"Sure, thank you."

He turns to enter another building. "That will also give me the chance to formally introduce you to the rest of the family," he says. "My sister, Irimë; my sons Turukáno and Arakáno, and my granddaughter Itarillë." Can you also soundproof this building?

Done. "Hello, all."

He sits down. "Blessed-be-Yavanna-the-maker-Oromë-the-hunter-Vána-who-makes-things-ripen-Ulmo-who-makes-them-grow," he says, swiftly and not entirely happily, like it's a habit he'd abandon if no one present minded, and then "I'm very sure Sarpalarë thought she was acting with the approval of someone who commanded her. I can't tell if she's right about that."

"It wasn't you. Who else might she have answered to?"

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," he murmurs. "We had a flexible structure on the Ice, but almost every member of the house of Finwë could ask any favor of any of our people and expect it to be taken seriously. Maybe not something like this, but maybe. Certainly a favor like 'hide a bow outside camp', complicating the accomplice question. I also had a list drawn up of the people she travelled with, but -" He passes it around the table. Ten names, none known to Loki.

Loki passes it on without comment.

"Would she have been likely to believe a secondhand report? 'The King says you should do this'."

"From people who'd be in a position to claim that convincingly, yes. Or - not even 'the King says you should do this', 'the King wants this done and can't ask anyone to do it'."

"Oh, that's so much worse. Do not have black ops. Do not enable the idea that you might endorse black ops. You are too small a political unit to have black ops."

"Obviously I wouldn't do something like that. I am content to go shout in the square 'anything the King wants done, the King will acknowledge wanting done!' It did not occur to me that this was a failure mode of sufficiently angry people. I didn't even know there was a word for it! There's precedent?"

"Normally people don't just make it up on their own. I'm calling it black ops because if this is what happened that's what it would have looked like to Sarpalarë. Black ops is - 'the rulers must appear to abide by certain principles, and keep their hands clean, and act like they are through and through noble and honorable and would never endorse thus and such, and they must be able to so act because they don't have to think about what the black ops people are doing with negligible oversight if whoever runs the organization thinks dirty work needs to be done; join us and you may never speak directly to the king, he won't know you exist, but you'll know, you'll be serving -'. Assassinations are frequently relegated to black ops like that."

"What a horrifying and obvious failure mode. In hindsight. Anyhow, I believe that's what happened, which makes the urgent question who is telling that lie."

"And how well they're telling it. Because of course the king has to say that he's never heard of such a thing, would never endorse it, insists that it disband immediately..."

"How on earth could this possibly serve my interests? I don't want my brother dead! I don't want a war! I wouldn't mind if people went around autonomously doing what they thought I desired of them, if their concept of that were remotely sane."

"I believe you! But if someone is actually putting together a fake black ops brigade - which we are by no means sure of, it just came to mind - and they're doing it competently, then they will have said that admitting to wanting your brother dead or a war or whatever is exactly the sort of thing they're preventing you from having to openly do."

"Lovely."

"...I'm glad this didn't occur to me while I was talking to the Fëanorians lest I think out loud, that would be a mess."

"You think they'd have leapt to this conclusion? Or adopted the tactic themselves? It's more or less how they operate anyway, though usually the underlings are trying to do good their father won't admit to endorsing."

"I think they'd have found the idea very concerning as something you might be doing and you'd never be able to convince them it wasn't happening. But your concerns have merit too."

"What would it mean for me to be doing it? I thought the general idea was that I couldn't know about it and couldn't be taken seriously when saying it didn't serve my interests?"

"You can't directly oversee it or acknowledge it in anyway. Traditionally you'd pick someone to work on it for you and then avoid discussing it unless something unprecedented happened and they needed guidance on how to work with whatever you were doing publicly."

He hesitates. "I can swear that I have not authorized anyone to organize trouble with anyone but the Enemy, that I would not do such a thing, and that anyone who thinks they're serving me but cannot tell me about it has been deceived. I would need at least several days to talk over the wording with enough people and think of all the ways it can go wrong, but that is an avenue available to us."

"I'm not sure it's likely enough that you've got a rogue black ops team that this is worth it, but it's your risk to take. Also, if there is one, it is not run by someone you authorized; they might be able to find like-minded people who don't need to think they're serving you."