"Coming down to get meals instead of sending Findekáno under horrifying oath sets, not doing things that'd provoke a confrontation like getting a few months' meals at once, everything else depends on whether there's an oath proscribing it - like, is Findekáno prohibited from speaking to any of us over osanwë, is he prohibited from communicating the room number, is he prohibited from using his messaging app unsupervised -"

"He's not categorically prohibited from osanwëing us, there was a contingency about if he got too hungry to take the stairs..."

"But we probably should not infer from the fact that he hasn't just told you the room number that he doesn't want us to find him."

"Yeah. Probably."

"And the 'retaining the ability to swear he hasn't raped his slave lately' isn't nothing, it is more concern for wanting to signal compatible values to us than I was expecting him to show."

"What were you expecting?"

"I told him I wanted him to get the oaths cleared and stop coercing him and then win him back without any games. I don't think that's possible - I hope that's not possible - but if he's working from that as 'what we want and are trying to bring about' - I don't know, maybe it was a mistake, maybe he's got enough strings to pull that with the oaths all cleared Findekáno still has no real way out - anyway, he's not behaving like someone afraid of losing, or considering giving away, his favorite toy -"

"...was there an answer to my question in there?"

"If he took that seriously I'd expect him either to be trying to lay the groundwork to win him back after being deoathed or to be trying to push that event as far off in subjective time as possible. He's not doing those things. If he didn't take that seriously I'd expect him to have decided to conspicuously be unmoved by our being appalled at him, and he's not doing that either."

"I didn't directly read him being moved by our being appalled; it was very subtle."

"I didn't read that off him in person either. Maybe he's not moved and just keeping his options open. ...if I'd heard the commitment not to touch him from Midnight rather than from the recording in context I think I'd have given it more weight as evidence of sincerity..."

"Is he going to be able to deduce that we have extra sources of information, if you don't react like you would've should he say that...?"

"Probably. I can react like I would've. ...can anyone else."

"Prrrrrobably not but he knows less about how me or Edie would've reacted..."

"Yeah - we should probably minimize his interaction with both of you anyway - what would it have been, can you reconstruct that -"

"...probably conspicuous-to-a-you relaxing followed by cynical second-guessing and depending on context a sarcastic remark?"

"Is the difference 'the information won't be new' or 'you have more context for the cynicism' or both -"

"Both mostly the first one."

"Well. Doesn't know you that well, and we are not in fact literally psychic, but maybe better for me to find out first and then be presumed to have told everyone."

"If we can finesse it. I can also spend a lot of time looking haunted and flinchy, that'll probably cover a lot and I can do it very authentically."

"Oh, lovely.

I should check on the computers."

"Okay." Kiss.

"Unless you've got the songs set to test, then I can do that first."

"Not yet, no, the time signatures are still fucked up and I haven't found the bug."

"Okay. Later." Kiss. He goes upstairs.