Well, hopefully he will osanwë Kib with this development as soon as he is in range.

Alive, got him, he's lucid, it was almost too easy, he's in pretty bad shape and I had to make it worse - his voice is shaking, even over osanwe - but he'll live, we're coming back, he confirmed the layout of Angband we had but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true...

- almost too easy? Do you need me to send something out to check, I can have a bird meet you -

It's definitely him, osanwe shouldn't work otherwise. A bird couldn't verify if he's under enemy mind-control.

I could send something to see if you were invisibly followed.

Go ahead.

And a courier-style chassis with all the cheating-with-servants upgrades flies out to look around -

And sees the two of them, on a pterodactyl, flying home.

It comes back.

Just the two of you.

Okay. Can you tell people to expect us - we need healers -

Yeah. Anyone in particular, or just - this happened, everyone be prepared -?

The latter. I'll explain myself to people individually later - 

- Maitimo, Kib's helping me - want to say hi to Kib -

He flinches, slightly. Hi, Kib, he says obediently.

Hi.

He positions himself a little better. He can stop singing for altitude now that they can glide back home. Makes a probably-futile attempt at making Maitimo more comfortable. We've got healers on the ground. If there's anything you want me to do - 

I'm all right, he lies instantly.

...great. I love you. I'm sorry. I love you. 

And home.

Kib has told everyone the gist of the story by the time the pterodactyl lands.

Then they will just surround Maitimo with healers, and with golems behind the healers to stop him if he does anything -

I am assuming it'll be awful for him if we tie him down - 

And there are people around but he kind of could use a hug. He settles for a hand on Kib's shoulder.

Kib leans into the hand subtly as he can. Shouldn't be necessary, he's not stronger than a golem...

I never really imagined that would be the easy part. Did - did you hear, when I said 'say hello to Kib' - the tone of his voice -

It did not escape me.

He watches silently. Maitimo's in bad shape. It's not that he'd imagined better but he'd been trying not to imagine it. Maitimo holds very still when the healers tell him to.

If they somehow got him to swear to something -

Is there any way to find out short of asking him to swear that they didn't?

Nope. And even that would only prove that he doesn't remember it.