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"Is it too soon?" Caranthir asks, and Maglor answers, feeling very hard and old, "It will always be too soon."
In his heart, the task has bored its way like a worm into an apple. Is it commemoration or desecration?
(Can sacrilege ever be born of love?)
All of Maedhros's shirts are too large, the trousers too long. "Leave those aside for Celegorm," Maglor directs. "Those--and the spare boots, too."
Maedhros took his long coat and his spurs and his gun. They die with him.
"Fine work, these." Until Utumno is resurrected, Gothmog does not strictly have a base of operations. He has been passing from one shanty to the next, governing the crawling construction of the infernal rails, and riding to Angband more often than he would like.
Bauglir has a gift for him today, however. The spurs gleam in his hands.
"They are Feanor's make, no doubt," Bauglir tells him, with a jealous smile. Brighter than silver shines the massive diamond at his breast. "You see they are monstrous dull."
"Boy was too fond of his horse," Gothmog agrees. "I seen it before. Let 'em get bold and they'll throw you."
Bauglir does not answer. He has more than spurs spread upon the desk before him: a shirt, once-white, and a mud-spattered pair of trousers. Worn leather boots, also soiled, rest beside the brass claw-feet of his chair. Gothmog took the Colt Walker himself, of course, and Bauglir hasn't asked for it back--but he wonders if this unprompted gift is strictly in good faith.
There is, in the shallow black eyes of Bauglir, very little faith of any sort.
"You didn't leave him much," Gothmog observes, and he strokes the star-shaped rowels, which have been deliberately blunted.
"A few stitches." Bauglir shrugs. "He lost all this honestly, what with his endeavors at wit and rebellion."
Gothmog hasn't seen the boy since he handed him over. His lieutenant, sent to collect more hands for their work-crews, reported that the prisoner was unconscious and stretched like a butchered side while Bauglir conducted his business.
"Will you cherish them?" Bauglir smiles. "Will you cherish Feanor's work?"
Gothmog grins, cautious. "I've great love for a trophy."
Maedhros's pack, emptied, looks too small. Caranthir takes his rosary without a word. Maedhros's prayer medal is nowhere to be seen. The clean socks and under-vests are shared as is sensible, and Maglor smarts under the brutal practically of this, even while he is the one to lead it.
Maglor, and practicality. A match he never dreamed. A match he--
A few days ago, you would not even enter this room.
When the hour came--the hour that marked the beginning of the fourth day, the day on which he could no longer even pretend that Maedhros was living, Maglor had to do something.
He has always picked at scabs, worried at loose teeth.
He opened the door of that room. It changed him, as he knew it would.
"I'll take the comb," he says hoarsely. No one protests. It was Mother's, first. Maglor has dragged it gently through Maedhros's hair, sometimes, when Maedhros could not sleep. There is a single red strand running through it now, wound about the curved bone teeth.
(There is a ribbon of red, bound with thread, in Maglor's wallet. That, he will not divide.)
Curufin hovers and watches with sharp eyes. At last, just as Amras's hand is reaching, he says,
"I shall have the cards." It is not a request.
"Take his spare hunting knife, Amras," Caranthir urges, when Amras goes stone-faced and too still. "It is--"
From the door, Celegorm's voice flares like a burning brand. "Perhaps," he suggests, "You should cast lots."
Gothmog shifts from one foot to the other. There are conversations that need having, but for now, Bauglir is so intent on his spoils, so intent on his captive.
"Where is he now?"
"Mairon flogged him bloody," Bauglir says, as if that is not surprising news. Gothmog rather thought Bauglir cared to save the boy's pretty looks--but the man remains a mystery, after all these years, even to him. "I have given him a little time to think. To heal." That smile again. "But you do not care about that. Keep the spurs, Cosmoco. And tell me what it is you really desire to treat over."
"They've been keeping to Mithrim. No more night-burnings, but it hasn't been long. We can start laying foundations for a new headquarters, but it seems risky to build it in the same--"
"Build it here."
"Eh?"
Bauglir pushes aside the rumpled clothing, to reveal his prized skull in two pieces. He gazes at the bleach-white bones, and says again, "Build it here. The mountain is cragged and treacherous, I grant you. But at the base, there is ground that could be turned over in an expedient fashion. The thralls have been growing rather thin and ill, kept underground. Let us carve a true space for their labor. A modern plantation, my friend--we'll grow engines and mapped tracks, instead of cotton."
Gothmog shrugs. It's not a terrible idea, though he's hardly keen to be close to Bauglir for the day-by-day of his work.
Not to mention Mairon.
"Thankye," he demurs, and nods his head, hat over his breast. The spurs jingle in his left hand.
They'll be useful.
Celegorm's face is granite-hard, save for his lip, twitching as he sneers. "Oh, Macalaure," he snaps. "How quickly you grieve."
(Maglor opened the door, and thought he would find Maedhros there--not really, but enough to believe for a moment.
He didn't. His imagination failed him.)
"I..."
I know I put the knife in your hand. I know I put the bullet in his head. I know, I know, I know.
"It is only right, Celegorm," Curufin interjects. "We cannot quarrel over supplies."
"This isn't about supplies," Caranthir objects, outraged. "We're--we're remembering him."
(This is the room in which Maglor last saw Maedhros rest.)
"Call it what you wish," Celegorm answers, his eyes cold as he looks at Caranthir, and somehow colder when he turns his gaze to Maglor again. "I'll have no part in it."
Celegorm always envied Maedhros's coat.