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Confirmation reaches them in the spring that Elwing of Sirion has the Silmaril.
It takes as long as the spring only because they weren't looking. They can stretch the oath that far, they can be disinterested in knowing - but now they know, and so there it is. Elwing of Sirion is twenty-three. Half-man, so fully grown. Sirion is a city of refugees. Elves and Men and, since there are Men, children. Elwing herself has infant children.
They debate whether to send messengers. Debating is allowed, even protracted debating. The Oath, these days, is loud in their minds, and louder when they're pushing it like this, but they drag out the debate for a few months. Messengers will probably be shot on sight. The last time Elwing of Sirion received news of the House of Fëanor it would have been the news that her brothers, twins, aged seven, had not survived the sack of Menegroth.
They send messengers anyway. The messengers are shot on sight. They have good armor, Fëanorian armor, and return home injured but not lethally. Maglor's songs no longer stitch them together. War makes you worse at healing. Maglor's songs are more powerful than ever - he can knock back a wave of approaching enemies, he can make a blade's next touch deadly, he can make them faster and more impervious to danger, but he can no longer do healing.
Maedhros, when he thinks about this, thinks that perhaps there needs to be part of you that is not broken for healing spells to draw on. Or perhaps the Enemy is amused to strip that away first. Perhaps the Enemy finds it suited to the theme as the Oath tugs and yanks and twists them into violence against the lands they once defended and the peoples they once sheltered.
They send messengers to Sirion again. The messengers deliver a plea for the Silmaril, an offer of anything at all in exchange. The messengers do not return at all.
The Enemy is many many hundreds of miles from here but at night Maedhros can hear him in his head. Is it so implausible that I really let you go? the Enemy likes saying. You serve me better free than you ever would have willingly.
The Oath allows them to work slowly. They begin planning the sack of the refugee camp even more slowly than the Oath allows, so slowly that its currents are constantly tugging at them. Any slower and the currents would erode all the things they care about which are not the Oath, and it would be a disaster to go to Sirion once they've been stripped of their capacity to care about anything that is not the Silmaril. So they do not hold out forever. But they work as slowly as they can.
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He walks out into the courtyard. Sits down in the sun.
And Maglor is happy to teach her more songs.
He again does not notice the sun setting.
imeanforever
She can finish the bit of thing they're working on, but then excuses herself to go eat.
Maedhros meets her there.
And silence, unless she wants to start a conversation.
"I don't think so. You have the information that I'm not lying at least about the oaths and the orders and the fact the Enemy would certainly try to hold you prisoner and torture you. If you think of more questions I can bring you more orcs, but otherwise I'll have our guards back on normal procedures."
"I can't spare escorts for all of them."
"That's not unwillingness, it's literal incapacity. There are around a thousand of us left, everyone's on an exhausting duty rotation to keep us fed and safe, I can spare perhaps twenty for occasional escort missions but I can't start an orc-exporting business."
"I hope it is obvious at this point that I'm likely to explain myself and not likely to retaliate when you do say things, so you don't have to just make wounded faces at me."
"One advantage of my fearsome reputation is that orcs give me a very wide berth unless specifically ordered to do otherwise. We don't actually kill very many."
"A few hundred a year, probably."
"During the siege of Himring during the Dagor Bragollach I probably killed thousands of orcs every day, hundreds of thousands over the course of the two years."