Work Text:
Regarding the order and character of fëar in the shadow of committed misdeeds, Noldorin writings of the First Age indicate a wide breadth of contemporary opinion and belief. This range of belief has been shown not to be solely determined by factional allegiance—contrary to what some previous scholarship has purported on the matter, though the writings of kinslayers and of exiles on the shifting nature of one’s soul are complex and often contradictory, they are not bereft of any conceptualization of spiritual consequence—but also shaped by time period and tides of war. In particular, accounts written prior to and following the Nirnaeth Arnoediad demonstrate a perceivable shift in literary handling and metaphysical ruminations on the nature and fate of the individual fëa . That the fëa is impacted by external doings upon the hröa , and that the hröa may demonstrate changes in the fëa in a number of ways, already features heavily in not only Exilic Noldorin but also Doriathrin Sindarin records; though the writings of the former appear to view any perceived fëa -influenced physical change more neutrally than the latter, the direct relationship between the two is well-noted in the records of both peoples.
Drastic changes in a fëa and a hröa as a result of evil deeds is indeed also recorded in contemporary texts, in particular regarding what Apharchiel called “pseudo-orcs” (276). However, frank descriptions of the physiology and temperament of so-called pseudo-orcs are rare in primary sources, and thus it is just as likely that they are a written fabrication of prejudice as it is that they had stalked among Exilic Noldorin ranks on the eastern fronts.
Similarly, the presence of true orcs of the Enemy among Noldorin settlement—including both the provision of sanctuary and the recruitment into ranks—may also be a fabrication. Accounts dated prior to the Nirnaeth of orcs organized against (or otherwise actively situated in opposition to) Angband are extraordinarily rare; a singularly reliable mention of such a phenomenon can be found in the Compiled Letters of Maitimo Nelyafinwë, Lord of Himring, FA 150 - FA 472 , and is far from conclusive on the matter. “Our guest, who has informed me of her knowledge of Sindarin and even a handful of Valarin lexemes, is also versed in several dialects of orc speech, and has offered to relay to me her notes” ( Letter 97 to Findekáno Ñolofinwion). Though one might be eager to argue that this suggests the presence of cooperative orcs in Himring, the guest in question is equally as likely to have been an escaped thrall, for Himring offered sanctuary and vengeance to many.
— excerpt from the introduction of Horror and the Fëa: An Account of the Elven Soul to the Late Second Age (TA 2084), obtained with permission from the library of Imladris in TA 3003
:
“Well,” Fingon said, holding the vellum which he had been given to scrutinize high above the bathwater, “I confess that I cannot judge the accuracy of the Valarin, nor—“ He shook the vellum, which had begun to wilt at its middle crease. “—nor determine exactly how many dialects of orc speech are even written here. One? Two?”
“Four,” said Maedhros. “Transliterated into the tengwar for my benefit, though only of them appears to utilize something like a writing system.”
“And this is useful to us.”
“As useful as we would like to make it.” From the chair on which he sat, legs extended before him and crossed at the ankles, Maedhros tilted his head. “I was under the impression that this was not a personal visit.”
“It is not a personal visit as far as Barad Eithel’s treasury is concerned.” Fingon sank to his chin into the bath. “Though I had thought you would allow me a night of reprieve before inviting me to discourses on orc dialects.”
“Discourses,” repeated Maedhros, with a slight upward twist to his mouth that suggested that Fingon would not know the true agony of linguistic discourses if they had him by the throat. Perhaps this was true. Fingon had entertained a nearly normal youth. “I will spare you them for now, if you wish.”
“I am grateful.” Fingon returned the vellum page. “Do you plan on learning them?”
Maedhros shrugged. “As much as possible,” he said. “I confess I am more interested in the language of command, as I have previous reason to believe that the base knowledge of Valarin written here—” He rustled the vellum. “—is part of a greater scheme for devising that.”
“Mm.” Fingon closed his eyes. The warmth in his extremities was beginning to return to him, first with a creeping heat in his fingertips. “I assume it has occurred to you that a low rank scout possessing any knowledge of the tongue, however rudimentary, is quite suspicious.”
“I did not say she was a scout.” Maedhros yet sounded patient, a likely testament to how much he had missed Fingon in his months of absence from Himring. Fingon, for his part, was behaving a bit contrarian by design. He had yet to defrost completely, and was embittered for the fact. “I said that she was captured with scouts, and that when they were all dead she did not plead to be spared.”
“So she was playing to your reputation,” hummed Fingon serenely.
“Yes, I have also considered that.” Maedhros regarded him calmly over the vellum. “I am not being overeager in this, Findekáno.”
“I am not suggesting that you are.” Fingon looked to him gently. “Merely over-hopeful.”
Something worked in Maedhros’ jaw. Fingon withdrew his gaze.
“So your guest received an escort,” he continued breezily. “To you, or through you, whatever the intention may be. She is familiar enough with the Maitimo of orcish nightmare to know better than to beg for her life at your boots, and she is charming enough that you do not leave her to rot in a freezing cellar but rather give her paper and ink to transcribe the secrets of the enemy for your benefit.”
“They are languages, Findekáno.” There was a crease working deeper between his brows. Fingon took no pleasure in it. “They are not troop headcounts, nor battle schematics.”
“I have never known you to disparage the importance of language to this war effort,” replied Fingon swiftly, with a serious set to his mouth. “Nor am I challenging you here, Russandol. I am merely pointing out its convenience, and why that has prompted my suspicion.”
“I share your suspicion,” insisted Maedhros, somewhat unconvincingly. Fingon wondered if he was being unfair. It was a remarkable advantage to have, and he could appreciate Maedhros’ desire to seize the opportunity which had presented itself. But Fingon was slow to trust any advantage which came so readily to Himring’s frigid step, and he would have previously thought the same of the lord of said frigid step.
“In any case,” Fingon continued more genially, and though he inwardly lamented it he resolved that he had squandered enough time thawing in the bath. “I would like to meet your guest, whenever that becomes possible.”
Maedhros folded the pages in his lap and tucked them under his arm. “Of course,” he replied, and tilted his chin downward in fresh affectionate amusement. “Though I would recommend steeling yourself for any potential linguistic discourses in the interim.”
Fingon sank again below the surface of the bathwater with a frown. Brightly, Maedhros only laughed.
:
Himring’s guest was well-guarded, and this, at least, was a comfort. Fingon and his fresh, unfrosted clothing were checked thoroughly at the door—as was Maedhros, and the volumes and papers which he carried. Fingon examined his face while this inspection was conducted, and when Maedhros caught him looking, he only lifted a brow very simply. I too will be held to all rules for others , said the expression, which was fair enough, and Fingon nodded only once. When the search produced three slender and sharp knives on Maedhros’ person, they were returned without comment on the discovery.
(Fingon’s singular knife was also returned, but only after the nodded consent of his host, and his guard seemed somewhat reluctant to do so. Fingon did his best not to take this slight too injuriously to heart.)
They were admitted with no announcement nor vocal assent of any kind. The door was heavy wood, but it was secured only by two locks, and the room beyond it was equally unnerving. Fingon blinked, and then blinked again, for he had been expecting dim light and was rather met with the warm glow of both a well-tended fireplace and several candles illuminating a desk. A figure sat at the desk, back turned to the newly admitted occupants, and did not rectify the vulnerable position.
Fingon looked with mild concern to Maedhros. The latter did not shrug, and did not smile. Fingon stifled the instinct to arm himself with his now-sheathed knife, and pressed onward only when Maedhros did. As Maedhros stepped quietly around the desk, the door locked twice behind them.
“You are late if you wish to share the evening meal,” spoke the figure flatly, in Sindarin, and Fingon rounded the desk’s corner as she lifted her gaze and showed her long, broken teeth. “I have already eaten it.”
“A pity,” intoned Maedhros. He set the papers and volumes which he carried upon the desk surface, and gestured with an open hand for Fingon to claim the chair positioned opposite his orc-guest. “Watching you consume soup is the emotional height of my waking hours.”
“I know this,” replied the orc with the same stretched-mouth expression with which she had greeted them. Now her yellow gaze had settled on Fingon, and it did not lift. Fingon sat, and folded his hands carefully in his lap. “I even waited for you, for several moments. I see now that both my soup and my company were low on your list of evening priorities.”
Maedhros retrieved a second chair from the far wall and set it beside Fingon’s. He sat in it, and imparted to the orc-guest an unimpressed look. She still did not remove her attention from Fingon’s face.
She was quite small—though not uniquely so, by orc standards—and the bones of her face protruded sharply against her skin, somewhat as if a handful of them had been broken and set incorrectly and somewhat as if her flesh was merely a canvas stretched too thin across the skeleton. Her eyes were yellow, and sharply observant, and as she surveyed him she sucked her teeth with an air of pleasure derived from his silent unease, and she said, “I know you.”
“Do you?” said Fingon, not as levelly as he might have liked. Maedhros’ guest nodded.
“You are the first and yet only creature to enter and leave his domain both alive and undetected,” she replied. “Your head is much desired in the Iron Hells. There is a significant prize staked on it, if that sort of thing makes you feel important.”
“It does not make me feel any particular way,” answered Fingon, and he rearranged his hands in his lap. Maedhros’ guest grinned, sharp.
“There is another reward for any number of those gold ribbons of yours,” she continued. She tilted her chin, as if inviting him to give his opinion on the matter. “Hm?”
“Agranc,” said Maedhros lowly, and Fingon did not lift a hand to touch any of his gold-threaded braids. He set his jaw.
Maedhros’ guest looked pleased. She said something easily in a sibilant language which Fingon did not speak, gesturing with her long crooked fingers at him while she did so. Maedhros responded darkly, in that same language which she had spoken. Agranc tossed her head and laughed, like the scrape of metal on stone.
“You are off limits,” she informed Fingon graciously. She ran her blue tongue over her teeth. “I confess I had expected that—I was merely testing my bounds, you understand.”
“I do,” said Fingon, equally graciously. He lifted his hands from beneath the table and folded them on the smooth surface. “Your name is Sindarin.”
“As Sindarin as yours, certainly,” replied Agranc swiftly, with bite. She tilted her head to the side. In Quenya, and mostly accurately, she said, “It is the most...diplomatic of my names, for it is also the most egalitarian of them. You understand.”
The Quenya was a surprise, and an altogether unpleasant one. Agranc observed the singular twitch of his mouth with a grin like a panting hound.
“I am afraid I can impress you no further with that,” she said. Her yellow eyes slid to Maedhros, and his books. “The materials of my education are slow to arrive when requested.”
Maedhros hummed. He seemed disinterested in this conversation now; he had retrieved more sheets of vellum from the surface of the desk and was leafing through them with an appraising eye. “Per our agreement,” he intoned without looking upward, “your Quenya education continues at the pace of my Orcish one.”
“Not quite fair,” said Agranc, though she waved a hand dismissively. “You are running a fortress, and I am rotting in here—” She caught Fingon’s expression of doubt, and his sliding glance to the bright and warm fireplace, and clicked her teeth. “With much more free time on my hands. But I digress.”
“You are not a scout,” observed Fingon flatly. Agranc dipped her head in concession.
“I am an academic.”
Fingon frowned. He looked somewhat urgently again to Maedhros, who met his eyes now with no evident alarm reflected in his own. Maedhros dragged his hand once tiredly down his face and slid the vellum pages before Agranc again.
“This is not even worth half of a book,” he said, tapping it with a finger. “Perhaps two and a half essays.”
Agranc sniffed. “Miser,” she deemed. Maedhros quirked a brow.
“I may need to devote most of my time to running a fortress , as you say,” he said, “but I am not a slow study. More of that—” He laid his hand flat open the topmost volume of the stack, a Sindarin translation of Elemmírë which Fingon was fairly certain had been a brief pet project of an Arafinwëan cousin. “—and then you will get the book. This is more than generous of me.”
Agranc lifted her lip. But then she took up a pen and began to write.
“I am not custodian of the most sinister machinations in this room,” she informed Fingon, with her eyes tipped to the page. “Your cousin wishes to learn our tongues for the proliferation of your miserable war effort. I only like to read.”
Maedhros snorted. “At the expense of eight lives in your coming to Himring, do not forget.”
Agranc turned out her hands. The tip of her pen dripped ink over her palm, through her fingers to the ragged flesh of her knuckles. She took her tongue over the ridges once to clean them and grimaced. “We all make sacrifices in the pursuit of knowledge.”
Despite the lit fire, Fingon felt a chill creep up his spine. He shifted, correcting his posture subtly. Agranc noted the movement, and leveled her gaze with him again.
“You are uncomfortable,” she said, in the same manner Fingon had said your name is Sindarin. Matter-of-fact.
“I was not aware that the Iron Hells employed academics,” Fingon said. Agranc snorted.
“The depths of Angband do not employ much of anything,” she said derisively, and to Fingon’s partnered irritation and dismay Maedhros made a noise in his throat which may have been amusement. “I was a forge laborer. I did not reside there long.”
“Why not?”
Agranc regarded him with a twitching smile. “Had the both of my hands smashed between a hammer and an anvil, and my options following such were either to be fed to the latest newly-hatched worm or to learn a library filing system in the span of an hour.” She sniffed. “I already knew the filing system. It was the same one used by the foreman for his schematics, and I had taught it to myself in hopes of one day cutting his throat and serving as his replacement.”
“Ah,” said Fingon.
“He was allotted boots.” Agranc shrugged. “I wanted boots.”
Ah , Fingon meant to say again, but could not. Fingon had never contemplated murder for boots, though he had spoiled them from frozen corpses with similar removed practicality. He supposed that this prohibited him from passing judgement on this one detail of Agranc’s machinations.
Beside him Maedhros made an impatient noise. Agranc lifted her lip in a brief sneer before she took up her pen again and resumed her writing.
Fingon—wisely perhaps—consigned himself to silence.
:
“So,” began Maedhros casually. “What did you think?”
He was still sitting at his desk, his face and his work illumined by three burning candles. Fingon had long since retired to Maedhros’ bed; he had been leafing half-heartedly through a monograph on the rotating governance of multi-family units among the Avari before he had grown bored, and drowsy, and had extinguished the lamp burning beside him.
Now he lifted his head, and regarded Maedhros flatly.
“You keep strange company in my absence,” Fingon observed. His head fell back against the pillows, and he slung a bare forearm over his eyes. “My conviction that she is a spy only grows.”
“So do not tell her your secrets,” resolved Maedhros, and he turned back to his notebooks. Fingon made a weary noise of agreement, and the room turned quiet again. There came the rhythmic scratch of a pentip on vellum.
“Our miserable war effort,” Fingon echoed, musing to keep himself from complaining more honestly of the light and Maedhros’ persistence at language study at this hour. He frowned. “She had an escort of eight? All dead?”
“Seven dead,” Maedhros corrected. “Though I would appreciate that you did not let her know it.”
“Hm.” This was better news.
“He was not as much a conversationalist,” Maedhros continued. “Though the story matches.”
Again, Fingon hummed, and noted the use of the past tense. “Felagund courts the Secondborn,” he drawled, “and your brother dwarves. You could pursue less dangerous diplomatic ends.”
“My brother does not court dwarves, as far as I know.” There was the sound of a pen set aside in thought. “Have you heard differently?”
Fingon laughed. He waved a hand vaguely in the air, hoping to inspire curious indignation with his flippancy. Maedhros might have seen through it, for he said nothing else on the matter, but he extinguished the lights on his desk and stood.
He came to bed, plucking one of Fingon’s hands from where they were arranged loosely atop his chest and pressing his mouth to his frostbitten fingers. Fingon watched him in the dark; Maedhros’ eyes reflected yellow in the little moonlight seeping between the curtains—like a cat, or like an orc.
“Custodian of sinister machinations,” Fingon murmured. “It is not the most flattering profile.”
“A bit overmuch too,” Maedhros mused, against his knuckles now. “I am capable of pedestrian academic interests as much as anyone else.”
“Mhm.” Fingon smiled. “Though we both know that is not your reason for it.”
“I have a few reasons.” Maedhros returned to Fingon his hand and began perfunctorily to undress. The fasteners of his collar were made to be undone with his one hand, though they looked no less typically intricate in construction. “The personal is not ranked unimportantly among them.”
“You are teaching her Quenya,” Fingon reminded.
“And you are speaking Quenya now.”
“Mm,” agreed Fingon.
“It is a bit more intimate than Sindarin.”
“A mother tongue typically is,” retorted Fingon drowsily. “Besides, there are no politics in this room.”
From Maedhros there came a sound like soft and disbelieving laughter.
“If you insist so.”
“I do.”
“There are no scribes in this room either,” Maedhros remarked.
Fingon nodded. He laid his forearm back over his eyes. “We are spared history noting our error.”
Maedhros hummed, and Fingon could not parse if it was in agreement or not. When he stretched beside him in the bed, Fingon shifted onto his side, and the monograph which he had laid open on his stomach fell into the space between them. The words spoken in that room then were few, but each one of them was Quenya.
:
The new posted guard accepted the slip of paper bearing Maedhros’ written permission with slightly more suspicion that Fingon thought immediately forgivable. Graciously, he did not expound his thoughts on the matter, nor did he invoke his title as he stood, with lifted chin, silently before the door. He was checked for weapons as he had been before—his knife again returned— and if there was something between his gaze and his perfectly mild expression that communicated his discontent, which simultaneously reminded the two soldiers of Fingon’s rank and motivated one of them to open the door with a hasty apologetic bow, this was no fault of Fingon’s.
Maedhros’ guest was at the desk. She did not turn when Fingon stepped inside the room, though she swiveled an ear at the sound of one set of footsteps rather than two. When Fingon came around the desk, she placed her chin in her hands and tilted her gaze so that she might greet him with her unnerving too-stretched grin.
“The crown prince seeks out my company,” she crowed, and then spat in her palms and made a show of fastidiously grooming her notched and ragged ears. “The things they might say at home.”
“I shudder to think,” said Fingon vaguely. He sat in the chair opposite Himring’s orc-guest. “Good afternoon, Agranc.”
“And what does the crown prince want with me?” Agranc gestured flatly at the book which she had been reading: Finrod’s Sindarin translation of Elemmírë. “I am occupied at the moment.”
“That is a decent use of your time,” said Fingon with a nod. “My cousin’s translation is the best one to be found on this side of the sea—though I think even he gets lost in the metaphors occasionally, and sacrifices a more truthful reading as a result.”
“Mm.” Agranc regarded the book with a flicker of new suspicion. “Do you read poetry?”
“Rarely in Sindarin.” Fingon tilted his head sideways. “Perhaps it is fairer to say that I read poetry, once, and do no longer, hence my preference for the Quenya original. It is what I was taught.”
Agranc hummed, a short and somewhat tuneful sound. Her hand settled over the open book’s binding, and she regarded Fingon flatly. “But you have not answered my first question.”
“First you may answer mine.” Fingon folded his hands atop the desk and looked Agranc in her sharp face. “How does a librarian of Angband escape its subterranean halls in the first place and come to Himring to peruse its books?”
The orc-guest smiled with her broken teeth, and tilted her head just as Fingon had. She said, “You are not uncomfortable today.”
“My discomfort grew from your speech familiarity with the Lord of Himring. Since yesterday I have come to accept that it is not my place to fault you for your rudeness, if Maedhros is willing to indulge it.”
“Eager, rather than willing, I might say,” Agranc mused, and did not elaborate. Fingon narrowed his eyes.
“In any case,” continued Fingon in a lower voice, “I do not fear orcs.”
Agranc examined her ragged fingernails. Then she raised her eyes, and regarded Fingon coolly. “Orcs killed your brother,” she remarked. “Beheaded him, I have heard.”
“You have heard incorrectly.” From between tight teeth, he said it. “It was my brother who did most of the beheading. And I have killed many orcs since then—and would not consider you among the most formidable.”
“The memory of the Eldar is long,” resolved Agranc seriously, though her yellow gaze was equal parts mocking and sharp. Fingon lifted his chin. “And in retribution they will take much more than they are allotted in fairness. I have heard that too, particularly of the Exiles.”
“And how long is your memory?” Painfully, Fingon corrected his curled lip and his dark expression. Agranc was looking mildly amused. “You have forgotten again that I had asked you a question.”
“I have not.” Agranc studied him now seriously; without taking her eyes from Fingon’s, she sought a notebook on the desk, opened it, and recorded something in a careless scrawl. “I was seeking an answer to my own question. You wish to know what I want with your host, and what he really wants with me.”
Fingon’s expression did not betray his displeasure with this accurate guess. His gaze flickered to Agranc’s notebook. “Are you keeping notes?”
“I have recorded that the prince Argon of Fingolfin’s host did not meet his end with his head separated from his shoulders, as the Orcish war marches sing. I regret to inform you that the truth will not likely make its way into verse revisions—the march is more popular than accurate history-study among Angband’s armies.”
“I see.” Fingon tapped a finger once, sharply, upon the desktop. “And do the orc marches sing of me?”
“Yes,” Agranc said easily, and she leaned back in her chair. “Though really only of your hair ribbons, and the handsome bounty they will pay in the event that you wrap yourself around an ax blade. There is a different rhyme which gets specific about the spilling of your entrails, though that is more of a work song than a troop march.”
“Lovely.”
“It has its charm.”
“Answer my question.”
Agranc showed her long teeth in a smile.
“There are orc peoples in the eastern reaches of Ard-galen,” she confessed. “They are smaller groups living on the edges, and somewhat nomadic—at least, as accustomed to spontaneous uprooting as fear and war can turn you. They speak a different tongue than I, and in recent years fear of the long blade of Dorthonion has inclined them to consider a less than fair offer from your Moringotto regarding their labor and their livelihoods.”
Fingon folded his hands. “I see.”
“They have nothing substantial to offer Angband.” Agranc shrugged disdainfully. “There are too few of them to increase production for the war machine, and they are no great warriors. I would say it was foolish to agree, paying tithe with what little intelligence and even less livelihood they can gather from the foot of the eastern mountains—especially seeing as whatever promise of protection they have been given is transparently worthless.” She tapped a finger on the notebook. “But the princes of the Noldor had inspired enough fear to make it seem absolutely necessary.”
“But you were a librarian, and not a deal broker,” said Fingon. “So what is your role in this?”
“A small one,” she confessed mildly. “I was given leave to record their tongue in writing, to facilitate easier communication in the future. The delegation with which I was sent was not composed of particularly competent soldiers—purposefully, and as an amusement, I think. They could not tell their south from their east, and were susceptible to some mild manipulation, and thus—” She gestured to herself explanatorily, and then showed her teeth. “Has this been satisfactory?”
“No,” Fingon said, more rudely than truthfully. “It strikes me as unlikely on several accounts.”
“That is not my problem.” Agranc took her blue tongue over her teeth. “Even had you tortured the answer out of me, the truth would remain the same.”
“I was not suggesting torture,” assured Fingon, but Agranc flexed her crooked fingers.
“Why not?” she hummed, observing the knotted joints contemplatively. “The Lord of Himring did.”
Fingon clicked his teeth. “And do you resent him for it?”
Now Agranc lifted her gaze. “No,” she said flatly, with a shrug. “For it was the simplest language which we both at the time understood. Diplomacy calls for the most expedient methods of communication, whenever possible.”
Fingon sat back in the chair, suppressing a frown. “That sounds like something he would say,” he said.
“And do you resent him for it?” Agranc smiled. Fingon delivered unto her what he hoped was a deeply unimpressed look.
“I did not come to discuss Maedhros,” said Fingon.
“Though he is what you wish to discuss,” pointed out the orc-guest. She closed the Elemmírë text around a scrap of paper torn from her notebook and set it aside. “ You would not make a very good spy. You are practically bleeding your honesty.”
Fingon made a displeased face. He refrained from any protest.
“You know,” Agranc continued. “I was surprised when we met, that you were not more like him. For someone whose opinion he regards so highly, you seem to be seas apart in worldview—and I find his to be the less naive.” She lifted her eyebrows. Tilted her head.
“Though now, I suppose, I do see it. You share the desire to keep your monsters as pets. Like a badly trained hound which bites your fingers as often as it catches the wolf, that you let sleep at the foot of your bed just for the novelty of the danger.”
Abruptly, Fingon stood.
He said nothing, although he thought he might do so when Agranc began to laugh. Fingon was not certain what he would say. Likely it would be something in Quenya, for it sprung most easily to his tongue when he was angry, and he was indeed very angry now, but Fingon did not want to give Maedhros’ guest the means for a vocabulary lesson.
Instead he refrained from speaking, for he thought this would give Agranc the scholar the least amount of satisfaction, and he stepped smartly around the desk and left the room.
By the time the door was locked behind him, Agranc had ceased to laugh.
:
“Well,” said Maedhros, taking his hand absently through Fingon’s hair. “Certainly there were better ways to handle that.”
“I know ,” snapped Fingon. His head was laid in Maedhros’ lap; irritably, Fingon turned his cheek against his thigh. “I know that.”
“In hindsight, you should not have gone alone,” Maedhros mused. He thumbed contemplatively at the gold threaded into a braid, and Fingon worked his jaw a fraction less tensely. “I am sorry.”
“I do not require a chaperone , Russandol—”
“Evidently you do,” said Maedhros. “If she is going to work you over like this, then you do.”
“Ass,” said Fingon, though his tone was lusterless. “We are not all as immune to personal offense as you.”
“You know that is not the case,” said Maedhros with a hum, and Fingon turned his head again so he could look at him and also catch his hand before it fled his braids. He kissed his inner wrist, once, twice, though by his own narrowed eyes and Maedhros’ slight amusement it was evident that Fingon did it to prove a point, and not from any overwhelming font of affection. “I am not immune to personal offense at all.”
“Ass,” Fingon repeated against the bones of his wrist, and in jest Maedhros snapped his teeth.
“Still the question remains,” he continued tranquilly, “whether you were offended on my behalf or on yours, when you were accused of keeping a monster leashed for your own amusement.”
Again, Fingon narrowed his eyes. “You are not angry at all about this.”
“No,” Maedhros agreed. “Except perhaps at the insinuation that I am badly trained, and dangerous for that reason over any other—”
“Maitimo—”
“Findekáno.” Maedhros raised a brow. “The fact that you care at all suggests that you should not be alone with her, for if you end up gutting my guest before I learn what she has promised to teach me, I will be quite disappointed.”
“I do not trust her,” said Fingon.
“That is wise,” hummed Maedhros. “Nevertheless, it appears that she likes you.”
Fingon made a face. He could not fathom how Maedhros had come to that conclusion. “You are not taking me seriously,” he protested.
“No.” Gently, Maedhros’ voice changed. “I am taking you seriously. I am telling you that you should not take her so seriously, and you will be better off for it.”
Perhaps this was sound advice. Maedhros’ hand returned to Fingon’s hair, to the curve of his skull, to the inner shell of his ear where his thumb worried lazily, coaxing a half-contented sound from Fingon’s throat. He liked very much these gentle ministrations of the Lord of Himring, cared for their regular practice in private more than he would ever admit beyond present company. Fingon was a tactile creature—while Maedhros was no longer—and even a political touch such as this, enacted to soothe a brewing argument, was welcomed for what it was.
And yet:
“They sing war marches about Arakáno,” confessed Fingon quietly. Maedhros’ expression flickered, and then he tracked his thumb carefully against the singular scar marking Fingon’s cheek.
“That is a cruel thing to tell you,” he said softly. “I am sorry.”
And suddenly, roughly, Fingon sat up. “Why must you apologize?” he demanded, while Maedhros blinked at him in mild surprise. “It is not your doing.”
This was not objectively true, and the two of them both knew it. They had argued before, many seasons ago now, about whom exactly was to blame for Argon’s death. Fingon had no plans to revisit the points made on either side. In any case, that was not what Maedhros had meant.
Maedhros’ hand rose, apparently instinctively, to hover just before Fingon’s jaw. Maedhros hesitated, though not in uncertainty on his part.
Fingon thought. The memory of the Eldar is long. And in retribution they will take much more than they are allotted in fairness.
His brother had not been beheaded at the Lammoth. The ax had met resistance not even a quarterway through his neck, although his throat had been opened properly from one ear to another once he had folded onto his knees. Fingon had recovered his corpse after Morgoth’s forces had been routed from the coast. Blood had soaked his brother’s still-neat braids, which Fingon himself had carefully redone on the Ice, gloveless and with decreasingly nimble fingers.
In Himring, Fingon pressed his cheek against Maedhros’ proffered hand. Again, Maedhros tracked his thumb along the scar, made by an unlucky knife slash which had broken two of Fingon’s molars when it cut deep into the tissue of his mouth. It was a scar which Fingon thought made him look charmingly roguish; he had confessed so once, when decidedly drunk, and Maedhros had laughed until he cried, and then kissed Fingon’s palms.
Fingon’s back teeth ached. He worked his jaw, and against his rough palm, Maedhros must have felt it.
:
“Where do you think an orc goes, when it dies?”
Fingon looked at Maedhros’ guest plainly. She had touched the rim of her spoon to her bottom teeth, and as he met her eyes she tapped the metal against the ragged points contemplatively. She appeared amused.
“I have not considered it,” said Fingon dutifully, though this was certainly untrue. But Maedhros had advised him to take Agranc less seriously, and so Fingon would do so. “Why do you ask?”
Agranc removed her spoon from her teeth and returned it to the crosscut bone on her plate. She spooned roasted marrow from the hollow and scraped it over toast with the convex side (for the only knife yet allowed in this room was Fingon’s, which was meant for killing, and not rounded cutlery designed for the purpose of spreading marrow over bread). Agranc hummed.
“I find that difficult to believe,” she said. “You have passed a few centuries now waging your war, and you have not once wondered where it is you are sending us when you cut our throats?”
Fingon spread redcurrant jam over his own toast. “To the Halls of Mandos, I suppose,” he said with a shrug. “For you were elves once.”
“Not for a very long time.” Agranc licked her spoon. “The last elvish sire of my line was likely dead long before you left your blessed land to swan around in mine.”
“ Your blessed land?” Fingon raised a brow. “I do not think—”
“Your Constrainer walked it once,” interrupted Agranc. “And he is still here, regardless of whether he ventures from his keep often enough to prove it.”
“And he has blessed Arda.” Fingon tapped his spoon doubtfully against the platter rim. “With corruption and rot and thralldom.”
Agranc spread her long-fingered hands. “I would not be here without him making Beleriand his home.”
“Nor would I,” said Fingon with a touch of wryness, and Agranc stretched her mouth to flash her teeth in amusement. “That does not make it blessed.”
Agranc regarded him for a long moment of silence. Then, quietly, she spoke: “You have fled your homeland.”
When Fingon looked at her in new seriousness, she continued. “Not only this, but you are forbidden to return there. I know you have kin in Valinor still—and not only those which you have slain, but living aunts and an uncle and a mother too—and you are now making a face which tells me that you are very uncomfortable with me speaking of this as I am. Do you not still consider it your home?”
“No,” said Fingon, and Agranc grinned.
“Liar,” she crowed. “At any rate, if you may think of your gods and their sway in complex terms, then I may do the same. We do not sing of death and enduring spiritual existence in the care of your Mandos, unless we wish to terrify our offspring into patterns of self-preservation.”
“And so you sing of what?” Fingon felt his mouth twist. “Return to the service of Morgoth Bauglir, to haunt caverns beneath Thangorodrim until he devises a new gruesome use for your spirits?”
“He still has his talons in me,” agreed Agranc with a shrug. “I reckon it is possible, and that when I die I will be unable to resist the call back to those mountains for some war machine or another. But it is not what I would choose for myself, and I think this is where we two are different.”
Fingon sat quietly for a time. Agranc finished her toast, and then gestured vaguely at Fingon’s serving. He waved a hand, and she helped herself to the marrow and the jam and the bit of bread upon the platter.
“The Lord of Himring swore himself to the Void,” mused Agranc at last.
“He regrets it now,” replied Fingon automatically, unthinkingly. Maedhros’ orc-guest hummed.
“Has he told you that?” She tipped her head. “In those words?”
“Do you presume to know him better than I?”
Agranc tapped a nail against her teeth. “Regret is a serious accusation,” she said pleasantly. “I would not suggest the crime of uncertainty unless I knew it to be true.”
“Regret,” enunciated Fingon, “is not the same as cowardice.”
“No,” agreed Agranc, and she plucked a book from the stack beside her and paged through it contemplatively. “Of the two, only regret is unreasonable.”
Fingon’s teeth ached. He said, “Why have you come here?”
“You ask me this as if I had any intention to become a captive curiosity of Maedhros Fëanorion when I left the Iron Hells.”
“I think you did,” replied Fingon dourly. “You did not want to go to Ard-galen. You have said yourself that you led your convoy south rather than east, because they could not tell the difference. And you are too pleased with yourself to be anything besides a willing captive.”
“ Willing captive . That sounds like politics.”
“Even more so when said in Quenya.”
Agranc lifted a brow. She plucked a charcoal pencil from the binding of another book and poised it upon the page. “Indulge my curiosity?” she prompted, and grinned. It was a half-charming, nearly familiar expression.
“Indulge mine first,” said Fingon, though he held out a hand for the pencil and a sheet of vellum and nodded his head in thanks when he was given both. “Why have you come here?”
Agranc hummed. She said: “Why do the Noldor speak so disparagingly of rot? One might even think that you fear it.”
“We do not fear it. We only find it unpleasant, as evidence of the Marring.”
“Yet the Laiquendi do not speak of it in the same terms. Rot yields successful gardens in the next season, when sufficiently controlled.”
Fingon propped his chin in his hand. “I do not often find the time to philosophize on the subject.”
“Though you have the time to condemn it,” noted Agranc. “Numbering it among thralldom in a list of Morgoth’s corruptions.”
“Agranc,” said Fingon impatiently. “I have written out your Quenya. Now answer my question.”
Indulgently, Maedhros’ guest dipped her head. “Books,” she said at long last. “Himring is the only elf-stronghold where I imagined I would not be killed at first sight of my teeth and the first word from my tongue, for I have heard the people here are already accustomed to such characteristics among their own.” She smiled, showing such familiar sharp teeth. “That, and to indulge a more personal interest. I wanted to see the near-orc prince of the Noldor for myself, and now I have done so.”
Whatever her expectation of his reaction, Fingon did not scowl, nor did he flinch. He tapped the pencil against the desk and slid the page with his handwritten Quenya translation before her. “And what do you think of him now?” he asked mildly.
“I find him very interesting,” Agranc said, and accepted the translation quite smugly.
:
“I think that I am jealous,” Fingon announced into the cold air, and he grimaced as he did so.
Maedhros rode beside him. Vultures wheeled above them against the grey sky—the carrion birds of Himring had long ago come to associate dispatches from the fortress with potential bloody meals, and winged convoys ever haunted the paths of scouts and hunting parties alike. (Maedhros had complained of the unshakeable vulture escort and the difficulty of approaching any matter with stealth before, but Fingon thought that secretly his cousin liked for his movements to be heralded ominously by the carrion eaters, for he did not complain overmuch.) Now, Maedhros looked to him, and he laughed.
“Jealous?” he repeated. “Jealous of whom?”
Again, Fingon grimaced. “Not like that,” he said. Wind howled across the flat expanse, seizing his hood and flinging it behind him. The tips of his ears stung from the cold. “Actually, I do not know.”
“Mhm,” mused Maedhros, and when Fingon looked at him an amused smile was playing across his scarred mouth. “I see.”
“Do not laugh, ” protested Fingon, and Maedhros adopted an innocently indignant expression.
“I have not laughed,” he said. “Have you heard me laugh?”
“Yes, actually.” Fingon narrowed his eyes. “And it is not what you think.”
“I am not thinking anything,” replied Maedhros, though there was still mirth in his eyes. He asked, “What was your last conversation like?”
“Civil.” Fingon watched Maedhros’ eyebrows raise. “On both our parts.”
“Well, I commend you for it.”
“Mm. You are being patronizing.” Fingon tugged his hood back over his ears. “We discussed where orcs go, when they die.”
Now there was no sound of amusement, nor of acknowledgement, from Maedhros. When Fingon looked to him, the Lord of Himring’s expression was lingering somewhere between curiosity and mild concern.
“We did not reach a conclusion,” amended Fingon, slightly more carefully. “Though return to the service of Angband seems most likely.” He cleared his throat. “Then I taught her a phrase in Quenya, and she said she found you very interesting, and that was all.”
“What phrase?”
“Nothing which will rank her as more learned in your native tongue than you are in hers,” dismissed Fingon. He cut his gaze at Maedhros. “It was ‘willing captive.’ ”
“Ah,” said Maedhros, and he sounded amused again. “But depending on your school of politics, that is a very useful phrase indeed.”
Fingon snorted a laugh. It was a quip which would have undoubtedly been determined indecent in any proper court, even here in Beleriand. Fëanor’s name had been all but struck from the list of decorous discussion topics in many of the greater Noldorin strongholds, and explicit debate over his theological convictions was similarly discouraged. Largely, Fingon thought this custom ridiculous—these same theological convictions were held to some degree by nearly all of the Exiles, being the reason for their flight in the first place—but he appreciated the rule for its usefulness in stifling familial arguments often before they began. Now, he tossed his head, and his hood slipped again from over his braids.
“I am cold,” he announced, and Maedhros dipped his head. They were only on a ride, not conducting any official or unofficial business, and thus Fingon had no qualms about declaring himself satisfied with the excursion. “I’d like a fire, and a hot meal.”
“Lofty demands,” reproached Maedhros. “But this is to be expected of a crown prince.” His teeth flashed in a grin as he turned his mount and made once more for the high walls of Himring. Above their heads, the vultures lost interest at last and drifted elsewhere in pursuit of their meals.
Despite his teasing and the external austerity of his keep, Maedhros had maintained his princely appreciation of luxury in Himring. During his short and infrequent visits, Fingon found that he ate as well in Himring as he did at Barad Eithel—which was as much a testament to the Noldor’s success in establishing continental trade as it was a testament to the Lord of Himring’s good tastes—and that Maedhros spared little expense when it came to his own peculiar creature comforts. This meant good wine, sweet dried fruits, and other pleasant and frivolous things like candied flowers and sugared tea cakes.
(None of these things were endemic to the eastern March, and thus they were obtained through cashing in on a series of owed fraternal debts. It was a tyrannical way to engage in trade, made somehow both palatable and charming only because it was Maedhros himself who played the tyrant.)
(And in any case, Fingon could not complain, for he too benefited from the practice.)
“Those are for you.” Maedhros nodded at the pair of earrings which Fingon had selected from his desk, laying their gold weight against his palms to inspect. “I had nearly forgotten about them—my nephew sent them, and he knows very well that they are not to my taste, so I imagine he intended for you to wear them.”
“Not to your taste?” mused Fingon, though plainly he could see that they were not. They were not short nor inconspicuous, though they were lightweight and—of course—finely crafted. They were made to loop through multiple piercings, threading rubies along the ear by a chain long enough that the last would certainly drape against his collar, and tangle in his loosened hair. “Though it would be to your taste to see me wear them, certainly.”
He held them to his earlobe and observed with satisfaction that the gemstones—with the proper arrangement, and with Fingon reclined on his back—would tumble nicely to the hollow of his throat.
“I believe that was the intention behind the gift, yes,” said Maedhros, but now he was not looking at Fingon and thus not admiring the earrings. His head was bent over a ledger; without looking up, his hand wandered to the cup of wine which Fingon had set on the desk for him, and he drank from it. “My brother’s son has become quite the magpie. The last time I saw him, he was dripping with more gold than I’d witnessed on nearly any other Noldo in my life.”
Fingon stepped around the desk at which Maedhros sat and propped his chin on his shoulder. “I feel as if you are making some pointed commentary about me,” he said, and Maedhros hummed.
“I said nearly any other Noldo,” he agreed mildly. Fingon laughed, and placed a kiss against the ragged edge of his ear.
“It is a scandal waiting to happen,” Fingon murmured softly into his hair. “Me, arrayed in red gems of Fëanorian craft…”
“No one need discover their origin,” replied Maedhros, to which Fingon laughed.
“As if their origin would not be plainly evident,” he scoffed, and then paused as Maedhros turned his head and pressed his own kiss to the line of Fingon’s jaw. He adopted a dramatic expression for Maedhros’ amusement: something both haughty and long-suffering, as if Fingon was only indulging the Lord of Himring in allowing himself to be kissed. “You only wish to assert the fact of your marriage in the most Noldorin way possible, and you would allow me to bear the brunt of the collective distaste.”
“You poor battered thing,” hummed Maedhros, and now Fingon was very pleased. He smiled, lifting his chin in a way that required Maedhros to turn away from his deskwork to continue to speak with his mouth at his jaw. The Lord of Himring—not to be outmaneuvered—pulled him bodily into his lap. “Have you finally outgrown your taste for being the singular subject of all court intrigue?”
“No one even calls me beautiful anymore,” Fingon sniffed. Gracefully, he reached a hand behind him and claimed the same wine cup from which Maedhros had drank. He gestured with it. “Now I am only noble , and valiant —”
“How very terrible,” sympathized Maedhros with a slender upward curve to his lips. “Would you like to be called beautiful again?”
“It is not the same, if I must ask for it,” said Fingon, though really only in jest. He tipped the cup to Maedhros’ mouth, watched heaviness set into his gaze as he accepted the offering. Coyly, Fingon set the cup back on the desk and then closed Maedhros’ book of accounts on a charcoal pencil, to save the page.
Then at last Fingon ceased being coy and allowed his throat to be kissed, very gently, while he tipped back his head and closed his eyes. “Mind your teeth,” he warned, and Maedhros’ laugh was a low rumble in his own throat. Maedhros hooked a finger in Fingon’s embroidered collar and pulled it aside just carefully enough to avoid tearing the stitching, and Fingon laughed too.
But the lofty mood was short-lived. At some point Fingon became aware that his throat and his jaw were no longer being kissed. Instead there was a soft worrying touch at the tender space beneath his ear, and a settled quiet draped between them. This was not unusual; rather it was very like the Maedhros of Beleriand to begin in high spirits some romantic exploit which he could not then bring himself to continue.
Fingon took no offense. He opened his eyes and saw that Maedhros was watching him with a vaguely apologetic expression. Fingon smiled.
“It is alright,” he murmured, bringing his hands up carefully to linger before his cheeks. “May I touch you?”
There was a miniscule nod, and then Fingon pressed his hands to his face, cradling his jaw between his fingers.
“Maitimo,” Fingon said. “Russandol.”
Maedhros said, very quietly: “What will become of us?”
Fingon weighed the question. “Nothing,” he said with his hands against his jaw, and when Maedhros frowned and began to pull away, Fingon amended: “I do not know.”
“That is no comfort,” replied Maedhros, and though there was no accusation in the words, Fingon felt his ears twitch. It was not his job to tell the future.
“It is the best I can give you,” he said. “I have no foresight, and I am no philosopher. Provided that we see the end of this war—”
“Miserable war,” Maedhros muttered, and there Fingon nearly smiled.
“—provided that we see the end of this miserable war, then I suppose we will have to reckon with further consequences. But we are already changed, are we not?”
Quietly, Maedhros laughed. “I struggle to think how much more I could possibly change.”
“Mm.” Fingon hummed, tapping his index finger on Maedhros’ scarred cheek. He ached to kiss him, though he knew that a kiss at this moment would not be well received. Maedhros would accuse him of avoiding the difficult conversation, and Fingon would not be able to deny it. “I will recognize you, regardless.”
“Romantic,” Maedhros said, though not without a tinge of bitterness. He lifted his gaze, as if to present a new challenge. “And if I become unrecognizable, in fëa as well as body? You have given thought to the fëar of orcs by now, beloved, and surely you must have ideas. What will become of me? I suppose the Void will still have me, unrecognizable or not, for an oath is an oath—”
“Do you wish to argue about this, Russandol?” Fingon’s tone had dropped into something both gentle and reproachful. He was only indulgent to a point, after all. “I can grant you that, but it will be joyless for us both.”
“I do not wish to argue.” Softly, Maedhros turned his head and kissed the pads of Fingon’s fingers. Fingon nearly slipped one into his mouth, to test against the points of his teeth, but Maedhros spoke again. “I do not know what I want.”
“I stand by what I have said.” Fingon traced the swell of his lower lip with his index finger. Maedhros looked at him with wide yellow eyes, for Fingon’s tone was stern, and Maedhros liked him stern. “I will know you, changed in body or soul.”
“I see,” said Maedhros faintly, following a lengthy pause. “I see.”
Fingon smiled. “And you accused me of taking your orc-guest too seriously.”
“We are not philosophers,” replied Maedhros. His eyes were still soft, caught halfway between worry and wondering, but he smiled vaguely. “But permitting Agranc to read any more of Finrod’s Elemmírë might turn her into one.”
“Finrod’s Elemmírë,” Fingon muttered. “I fear for your peace of mind.”
“I might prefer it to the original,” said Maedhros, and Fingon threw his head back and scoffed. “Is that very terrible?”
“Tasteless,” condemned Fingon. “That is a political opinion, not an artistic one.”
“I am not quite sure I can tell the difference anymore.”
“ Tragic ,” bemoaned Fingon. “You are a Noldo —”
“My duty is here, and thus—” He cut Fingon a suddenly proud look. “It does not fall to me to have esteemable opinions on art.”
“Is that then my job?” hummed Fingon. “Foppish and idle crown prince, with the free time to cultivate informed artistic opinions—”
“Are they informed?” Maedhros’ smile was briefly wicked. “I was under the impression you were distributing them freely as they came into your head, unfounded as they seem.”
“Now you sound like my brother,” said Fingon, for he knew it would offend, and Maedhros’ cheeks did color at the comparison. “I confess, I know more about fighting dragons than distributing good opinions on art.”
“But I know this about you,” murmured Maedhros. His gaze had gone liquid; there would be no further discussion of death and the destination of one’s fëa thereafter. Now Fingon kissed the fluttering lids of his eyes, and Maedhros’ voice turned thick and drowsy. Still, there was a smile to the next words. “And I also know that you have fought one dragon only, which makes pitiful the apparent number of your decent artistic opinions.”
Fingon snorted. “You think you are clever.”
“I do not,” objected Maedhros, in a way which quite obviously meant I do. Maedhros always thought himself clever. This, at least, was one thing which had not changed.
“Help me with these,” Fingon ordered, meaning the earrings of Curufin’s son’s design, and gently Maedhros obliged. When he had finished, Fingon kissed his ears, his brow, his nose, and when Maedhros sighed, weary and a bit flushed from the wine, Fingon leaned out over his desk and snuffed out the lights.
:
“Do you pray, princeling of Aman?” Agranc had asked, and Fingon had laughed. He had leaned across the desk and poured Agranc a cup of rich red wine from a carafe, and she had snapped her teeth at him in apparent thanks.
“Do you pray, academic of Angband?” Fingon had demanded in turn.
The orc-guest had laughed too.