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Calling it a council was Feanor’s idea. There is no mistaking the double entendre—my half-brother is rarely subtle.
We meet in Finarfin’s home. The last time Feanor entered my house is an occasion we would do well to forget, and I have never visited his apartments in Valinor Park, though they are but a quarter mile south of our father’s. This, I suppose, is our version of neutrality.
(And what is my mother’s? Sitting at home a widow, with half her family leaving?)
We gather around the table Olwe built for his daughter’s dowry. It is exquisitely inlaid with many kinds of wood and mother-of-pearl. Olwe is the mayor of Ulmo’s Bridge. I think it strange that we are here and he is there, and yet Finarfin is the last of us to decide whether he will go west.
Would not his wife wish it?
Our eldest sons are with us this morning—Feanor’s attempt at graciousness, and acknowledging lineage. For my part, I am glad Fingon is dressed as a gentleman, for once, rather than a homely doctor. Not that I would ever call my handsome firstborn homely in his features, but I mislike the way he drapes himself in old cloaks, rough linen, and tells me that it is right for him to commune with the vulgar public.
Finrod looks like a mountain man—a stark contrast to his dandy days—and Maedhros looks as he most often does: radiant and arrogant and entirely too charming to trust.
Earwen sends in a maid to pour us tea. Irish brews, because of Feanor. Our youngest brother is ever the diplomat.
“Finarfin,” Feanor says, when we have finished an exhausting round of light conversation. Feanor is always so much warmer with our youngest brother, even now—whereas my presence is like a stone’s weight in the room. “Have you made your decision?”
Finarfin fusses with the diamond studs in his cuffs. Feanor made them for him when he was married—everyone else in the family was too flustered and disapproving for wedding gifts, at first. Finarfin and Earwen were married in secret just after his eighteenth birthday.
“I…” Finarfin clears his throat. “I shall remain.”
I suppose I am not surprised. He has our mother’s light hair and smooth skin, her love for the comforts of home. Despite his marriage with one of Olwe’s Swedish settlement, what would Finarfin do in the west?
Much less the far west?
Feanor frowns, but it seems to be an expression of sadness, not of anger. Then the frown slips away and he nods. “Someone should remain in Father’s stead,” he agrees.
And I would rather it be you.
He is so close to adding that, I know. I see Maedhros’s knuckles tighten on the arms of his chair, waiting for the same words.
They don’t come.
“Finrod will accompany you, though,” Finarfin adds, trying for bright good humor, now that the worst is over. “Will you not, eldest?”
As if there was any doubt. Finrod does not even dress like we do anymore; he wears too much leather, too much embroidery with patterns the like of which I have never seen. “I must,” he says. “I have…I have friends there, whom I would see again. Perhaps when I have built a house large enough to keep you in comfort, Father, you and Mother shall make your way there, too.”
“Perhaps,” Finarfin answers. He sips his tea a little languidly, and turns to me. “You are set on your sudden decision, Fingolfin?”
“I am.” I, too, have hated my years here. I, too, want to keep my pride intact.
I, unlike Feanor, have done my duty by my father and his legacy. It is only Melkor’s trickery that has wedged me from my place here, at long last.
“Melkor is a criminal.” Feanor’s voice is hard. “A sadist, and a thief.” He says the last word with such disgust that I am uncomfortable, remembering his many theories of Melkor's villainy--theories I have doubted, in my time. How often have I been wrong? “As long as his brother is governor, as long as he is permitted to wield his mastery of machinery in mastery of men, he will not rest until he has made the West as ugly and festering as the East.”
“Some of us can tolerate the East,” Finarfin says gently. “But I would not hold you back. Either of you—if you, Fingolfin, feel the same.”
I do not arise in anger as does Feanor. I am not so quick of temper, at least, so I hope to believe. But I say, because I also hope to have his trust—for once—
“I do.”
After that, there is a great deal of exact planning: who will stay and who will go, how to assist Finarfin in managing what is left of our father’s affairs. I say without self-flattery that I have worked day and night to see to his estate, and to smoothly transfer the running of his business to myself, in the year since his passing. Now, I offer the crown (of sorts) to Finarfin.
I do not know if the calm pallor of his face could rightly be called gratitude.
“You will do admirably,” Feanor tells him, perhaps perceiving the same shadow of doubt.
My traitorous heart twists in my chest. Why must I always—a man of middle-age—feel the absence of such compliments so keenly?
Fingon is looking at me. In a moment, I realize that Maedhros is, too, though more cautiously, out of the corners of his long eyes. I lean back in my chair as though no harm has ever come to me.
“Our family shall flourish on the western coast,” I say, and I smile at Feanor as if he will return my good humor. “We may leave in haste, but not in shame or misjudgment.”
He inclines his head. Is that agreement? Is this neutrality, or something more?
My traitorous heart would call it by too many names.