Maitimo's very helpful when he wants to be. I suppose he does have a lot on his mind.

Maybe it's time to talk to the hidden kingdom.

Agreed. Either for a covert look at whatever they're using for food production or at least for regular diplomacy.

So how best to go about finding them?

Depends on how it's hidden. Maybe there's nothing we can do. Hopefully some combination of an aerial view and a sense they don't know about will work. If not, we could try and figure out some kind of divination magic. Eventually.

Let's try from the air first. You want to take someone with good eyesight and go have a look?

Yes, definitely.
It'd have to be you or Irissë or Lalwen, for the best chance at seeing through whatever it is.

I can't be spared right now, but you're welcome to grab either of them.

And does either of them want to come look for an extremely isolationist and xenophobic country that hopefully won't mind too much if strangers breach their secrecy?

Sounds guaranteed to be a great idea. Happy to, though. And we only have Maitimo's word on the isolationist and xenophobic, right?

For all of this. Though I did get the impression he'd exaggerate toward speaking well of them rather than badly.

Why would he want us to trust them?

He suggested we give them magic. He doesn't have anywhere near enough information to know if that's a good idea, but my speculation is he wants us to think it is because it increases the chance of someone from his camp finding out eventually.

Makes sense. Gosh, if the stakes were lower watching you spar with him would be kind of fun. 

You can say that, but I keep losing!

Are you sure? He figured out magic, but isn't going to try to do it, and he gave us a song for the Ice and has apologized profusely for the whole thing, sincerely or no.

Huh. And he did not in fact sound very credible when saying we should awaken people in the hidden kingdom, and he did decide not to walk into the Enemy's trap...

But he's good enough at ferreting out secrets that I'm a security leak just by virtue of being likely to talk to him in the future. Maybe keeping score is too simplistic.

We are, like, supposedly allies or something. 

In the enemy of our enemy sense, at least.

Maitimo'd slit all our throats to buy him a second's strategic advantage but I don't think he'd do it otherwise. That's something.

A bit damning with faint praise, but definitely better than the alternative.

I will even grant him that he might feel briefly sad about it.

She stares out at the forest. Nothing.

They only have a general direction from Maitimo. It could be too undetectable, or they could just be in the wrong place.

If they're as isolationist as it sounded, there probably won't be conveniently visible connections between them and everyone else. Maybe look for anything that looks brighter, like there are more spirits there? Depending on how they pulled this off in the first place, the fact that they don't know to hide Others might help.

She tries scanning systemically.

She can notice that her scanning is not going systemically.

Anything stand out?

Yeah, if I try to, like, look at each bit of forest, I find my eyes on places they've seen before, I am pretty sure there's something I'm not looking at - and it's giving me a headache -