"I don't know. I could move it now to some other location, you could pick it up from there later when there's no suspicion. Then I could tell people I'm giving you food to take back to yours, so when you do fly off no one sees."

"Okay. Where will you put it?"

"The children have a play yard, I can put it there."

"Where is it?"

"Opposite side of the palace, sort of a courtyard except the back is still under construction."

"Okay. What will the bundle look like?"

"Heap of laundry, probably, covered in fishing net."

"Not 'probably'. I need to be able to recognize it. When would be the least suspicious time for me to collect it?"

"In an hour or two, when I can have had time to tell everyone I gave you food to take back to your people."

"All right. When I've left this room, act normally except insofar as is necessary to plant the Silmaril, the described bundle around it sufficient to conceal it, and the key to its box without any suspicion you can possibly evade or defuse. As necessary to maintain the fiction but not extraneously or in any tellingly irregular manner, tell people I am taking food that you offered me. If anyone is suspicious enough to make trouble in the relevant time frame, telepath me their name and face and what's going on in as much detail as I would need to find them and address the situation informedly. Continue to minimize suspicion until I have been gone with the Silmaril for two hours. At that time you may freely act. Do you detect any flaws in this plan from my perspective?"

"The Silmaril will glow even with that much wrapping if you wait until it's dark. You should leave during the day. I think it'll still be day in two hours. I haven't been outside, I'm not sure. The House of Fëanor will try to kill you for stealing their Silmaril. I don't know if that's a flaw in the plan from your perspective."

Nod. Sigh. "I won't insult you by thanking you. Plan stands without revision. If you have to explain what we were talking about, pretend we were discussing something intensely private to me and also my need for food." She opens the door, looks shaken and grateful, and says, "- thank you for seeing me, Lady Elwing."

"My pleasure," says Elwing.

And Promise goes out and makes sure she knows where the yard is and makes herself innocuous for an hour and then goes to check the yard again.

And it's there; clothes, wrapped in fishing net.

Nothing shoots at her.

Great. Then she can lug the damn thing all the way back to the fortress.

A cry goes up as she returns, and he waits for her on the ramparts.

She goes and plunks it down. "You didn't tell me it glowed. You didn't tell me that it plus enough stuff to make it not visibly glow weighs half as much as I do!"

"..how much do you weigh?" He unravels it, opens the box, touches it, immediately removes his hand. Goes very very still.

"Thirty pounds."

"I'm hungry. I'm otherwise fine. They sang me almost all healed, I didn't know there was mortal magic. Is something wrong with it? Did they have a decoy or something?"

"No. It's the real thing. You prevented a war. Someone bring me food for Promise. We are, again, not mortals, but have magic. My family no longer has any healing magic, because we've been fighting for so long."