"Well. He didn't."

"I'm sorry."

"What, that you didn't convince him to leave you there?"

"That I made either of you care about me in the first place."

"My recollection assigns you comparatively little responsibility there."

"Could've refused to apologize after the dance, said I'd meant every word. You'd probably be happier now."

"Are you expecting me to be, what, such an unconvincing imitation that I evince a preference for blissful ignorance."

"I hate that even if he never got a word out of me and doesn't have mind control he is still using me to hurt you. I hate it."

"Price of admission for being a person and not a golem, I have an emotional range, it responds to things."

"Would you - should I have tried harder to recover more convincingly, I could be acting normally by now-"

"Did I tell you when it came up with Findekáno that we can't figure out a purpose for which the state he recovered you in could possibly be optimized except maybe confusing us or unstrategic sadism? If you were acting normally by now you'd be a match for my best guess at sabotage-optimized, not exactly better."

"And what would you have done about that?"

"Are we assuming I'm convinced all is well or that I notice that you're thusly optimized?"

"I am hoping that at some point in my absence you learned a modicum of paranoia?"

"Some. I was not about to produce all the details of a master plan to keep you away from anything delicate if you said 'do let's speculate in detail about option two'."

"I think if I were compromised I would have killed you right away, depending on how much 'compromised' resembles 'working for the Enemy'.

"I have a golem on me all the time too, and I did check to make sure there weren't any Maiar or anything smuggled along with you."

"And you think I couldn't have arranged to get closer than our golems currently permit, if that'd been an objective?"

"The one foot perimeter is for your comfort, not my safety. These things are fast. I guess you could have gotten lucky - for certain values of lucky - but you'd only get the one shot."

"It was demonstrated to me in Angband that humans are very fragile."

"Demonstrated? I wouldn't think he'd be careless with the kids, it's not like he has a way to replace them."

"He has adults. Don't know how many. I assume he grabbed them when everything went to hell or we'd have noticed. Only saw a few. It's presumably why he was willing to trade us the kids - he does not strictly need them." A pause.

"He's trying to figure out whether humans can be altered to bear or father children, and if so whether the resultant children are servantmakers - think the goal is something that breeds like orcs, has binding oaths, and can servantmake.  I should probably have told you sooner. I told my family and Nolofinwe."

"I do not know of any successes on that project."

"Small mercies. Anyway. We're kinda fragile. I would still bet on the golem."