"We can do that - and they'll need a way to call for help, too, that should be doable as well. I think Van would want me to have more than that - including maybe a lethal weapon - and would trust me not to panic with it. I'm not sure I trust Fëanáro with his own lethal weapon artifact, but also he's an even higher-priority target than I am. Probably he should just go everywhere with guards who can maintain very good situational awareness and get a shield up in time. And maybe arm them with some sort of nonlethal weapon that would still stop a dinosaur, I don't know if Van can do that but I can at least ask." 

"Seems like a good ask. - you should be aware that if you're carrying a lethal weapon in Valinor and anything at all ambiguous happens the Valar will probably react very poorly."

"Yes. If Vanyel can make a reliable nonlethal weapon I would prefer that. If not... I guess all I can promise is that I know how awkward that would be and I'll be extremely careful. I should minimize how much I'm in Valinor at all, really, but it's not feasible to never go right now." 

"That makes sense. I think the downside looks acceptable? Even if they wildly overreact they probably just ban all humans or something, and - there's nothing we are relying entirely on them for."

Nod. "Thank you for your advice, as usual. I'll keep you updated." 

And a few days later, Treven arrives with Dara for their own private debrief with Findekáno. "We talked to Fëanáro about your father's involvement. It went - all right, I think." 

"Well, that's something. We're not exiled?"

"No! I think his words were 'I guess if they want to be useful we might as well get something out of it.' I presented it all in a very numbers-y way. Personnel gaps due to Maitimo being evil, plus higher needs for planning; sorry, I might've sort of implied I thought running Vinyamar was far less critical than what he's doing now and actually ought to be given to someone less brilliant, which is maybe true but not the point. Planning the asking for volunteers in a hurry part might be more critical. I said Dara and I were advising, which is true but he probably thinks that means we're doing a way bigger share than we actually are." Shrug. "Nothing I said to him was false but I did frame it a certain way and I think it went over better as a result." 

"Well, that's definitely how Maitimo would've done it. Thank you."

"...Stef might've, er, coached me on it. I'm nowhere near Maitimo's level on this but Fëanáro isn't complicated as a person. Anyway. I - did have to promise something which you're aren't necessarily going to like, to get that level of buy-in from him, though I don't think it should ever come up because we're going to avoid being stupid." 

"Mmm?"

"His biggest worry was that there are no possible conditions under which you and your father would allow the - involuntary murder part. He was pleasantly surprised you were on board with volunteers, actually, and he knows we may have other options although not details because, er, we don't trust him to keep anything secret from Maitimo. But I promised that if we were up against the wall - if we got news that Sauron was moving in two days' time, and there weren't going to be enough volunteers and our other sources weren't going to pan out - and your father was still objecting and trying to stop us - I said if all of those things happened, then Vanyel would Gate Nolofinwë somewhere else for the duration."

He makes a loose, helpless hand-gesture. "Honestly, Van would do it anyway, with or against my orders. If the alternative was Melkor getting Velgarth. But I think it's not too costly a promise to make because if we're smart, we shouldn't end up in that corner at all, and also - I think you would recognize the necessity then? As long as we were clear on having tried literally every other option first." 

He looks down at the table. "Conveniently I guess I will never have to figure that out about myself. - let's make sure it isn't necessary."

"Anything new on having some contingency-plans for getting volunteers on short notice?" 

"Are we prepared to circulate that we might want volunteers on very short notice for the war in Velgarth, or is that still leaking too much -"

"Hmm. I'm going to run that by Stef, actually, since he has the best guesses right now of what information Maitimo is successfully pulling in. Could you circulate that there may at some point be a very important announcement regarding the war, that people may need to come in on short notice for, but without specifying the volunteers part?" 

"Yeah, we can do that."

"Thank you." 

Weeks pass. Mostly uneventfully. Telumë works on plans. Checks math. Tries to stay on top of gathering intelligence on all the activities happening within Valdemar and Karse (Iftel is a lost cause). He has a lot of very competent people, but - ultimately, he's still the centre of it, they need him to be a driving force - to check for missed corners, to be paranoid in the right way, and the only other person he would actually trust with that responsibility is currently evil. 

He misses Maitimo so much. But - he can hold himself together in the meantime. Findekáno was right; it helps to visit Vinyamar, even if he basically cannot stay the night because whatever Maitimo is up to means he won't sleep. (Vanyel came to him very concerned at one point and asked if he was coping with it all right, and he promised he was and then asked Melody to please actually watch whether he is or not, because clearly he can't trust his own sense of this right now.) 

The fastest route out of this is winning the war, and the best route out is winning the war at an acceptable cost in lives and destruction and trust destroyed forever, and even if the centre of him feels unsteadier than he would prefer, he can use that as a guiding star. 

A month later, Stef sits down to collect one of his period spy reports on all the gossip his various people can gather from Maitimo's sleepy little town, and somewhat thinner coverage of gossip in the neighbouring regions. 

Maitimo flirts with men in town, which is a clear sign he's incredibly evil, as he's married. People are unclear on the details of who he's married to. The most popular theory is that Sauron used his evil magic to turn Maitimo attracted to men and then had him married to the child-King of a Velgarth empire for a peace treaty but then Maitimo made contact with the Noldor and negotiated an alliance and his release.

Maitimo's staffers caught him trying to get a knife once. He said he wanted to cut his steak and forgot why it'd alarm everyone. He was in fact eating steak at the time.

Maitimo's research institutes are studying animal suffering in nature and chronic pain among trauma survivors. He was steered very firmly away from infectious disease research because his staffers aren't idiots but they can't actually think what harm he can do with these lines of research, unless Sauron wins and he can be slightly more efficient about making the whole multiverse horrible? They're having a hard time feeling very motivated to stop him over that, it's probably better than whatever else he'd spend his time on. 

An Angband survivor in a nearby town commits suicide. This is upsetting but also half of them do, at one point or another. Maitimo shouldn't've had the range to talk to her but it's not impossible.

Fëanáro and Nerdanel are inconvenienced by dinosaurs on one occasion. Also a lot of people are vaguely stressed about Fëanáro's presence here; he hasn't visited since before the war when he was the Crown Prince who did lots of engineering projects and, well, it suited him better. He's very impulsive. And kind of concerning as a person. Some people are tallking about convincing their children to leave Vinyamar and come home.

...It could be worse. Stef is very glad they caught the dinosaur thing and had Vanyel plan suitable precautions. He's moderately worried about the Fëanáro-related rumours, which are too vague to even chase down that well but he'll put out some feelers. 

He updates Findekáno, and Vanyel, who can fill Telumë in on his next visit to Velgarth. He plans a time with Dara to send Rolan in another week. There is nothing else really to be done except watch and wait. 

There's a rumor from a village near where Maitimo lives. Someone thought she saw a person standing in a field, a week ago. She osanwë'd him to ask if he was all right and he promptly vanished from view. She might have imagined it.

...Well, that's significantly more concerning than he'd hoped to hear. 

Stef alerts his network of people, asks to get a check on the recent gossip in every town for fifty miles. It's pretty costly every time he does that, he doesn't have that many really trusted people, and most of the people involved here don't actually have any idea what they're checking for or why, but - if a possible-mage was seen more than once, that's a lot more alarming. 

There's another possibility, in a different place farther away and a week earlier. Someone mentions that she noticed someone sleeping by the side of the road whose clothes were really ugly. She did not interrupt them, though.