"Next time I'm in Brithombar I'll get some lobsters for your host, how about. Anything else you'd like to contribute?"

"I was stopped because they wanted to provoke a fight. Don't help them do it."

"Why do you suppose they'd want to provoke a fight? They've seemed to me to want to ignore you and yours as much as possible."

"After the time they tried to kill us all, you mean?"

"Yes, after that, such as in the present."

"At the moment I'm not trying to kill them, so should we tell them to forget the past and think of the present and let me go?"

"We've never wronged them. At all. We've done nothing to them."

"Unfortunately, the history leads them to believe that you might want to do something to them, past performance notwithstanding."

"The history being the things they've done to us!!"

"Yes, it's really awkward that way, but somehow it hasn't engendered in them a desire to sacrifice self-defense measures over the principle that it might serve them right."

"Do you really think you can get me home?"

"I think you're worth less to the Fëanorians than a bird scout. Do you think you're worth more to your host than the Fëanorians not having a bird scout?"

"No, because it sends the message to them that any time they can snatch one of us, they get some magic gifts from you in return."

"Then I suppose I might run into a problem at the point where I explain all of this to your king and tell him what I think of as a reasonable precautionary measure for people who think he's sending assassins after them. But I don't think the Fëanorians being unwilling in principle to release you will be the bottleneck."

She nods. "Well. Have fun."

"Fun is what I have when the rest of the world is behaving itself," Loki says, and she lets herself out. "All done," she says at a perfectly ordinary volume.

Wax is a satisfactory insulator.

Good to hear it. Who wants the latest from Maitimo? Are the guards coming back?

You can meet my sons in the conference room. The guards enter the room as soon as she leaves.

To the conference room, then.

Tyelcormo and Carnistir and Huan, looking unsurprised whens he joins them. "Ever tried finding beehives while wearing plate armor? That's going to be an unpopular order."

"...Did I miss something? Oh, wax. Do you know about the thing where bees calm way down if exposed to smoke?"

"Yeah," Tyelcormo says, "I can also just talk them down, with approximately the same effectiveness. Though there's more things-that-smoke than there are of me, so. The problem is it only takes one bee in your armor."

"Yeah. And I suppose you can't have everyone wearing fine netting. I hope none of you are allergic to beestings." She pulls out the transcript from Maitimo.