"It was less hands-on than that. We debated phrasing for a while and then I reassured Gem and Joy that the resultant explosive powers were unlikely to be deployed against anyone who was stoppable without explosions and then I wished he was gone. Yours is - not more plausible, exactly, but certainly more something."

"I'm not really going to have any luck in trying to present myself plausibly," she says. "Took long enough when it was just me, and it's a lot more than just me now."

"I was not expecting it, don't worry."

"Yeah, I know."

Cam chooses this moment to arrive. "Chip computers for the two of you?" he asks, putting a wing around Loki.

"Yes, thank you. How're Gem and Joy?"

"Computing," says Cam. "They're really cute. Chips in, computers -" He hands each of them a computer. "Walkthrough to set it up is in Space Quenya but if you still wanna take the language ban seriously it can do a bad translation into Thindarin."

"Official policy's still to conduct state business in Sindarin, not because of the ban but because more than half our population was born in Endorë and they don't learn languages as quickly as the Noldor do. I'm going to declare this not state business, at least not yet. ...If Space Quenya's like regular Quenya mine would be very rusty if not for the eidetic memory but it should suffice."

"Oh, yeah, necklace for you -" Cam offers Maedhros a necklace. "You can get the indelible version later. Space Quenya and Flat Quenya are eerily similar."

"My lord prince actually wished us both eidetic memories earlier, along with Gem. It made juggling reconstruction easier, and we didn't know you'd come along. Gave him memory-altering powers, too." He shivers.

"Oh." Cam pockets the necklace. "Loki, did you already give them spell symbols?"

"Not yet." Why does this Maedhros keep calling him that. She starts up with the symbols.

He catches her expression. "For four hundred years our ability to cooperate rather hinged on at least the pretense that the Noldor were united under one King. Maedhros happens, to the surprise of no one, to be very bad at taking orders if they don't happen to be exactly what he wanted to be doing anyway. But the performance of a political arrangement in which the Feanorians are devoted subjects of their King he's happy to indulge in."

"They'd have all ended up insulated from titles on account of being magically powerful enough that it'd be and look stupid to request they use them, and not innately being especially title-using people."

"And also I think you're in charge wherever you're emotionally healthy enough."

"Yes, I would be."

"I called my Thingol and Melian 'their majesties' frequently enough that I was beginning to worry 'this is a sign of contempt' would wind up written on my forehead."

"I have no contempt for the King. He's done a very good job in every conceivable respect except possibly reining in all his evil nephews and that was a hard problem it was reasonable not to regard as a wartime priority. Finno's title is an important fiction, not an insult."

"Oh, I know Nolofinwë can do competent Kinging and I know you're not exhibiting contempt, I was just elaborating on how we are not title-using people."

"So much so that it bothered you that I was, or is that related to the thing everyone's not telling me?"

"It is unrelated to the thing everyone's not telling you, I just know a few details about the nature of your involvement at least as it typically goes and it makes it weird."

"Does 'as it typically goes' involve really excellent healing magic."

"Yes. I was assuming you'd already been covered, Gem's system does healing..."

"Yeah, I'm fine now, but it was four hundred years in the interim which I assume the other sets did not have."

"Yes."

...It's still weird but she didn't even say anything in the first place, did she.