But we have all the time in the world and no books, so we'll have to see where we can get.  How common are practitioners good enough to see and manipulate relationship kinds, oaths, things like that?

No relevant books. We should get mine transcribed off that device at some point just in case.

Oaths would be hard, if they literally can't not serve him and he's there being all undeniably himself. Maybe impossible. It is heard of but very rare for an enchanter to be able to steal someone's familiar, which is the best analogy I can think of.

I don't think there are many practitioners who can change other peoples' relationships. Affect strength of the connection, maybe. And of course being really good at the disappearing trick.

I just can't think why Maitimo'd tell us he had spies except as a power play or to waste our time. And yet.  

Maybe he doesn't know if they're still loyal, and this is a way to find out who we think is sympathetic to his side so he can do...something, once he has actual spies? I doubt trying to figure it out is going to be very productive.

Probably not. King's ready to speak to you.

All right. Here's hoping Maitimo knowing things isn't a political disaster on top of the magical one.

And she heads tentward to fill in the King. The ring can come off; there aren't arrows to deflect here and it might be recognizable as Feanorian.

How'd it go? he asks, though he's presumably already informed of that. 

For a success, pretty badly.

He did agree to make the weapon I asked you about, so we shouldn't need a hundred copies made of ice. That's something.

I hope he appreciates that we could really just have let him get himself killed. What was his justification for going to the parley anyway?

They were hoping the Enemy would give them a Silmaril to see what they could do with it, and then find out he couldn't take it back. They thought it was a good enough outcome to be worth staking lives on despite the odds.

...and what can they do with the Silmarils? They're really pretty, they'd let you grow crops...

That's apparently classified. Enough to convince me he was right about the parley having positive results on average.
I'd definitely tell you if it mattered strategically, but now that they're staying put with the Enemy I'm not sure it does.

Why's he not going, if he convinced you the parley had positive results on average?

If the Doom means anything, it means averages stop applying.

And on his part it was an experiment to see what happens if he takes advice from known non-Doomed people. If he's inclined to try for a larger sample size I'd want him to think I can be fully informed, hence the not telling you about the Silmarils. Sorry.

I am not delighted that Maitimo has you keeping secrets for them this fast, but I applaud you successfully talking him down and understand that he'll know what you said. And then he guessed that your magic isn't something like our world's?

Neither am I. How secret is the departure time, by the way? I told him I should err on the side of not saying before I check. He probably suspects anyway.

He had already guessed about the magic, but meeting me confirmed it was different and shareable. The cover story on that side is that Men can make songs permanent, which meant I could improve their forges, which meant I had a chance to catch some fire elementals. There've been a couple times when those would have come in really useful recently.

...also I could probably destroy their forges now, if it comes up.

The departure time isn't importantly secret but I'm disinclined to tell them, they hardly need to know. 

I can imagine circumstances under which that'd be useful but they'd be pretty extreme. How are their forges now improved?

Fire elementals—they had a lot of them—outputting heat instead of just sitting there. Very basic, barely more complicated than the unmelting ice. It means they'll burn hotter with less fuel. Could have concentrated it in a single fuelless forge but that wouldn't have fit with the cover story.

Oh, useful. What's Maitimo's ostensible reason for wanting to know our departure date? Familial concern?

His father has been working on rings for warmth; if we were leaving in a month or later they could start producing those.

I didn't say when even though I admitted to knowing it, and I did say not to drop everything else to churn out those rings. It wouldn't surprise me if he guessed that we're leaving extremely soon.

Do you think he was telling the truth about their willingness to drop everything to churn out rings?

What he said was that it was ridiculously extreme, he gave an estimate of how much work it'd be but I forget the number, but they'd do it if it were that or an extra war. He wasn't seriously considering it.

This is only his stated reason for wanting to know the timing.

I do not think he'd try ambushing us on the other side even if you weren't with us. Unless Macalaure has a sleep song. 

Maitimo did say he's been working on an improved weather song, but who knows what Macalaure has.

That's not an easy contingency to plan around in any event. We'll presume that he's pretending to be friendly because he wants us to think he's friendly, and will keep wanting that, at least.