"Rolan!" Stef barks in the Groveborn's ear, hanging on almost flat to his neck. "Who's with Maitimo?" 

The water's moving faster but they have a substantial head start, they started moving before anything even happened. They should be able to get clear of it.

Maitimo is presently accompanied at the concert by his mother and four guards, with Iverindo in charge.

"Jisa, you remember Iverindo - Mindspeak him, tell him not to react visibly, then explain."

Jisa pauses in the middle of trying to gauge how much water is getting to the village anyway, figure out if she has the strength to raise the barrier higher. The range is long for her but Eren can actually boost her a little, apparently, despite not even being her Companion - Companions are pretty neat when they're trying to help in an emergency. 

:Iverindo. It's Jisa. Don't react visibly. We have a situation: 

Okay. I can see Maitimo right now, he's attending a concert with us. 

:Stef and I are here: she names the village, :following up on a report - trap - Maitimo just somehow arranged to blow the dam and drown an entire village trying to get us: She flashes him a couple of her sense-impressions of it. :We know it was him, conclusively. I need you to osanwë whoever needs to know so they can get here and help. We'll figure out what to do about Maitimo later. Please don't tell him anything just now: 

Gods. We should contact the Valar - for something of that scale - and I'll send help right away.

:Oh, that's a good idea, please do contact the Valar. We're getting out of Valinor as fast as we can: Jisa pulls some energy from a magic ceiling still within range of her Gift. Checks the water level still getting through. How do people seem to be coping? 

:–Rolan, what's Maitimo up to - what's he thinking about...?: 

Maitimo is almost entirely focused on the concert; he does not have to go to any particular lengths to ensure that the news of how it went will eventually reach him, and if he has strong emotions Telumë will notice them. He has fanned out his attention across the singers and the program with notes on the music, instead of spying on anyone outside the city. A little corner of his head is running through his calculations, as he pulled this plan together: if Stef's dead, Vanyel shows up and - probably just kills him, hopefully in front of everyone - if Stef's alive, they'll probably take more time to regroup, show up in a few days to complain, by which time he can have pointed out the obvious - he is a traumatized newlywed with no head for engineering, who has never been to the village or met anyone in it, hypothesized to have blown up its dam with his mind while watching a concert. There is another explanation. There was a mage right there, investigating reports of yet another mage right there. 

No one from Velgarth will buy it. Almost everyone from Valinor, he suspects, will.  

They need to piece together how he did it in as much detail as possible, then. It doesn't matter whether most of Valinor believes it, but it does matter a lot if the Valar do. 

Rolan has an eidetic memory. There are probably relevant fragments from earlier. They can think about it once they're no longer in imminent danger. It seems like there aren't any more teeth in this trap but Jisa is not yet confident of that. 

She holds the barrier and tries to divert water away from people she sees in particular trouble until she's out of range for mage-sight.

...It occurs to her long after it should have to contact Vanyel. Not that he could actually have done anything, but he deserves a report. She belts herself into the saddle and then digs in her pocket for the artifact. 

<Vanyel. Situation> 

Half a candlemark later, Vanyel and Telumë both march into Findekáno's office in Vinyamar. Vanyel flings up a privacy-barrier. "We have a serious problem." 

" - what -"

"Did Jisa or Stef talk to you before they went to Valinor just recently?" 

"Yep. Looking into Enemy mages. Did they find one?"

"No. It was a trap. Maitimo was watching the village. Somehow had osanwë range, which I didn't think he ought to. He'd put together a plan to catch when they arrived and–" he hesitates, "and blow up a dam. You ought to be getting the report soon, I don't know how long it'll take to relay via osanwë. I don't know how many people died, yet, but I'm sure some did. Jisa and Stef both got out safe with the Companions. Jisa tried very, very hard to save everyone in the village too, but..." 

"Blow up a dam. Wow." He closes his eyes briefly. "If he wasn't working with anybody I'm - a bit surprised, I wouldn't have expected him to know how to do that. Tell Jisa I'm sure she did well, we just - there's really no way to let him have osanwë safely, is there."

"There absolutely isn't. Jisa had some ideas about how he did it and I think we put together more when they're back, Rolan was reading him at range and can track just as much as he can and remember it all, we don't know what was important yet but there might be hints. He - taught himself to talk to birds. Had some crows knock over a lantern, start a fire, and - there were explosives. Labeled as not that. He must have talked someone into carrying those in for him, but probably said convincingly it was for something perfectly innocuous. It...didn't exactly take engineering skill, doing this. Put lots of explodey things next to structure, explode them, done. Jisa passed everything relevant on to Iverindo, told him to investigate, so maybe soon we'll know who did what. If they're alive." 

Vanyel shoots a slightly worried glance at Telumë, who hasn't said anything yet. Looks back to Findekáno. Waits. 

"He taught himself to talk to birds - would've been someone in his hometown, one of the Aulendil, most likely, there aren't many people in Valinor who use explosives regularly, for mining, and he probably has pretty good range with some of them because he grew up with them. The Valar must be furious. I guess we can try to convince them to...take his osanwë away? That's aganst the terms of your agreement with him but presumably that's voided by, uh, murdering a lot of people -"

"My plan is to head to Valinor myself as soon as I know my lifebonded and my daughter are safe," why did he send them in there alone, he was an idiot, he should have interrupted and asked Telumë, not careful enough not paranoid enough, "and osanwë-barrier his house, he can have people in with him if he wants, and put a second barrier around the entire goddamned village. People can leave if they want, I guess. Probably the Valar won't let me keep it up but we need some kind of interim measure, obviously. Also I was thinking and Telumë and I can build an assemble-able Gate terminus. Stick it on a boat on the southern coast. Gate Rolan out that way, cuts the travel time and the exposure, we think Maitimo has no idea we have a Groveborn helping and that's our only advantage right now." 

"You can keep him in the village maybe two weeks and then he'll die of it. In the house maybe a day. I realize it's extraordinarily inconvenient. - we should also be preparing for the possibility the Valar react by kicking him out -"

"I'm aware, Telumë helpfully reminded me of that, that's why a couple layers and he can go on supervised walks or something. I don't know what to do longer term but the Valar are really slow. Hopefully they'll have a longer term solution in a week. What are we going to do if they kick him out of Valinor?" 

Sigh. 

"I don't suppose any of the work on using the existence of other planes to solve our problems have encountered any worlds that are just...uninhabited?"

"Not planes that humans or Quendi can survive in," Telumë says quietly, without looking up.