"Well, learning more magic would permit more help with the war. It just frontloads effort and postpones results."

"We're putting the non-engineers on the task of penning Moringotto up in Angband and then clearing the land of orcs so that the engineers have peace and quiet to invent something that will actually kill him. It seems this might be the same principle."

"Maybe, yes. I could aim for a destructive spell. Or I could do one that will let me travel freely and see if my mother wanted me dead after all and if she didn't I can fetch an Asgardian army - or if I can't rally one of those, someone else, maybe someone more suited, there are many realms. Asgard as a culture makes a number of tradeoffs against its efficacy."

"My father thinks that we can hold a siege of Angband for four to five hundred years before the Enemy's ability to breed new soldiers, and the results of his new experiments, and the fruits of the magic he can, as a Vala, work over great lengths of time would make that untenable. He's aiming to kill him in three hundred, to be on the safe side. Is that a timeline you could conceivably work with?"

"Slower than I usually work. I am all but certain I can make transport work in less than that. Not knowing how killable Valar might be I don't know what I'd be meaning to do exactly with a destructive spell and my result might or might not succeed."

Nods. "It's getting dark. I don't know the means by which you travel, but I imagine they're safer by light, so should you be heading out? Staying the night?"

"If there's not some public relations advantage to dividing my nights between here and there I should probably go make this delivery now," she acknowledges.

"None occurs to me. Findekáno is probably very afraid that you'll decide you like us; he regards it as a terrible and costly mistake which well-intentioned people can make in an instant and repent of at their leisure. So go back to them, mention how callous we are and how little we care about them, and everyone's happy."

"How do you have such rich speculations about his post-fiasco opinions, not having spoken since then?"

"I've known him for more than a thousand years. And he and Nelyo went through this when my father threatened his, when the exile happened, when the Darkening happened, when the Kinslaying happened - it wasn't a cycle, exactly, because every iteration drove them farther apart and hurt them both more, but it was a spiral of sorts. Coming back to places that paralleled places they'd been before. And I know what Findekáno said to his sister about caring about the House of Fëanor, because she repeated it all to us, quite angrily, the last time she and Tyelcormo fought."

"Mm. Well. I can be selective in my reports but prefer to reserve lies for people I am actually working against."

He looks appalled. "Of course you shouldn't lie."

"...Have I encountered another cultural mismatch?"

"He's dead and died terribly, his reputation is beyond haggling over at this point, and he would not have granted me leave to share this. But if you've heard Findekáno call him dishonest, or faithless, that accusation specifically is untrue."

"I have heard that."

"He would not have corrected it, and I'm not going to."

"Why? If Maitimo seems more sympathetic to his cousins they can hardly make unfortunate leaps about the limits of -" gesture, "brinksmanship on that basis."

"Because it's his choice, and I know the one he would have made. He never wanted their sympathy when it was bought by making him the good one, the victim of my father's choices, the exception. And - he cared about Findekáno, and if Findekáno grieves a little bit less because he falsely believes that he was deceived and betrayed, all the better. Grief is not -" he grimaces - "a helpful emotion."

"I'm unsure whether you mean 'not having known him long enough to evaluate whether this is reasonable' or 'having known him long enough to agree that this is reasonable', but either way, thank you. It is not your information to share." He hesitates. "And if you do tell him, I won't confirm it."

"The former."

"Was he upset to hear the news?"

"Yes."