Maitimo looks like he's dying.

He is not in fact literally chained to the wall very often - Elves die - but whenever he's not there's an oath. This one is not to leave the room. He can go over and stop Maitimo from collapsing on the floor and have him collapse on the bed instead. "I'm going to call for help -"

"Don't. I'm not injured. Don't - shouldn't have to touch me -"

He steps back against the wall and watches while Maitimo curls into a ball and weeps.

After a few minutes Maitimo says "you can go."

"...I swore not to leave these rooms," he says, in case Maitimo has somehow forgotten this. "It expires when I chain myself to your wall again, and then you can give me different orders if you so please."

"Right," he says, "okay, let's do that - Eru -"

"What did you do?"

"Realized -"

"You want me to chain myself to your wall again?"

He shudders and shakes his head. "Want to let you go. Need your oath to expire -"

"What?"

"I am trying to let you go and if that's the first step then we should do it only I am not coping as well as I thought I'd be able to and I'm not sure I can actually unchain you from the wall yet - couple minutes, though -"

"Coping with what?"

"With realizing what I did to you."

If this is a game it'd be an unusually sadistic one. 

He defaults to standing against the wall with his hands folded in front of him. Kneeling makes Maitimo happier but Maitimo doesn't look in a position to be happy either way. "Did you swear something?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"To regret what I did to you."

"Why?"

"Wanted to, obviously!"

"Nothing about that is obvious."

Maitimo curls even tighter into a ball and quivers. 

After a minute he says "I swear I'll let you go."

That has a lot of loopholes.

Findekáno believes him anyway. 

Findekáno walks over to the wall and chains himself to it and feels the oath expire. 

Maitimo drags himself out of bed and steadies his hands enough to use the key around his neck and releases him. Then he collapses sobbing on the floor again.

Well, time to test if he meant it. "Do you want me to call someone for you."

"No."

"Okay," he says, "goodbye," and when he opens the door Maitimo twitches miserably but that's it and if he's not stopped by guards on his way out maybe -

He lets the door swing shut behind him.

He walks.

He doesn't actually have a destination in mind, he doesn't actually know any of these people, but -

Elspeth is thinking very loudly.

She should probably send a letter before showing up wherever Aredhel is. She could also go back to Tumunzahar but she doesn't actually like it very much being around people who not only can't read her mind but can't let her read it to them either. And Aredhel seemed nice. Maitimo seemed nice for a while too, of course, but she can't just go around assuming absolutely everyone is horrible.

Elspeth?

...yes?

I actually don't know how to explain - 

- I'm not under any mind-altering oaths right now, for whatever that's worth -

can I accompany you to my sister's?

Oh did Maitimo let him go early for some reason that's nice and therefore really suspicious. I don't mind.

...he was planning to let me go at all?

It took a truly unreasonable amount of arranging and 'he was planning' is a generous description.

Thank you. 

He let me go and then collapsed on the floor in horrible agony. I'm just testing whether he meant it before I decide what to do about that.

...collapsing on the floor she doesn't know anything about, she would have expected him to mention it if he had some kind of condition that made that a likely result of letting his mind controlled sex slave free. And also that this would not make it happen faster.

He said that he swore to regret what he'd done to me. Which could definitely cause the collapsing in horrible agony, I guess, depending -

- should we go talk to him instead of leaving for my sister -

...well that's up to Findekáno but maybe he should, like, think about that in some relatively neutral setting first.

"Let's go ride towards my sister and see if anything stops us."

Okay.

Nothing stops them.

After a while he stops his horse and dismounts. I would prefer talking this over with another person to talking it over with my horse, but that'll suffice if you want nothing to do with figuring this out.

She doesn't mind, although she has obvious drawbacks as a sounding board. Possibly not as many as a horse has.

Yours being that you hate him? I'm not even sure that's a drawback.

General inability to shut up at least metaphorically, projecting personal and impersonal memories onto local situations beyond what's probably really appropriate, and, yes, hating Maitimo.

Yeah. 

I think now that I've verified that he apparently actually decided to let me go, I should go back and figure out what's going on. 

To what extent will going back actually help with that?

How else would we figure it out?

She has occasional luck with the sourceless truth. Barring that there may be other clues he doesn't have to go back to get, just recontextualize.

So he sends her the whole memory.

- this reminds her vaguely of something and she's not sure what and she mulls it over and then suddenly Allirea must unfade back home because it's like that listen quick she's going to lose ability to focus on the story presently but it's almost like how Demetri died and - huh, lost her train of thought.