That sounds more like a reason to not read the letter yet than to burn it. 

I do have fire spirits, by the way. Turns out a permanently running fire at above nine hundred degrees is a pretty good place to get those. Should help for your ring, or possibly the burning.

Oh, I should have thought of that. Excellent. How's Maitimo, aside from 'very likable'?

We didn't talk personal lives much, but he seems to be doing as well as could possibly be expected with his side of the everything. Also terrifyingly good at ferreting out information, but that one you knew.

They're all brilliant. If they were less amoral and reckless they'd be amazing. 

I believe it. He was running rings around me the whole time, or at least I think he was.

At least you noticed. I didn't, until it was rather too late. If he swore not to share, though, that's something. And he's not going off to get himself killed. That's good. 

Strategically.

That was the main goal, yeah.

I'll be talking to him again soon, probably, unless some undeniable reason not to comes up.
Which means he'll know you didn't reply to his letter, who knows what he'll extrapolate from that.

I mean. I think he has an excellent idea of what I think of him. We're going to need to forgive them all eventually for the sake of the war but I think I can avoid jumping whenever he snaps his fingers. You are welcome to tell him I burned the letter.

He also knows you're a practitioner, I'm almost sure. Not Irissë though. You definitely should be warned about that one.

Thanks.

If his father hadn't handled everything so badly Maitimo was obviously going to be the next King of the Noldor, everyone knew it. He'd have been scary good.

Or a scary good practitioner, on my world, or just scary.

I should update the King on all this; part of it is an offer of diplomacy.

I'll tell him to shoo people away for us. What's the offer of diplomacy?

They tell us anything strategically relevant—he intends to do that anyway; his goal is for sharing information to at least not make people worse off—and he requests that we send their spies back if we find them. They have spies, apparently.

I knew he had spies but did not really expect their unswerving loyalty to survive being abandoned here with us to die. That's - that's honestly just bizarre, as a request or statement of intent or whatever it is supposed to be. We are not amoral and reckless, we're not going to execute people, so what concession does he want? Or is it just a way of communicating 'I'm playing so many levels above you that you should not even bother'?

It sounds suspiciously reasonable to you too? I assumed it meant spying was really severely disapproved of, there've been human societies that would execute them.
Maybe he doesn't still have spies and is just distracting whatever espionage systems you have. And shouldn't tell me about because I'll be in a room with Maitimo at some point.

I mean, it's considered very rude and would make people disapprove of him if they didn't have better reasons. Elves don't have any crimes for which we'd execute people, I suppose we can reconsider that in the Outer Lands where we can't just ask the Valar to find a solution that makes it impossible for them to harm others, but that isn't where I'd first have diverted the attention of a more retributive justice system.

I will avoid telling you things I don't want my cousin to know.

Yeah, I just wasn't expecting sending them back to be as trivial as it sounded.

Can't just look at people and see who's got connections running off toward the Feanorians, unfortunately. That's practically everyone.

We can see that kind of thing?

Yes? It varies by individual, but shouldn't be that much. 
If there's currents of whatever the microscopic spirits look like to you, and they seem to be going in consistent paths to and from people, that's probably this. A specialist might be able to tell more, like how strong of a relationship or what kind, but we don't have one of those handy.

Oh, I was worried you could sense strength or kind. Existence is all right. I can see currents. 

Yeah, it's only the same thing you cut off in the unnoticeability trick.

Potentially a useful specialty. A really good enchanter might plausibly be able to redirect orcs' oaths.

I shall consider specializing in it. 

We don't have any way to get that good, of course. Knowledge is a currency, I wasn't rich, all that.

You can't make up for it with time?

Theoretically. Techniques have to have been developed somehow, and that one doesn't sound like an especially dangerous field for just trying things.

Normally there isn't all that much innovation. It's less effort to get an existing hard-to-get book.