Elspeth wonders vaguely how he's going to conduct an invasion chained to a wall. Presumably they will have to let him not be chained to the wall at least temporarily.

He'll be under very restrictive oaths. But he'll ride out with the army.

It's nice that these people have ways to verify honesty but the other thing mostly reminds her of this one witch with the compulsion power who died with the Volturi. He was a creep.

Send me all about that? We don't have your world's magic.

If she wraps up everything she knows about witchcraft and sends it at a human safe speed it will take days and days, she has Addy's memories and they're up to date, but he can have a summary of Pyotr's power, only worked some of the time and Addy never did figure out why but when it worked people who he told to do things just did them.

The Enemy employs oaths that way. I do not. 

Well, Elspeth now knows that he wants her to think that he doesn't do that.

He likes her. 

He has a place arranged for Irisse and her son, and a place arranged for Elspeth where live animals can be easily brought, and he sets Irisse to the letterwriting and then goes to speak to Findekáno. 

Irisse is safe. 

From who?

She was in Nan Elmoth. Eol married her. She murdered him.

Hmmm.

She wants to talk with you, and she wants you to be the one to go take over Nan Elmoth for me. She thinks you won't cause unnecessary bloodshed. 

Findekáno is quiet for a moment. What is your will, my liege?

You swear to take my ends as your own until you next return to me, and then you go collect me Nan Elmoth. Or I have Tyelcormo do it.

All of your ends, not just with respect to the campaign?

Yes.

I'll swear it for all of your goals that I currently know of, with the qualifier that I will not swear additional oaths while under the influence of that one and if I learn of new ends of yours I won't take them as my own.

Thank you, Maitimo says, and kisses him. He grits his teeth. He usually does that. When Maitimo doesn't want him to do that he asks his cousin to swear himself temporarily in love. 

And an hour later Findekáno comes to find his sister and Elspeth.

Elspeth can't talk to her sword from where she is, and has been unpacking memories in real time to occupy herself. She will take ages to run out like this, playing through the lives of random Roman peasants. Pity it's so Eurocentric. She's saving Aro's lunches from his rare trips to other continents for special occasions. Who's this guy?

One of Maitimo's ends is learning more from the stranger; therefore he wants that too, just as much. Hello, he says. You must be Elspeth, and it's nice to meet you but I am actually mostly looking for my sister who apparently commissioned me to conduct a war. Have you seen her?

Last I saw her she was writing letters - Impression of the place.

Thank you. 

He finds Irisse. 

Hey.

Hey, she says. I'm not even sure how much it's you but I had to try.

It's me, he says. Maitimo's war but my - way of thinking, Maitimo's steering but on a course I got to choose, it will be as clean as anyone possibly can make it. I appreciate the thought. Congratulations on making it out.

Thanks. Means I shouldn't tell you things, though. Can I have a hug?

They hug.

I don't want to make you lie to me, she says. So I'm not going to ask anything or volunteer anything you'll be obliged to cover for - uh. If you were really here you'd want to meet your nephew. He's sleeping, but...

Findekáno is delighted by his nephew. 

Someone brings Elspeth some medium-sized live animals a while later.

That's nice of them. She drinks up. Since she's not venomous the meat's not going to be poisoned for anyone else who might want it.

Good to know. They'll make sure not to waste it. The King would love to talk with her at her convenience.

Now's fine, where is he?

Smaller, less dramatic room. It still has places to sit, since Elves are not vampires and need to sit down occasionally. He waves at her. 

Hello! I am rather desperately curious about your world. Do you have a summary for that, or should I pepper you with questions?

I have a summary designed for humans from my world who didn't know vampires and magic existed, but not one designed for Elves.

I am happy to start with that if it's what you have convenient.

Normally it's distributed in pamphlet form because there are more humans like that than there are chunks of Elspeth-time and because some people find her a little overwhelming on top of the whole "vampires are real" thing but she has all the content memorized and can translate it into language-independent meaning pretty easily. Vampires and werewolves and hybrids and their traits and history and the Golden Empire and eating people and forcibly turning them are both illegal now and this is the form you'd have to fill out if you wanted to be a vampire except that's moot here because Elspeth's nonvenomous.

And I'm not at all sure that would work normally on Elves; for one thing, when tortured we can usually just choose to stop having our body, and we can be brought back from being dead.

It's entirely possible Elves can't turn into vampires. Werewolves can't either, at least not active ones, for different reasons, and neither can hybrids for still other reasons.

Okay. How vampires in your world fight wars is therefore not very plausibly helpful to us; I am very interested in how humans do it.

Yeah she still does not think she likes these people enough to dig up any engineering. Now she is contemplating Jasper's Civil War days. There was a lot of malaria going around.