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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
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purposeful_glory
Loki waits, although she suspects that an oath with loopholes like that wouldn't've held.
She shakes her head.
"Can you tell me why you can't tell me that?"
She shakes her head.
He sighs. "Fëanáro, by virtue of being even more reckless in this respect than her, would have some ideas."
"Can you tell me why you can't tell me that?"
She shakes her head.
He sighs. "Fëanáro, by virtue of being even more reckless in this respect than her, would have some ideas."
purposeful_glory
"Yes, he's the one who came up with the way around - or through - the orcs' oath. Though that was given the wording of it. But it looks like she can tell you that she can't tell you things, which suggests imperfect information security... Can you tell us who you didn't think you were talking to when this plan was cooked up, Sarpalarë? List some people who it wasn't."
And now she looks genuinely conflicted.
"Wasn't you. Wasn't Fëanor."
"Wasn't you. Wasn't Fëanor."
purposeful_glory
"Maybe you can list letters their name doesn't start with, even."
She snorts. "Doesn't start with tinco, parma, calma, quesse..."
The prisoner keeps listing letters. Everyone else is watching Loki, a little bewildered. "Oh, right," Irissë says, "you don't actually speak our language. Those are all the letters."
purposeful_glory
"Oh. Well, that's unhelpful. Unless there's someone around who refuses to render their name in written form, or we're on the wrong track altogether."
"No, just starts with a vowel, which we don't write. Could still be me." says Irissë.
purposeful_glory
"Do you have names for the vowels, even if they aren't written?"
"No. You can take your complaints up with my uncle."
purposeful_glory
"I might." She pulls out her notes on Dorean's alphabet. Has it got vowels?
It does. Sarpalarë is glaring at her disdainfully.
purposeful_glory
"Oh, look at that, I had an alternate alphabet in my pocket. Here's how you spell Irissë's name in it - Artanis's -" She goes on with the rest of the vowel-beginning names she can think of. "Care to continue your list?"
"It's not Irissë, or that sound."
"Don't think - I think that counts, sorry."
purposeful_glory
"Okay, so it starts with a vowel but not the same vowel as Irissë's," Loki puts the alphabet away. "Anybody else have ideas for how to distinguish people by process of elimination?"
"I think someone impersonated Artanis," Irissë says, "and asked for an oath, and for some reason this complete idiot agreed, and then later that person sent her on the assassination attempt and tried to watch the trial today and the most mysterious part of that is the last bit."
purposeful_glory
"...Feel free to call Irissë a fool or something," Loki says to Sarpalarë, "or conspicuously don't."
She doesn't, though sullen silence has been enough of a pattern that it may not mean much.
"Why send anyone today, when you seem thoroughly stuck and we had nothing to go off? Were they trying to make sure you obeyed? But if you have no choice, why bother? Were they worried the truth would come out some other way? Were they trying to see to it that a partial truth came out, that my cousin was implicated?"
"Why send anyone today, when you seem thoroughly stuck and we had nothing to go off? Were they trying to make sure you obeyed? But if you have no choice, why bother? Were they worried the truth would come out some other way? Were they trying to see to it that a partial truth came out, that my cousin was implicated?"
purposeful_glory
"Well, the truth did come out some other way; even without figuring out all the details and noticing the shapeshifter we were sure something was going on and weren't satisfied with 'Sarpalarë did it'. If they have a source of information, knew that I was messing with things..."
"The Enemy should have tried to kill you a long time ago," Findekáno says, "but doesn't seem especially advantaged by doing it in our camp. Unless he's trying to tease out your role, first? Or offer you a job?"