Definitely not. Note that winning the war and handing them their stupid oath objects doesn't need any involvement with them past 'you're welcome.'

Yeah.

And then he'll make that face, again, if it hits him that I actually mean it.

And at that point, if political advantage isn't why he's confessing his innocence,

That's a hard sentence to speculate on the end of.

Anyway. We learned a lot more than that.

As did Maitimo. What did you have in mind?

His line with us is going to be 'I wish I had the latitude with my father'.

In which case emphasizing how little he has isn't just to get us to tread lightly like I thought, it'd also be setting up for saying no to things.

Yes. And it'll be hard to tell if he legitimately doesn't have the latitude or if he's just not inclined to use it or doesn't want us to have whatever it is.

Well, we'll know to translate it to "no, reasons unknown" and if your father has spies maybe you can check whether it correlates with how much latitude Maitimo actually has that day.

If he has spies he hasn't told me about them. 

Wisely, I guess. 

In retrospect.

Or it might make more sense for you to just avoid Maitimo, then this particular problem doesn't come up.

He reads you pretty well too. I'm not sure we have anyone short of my father himself who can actually keep secrets from him. Though I'm obviously a particularly open book.

Yeah, apparently he could find out any secret that gets put in a room with him, it just happens. I mean since you didn't just get sort-of requested as unofficial ambassador you can just not be in the room where it happens.

I'm actually guessing they have a way to see across the ocean which they're covering for as Maitimo's ridiculous deductive powers. Makes more sense.

I briefly wondered if they had some other source of information, but not for long. No way across. How plausible is seeing that far?

Humans have technology for that, and magic could probably do it.

My uncle can do a lot with lenses, and he stole our lenscrafting equipment when he crossed and burned the boats. Or they figured out a way to use the palantiri. I wouldn't have guessed it's possible, but they hid some secret capabilities of the Silmarils, maybe they also hid some secret capabilities of the palantirs.

What are the non-secret capabilities?

Instantaneous communication, one palantir to another. There are nine. 

All the same size? 'We hid the tenth in Nolofinwe's crown' could get them the same effect.

Not all the same size, none a size you could hide. That I know of. 

I mean, if any of them are close and they're inclined to use them that way then it would be the smallest that they wouldn't mention. I have no idea how implausible this is relative to them just being able to receive without a transmitter.

Or having given one to someone on our side of the sea who's still loyal to them. Or having the ability to enchant other things into transmitters: they give you anything since you first visited them?

Good point, I didn't think of that. I might be bugged now in addition to being an open book. There's the weapons, but that was just today.

Wait. No. There's this ring. Supposed to be protection from arrows. I haven't been wearing it publicly in case people recognize it as theirs, but maybe it doesn't need to be worn.

Might be protection from arrows. Might be a transmitter. Might be both.

My fucking cousins.

He doesn't even get anything strategic out of it half the time, you know, he just gets off on having power over people.

This being the guy we do want in charge? I mean, comparatively.