I'll save them for later, though. He smiles at her. Company's rarer than reading material.

Are you not getting visited enough?

Lúthien feels badly about the chain being back and expects you'll be furious about that and the silence and I can't exactly tell her that I maneuvered her father into it and so do not hold it against him. So she comes and sings but is otherwise much happier to run errands for me than be in my presence. Elu comes but he likes lecturing, not talking.

I can break the illusion on the necklace unless you think that would do something unfortunate to your bargaining position or something.

Oh, it doesn't bother me, it's one of those things that's far more symbolically demeaning than actually unpleasant and given that Elu's going to insist on some amount of shows of power he may as well stick to ones like that. The chain only bothers me because I've had a harder-than-I-should-have-had time correcting my brain about its expectations.

Sigh. Right, what's my line about why I haven't broken the illusion then? I assume it's not 'oh, if you're going to be repulsive about treatment of prisoners it might as well be like so'.

You ask the King's leave to break the illusion, obviously.

Think he'll grant it?

I do not. But if he does, we get the illusion broken with no cost to Thingol, and if he doesn't, you get currency with him for obeying his orders even when you obviously needn't.

Fair enough.

And either way Lúthien will probably stop feeling so apologetic in my presence, which will be nice, because she's perfectly good company when trying.

Is she actually apologetic to you per se or just wringing her hands about my reaction?

More the latter. You have to understand, if I'd met a Kinslayer thirty years ago I'd have had a very hard time thinking what to say.

You at a loss for something to say to somebody, what an image. Why is the emphasis so firmly on kin?

Cuivienen. At the time the absolute ability to rely on each other was a matter of life and death, the absoluteness of the taboo on violence against each other except as retaliation for same was the only thing that could keep us alive as a people...

Doesn't explain why the magic word isn't just, 'murder'.

You can tell Allspeak to translate the word that way, if it'll make you less annoyed with everyone who keeps saying it.

I suppose, but it's not making an actual translation error.

It is not. The word we use for the gravest crime we know means 'killing of kin' not 'killing of people'. I am not for that any less a murderer.

I'd sooner not lull myself into a sense that my status as honorary kin would hold up if anyone glared at it.

Your status as the only person who stands a chance of winning this war holds up a little better.

That gives me strategic and not moral value.

I don't think Elu regards anyone outside his nation as having moral value. It being impermissible to kill them isn't a claim to personhood on their behalf.

That actually hadn't occurred to me but does not really help.

Me I think they're planning to kill, though trying not to think about it too hard. They are still perfectly good company.