Leareth isn't going to enlighten the curious people, mostly because he doesn't know yet. It's starting to feel plausible that he'll end up on neither side, if both are behaving badly. He isn't sure yet what he would choose to do about that. 

He asks his guide what they think of the plan to reopen contact with the Outer Lands. 

It's our birthright as a people. We were meant to live there, but the Valar screwed up so badly that they had to bring us here for us to get a chance to grow up at all. That doesn't mean they own us forever.

That's interesting. :No, I shouldn't think they own you at all: Leareth sends, and pays attention to his guide's surface thoughts; how do they feel about the gods? 

They are actually mostly thinking about whether it'd be rude to telepathically tell Prince Nelyafinwë to expect them or rude not to. You shouldn't telepathically address someone who lots of people might be tempted to telepathically address unless you're sure that yours is the most important interruption that could plausibly be happening at the moment, which for a prince usually rounds to 'don't', but on the other hand a visitor from another world is very important? There's an argument it's the most important thing? This is kind of a terrifying decision to have to make. 

(Prince Nelyafinwë stopped routing things through an assistant because of all the leaks to the traitors).

The questions about the gods are being answered on autopilot from debates held in the city forums a Year ago before things got so bad.

There was a debate? Fascinating. Leareth discreetly slips out his paper and makes a note.

:I do not mind waiting a little: he informs his guide, :but - I am concerned there is time sensitivity to this situation: Assuming things haven't already escalated past the point of no return. 

His guide nods. 

The door opens. These people have swords at their belt and also daggers, and they size up Leareth and look past him out at the street -

Why don't you come in.

Leareth nods to them, and slips into the room. :My name is Leareth. I arrived here by accident from another world. I heard that there was a tense situation and I wished to find out more. And to offer what help I can. I have advised a King before: 

What are these people thinking? 

They're showing this interaction to someone else, in the next room. They're trying to figure out who saw him and how long it'll be before they have to answer questions about having him here. They're wondering if he's dangerous. If anything were to happen to Prince Nelyafinwë there'd be no way to get out of this peacefully, at that point - they're planning to send someone to inform the King, who won't do anything but it'd look bad to have this play out without having informed him -

Send him in, the person in the next room says, decisively, so they do that.

Someone informing the King is good, hopefully the King will ask to speak to him and he won't have to bang his head on a no-visitors policy. He wasn't making any attempt to conceal his progress through the city, quite a lot of people saw him and had feelings about it; that seems hard to have avoided, if he'd wanted he could have hidden himself and his guide behind an illusion but that would have screamed subterfuge-of-some-kind and set off different questions.

Leareth is, in fact, dangerous. He's also not planning to harm anyone – or, at least, not to be the first mover on that, escalating the violence here is the last thing he wants to do but he's not going to stand by and do nothing if it escalates despite his best efforts. 

Leareth keeps all of his thoughts to himself, and follows them into the next room.  

This Quendi is tall and has striking red hair and looks up as if startled, which he isn't, and says "- welcome to Tirion! Can I help you with something?"

"Thank you, speak Quenya only little," Leareth says haltingly, he can manage that much without consulting his vocabulary notes. He switches to Mindspeech, trying to convey as much friendliness as he can in the overtones. :My name is Leareth and I come from another world. I hear your political situation is complicated. I have relevant experience and wish to help your people resolve things peacefully: 

And what is this non-startled Quendi thinking? 

- tell the King that there's a visitor claiming to be from another world, interested in the political situation, and we're of course delighted to interface with him on the King's behalf but if doing so will want to send updates at least daily, since the King's wisdom will be much needed for such an unprecedented situation, he is saying to one of the people who escorted Leareth in -

and simultaneously to someone else I don't think this merits interrupting my father - which, he is privately thinking, is a gamble, and a dangerous one, because of course this obviously merits interrupting his father, who'll be here ten seconds after he hears about it and who will also establish himself as unqualified to be King of anything ten seconds after that -

and at the same time, to a different person, put off Mólië until the Mingling, with my profound apologies, I think you may as well be straightforward that it's about the alien visitor because she'll take less offense and there's no way Nolofinwë doesn't already know -

And ideally he'd offer Nolofinwë eyes on the situation, that being the only offer that could even potentially be taken as good faith at this point, but the decision not to tell his father means he really, really cannot do that, it's one thing to be keeping his father at arms' length from anything delicate and entirely different to be doing that while strategically leaking it to other people -

"I have relevant experience", meaning that his people have gone to war, there are other ways to read it but he's pretty sure that's the right reading - that's not the part I need advice on - 

Another world! he responds, delightedly. We didn't know there were any others. You don't mean the Outer Lands?

:I also did not know there were others until now: Leareth sends, smiling with more genuine warmth. :And no, I do not mean the Outer Lands: 

Most of what he's feeling is relief; at least there's one person in the goddamned city with any of the appropriate paranoia. It's still a baby-duckling level of it, but the ability to route multiple conversations at once is extremely impressive. He can't do that, he can process hearing a couple different threads, but he can't answer even two at once. The information on Prince Fëanáro is rather thought-provoking. As is the hint at how Nelyafinwë – he's guessing this is Nelyafinwë despite introductions not having happened yet – feels about Nolofinwë, the other claimant to the throne. He wonders who Mólië is and how important she'll prove to be. And what the current King's relationship is with Nelyafinwë is, such that him interfacing with Leareth and providing daily updates is a reasonable proposal. 

:May we speak privately?: he sends. 

Might be dangerous. If you were trying to push this mess over the edge the next step would be to kill someone, without witnesses, and let everyone trip over themselves blaming each other - but if you were doing that you'd also be very sure the victim wouldn't know exactly what happened, Leareth has no reason to imagine he'd be delayed in returning -

Of course, he says, and sends his staff out, and cuts their ability to hear through his ears but not to see through his eyes, and sends a summary of all this to Macalaurë.

"Thank you," Leareth says out loud. He holds his hands loose at his sides, palms open in the most non-threatening posture he can manage (hopefully it signals the same thing here), and does some very quick thinking.

He's obviously never been in exactly this situation, but he's experienced enough vaguely-analogous ones. Normally, he would play it carefully, take his time mapping out the various intricacies, before choosing how to insert himself. 

He isn't sure he has that kind of time. More importantly, it's not clear he has leverage in the way he's used to. The Quendi may be inexperienced in some matters, but they're also long-lived - Leareth could be younger than Nelyafinwë for all he knows - and their civilization is, in many ways, clearly more advanced than his. And Nelyafinwë is smart. And, due to the cultural gaps, unpredictable to Leareth. 

There are always some moments when the right path, in expectation, is to take a leap of faith. 

:I will be forthright with you: he sends. :Your world is a paradise next to mine. And the Quendi I have met so far show the marks of having grown up in paradise. Your people are kinder and far more able to coordinate than the people I have known in my homeland. Yet, I have seen many things in my time: he would say he's older than he appears, except that won't even mean anything to an ageless race, :and the pattern that jumps to my attention, here, is one headed for death and destruction: 

He shrugs, slow and deliberate. :Perhaps I am wrong, since your people are different. However. I have spent a very long time trying to improve the state of affairs in my own world. Having observed the flourishing and prosperity in this world - having, for the first time in my life, seen paradise with my own eyes - I am horrified at the prospect that it could be destroyed. I wish to prevent such an outcome. I hope that you might share that goal:

And he waits to see how Nelyafinwë will respond. 

There's so much context that he has no idea where he'd even start, trying to give someone enough of it to - 

- but he's assuming that they got here by accident, that's better than lots of things you could assume, even if it's simultaneously too generous and too harsh - 

The stranger's body language is mostly not too hard to interpret, so maybe that goes both ways.

He looks down. 

I'm very afraid you're right, he says. It was a very terrible mistake - or several of them - to let things get this bad.

It wasn't, not even in hindsight, he's been over it a thousand times and he can't actually pick out a single thing he could reasonably have done differently, everything he tried was fatally undermined by some corner of the mess he hadn't heard about even though he'd talked to four hundred people trying to make sure he hadn't missed it, it wasn't fair, but that's not exactly the kind of claim you can make credibly, and it's a bad sign, insisting that you did nothing wrong as your country catches fire.

And his thoughts are bare to Leareth, it's - well, for one, it's painfully reminiscent of a time in his own past, back at the very beginnings, except - except, really, Nelyafinwë has done so much better than Ma'ar ever could have, it's been centuries and it looks like things still haven't, quite, crumbled beyond salvaging. And Nelyafinwë is the sort of person who post-mortems his own mistakes, and - who recognizes that not even a King is sovereign over reality itself, that a lack of mistakes and the best intentions aren't enough to keep a country from catching fire. He lives in paradise, and he still gets it, what so many people bounce away from – that things can fall apart, that there's no ultimate rule of justice and fairness holding the universe together. 

(At least, Leareth assumes not; he is in a different world that could have different metaphysics. But it's a world that contains a god who was once a torturer and murderer, and this kind of mess developing despite clever and valiant efforts to stop it has the marks of god-interference all over it.)

And Nelyafinwë is questioning Leareth's motives and goals. Good for him. 

:There are some things I wish to say to you in complete secrecy: he sends, with carefully-shielded Mindspeech, from what he's observed it ought not to have any chance of leaking to the others but he's not sure enough of that to actually say the things. :There is a spell from my world I might cast to ensure our privacy, but I understand if you would be leery of this, given that I am a stranger. Though, given the situation with your death god, there is little I can do to harm you that would not harm my own interests even more: 

If that blocks osanwë - the way that my people speak to one another with our minds, which I think is slightly different than yours - it'd be troubling to do for more than a few minutes, as people will try to contact me and be frightened if it fails. If it doesn't block osanwë then that sounds fine.

Actually, he says to Macalaurë, I need you paying closer attention -

Sure, why -

Unfamiliar magic. I don't know what he can do. Just - repeat back to me everything I did or said, make sure I remember it, make sure it makes sense, if something's off send people in -

I think you should tell Father.

And now he has to play this very carefully so Macalaurë doesn't decide to do it himself - he's so tired -

I'm planning to. But this is delicate and you know the mood he's in right now - and we don't know what the danger is, precisely - if something's off about me he can override me, if there's something off about him what do we do -

You're planning to when?

Tomorrow. 

He offers Leareth a chocolate, because the motion with cover his distraction.

Leareth smiles and takes the chocolate. It's shockingly delicious. "Very good!" he says, he has that vocabulary too. 

:I am not sure how the spell I know will interact with osanwë: he goes on. :If it blocks it, tell me and I will not maintain it longer than a minute - you might pass on to your people that they can interrupt to check on you if it is longer. In that case I would want to redesign a version that did not have such a blocking effect. May I try it now?: