"Ah. Can you expand on this?"

"Yes. So, the thing with orcs is that they're all made to swear to serve," which excess name did Meril call him, "Morgoth, along with a number of other specifics, I have the text of -" She produces the transcript of the oath as she last heard it repurposed. "But they are made to do this very young, barely old enough to speak - so they don't have a very firm understanding of what they're supposed to mean by it at the time. I can cure their chronic pain conditions and this tends to make them pretty receptive to talking, although like any group of people they vary. If they can in this mood be convinced of certain redefinitions, in particular that 'Melkor' is actually a benign noninterventionist deity I'm familiar with from home and that all the people of your species on this continent are 'Quendi' and not 'Elves', they can re-swear the same words with the revised meanings and they've been getting along all right with the Fëanorians so far in a way that would be wholly implausible for unaffected orcs. Although they do still make their Quendi neighbors nervous to the point where they're expending a fair amount of labor on keeping an eye on them, and I'd like to get them settled somewhere else."

"I see," he says, and sighs. "In pain all the time, you say?"

"Until I get to them, yes. The first one I healed was so confused."

He looks very grave. "The Enemy has millions of orcs."

"I don't expect to save them all. I would never ask someone to risk their own or their friends' lives more than they already do by engaging orcs to take some alive. And I couldn't heal that many in any reasonable amount of time, and while I was very lucky that the first orc I spoke to turned out to be an effective and committed missionary we have not turned up more of the same, so that's another bottleneck. But I would like to save some, and I would like them to have a place to be when they've been saved."

He nods. "Then the Isle of Balar seems a wise place for them, assuming the lords of the sea do not disagree or at least do not disagree vehemently enough to sink settlement ships."

"I hadn't even considered that complication; I don't think that apart from the Enemy and Melian I've seen anything that looked attributable to attentive Powers."

"Their attention is mostly reserved for Valinor, but Ulmo is still active in the events that touch his shores."

"I was actually considering transporting them all by air, but it would be less convenient in some ways - it would require more of my personal attention, on a per-orc basis, and it'd mean they wouldn't have much cargo allowance. And if Ulmo disapproved of them I suppose living on an island would be a bad idea anyway..."

"I will ask him as soon as I have the opportunity."

"How quickly do you anticipate an answer?"

He grimaces. "Meril must have communicated her opinion of the Valar."

"I did already have an opinion of the Valar," Loki says. "But yes."

"A few weeks at the soonest, more plausibly a few months to have an answer from Ulmo."

Loki winces. "That's not the timetable I was hoping for, but I suppose the Fëanorians can stop catching new orcs when they have as many as they feel they can harbor."

"And it'll take a great deal of time to march them all down here, one assumes. Or are you reluctant to do that until we get approval, in case it should be denied?"

"Pretty much. It wouldn't be fair to them. The other place that Elu said was open was -" She pulls out her map. "This area, but it's pretty exposed to Angband, and they don't want to be easily found by the Enemy."

"Arviernen is depopulated, perhaps at the hands of these very orcs. Or is the concern that then they're only a day's march from us?"

"If you can suggest other settlement locations that don't require waiting for a Vala to reply to a question I'm delighted to hear them. I am a poor judge of how willing Quendi may be to have orcs, even friendly ones, as neighbors, but it's certainly not the orcs who'd mind."

"I don't like it," he says, "but if you march them down here and then Ulmo declines they can settle in Arviernen at the mouths of the Sirion. It's beautiful territory, they'd do quite well, and your friends say they can send food down the river so I'll have more resources to defend my people with."

"Thank you!" exclaims Loki. "That's wonderful to hear. I'm sure Vár - the first one, the one who's all excited about converting others - and the rest will be excited."

He nods unhappily. "You're very sure of them?"

"...Some more than others, admittedly, but I'd say that about almost any group of people. I think if some of them decided to defect they'd have trouble with their fellows before you ever heard about it."

"It would be a great wrong to refuse to let people settle because they seem shifty and untrustworthy," he says, "and moreover if I adopted that as a policy I'd have some worries about the newcomers as well. I hope we can rely on your aid should things end badly."