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Maeglin's little room in the mountain is as small as his smithy quarters, but far cleaner. Instead of discarded horse-blankets, there are real linens on the bed. The oil lamp hanging from the ceiling is covered by a fluted glass shade, and there is a small writing desk in one corner. The desk has a hunting knife on it, and a vial of perfume in it.
The room was not first meant for Maeglin. He swallows in a funny, tight way, and picks up the knife first. There is a crude eye carved into the leather wrapped around its handle.
Maeglin is afraid of Mairon self-named Annatar. He has, of course, known him since he was a child. Mairon was jealous of him at first, and disinterested in him afterwards; this was never certain enough to be felt as relief. Always, Maeglin was told to do his best not to provoke him.
Mairon will be halfway across the forest by now.
Halfway across the world.
The perfume is next. It is nearly empty. Maeglin lifts the stopper from the vial, and drags in a breath so deep he coughs.
He cries a little, at night. By day, there is nothing to do or see that is not frightful, so he paces the little room and distracts himself with thoughts of metalwork. The trouble is, metalwork has Russandol threaded through it, like veins of ore through stone.
Russandol smiled at Maeglin once, when they were side by side and Maeglin had done something clever. It was cautious and swift, that smile, but the delicate crinkles at the corners of Russandol's eyes warmed Maeglin right down to his toes.
Russandol worked the forge like a man who was used to serving a genius. He seemed to think little of his own skill, while also expecting those around him to be two steps ahead of whatever was being presently hammered, almost as a matter of course.
Maeglin waits in his little room, and has nothing to craft with his hands, except to roll the crumbs of his bread into crude animal shapes.
After the second night, which feels, as the first did, so much darker and colder underground, he is ready to be cruel to Russandol again. Russandol is a traitor, and something uglier than that: he is selfish, and a murderer.
If you are going to kill a man, Master Bauglir has said, It must be done for a greater purpose. There is generosity even in blood.
Maeglin would not choose to hear his voice. His hand itches for the perfume again; something to take him away. But Master Bauglir looks after him now, and it is important to let one's world shape one.
(Russandol is dragging his crooked body through the forest, after he killed so many, so violently.)
(Mairon will fetch him back.)
Master Bauglir does not rap at Maeglin's door. He turns the handle, and comes in. His lips are pressed very tightly together, but he reaches out his hand and beckons, rolling two fingers languidly in and out.
(He went fishing once, with--he was very small, then, and it was so rare that-- The worms, dangling, undulated like this.)
"Good morning, sir."
"Good morning, my boy."
Maeglin has not yet washed his face. He feels dusty and rank. He cannot apologize for anything, though, until he knows whether or not speaking is a sin.
Master Bauglir blinks and blinks. He is holding himself as stiff as a fencepost.
Keep the firmness in your wrist, Russandol said. Keep your shoulders loose. This aids in precision. There, Maeglin. That's capital. That's very good.
"We caught him," Master Bauglir says, with a smile that looks like it must hurt.
"That lowly dog?" Maeglin pipes up. His voice sounds very thin in his ears.
"Yes." He reaches into one of his deep frock-coat pockets, and draws something out.
It is a hand. A copper hand, dotted with holes through which one might fit a pin. There is an embedded link on the back, below the fingers, as if for a chain. There, too, is a sack of pins, matching their marks in number.
Maeglin's skin crawls.
"Do you know what this is?" Master Bauglir asks, but mercifully, he does not wait for a reply. "This is a prize for a prisoner."
His left hand, which does not hold the shining thing, works and twitches, as if it wants to be a fist but knows not how.
"Oh."
"I would you like to take it, Maeglin, and go up to the great hall. You know the great hall, don't you?"
"The one with the angels?"
"The very same." And Master Bauglir sets the--it--in Maeglin's open, unwilling palms. "Wait there, until I call you."
You keep looking towards the woods, Maeglin said. He tried not to show Russandol that he was spying, but sometimes he thought of--of what Russandol had done, and taken, and a vicious boil rose on his heart, that could only be burst with sharp words.
Russandol dropped his shaggy head. Watching the light.
If I call Murphy, he will beat you for being lazy.
Yes, he will, Russandol agreed. But would you let me finish this chamber first, before you fetch him?
"I hate you," Maeglin says, chokily, his eyes fixed on the copper hand. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you."
Master Bauglir is nowhere to be seen, in the cavernous hall. The light from the far windows is painfully white. Maeglin prefers the shadows. Prefers the angel paintings to the eagle wings.
He hears the scraping sound of something being dragged before he sees. He hears uneven footsteps, and he hears low voices, and he sees...
Russandol, dead in every way but freedom.
Russandol's head hangs between his shoulders. Russandol's hands are much as they were before, split and bruised. There is blood at the breast and hem of his shirt. His feet are bleeding through his shabby slave shoes.
Maeglin has something very ugly, gripped tightly in his fingers. He wishes he could throw it away.
Russandol does not lift his head or scrabble with his feet, when his keepers turn the corner into Master Bauglir's study.
Sometimes, oftentimes, he wanted to ask Russandol why.
The voices are not low any longer. The voices are not voices, any longer: they are blows. Maeglin wants to cover his ears, but he will not lift that thing towards his face.
Maeglin hears--
Russandol doesn't sound human. Russandol might have been a traitor, and a selfish killer, but he was very, very human. These hideous groans should not be his.
"Come in, Maeglin," Master Bauglir says. Master Bauglir's face is blotched with purple (his) and spattered with red (not his). He opens the door for Maeglin with one hand; the other is clubbed and seeping.
Only half of Maeglin goes into that room. The other half, which he likes to think of as his littler self, the self that waited at the windows of upstairs rooms, runs out doubled-over. Runs out and away, and doesn't have to see the filthy, whining, thrashing mess.
The way it moves--
But he gives the hand.
He gives the hand, and they take a hand from the creature that was Russandol, and before they close that hand into the copper one, Maeglin must know just how much it looks like it always did: bruised and cracked and tired, but still slim; still clever.
Slim, clever, and kind. It was a kind hand, to Maeglin.
(He does put his hands over his ears, now. No one is looking at him.)
"Why not leave him in his old cell, Annatar?" Master Bauglir asks, smiling. "That seems a poesie of sorts, to me."
"All of this is yours, mon ami," Mairon answers. "But out there--I know it best. Will you not let me give the wild things their chance, before I take mine? That is the hunter's pleasure."
"I trust your senses," Master Bauglir agrees. "Maeglin, my lad, come here."
The creature that was Maeglin comes.
"We are going to put him outside the hidden gates," his master says. "We are going to leave him in the open air, as others have died before. Do you see, dear boy? This is vengeance." So quietly that Mairon cannot hear, he adds, "This is your vengeance."