The secret lab is in a bland office building with 'American Home Insurance' on a placard outside. There's an underground parking garage and an elevator that responds to her key card. "I think they're a bit paranoid, really," she says conversationally, "but our patrons take aesthetics very seriously." A shrug.

You have no idea, Imliss thinks but does not say. "So I see."

It's a lovely lab. Spacious and well-equipped and stunningly pretty, like someone not only let an interior designer set up the place but actually did not pile up equipment after they did. There's a conference room to the side. A man in his fifties joins her and her driver. "Hi," he says, "I'm Ed Conway, I'm the lead on our team here. Aricin said you were already told for reasons other than your candidacy for a job here that what we're doing is magic."

"Oh. Yes. He didn't mention he'd told you."

"It's technically possible to work here without guessing if you're astoundingly incurious, but we don't want incurious people and anyway you'll have to sign a whole host of nondisclosure and non-compete agreements that'd put people off if we weren't offering explanations. 

There are immortal people; Aricin's one of them; they can create items with magical properties; we're trying to figure out how to mass produce them. That's the very short version."

So apparently you told them I independently know about magic; just how much are we admitting about what I know?

All anyone in the labs knows is that we're immortal and then all the technical details on the Elven and Dwarven styles of magical metalworking, not explained as having anything to do with either Elves or Dwarves.

And as to why I know about magic? I assume we're not explaining "I reincarnated for reasons we can't figure out yet" but, like, presumably there's a reason, should i tell them it's because my sister married your brother, for example.

Yes, that'd be a perfectly good explanation. That or you figured it out on your own somehow and confronted me, if you want to protect Idaia or something.

More like protected these people from Tyelcormo, if they ended up with any ill intent towards her because of it.

Laughter. They're pretty screened for being sensible scientist types. But - yeah.

Yeah. "I knew about the immortal people; my sister married one."

"Lucky her," the woman says, laughing. "They're pretty."

"That they are."

"Anyhow, they can pull off all kinds of things with their magic - " he pulls out a lampstone - "and want a way to scale it. They think they could have rings for immortality within a decade, but they'll each take around a year to make. Not very scalable."

"Yeah, that's a problem. Obvious thing is to publicize the knowledge, let everyone spend a year making themselves immortal, but I'm pretty sure it's not actually that easy."

"The way they do it, we can't do it at all. They telepathy at the metal. There's another way that doesn't seem to require innate mental magic, but we've been having to reconstruct it - lost ancient secrets, supposedly - and even then it'll probably require extraordinary precision equipment. Also, patrons want secrecy. I'm sure you got the talk."

"Yep."

"I'm dying to learn more about them but it's not worth jeopardizing a world-changing project like this."

"Yeah, the secrecy's annoying on multiple levels."

"I do want to impress on you its importance, though. If word somehow gets out, even if it's no one's fault, they'll probably just sit on the project for a century."

"Secret's safe with me."

And he launches into half an interview half a briefing, describing the problem and their approach and what she'd be doing in the lab.

Which is probably less than if they knew what she learned in Valinor, but, the price of secrecy.

And the work is legitimately pretty different; they're using different techniques and completely different materials.