Leareth takes a slow breath, lets it out. Ultimately it's their world, they have more information, and Nelyafinwë thinks it's worth it. :All right: he concedes. 

Realistically, it doesn't make sense to delay for 'preparations', because there's no preparations he can make that will do much if Melkor refuses to be subdued and the gods of another world end up fighting each other openly. 

:Would they be able to view my memory as well?: he asks. Again, Mindspeaking with a god is not exactly something he wants to do, but asking them to believe it as hearsay is fraught as well. 

I would expect so. 

If a delegation leaves for Valmar now, the departure from Valinor can still happen on schedule; we'd just want to gate right out. 

We lost a lot of the food. 

Then I suppose you'll be very busy. It's good for you. 

:Where is Velmar?: Leareth asks. :I can Gate us there if it is a significant journey: he glances at Nelyafinwë, :assuming you are willing to depart in secret, which seems wise anyway, and alert everyone coming with us of the subterfuge regarding my current exhaustion:

Though he is, in reality, pretty tired by now. He can push it a lot further than this before he actually collapses or anything, he's done it in a fight – it might be worth it for this kind of crunch.

:And I ought perhaps place wards on any other storage areas, to avert further fires or other losses. It will be complicated if they need to be accessed legitimately, but if they can be sealed off, I can easily set an alarm to trigger if anybody goes in: 

We can seal the warehouses and place additional goods somewhere else. He can ask the people who live somewhere conveniently located to move out; he starts thinking through who. 

I don't think I should accompany you, not if we're not delaying the departure. 

Valmar is west of here, Finwë says to Leareth. On the high mountain - he can send an image of the city. It's much more spread out than Tirion, meandering across a valley and the surrounding foothills, full of little towers.

:Then I do want you to keep your shield-token: Leareth sends. :And give you a way of contact me, if osanwë does not have that range. Finwë, if you have a memory of a particular place, with senses other than sight, I can use that for a direct Gate. I wish to bring Huan with me, as a source of magic in emergencies. Also, I ought practice drawing from the Trees for the main departure Gate, to check that it is possible. Huan may not be sufficient for that: 

That sounds good. I think we ought to take Nolofinwë, too; he can testify to not having ordered the warehouse fire, and perhaps now that this possibility is well-understood we can trace Melkor's role in the past disputes, as well.

:I agree: Leareth hasn’t been keeping track of time well at all. :How many total hours from now until departure, if we leave on time? It is important that I fit in completing the cooling artifacts for food, and basic wards: Cutting sleep to get it done is extremely non-ideal, but he won’t be good for much after an 850-mile Gate large and sustained long enough to fit a thousand people and all their gear.

Two hundred forty.

More than Leareth had expected – confusingly so, until he remembers that their days, and thus weeks, are longer than the ones he knows. :Good. I ought have enough time: 

And he switches to private shielded Mindspeech with Nelyafinwë alone. :I will have time, but it will be tight, especially if anything unexpected comes up: and he doesn't know what, or it wouldn't be unexpected, but he's almost certain something will, :and I will be sleeping less than I would prefer. Given our respective comparative advantages here, I am inclined to make that trade, even though it will mean I am less sharp at catching plots before they happen. So I am trusting that to you:

–which is a rare and somewhat uncomfortable thing for him to do, but then again, this is a rare situation. He's usually not the only mage or even the most powerful, only the oldest and smartest, but here he's surrounded by immortal Quendi who can have six conversations at once. Different conditions. 

There are songs for going without sleep without it catching up with you too quickly. But - yes, I'm focused on that, I didn't expect this but it wasn't brilliant or anything, I think we can anticipate further disruptions and work around them. Thank you.

Nod. :I may ask you about the songs again when it was a better time: Back to group Mindspeech. :Both of you are coming with me?: Damn it, which one does he give the spare token to? Probably the senior one. :Finwë, I have a shield-talisman for you; Fëanàro, yours is partially complete, I can work on finishing it while we wait for Nolofinwë: He's already reaching for his pile of prepared blank spell-foci. 

Finwë takes it, frowns. What does this do?

He gives the same explanation he gave Nelyafinwë, except that the one he's handing the King doesn't do a privacy-barrier. Just protection against a sword, or against a magical attack, though he's not sure it could hold off the wrath of an entire god. He can set up osanwë commands so that Finwë can activate one or the other or both himself, at which point the talisman can run for about eighteen hours on its stored mage-energies. (That's a good reminder, he should re-power Nelyafinwë's, he can do it from here and Huan has infinite energy to spare and likes being petted.) 

I would like to show this to the Valar before I put it on, Finwë says evenly, though I am grateful for your generosity and your talents.

:That is fair enough: Damn it, though, now he has to shield both of them if anything happens, it seems socially fraught to try to persuade Fëanàro to take the spare now.

–He's getting practiced at not reading all the surface thoughts by accident all the time, but he will do a quick skim for this, to check if it's generic caution or if the King is developing some specific source of mistrust. 

Nelyafinwë is rarely wrong to trust people - never so far, really - but they don't actually know anything about what Leareth can do and the rate at which he is manifesting convenient new capabilties suggests it's a lot.

To which Leareth's answer would also be 'fair enough'. He can do significantly more than even Nelyafinwë is aware of. (And, at this point, he's inclined to withhold as much as he can until after their departure; a god has been walking around the city in disguise, and from his brief conversation with Aulë, it seems like the Valar can do at least some mindreading. Hopefully not everything – probably not everything, he's pretty sure Aulë would have reacted differently if he'd known everything that Leareth has ever built and what he still hopes to build – but, paranoia.) 

He immediately starts working on the next talisman, half-listening to any ongoing conversation. 

Fëanáro and Finwë are discussing what to say to the Valar, and going back through some old events to try to guess how Melkor might have seeded them. 

Leareth isn't sure he has much to contribute to either. Avoiding making his existence salient to the Valar seems like a lost cause at this point, and if another set of gods end up trying to kill him, well, that would've been bound to happen sooner or later. But he doesn't want to draw extra attention either. 

Magic magic magic. He can do it a lot faster with Huan there, and having done three already. 

Nolofinwë arrives. 

You were impersonated, Nelyafinwë explains, when he does. We think by Melkor. Leareth has magic that made it possible to watch it happen. We think he was responsible, as well, for sowing the initial rumors that Fëanáro planned to expel you from Tirion -

          I'm not even staying in Tirion, Fëanáro says, why would I have cared if you did -

- and the rumors we heard that you were trying to supplant him - yes, I know it's true now, but it's also true now or was a day ago that my father would've exiled you if he could, he picked self-fulfilling lies - but we think the initial events were lies. 

         I think you're right, Nolofinwë says after a moment. He does not elaborate.

We think that we should take this to the Valar, Finwë says, that Melkor may be rearrested. 

         I agree. 

Leareth can transport people instantaneously across the continent, and has offered to do so.

        I would be grateful.