"

"I'm not sure. My instincts are to be late because they seem rather determined to make this happen and mildly annoying them would be entertaining, but I am not actually going to give that any weight."

"I wouldn't assume we could talk freely - without writing out our entire conversation, anyway - at the parley location. I suppose we could show up and then amuse ourselves uninformatively, I do in fact prefer to pick up a violin at least once every few weeks..."

"I have never seen an interaction between two people that I'd call 'uninformative' but the Maiar are probably worse at people than me."

"Well, useless, anyway, I'm sure you could learn something about me watching me play the violin but I wouldn't expect it to get you anywhere with nefarious plots, am I wrong?"

"Probably not. I could probably sit and watch you in a suitably boring way, too."

"But I don't think there is actually a reason to get there early."

"All right. Then I'll get some more done here. See you in a few hours?"

"Yeah, see you."

And now Cam has a violin under his chin and a bow in his hand.

Of course he does. Maitimo smiles and shakes his head and walks off to check on progress at being useful reinforcement to the locals and earning enough trust to evacuate them. 

Cam only violins for a little while, and then he gets back to reading miscellaneous local things for tidbits of information and a general sense of zeitgeist.

And twelve hours later Maitimo's back, energized. "Whenever you're ready."

"Now works."

Into the shuttle, off to the parley. Mmm coffee.

The location in question is ugly. Bombed out, and then the rubble dragged away, leaving scars in the land. Atop this the Enemy has built a circular slab of something that looks like marble, and atop that is a table, and there's no one there. 

"I'm slightly tempted to put something else on top of that as half showboating half not knowing what might be up with that dais and table."

"One possible thing he could do is have a bunch of invisible people on it," he says, "so probably don't do that."

Cam radars the place.

Not on the dias. All around it, though. Also the lay of the land is rather subtly different. 

"Charming," he says, looking for a clear place to land.

It'll have to be a little distance off.

So he lands a little distance off.

The landscape doesn't change. 

Cam hands Maitimo a radar. "Watch your step."

"Thanks."

The people all around them are very still. 

Are they even, like, alive - infrared goggles time -