And I suppose they wouldn't send Findekáno. They sent someone, though, your senses are not good enough to have eavesdropped because if they were, you would have reacted to the noises I've had several people make outside during this conversation. 

My senses aren't, no. Is there any version of this where Maitimo guesses that it's totally possible to be in human-hearing range without being seen and assumes that happened? Would that be any better? Probably not.

Why wouldn't they send Findekáno?

I am not going to press the point but plans that depend on keeping secrets from me only work if someone wholly informed whose judgement I trust swears that our prospects against the Enemy are better if I don't know the secret. So, if you're not just playing games with the subterfuge, tell me what I need to avoid finding out.

You know why they wouldn't send Findekáno.

You mean because of the, the insulting allegations Artanis likes to hint at, because I did decide to just act like there's enough cultural difference I have no idea what it's about so no one notices I don't seem to care, and it would be fair to call that playing games with a subterfuge–

I mean because if we came to terms his own people wouldn't trust them, they have an impression of my capabilities that's wholly inconsistent with what I've actually achieved and think I can hijack him or something. He used to trust me and he still knows me to be capable and thinks my goals are good, there's no magic at work there. What's Artanis implying?

That is much better than Maitimo knowing about the other reason Findekáno and Irissë are avoiding him.

Nothing strategically important, more like just embarrassing. She's probably gone around implying it at you at some point; I don't think it's a new thing.

How does telling you what you need to not find out work when it would alert you to the shape or existence of the secret?

He is watching her intently. 

Existence of the secret is obvious; you have capabilities humans don't. You go out of your way to avoid observably using them but don't mind doing things that could not have been done without them; thus it'd be informative even to see you do it, over and beyond the information that you can do it, thus it's probably shareable and your reaction confirmed that. I have a broad sense of what the capabilities entail and will eventually have a much narrower one.  It's magic. It's not typical of or specific to humans. You have senses I don't that can probably also be acquired. Is that enough information that you can decide what additional information I should avoid seeking out?

Anything at all in that direction until I've had a chance to panic? Actually at this point it's probably more important that you not spread it to anyone else, you're definitely over the edge on knowing enough for it to count and telling someone would endanger both of us primarily you and also them, and I knew talking to you was risky–

It's a threshold thing. What's the threshold?

Just a minute, not done panicking.

Okay, so there are sequential thresholds, or past the first it's gradual, but you've definitely hit the important one. Knowing that it's magic, basically, and being unable to fool yourself into buying any other explanation. Normally there's a strong weirdness censor, where if there's any other explanation people will go with that one. I was relying on the fact that non-magic Powers exist and what counts as magic might be fuzzier, plus the fact that no one needs to know what humans can't do, to be a lot freer with magic than normal. But either the thing stopping people from taking the idea of my kind of magic seriously doesn't apply here or you're just that observant, and when I was deciding whether to come here I'm not sure which would have scared me more.

Oh, there is something to make other explanations more compelling even when systemically looking through my hypotheses they seem less likely, and to make likely ones fail to come to mind? That was very annoying, I had to formalize my reasoning to an absurd degree to stop systematically making mistakes. Comes across as hostile, for the record.

I actually agree. It's not me doing it, by the way, there'd be the same effect if you tried dropping hints any less clear than just saying it. Which, don't.

Now that you know, you're theoretically in danger. Probably wouldn't be much back home, and less here, but if you run across any of the monsters that go with my kind of magic you're less protected. The bigger problem is that there's a set of pretty arbitrary rules—I should tell you what they are—where if you break them too egregiously the universe hands you a run of bad luck. And me, because one of the stupider rules is that I'm now magically responsible for everything you do.

So I hope you haven't been relaying the existence of magic to anyone else, or the problem could get exponentially worse.

Everyone has been trying to puzzle you out but I can tell them 'infohazard, drop it', they trust me. You're accountable for my behavior in what sense?

We call it karma.

The universe has opinions on how people should act. Most people don't have to worry about this; it almost never touches them. Practitioners–people with my kind of magic–constantly do. You're closer to the normal people end.

Go against what it wants and you rack up bad karma, which gets redeemed in the form of random events happening to go against you when it counts. Or if you accumulate a lot of it, something jumps out of nowhere and kills you in whatever way is least convenient. I'm accountable for you in the sense that if you manage to get a karma score, good or bad but almost always bad, a percentage of it gets passed on to me. I am trying, apparently unsuccessfully, not to be responsible for too many people.

I'll fight this war honorably if I can but I am first and foremost concerned with winning it. I don't know what kind of karma that will leave me. I'm sorry my actions affect you. You're lucky my father hasn't pieced it together. As far as I know. He's smarter than me, might not need as much information.

I'm more or less expecting to end up with my karma tanked for the same reason. Already started that way, but that doesn't make doing more of it any less dangerous.

One of the other reasons to monopolize magic and related secrets is that I don't know how karma interacts with Doom and it might be suicidal to try to find out.

Fair enough. I can keep your secrets. If there's no additional danger to it, can you describe your capabilities? My lies will be better if I know what I'm covering for.

Probably. Additional danger should be pretty minor. Describing capabilities is a bit more of a decision than I'd want to make on the spot after being found out, can I get back to you on that one?

Also, lies are one of the main things that earns bad karma. Not a problem since you're not a practitioner, but if you have to lie a lot you should stay away from the spirits' attention.

I can aggressively mislead if your spirits find that less objectionable. What gets their attention? Is osanwe less dangerous? Does it matter that I have a reputation as dishonest independent of whatever I did to earn it?

Humans don't have osanwë, but in general medium doesn't matter. With the exception that spoken word has more gravity than any other way of saying things. A lie over osanwë shouldn't be any less a lie than a written one. Misleading is not a lie.

You get their attention usually by being a practitioner or an Other–that being a catchall term for the nonhumans that interact with the magic system–or by getting unlucky. There aren't any common ways for that to happen but there are very few absolutes with magic and I can't say never.

An unearned reputation shouldn't hurt you. Not directly. If you were a practitioner and it came up while you were present, the spirits might expect you to announce that you're innocent and take silence as an implicit admission. It'd give your accuser the karmic high ground if you don't, so things go more right for them and wrong for you in the current plot.

If I give you information the Nolofinwean host cannot have will you promise not to share it with them.

If I would otherwise not know it, then making that promise shouldn't hurt.
Is that absolute, like if there's some unpredictable emergency more important than your stated reason for secrecy where acting on the secret could save the day do I have to pretend not to know it? Or if someone guesses as soon as I walk into a room with them while knowing it, I assume that doesn't count as sharing?

I don''t want to give a promise lightly; those are binding.

This is circumstance-driven. I did not burn the ships. I promised Findekáno we were coming back for him and I meant it and Father announced his intent on the other shore and I tried to stop him and I failed. You might have noticed I have a surprising amount of freedom of action for having just publicly disobeyed my King on something that important. My father and I have an understanding. Part of that understanding is that leveraging my defiance of him for political advantage with the Nolofinweans would be unacceptable. But if I cannot contradict them when they call me a liar, the universe will take it to be true?

Kind of. If a practitioner makes a show of asking you and you don't say no, the spirits would read that as you being in the wrong. It wouldn't mean that you having burned the ships becomes "true." If you said afterward that you never did it, no number of missed chances to deny it would make that register as a lie. It could work against you in the short term, like for whatever the practitioner is doing or or about to do right then. Keeping silent wouldn't affect your long-term karma balance or anything even if you were a practitioner.

Hmm. All right. That does not seem sufficient incentive to set the record straight, given what it would cost me.