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Melian is gracious when disturbed in her work, but she will not devote her full attention to anyone until she is ready to. Thingol learned this long ago, and loves her not less for it. He has also learned, however, that he should not seek her out when he is perturbed by a matter that will not stir her so readily as it does him. If there is a real crisis, of course, she will be his at once… if he has a small concern that can await her, he will watch her weave or stitch or concoct her herbs until she is content with her progress.
But at times like the present, he does not want anyone to force patience upon him, not even his beloved wife.
Word of Haleth’s arrival reached him almost as soon as she was at the gates of Doriath. He had riders who went to and fro at the slightest disturbance of the wild grass bordering his orderly grass. Haleth herself did not follow the word quickly. She stopped off at one of the lodgings where her Haladin and some of the former thralls were. Thingol sent word to her by Daeron—knowing that that would vex her, as she had little use for his minstrel and scribe—that she should come and deliver a full report of her doings before night set in in earnest.
He is sitting beside his low fire now, alone, with the dining table long since cleared of supper. The embers on the hearth shed little more than a ruby glow in the mild spring night. He drinks a small glass of madeira while he waits. Thingol is a moderate drinker—moderate and temperate in most areas of his life, save those that concern his family, his business, his good opinion, or his good name.
Unwittingly or not, Haleth has threatened all of these by her pattern of conduct during the last year. Grief brought her to Doriath, it was true, but it also worked changes on her: changes in a woman not yet full-grown. It made her bold, steel-hard, and distrustful.
Thingol admires these traits in himself, but he cannot accept them in another.
Haleth, when she enters, is bareheaded, with fresh plaits swinging like bell-ropes over her broad shoulders. Sometimes, privately, Thingol thinks she looks more like a daughter of his than Luthien ever will, though Haleth is of native, not of Spanish, blood.
“Good evening,” Thingol says, lifting his empty glass—more as a challenge than as a toast, for he has not set a second glass out for her, intending, as he is, to be angry.
“Good evening,” Haleth replies. “Thank you, but I ate and drank already.” She takes the chair opposite him without waiting to be asked. “Well, Thingol? What questions do you have for me?”
He will not dissemble. “Where have you been?”
“Mithrim,” Haleth answers, and holds his gaze. Not defiantly—almost sadly. “I learned much, there.”
Even the young can betray. Thingol traces one finger around the rim of his glass, and says nothing for a moment. Let her confidence wane, met by his silence.
Haleth continues, “I spoke, also, to Maedhros.”
“To Feanor’s son?” Thingol tastes his anger then, as one tastes a change in the air when rain and thunder roll in. “He lives, then. Speaking wisdom from his invalid cot?”
“He walked on two feet to speak to me,” Haleth says. “Can I ask you something?”
Bold. Steel-hard.
The night wind has found a way into the hall; a way between them. It whispers over the flags of the floor.
“Yes,” says Thingol.
“What is it that you want?” Haleth’s fingers lace between her spread knees. She sits like a man, but straighter-backed than most men Thingol has known.
He narrows his eyes. “Your loyalty.”
She does not flinch. “You have it.”
“Do I?”
“I know you want your people to worship you,” Haleth says—says it casually, as if this is no great or recent discovery for her, but a common fact they share in knowledge between them. In the back of Thingol’s mind, an uncomfortable suggestion presents itself: Melian would laugh at this.
A good thing, perhaps, that she is still at her loom.
“But?” Thingol prompts. He must restore himself as master of this conversation. In only a few turns, Haleth has confessed her defection to Mithrim and her liaison with Feanor’s rapscallion eldest, then turned the interrogation on him as coolly as if Doriath was her kingdom and he the guest within it.
“You are not my god,” Haleth says. “I do not have any gods.”
“I have never asked for anyone’s worship,” Thingol retorts. “Only for their honesty. Their trust. Feanorian was savage little nincompoop who cheated every hand he touched—I did not think I would need to remind you of this, who have always distrusted treacherous men.”
“Maedhros has only one hand,” Haleth says, not quite in answer. “And he is more honest with it than his father was with two, maybe.” Her voice drops, suffused with greater urgency. “Thingol, he told me something about Bauglir.”
Melian and Luthien seem incapable of discussing the subject of Maedhros and Mithrim without showering pity on him over his time in Bauglir’s ludicrous mountain keep, so Thingol has given up raising it with them. He will not be moved to mercy for Feanor’s son.
And at any rate—
“What could I possibly wish to know,” he asks now, “About Bauglir?”
“He is in the city, San Francisco,” Haleth says. “He has many friends there.”
“I am aware.” In truth, it is not only because of his family’s pity that Thingol does not speak of Bauglir. He simply despises the man, and all his works—to give much thought to him is to give credence, and credence Bauglir shall not have.
The embers spit a spark.
“Then you know also that his eye is on Doriath?”
Thingol scoffs at this, reaching for the poker to stir up the fire. For all Haleth’s wits, she is very young, yet. “He has had his eye on Doriath forever,” he says. “These dozen years, at least. He is a greedy vulture who never saw a beef-bone his beak did not yearn to pick.”
Haleth is quiet.
“This is what Mithrim can give you,” Thingol says, setting the poker aside, and heartened by an opportunity to make his finely honed points. “Promises. A stirring speech. Both hollow—and only bolstered by news that turns out to be stale. They do not want me to treat them as the enemy, Haleth, so they will speak of Bauglir whenever they can. I know he mistreated Feanor’s son viciously—such is his wont. But mistreatment of one evildoer by another…the knowledge that a rattler has sunk its fangs into another rattler by the freakish chance of nature… neither will stir me to action.”
Haleth says, very quiet now, “I think Luthien is in danger.”
Thingol gapes, then recovers, and for a long span of seconds there is no hotter fire than the one burning in his breast. He is wrathful at such an accusation. For yes, an accusation it is and must be, while a man of the house, a father of the house, is rendered weak in the court of others’ fear.
“Did Maedhros say this too?”
“Yes,” Haleth says, “But not only Maedhros. Still—he knew of Luthien, and not from Bauglir.”
The rascal Beren—another of whom Thingol thinks very little, if he thinks at all—briefly enters his mind. Then he dismisses the thought. There is no reasonable connection to be made there.
“Not from Bauglir,” he repeats cautiously.
“From Mairon the hunter,” Haleth says. “He gloated to Maedhros, when Maedhros was captive, of the time he spent in Doriath. Time in which he saw her. Did you know? Have you killed him? We—I—do not know where he hides, otherwise.”
Mairon is a name somewhat known, even this far south, for there are always wolves among the sheep of the world. He has never, however, been to Doriath—not in Thingol’s knowledge, and Thingol’s knowledge reaches wide.
“Mairon,” he says. “In Doriath.”
“Bauglir must have sent him. The errand, since you did not feel it—”
“Must have been secret.” He finishes the words for her, though he can hardly bear it.
“Mairon is his beast,” Haleth explains. Then, speaking more quickly than usual, as if she anticipates his interruption, “Maedhros was not the first tormented. There was another, a former slave. Her name is Estrela. She—she knew my brother.” She clears her throat and drops her eyes, only an instant. Thingol, even if his thoughts were not clouded by sudden doubts and questions, would give her this moment. It is hard for Haleth to speak of her dead kin, and she rarely does. “The way was always the same—Bauglir wanted the work of their fathers, the wealth of their fathers, and when he could not take all he wished he—he claimed their children.”
There is a night long ago in Thingol’s mind, the details of which he has not told Haleth—or anyone. Anyone who was not present, who did not hear Melkor speak with lascivious interest in Luthien, then but a girl of thirteen.
“Claimed their children?” His words create the certainty his heart cannot. “He shall not claim mine.”
“But she is beautiful,” Haleth says. “And since he knows of her—since Mairon knows of her—they must think her very beautiful. This, to Bauglir, is necessary.”
He wants to doubt Maedhros first, and loudly. He wants to regale her with an account of how firmly his fortress stands. Instead, his tongue cleaves to his mouth, as it never has when the opportunity for insult or dismissal arises.
“Maedhros is not full of the piss-pride you hate.” Haleth stares him down, her tremor of grief from a moment ago utterly dissipated. “He and his family—his living family, Fingolfin, too—want peace. Seeing their losses, I believed them.”
“We shall have no losses, here.”
Haleth stands. She looks weary, and no longer young. “Then listen to him, Thingol. Listen to the man with one honest hand, if he speaks truth to you.”
He rises also. He folds his arms over his chest. “I thank you for your insights,” he says. “And I hope you found Wachiwi well—I expect she sent no apologies, as you have brought neither hers nor your own.”
“You have pride,” Haleth says. “It is for this reason I say you are like a god. Not one of the spirits—” And here she makes a reverent, private gesture—“But one of your small ones. They came quickly for my people, Thingol. They broke our spears and cut us down before our arrows could reach them. We heard each other’s cries, you understand, but when the air was full, it was too late.”
“Did you find Haleth well?” Melian asks, embracing him. She is scented with spring flowers. “I shall visit her on the morrow, with good, fresh food.”
“Her head is full of fears,” Thingol answers. “It is good that she is here again.”
Night lies softly on Doriath, but the air tastes of the coming storm.