Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rain pressed the sky into the earth until the river ran high and brown, dragging reeds and splinters of spear shafts along its snarling surface. Crows kept low, restless and greedy, flitting from branch to branch as if the trees whispered of meat. The air tasted like iron. It sat on the tongue and would not leave.

Jane woke with the iron taste in her mouth and the noise a battlefield makes after it has forgotten that men are not part of the landscape. Not the shouting kind of noise. The after-noise. The clatter of something rolling, the creak of leather that has soaked too long, the soft ticking of rain on mail.

She was on her knees in grass that smelled crushed and green, palms cut and muddy. A moment ago there had been a Dubai road under her sneakers, a clean white line, a brake light that flared too late, the wheel jerking. Now there was a sky the color of old wool, and cold that lived in her teeth. She shifted and her left boot slid on something that gave with a complaint she felt in her stomach. A broken shield. The device upon it was a white horse, chipped and rain-blurred. The curve of the wood cradled a puddle where the rain gathered and spilled over the rim as if the shield were drinking.

She stood, swaying, and turned in a slow circle. Beyond the willows the river split itself over a shallow and made the sound of gravel being chewed. The ford. Every direction held trampled grass, churned mud, dark shapes that did not move. Spears stuck out of the earth like an untidy fence. A leather strap swung from a branch, clicking against bark. She swallowed and the swallow scraped.

"Okay," she said, because saying something anchored the moment. Her voice sounded too loud and then too small. "This is new."

Her brain looked for neat boxes. Movie set. Medieval festival. People with too much commitment to realism. The smell was wrong for any of that. The smell was copper and wet wool and the sweet, spoiled note of opened guts. A fly landed on her cheek and she hissed and flinched it away. The world balanced on a point and decided to continue.

A horse stood a little way off, trembling and sweat-slick, reins tangled in a dead man's hand. The animal's eyes were the same honest brown as every schoolhorse she had ever trusted. It flicked an ear when she moved and then did not move at all, which told her more than anything else that this horse had seen enough to last it several lifetimes. She approached sideways with her body turned a little, knees soft, hands low. Her mouth did the automatic work, and the words came out German and English together, nonsense shaped like comfort. "Ist gut, brav, good girl, easy now."

The horse breathed a warm question over her sleeve. She ran a hand down its neck, felt the heat of it, felt the tremble under the skin settle. The saddle was scored. The stirrup leather hung by a few threads. The bit had foam dried pale around it. This was not a museum prop. This was a life that had not asked for any of this.

When she untangled the reins from the dead man's fingers, she did not look at his face. He wore mail that had been good once. The links had a bite mark where an axe had found them. He had fair hair and a strong jaw and the same white horse picked out on his torn surcoat. She took the knife from his belt because he did not need it anymore and because she did.

Her phone was in her jacket pocket. She pulled it out on instinct, thumbed the screen. The glass was spidered with cracks. No signal, which was a punchline all on its own. No service across the river between worlds, who could have guessed. The battery icon was a red sliver. She slid it back inside, as if the weight of it could keep a part of home near her ribcage. "Great," she told nobody, "we love a dramatic setting and no Uber."

The field told its story while she moved through it. Here an arrow stamped straight down into the mud. Here a print with toes splayed wide that was too large for a man. Here the grooves left by a dragged weight and the broken places where men had fallen and been pulled again. She kept her eyes on the useful things, the signs of life. The horse's track came from the far bank. The ford was wide. The stepping was hidden by the flood. Someone had crossed and someone had been chased.

A knot of bodies lay where the slope rose toward the willow fringe, men in mail and men in leather, and others larger and uglier with hands that looked like spades. Her mind offered her a word that felt like a swallowed secret. Orc. The part of her that had made maps and copied family trees from the appendices under a childhood duvet whispered it. The rest of her pushed back, because accepting that word would make everything else follow.

Another shape lay half in the rushes. Not still. Not yet gone. The movement was small, like grass breathing. She ran.

He lay on his side, mail shirt sliced across the ribs, the fabric beneath it soaked near black. Water ran off his hair in lines and fell from his jaw. He had the kind of face that looked carved to last. Not pretty, not kind, something like a cliff face, something that belonged outdoors and would not fit under a low roof. His eyes were closed and the lashes were too dark for his hair. The ridge of his collarbone showed under the torn fabric. She had a fleeting, stupid thought that if someone cast Henry Cavill as a medieval prince and then rolled him in blood and rain, this is what they would get.

He was cold. Not the cold of a winter morning. The cold that moves into the deeper places and starts to lock doors. She slid her hands under his shoulders and heaved him onto his back. He made a sound that was not a word and not only pain. She pressed two fingers to the hollow of his throat to feel for the beat. It was there, stubborn, slow.

"Hey," she said, and she made her voice a little too bright because panic would not help. "You, mountain man. Eyes on me."

The lids flickered, struggled, opened. His eyes were gray, the particular winter gray that holds green somewhere very far back. They tried to focus on her and then focused on the sky. His lips shaped a syllable she did not catch.

"Later," she said, with the authority one uses on people who are bleeding too much. "First we stop this."

She tore strips from her undershirt and used the knife she had taken to pry mail apart where it had glued itself to cloth and skin. The cut started high under his ribs and curved like a wicked smile toward his back. Not clean. Not deep enough to have killed him outright. Deep enough to keep trying. She wedged her shoulder under his arm to tip him a little and saw the exit of a smaller wound at the back where a blade had glanced. He had another cut at the thigh and a bad bruise where something had taken him in the side. She did not see bubbling at the wound when he breathed. The relief of that made her sit for half a second with her eyes closed, letting the rain wash her lashes.

"Okay," she said again, this time to herself. "We can work with this."

She packed the worst of it with the cleanest cloth she had, which was not very clean at all, and tied her scarf around him as tight as she dared. His skin was hot where the fever was already thinking about making a home. She braced her forearm across his sternum and leaned into the pressure while her other hand wrapped. It made them close. Her cheek brushed his shoulder. She smelled the mix of rain, leather, sweat, and iron, and under it something like crushed thyme. In another life, in another world entirely, it would have been a closeness with very different intentions. Here it was a fight against a slow tide.

He tried to speak again. She shook her head but he ignored that and forced the word through his teeth like a man shouldering a fallen gate. "Theo..."

"Save it," she said, but then his mouth shaped the rest and the rest fell into her hands like a key. "Théodred."

She went still in a cold that had nothing to do with rain. The map in her, the one with scribbled family trees and spears inked along borders, put a pin into a place and a time. The Fords. The heir of the Mark. The son who had fallen. Her mouth tried on denial and found it did not fit.

She had loved these stories. She had loved them so hard as a teenager that she had thought they were part of the furniture of her mind. She had loved Rohirrim horses more than biology homework. She had said the names to herself on the metro in Dubai when work days were too long. She had always come to the part where the king's son fell and felt the ache of a story doing what it had to do. The ache had felt fixed, like a rule.

He was here. He was not gone yet. The rule felt like a thin thing compared to the weight of his ribcage under her forearm and the way his fingers had frozen in mud.

"Right," she said, and her voice shook a little and then steadied because once a decision is made the shaking can wait. "Not today."

She checked the thigh wound, cleaned it as best she could with rainwater and the inside of a cloak that was at least less filthy, then bound it. She found a deep scrape along his hip bone and forced herself not to think about how close that had come to ruining everything. She put her palm flat against the side of his throat to feel the pulse again. It thudded slower now, but there.

"Listen," she told him, because getting angry is sometimes the quickest way to keep fear at heel. "If you decide to die on me after I used my favorite scarf on your medieval abdomen, I am going to be very annoyed."

A corner of his mouth twitched. It might have been a grimace. It might have been a ghost of a smile. "Lady," he whispered, rough as bark.

"I am many things," she said, "but not that. Jane. I am Jane. Now stop moving unless you want my knee in your chest."

He closed his eyes and obeyed. She let herself breathe and then looked around for the next thing. Shelter. The rain would keep bleeding wet and cold into him. If there were orcs, then there were probably more. The crows spoke of watching things that watched back.

There, near the waterline, the roots of a willow had been undercut so that a pocket opened where the bank bit inward. It would give them cover from three sides. Not perfect. Better than the middle of a churned field.

She used him as if he weighed less than he did. In truth he weighed as much as a tall, muscular man in mail weighs, which is a lesson the lower back does not forget. She got him upright first, her hands under his armpits and her shoulder jammed into his ribs, and his head fell against her collarbone for a minute that was both too long and not long enough. Then they did the awkward dance of taking three steps and stopping, three more and stopping, and when his breath hitched she lied. "Nearly there. Two more. One more. Good."

They reached the hollow and she eased him down carefully, then more carefully still. He shivered. She pulled a cloak from a dead man who did not care anymore and shook out the rain. She tore the last of her shirt and folded it between his skin and the rough wool to keep the worst hairs from sticking to the drying blood. Thunder muttered in the distance, low and sullen, as if the sky had opinions.

"Do not sleep," she said. "Talk to me. Anything. Your favorite horse. Your least favorite stew. The color you hate most on banners."

He looked at her with a slow, distant focus. "Who are you?"

"Jane. From Dubai." The words felt like a joke that only one person on earth would find funny, and she was not here. "Long story. Where are we, officially. Humor me."

His brow folded a little. "The Fords. Isen."

Her laugh came out too sharp and then turned into something like a breath sucked through teeth. "Of course. Of course it is."

She had spent too many evenings with cheap karak tea cooling on a desk and a spreadsheet open on one half of the screen and a forum thread about Middle-earth horses open on the other, telling herself it was only five minutes of reading. She had memorized maps for no reason except the pleasure of it. She had traced the path of armies with a finger and thought of grasslands she had never seen. She had loved a world that was not hers with a tenderness that had not fit anywhere in the rest of her life.

Now she had mud in her socks and the heir of the Mark in her lap and a practical problem to solve. Her heart wanted to turn into a comet and burn a trail across the sky. She had no time for that. Not yet.

She checked the pulse again. It had steadied a fraction. He was losing heat. She stripped her jacket and put it around his shoulders under the cloak. "This is a very limited edition," she told him. "Do not bleed on it. That was a joke. Bleed on it if you must."

The horse had followed them on its own, sensible creature that it was. It put its head over the lip of the hollow and blew a breath that ruffled her wet hair. "You," she said, grateful for the straightforward reality of a horse, "are my favorite coworker on this entire project."

She ran hands down forelegs and felt for heat and swelling, checked the shoes, checked the belly for cuts. The animal had a nick on the inside of the left hock and a saddle gall in the making. She loosened the girth and lifted the saddle away, setting it upside down so the stuffing would not soak more. Her shoulders remembered the old rhythm, the way everything is heavy the first time and then the body remembers its tricks. She smiled at the horse. "You and me, habibti. Yalla."

Something moved at the edge of the field. Not a crow. Not a branch. A shape low and wrong shivered against the gray. She felt the hair go up along her arms. Her breath made the smallest cloud.

She slid back down into the hollow and put her hand on the man's chest, a steady weight, the way you calm a horse. He went still. They listened. The rain made its thousand small sounds. Under it, another sound of something sniffing. Her heart beat so hard it made the edges of her vision change.

Orcs did not hunt like wolves, at least not the ones that came out of movies and books. They blundered. They got bored. They followed easy blood. She tried to decide whether these were the blundering kind or the patient kind. She did not like the idea of either.

She found the knife she had taken and pushed it into the earth by her knee so she could find it without looking. "If you can do anything useful," she whispered, "like magic, now would be great."

"Magic," he said, and it was almost a laugh though his lips were white. "Lady Jane from Du-bai, I am a rider."

"Then we ride later," she said, keeping her voice the kind of soft that does not travel far, "and we do not get stabbed now."

Their uninvited guest came closer. She could smell it before she saw it clearly, that sour-dirt smell that belongs to things that hate soap as a concept. It was carrying something that clinked softly, and it breathed like a bellows that had rusted. The shape passed within three horse-lengths of the willow roots, head turning in little jerks. Jane put her palm over Theodred's mouth without thinking. He did not flinch. They waited while her hand felt the warmth of his breath against the base of her thumb and her arm shook because something in her had decided it could not move while survival was deciding how the next five minutes would go.

The shape paused, sniffed again, made a throat-noise, and shambled on. When it was gone, the crows scolded. The sound went along the bank like thrown pebbles.

She took her hand away from his mouth. Her palm had an imprint of his stubble in the damp. She looked at that as if it were the most important thing she had ever seen, because it meant they were both still here. He looked at her. In the small space between them there was rain and breath and the kind of heat that grows in spite of everything else. It surprised her, the way it came like a blush that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with being alive very near another person's aliveness.

"Do not get ideas," she told herself under her breath. "He is literally bleeding on your jacket."

"What ideas," he said, so dry it was almost a joke, and she realized she must have not been as quiet as she thought.

"The idea that you are more than a very unfortunate patient," she said, and she could not help the smile that came with it, or the way her body eased because humor had always been a way to carry heavy things. "Although, for the record, you looked like you would be very dramatic in a clean shirt."

He gave her the look of a man who was not sure if he had been complimented or threatened. "You are bold."

"I am tired and cold and making jokes so I do not cry," she said. "Do you see my face. It is a face that has used humor as a flotation device for years."

That pulled an actual tiny laugh out of him, which turned into a wince. She eased him back a little, slid new pressure against the bandage so blood would not creep following gravity. Her hands were muddy. She would have given very good money for clean water and an antiseptic that did not sting. She picked leaves out of his hair, one, two, three, the way you do when you are suddenly invested in a stranger's dignity. Her fingers found a bump on his scalp and she took note of it as a later problem.

"Listen," she said softly, and felt ridiculous for asking a question in a war. "Do you have a favorite horse."

That surprised him. His eyes unfocused and then focused again on a place behind her shoulder that had nothing to do with rain. "Brego," he said, and the name fit his mouth the way certain names fit a landscape. "The king's. He chose another after, yet I remember him."

"Good," she said. "Tell me about Brego."

He did. He spoke a few halting words at a time. There was a little about the horse's temper and a little about a day that had been good for no particular reason, which is how you know a day was truly good. He told her that Brego disliked flags that snapped and adored stale bread with the insolence of a prince. He told her the names of his friends in the éored, names that felt like coins pressed into her palm to keep safe. The speaking kept him in the warm place where the living stay. She took the coins and held them. She added a few of her own.

"I had a mare," she said. "Not mine, not really. She belonged to the stable. Her name was Luna and she thought anything that touched her flank was a conspiracy. She was the funniest thing on four legs. She used to decide that the birch tree near the far corner of the arena was a portal to hell, and then five minutes later it was fine."

"What is an arena," he asked, in the cautious tone of a man crossing a cultural bridge.

"A big flat place where you ride in circles and pretend you are very elegant," she said. "And then you do not look elegant at all because your horse decided to invent a new movement that is not in the handbook."

He breathed a little laugh, then closed his eyes. She watched his face for a moment, the tension at the corners of the mouth, the small lines of a man who frowns at weather more than at people. The rain slackened from a drum to a murmur. Her clothes stuck to every place they could stick. She shivered and then noticed that he felt the shiver through the places they touched, which was both embarrassing and necessary.

"Cold," he said, and the word landed with weight because he could not afford much more of it.

"Working on it," she answered. She looked at the saddle again. There might be a fire kit in the saddlebag. If there was flint and something dry enough, she could coax a flame even in this. She did not feel like leaving him, but the hollow was small and she would be a few steps away. The horse would stand guard with those big eyes that saw more than people think.

She climbed up, slid her hands into the right bag and then the left, found a twist of old linen that felt taut with dryness, a little tin that smelled like tallow and pine, a horseshoe nail wrapped with something that scratched. Flint. Thank every god of small kindnesses. She brought them back, built a saint's altar of meticulousness with thin twigs under the willow lip where the rain did not fall directly, scraped and coaxed until a spark took. It felt like stealing light from a stingy sky. She fed the flame with breath and care until it had a small life of its own, then smaller sticks, then one or two that were almost twigs.

Fire changed everything. It put color back into the world. It made the river look less like a mouth and more like water. It let the smell of pine balm climb the air instead of the metallic breath of the field. He watched the flame as if it were a child he had not expected to have. She warmed her hands and then warmed the cloth and then warmed his hands by holding them for longer than was strictly necessary.

His fingers dwarfed hers. He had sword calluses and the flat spots where a rein rubs. He had a scar that ran from the base of his thumb toward the wrist, just shallow enough to have missed anything important. She turned his hand a little, not really an examination anymore, more a tracing of the facts that made him him. He did not pull away. The quiet between them filled with the small sounds of fire and rain and an animal shifting its weight above them. She could have sat like that for a week.

He looked down at their hands and then up at her face. He had the most inconveniently steady gaze. It threw back panic like a shield throws arrows. "You ride," he said, not a question now.

"All my life," she said, and felt a smile that had salt in it. "Since I was tall enough to fall without breaking. Which was, tragically, very early."

"You are tall," he said, in a tone so considering that she snorted.

"Thank you for noticing. In my world, twenty seven and not married is a perfectly respectable way to be. In yours, I am probably a cautionary tale."

"In mine," he said, and the faintest humor softened his mouth, "you are a marvel."

The words were so simple that they caught her unprepared. Heat rose under her cheekbones. Rain had no business making a person blush, yet here they were. She let go of his hand to check the bandage again because movement was safer. "Tell me if this hurts."

"It all hurts," he said, not to win sympathy, simply truth. "Yet your voice makes it seem that I should bear it."

"Flatterer," she said, and a smile got out before she could stop it. "If we survive this, I am buying you coffee. The strong kind that makes you see through time."

"Coffee," he repeated, tasting the shape of it. "Like karak."

Her head snapped up. "How do you know that word."

He frowned, as if listening inside his own skull. "I heard you say it. You spoke to the horse, and you said habibti and yalla. The words sat well in your mouth, as if they were your own."

"They are," she said, and something in her chest loosened with that ordinary piece of home dropped into this very unordinary day. "Dubai. The best cardamom tea on the planet is a roadside shack next to a carwash that looks like it was built overnight. Their karak could bring back the dead. You would like it. It comes in Styrofoam cups that melt if you look at them wrong."

He looked at her like a man filing away a story to take out later. She wanted there to be a later so much that her hands hurt with it.

The wind shifted and brought her the noise of voices where the bank widened. Not men speaking. Not the shape of words at all. The sounds were thick and hateful. The horse above them froze with its nose in the air. Theodred's eyes sharpened. He tried to push himself up. She put a hand flat on his chest and he stopped, because he was a man used to being obeyed and also because he did not have anything left to push with.

"They return," he whispered.

She closed her eyes for a span and then opened them because she preferred to look at the thing that wanted to eat her. "We have a plan. First step, you stay quiet. Second step, we do not die."

"What is the third," he asked, as if a plan without a third step was not a plan at all.

"We get you out of here," she said. "I am thinking a very elegant exit, nothing dramatic, just two very normal people leaving a battlefield with a horse. Nobody notices."

His mouth twitched. "You are unlike any healer I have known."

"I am unlike any person you have known," she said. "And you are very lucky that I am here to be annoying at your enemies."

The orcs slunk along the bank, three of them, noses lifted. One carried a broken spear, another had a dented helmet that made him look like an angry mushroom. They stopped where the shallows began to braid, looking down at tracks where mud had been churned into a soup that told a story with no neat ending. One of them prodded a body with its toe and grunted approval at something shiny it found and pocketed. Jane counted heartbeats and watched their feet. Feet tell where minds go. The feet were restless but not yet directed. Good. She wanted them bored. Bored was her favorite version of evil.

She picked up a small stone and weighed it. The hollow gave them cover but only from three sides. If she could pull the creatures a little farther downshore, the willow roots would block their line of sight more completely. If she missed and the stone bounced the wrong way, she could create the opposite of what she wanted. She thought of the corner of the arena where Luna had refused to go and how they had fixed it with patience and a handful of reasons. Horses are simple. Orcs are not horses. Still, attention can be led by a noise the wrong way at the right time.

She kissed her teeth to the horse above, the soft sound that means steady, and the animal flicked an ear like a promise. Then she threw her stone into a cluster of reeds thirty paces away. It landed with a pleasant plop, the kind that boasts of having fallen from something worth investigating. Two heads snapped toward it. The third did not. The third looked up. Jane flattened herself against the damp wall of the hollow and thought small thoughts.

The third inched forward, suspicious in the way of things that have only ever learned to suspect. It turned its head slowly, sniffed, scowled. The other two shuffled toward the reed-cluster with the focus of petty thieves who have never found anything truly interesting and desperately want to. After a minute of sniffing the reeds and swearing, they called to the third. The third hesitated, then joined them. All three argued with the reeds, and the reeds held their ground. The argument moved ten paces farther away. Then twenty. The sound of it blurred into river and rain.

Jane exhaled. Theodred's hand was on her sleeve. His fingers had tightened without her noticing. She looked down and then up. Their faces were very close, the way faces get in small shelters, and the air warmed between them the way air always does, even in rain, when two bodies decide they will be alive next to each other for at least another five minutes. His gaze rested on her mouth for a fraction too long. Heat crawled up her neck, a quiet, steady thing. Not fever, not fear. She tucked a curl of wet hair behind her ear that had no need of tucking. Human hands require tasks when they begin to shake.

"We need to move before they return," she said. "I can make a travois. Two spears, a cloak. The horse can pull you. It will not be comfortable, but it will be less lethal than walking."

"I can walk," he said on reflex, and then his body answered differently by trying to fold the wrong way.

She raised one brow. "You can attempt, and I can watch you fall like a romantic pine tree. Or we can go with my plan."

He frowned as if he did not like admitting that her plan had better bones. "Your plan."

"Excellent choice. That is leadership."

She climbed up, found two spears with points that were more rust than metal, bound them with girths and reins and a shredded banner's cord. She stretched a cloak between the poles and laced its corners with the bits of leather she had, then dragged the contraption to the hollow and tested it with her own weight. It held. She tightened the breastplate straps around the horse's chest to distribute the pull and laced a loop runners would not trip on. The horse looked at her as if to say that this was not the worst thing that had ever been asked of it but certainly ranked. She kissed its nose and promised it apples that did not exist.

Getting Theodred onto the travois was an exercise in mutual stubbornness. He tried to help by helping incorrectly. She tried to lift more than she should and felt something in her lower back send her a memo that she would be reading for days. At one point her boot slipped and she sat in the mud with a graceless splash that knocked her hair into her face. He made a noise that might have been concern and might have been laughter. She blew wet hair out of her eyes and glared at him for form's sake.

"No comments from the bleeding section," she said, pushing to her feet. "If I fall again, I am blaming the Middle-earth health and safety board, which clearly does not exist."

"Middle... Earth," he repeated, pronunciation careful. "You have a very strange tongue."

"I have several," she said, and he blinked as if uncertain whether to be impressed or alarmed, which made her grin. "On three. One, two, up."

They got him settled with his good leg slightly bent, the bad one supported by a folded saddle blanket, the cloak drawn over his chest. She wedged another blanket behind his shoulders to keep him from rolling. The bandage held. His face was gray around the mouth in a way she did not like. She touched his cheek with the back of her fingers. Warm, and not the bad warm yet. She wished she could count his temperature in numbers and chart them and feed his veins with a bag of clear fluid and antibiotics with names that end in comfort. She had twine and hope.

"Ready," she said, and the horse lifted its head because horses understand tone as much as words. She clicked her tongue and took the lead rope. "We follow the bank. If we keep the willows between us and the ford, we might pass under bored nose levels."

"Where," he asked, "do you take me."

"The nearest place with a roof and a man who owes you a drink," she said. "And if that place does not exist, I will build it with anger and sticks."

He made the smallest sound that could have been a prayer or a curse or both. She braced herself, breathed once the way an instructor had taught her when she was nineteen and about to put a green horse over its first cross-rail, then set them moving.

They went along the river's edge where the ground was firmer under the grass and the roots knitted the soil. The horse stepped careful, ears forward, nostrils wide. Jane's hand on the lead rope was steady, the same steady she used when asking a nervous gelding to pass a flapping banner. The travois slid with a sigh against the wet, caught on a reed cluster, freed itself. The river to their left spoke in a low, constant voice. The field to their right held its breath.

The orcs did not cross their path again. They heard one of them shout in the distance and laugh the way a badly tuned instrument laughs, then the sound trailed off. Crows shook water off their backs and rose into the gray. The world expanded out of the small hollow and let them inside the larger, which only made Jane more aware of how exposed a person can be under a sky.

She talked to keep the world busy. She told Theodred about Dubai in little bites. The air that tastes like salt in October before the heat returns to its throne. The way light slides along the glass of towers at sunset until the buildings look like someone's idea of a jeweled box. The stable ten minutes from a highway where you rode in a rectangle while trucks groaned by with their own lives. The karak stand that always pretended to be closing and never closed. The old Emirati man with the kind eyes who called everyone son or daughter, and who clucked to horses in a dialect that made them prick their ears like children being offered sweets.

He listened. He told her, haltingly, about a hill near Edoras where the wind always seemed to want to tell you a secret. He told her about riding at dawn when the grass still held the night's cool and the horses' breaths drew clouds that hung low to the ground. He told her about a mare that had once bitten him on the shoulder and how he had forgave her because he had been a fool that day and she knew it. The words stitched themselves across the damp air, thread meeting thread. Proximity did the rest. Any time she glanced back to check him, her gaze caught on a detail she did not need and could not stop taking in. The way water beaded on his lashes. The notch in his ear that someone had made with a blade a lifetime ago. The breadth of his chest under the cloak rising, falling, rising.

There were moments when the humor that lived in her ribcage put out a hand and squeezed. She almost laughed when she realized she was literally dragging a man who looked like a saga under a blanket across a battlefield while explaining to him the price of a good cappuccino on Jumeirah Road. Absurdity kept the terror from getting teeth.

They made a slow mile. Another. The bank rose and then fell. A stand of alders gave them a darker stripe of shade where they could pause. She watered the horse and let it graze for ten frantic bites. She gave Theodred water a little at a time and he drank like a man who had to negotiate with his own body about how to keep it. She checked the bandage again and changed out the top layer for one that was less soaked. The blood had slowed to an ooze. It was good, not good enough.

"Color is better," she lied, then told the truth because her voice never sat well on lies. "A little better. We keep going."

"You are relentless," he said quietly.

"You are not allowed to die," she said. "I am just enforcing policy."

"Whose policy," he asked, and she held his gaze with all the steadiness she had left.

"Mine."

They moved again. The clouds thinned a little, and a color that might one day call itself blue played at the edges. The river carried a log downstream and the log turned and turned as if puzzling out what it had become. Jane looked at the land ahead and guessed which wrinkle of earth might promise a cart track. Tracks mean people. People might mean help or harm. She had always been good at reading arenas, the small shifts in how sand lay when a horse had been hauled into a corner too often, the patches that swallowed hooves. She tried to read this, a different sand, a wider ring. There was a cut in the bank where wheels had chewed after a rain and then dried. She turned them that way.

They had almost reached the cut when a man stepped out of a hawthorn thicket with a bow drawn to the cheek and a face that would not have looked out of place in any of the photographs she had saved for reference as a teenager. He had a braid that lay on his shoulder and eyes the color of burned straw. The white horse was stitched on his breast. She stopped because running away from a bow is a hobby for people who like collecting arrows.

The bowman's gaze lifted from the horse to the travois and froze. The line of his back changed first, and then his mouth. "My lord," he said, the sound raw.

Theodred's eyes opened and a light that had been banked there came up as if fed by a corner of dry wood. "Éothain," he said.

The bow dropped. The man ran. He did not waste time with politeness or even caution. He knelt by the travois and his hands turned careful when they reached Theodred's arm. His jaw clenched. "We thought you taken to the river. We... forgive me."

"Do not," Theodred said, as if he could spare his man the shame and the words both by deleting them. "Help her. She brought me from the ford."

Éothain looked at Jane then, properly, and saw not only a woman and a horse and a mess, but the fact of someone who had taken what should have been a dead man and moved him into the country of the living again. His mouth worked around something that looked like gratitude and came out as command because that was the shape his mouth knew. "Up the cut. We have a cart. We are few but enough."

"Music to my ears," Jane said, and did not care that he would not understand the idiom. "You take his head. I will steer this elegant chariot."

They brought Theodred up the rut where old mud had dried into crisp edges. A cart waited in a stand of hawthorn, two horses still in the traces, their ears turned to the world. Two more riders kept watch with faces that looked like they had not slept since childhood. When they saw, their faces came apart and then back together around something that was not speech, just a set of vows. They made space. They lifted. They did not jostle, which told Jane everything about the loyalty in that little group.

They tucked Theodred into the cart with a bed of cloaks that looked like they had been meant for shoulders a few minutes ago. Jane climbed in without asking, put her hand where his pulse lay, and kept it there like a metronome. Éothain took the reins with a grip that dared the leather to argue. The cart moved like a ship on a small, uneven sea.

"Edoras," Éothain said, not looking away from the ruts he chose, as if he could pull the city closer by sheer will.

"Soon," Theodred said, and the word sounded like a promise to a place made of wood and wind. His eyes slid to Jane. "You will be honored."

She shook her head lightly. "You will be alive. That is the honor I care about."

He studied her face like a man counting to make certain the numbers still add. "You are strange."

"I have been called worse," she said. "If anyone attempts to call me a witch because I know how to press on a wound, tell them I prefer queen of first aid."

"Queen," he repeated with a very faint smile. "Lady Jane, queen of first aid, from Du-bai."

"You remember," she said, and the warmth that ran through her had nothing to do with the blanket she had shoved half under him as padding. "Good. That means your brain is fond of me."

"It is certain of you," he said. The cart jounced and he caught his breath. The sound went through her like a string pulled. She leaned closer without thinking, steadied him with the heel of her hand against the sternum where his breath could find a better shape. The nearness made the universe contract. His eyelashes were too long. The fine line of a scar at his hairline made a small, mean part of her want to kiss it. She did not. She stared at the wooden slat of the cart like it had said something brilliant.

The road unrolled in its lumpy fashion. The hawthorn gave way to open grass. In the distance the hill rose where Edoras would be. She had seen the hill in pictures and paintings for half her life, and now it stood there as if it had been waiting the entire time, which is an annoying thing for a place to do. The sky considered letting a sun through and then thought better of it. Jane set her jaw as if she could carry the cart the rest of the way on her back if she had to.

They did not make it to the city that day. The horses had limits and the men's faces had the look of string pulled too tight. Éothain chose a shallow dip in the land where a fringe of elder gave cover and a small spring made a note of water sweet enough to loosen a person's throat. They formed a small camp with the quiet efficiency of people who have done this far too often lately. A fire rose that deserved to be called honest rather than clever. The smell of something like onions happened. Someone found a handful of dried herbs and someone else produced a heel of bread that had opinions but softened in the steam.

Jane cleaned the wounds again with water warmed to take the bite off, hands steady, movements sure. She did the work with her wrists relaxed and her jaw set, which had always been the way she did anything that mattered. The men watched her like they had never seen such delicacy and such ruthlessness on the same pair of hands. She ignored their watching because people only ever believe a thing when it is finished and sitting quietly, and she preferred to deliver her miracles as facts rather than invitations for awe.

When she had done all she could do and tucked him in a nest of cloaks that would have made an eagle envious, she sat on the edge of the cart with her boots in the dirt and her hands dangling between her knees. She could feel the tremble she had kept at bay all day come knocking. She made it wait a little more. She looked up at the hill and down at the man and sideways at the men who loved him. She loved the shape of this love. It had nothing to do with hugeness. It had to do with stewardship and weather and a loyalty that was a practice more than a feeling.

Theodred turned his head a fraction and found her outline without opening his eyes. "You did not leave," he said, as if remarking on the weather.

"I never leave early," she said. "German punctuality. We are very annoying about it."

"German," he said, filing another word, and his voice dropped into a place where the words grew thicker and warmer. "I will learn."

"You have other things to do," she said, and she let herself be soft for one second because the day had earned one, "like not being dead."

"Understood," he murmured, and his lashes lay against his cheek like small curved feathers.

She sat with him while the men ate and brought her a bowl that steamed against her hands and tasted like onions and patience. She ate half and pressed the other half on Éothain, who tried to refuse with a look and failed when she told him that if he did not eat she would call him a poor example in front of his men. He accepted with a shrug that admitted a certain admiration for how brazen she was being in his camp.

Night came fully. Someone sang under his breath while he cleaned a bridle. It was not an elaborate song. It was the sort sung to babies or to skittish horses. The words were simple and steady. Jane let them run over her. She did not sleep. She watched the rise and fall and rise of Theodred's chest. She turned his hand over once to press two fingers to the pulse and then left their hands there, palm to palm, because it made something in her slow down.

In the small hours when the fire had gone to coals and the men's breathing had found the deeper register of bodies finally convinced, Theodred stirred and opened his eyes. The coals made his face a study in red and shadow. He did not move much. He did not need to. He had the kind of presence that made movement optional.

"Jane," he said.

"Yes," she answered, and her voice came out in the same tone she would use for a horse she loved who had woken from a bad dream.

"You are very brave," he said, careful and plain. "And very foolish."

"I know," she said. "These two horses live in the same stable and share hay."

He smiled with half his mouth, and that half was enough to do things to her breathing that were neither medical nor decent. "Why," he asked, and in the simple question he put a great deal of what a day cannot carry alone.

"Because you were there," she said, and that was the core of it. "Because I could. Because I have spent too many evenings wanting to reach into a page and take a person by the collar and say, not this time. Because someone has to be very stubborn for you today and your men have other work. Because I like your face."

He breathed in, and the breath felt like a long road ending in a door. "Do not stop," he said.

"I will not," she said, and they both heard the vow for what it was.

Silence opened between them, not empty, more like a field waiting for morning. The wind came down off the hill and brought with it a smell that might have been wood smoke or the idea of it. He watched her. She watched the fine place at the corner of his eye where laugh lines had not yet had time to teach themselves. She smoothed the blanket with a motion that did not need doing because hands do that when they have learned the body they touch. Her thumb stroked the edge of his forearm where a vein ran. It was not strictly medical. It was an acknowledgement that their bodies had decided to be conspirators even if their heads had not signed the forms.

When he slept again, finally, deeply enough that his mouth softened and his breath forgot to be careful, she let herself lean against the wheel of the cart and close her eyes. She dreamed of a desert road that ran into a sea of grass, and of a kettle that never boiled because it kept choosing to sing instead, and of a horse that answered to two names and did not care which was used as long as the hand that offered the sugar was honest.

Dawn came with a pale stripe along the east and a single clear bird note that felt very bold after so much rain. The men moved like shadows that knew their work. The horses blew and shook out their manes. Jane woke with a stiffness that considered sending her a threatening letter. She stretched, rolled her shoulders, and went straight to check the wounds because that is who she was now in this place.

The bandage looked less ugly than it had the night before. The skin around it still burned with the beginning of fever, but the heat held instead of climbing. She told herself not to be greedy with hope. Then she failed at that because hope is greedy by nature.

He woke under her hands as if her hands had told him it was safe. "Morning," she said. "We are still in the not-dead club. Membership is free and comes with sarcasm."

"I knew," he said, and his voice had that morning roughness that should have been illegal. "You were here."

"I was," she said. "I am."

He looked at her mouth for a second that he did not apologize for. Then he looked at the hill. Duty entered his face, and with it a thousand other things that made a man taller and also a little lonelier. She wanted to put a hand between duty and his ribs and cushion the way it fit there. She settled for tightening the strap that kept the blanket tucked under his side.

"We go," Éothain said, appearing with all the subtlety of a man who had been specifically trained to appear this way. He looked at Jane with something like respect that had not been there the day before. "Lady... Jane." The pause was interesting. "Can you ride."

"She can," Theodred said, and the pride in his voice was a ridiculous thing to feel proud of when all she had done was lead a horse and build a very ugly sled. Yet she did feel it. It lit her like fire under the skin. She nodded, brisk so she did not embarrass herself.

"I can ride," she said, and the horse she had adopted for the night turned its head as if to ask whether she had remembered the apples she had promised. She rubbed the horse's forehead between the eyes until the eyelids drooped a little. "I can keep up."

"You will do more than keep up," Éothain said. "You have a hand. The horse knows it."

"It is mutual," she said. "We have an understanding. I provide better life choices, she stops me from dying of my own stupidity."

Theodred's mouth curved, slow and delicious. "A good bargain."

They loaded the cart. They set out. The road climbed until the wind had more room for its opinions. Jane rode beside the cart for a while, then ahead to scout the track as if she had been born into this patrol, then back again to check his face. She did not mean to look at his mouth as often as she did. The mouth in question made a case for the crime by existing. When their gazes met, the air stretched a little between them and hummed. She looked away to spare them both.

By midmorning the sun worked its way between clouds like a shy king returned from a long journey. The thatch of the outbuildings at the foot of the hill steamed. The path wound up in a ribbon. Edoras stood above them, wood and gold and age and pride. Jane's heart did something that made her want to sit down on the road and laugh and cry at the same time. She did neither. She pushed hair off her face with a wrist and lifted her chin as if she had planned this on a Tuesday between meetings.

"Home," Theodred said, the word so simple and so heavy that she felt its weight in her own chest.

"Let us get you to a bed," she said. "And to someone with real medicine. I am an enthusiastic amateur with a good bedside manner."

"You are more than that," he said. His hand moved an inch as if to reach for her and then settled because he was careful with the men watching and with the world and with her. She understood and did not mind. Anticipation is a language too.

They crossed under the wooden arch where carved horses ran forever. People turned. Men called to each other, quick and short. A boy ran and then stopped with his mouth open and his cap in his hands. A woman put her palm over her mouth and then lowered it to her chest like a blessing. The cart rattled. They made for the house that would be his because he was the son of the place, but his father was not himself these days if the map in her bones could be trusted. She wished maps could do more than warn.

Doors opened. Arms reached. Words piled on words. Jane let the swirl take the weight and then refused to let it take her presence. She stayed at his side until someone with the authority of years and a voice like lavender said she could keep the jacket and the scarf, that they would wash them and bring them back, that they would wash him and not wash away the parts of him she had decided to be fond of. She stepped back a pace when they lifted him, because there is a point beyond which a stranger's hand must let go for a moment, but she did not leave the room. She folded her hands behind her back like a soldier at ease and pretended to study the carvings on the bedposts. She watched everything.

When they had done the first round of old world medicine, the kind that involves boiled linen and crushed herb and clean water and a language for pain that does not require dramatics, someone turned to her with the polite severity of a house that knows its order. "You may rest," the woman said. "You have ridden far."

"I am fine," Jane said, and whatever her voice did made the woman's mouth relax by a fraction. "May I stay here."

"For a time," the woman said, which in any language is permission that earns itself by being useful. "If you sleep, you will not fall over on my floor like a felled oak."

"I never fall without flair," Jane said. "But I will sit. There. I will not be in the way."

She sat. She watched. Theodred slept with the heavy sleep of a body that has been paid a debt and intends to take the coins to its private room. When he woke, he looked for her before he looked for water. The small thing did the large thing to her insides again. She went to him, smiled without using all her teeth because she felt that anything broader would break something in the air.

"Hi," she said softly. "Still here."

"Good," he said, and under the weight of his father's hall and the eyes of his men and the knowledge of his duty, they managed to lay a private bridge between them with that single unadorned word.

There would be time later for everything else. There would be ropes to cut and knots to tie. There would be kings and counselors and the small tired ferocities of politics. There would be orcs and worse things. There would be humor that made the spine of a hard day less rigid, and there would be a slow burn that became a steady fire because two people had decided to cup their hands around it and keep out the wind.

For now, there was a man alive who should not have been, and a woman whose body knew horses and wounds and jokes, and the field outside where rain had washed the worst of yesterday away without erasing it. For now, the world tilted toward something like mercy.

Chapter Text

Edoras breathed like a living thing. Wood sighed in the wind, thatch lifted and settled, and somewhere a hammer counted time with a patient hand. The air smelled of wet straw and smoke and horses, the last of which lay under everything like a promise. Jane sat in a carved chair that had more history than her entire apartment, head tipped back against rough wood, hands empty for the first time since the ford. Tiredness crouched at the edges of her vision like a cat ready to pounce if she closed her eyes.

She did not close them. Theodred slept, chest rising steady now, as if breath had decided it would stay. Light moved along the wall in a slow drift. Someone had left a bowl of water on the low table beside the bed, and the rim held a reflection of the rafters like a small, inverted hall. She studied it the way children study aquariums. A world inside a world made out of something clear.

The door whispered. A woman entered with a basin and a folded length of linen over her arm. She was fair as the fields, long hair braided into a crown, and her eyes held the strength of mountain grass that grows where wind never stops. She stopped a breath too long when she saw Jane, which told Jane that strangers were not common in this room and that women strangers were even less so.

"You are the one who brought him from the river," the woman said. The voice was warm and steel together.

"I am," Jane answered. "I will not pretend I did it with grace. There was an ugly sled and a great deal of swearing."

The woman's mouth almost smiled and then decided to stay strictly useful. "I am Éowyn. You will sit." She set the basin down and unrolled the linen. "You were awake through the night."

"I have an irritating relationship with sleep," Jane said. "It holds a grudge."

"Then you will let it win for an hour," Éowyn said, which was not really a suggestion. "You have the look of one who refuses help until she falls on her face. I prefer to prevent the face-falling."

Jane looked at Theodred, then at Éowyn. Pride lived in the woman's bones, but so did the practice of care. No choreographed politeness here. A household run by necessity shapes people into tools and anchors. Jane stood, the chair creaking in relief, and came to the bedside as Éowyn lifted the bandage with a hand so precise it could have stitched fog.

"He is better," Jane said, watching the edge of the wound for that one wrong shine that would mean infection had claimed a room.

"He will be," Éowyn said. "There is fireweed in the balm. It draws fever out the way a sink draws water. Sit."

Jane sat on the edge of a bench. Éowyn wrung a cloth and set it on Jane's wrists. Heat climbed quick up the tendons into her forearms. The tremble that had waited all night was invited now, and took the seat, a small restless shiver that ran through her and back out again.

"You have hands like a healer," Éowyn said without looking up.

"I have hands like a woman who patched a lot of knees and taught nervous animals to stop inventing ghosts," Jane said. "In my world, the medicine belongs to white rooms and metal. Here it belongs to people who sing while they grind herbs."

Éowyn's glance was quick and measuring. "Your world."

"Yes." Jane watched her own reflection shiver in the basin. "It will sound impossible. It is impossible. But impossible things keep happening."

"You carry yourself as if you have already won your battle with impossibility," Éowyn said. "I like that."

The door eased open again. Éothain came with the kind of careful movement a man uses when he brings news into a room that already holds something fragile. He bowed his head to Éowyn, then to Jane, then to the bed.

"My lady. Lady Jane. He sleeps."

"Good," Éowyn said, and that single syllable contained more relief than a speech. "What is it."

"Scouts from the Westfold," Éothain said. "Smoke on the downs. Villages emptied. Some drove their herds into the hills. Some did not make it to the first hill."

Éowyn's jaw set. For a heartbeat the girl in her showed, a flash of grief and fury that any human knows. Then the lady returned with her chin a fraction higher. "Send food from the stores. All we can spare. Send horses with them that will carry far."

Éothain nodded. His gaze slid to Jane. Something gentled there, something like gratitude that had had sleep and decided to live a little longer. "There is also this. The men say that the orcs at the ford bragged of a prize for Saruman. They named the prince. They do not boast so loudly now."

Jane felt the smallest shake in her knees and did not let it travel. Lives were knotted all through this city to the life in the bed. Every breath Theodred took was pulling thread through a tapestry that had almost been left half woven.

After Éothain left, the room settled back into the rhythm of breath and fire and the small dripping noise a cloth makes when you wring it too thoroughly. Jane's phone sat in the pocket of her jacket on the chair, a modern stone inside a ring of ancient wood. She did not touch it. Tiny glass rectangle. No signal. It was not a thing in this world except as a talisman against forgetting.

Theodred stirred. Éowyn was beside him before the covers moved, quiet as a thought. "Cousin," she said softly.

His eyes opened, found hers, moved to Jane, and did the small softening that meant recognition had matured into trust. "You are still here."

"I threatened to glue myself to the floor," Jane said. "They decided not to test it."

Éowyn glanced from one to the other, took in a language that had barely been born and already had grammar. Approval did not show on her face because she was not the sort to give it cheaply. She dipped her cloth in the basin and passed it to Jane without comment. Jane took it and pressed it along the uninjured ribs where heat gathered like a stubborn guest.

"You found him," Éowyn said. "And you did not leave him for the river. You have bought a great many people a little time."

"Time is my favorite currency," Jane said. "I spend it like a miser."

Éowyn's mouth moved again around something like a smile. "You will eat," she said, and left before Jane could argue.

When she was gone, the room changed shape without seeming to. The grain of the wood felt more visible. The window admitted a bar of light that had learned patience. Jane wrung the cloth again and slid the cool along Theodred's collarbone. He closed his eyes, not in pain, but because closeness can be as heavy as any wound.

"You look like you lost a fight with a river and won a kingdom," Jane said.

He huffed what might have been a laugh. "You look like rain and sand both tried to claim you and failed."

"They can get in line," she said. "I am not taking new suitors. My schedule is full."

"With what," he asked, one eye opening in the manner of a man who plans to make an argument later with that one eye alone.

"With keeping you alive," she said. "And reminding people to drink water. And arguing about firewood with men who believe ash is a personality trait."

"I can assist with the last," he said. "I have opinions on wood that burns too fast."

"Perfect," she said lightly. "This relationship is built on shared values."

The word sat between them, bare and bright. Her own ears heard it and tried not to flinch. Relationship. Foolish to call a bridge a house on the first day you cross it. Still, the shape of the thing was honest. Two humans who had chosen to be particularly alive near each other.

Footsteps thickened outside. Voices straightened. The air took on that alertness of a city preparing for a visit it has been dreading. Jane recognized it from boardrooms, from hospitals, from stables before inspections. Someone important was moving through the hall.

The door opened without ceremony. A man entered in a furred mantle despite the soft day. His hair hung like uncombed straw. His face had the worn look of someone who had walked all night in his mind. Behind him drifted a figure narrow as a reed, draped in dark cloth that seemed to drink the light, with eyes that looked like they had learned every bad thought and kept the best ones.

Jane did not need a map to know names. Her stomach did that small unfriendly flip it did when she was late for a flight she had not missed. The king. And the whisperer who had turned a hall into a cave.

Theodred tried to rise. Jane pressed a hand to his shoulder and he stilled, though pride flared in his eyes as if she had denied him a spear. The king paused at the foot of the bed. His gaze moved over his son's face as if he were looking across a winter field and remembering where the summer gate used to be.

"My lord," Jane said quietly, expecting nothing and oddly unafraid of the weight of titles. "He lives."

The king's mouth trembled. His hands, when they reached for the bedpost, were not steady. "He lives," he repeated, as if he did not quite understand the taste of the words. The man in the shadow behind him tilted his head, eyes sliding toward Jane with the lazy interest of a cat considering whether a bird is worth the climb.

"So he does," the whisperer said. His voice was sueded and warm and made for rooms without windows. "Fortunate. And who are you, child of no one."

"Jane," she said, because a plain truth is a better blade than a long speech. "From far away. I found him in the reeds and refused to accept the obvious outcome."

"Obvious outcomes are the only kind worth trusting," the whisperer said, his gaze flicking to Theodred's bandage, to her empty hands, to the small bowl of water like an accusation that she had used such peasant tools. "The river is wise."

"The river is wet," Jane said, mild as milk. "And indifferent. I prefer my wisdom with a pulse."

Theodred's mouth curved at that. A spark lit under the old wood of the room. The king's eyes shifted, seeking the sound that had almost become laughter. For a moment the mantle on his shoulders looked too heavy to be only cloth.

Wormtongue, for that was who he must be, made a small shape with his lips that could have been a smile if someone had taught him the concept. "We will see what bargains the wet world and the dry world make with your insolence," he said gently. "There are debts here older than you."

"And yet here I am," Jane said, not raising her voice. "And here he is. Breathing. You are welcome."

Silence fell with the softness of felt. Éowyn stepped back into the room like a blade finding its sheath. Her eyes touched Jane's face and then rested on Wormtongue with a stillness that was not emptiness. It was preparation.

"The prince requires rest," Éowyn said. "Sire. Cousin." She inclined her head to both men and to the shadow behind them not at all.

The king looked at his son again, as if trying to locate the road that led to all the things he had not said. He touched Theodred's wrist and withdrew his hand quickly, like a man who had found heat and did not trust it. He turned and left with the slow tread of someone who measures each step in a currency no one else can see.

Wormtongue lingered a fraction. His gaze drifted over Jane as if choosing where to lay a stain. It slid off her like oil off well-polished leather. His mouth did that small shape again and then he followed his lord.

The room breathed out.

"I prefer my wisdom with a pulse," Theodred said, voice low with amusement and something else.

"Add it to my tombstone," Jane said. "May it be very far in the future."

Éowyn's laugh was a quick bright thing that lived just under her ribs. "He will not like you," she said. "Which is as it should be."

"I have rarely been liked by men who varnish fear," Jane said. "They find me annoying. I do not apologize."

"You never should," Theodred said.

The day lengthened. Jane dozed in a chair for what might have been an hour and woke to the particular stiffness of a nap taken sitting up, which is always proof that humanity is not designed for chairs. She rinsed her mouth with mint water that tasted like discipline. She walked out onto the covered gallery that ran along the hall and looked over the city.

Roofs made patterns like woven straw baskets. Lanes curved around huts as if respecting old footpaths. Children ran, chasing a dog with a tail that could have swept a hearth. Women scrubbed a saddle with the tenderness you give to useful things. Men carried sacks with their backs grudging and their arms willing. It was a city doing what cities do while war circles like a hawk too high for the chickens to notice.

Éothain found her there, leaning on a post. "They are speaking of you in the stables," he said.

"Please tell me it is complimentary," Jane said. "I am fragile."

"It is," he said. "They say you fixed a girth with three knots none of them had seen and that you mocked a stallion into being sensible."

"I bribed him with honesty," Jane said. "It works on horses. It fails on men who braid their hair with malice."

"You speak of Wormtongue," Éothain said flatly.

"I speak of a habit," Jane said, then pointed with her chin at the paddock below. "That mare is sore in the right hind. Watch how she shortens when she turns to the inside."

Éothain watched. He saw it once she had laid the word on his eye. He grunted approval the way a man approves a clean cut across a log. "You ride well."

"Do not tempt the universe into humbling me," she said, then smiled. "But yes. I ride."

"Come," Éothain said. "He sleeps. I can steal you for a quarter hour. There is a gelding that needs a better hand than the boy has."

She hesitated, looked back toward the bedchamber. Éowyn stood in the doorway with a look that said she knew this conflict and had lived with it for years. "I will sit with him," she said. "Go. Your hands need a horse like lungs need air."

Jane went. The world outside the hall met her with light scattering off brass buckles and hay dust floating like small planets. The stables were warm and honest. The gelding in question showed the white of his eye at her approach. She did not look at him. She set a hand to his shoulder and talked to the boy instead.

"What is his worst habit," she asked.

"He thinks flags are evil spirits," the boy said with the seriousness of an academic. "And he thinks puddles are portals to death."

"Excellent," she said. "We are in agreement on puddles."

They worked the horse back and forth past a hanging banner. She kept her body turned a little away as if she did not care, breath loose, attention elsewhere. Each pass she asked for a single step closer, then three steps forward, then a step away before he could stiffen enough to exile himself from his own spine. She rewarded the smallest softness with a scratch where neck meets withers and a yes under her breath. When he took three steps without flinching, she praised him with a fluency that comes only from years of loving a species that does not care about your human plans.

By the time the boy led him back to his stall, the horse's eye had gone quiet. The boy looked at Jane as if she had pulled a fish from his pocket.

"You did that," he said.

"He did that," Jane said. "I only chose when to get out of the way."

Éothain watched with the pleased suspicion of a man who wants to be sure this is a repeatable miracle. "You speak our language," he said.

"I speak theirs," she answered, and turned back toward the hall because her body had already begun to lean in that direction the way sunflowers lean.

She found Theodred awake and alone except for the low fire. He had color, the faintest pink at the mouth. The line of his jaw had forgotten to be clenched. He looked at her like people look at water after a day's march.

"You rode," he said.

"I seduced a gelding," she said. "Purely professionally."

"I am in awe," he said, which made something ridiculous happen in her chest.

She came to the bed and sat where she had sat before, feet tucked under, hands light on the blanket. The nearness did that dangerous thing again, widened and then narrowed the world until it contained only a pulse and the smell of smoke in hair. She lifted the damp curls off his forehead and smoothed them back. Her fingers rested along his temple without meaning to.

"Tell me," he said.

"What," she asked, forgetting for a second that she had wanted to play it cool.

"Something from your world," he said. "The smallest thing that you miss that you did not expect to miss."

She laughed softly. "Plastic clips," she said. "The cheap ones that hold bags shut. They break if you breathe on them. I loved mocking them. I miss how petty that love was."

He considered this as if it needed a council. "We have leather ties," he said. "They do not break when you breathe on them."

"No," she said. "They break when you pull too hard while thinking about a man who annoys you."

"Which man," he said, and his eyes did that glint one sees just before someone says something indecent. "Name him and I will be jealous for an hour."

"Gríma," she said, sweet as a knife. "Jealousy is wasted on that spine."

"Then I will not waste it," he said. His hand moved a fractional inch toward hers on the blanket. "I will be practical."

"How practical," she asked. The room heard the question and held its breath.

"Practical as a man who knows he is alive because a stranger decided he should be," he said. "Practical as a man who intends to make that stranger not a stranger."

The heat that rose under her skin now was honest. It asked for nothing. It answered the question the air had asked all day. She turned her hand and laced their fingers together where the blanket hid them from the door. His palm was a map and she read it greedily. The silence between them was not empty at all. It was full of the first notes of a song that would take its time.

They sat like that while afternoon slid across the floorboards and the small fire made the sort of noises fires make when they are awake but not hungry. Somewhere in the city a woman called to a child. Somewhere past the walls, riders counted miles.

Éowyn returned as the light cooled. She took in their joined hands with no change in her face. Her eyes warmed by a degree you could measure with a carpenter's tool. "He will sleep again," she said. "You should too."

"I will," Jane said, not moving. "After."

"After what," Éowyn asked, though she already knew.

"After the moment acknowledges itself," Jane said, smiling a little because she heard the drama in the line and liked it anyway.

Theodred squeezed her hand. It was not a question and not a command. It was an agreement signed without ink.

"Very well," Éowyn said, and lit a lamp with that measured economy that wastes nothing, not even grace.

Later, when night wrote its name on the windows and the sounds of the hall thinned to the cough of an old man in another room and a horse shifting in the yard, Jane stood and tucked the blanket higher under Theodred's arms. She leaned down without planning to and pressed her mouth to his brow. Not a lover's kiss. Not yet. The first line in a language both of them wanted to be fluent in.

His eyes closed. His body let go of vigilance. She turned away with the steady calm of someone who had chosen her cliff and stepped from it, knowing the water would be there.

In the small room Éowyn had set aside for her, she lay on a bed stuffed with straw that smelled of open fields. She thought of Dubai lights caught on glass, of karak steam fogging a windshield, of Luna's ridiculous sideways canter. She thought of a man whose hand had learned her hand in one hour and decided to keep learning. She breathed once. Twice. Tiredness finally won the long argument.

Outside, Edoras slept with one eye open. On the downs, fires moved like insects under a black glass. In the morning the wind would change. Riders would gather. A wizard would come. The world would tilt again.

For now, wood and gold and breath and the quiet, stubborn heat of a slow fire. For now, a woman from another place and a prince who should have died and did not. For now, the beginning of a longing that did not hide or shout. It lived like a candle cupped between two hands, and it refused to go out.

Chapter Text

Morning found Edoras rubbing sleep from its eyes. Roofs steamed where last night's rain had sunk into thatch. The wind played over the hill, picking up smells of straw, woodsmoke, and horse. Jane stood on the gallery outside the guest chamber, fingers around the rail that had been polished by generations of hands. Somewhere in the lower lanes a woman laughed, quick and bright, and a dog answered as if enlisted.

Behind her, linen rustled. She turned and found Theodred braced in the doorway. The fresh tunic fit him like a promise he intended to keep. Color had climbed back into his mouth and the high cut of his cheek, but there was a carefulness in the way he stood that told the truth. Pride wanted the floor. Pain still charged rent.

"You are supposed to be horizontal," Jane said, moving before he could pretend he was fine. "Doctors orders. By which I mean mine."

"I will not be remembered as the prince who slept while his people counted smoke on the horizon," he said. The voice had its strength again, though it carried the hoarseness of a man who had negotiated with fever and won on a technicality.

She took his arm. "Walk with me then, stubborn creature, and at least have the decency to lean when you need to."

He did not lean much, which irritated her and filled her with unreasonable pride. Together they crossed the chamber to the bed. The whole journey took the time of five measured breaths. At the last step his body miscalculated and she caught him, hands firm at his ribs. He drew in sharply. The sound ran through her hands and into her arms before it found her chest. Heat ghosted her face.

"Breathe," she said, with the crispness she used on horses that had learned to hold their breath during girthing. "In. Out. Good."

He obeyed because he was sensible, and because obeying her in this single thing did not injure his pride. When he sat, he masked the tremor in his thigh by reaching for the cup at his side. Jane peeled the blanket back a finger's width and checked the bandage where it crossed his ribs. The clean linen held. The angry shine at the edge had lessened. Under her palm, his breathing settled to a steady tide.

"You have a talent for command," he said. "Without raising your voice."

"I had a lot of practice with creatures larger than me," she answered. "Some of them were horses."

His smile started small and grew until it showed in his eyes. "I am grateful to be classed among the teachable."

"You would be a terrible patient if you were not so charming," she said, and then decided that had been too much honesty for a room with open doors. She tucked the blanket and turned toward the basin.

Éowyn slipped in with the ease of a blade finding a seam in mail. She carried a covered bowl that breathed rosemary and something bitter, and she had that look she wore when she understood a room on sight and chose not to say everything she could say. "He should not be standing," she said to no one in particular, then set the bowl down and lifted the cover. "But if he has stood, he will eat."

"What is it today," Jane asked, welcoming the smell.

"Barley with broth from the shank," Éowyn said. "And root from the high pastures. It drives out chill." Her gaze flicked to Theodred's face and softened by a measure most people would have missed. "Cousin, if you faint in front of Éothain I will never hear the end of it."

"I am standing," he said, attempting dignity from a seated position. "That is surely the opposite of fainting."

Éowyn ignored him, handed Jane a spoon, and nodded toward the bed. Jane took the hint. Theodred suffered to be fed, which was an intimacy most men would have rejected with a joke. He did not joke. He watched her mouth as if learning a language.

"You may stop staring," she said at last, combing broth from the spoon's edge with her thumb.

"I am memorizing the face of the woman who refused the river," he said, unashamed. "It would be stupid to forget."

Éowyn did not smile, but a corner of her mouth relaxed. "I will send a message to the stables. They will bring a quiet mare for Jane to ride after noon. The air will do her good."

"I can walk," Jane said out of habit.

"You can ride more," Éowyn answered. "And you will, for all our sakes."

Theodred made a pleased noise that could have been a prince agreeing with policy or a man grateful for something beautiful returning to a room. Jane kept her face as unaffected as she could manage and nodded. "As you command, Lady Éowyn."

"I have learned that if I do not, men end up bleeding and women end up cleaning it," Éowyn said, and left them with the bowl, the breeze, and the knowledge that somewhere in the hall a snake listened.

He came sooner than Jane would have liked. She heard him before she saw him, the soft slide of foot leather that made no claim on the floorboards, and felt the room grow a degree colder as if the light had blinked. Wormtongue did not enter, he inserted himself. He bowed to Theodred as if the gesture bored him and let his eyes touch Jane the way cold water touches skin.

"Your recovery is a tale upon every tongue," he murmured. "We are all so relieved to discover that the river failed to carry out its work."

"The river's work is to run," Jane said, pleasantly. "If you trust it with your errands you will be perpetually disappointed."

He regarded her. "You are very sure of yourself."

"Only of some things," she said. "That fresh air is preferable to stale. That honest work solves more problems than whispers. That men who prefer dim rooms rarely breed good harvests."

For a breath his eyes glittered with something that looked like hunger and felt like a draft. Then he lowered his lashes and smiled incorrectly. "How fortunate the prince has found a nurse who brings aphorisms with her bandages." He turned to Theodred. "The king asks for you when you are fit to stand."

"I will come when my steps are steady," Theodred said. "Not before."

"As you wish." Wormtongue's bow was shallow. He gave Jane one more unreadable look, then drew himself out of the room like smoke under a door.

Jane exhaled. Theodred reached for the cup again. His hand shook. She steadied it and did not name the act. "Promise me you will not humor him," she said.

"I have never humored him," he said. "I have endured."

"Enduring encourages men like that," she said. "Starve him."

Theodred glanced at her, considering. "Your counsel makes war sound like a kitchen."

"It often is," she said. "Same knives. Same fires. Same need to keep the rats out."

He laughed, and the line of his throat moved in a way that made her hands lose their train of thought for one unprofessional second. She busied herself with the bowl and the cloth until ethics found their feet again.

By noon the mare arrived, a flaxen chestnut with a wise eye and the opinionated switch of a tail that said she had educated many riders and would educate more. Jane walked her in a small circle in the yard to feel how the shoulder freed and how the foot placed. The mare stretched into the bit and breathed on Jane's sleeve with that sweet hay smell that always, no matter the world, made everything simpler.

Éothain hovered with the rigid casualness of a man who did not hover. "She is gentle," he said. "Even so, do not gallop. If you fall, Éowyn will claim my ears."

"I am not in the habit of falling without intention," Jane answered, swung up, and settled her weight in a way that made the mare's ear tip back to listen. The yard dropped away. The world arranged itself into the right proportions. The ache that had set up house between her shoulder blades since the ford loosened.

She rode along the inner path that circled the hill, keeping the mare in a working walk and then a jog just long enough to remind the muscles what they were for. She spoke to her under her breath, praise when it counted and nothing at all when quiet would do more. The view opened and closed between houses. Children ran parallel for ten steps, shrieked, and returned to their games. Women paused with baskets on hips and nodded. Men looked up from mending a wheel and let the horse pass without fuss.

She did not let herself fly, not yet. She kept to the edges where the wind lifted and where the hall's tall front threw shade. On the third circuit she looked up at the gallery. Theodred stood there with Éowyn, shoulder braced to the post, eyes on her as if sight alone could keep her in the saddle. She sat deeper for him, put the mare into a collected trot along the fence line and let the rhythm show. When she brought the horse to a halt directly beneath him and looked up, the pleasure on his face was not princely at all. It was very human and very plain.

Later, when she returned the mare to the stable, a boy stood waiting, the same one who had watched her work a skittish gelding the day before. He held a currycomb that had seen better decades and a determination that could have cut wood. "He is the worst at puddles," he told her solemnly, pointing at a shaggy roan whose expression suggested conspiracies.

"Excellent," Jane said. "We begin with puddles then, and end by conquering the moon." She took the lead rope, led the roan to the tiniest slick of water outside the door, and asked him to look, then to breathe, then to step. The first time he declined with offended dignity. The second time he put one foot on the edge and froze in the exact manner of a human about to make an unwise purchase. Jane praised him as if he had leaped a river. By the fourth try, he sloshed through and discovered that life continued.

The boy grinned, gap-toothed. "You do it different."

"I do it until the horse thinks it was his idea," Jane said. "It is how you make good husbands as well."

The boy looked scandalized. Éothain laughed under his breath where he leaned against a post. "You are going to be very popular and very dangerous here."

"Only to men who insist puddles are portals," she said, and returned the roan's head to his chest with a rub in the place that makes a horse remember your hand.

In the afternoon a string of folk came up from the west, weary and mud-veined, with carts that had been loaded in a hurry and faces flattened by smoke. Jane did not think. She moved toward them as if pulled by a rope, folded herself into the tide of problems, and began triage with the quiet authority of someone who has done this before in other places with other words.

A man with a cut forearm answered questions bravely until he saw his daughter stop pretending. Jane sat on the step with the girl and showed her how to breathe through the pinch while the needle made a path and the thread closed a door. An old woman would not put down her pot until Jane promised to keep it beside the bed and proved she remembered where each dent had come from. A boy refused food until she took the first bite, made a face at the blandness, and bribed him with a story about a horse that had refused to step on a shadow one full afternoon because he thought it was a snake.

By the time the light went soft, the worst of the panic had been spent. There would be more nights like this. Jane knew a pattern when it showed itself twice. She washed her hands at the pump until the cold bit and then rubbed balm into the cracked skin, the Rohirrim paste that smelled of pine and a small sweet wildflower she could not name. As she turned toward the hall, Theodred stood in the doorway. No mantle. No crown. Only a man with his weight on the frame and gratitude in his face that made her throat go tight.

"You did not sit still," he said.

"I never sit still when there is a list," she said. "There was a list."

He came a step closer and another, until the distance between them was something only they could see. She reached for his wrist to check the pulse out of habit and found his hand turning to meet hers, fingers threading through with the ease of someone who has known the shape for years. It should have felt strange. It did not. It felt like two facts finding each other.

"Walk," he said. "Slowly."

They walked the inner gallery where the shadows forgot to be cold. Below, the city made evening sounds. Above, the sky kept its last blue for those who bothered to look. He told her one small story about a spring at the foot of a beech where he had hidden when he was ten and how his father had found him by following the muddy fingerprints he had left on the fence. She told him nothing large, only that cardamom should always be crushed by hand and that shortbread is a test of character. He laughed softly and made her promise to prove this later.

When they paused, the air became very attentive. A strand of her hair had dried into a curl that insisted on escaping. He reached and smoothed it back behind her ear with a touch more reverent than it had any right to be. His fingers lingered on the hinge of her jaw. Warmth slid through her in a clean line. Her breath remembered to return.

"You will be called lady by men who do not know what else to call you," he said. "What should I call you when there is no one listening."

"Jane," she said, because that was the simplest truth of all. "Always Jane."

"Jane," he repeated, and made it sound like a word that could carry a house.

She would have kissed him then if not for the scrape of a boot and the sudden awareness of a world that could not be made to wait forever. A scout took the steps two at a time and bowed with his breath still racing. "Riders on the plain. A white figure at their head. Far, but coming."

Éowyn arrived as if summoned by the same wind that had pushed the scout uphill. She did not ask what color the horse was. She did not need to. "Inside. Now."

Theodred's hand tightened around Jane's for a heartbeat, the squeeze a promise made without words to both her and the city. Then he let go. Duty sat back down beside him, not unwelcome, simply heavy. They followed Éowyn into the hall where the tapestries held the old stories that had not yet finished with the living.

There were councils then, swift and tense. Voices rose and were wrestled down. Wormtongue poured honey over nettles and called it balm. Jane watched men who loved their homes navigate pride, fear, and history. She said nothing. She had learned in boardrooms that the first thing to do with certain kinds of men was let them empty themselves of their own sound.

When the talking ended and the hall exhaled, Theodred found her again in the space between a pillar and a carved chest. The moment was brief and fully theirs. "Do not leave this hall without telling me," he said. "If the wind changes, I want to know where you are."

"I am not easy to misplace," she said, trying for light. It came out as something truer. "I will be here."

He nodded once, the smallest bow a prince can make to something that is not a throne. He would go to his father soon. He would stand where he should stand. He would not stand alone. She had promised that without saying it.

Night closed around the hill. Torches took on the labor of the sun. Somewhere down in the lanes a child cried and was gathered up. Somewhere beyond the downs a white horse came, and with it a man who could speak to kings.

Jane sat at the foot of the bed that had almost gone empty and warmed her hands on a cup she did not drink. The city breathed around her. She listened to it and, for the first time in a very long life, felt a boundary inside her move. Not a crack. A door opening inward.

She looked at Theodred where he rested, eyes shut, the lines of his mouth soft in unguarded sleep. She marvelled at the simple fact of him. Not the prince at this hour. Only a person, breathing. She reached, careful as prayer, and touched two fingers to his wrist. The beat answered. Steady. Mortal. Absolutely alive.

She smiled to herself, small and unshowy, and settled to keep watch. Outside, hooves struck the earth with purpose. Inside, the slow fire held. The thread she had taken at the river stayed tight between them. Tomorrow would pull hard. She did not fear the pull. She had hands for that.

Chapter Text

The wind was sharp that day, tugging at cloaks, teasing banners, and sliding through the cracks in the hall doors as if even the air wished to glimpse what lay within. Jane stood in the upper gallery with Éowyn, watching the plains stretch pale and endless toward the horizon. Riders had gone out at dawn; now they returned with whispers of a company approaching. Three men. A white figure. A horse like moonlight.

Her chest tightened. She knew what this meant. She had read it first at fourteen, again at nineteen, and a dozen times since, curled up with paperbacks or the glow of a screen under her duvet. She had seen it on film, the slow reveal of Gandalf the White, but knowing and witnessing were not the same when you stood inside the tale itself.

"They will be here before the sun crosses the ridge," Éowyn murmured. Her eyes were restless as hawks. "If it is who we think, the hall will not stay quiet tonight."

Jane nodded. A knot of events pulled taut in her stomach. She held dangerous knowledge, exact and undeniable, and her choices would decide whether it became shield or blade.

⸻

Meduseld waited like an old warrior holding its breath. Fires burned low, smoke curling through the smoke-holes and staining the beams. Théoden sat hunched, mantle heavy, eyes dulled to amber glass. Gríma crouched at his side, whispering as though words alone could weave invisible nets. Jane sat near Theodred's bed, her body leaning forward, as if drawn toward the door.

When the company entered, sunlight spilled in dazzling waves around their silhouettes. Aragorn came first, broad-shouldered, road-worn, bearing both grief and hope in his step. Then Legolas, all grace and keen edges, his gaze sweeping the hall like a blade. Gimli followed, beard bristling, axe heavy with expectation. And last came the figure in white, staff in hand, robes too bright for mortal cloth, hair like starlight fallen.

Gandalf.

The hall erupted — suspicion, warning, challenge. Wormtongue's cry was sharp, a hiss turned human. "You bring armed men before the king! You mean violence in his own hall!"

Jane's pulse hammered. She longed to shout, Do not take his staff, before the guards could be deceived into disarming him. But careless knowledge could shatter everything. Instead she rose and edged closer, ready if her voice was needed.

Theodred stirred, pushing himself half upright despite his wounds. His voice cut through the clamor, hoarse but strong. "Let them be. If harm was their purpose, the blood of guards would already stain the floor."

Gasps rippled through the chamber. The heir lived. Rumor was flesh. Gríma faltered, his tongue caught. Jane felt triumph surge so strongly she had to hide it behind stillness.

Aragorn bowed. "We come in need, not in enmity. Our road was long, and darkness presses on all lands. Will you not hear us?"

Théoden barely stirred. His fingers clutched the throne's arms like roots unwilling to release stone. Wormtongue bent low, but Gandalf's voice carried over all, clear as bells in frost.

"I will."

It was not a request but command. His staff struck the floor once, and the echo stilled even the restless guards.

"Théoden, son of Thengel," Gandalf said, voice deep and steady. "Too long have you sat in shadows while poison dripped in your ear. Rise, and walk free of the chains upon you."

Wormtongue shrieked. "Do not listen! He brings sorcery, lies wrapped in white!"

Jane felt the choice press against her. She thought of Dubai boardrooms, of tilting her chin just so until men twice her age second-guessed themselves. Influence was always a game.

She stepped forward, voice calm and clear. "What harm is there in hearing him, lord? Words weigh little, but silence weighs heavier."

Théoden's clouded eyes lifted toward her, a crack in the stone. Gandalf seized it, stepping swift as storm, staff raised. Light poured down as if the roof had split. The hall cried out, awe and terror entwined.

Jane shut her eyes but stood firm, every muscle taut. She felt the shadow tear loose. When she opened them, Théoden sat taller, the years burned away, his gaze sharp once more.

The hall roared with astonishment. Guards dropped to their knees. Éowyn's hand covered her mouth, tears sudden and fierce.

Théoden's eyes fixed on Gríma. "Too long have you fed me rot. No more."

He struck the floor with his sword. Guards seized the pale wretch, who shrank like a worm under the sun. Jane almost pitied him. Almost.

Theodred stood then, pale but proud, leaning on Éothain's arm. "Father," his voice broke, "you are yourself again."

Théoden reached for his son, pulling him close. The hall fell hushed, the moment too private to bear witness. Jane turned away, throat tight.

Gandalf lowered his staff. "The world moves swiftly, Théoden King. Fire is already at your gates."

And so the council began: war, Isengard, Helm's Deep. Names Jane both cherished and dreaded. She listened, knowing this was the moment the story could split. She knew too much to stand idle, yet she also knew the peril of pressing too hard on the scales.

⸻

That night Edoras was alive. Torches blazed, the people sang, and the king's hall breathed with new lungs. Jane stood apart for a while, watching. She had danced in marble halls and rooftop bars, champagne bubbles rising under city lights. She had worn silk gowns, diamond cuffs, shoes worth rent. She had belonged in those places by will alone, climbing every rung herself.

But here, with rough benches, horses shifting in the dark, a king reborn and a people daring to hope, she felt something she had never found in those high rooms. Belonging, without performance.

Theodred found her at the courtyard's edge. His steps were careful, but his smile carried light.

"You spoke at the right time," he said. "When fear had their ears, you bent them toward chance."

"Words are cheap," she said, brushing her skirt. "But sometimes they buy doors."

"You saved more than me at the ford," he said, coming closer. "You saved him. You saved us all."

Her throat tightened. "I did not plan it like that."

He caught her hand, openly, unashamed. "You may not have planned it. But you did it. And I will not forget."

The torches crackled, the stars were cruelly bright. Jane looked at him, at the cut of his jaw, the softness under his pride. She felt the slow burn of something inevitable, something she had promised not to fall into blindly again. And yet here it was, stealing through her like fire in dry grass.

She tilted her chin. "Good. Because I intend to collect the debt."

"And how will you collect?" His voice was low, dangerous with honesty.

"You will see," she murmured.

For a moment the world was only them. Then a horn blew from the watchtower, sharp and urgent. The night stilled. Riders gathered. Darkness pressed close again.

Jane let go of his hand, stepping back into the tide of the story. She knew the road ahead: Helm's Deep, shadow, loss. She knew she would have to choose again and again when to use the knowledge that was both gift and burden.

But for one heartbeat, standing in the firelit yard with Theodred's warmth still in her palm, she allowed herself the thought: maybe she was here not just to witness, but to change.

⸻

The hall smelled of resin and smoke, of unwashed men and fear burned into wood. Jane sat near the back with Éowyn, eyes on Théoden where he stood upright, golden hair gleaming in torchlight, hand on Herugrim.

How strange, she thought, to see the king reborn in real time. In the films it had been a cut, a trick — before and after. But here the change unfolded like a man shedding years of grief in an hour. His eyes were sharp but weary, catching up to the life stolen from him.

Aragorn spoke first. "Saruman's hand is on your people. He burns villages, drives herds, slaughters men. Every hour you delay strengthens him."

Théoden's jaw tightened. "Shall we empty our homes, then? Flee like cattle before the wolf?"

"No," Aragorn said. "But you must gather your strength. Helm's Deep is your refuge. The Hornburg has never fallen."

Gríma, still pinned by guards, hissed laughter. "And you would drag women and children into a hole in the mountain? Saruman's army is countless. You will only delay slaughter."

Murmurs spread. Doubt seeded quickly. Jane leaned toward Éowyn. "They will listen if someone speaks of the caves as shelter, not trap. Right now it sounds like fear."

Éowyn's lips curved. "Then speak it."

Jane rose. Firelight caught her hair. Dozens of eyes turned. She felt the tremor she had known in Dubai boardrooms, stepping into rooms where no one expected her to own the table. She steadied her breath.

"My lord," she said, voice steady. "I have seen mountain strongholds. They are not burrows for beasts but shields carved by stone. To gather your people there is not retreat. It is strategy. You guard the heart of Rohan so its sword-arm may strike back."

Some nodded. Others frowned. Théoden studied her.

"She speaks truth," Theodred said, leaning on Éothain. His voice was weak but firm. "At the ford we saw how vast the enemy is. To meet it scattered is to bleed out before the blade. At Helm's Deep the people may stand while riders strike together. Father, you know this."

Silence thickened. Then Théoden's hand closed on Herugrim. "So be it. We ride to Helm's Deep."

The hall exhaled, half relief, half dread. Wormtongue cursed as guards dragged him away.

Jane sat again, pulse hot. Éowyn leaned close. "Well placed. You split the seam."

Jane smiled crookedly. "Sometimes one thread is enough to unravel fear."

⸻

The night blurred with orders and movement. Scouts dispatched, carts packed, horses readied. Jane walked the yard where torches fought the dark. Women bundled grain, children clung to skirts, horses fretted. She lent her hands where she could — calming a stubborn mare, lifting baskets, telling a boy a silly tale until his tears dried.

At the edge she saw Theodred speaking with Éomer, mud-stained but alive. Theodred leaned on a staff, body frail but presence unbroken. Jane watched them a moment, struck by their shared pride.

Theodred's gaze found hers. His lips softened, eyes warmed. He excused himself and crossed to her, slow but steady.

"You were bold in the hall," he said.

"Would you rather I kept quiet?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I would rather you keep speaking. Your tongue is sharper than most swords here."

Jane laughed softly. "Careful. Too much flattery and I will start charging."

"Then charge me," he said, nearer now. "I owe you more than coin could pay."

Her throat tightened. She looked away. "Do not waste what I gave you. Stay alive. That is payment enough."

When she looked back, his eyes held hers, steady and burning. For a moment the noise around them blurred, his nearness like a hand against her cheek.

Then Éothain called his name, and the moment broke.

⸻

Jane did not sleep. She worked beside Éowyn, checking skins, gathering herbs, tying packs. Her body ached, but the rhythm steadied her, like grooming a horse steadies trembling hands. Once she caught herself humming, an old tune from New Zealand, and the memory struck so hard she pressed her palms to the cart until it passed.

At dawn, pale and thin, the people of Edoras filed out. Hooves drummed, wheels creaked, babies wailed, and a man's steadying verse carried through the line. Jane rode beside Éowyn on a flaxen chestnut, legs aching with the rhythm, heart caught between two worlds.

From the ridge, the city looked smaller than it had within its walls. The golden roof glowed in the new light. Jane thought of Dubai towers, glass catching sun and turning to flame, and knew this was no less magnificent — only older, heavier with story.

Theodred rode near the front, upright despite his wounds, face pale but fierce. He turned once, his eyes finding hers across the crowd. He nodded, not only in greeting but in promise.

Jane lifted her chin. She would not let him fall. Not again.

The line pressed onward, toward Helm's Deep, toward the pages she remembered and feared. Toward the place where her knowledge could change everything, or nothing.

She pressed her knees to the mare's sides and whispered, "Let's see if I can rewrite history without breaking it."

The horse flicked her ear back, as if to say: hold on.

And Jane did.

Chapter Text

Morning broke with a flat grey light that made the thatch on Edoras steam and the hills look carved from dull metal. The line of people moved out along the road like a long thread pulled from a heavy cloth. Hooves chewed the track into clay, wheels complained, children asked questions until they ran out of breath, and mothers answered with the patience of people who have packed their lives into sacks and still found space for hope.

Jane rode near the middle at first, her mare taking short clever steps between carts. The air was full of leather, wet wool, and the honest smell of horses. She had moved through a thousand mornings in other worlds, but this one settled into her bones as if it had always been waiting there. She checked girths with her knee as she passed, retied a sloppy knot for a boy whose hands were cold, and traded two dry jokes for one wobbly smile from a girl who clutched a wooden doll with flaking paint.

Up the column, the king rode with his guard. Gandalf's white horse shone even under a leaden sky. Aragorn and Legolas kept the kind of watch that never tires. Gimli's helm bobbed like a stubborn island in a river of bodies. Jane watched them for a while, then nudged her mare forward when the track widened. It took longer than she liked to reach the front. People made way once they saw who she was, and that kindness burned a little, a brand tied to the ford and a choice she would carry for the rest of her days.

Aragorn noticed her first. He had the look of a man whose mind could hold many roads at once and still find space for curiosity. He gave her the small, precise nod of one commander to another person who had earned a place near the decision makers.

"You ride well," he said. "Your hands are quiet."

"Horses like quiet," Jane answered. "It gives them space to make good choices."

Legolas turned his head, the light catching along the fine braids at his temple. "You speak horse as if it were your first language."

"It was the first language I loved," she said, and felt her mouth shape a smile that belonged to an arena on a different continent. "The second was coffee. The third, sarcasm."

Gimli barked a laugh. "A useful tongue. The last one especially. If you can wield it without cutting yourself, you may keep company with dwarves."

"That sounds like both a warning and an invitation," Jane said.

"It is," Gimli said cheerfully. "Tell me your name again, lass, and give it to me loud enough that these hills will remember it."

"Jane."

Gandalf had been silent until then. At the sound of her name he turned, and his eyes were like winter sky behind sunlit cloud. They held more light than his face should have allowed.

"Jane," he repeated, tasting the word. "You have managed to be where you were most needed twice in as many days. That is a trick I admire."

"It was stubbornness," she said. "And a dislike for obvious outcomes."

"Many miracles wear those clothes," he said, and the small smile that followed felt like a test passed and a test assigned.

She kept pace with them, close enough to hear what needed hearing but far enough not to be rude. For a time they rode without speech. The land opened and folded, the grass lay in long wind-brushed waves, and the sky stayed heavy. Theodred came up from behind with Éothain beside him, upright and pale. Pride carried him where strength could not yet serve. Jane moved her mare by a half-step, enough that if he faltered a hand could find a shoulder. He did not falter. He kept his eyes forward and his jaw set, and when a child waved at him he raised two fingers in answer like any ordinary rider and not a prince who had climbed out of a river's mouth.

By noon the column had loosened into natural groups. Gandalf and the king kept council with low voices. Aragorn drifted to the carts when something needed lifting and returned without fanfare. Legolas made a game of walking his horse up a slope where the footing was tricky and coming down again to set a fallen bundle back in place with the ease of a dancer. Gimli never stopped talking, which turned out to be a gift. He traded jokes for fear and won more often than he lost.

He fell in beside Jane with the air of a man who had chosen a companion for the next stretch of road and would not be argued with. "Tell me true," he said, lighting his pipe with a coal he had stolen from a cook fire at the last stop. "How does a woman who rides like a Rohirrim and swears like a miner come to us with no clan and no crest."

"I have a clan," Jane said. "It is spread across oceans and group chats and the aisle of the feed store."

"That sounds like a sad song with a lively chorus," Gimli said. "A dwarf would fix the sadness with ale and the chorus with a hammer on the table."

"I have tried both," Jane said. "The ale helped. The hammer frightened the waiter."

Gimli laughed until he wheezed. "There is steel in you. That is good. The world takes soft things and makes them into stories for other people."

"Sometimes it takes the hard things and makes them into stories too," she said. "Sometimes the story is all that lives."

The dwarf gave her a look of quick respect. "Aye."

They rode together until the road bent into a dip where the wind held its breath. Jane's scalp prickled with the feeling of being watched. She had known that feeling on city streets and in showgrounds and once in an airport when a stranger's smile had gone on a little too long. She stood in her stirrups and scanned the ridge. A line of dark shapes against grey, too still for rock, too clumsy for deer.

"Ridge," she said to Gimli, voice low and unexcited. "Left. Five. No, six."

He was out of the saddle before the second number left her mouth. Legolas had already turned his head and reached back for an arrow, cool as a cat on a garden wall. Aragorn's hand lifted without looking. The nearest riders tightened the line. Gandalf did not move. He watched the ridge like a man who had negotiated with hills before.

The first arrow from the ridge fell short, a tester shot thrown to taste distance and courage. The second whined through a space where a child had been a moment ago. Jane had already leaned, caught the child's cloak, and pulled him into a gap between two carts. The mother swore in a language that did not require translation and kissed Jane's sleeve.

Legolas loosed and then loosed again, the second shaft so quick the first had not finished singing. Something on the ridge made a soft, unpleasant sound. Gimli rolled his shoulders. "Come down and fight fair, you sacks of bad meat," he muttered, then grinned at Jane. "Pardon my language. The presence of ladies sometimes improves it."

"I have heard worse," Jane said. "Please preserve your strength for when you need to be impressive."

"I am always impressive," he said with such smooth certainty that she nearly forgot to be afraid.

The orcs on the ridge were scouts and they were impatient. They sent three more arrows and then broke, loping east with a shambling energy that spoke of bigger plans farther down the road. Legolas would have chased them for sport if Aragorn had not made a small sign with three fingers. Not now. The column closed ranks like a wound that knew how to knit, and the sound of feet and wheels swallowed the little skirmish behind them.

Gandalf drifted his horse back until he rode abreast of Jane. He looked at her without looking, the way good horsemen look at a fence and the ground on either side at the same time.

"You have a good sense for where danger lives," he said.

"I have spent a lot of time being told to notice things," she answered. "When your job depends on it, you learn. When your life depends on it, you get fast."

"Hm." The sound held both approval and an accounting. "If you notice it again before the rest of us, tell me, and tell no one else until you have told me."

"Because panic spreads faster than a fire in dry wind," Jane said.

"Because a word in the wrong ear will travel inside the skull of the man who laid the trap," he said. "We are watched from more places than ridges."

They did not say Wormtongue's name. They did not need to.

The road narrowed after that, hemmed in by low hills that funneled the wind. The sky tried to rain and failed three times before it finally succeeded, a mean persistent fall that found its way down the back of collars and into boots. Jane did what she always did in bad weather. She made work. She rode back down the line and forward again, counting faces as if they were precious things in a box and not one could be lost. She tied tarps tighter over two carts that had already given up once and were thinking about doing it again. She lifted three children into a wagon when the mud had stolen both their shoes and their good humor. She took a cooking pot from an old woman who would not put it down, tucked it under the seat where the woman could see it, and promised that she herself would watch it. The woman looked at Jane as if she had put her hand on a Bible and said a truth.

By late afternoon, the column paused in a fold of land where a thorn thicket gave the first real shelter of the day. Fires were banned until night, but people huddled together and pretended their breath was enough. Jane turned a cart sideways to make a windbreak and laced a blanket across the gap using a trick from a very different kind of storm. The family behind it gave her looks that would have warmed hands.

Gimli stomped up, water dripping from his beard and his sense of dignity. "There had better be stone at this Helm's Deep," he declared. "I have had my fill of wet grass and honest air. I want walls that keep their promises."

"You will love it," Jane said. "I have been promised you will love it."

He squinted at her. "What do you know of it, city swallow."

She pulled her smile into a smaller shape. "Only that when a dwarf and a mountain shake hands, the ground remembers."

Gimli gave a pleased snort and dropped down on a coil of rope as if it were a throne. "You can stay."

Aragorn came to stand under the same poor shelter and wrung water from his hair with both hands. He looked older when he was tired, and then he lifted his head and it all fell away because purpose is better than sleep for certain men.

"You have an eye for the practical," he said to Jane. "You make a good camp out of a bad hill."

"In my world, there was always another problem to solve before the first was done," she said. "You learned fast or people suffered. The rules are not so different here."

He studied her a long beat. "You sound like someone who learned to live without being rescued."

"I learned to leave a place better than I found it," she said. "That is a kind of rescue."

Aragorn's mouth softened into a smile that had weight to it. "You and I will speak again after this is through."

"I would like that," she said, and meant it.

The rain softened toward evening. Gandalf and Théoden conferred apart, the words stripped down to bone. There were scouts to send and a decision to be made that smelled like smoke. Gandalf swung into the saddle before the last light died, his face set in the way of men who mean to return at dawn and change the shape of a day.

"Where," Théoden asked, not as king, but as a father and a friend.

"To find help where help still remembers its own name," Gandalf said. "Hold fast. I will bring you what the night has not yet eaten." He touched two fingers to the brim of an invisible hat out of old habit and turned his horse. The white shape slid into the dusk and was gone. For a blink the road felt emptier than the absence of one rider should make it.

Jane stood with her hand on her mare's neck and watched the dark swallow a piece of the story she knew and did not know. She had to swallow twice before her voice would work. When it did, it came out steady. "He will come back," she said to no one in particular and to everyone who could hear. "He has that look."

Gimli grunted assent. "Wizards and dwarves both keep their bargains," he said. "Men need reminding. Elves never forget, which can be a problem at parties."

"Do dwarves have good parties," Jane asked, grateful for the pivot.

"The best," Gimli said, eyes lighting. "Barrels of ale that would float a goat, songs about mines that would make your hair curl, and contests that leave three men sleeping under the same bench who claim they were never there."

"Sounds like most of my twenties," Jane said under her breath, and Gimli nearly choked on his own laugh.

Night settled in the valley. No fires. The camp made a low country of breath, quiet voices, and the small creak of leather as people found a way to fold themselves into rest. Jane took a turn on the outer line with Éothain and two men whose names were Roric and Hama's cousin, which was how people named themselves when families had been scattered and last names did not matter. The land hummed softly underfoot, wet grass releasing what the day had stored. A fox stalked along a fence line, a creature minding its own economy. Far off, a single hoof strike rang and then went quiet. The scouts were circling.

When her watch ended she did not sleep. She sat with her back to a wheel and her mare's warm breath misting her left ear. Theodred found her there, the staff he had used earlier traded for Éothain's arm when the ground went uneven. He dismissed the help without bravado when he reached her, then stayed standing as if sitting would be an admission he was not willing to make.

"You should be lying down," Jane said softly.

"I am tired of being told to lie down," he said, not unkindly. He eased himself to the wheel beside her anyway, jaw tight. She pretended not to see the grim line that pain wrote now and then. They sat close because there was only so much shelter in a world that had decided to be damp. In the half light his profile looked carved, the sort of carving that wanted to be stroked once with a thumb and then not spoken about again.

"Gimli likes you," he said.

"I like him," she answered. "He reminds me that world-saving is permitted to have joy around the edges."

"He will be impossible to dislodge once he has decided to be your friend," Theodred said. The idea seemed to please him.

"That sounds perfect," she said, and it did, in a way that made the back of her throat ache.

They watched the slow pulse of the camp together. After a while he spoke again, voice low. "When I was carried in from the ford, I remember hands that did not shake and a voice that lied very well about how everything was going to be fine. After that, I remember being warm for the first time in a long time."

"You were heavy," she said, which was the truth and also not the point. "My back is going to complain about you until it dies."

"It will have to stand in line," he said, and she laughed softly, because humor was a bridge they both knew how to build and cross without looking down.

Silence again. But not empty. The kind that lets a person notice the important things. He turned his hand on his knee, palm up, not quite an invitation and not quite a habit. She placed her fingers in it because the simplest choices are sometimes the bravest. They did not grip. They rested. The clean ache that moved through her then had nothing to do with wounds and everything to do with the precise relief of being next to a person who had decided not to leave.

They slept in fits and starts after that, heads bent, the way people sleep when the body steals what it can and leaves the watchfulness intact. Dawn found them with damp hair and stubborn hearts.

The last day's ride to Helm's Deep began under a sky that had decided to take the clouds with it and leave a hard blue behind. The land changed its voice. Hills gathered like witnesses, and a stone spine began to lift out of the grass. The refugees spoke more softly, as if the air itself had rules. The air smelled like old rain and something iron, the way rocks smell when you break them.

They crested a low rise, and the Deeping-coomb opened its long mouth. The Hornburg stood where the cliff met the valley, all stratified strength, a fortress that had grown out of the mountain because the mountain had liked the idea of being an argument that could be won. The deeping wall ran like a held breath. The causeway lifted, and the great culvert cut the wall where water had insisted on being water since before men learned to shape it.

Even Jane, who knew what she would see from maps and movies and the ache of old chapters, felt the skin tighten along her arms. It was not only stone. It was intention. Gimli stopped so abruptly that his pony walked two more steps without him.

"Ah," he said, and the sound came from a place in his chest that did not remember how to lie. "There is a builder's hand in that wall. There is a promise in that gate. Look at that join. By the roots of the mountain, who set the first stone there knew their craft."

"Welcome home," Jane said, and meant it for him as much as for herself.

He blinked quickly, then thumped the pommel of his axe against his thigh. "When this is over, you and I will come here in peace, and I will show you where the stone speaks back to you if you listen. I will also show you the best place to sneak a skin of ale."

"Educational," she said. "And necessary."

They made the last mile with the relief of people who have seen a harbor and remembered that their arms could row. The gates opened, and the world narrowed to a track of stone under hooves, the echo of iron on rock, the smell of water forced through old stone teeth. The Hornburg received them the way a good house receives company. It made space. It sent people to their places without wasting a word.

Jane turned her mare over to a boy who ran on legs too long for his sense of balance and took the stairs two at a time toward the keep. The healers' hall was already full. The few who knew what they were doing were overwhelmed by the many who needed something done. Jane rolled her sleeves and did not ask permission. She found the steaming cauldron and insisted on more boiling, not less. She built a rhythm for washing hands that could be performed by men who did not believe in such fussy notions, and she shamed them into it with humor until they did not notice they had been shamed. She cut strips of linen against the grain so the edges would not fray to the point of nonsense. She moved the children away from the worst of it without making them feel they had been moved.

Aragorn appeared at her shoulder with a crate of salves and the look of a man who would follow orders if the orders were good. "Tell me where you want me."

"Splints," she said. "Two lengths, smooth the edges with a knife, wrap the limb, check for the press at the nail. If it goes white and does not pink again, loosen and start over. If anyone argues the point, give them to me and I will fix both their arm and their attitude."

He grinned, sudden and young. "As you command."

Éowyn worked like water through a tight space, in every place at once, her hair braided tight, her eyes the color of dry plants that never stop living. Jane let herself admire that, and then they were shoulder to shoulder over a boy whose breath wanted to leave the room. They kept him, together, with a smear of balm, a hand at the back of the neck, and a stream of words that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with ponies who refuse puddles. The boy laughed once through a sob and then fell asleep, which counted as a victory.

By late afternoon Jane's knuckles were wrinkled from water, and her hair had given up on respectability. She stepped out onto the wall for air and found Gimli there, both hands on the stone, head bowed in a way that might have been a prayer or a plan.

"Well," he said without turning, "if they break this wall, they will have earned the break."

"They will try," she said.

"They will," he agreed. "And we will answer."

Below them the Deeping stream ran clean into the culvert. Jane squinted. Something about the angle, the way the tailwater fanned, tugged at her mind. She followed the line of force with her eyes. The culvert was strong, the grating ancient. But the rock around it had been patched twice and weathered thrice. Water always tells the truth about what it wants.

She went to find Aragorn and came back with him and a coil of rope. They lay on their stomachs like children and peered over the edge. He traced the line she had seen without her saying a word.

"If they place fire here," he said softly, "if they have the wit for powder and the patience for it, they could lift the heart out of the wall."

"Gandalf will bring help," Jane said. "But that does not fix a hole that has not yet been made."

Aragorn's mouth flattened. "We will pack the space around the culvert with stone and wet clay. We will lay sandbags as if they were thoughts we meant to keep. If they blow, they will buy themselves less break than they paid for."

He turned his head and looked at her with a gaze that made room. "You take in the shape of things quickly. I am glad you are on our side."

"I am on the side of breathing," she said. "Yours, mine, theirs."

"And his," Aragorn said, a glance toward the keep where Theodred rested on a chair he called a bed because other men needed the real ones.

"Yes," she said. "His."

They worked until the light went from gold to iron. Men carried stone and cursed the weight and kept carrying it. Gimli supervised with the joy of a craftsman whose medium had presented itself at the right hour. Éomer put his shoulder in it and made it look like pride. Theodred came to the wall at last with Éothain at his elbow and watched, allowing himself the smallest smile when Jane pretended not to see him and then looked anyway. When she wiped a smear of clay from her cheek with the back of her wrist, he made a small sound in his throat that she felt rather than heard across the span between them.

Night came. Torches flared all along the wall. The people of the Westfold packed themselves into the keep and the caverns like seeds into a pod. A low hum of voices rose from the stone. Jane stood for a while with her back against the granite, eyes closed, feeling the way rock holds sound. It holds it and gives it back in a tone a person can stand on.

Gimli found her there, thrust a skin into her hand, and nodded at the deepening dark. "Eat," he said. "Drink. Sharpen your tongue. You will need all three."

She drank, winced, then drank again. "What is it."

"Something that would kill an elf and make a man reconsider his life choices," he said, pleased. "You will do."

She handed the skin back. "Teach me a dwarven curse that will not offend the children."

He thought about it with dignity. "May your beard itch where you cannot reach," he offered.

"That is elegant," she said. "And terrible."

"Both are good," he said. "Now go find your prince and make him sit before he falls where I have swept."

She went. She found Theodred at the base of the tower stairs, eyes on the yard where the last carts were being rolled under the eaves. She did not say a single practical thing. She put her hand on his wrist, felt the beat, and let her thumb rest in the small valley where two tendons met, a place her mind had decided belonged to her.

"You look at me as if we have time," he said quietly.

"We are going to act as if we do," she said. "And we will steal some."

His breath left him on a sound she would remember for the rest of her life. He leaned closer than a prince should in a yard full of eyes, and closer than a patient should in a yard full of rules. He did not kiss her. He stood so near that the space between their mouths felt like a page on which someone was about to write.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"Tomorrow," she answered.

Behind them, the Hornburg lifted its chin to the night. Out in the dark, something with too many feet moved. Somewhere, a white horse crossed a river with a promise tied to its bridle. The wall held its breath and waited to be useful. Jane closed her eyes for a count of five, opened them, and went to work.

Chapter Text

Morning came cold and clean, a blade of light drawn down the spine of the mountains. The Hornburg woke in layers, first the soft stir of sleepers turning on stone, then the whisper of water running through the culvert, then the clank and scrape and human voices that mean work has begun. Jane blinked herself awake under a rough cloak that smelled of smoke and horse, sat up on the storeroom floor that had become her bed, and counted the ache in her shoulders like a familiar inventory. Someone had left a heel of bread near her boot. She ate it standing, washed her face in a basin that had already been claimed by three other women, and went out into the yard before the doubts could crowd the doorway faster than she did.

The Hornburg did not feel like a fortress only. It felt like a living thing that had gathered all the stray bits of a people into its ribs. The courtyard churned with bodies and intent. Blacksmiths struck bent mail until it remembered how to curve, sparks snapping like yellow insects. Boys worked whetstones against blades with expressions too serious for their faces. The horses were restless, the mares tossing their heads, the stallions showing white at the rim of their eyes, every one of them reading the weather in men's breath. Barley boiled in iron pots, a thick sound that smelled of enough and not of pleasure.

Jane did the only thing that had ever kept her steady in the face of large problems. She looked for the first small thing she could fix. The makeshift healers' hall had been claimed under the high vault of a side chamber where the rock dipped low and held warmth. Pallets lay in uneven ranks. Steam fogged the air above a great copper cauldron. The night's wounded had been carried in from the road and the ramparts, and the day's pains had to be sorted before they could turn into tomorrow's trouble.

She rolled her sleeves, tied her hair, and washed her hands to the elbow. Then she set her voice to work, even and practical. Clean cloth here, not there. Boil those bandages again and do not argue with physics. Honey is for the bad edges, not the good ones. Salt the water if it smells wrong. If a man says he is fine and he is pale at the mouth, he is not fine. If you feel faint, sit, no one is impressed by a helper who has to be carried.

She was carving a split scalp with her eyes, looking for the place to anchor a simple stitch, when she heard a girl telling two boys to keep the pot from tipping with the same authority a captain would use to set a line. The girl bent over a man with a cloth pressed so hard to his side that his breath had become a fight of its own.

"You are stealing his air," Jane said, setting a hand softly near the girl's wrist, not on it. "Give a little. He will bleed less for you if you do not teach his ribs to panic."

The girl looked up, chin fierce, eyes quick and brown like hazel bark. "And you know this."

"I do." Jane loosened the cloth by two fingers, changed the angle, and the man's face slackened into something that looked like relief's cousin. "Firm, and kind. Not one without the other."

The girl's mouth curved despite her suspicion. "Firm, and kind. I will remember." She studied Jane for one heartbeat longer than politeness requires. "I have not seen you in the Westfold. Or any fold."

"No," Jane said. "But blood is blood wherever you carry it." She stuck out her hand because sometimes the simplest tools are the best. "I am Jane."

"Katrin," the girl said, and shook as if handshakes were wrestling matches to be won. A grin snuck up on her as fast as light on water. "If you keep talking like that, I will not leave your side. I like being alive."

"Then we will keep each other that way," Jane said, and meant it as a compact signed without ink.

From then on she had a shadow. Katrin moved like a needle threaded with sense, pulling small knots tight behind Jane wherever she passed. If Jane called for more water, Katrin had it before anyone else heard. If Jane asked for cloth torn across the bias, Katrin had already sliced a sheet into the right kind. When a man shivered under too little blanket, Katrin stripped her own cloak without fuss and tucked it under his feet, then stole another from a pile without anyone feeling robbed.

The Hornburg's long day built itself hour by hour. The blacksmiths' hammers became metronomes. Men raised and lowered shields along the wall walk until their arms remembered how to hold them without thinking, then they drilled again. Éomer's riders brought in the last stragglers from the vale, a line of carts that looked like a family of beetles under a sky that could not decide whether to rain. Jane toted buckets side by side with Katrin until the skin of her hands pruned and the muscles above her elbows burned. She taught two small boys how to press a fresh bandage into place with both hands and pretend the pain was a bad dog that would run away if you stared it down. She scolded three young men for leaving a latrine upwind, and did it with enough dry humor that they blushed and moved the trench without arguing. There are fights worth having and fights you win by smiling while you point.

By midmorning she found herself in the yard beside a wall that had swallowed the attention of one dwarf whole. Gimli stood with both hands splayed on the stone, eyes half closed, the way people touch trees when they think no one is watching.

"You are going to kiss it next," Jane said, setting a bucket down at her feet and leaning against the wall with the kind of tired that had become a companion.

He did not open his eyes, but his beard lifted with a smile. "If I did, lass, I would be accused of scandal. This is good work. A man chose this angle because he respected weight more than prettiness. The bond holds. The water finds the seams, but it finds them honest and tight. If I had a barrel and a song I would sing to this wall about loyalty."

Katrin arrived with a bundle of linen that had been boiled and wrung, and she glanced between stone and dwarf. "Do all dwarves flirt with fortresses," she asked, amused.

"Only the desirable ones," Gimli said. He finally turned his head, took in Katrin in one swift look that judged her capable, then grinned. "I see you have recruited more sense, Jane. Good. The place was getting light."

Katrin made a face. "Then you must be delighted I am here, since I am made entirely of weighty thoughts." She set the linen where Jane could grab without looking. "You too," she added to Gimli, "have a useful brow for carrying worry."

Gimli puffed his chest. "My brow carries many things. Helmets. Intelligence. The envy of elves."

An archer above them snorted a laugh. For a heartbeat the yard breathed easier. Jane let the moment sit. Humor is a tool like any other. It cuts through fear in ways steel cannot.

She moved on. In the storehouse she found a stack of small clay jars of honey that had been set aside by someone with a conscience and a plan, then she set a boy to stirring it into a salve with thyme until it became a thing that could be spread thin and still do good. She improved the handwashing line with a trick from a different life, rinsing a rag in clean water and laying it across the rim of the basin to remind the next pair of hands where to rest and not to dip where the last man had left his dirt. She took a moment in the stables to put her palm flat on the neck of a grey that had started to grind his teeth, then showed the stablemaster how to knot a noseband lower for a horse that had learned to brace against the bit. Small mercies, small changes, a hundred points of pressure that kept a big, frightened machine from shaking itself to pieces.

Éowyn crossed her path near noon with sleeves rolled and hair braided like a crown that she had earned. The two women slowed in the same instant, as if some internal compass had pointed them at each other and asked for a check.

"You look like I feel," Éowyn said, eyes raking Jane's face with the kind of assessment that only comes from years of carrying households through lean winters.

"Then we are both still standing," Jane said. "I will take it."

Éowyn's mouth curved. "The women in the caves work because you make it look like the work matters. Some of the men work because you make them laugh. I approve of your methods."

"Thank you," Jane said. "I approve of your existence."

They stood together at the gate long enough to watch Éomer's riders drill a short charge and re-form. Éowyn's hands tightened once on the parapet where the stone had been polished smooth by decades of palms. "There are days when the work inside these walls feels like a cage," she said quietly. "Today it is the work, and I am proud of it. Tomorrow I may envy my brother his saddle again."

"You know the shape of your strength," Jane said. "You can put it where it is needed, not only where it looks good. That is rare. In my world, people spent a fortune to learn how to look good while doing nothing."

Éowyn looked sideways at her with a glint. "And did you learn it."

"For a while," Jane said. "Then I learned something else. Looking like you are useful is currency. Being useful buys food."

"Stay tonight with the women in the caves," Éowyn said after a moment, as if chalking a schedule on a wall no one else could see. "They will sleep better if your voice is the one that tells them they can."

"I will," Jane said. "You send me one of your worst complainers, and I will spend them down to quiet."

Éowyn laughed for real then, and the sound put a splinter of sunlight in the day.

By the time the sun reached whatever place it hides behind a white sky, Jane had found a dozen ways to turn knowledge into muscle. She roped three boys into carrying buckets not by command but by making it a race with stakes, then let them cheat on purpose so they would keep playing. She showed a ring of older men how to build wedges to brace the inner gate, cutting the blocks long and squaring the ends. She explained to anyone who would listen that sandbags were thoughts to put in front of fire, then made a line that reached from the stream to the wall so sacks could be filled and stacked along the weak point at the culvert. Men grumbled at first because men will always grumble at anything that looks like a lesson, then they found themselves nodding, then they took ownership of the labor and Jane stepped back because once a job belongs to men with pride in their hands it will get finished whether you are watching or not.

Aragorn came to her while she was mid-lecture on barbs and ropes. He took in the hooks she had asked the smith to make, thick iron with mouths wide enough to catch a ladder rung or the wrap of a rope. He set one in his palm, weighed it, and passed it back with approval as quiet as a nod.

"You think with the whole wall," he said. "Not only the piece in front of you."

"I have spent a long time managing problems that come at once from different directions," Jane said. "A wall is like a team. It breaks at the seam between two people if the seam is the part no one is watching."

He glanced toward the culvert where the sandbags rose like a new tooth under the old mouth of stone. "We will keep men there with sodden hides and buckets. If the enemy brings fire, we will feed it more water than it can swallow."

"Good," Jane said. "And scrape the causeway clean. Mud makes ladders slip, but it slows men. Smooth boards laid at an angle can be pulled out from under feet, and if you tie a loop for a hand you can do it without looking over the edge and inviting an arrow."

Aragorn's mouth twitched. "You are dangerous in the way that keeps people alive." His eyes softened. "You should rest in the afternoon if you can. The night will ask for your full price."

"I know," she said, and wished her bones would listen.

He did not move, and for a heartbeat it was not the captain speaking, only a man. "Jane. When fear tries to make your voice small, do not let it. There are men here who are listening for you."

She swallowed. "I will keep my voice loud enough to be useful."

Gimli joined them then with a pouch of iron nails and a grin. "Hooks for ladders, aye," he said, rummaging in the pouch like a squirrel who had found something delightful and technically not food. "And if the enemy brings a ram, I would put a bet on this gate. Tight grain, good joinery. We will wedge it until it feels like a mountain. If it groans, it will be a song and not a complaint."

Katrin sidled up with two cups of something that had been called tea by someone ambitious. She passed one to Jane and one to Aragorn, then looked at Gimli. "No tea for dwarves," she said. "You will only complain it is weak."

Gimli sniffed the steam. "It is weak. But I will share yours." He took a sip from Jane's cup, grimaced in theatrical suffering, and then finished it because dwarves are practical.

In the quieter moments of the early afternoon, when the fortress found a rhythm, Jane let Katrin drag her down into the caves to walk the lanes of people who had made their world under stone for a day. The caverns were a city with its own streets. Blankets hung like walls where women tried to lift a little privacy out of the common air. Babies slept with their mouths open and their hands in fists as if even in rest they had found something to hold. Old men argued about plows and stories because arguing is a way of reminding your lungs that they still work.

Katrin moved through it with the authority of someone who had been born in a village and knew the art of being useful without being obvious. She bent to adjust the way a mother had swaddled a baby so the legs could kick freely. She redirected a cooking fire that had been set too close to a blanket that was still damp and sulking. She taught a ring of girls how to braid each other's hair into crowns that would hold for a day on short sleep. Jane watched and recognized competence, which is the kind of beauty that makes you want to applaud with your whole chest.

They sat for a moment in a bend of the cave where the rock had made a seat and the light from a single lantern turned the air to amber. Katrin produced a heel of bread and a small lump of cheese from somewhere she had hidden her better life, then divided both without pretending she was not hungry.

"Where were you before you found us," Katrin asked between careful bites, and her voice had the tone of friendship, not inquiry.

"Many places," Jane said. "Places that do not make sense in your head unless you dream them first."

Katrin smiled, and did not pry. "Then dream me a promise instead. When this is over, if we are both standing, you will come to my village and we will take the long way home through the hedges so no one can find us to ask for more work."

"I will," Jane said, surprised by the way the answer lifted her ribs. "And you will come with me to the stables first and last, because I refuse to be scolded by a mare all alone."

Katrin laughed, the kind of laugh that puts a new line in your day. "Done. Also, I intend to make you tell me everything about your not-place, one story at a time. I have time, if we keep it."

"You will be very bored," Jane said.

"I doubt it," Katrin said. "You have the look of someone who set fires with her tongue and called it strategy."

"I prefer water," Jane said. "But yes, I have been in rooms where the people made me want to shake them until their coins fell out."

"Good," Katrin said. "We will keep you where you cannot do that to our king."

They both grinned at the thought, then sobered in the same beat because they could hear the fear under the jokes and respected it.

They rose and returned to their lanes of duty. The day thickened. The light outside did that grey thing mountain weather does, when time feels like a stalled cart. Scouts came in with damp cloaks and tighter faces. Fire in the distance. Trees felled and burned to stumps. Tracks cut into the sod in a line as straight as a bad idea. Éomer sent them back out with fresh horses and the kind of orders that are also offerings to courage.

In the late afternoon Jane found herself again on the wall with Gimli, measuring the culvert with her eyes, counting the sacks, adding more. The stream ran through the grate in the old stone and looked innocent doing it. Innocence was a coat predators wear when they shop. She knelt and pushed at the base of the sandbag wall with both palms, then nodded. It was ugly work and honest. If a wall must break, make it break slowly.

Theodred passed along the walk then, Éothain at his side, a little color back in his mouth but the stiffness in his step betraying the truth. He paused when he saw her and Gimli, and there was that small warmth again in the way his face changed when he found her in a crowd. He looked at the sacks and the soaked hides draped over poles, at the hooks and the ropes coiled ready.

"You have given me three things today I did not know I needed," he said to Jane, quiet enough that the wall would not carry it.

"I hope they fit," she said. "If any pinch, I will take them in."

For a heartbeat they simply looked at each other with the kind of attention that can be dangerous in daylight. He lifted his hand, not enough for anyone to call it a gesture, and she almost stepped to it, then did not, because there is a time for patience and patience was a kind of bravery too. He moved on, and Éothain gave her a look that was almost a smile and almost a warning and entirely affectionate. She filed it away under things to think about later, a drawer already full.

Evening finally came like a decision. Torches were set in iron brackets along the wall walk, their flames laying a hot smell across the colder air. No fires on the outer ramparts. No silhouette offered to the archers in the dark. The caverns grew louder and then quieter as children were corralled into sleep. Éowyn walked the length of the women's rows with a cup in her hand that she did not drink and a smile that was a promise she would not leave. Jane took the second long watch among the refugees, Katrin at her shoulder. They quieted a dispute about blankets with the speed of women who have shared rooms with siblings, sorted out a line at the water butt, and moved a cluster of old men farther from the draft because their coughs had started to answer one another across the aisle like an argument.

Between tasks they talked in the small, clipped lines of people who know there is much to say and not enough air. Katrin told Jane about a brother who had run too fast and broke his arm falling from a hayloft and refused to cry until he saw his mother's mouth go soft. Jane told Katrin about a horse named Luna who spooked at shadows and then ate them for breakfast once she decided they were hers. Katrin mocked her gently for naming a horse after the moon. Jane mocked Katrin for the string of boy names she admitted to assigning chickens. They wrangled affection the way some people wrangle ropes, with knots that hold and can be loosened again without fuss.

Near midnight the scouts came in one last time with faces that had left the fields and come home to stone. Far to the east, a glow like a low dawn in the wrong place. The sound of feet that were not men's, a thudding shuffle that carries a rhythm no one wants to dance to. A smell of tar and boiled leather and something metallic like blood in rain. Éomer listened, and Aragorn, and Théoden, and the news moved through the keep the way heat moves through a room with a closed door.

Jane felt it in her teeth before she saw it. A vibration under the stone. The wall itself seemed to gather its thoughts and take a breath. The horn sounded then, the deep horn that lives in the gut of a fortress, the kind of sound that turns spines into upright things whether they want to be or not. Men rose without talking. Boys went still as arrows. Women tucked blankets tighter around small bodies and kissed foreheads with the gravity of priests.

Katrin's hand found Jane's sleeve and squeezed once, hard, then let go and set itself to work. "Go," she said. "The wall will need your mouth and your eyes. I will stay with them and keep the air steady."

Jane nodded once and moved, the body already making choices before the mind could name each one. Up the stairs, two at a time, boots striking the stone that had been worn by generations of the same urgency. Onto the rampart where the wind took her breath for a second, cold and clean, as if to remind her she was alive. She went to the culvert first, counted sacks and men and buckets, laid her palm on one wet hide as if blessing it, then crossed to the causeway where the ropes and hooks were coiled like sleeping snakes.

Aragorn stood at the wall's edge, eyes on the dark valley. Beside him Legolas had the stillness of a thought you will not forget. Gimli rolled his shoulders the way a boulder might if it could anticipate gravity.

"Speak," Aragorn said without turning. "Say whatever you would say before the first arrow flies. Men hear better now than they do once fear is shouting in their ears."

Jane looked down the long curve of men, at the boys with jaws too tight, at the old hands who were not too proud to be afraid. She set her voice to travel, even and sure.

"Check your knots," she said. "Twice. Your straps. Twice. Your neighbor. Twice. If your hands shake, press them flat against the wall and count to ten. If your mouth goes dry, swallow and breathe in through your nose. If you are scared, it means your blood knows you want to live. Use that. If you are angry, put it in your legs and your back, not in your throat. We will do this one piece at a time. If you do not know what to do, look at me or look at Aragorn and do what our hands do. If you fall, fall against the wall, and someone will catch your foot. We will not waste each other."

It was not a speech for songs. It was instructions for staying here in your body. Heads nodded, not many, but enough. Men touched buckles and straps. A boy loosened his grip on his spear so his knuckles were not white any longer. Gimli grunted approval under his beard.

Far below, the first line of torches swung into view, a snake of fire that slithered between hills and grew thicker as it came. The air changed in the way air does when weather walks up the road, cooler and electric. The first small drops of rain found stone and skin, a warning and a promise. The valley filled with a sound like grain poured into a bin, steady and overwhelming. Jane felt her heart pick up and go steady again, faster and sure, like a horse that has understood the task.

She glanced back once, over her shoulder, down toward the dark mouth of the caves where Katrin would be. She pictured the girl's braid fraying, her hands moving, her mouth set in that little line that meant she had decided to be brave. She pictured Theodred somewhere along the inner wall, upright, pale, refusing a chair, Éothain a shadow at his side. She pictured Éowyn with a cup she would never drink, standing like a pillar where every passing woman could see her and borrow a thread of her spine.

The horn sounded again, answering itself from different towers, turning the night into a map of sound. Aragorn lifted the point of Andúril in a small salute to the darkness, not to honor the enemy, but to promise the men at his back that steel and will would stand in the same place. Legolas raised his bow with the grace of a man lifting a cup. Gimli spat neatly over the wall and rolled his shoulders one more time. Jane set her hands on the stone until the cold bit and then took them away because there was work to do and not much use in ceremony.

The long day had ended. The longer night had come.

Chapter Text

The night did not fall quietly.

From the battlements Jane saw the torches first, hundreds of them, spilling across the valley like a river of fire. They moved with terrible precision, unbroken even in the rain. The sound of orc horns carried up the cliffs, guttural and mocking, an echo that made the stone vibrate under her boots. The men along the wall gripped their spears tighter, some whispering prayers, others muttering curses.

Jane's stomach clenched. She had seen this before, but on a screen in a theater, wrapped in the safety of popcorn and air conditioning. Here the fear was alive. The smell of pitch and iron mixed with wet wool and sweat. She wanted to close her eyes and unsee it, but the stone wall under her hands was too solid, the rain too cold.

Then another sound rose behind them — higher, clearer, like silver against iron. The soldiers turned, confused, until the watch cried out. Jane's head snapped toward the causeway. Out of the night came a column of pale helms and dark cloaks. Their armor caught the torchlight and threw it back, bright as moonlit water.

The elves.

For a moment the men of Rohan simply stared. Fear loosened its grip on them, replaced by awe. The elven line moved with the silence of snowfall, their boots almost soundless on the stone. At their head walked a captain whose presence made the fortress itself feel smaller: tall, composed, his eyes like distant light.

Haldir.

Jane's throat tightened. She had known this moment was coming, had dreaded it with every step since they reached the Hornburg. Seeing him now made her heart ache as though the story itself had reached through the page to remind her of what it demanded.

Théoden stepped forward stiffly, surprise etched across his face. "We are grateful for your aid."

Haldir bowed with the grace of another age. "We come to honor the alliance of old." His voice was low and steady, carrying more strength than volume.

Aragorn clasped his arm in greeting, words exchanged too softly for Jane to hear. She felt the men around her straighten, as if the elves' presence alone had poured steel into their spines.

She caught Haldir's gaze for only a breath. It was enough to make her chest ache. She dipped her head, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. "Mae govannen. Welcome."

Haldir's brows lifted, a flicker of surprise warming into something gentler. "Mae govannen," he replied. "You speak with a foreign tongue, but with intent."

"I learned badly," Jane admitted. "Forgive the mistakes."

"Intention matters," he said simply, and then he turned to his men, placing them along the wall with unhurried authority.

Jane's hands trembled. She knew what awaited him. Knowledge pressed against her ribs like a blade.

⸻

The fortress moved like a hive. Arrows were distributed, ropes coiled, cauldrons filled with water and oil. Jane and Katrin hauled buckets up narrow stairs until their arms shook. Gimli wandered the battlements with a grin half hidden by his beard, muttering about stonework and promising that no orc would pass his axe. Legolas tested his bowstring and did not seem to notice the rain soaking his hair.

"You should rest before it begins," Katrin told Jane, wiping her brow with a sleeve streaked in soot.

"I'll rest when we win," Jane replied, forcing her mouth into a smile.

"You mean if." Katrin's eyes were sharp, but her grip on Jane's arm was steady. "Then again, trouble tends to survive. Perhaps that means us."

Jane laughed, a short sound that startled even her. "I'll take that."

They leaned against one another for a moment, sharing warmth. Jane marveled that she had met Katrin only hours ago, yet the girl already felt like an anchor in this storm.

⸻

The drums began.

They rolled up from the valley floor, deep and relentless, vibrating through the stone into marrow and teeth. Jane pressed her palms flat against the battlement as though she could steady herself through the rock. Ladders moved in the distance, black against the firelit rain.

Aragorn raised his hand. A ripple of silence spread across the wall. Men bent their heads. Elves notched arrows in a single movement.

The first ladders hit with a crash that shook the parapets. Orcs scrambled upward, claws scraping stone. Elven arrows hissed in silver sheets, cutting the first climbers down before they reached the lip. Ropes snapped taut as men hauled at the ladders, dragging them sideways to crash back into the dark.

Jane moved with them, shouting instructions, steadying hands. "Together — pull as one. Don't watch them fall, watch your knots."

The wall became a rhythm: arrows, ropes, buckets, shouts. Twice Jane dragged injured men back by the straps of their armor, and once Gimli yanked her away from the edge just as a hook clanged onto the stone where her shoulder had been.

"Not tonight, lass," he barked, eyes gleaming. "Save your tumbling for a feast."

"Add it to my calendar," she shot back, breathless.

The dwarf roared with laughter, even as he split an orc skull in two.

The first assault broke like a wave on stone. The second came harder. Orcs surged in greater numbers, ladders slamming against the wall faster than men could pull them down. Rain turned the battlements slick, blood washing away only to be replaced by more.

Then came the culvert.

Jane felt the tremor before she heard it. A vibration in the stone beneath her boots, then a flash of light, then the world cracking open. Fire exploded against the wall where the water spilled out, tearing stone and men into the air. The blast hurled her flat, ears ringing. When she staggered up, coughing, the wall was gone. In its place yawned a smoking gap where orcs poured through like black water.

"Back!" Aragorn's voice cut through the chaos. "Fall to the keep!"

Jane grabbed a dazed boy by the collar and shoved him toward the stairs. She jammed a spear into another's hand until his fingers closed around it.

Then she saw Theodred.

He fought not at the front but close enough, Éothain at his side. His movements were measured, efficient, but every stroke of his sword reminded her of the wounds she had stitched only days ago. Blood streaked his hair, his face pale in the torchlight.

"Theodred!"

He turned at the sound of her voice. For a moment the battle seemed to recede. He strode toward her, eyes burning, and then a stray arrow hissed past. He moved without thought, slamming her against the wall, shielding her with his body.

Her breath caught at the sudden closeness. His hand gripped her shoulder, hard and grounding. She felt his heart hammering against her ribs, the heat of him through soaked leather.

"You should be behind a door," he growled.

"You should be in a bed," she shot back, voice shaking.

They stared at each other, rain dripping from hair and lashes. Something that had been building for days broke.

She lifted her face. His mouth met hers, fierce and desperate, salt and blood and rain. His hand slid to the back of her neck, holding her as if he could keep her alive through will alone. She clung to him, fingers curled into his jerkin, kissing him with all the terror and longing that had been caged in her chest since she first found him broken in the river reeds.

The world narrowed to heat and breath and the taste of him. For a moment there were no ladders, no drums, no torches. Only two souls clinging to each other on the edge of death.

When they broke apart, gasping, his forehead rested against hers. His voice was low, almost broken. "Live through this. Then we will see what more there is."

Jane's throat tightened. She could only nod.

Éothain's shout dragged him back to the fight. He squeezed her hand once, hard, then vanished into the press of men.

⸻

Hours blurred. The fortress became a storm. Orcs crashed through the broken wall, only to be pushed back by men and elves fighting shoulder to shoulder. Jane moved between lines, dragging the wounded into corners, pressing cloth to wounds, barking at Katrin to keep pressure here, tie that there. Katrin did not flinch, even when blood soaked her apron to the knees.

Gimli bellowed numbers with every kill, Legolas mocking him with tallies that came too fast to count. Even in the din their rivalry was absurd, and Jane found herself laughing hoarsely once, the sound startling and raw.

And through it all, Haldir.

She saw him along the wall, moving with calm precision, his words soft but carrying. His elves fought like a tide, arrows loosing in perfect rhythm. Once he met her eyes across the battlements and gave the smallest nod, as though acknowledging her place in this storm. Her chest ached. She wanted to scream at him to stay down, to hide, to live. But she knew the story.

The battle pressed closer. Orcs swarmed ladders, poured through the breach. Haldir fought at the head of his line, blade flashing. For a time he held, until a lucky blow glanced off his greave and drove him to one knee. He rose again, struck down his attacker, but his stance was slower.

Jane's stomach turned to ice. She knew what was coming.

"No," she whispered, and shoved forward through the press.

She reached the walkway just as an orc's axe swung toward him. She slammed her shoulder into his, shoving him aside. The blade bit stone instead of flesh.

"On your feet," she panted.

He staggered up, blood on his temple, eyes finding hers. For a heartbeat gratitude flickered there. They fought back to back, her with a stolen spear, him with his sword.

But the tide was endless. Another blow came, cruel and heavy, striking his temple. Haldir crumpled.

Jane dropped beside him, hauling him into her arms before the press could trample him. Blood ran hot across her hands, shocking in its heat. His eyes fluttered, trying to focus.

"No, no, stay with me," she begged, tears streaking her rain-wet face. "Stay."

His mouth curved faintly. "It seems... tonight is not mine to keep."

"Don't say that." Her voice cracked. Words she had hoarded for years spilled out in fragments, her accent clumsy, her memory patchy. "Le hannon. Hannon le, Haldir. Mellon nin."

Thank you. Thank you, Haldir. My friend.

His lips twitched into a tired smile. "Mellon," he echoed. His hand lifted weakly, brushing her cheek.

"Namárië," Jane whispered, broken. "Novaer. Go with light."

His gaze softened, sliding past her toward something she could not see. His breath shuddered out. His weight settled. The light left his eyes.

Jane wept openly, forehead pressed to his. The battle raged around them, but the world had narrowed to this loss. She had known it was coming, and still it shattered her.

Legolas appeared silently, crouching beside her. His face was pale, grief sharp in every line. He closed Haldir's eyes with infinite gentleness. "Go," he told Jane softly. "Your prince will need you."

She shook her head. "My friend needs me."

"He is beyond need," Legolas said. His voice was kind, but final. He lifted Haldir's body with reverence, carrying him back toward the elves.

Jane rose, shaking, blood on her hands. Gimli caught her arm and squeezed. "Enough. Breathe. Swear. Move."

She breathed. She swore. She moved.

⸻

The night dragged on. The gate shuddered under the ram. Théoden rallied his men in the keep, Aragorn shouting for one last ride into the press. Jane patched wounds with shaking hands, Katrin steady at her side. Together they kept men alive by inches.

When Aragorn and Theodred led the charge down the causeway, Jane watched with her heart in her throat. She glimpsed Theodred's face, streaked with mud, eyes burning, and felt both terror and pride.

At last, in the final hours before dawn, despair settled over the fortress like a shroud. Men slumped against walls, too tired to speak. Mothers in the caves whispered prayers. Even Théoden sat silent, sword across his knees.

Jane curled beside Katrin, the girl's head against her shoulder. They did not sleep. They shared warmth and listened to the stone groan.

Then, when the world seemed about to break, a horn sounded from the heights above the valley.

Clear. Ancient. Full of dawn.

Men lifted their heads. Jane's breath caught. She ran to the door as Aragorn flung it open.

Gandalf stood on the ridge, white robes blazing in the first light. Behind him, Éomer's riders massed, spears glittering like a field of wheat. The sun spilled over the mountains, a river of gold.

The charge thundered down. Orcs broke and scattered, swept away by light and steel. The fortress roared with new life.

Jane laughed, choking on tears. She grabbed Katrin and kissed her hair, hugged Gimli hard enough to make him grunt. Then she turned and found Theodred, alive, eyes alight with joy. He crossed to her in three strides, cupped her face, and pressed a swift, desperate kiss to her mouth.

"You kept your promise," he said.

"So did you."

The dawn poured over them, washing the blood from stone, turning grief into something like hope. Jane lifted her face to the light, whispering one last goodbye for Haldir. Then she turned back to the living, because they still needed her.

Chapter Text

The sun rose too bright over Helm's Deep. Its light poured down the cliffs and spilled across the valley, and in that cruel clarity nothing was hidden. Orc bodies carpeted the slopes like refuse. The corpses of men and elves lay among them, cloaked in broken armor and twisted limbs. Smoke still drifted from the breach in the wall, where fire had torn the stone open.

Jane leaned against the battlement and pressed her forehead to the cold rock. The valley below looked bruised, smeared in black and red. The stench carried even up here: iron, smoke, and rot, a stink the dawn air could not scrub clean. Her stomach twisted, and she swallowed hard against the nausea.

Behind her the fortress murmured. The thunder of battle had been replaced by something quieter, but no less heavy. Men moved with the weariness of those who had survived when they were not sure they would. Women emerged from the caves clutching their children. The wounded groaned in the high hall, their voices carrying through the cracks in the stone.

Jane closed her eyes. Her body ached in every muscle, her hands torn and blistered. She had not sat down since the horns first blew the night before. She felt like a puppet with her strings frayed, still moving because no one had told her she could stop.

Katrin appeared at her side, a jug of water in her hands. Her dark braid had mostly unraveled, strands sticking to her sweat-streaked cheeks. She held out a cup. "Drink, or you will fall over."

Jane accepted it and sipped. The water was warm and tasted faintly of smoke, but it steadied her throat. She handed it back. "Then we will fall over together."

Katrin's lips curved, weary but amused. She drank herself, then set the jug down and leaned against the stone beside Jane. For a long time they said nothing, staring out at the valley as though their watching might change it.

⸻

Work began whether they were ready or not.

The wounded filled the high hall. Pallets lined the floor, the air heavy with blood, herbs, and smoke. Jane and Katrin rolled their sleeves high and waded into it.

Jane stitched wounds with clumsy needles, bound gashes with strips torn from cloaks, pressed rags to burns. Her fingers shook, but she forced them steady. Katrin worked as her shadow, cleaning wounds, holding men down, whispering encouragement when screams grew too raw. They moved together with the strange grace of shared exhaustion, anticipating each other's hands without needing words.

At one point, a soldier flinched so violently under Jane's needle that she nearly lost the thread. Katrin leaned down, murmured something too low for Jane to catch, and the man laughed hoarsely through his teeth. Jane shot her a questioning look. Katrin shrugged. "Words can be salve too."

"Remind me to steal yours," Jane said.

"You already steal my bandages," Katrin replied, and they both laughed for the briefest of moments before the next groan cut through.

By midday Jane's arms were streaked with blood to the elbows. She washed them in a basin that turned red almost instantly, then returned to work. Her body screamed for rest, but the sight of another pale face kept her moving.

⸻

The elves prepared Haldir's body in the high hall. They spread a cloak of deep blue over him, the embroidery catching the light like scattered stars. His face was peaceful, his hair smoothed, though Jane thought it a fragile peace.

She stood at the edge of the room, unable to go closer. The sight of him pierced her. She had known him for mere hours. They had spoken only a handful of words, fought side by side for a blink of time. Yet his death pressed against her chest like a stone.

It was not for Haldir alone that she mourned, but for what he embodied. He had come when he did not have to. He had stood as proof that old alliances still breathed. His death made the air feel thinner, as though something ancient and noble had cracked.

Legolas spoke in Sindarin, his voice steady but edged with sorrow. Jane did not understand most of the words, but she understood the tone. It was grief given shape and sound, grief without shame. The hall listened in silence.

Jane whispered her own broken words, her accent crooked. "Le hannon. Namárië, mellon nin. Novaer." Thank you. Farewell, my friend. Go with light.

Her throat burned. She wiped her face and stepped back into the daylight. Katrin waited by the door and quietly took her hand. They walked away together, the silence between them enough.

⸻

The day stretched long.

The dead were carried out to the fields beyond the gate, cloaked and laid in rows. Mothers wept in the caves. Fathers sat with blank eyes. Children clutched each other, wide-eyed and silent.

Jane and Katrin returned again and again to the wounded. They spooned broth into shaking mouths, pressed cloth to fevered brows, coaxed the stubborn to rest. The work was endless, yet each small survival felt like defiance.

In the yard Gimli planted himself on a chunk of fallen stone and entertained children with his booming voice. "Forty-three orcs I slew, before the sun had risen!"

Legolas leaned nearby, calm as a cat in the rain. "Forty-seven. With far less noise."

The children giggled, covering their mouths. Jane found herself laughing too, though her voice was rough. Gimli shot her a wink.

"You see, lass? That is how dwarves mend hearts. Numbers and tales. Ale would help, but I suppose this keep cannot manage everything."

Jane smirked. "I will see what I can do about ale."

Katrin elbowed her, grinning. For a moment, the laughter spread. Fragile, yes, but real.

⸻

As the sun lowered, Jane climbed the steps to the courtyard and found Theodred. He leaned on a spear, his hair damp, his face pale. He should have been lying down, but he stood with his gaze fixed on the valley, as if daring it to rise again.

She hesitated, the memory of their kiss burning like a coal in her chest. He turned at her approach, and for a heartbeat his eyes were unguarded. Longing. Recognition. Fear.

"You are exhausted," he said quietly.

"So are you."

His mouth twitched. "We are alive. That is something."

Silence hung between them, thick with things unsaid. She wanted to reach for him, to remind herself that he was alive and warm. But the valley below still reeked of blood. The caves still echoed with keening. The kiss from the night before felt like fire stolen in the middle of a funeral pyre.

"It is terrible timing," Jane whispered.

"Yes," he agreed, voice steady but eyes betraying him. "But that does not make it untrue."

Her chest tightened. "I know."

They stood close but did not touch. His hand shifted once, then stilled.

"We will have to wait," he said.

Jane nodded, though the ache in her chest deepened. "Wait, then. But not forever."

His gaze softened. "Never forever."

For a moment she believed him. Then voices called from the yard, and she stepped back, leaving the silence intact.

⸻

Later, Jane slipped into the storeroom where she had been given a corner to sleep. She sat on the stone floor and pressed her palms to her eyes. The adrenaline had worn off, leaving her hollow. For the first time since stumbling into this world, the enormity of it struck her fully.

She was in Middle-earth.

Not just visiting, not just watching. Living. Fighting. Bleeding.

Her chest clenched. She thought of Dubai, of the skyline lit like a jeweled crown against the desert night. She thought of neon spilling across Sheikh Zayed Road, the smell of shawarma curling from a corner stall at midnight. She thought of hot showers, of clean sheets, of her phone buzzing with messages she could ignore or answer. She thought of traffic jams and the clatter of coffee cups in a café where no one knew her name.

She wanted those things with a sharpness that hurt. Ordinary things, so banal she had once resented them. Here they felt like treasures locked behind glass. Her throat closed. Tears slipped down her cheeks, hot against the grime.

Katrin found her like that. She crouched down, her hand light on Jane's back. "You are far away," she said softly.

Jane laughed through her tears, a broken sound. "Farther than you know."

"I do not need to know," Katrin replied. "You miss something you cannot reach. That is enough."

Jane leaned against her, grateful for the warmth of another body. "I want to go home. I want a shower and food that isn't broth. I want... just one night where nothing depends on me."

Katrin's arm tightened around her. "Longing does not mean weakness. It means you remember what comfort is. That is not something to be ashamed of."

Jane swallowed hard, nodding. She let herself cry until the knot in her chest eased, then wiped her face with the heel of her hand.

⸻

Night fell slowly. Fires smoldered in the yard, their smoke drifting into the mountain air. The fortress was quieter, though grief still hummed in the caves.

Jane and Katrin sat side by side against the wall, their heads tipping together. The silence between them was easy now, shaped by shared exhaustion.

Above, the stars glittered sharp and cold. Jane tilted her head back, staring until her eyes blurred. She thought of Haldir, of his faint smile in the rain. She thought of Theodred, of the fire in his kiss. She thought of Dubai, neon lights against desert night. She thought of all the roads ahead, dark and uncertain.

Her heart ached, but beneath the grief and longing flickered something fragile: hope.

She closed her eyes, letting the sounds of the fortress wrap around her — Katrin's steady breathing, Gimli's distant laughter, the low murmur of men on watch. Tomorrow they would ride out. Tonight she would rest.

For the first time in days, she allowed sleep to claim her.

Chapter Text

Dawn came shy over the Hornburg, pink light threading the cold stone. The keep was already awake. Hooves rang on the causeway, armor clinked, men spoke in low voices that did not carry far. Jane had just finished binding a final shoulder when a page found her with eyes like chips of flint and a message delivered as if it weighed more than his small body.

"The White Rider asks for you."

Gandalf stood near the outer steps, Shadowfax casting a long pale shadow across the wet flags. The wizard's face looked carved from mountain light, and yet his eyes were all human attention, keen and measuring. He let her approach in silence. When she stopped at a respectful distance, he studied her for a heartbeat longer than comfort allows.

"You strengthened the culvert," he said, not a question but not quite a charge. "You saw the shape of that weakness before most eyes would. You moved men to it with the right words and without fanfare." He tilted his head. "You also ran toward a dying elf with your heart already broken, which is very like courage and very like foolishness. Both have their place."

"I did not save him," Jane said. The words scraped coming out.

"Not all mercy wears the face of saving," Gandalf answered. "Sometimes it is a held hand at the right breath."

He let the silence sit for a few steps of Shadowfax's tail through the air. Then, more gently, "Come with us to Isengard. I would have you near while we reckon with a voice that has turned too many hearts. You notice currents other people miss. And I would rather keep an eye on a storm than pretend I only hear distant thunder."

"You think I have foresight," Jane said, and even hearing it aloud felt like stepping on a new rung of a ladder in the dark.

"I think you are out of place and time," Gandalf said mildly. "Such people tend to carry splinters of sight in their fingers. They prick at useful moments." He turned his head toward the caverns. "Can your new friend carry your work until we return?"

"Katrin," Jane said, the name fitting cleanly in her mouth now. "She can. She will not like letting me go."

"She has already decided to let you breathe where you must," Gandalf said, and there was a flicker of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "Go tell her. Then return with your mare. We cannot take every healer out of the Hornburg, but we can afford one stubborn rider who learns quickly."

Jane bowed without thinking about whether a woman from Dubai bows to wizards. It felt right. She turned and ran the corridor downward, her boots loud where the day was tired.

Katrin was exactly where Jane knew she would be, in the large chamber where the wounded had been moved to let the high hall breathe. She was scolding a soldier through a cup of broth with the kind of tender ferocity that makes men obey. When she saw Jane's face, she straightened and set the cup aside.

"How long," Katrin said. No greeting. No argument yet. Just the question.

"A few days," Jane said. "Gandalf asks for me." She made herself hold her friend's gaze. "He suspects I see some things before they arrive. He wants me close when words get dangerous."

Katrin's jaw worked once. Then she breathed out and nodded, the kind of reluctant yes that is actually love. She stepped forward and embraced Jane hard enough to bruise. It made Jane's throat burn.

"Then go," Katrin said into her shoulder. "Go and come back. I will keep this place stitched until you walk through the gate again. If you take too long, I will ride halfway to whatever tower you find and fetch you by your ear."

Jane laughed, and the laugh broke halfway through into something wetter. Katrin pushed her back to arm's length and surveyed her with brisk authority.

"Take the salve we made," she said, already rummaging in a basket. "The one with honey and thyme. And the roll of linen that does not fray. And this scarf, because the wind on that road will think you are a guest and try to climb your bones." She thrust the small hoard into Jane's hands, then, softer, "And take my luck. I do not need it. I have sense."

Jane folded the scarf between her fingers, the weave already warm from Katrin's hands. "I will bring you stories," she said. "And if I find a market with decent spices, I will bring you a noseful of something that makes you cry and then beg for more."

Katrin's grin flashed. "Bring me three. And bring yourself back."

They held each other one more moment. Then Jane pulled away before she could think of reasons to stay. The mare was saddled and ready in the upper yard. Most of the company had already formed up, riders of the Mark with spears and the long patience of men who can ride all day on bread and stubbornness. Aragorn stood with Legolas and Gimli not far from Gandalf and Théoden. The prince of Rohan had mounted already, pale but set, Éothain an arm's length away.

Gimli spotted Jane and brightened like a hearth sneaking up on a winter room. "Ah, the runaway healer. Come to keep a dwarf from bouncing off his saddle and into ignominy."

"You would scold the ground for getting in the way," Jane said, but she was already checking his girth, tugging the strap until he harrumphed and bore it, adjusting the stirrup leathers on the pony that had been found for him.

"I have been made to ride this creature with dignity," Gimli grumbled. "Yet it is a small barrel with ideas."

"Then you and it will get along," Jane said. "You are both barrels with ideas."

Legolas's mouth tilted. "If we are taking a census of ideas, I suggest we keep tally on parchment, lest the dwarf's pride exceed the weight limit of that saddle."

"Elf," Gimli said with relish, "your hair will make a fine rope if we need one to pull me out of a ditch. I will tie it to your tongue so it holds."

They grinned at each other like men who had made a game out of survival. The warmth of it settled Jane's nerves. She put her hand on her mare's neck and felt the old language of horse stout under skin: here, now, breathe.

Gandalf swung into Shadowfax's saddle as if he had been born there. He did not raise his staff. He only looked down the line of riders and then toward the gate, and the whole company moved, willing as a single body. The great doors opened. The morning spilled in cool and smelled of wet grass. The Hornburg's shadow fell away behind them.

They rode out through the Deeping-coomb in a long dull glitter of spearheads. The land bore last night's wounds like a person learning to breathe with a cracked rib. Burned stumps stood like cauterized teeth along the edges of trampled fields. Where the orcs had passed they had left a grammar of chaos: boot marks, broken fences, a turned soil that had not asked to be turned. The horses picked their way without complaint. The men did not speak much. When they did, it was in pieces.

Theodred kept a steady pace just behind Théoden's right hand. He looked like a man who had been assembled by sheer force of will and bound with thread that might hold or might not. Once he turned to look down the line and his gaze caught on Jane. It stuck there one heartbeat too long and then moved on as if nothing had happened. Her skin felt singed where it had touched his.

Aragorn rode near Gandalf for a while and then fell back, then moved forward again. Leadership breathed in him like a second set of lungs. As the morning lengthened into something flatter and more tired, Jane's mind began its old habit of wandering in the space between hooves and breath. She had not allowed herself much reflection since she had fallen into this story. Work had filled the cracks with paste. But now the rhythm of riding and the repetition of landscape loosened something.

It came in jagged flashes. A hotel hallway in Dubai at two in the morning, air conditioning humming, her heels in her hand because she had decided to be kind to herself on the walk to the elevator. The quick friendliness of a shawarma stand at midnight, heat wrapping her face and spices hitting her behind the eyes. The impossible clean of a hot shower after a week in the desert, water marching down her back until the world reassembled itself. The neon ribbon of Sheikh Zayed Road, heavy with traffic and promise. A gallop on a New Zealand beach that had seen her grin so hard her cheeks hurt. A German winter with a horse's breath printing clouds in a cold that softened once you learned how to move inside it.

Her chest tightened until she had to open her mouth to draw air. The mountains here were old and stern. They did not care about shawarma or polished lobbies or the way a modern city could make a person feel like a bead on a bright string. She missed all of it in a pain that felt absurd and true. Tears pricked the back of her nose. She was ashamed for a moment, because what did hot water matter next to men who had died last night. Then she made herself stop being ashamed. Longing was not betrayal. It was proof that she had come from somewhere real.

Gimli noticed her quiet. "Tell me a cheerful lie," he said, not unkind. "Tell me there is ale at Isengard and that it is not brewed by orcs."

"There might be something better than ale," Jane said, thinking of two small hobbits with appetites wider than their waists. It made her smile more than was reasonable. "And if there is not, I will tell you a story about a food so good it makes men weep and then stand in line for more."

Gimli squinted at her, interested in spite of himself. "A food that makes a man confess his sins and pay for the privilege. Now that is a trade I understand."

"You will taste it one day," Jane said. "When there is peace and time for patience."

"Peace," Gimli rumbled. "I will hold you to that word."

Near midday Gandalf called a brief halt in a fold of land where a stream ran clear. Men dismounted and let horses drink. Legolas moved along the bank and seemed to drink the light with his skin. Jane knelt to scoop water into her mouth and splashed her face again and again until the shock of cold cut through the ache in her head.

Gandalf appeared beside her the way cats appear on windowsills, without disturbing the air between steps. He sat on a flat rock and watched the stream behave as if streams could be coaxed into confession.

"You spoke words to Haldir that you should not have known," he said after a while. "And you saw the shape of a blast in a place men do not look."

Jane kept her eyes on the water. "I read things that did not belong to this world. At home. I watched stories told by people who had only ever met these names on paper. It seems that some of those stories were true enough to be dangerous."

"Names carry farther than people think," Gandalf said. "Stories are a sort of weather. They move over mountains and under doors. Sometimes they rise from what is real. Sometimes they fall back down and make it more real." He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Do you intend to change what you know you can change."

She thought of Haldir, of the way his weight settled in her arms, of the rain washing his temple clean. She thought of the culvert and the men shoving sandbags into a mouth that had wanted to be a disaster. She thought of Theodred's hand on her shoulder in the roar of ladders, of the taste of a kiss stolen when steel was singing in the air. "I intend to keep people breathing. If that changes a story, so be it."

"Good," Gandalf said, and there was no judgment in it, only a map. "Then you are my ally and also a person I must watch like a fire in a dry season. You will save some and cannot save all. That truth is a stern companion. It will walk beside you whether you like it or not." He tipped his head. "When we reach Isengard, keep your feet under you. Saruman's voice drags the ground out from under men's thoughts. Listen with your whole body and not only with your ears. Yank your mind back by its collar if you feel it leaning."

Jane nodded, gooseflesh lifting along her arms at the calm way he said it. "I will stand where you can see me."

"Do," he said. "Shadowfax does not care if you fall, but I would rather not try to catch you and argue with him at the same time."

She laughed, tension easing. Shadowfax tossed his head as if he had understood every word and found all of them beneath him. They mounted again and rode on.

Afternoon brought the smell of smoke long before any plume could be seen. The land grew rougher, hills lifting and falling under the horses like old breath. The light had the odd flat quality of days after a storm. Broken trees began to show, not in twos and threes but in whole pieces of woodlands wrenched apart. The tracks of heavy machines scarred the ground. Jane's stomach turned in the same way it had when she had watched construction sites eat their way into empty lots that had once held a child's bicycle and a stray cat.

At last they climbed a ridge and the world broke open beneath them into a shape that was both familiar and wrong. Isengard lay in a wide ring, but the ring was filled with water. The valley had become a cold lake where ragged lengths of machinery poked through like ribs. The tower of Orthanc rose black and shining from the flood, stubborn against the weather and the work of trees. And trees there were, not quiet, not passive. They stood in the water like old kings waking up, their bark soaked, their leaves hung with clots of last night's storm.

Gimli swore, then swore again because one oath was not enough. Legolas's face changed in small ways that meant much. He took a breath like a singer finding the pitch before a long note. Aragorn laughed once, not in mockery but in relief so large it startled everyone near him.

Gandalf smiled as if the day had finally remembered its duties. "He has been busy," he said to no one in particular, and then he lifted his voice. "Ride."

The gate of Isengard hung crooked, smashed. They passed into the ring and saw the work up close. Scorched earth had been drowned. Smoke curled from broken vents and fled into the air with a smell like tar giving up. The water lifted little wrecks and let them clink together like dirty wind chimes. The ground made the sound of a giant swallowing.

On a stone broken from the ring wall, two small figures sat with their legs dangling, sharing a loaf between them and looking for all the world like boys on a bridge at a summer river. They wore coats cut to a pattern that did not belong in Rohan. Their faces lit when they saw the riders, brighter than the pale flag of Orthanc had ever been.

"Merry," Jane whispered, and then "Pippin," because some names carry across worlds like a hand across a table.

Aragorn called out and laughed at the same time. Legolas smiled in a way that used his whole face. Gimli applauded with his gloves. The hobbits stood and began talking both at once about bread and salted pork and the relative merits of smoking on ruined walls. Gandalf shook his head like a man forgiving a pair of nephews who had been scolded by every aunt in the village and had only learned how to be more charming.

Jane could not stop smiling. It hurt the place in her that had been clenched since she arrived. She slid down from her mare and stood by the water and breathed it all in. She had once sat in a dark room and watched these two on a screen with a heart that had needed something gentle. Now they were here and scolding Gimli about manners while he pretended to be offended. The world had the indecency to be funny again, in the middle of wreckage.

An old sound moved through the drowned ring then, the groan of wood remembering itself. Jane turned and saw him coming, slow and steady, every step a negotiation between roots and memory. Treebeard looked like a tree shaped by the thought of an old shepherd and a river. Moss hung from his beard. His eyes were like wells with something looking back.

"Hoo," Treebeard said. It was nearly a word and nearly weather. "A crowd at my pool." His gaze moved over the riders, weighed them, then paused on Jane.

"A strange sapling," he said, not unkind. "Far from her grove."

Jane put her hand to her chest because she had no idea what gesture might be safe before an Ent. "Far," she agreed. "But grateful to have shade again."

"Shade is earned," Treebeard said. "You brought water to a fire last night. We remember the smell of good work."

Gandalf stepped forward and traded a sound with Treebeard that did not need translation in the way music does not. He asked and Treebeard answered without haste. Saruman was sealed in his tower. The waters would stand a while and then go where they always went. The young hobbits had eaten their fill and given the Ents something new to laugh at. The list went on like a bill of sale for a world where balance had finally started to return to the ledger.

They made camp along the ring wall where the broken stones made good windbreaks. Men unsaddled and rubbed down horses. Merry and Pippin were passed from hand to hand like news. Gimli was given a long description of salted pork that made him threaten to adopt a hobbit and take him to the Glittering Caves to be fattened. Legolas taught a group of very tired men how to set a line for drying cloaks so they would not tumble into the lake. Théoden sat long with Éomer and with Theodred, their heads bent, voices low. Gandalf looked like a man who had found a comfortable rock and managed to sit on it without forgetting the rock was still a rock.

Jane walked by the water until she found a place where a willow had leaned into the flood and stayed there in stubborn comfort. She stood with her arms folded and let the evening wind figure out a path through her hair. Theodred came to her quietly. He had changed his tunic, which meant someone had insisted he behave like a person who bleeds and then stops. He looked better. He still looked like a man who had learned how to sit carefully because sitting sometimes hurts more than standing.

"We left the Hornburg without asking the blessing of the women who carried us through the night," he said.

"Éowyn blessed you with her eyes," Jane said. "Katrin blessed me by letting me go."

He smiled, small and true. They stood side by side. The water lapped at the ruined stones with the peace of a job almost done.

"It is awkward," he said at last, and relief curled in her ribs because he had said the first hard thing out loud.

"It is," she answered. "I want fifteen minutes in a room that is clean and no one bleeding through their clothes. I want a door I can close and a lock that means no one will ask me to save them for the length of a song. I want a shower so hot it turns my skin red. I want food wrapped in paper that drips down my wrist. And I want you there. Not for talking." She laughed once, soft. "For breathing."

He turned his head toward her and the look he gave her was almost a touch. "You make war sound like a pilgrimage to common mercies. I will build you a room with a lock. I will ask Éowyn what it should have inside, because she knows how to make spaces that feed strength. Then I will stand outside it like a guard and let you be selfish for an hour without feeling ashamed."

The ache in her chest went bright. "We will still have terrible timing when I open the door."

"Yes," he said. "We will. And we will hold our timing like a hot stone and toss it back and forth until it cools enough to carry."

He reached, slow enough to let her step back if she wanted to. She did not. His fingers found the inside of her wrist and rested there where the pulse announces its news. She felt the weight of his hand and the measure of his restraint. They stood in that simple intimacy until the air cooled further and the sound of hobbits arguing about beer drifted down the broken wall.

"Rest," he said at last. "For once, sleep on a night when no one is trying to climb a ladder into your nightmares."

"You too," she said.

He lifted her hand and touched it to his mouth, not a kiss, something older. Then he let it go and left before either of them could make the moment more than it could bear.

Back at the cook fires, Merry pressed a cup into her hand that smelled like something the hobbits had coaxed from the wreckage and some surprisingly clean barrels. It was not ale and it was not tea. It was warm and it told the truth that comes at the end of a long day. Pippin begged her for a story about horses and puddles. Gimli demanded to know what a shawarma was since she had spoken the word under her breath and he had a hunter's ear for food.

"Meat cut thin," she said, mocking seriousness, "spiced and roasted and wrapped with vegetables in hot bread, with a sauce that convinces even honest men to lie about whether they want more. It is served at midnight to the broken-hearted and at noon to the lucky. It is eaten standing in alleys while taxis honk, and it heals things broth cannot reach."

Gimli made a solemn sound. "I will slay ten orcs for a taste."

"You have already paid in full," she said. "When there is time, I will find a way to make something that remembers the idea of it."

Legolas leaned in, curious despite himself. "You carry a great many places inside you."

"I do," Jane said. "Sometimes they all wake up at once and argue."

He looked toward the black tower rising from the lake. "Tomorrow another voice will try to make a new place inside your head. Do not let it rearrange your furniture."

"That is the second warning today about Saruman's voice," she said. "I am listening."

Night gathered itself slowly around Isengard. The men's laughter settled into the fire, low and satisfied. The hobbits fell asleep as if falling happened to them often and never hurt. The horses trimmed the wet grass along the ring wall as politely as dinner companions. Gandalf came to the edge of the camp, his staff making a shadow on the stones. He did not call her name. He only waited until she felt his attention and looked up.

"Tomorrow," he said, "we will ask an old friend to stop lying to himself. It seldom works. Sometimes one syllable slides under the armor. Be ready to hold that syllable still until the man in the armor has to look at it."

"What do you need me to do," Jane asked.

"Stand where your eyes can meet mine," Gandalf said. "When his words pull men toward him, I will anchor one side and you will hold the other. You will remind yourself what is real. You will not repeat his phrases in your head. Repeat your friend's name instead. Repeat the taste of a food you love. Repeat the scent of a horse's skin where it is warm behind the jaw. He will try to make the world thin. Keep yours thick."

Jane swallowed. "I can do that."

He nodded. "Also, sleep." His mouth curved. "You are of very little use when your mind wanders off to think about hot showers."

She laughed, startled. "Did you just read me."

"I am old enough to recognize the expression a face makes when it is thinking about water and redemption," he said. "Go. Dream of steam. It will make you kinder to men who have to shout in the morning."

She curled her cloak close and lay down with her back to the warm side of a stone that had held sun between its veins all afternoon. The sky above Orthanc was a perfect black with stars like thrown salt. She thought of Katrin with a scarf around her throat and her sleeves shoved up to her elbows, of Éowyn not drinking from the cup in her hand but keeping the shape of comfort present anyway, of Gimli's loud love and Legolas's soft jokes, of Merry and Pippin tasting the world as if the world was a market and they had coins hidden in their socks.

She allowed herself one long thought about a shower so hot it would make her laugh. She let herself imagine the first mouthful of meat and bread and spice, standing outside a neon doorway while a taxi complained. She let the ache of homesickness spread and then settle. It did not cancel love for this place. It layered it. She slept.

Morning rose out of the lake in thin mist. The company gathered before Orthanc as the light climbed the tower one skin at a time. Saruman's balcony glinted. Voices went quiet in the way that means someone important is about to say a thing he believes will work. Gandalf stood straight and still, staff grounded. Théoden breathed in and out and held his crown like a memory that was trying to be a promise. Theodred sat his horse as if the saddle had grown there. Aragorn's face was the kind that does not tell enemies very much and tells friends enough. Legolas watched the water. Gimli adjusted his axe with a satisfaction that said he would prefer problems that fit in one hand.

Jane took her place where Gandalf could find her. She closed her eyes for one breath and saw Katrin's grin, heard Gimli's oath, smelled a horse's skin where it is warm behind the jaw. When she opened them again, the door of the tower creaked like a confession.

Saruman came into view, white robes made bright by the morning. His voice went down into the crowd and tried to smooth the world into something soft and flat. Jane felt it touch the edges of her mind and slide along the grain. She set her feet and held to her thick world. She watched Gandalf like a point of land in a wide river. When the words tugged, she pulled back by looking at Theodred's hands on the reins, at a nick on the leather where his thumb rested, at the small unimportant details that belong to real things.

The chapter of talking would be long. The work would be delicate. The day would not be finished when voices ended. But she was there, and she was steady, and a city inside her had decided to keep its lights on.

Chapter Text

Morning climbed Orthanc one skin of light at a time. The flooded ring lay still as hammered metal, only the smallest ripples moving where breeze found its way across drowned yards and broken rails. Riders gathered in a half circle, faces upturned to the black balcony. Hooves shifted, leather creaked, a cough here and there, the usual sounds of men in formation pulled tight as a bowstring.

Jane stood where Gandalf could see her. She lifted her chin and let the cold find the back of her neck. She had his instructions tucked inside her ribs like a charm. Keep your world thick. Hold to real things. When the voice drags, lean into what you know.

The door above swung inward. Saruman stepped onto the height, white robes bright against the stone. His presence thinned the air. When he spoke, the sound slid down the tower and entered the company like a thread seeking a seam.

The words were soft at first. Reasonable. He had been wronged. He had been forced to harsh measures. He could still be useful. He could counsel the king. He would gladly provide terms if men of goodwill would listen. The voice did not ask or demand, it reassured until doubt began to feel like wisdom.

Jane felt the pull. It stroked the mind the way a hand strokes the grain of wood, gently, endlessly, until the surface seems inevitable. She dug her nails into her palm. Katrin's scarf lay warm at her throat. She concentrated on small real things. The scrape on her knuckles from a saddle buckle. The faint smell of horse behind the jaw, warm and clean. The taste of last night's ash at the back of her tongue. Theodred's hands on his reins, calloused where leather had rubbed them for years, a nick along the edge from a blade caught on a bad day. She fixed on that nick and pulled herself back by inches.

Around her the riders shifted. Théoden's jaw hardened and loosened and hardened again. Aragorn sat his horse with stillness that looked like a choice won again and again. Legolas watched without blinking. Gimli muttered something that sounded like an oath sharpened into a prayer.

Saruman's tone bent toward contempt. He told old stories about young mistakes and made them fit men who had not made those mistakes. He dangled hope and then named it foolish. He called Gandalf a meddler, Théoden a puppet, Éomer a blunt instrument. He spoke of Rohan's future with a voice like a blade drawn very slowly.

Gandalf waited. It was astonishing to watch patience operate as a weapon. He let the voice spend itself against such stillness that the company seemed to lean toward him without moving. At last he spoke, quiet and clear. He unmade Saruman's phrases with a few plain words and no adornment. There was no thunder. There was only truth refusing to move.

The shift was small at first. Jane felt it before she heard it. The air stopped dragging. The seams closed. Men breathed without thinking. Gandalf lifted his staff and pointed toward the balcony, not in threat, only in recognition. He told the former head of his order to come down. He said the words as if late oaths could still be honored if a man chose to unclench his hands.

Saruman laughed. The sound ran over the water and made the lake shiver. He spoke of power. He spoke of foresight. He spoke of ownership, of lands and men and voices. He did not come down.

Gandalf raised his staff one inch higher. The wood glowed as if old sunlight had decided to pour into it at once. A crack ran down the day like ice breaking on a river. Saruman's staff snapped. The shard of light that had lived in it went out without smoke.

A cry spilled from the tower. Gríma Wormtongue stumbled onto the balcony behind his master, pale and shaking. Panic made fools of his hands. He dropped something heavy. It struck stone, rolled, flashed with a buried fire, and came to a stop near Pippin, who sat on a broken rock trying very hard to look like a taller person. The hobbit stared at the dark sphere with the kind of curiosity boys keep even when the world asks them to be men. Gandalf moved faster than his age should have allowed. He wrapped the thing in a cloth and tucked it away as if it had grown teeth. Pippin attempted innocence and nearly pulled it off.

The confrontation ended without a victory shout. There was relief, and there was sorrow, and there was the taste of old friendships burned to ash. Gandalf turned his horse and rode away from the ring. The company exhaled as one body. Orthanc glinted in the sun as if nothing had happened at all.

Jane found her legs shaking only when she tried to dismount. Her knee did not want to remember how to bend. Theodred was at her side before she could ask. He set a hand at her waist to steady her. His touch was warm through cloth. She slid to the ground and only then realized how close they were.

"You went pale," he said, voice too calm.

"I am still here," she answered, and was grateful for how steady it sounded.

His hand stayed where it was half a heartbeat longer than necessary. Then he let go and stepped back. The controlled distance left her more exposed than the closeness had.

They did not speak of it, not yet. The company made camp inside the broken ring where stones lay like fallen teeth and green water lapped with domestic patience at the work of last night's flood. Merry and Pippin were passed from hand to hand like good news. Gimli demanded salted pork as if the lack were a personal insult. Legolas found an airy place on the wall and let a thin line of music stitch the afternoon.

Jane moved between cook fires in that useful way she had learned here, belonging through work. She mended a stirrup leather with thread that should have gone to clothing and would now live under a saddle forever. She trimmed a rough hoof where a nail had gone crooked. She found a boy asleep with a ladle in his fist and tucked a blanket over his knees.

When the light began to thin, she carried a bucket to the far side of camp where the horses drank. The mare breathed into her palm, that old greeting that takes its time and makes kings of ordinary people. Jane rested her forehead against the soft place behind the jaw. She thought of hot showers and elevators and taxis complaining while she ate in an alley at midnight. The homesickness hurt, but it had softened into something she could carry.

Footsteps found her. Theodred came out of the late light like a piece of it had decided to walk. He had splashed water on his face. The cut along his cheek had scabbed into a comma at the end of a sentence he had not finished writing.

"You walked away again," he said.

"I walked to the horses," she replied. "Gimli says if the day is too big, talk to stone. I prefer hooves."

He huffed a laugh, then sobered. "During the voice," he said, and left it there.

"I held," she said. "Barely."

He took one step closer. It felt like a decision that could not be undone. "I watched you. If you had swayed, I would have put my hand on your shoulder and made you angry enough to come back."

"That is an unorthodox rescue."

"It suits us," he said, and made it sound like affection.

Silence settled. It felt alive, like a rope humming with weight. He reached for her mare's bridle to busy his hands and found nothing he could correct. For an instant he looked almost foolish and it ruined her again. He closed the last space and set his hand on the back of her neck. It was not force. It was a claim made with trembling restraint. He tipped his forehead to hers and breathed there for a moment, letting the act be more intimate than a kiss.

"Not here," he said at last, teeth on the words. "I will not give them cause to talk. I will not make you a rumor. But I am done pretending I do not want you."

Her mouth went dry. "Then stop pretending," she whispered. "Quietly."

He laughed once without sound. Then he did the boldest thing he had done all day. He lowered his head and kissed her, not the desperate crash at the Hornburg, not the fierce claim by the stream, but a careful, lingering kiss that fit into the edges of dusk without breaking the camp's fragile privacy. It was somehow worse, because it promised that slow would not keep them safe.

They parted because he made it so. He stepped back one pace, then another, jaw tight. She could see him setting each brick back in place, as if he could rebuild the wall for an hour and let it crumble later in some safer corner of the road.

"Sleep," he said. "I will take second watch. If you wander out of sight I will throw you in the lake."

"If you throw me in the lake I will pull you with me," she said. "The water would not forgive the lack of company."

He let the small smile win. Then he was gone, a prince again, hands busy with orders.

Camp settled. Men slept uneasy and then easier. The ruined ring turned from green to black and kept its own counsel. Jane doused the last cook fire near her bedroll and lay on her side, watching embers go to stars.

Some time after midnight a small sound pulled her from a thin doze. A soft scuff, a muffled intake of breath. She opened her eyes to the dark and saw a shape moving at the edge of Gandalf's pallet. Pippin, wrapped in guilt as plainly as in his cloak, was crouched beside the bundle that held Saruman's stone. He looked around with the slowness of boys who know they are wrong and choose it anyway. He lifted the cloth, hands trembling, and revealed the sphere.

Jane sat up. "Pippin," she whispered.

He startled, nearly dropped it, then cradled it to his chest like a stolen loaf. "I only want to see," he breathed, eyes fixed on the dark glass. "Just a look."

She rose and crossed the distance, heart beating hard. "Put it down. Please."

He shook his head, the stubborn of a child and a Took mixed into something impossible to stop. The palantír's surface was night, not the night around them, a deeper one, a depth that made the camp seem thin. Light swam inside it like a fish that had learned to move without water. Pippin touched it with one palm, then both hands, unable to help himself.

The pull hit him like a fist. He arched, mouth open, eyes white. Instinct moved Jane before thought could advise. She grabbed his wrists, she tried to pry his fingers free, her own hand slipped on the glass and for a heartbeat her fingertips pressed to the stone.

The world vanished.

There was no camp and no cold and no breath to speak of. Fire lived on every horizon. A great wind shoved the ash into spirals that tried to be clouds and failed. Beneath her feet there was no ground, only a sense of height so absolute it felt like falling while standing still. The dark swelled and narrowed like the pupil of a beast. The Eye filled the space in front of her. It was not a lantern or a symbol. It was alive. The lidless fire stared at her with a hunger that recognized prey.

It saw her.

Not as an elf, not as a woman of the Mark, not as any category it knew how to name. There was a small hesitation, like a hunter catching an unfamiliar scent.

Stranger, the voice said. It did not speak in words. It pressed meaning into her mind until meaning made sound. You are not of this season.

She could not speak at first. She was aware that she still held Pippin. Somewhere very far away, she heard his thin cry. The Eye focused, and the pressure sharpened into questions.

Where. Who holds you. What road do you serve.

Jane tried to pull away and had nowhere to go. She dragged a city between them in her mind, a city of glass and noise and taxis, neon ribboned along a highway under desert stars, the taste of spiced meat at midnight, water falling hot from a high showerhead onto sore shoulders. It was ridiculous and true. She held it like a shield. The Eye narrowed in a way that was not narrowing at all, only a new kind of focus.

Your mind is a place I have not scorched, the voice said. Your words are wrong for this tongue. Yet you know the names of things that will break. Tell me the name that hides in the west. Tell me the hand that carries the small weight.

She felt the question push at her thoughts, looking for a slip in the surface. She thought of Frodo by a different name, of a hill under a different sky, of a ring like a coin that is always too heavy. She did not let the names rise. She repeated Katrin, she repeated the smell of horses, she repeated Theodred and the feel of his mouth, she repeated shawarma because it made no sense here and therefore might be safe.

The Eye tilted. The heat ran over her like a hot wind.

You have seen me before, it pressed. You have stood and watched and eaten sugared corn and laughed and clapped and still you came here where I can burn you for the honesty of it.

She felt sick. Her secrets did not need to be noble. They only needed to be hers. She clung to them and let the shame pass through like smoke.

Tell me, the Eye insisted. I will find the ring-bearer, and I will find you. Your taste is wrong and I will not forget it.

A pressure rose behind the pressure, different in shape and temperature. A hand yanked hard at the back of her mind like a rider hauling a horse from a cliff edge. The fire flared, the dark rolled, the Eye widened. She fell.

She was on her knees on the cold ground, hands clamped on Pippin's wrists. He sagged against her with a cry that sounded ripped from a small throat. Gandalf was there in a heartbeat, staff in one hand, the other tearing the cloth back over the palantír and wrapping it as if wrapping could stop a heart. He spoke to Pippin and to Jane both, low and steady, the kind of voice that threads panic and ties it into something that will hold.

"It has you," Jane gasped, and did not know if she meant the hobbit or the stone or the fear that still clung like cobwebs.

"Not any longer," Gandalf said. His eyes flicked to her face and did not hide the concern. "Did it see you."

"Yes," she said. The word cost air. "It knows I am wrong. It asked for names. It will look."

Gandalf pressed his palm to Pippin's forehead, then cupped the boy's cheek, then looked at Jane again. "Breathe. You are back. You are both whole."

The camp had risen around them, men with blades half drawn, eyes wide with the weakness of being woken to danger you cannot stab. Theodred pushed through the circle like a man parting reeds, dropped to a crouch, and set both his hands on Jane's shoulders. His touch shook. He mastered it and did not let go.

"What happened," he demanded.

"Curiosity," Gandalf said without heat. "That is all it ever takes. And a hand that tried to help at the wrong breath." He inclined his head to Jane in acknowledgment rather than blame. To Pippin, gentler, "Fool of a Took, and bravo for surviving the lesson."

Pippin shuddered and cried once like a child and then bit it back like a small man trying to be taller. Jane drew him in and held him the way she would have held a lost thing that finally stopped being lost. Theodred's grip steadied her. Gandalf bundled the stone and moved it far from reach, tucking it under his own cloak as if proximity could be a guard.

The company slowly uncoiled. Men returned to blankets, some because they trusted the wizard, some because exhaustion folded their arguments without asking permission. Theodred did not move his hands from Jane's shoulders until her breath had lengthened. When he finally did, he rose and lifted her by the elbows as if she were something precious that might break if he used the wrong angle.

"Are you hurt," he said, and the calmness in his voice was the sort men use when they are standing in a burning house and have decided to behave until the smoke changes its mind.

"No," she said. "It saw me."

He closed his eyes once. His jaw flexed. "Then it hunts you now as well as the ring," he said, so quietly only the ground could have heard. He opened his eyes and added, in a voice for sharing, "You will not leave my sight without telling me. Not until Gandalf says it is wise to pretend we are safe again."

Gandalf heard the last line and gave a small nod that was permission and warning. "At first light we ride," he said to them all. "The stone will travel with me. The hobbit will ride with me. The lady will ride where I can see her. The Eye has new scent."

The rest of the night lasted three years and also fifteen minutes. Jane lay back down and stared at the dark until it softened into shapes she could name, then dreamed of an elevator opening onto a field of ash and stepping back because she remembered she had not brought her keycard. Dawn felt like a reprieve that had been argued for and won.

They left the flooded ring soon after sunrise and turned toward Edoras. The land lifted and fell under the horses like breathing. The wind freshened, clean after the scorched taste of Isengard. Men spoke more easily. Merry and Pippin rode together and regained enough spirit to argue about pipeweed. Gandalf kept the wrapped thing tucked to his side and looked at Pippin often as if reassurance were a rope he could hold from horse to horse. He looked at Jane as well, and each time she met his gaze she repeated small things in her mind that had no place in Barad-dûr. Coffee. Shawarma. The smell of horse where the jaw meets the neck. Katrin's voice telling her to drink or fall over.

They camped once along the way in a hollow where grass had escaped trampling. Theodred sought her with a bandage and the jar of honey salve Katrin had thrust into her hands. He sat across from her and reached for her palm. He did not ask permission. He turned her hand and examined the raw scrape across the heel where a halter rope had burned her. His fingers were careful. His mouth tightened as if the injury had happened to him.

"This will sting," he said.

"It already does," she answered.

He worked the salve in slow as if the small hurt required reverence. He wrapped the linen with the neatness of a rider who had learned to tie things right the first time. She watched his face rather than his hands because she did not trust her breath otherwise. When he finished, he kept her palm one heartbeat longer than necessary and released it with reluctance he did not hide.

"Thank you," she said.

"Do not make me do that in a hall," he replied. "There are men who will read meaning into the way a prince carries a woman's hand."

"They would not be wrong."

"I will not give them that satisfaction," he said, then added, lower, "I will give it to myself later."

Honesty moved through her like heat. "I want you," she said, because not saying it had begun to feel like a lie that weighed more each day.

He drew a breath through his teeth and looked away. When he faced her again, his eyes had gone warm and dangerous. "I want you. I have not wanted like this before."

Night grew cold around their small fire. They let the quiet do the rest of the talking. When he rose to take his watch, he bent and pressed his mouth to her hair. It was brief and unfeigned. She closed her eyes and stored it.

They came to Edoras under a sky the color of wheat. The wind carried the smell of the sea though the sea was far away. The grasslands lifted in long slopes toward the Golden Hall. From the plain the hall looked as it always had, roof shining, carved beams catching light, the banner of the horse streaming.

Inside, the world changed shape. Politics held the air the way smoke holds a ceiling. Courtiers bowed. Wives and daughters of the Mark looked from under their lashes. Men took the measure of new faces with old habits. Jane had thought herself braced for it. She was wrong. The need to be proper found its grip fast.

Théoden entered to cheers that were not loud but honest. Éowyn stood behind his right shoulder like a line of verse made into a person. She had washed and braided her hair, but there was no polish in her gaze. She saw everything worth seeing. When her eyes found Jane across the crowded space, there was no jealousy. There was a small nod that said I remember, and there was a kindness that felt like a hand at the spine.

Theodred moved through the hall like water moves through a riverbed that fits it. Men bowed to him. Women looked and then looked away. He spoke the formal words, he did the required smile. He did not look at Jane. It was a discipline that skimmed close to cruelty, and the cruelty taught her patience faster than a lecture could have.

Later in the afternoon, when noise had lowered and the feast had begun its slow climb from hunger to contentment, a boy tugged Jane's sleeve. His hair had been stubborn about the comb. His hands were the clean of a child scrubbed by someone thorough. He said that the prince asked if she would step into the side passage where the air was cooler.

She followed the narrow hall behind the dais to a balcony that looked east. The wind was a ribbon here, cooler, more honest. Theodred stood in the shadow between two carved posts. He kept his hands behind his back like a soldier trapped between parade and dismissal.

"Thank you for not looking at me," she said, because if she did not name it she would begin to gnaw on it.

"I wanted to," he answered. "When I look, I forget there are eyes. They do not deserve our private things."

The words put warmth in her skin that winter could not have chased. He stepped into late light. He was still beautiful in a way that made denial foolish. He did not touch her. He did not reach. He looked. The looking unspooled restraint.

"Tell me something unimportant," he said. "Not war. Not duty. Something a report would not teach."

"I sleep on the left side of the bed," she said. "Because curtains, when there are curtains, leave a line of light along the right. If there is no bed, I fold my cloak under my hip and pretend linen. I like cold grapes. I hate the part of morning before coffee because it is unfair to ask a person to exist without a bargain."

He laughed, a quiet sound that cleaned the air. "You are a hedge of thorns against the world's demands."

"Your turn," she said.

"When I was a boy, I kept a foal's first tooth in a leather pouch," he told her. "I wore it under my shirt in winter and tucked it into my collar in summer until Éomer told me I would catch my death from being sentimental. I still have it. It is in a box under a box in a chest, because I learned where to hide the things men tell you to outgrow."

They did not plan the kiss that followed. It stood in the air like fruit on a low branch, inevitable and sweet. He stepped into her, one hand at her waist, the other at her jaw, and kissed her until the hall behind them lost its edges. It was slow at first, then not, then slow again, as if both of them wanted to memorize and burn at the same time.

When they parted, the wind brought the smell of the grasslands over the railing. He rested his forehead against hers and breathed, eyes closed. His voice came out rough.

"If I take one step more, I will not stop."

"We are in a hall," she said. "The world has ears."

"Then hear this," he said, drawing back enough to see her clearly. "I will not court you in the open. I refuse to make you a thing for men's mouths. But I will not pretend that I am not already undone. If we both live to see a day when timing is not a blade, I will stand in the middle of a market and say your name like an oath."

Her heart did something reckless against bone. "Then you had better live."

He smiled that small smile that had ruined her twice over. "You command too easily."

"You obey too willingly."

He stepped away first. Mercy. They walked back into the hall separate, ordinary. It felt like cheating fate.

The feast lasted long enough to remind the body that it was human. Men sang in pockets. Gimli told a story he had already told and made it funnier by insisting he had never said such a thing in his life. Legolas leaned in a doorway and spoke with Éowyn in tones that made everyone else want to borrow their posture. Merry drank something stronger than he intended and confessed to Pippin that salted pork would haunt his dreams.

Jane did her small work. She refilled a cup for a woman whose hands shook. She found an old man a seat near the fire. She fetched a second ladle of stew for a boy who tried to lie about not being hungry. People began to know her face. Belonging took shape at the edges.

When the hour had gone late enough to soften the harsh corners, Gandalf found her in the shadow of a pillar. He studied her in that measuring way, as if weighing not only what he saw but the space around it.

"Tomorrow the talk turns to paths and promises," he said. "Sleep while you can. The next road will not have as many fires."

"Do you need me in the council," she asked.

"I need you awake," he said. "On whichever side of the door that requires." He hesitated, then added in a voice only she would hear, "It felt you. It will reach again if given the road. When your mind wanders, bring it home by the scruff. Names, smells, small mercies, anything thick enough to stand on."

She nodded. "I will keep my world heavy."

"Good," he said, and his eyes warmed. "Heavy worlds sink hooks deep. Harder to drag."

Outside, the wind had cleared the sky to velvet. The city below the hall made the comfortable sounds of animals turned in and fires convincing ash to remember heat. She looked toward the east and thought of Katrin with a scarf around her throat and her sleeves shoved up, telling a boy to swallow his broth or she would feed it to him with authority. The ache of missing her friend was clean. It fit beside the others without pushing them out.

In the small chamber offered as a bed for strangers, she found a basin with water that still remembered warmth. She washed her face and hands twice. She sat on the bed and laughed quietly at the idea that a mattress could feel like grace. She lay down and told herself a story of hot showers and street food and rooftops at midnight. Then she changed the ending because she could. She placed a man in that room with her, not for speech, simply for breath. She stood in a market at noon and listened to him say her name as if the syllables were a place to live.

Sleep took her in the middle of his first laugh.

In the morning, a page would come. The talk would begin. The world would make its next set of demands. For the length of the night, stone held heat, and her body remembered that there is a kind of safety that does not contradict courage. The prince of Rohan slept under the same roof. His restraint had not made him colder. It had made him clear.

The walls were crumbling. Not loudly. Not foolishly. Stone by stone, in the exact places that allow a house to remain standing while the door opens wider.

And under it all, something new sharpened the air. The Eye had seen her. The hunt had widened. Hope did not retreat. It put its back to hers and watched the road.

Chapter Text

Edoras stood bright under the sun, though the light felt cautious, like the first clear day after a storm. Wind climbed the long stair and slipped under the eaves of Meduseld, carrying the smells of straw and woodsmoke and horse. Inside, the Golden Hall warmed tired bodies and steadied hands that had slept with fingers hooked around sword hilts.

Jane paused just inside the great doors where a pane of light lay across the rushes. She had washed in a basin that still remembered heat and braided her hair with steadier hands than yesterday. Smoke and blood had been scrubbed from her clothes. The work left her weary but cleaner in spirit, the way a long shower in another life once did. She took the small mercy and kept moving.

The hall moved in waves. Boys ran messages with the swagger of the barely trusted. Women poured ale, counted loaves, and set aside bowls with a precision that looked a lot like command. Éowyn crossed the floor with that quiet authority that slipped into people without asking. A touch to a forearm. A few words at the right time. Pippin kept close to Gandalf, still pale from the palantír, brave in the way that does not announce itself. Gimli had claimed a carved pillar and already gathered men like dogs gather around a cookfire. Laughter followed him as if it had nowhere better to go.

The edges of victory and loss still cut. Helm's Deep had been won, but not without a price. There were empty places at the long benches. There were boots lined by doorways that would not be worn again. The pile of broken shields had been cleared from the steps, but the marks were still there in the wood if you knew how to look. In the morning a dozen riders had gone to carry tidings to families along the Westfold. By noon, wagons had begun to arrive with the slow solemnity of grief, each covered shape a story that would never be told by its owner.

Jane helped where she could. She moved from table to pallet to bench, checking bandages and lifting cups to lips too tired to hold them. She kept her voice level and her hands warm. In the corner, an old woman hummed the same four notes over and over while she stitched a torn cloak, and the sound set a rhythm to the work.

By midmorning the horns called for the rite in the high field. The city poured out to the green where mounds were raised in tidy lines, each with a spear planted and a small token tied to it. Rohan did not weep quietly. It sang softly and let the voices be the tears. They were not beautiful voices. They were farmer voices, rider voices, and that made them better. Jane stood with Katrin among the women and added her alto to the low braid of sound as it wound around the wind.

She did not know all the words. She knew enough. She had learned the cadence of their laments in the caves and the cadence was what mattered. When the name of Háma was spoken, a hush moved through the crowd. Jane remembered the guard who had first challenged her when she stumbled into the Golden Hall scratched and disoriented. She remembered his politeness, even in suspicion. The knot in her throat held. Éowyn's jaw set, then loosened again. The king bowed his head.

On the edge of the field stood a small knot of Elves who had ridden with them to Helm's Deep and now prepared to return west. Jane walked there after the singing thinned. The faces were calm in that way Elven faces are calm, the kind of stillness that has learned its own weight. Haldir was not among them. He was a name the wind carried. She knelt where the grass and soil met and pressed her palm to the ground.

"Le hannon," she said softly. Thank you. "Navaer." Go with peace. The words were clumsy but sincere. Her eyes stung and she let them. She did not know him in life. She could still honor what he had stood for and what had been lost when he fell. She brushed her fingers over the grass once, then stood.

Legolas fell in beside her as she walked back toward the city. He did not speak first. He gave her a silence he knew she could use. When he did speak, it was simple.

"You grieve well," he said. "Even when the name is not yours."

"I grieve what he gave," she answered. "And what it meant that he chose to give it."

"That is the right measure," Legolas said.

They drifted toward the stables. Light fell in slats through the boards and the smell of leather and warm hide loosened a knot she had not been able to reach with speech. Horses shifted and snorted in comfortable complaint.

"You are a rider from another world," Legolas said as a bay nosed his shoulder. "Yet your hands speak ours."

"I have been riding since I could count to five," Jane said. "Horses do not care if you are a queen or a stable girl. They care if you sit straight and keep your hands honest."

"They forgive clumsiness and pretend it was grace," he said.

"I could use more of that."

He stroked the bay's neck. "My father's halls lie deep in the great wood. Even shadowed, it is still our heart."

The name slipped out before she could catch it. "Eryn Lasgalen." Heat rushed into her cheeks. "I mean, Mirkwood. I must have read it."

Legolas's eyes sharpened as if a sound had changed in the distance. "Eryn Lasgalen is no name we have spoken. Not yet."

Jane kept her hand moving over the horse's mane. "It sounded right. Forests deserve names that carry hope."

He watched her as if he were listening beyond what she said. "It is not the first time we have met a thing ahead of its season. About sixty years ago a woman came to our borders. Wounded, alone, from no path we knew. My father mistrusted what he could not place. She healed, and she stayed, and in time she became our queen." He tried the next word and it did not sit. "Vee-veen. Vee-enn."

"Vivienne," Jane said, too easily.

Legolas turned his head. "Yes. That is the way of it. Strange you know."

"Some names refuse to be bent," she said quietly. "They want to be spoken right or not at all."

He did not press. He inclined his head instead, a small salute to something he could not name. "Two wanderers then. One before, and now you. Perhaps it is not strange after all."

The bay nudged Jane's shoulder. She laughed under her breath and the tautness in the air let go.

Legolas glanced toward the hall. "The room hears more than men admit. I hear more still. Your breath stumbles when the prince enters. He sets his shoulders like a wall when you are near. He would rather bleed than give men a knife made of gossip."

"He already does," Jane said. "I do not know how to love him without hurting something."

"Remember you are human," Legolas said. "Be ordinary when you can. Eat. Sleep when you are able. Laugh at least once a day. Wars are carried forward by people who refuse to stop being people."

"Thank you," she said. "I forget."

"Then remember," he answered, and the advice sat between them like a tool laid on a workbench.

By afternoon the hall had shifted from mourning to planning. Gandalf stood with Théoden and Éomer. Aragorn listened with patience, speaking briefly and never to hear his own voice. When Jane reached the circle, Gandalf's eyes found hers as easily as always.

"The road divides," he said. "The Mark must gather at Dunharrow. Minas Tirith must be warned in a way that cannot be ignored. The Enemy felt more than he expected. He will act. Peregrin Took rides with me. And you."

"If I stay," Jane said, "the questions will grow teeth."

"Denethor will sense what he cannot name," Gandalf said. "He will try to master it or break it. Better he meets it on ground I choose. You will stand at my side when I speak to him. You will be a knot he cannot pull loose."

Théoden's voice held pride and regret together. "You have my leave," he told Gandalf. Then to Jane, "You came to us a stranger and stood as a friend. Rohan will not forget."

"I will return," Jane said.

Éowyn's eyes met hers from the dais. The small nod that followed did more for Jane's spine than any speech.

Word passed through the city the way fresh bread does. The White Rider would leave by nightfall, taking with him a hobbit and the foreign woman. People tried the news on their tongues and found it tasted of relief and unease at once.

Jane found Theodred in the rear gallery where the view east looked like a long held breath. He stood with his hands behind his back, posture straight as judgement, a prince who had taught his body to remember duty even when his thoughts wandered.

"You are leaving," he said. It was statement, not charge.

"I am," she answered. "Gandalf wants me where Denethor can see what he does not understand. Pippin will be safer with two pairs of eyes on him."

He took a slow breath. "I want to lock the gates," he said. "But I will not. I would rather have your respect than your captivity."

"You have both," Jane said. "And something else."

He turned toward her fully. No court voice. No prince face. "I made a promise," he said. "I do not unmake it. When the war is done and we still stand, I will ask you to bind your life to mine. I have no ring. Only words."

"Yes," Jane said at once. "Yes, I will marry you when the ground stops trying to throw us. Yes, I will say it so loudly that the horses gossip."

Something eased in him that nothing else could have loosened. He reached for her hand, turned it, and pressed his mouth to the soft place where her pulse beat. It was not a kiss meant for an audience. It was a mark he left on himself.

"I have nothing quiet enough to give you now," he said. "Keep the vow warm until I can bring its companion."

"I will keep it with the stubborn parts of me," she said. "They guard well."

A voice called his name from the far end of the gallery. He stepped back, the prince again by habit and need. For a heartbeat they stood like two people who had just traded something valuable and were afraid to breathe wrong. Then he bowed and went.

From the shadow of a pillar, Gimli shuffled out with the guiltless air of a born eavesdropper. "An honest dwarf," he announced, which meant he had heard enough. "When peace is upon us, I know a mountain that keeps jewels and rings beyond mankind's imagination. Your yes should have a jewel that can keep up."

Jane hugged him until he harrumphed. "You are terrible," she said, smiling into his beard, "and I love you."

"Paragon of restraint," he muttered, pleased and pink about the ears. "Now let go before the elf writes a ballad."

Twilight climbed the walls. Jane gathered what little belonged to her now. Katrin's scarf, a small jar of honey and thyme, a bone needle traded in the caves, a coin from another life tucked in her boot because it felt like an anchor. She had said goodbye from her best friend earlier in a teary eyed embrace.
In the lower corridor a torch hissed. Somewhere a laugh rose and then folded itself away again.

She stepped into a small chamber set aside for guests. Narrow bed. Basin. A carved chest with horses running across the front. She had meant to wash her face and breathe twice and be done.

The door closed behind her with care. Theodred stood inside the threshold. Candlelight found the tired set of his mouth and turned it gentle. He had not taken off his sword. He had taken off the day.

"I cannot let you go with only a breath between us," he said. No flourish. No speech.

Jane crossed the space and set her hand against his chest where leather lay over linen and both were warm with him. His heart beat like a steady argument with the world and she took the side of his pulse at once.

"We have a few hours," she said. "Maybe less."

"Then let them be honest."

He unbuckled his sword and laid it aside with the care given to a prayer. He did not rush. He did not take. He touched her as if reading a map he had always owned and was only now allowed to study. He learned the bends by touch and the rivers by listening. His mouth found hers and the heat rose, then steadied into reverence that made her knees threaten to fold. He did not seek to win. He sought to know.

She unknotted his braids with careful fingers. She slid his tunic from his shoulders and kissed the old scars there, those thin pale lines that told truths without asking pity. He groaned, a sound of a man remembering he was not only a prince or a soldier or a vow, but hands and mouth and breath and a name spoken softly in a room only the two of them would ever remember.

They moved together the way people do when the world outside is sharpening its knives. Urgent and unhurried at once. Once she laughed, breathless. He kissed the laugh from her throat and then slowed until the candle and their breathing were the only sounds and it felt like the room had learned how to hold them without dropping anything.

He treated her as if she were something to honor, not conquer. He watched her face and learned it. He asked with his hands and listened with his mouth. She answered with all of her, relief and hunger and love finally speaking the same language. When release came, it came like weather that had threatened for days and finally decided to rain.

After, they lay tangled. The candle threw a soft gold against the carved chest. His hand rested on her stomach with the absent tenderness of a rider calming a mare after a hard run. She kissed his wrist where his pulse beat steady, that small place where life announces itself without asking permission.

"Morning will be cruel," he murmured.

"Morning will be honest," she said. "Be honest with me now."

"I am," he said. "I love you."

The words were so simple they could only be true. She lifted her head and met his eyes and gave the only answer that belonged there. "I love you."

No new vow followed. They had already made one. This was a quieter covenant, sealed by skin and breath and the trust of sleep. The house around them settled into its night sounds. Somewhere above them the great thatch sighed like fields in summer. A breath of fate moved across the room in the deep hour, light as a moth's wing. Jane dreamed of a field going green after fire, of a sky mended with small stitches, of something bright curled safe like a seed. She did not wake. She did not know.

They rose before dawn in that gray that makes faces look like courage whether or not they feel it. He dressed with the slow care of a man putting armor back onto a body that would rather stay warm. He kept his eyes on the buckles because looking at her undid all his work. She dressed by feel, hair a little wild, cheeks still pink from a night that had not asked permission to be beautiful. The quiet had changed. It was not absence. It was fullness that did not require naming.

He took a thin braid of his hair and tied it into the end of hers with a neat knot made one-handed. "For luck," he said. "And for untying later."

"You had better live to do the untying," she said.

"I intend to be rude to fate," he said, and her smile ached and healed at once.

They kissed once in the doorway. Not hurried. Not long. An anchor. He turned away to be a prince again. She walked the corridor toward the lower gate where Gandalf waited with Pippin and with a horse who liked to have opinions.

Morning was blue and sharp. Shadowfax stood restless and proud with Pippin already settled before Gandalf. A groom led a dark mare for Jane. Tall. Clean-legged. Eyes that considered her and then agreed. Jane stroked the velvet muzzle and felt the reins commit to her hands.

Gandalf looked over and gave a short approving nod. "Better you ride your own," he said. "You will need your strength. Keep with Shadowfax."

Jane mounted and guided the mare to the white stallion's side. Theodred came last because leaving is always hardest for the one who must be left. He took her hand for a moment, thumb moving once over her knuckles. His eyes had the clear, dangerous warmth that had undone her pride twice already.

"You carry my word," he said.

"And my yes," she answered.

He let her go.

Shadowfax surged out of the gate with a cry that split the morning. Sparks leapt from the stones under his hooves. Jane's mare followed at a quick eager stride, smooth and sure. Edoras fell back. The golden roof caught the sun one last time, then the road bent and Theodred was gone from sight.

They rode hard. The wind lifted Jane's braid and tapped it against her shoulder where Theodred's knot had been tied. She pressed a hand to her chest and felt her heart beating fast and fierce. Whatever waited in Minas Tirith, she carried more than duty now. She carried love and a promise and something fragile that felt determined to live.

Day stretched. Shadowfax set a pace that asked much and offered pride as payment. Jane's mare was from the Mark. She knew distance and weather and how to keep a gallop honest. They ate miles as if they were bread. When they slowed, it was to water the horses and let them breathe and then they went again. Pippin kept his complaints behind his teeth because they would have sounded too much like fear, and he had decided to be brave today.

By noon the plains lay wide around them, blurred with wind, the grass running in waves from horizon to horizon. Cattle moved like knots in green fabric. Here and there, a farmhouse showed a piece of roof and a curl of smoke. Gandalf said little. When he did speak, it was to ask after the mare, to point to a line of darker earth where a stream hid, or to warn of a patch of ground that looked firm and was not.

They crossed the Snowbourn at a ford where the river ran quick over pale stones. Jane's mare stepped in without fuss. Water slapped against her boots and then fell away. On the far bank, Pippin twisted to look back and then forward again, small face set like a man who has put something behind him on purpose.

"Drink when we stop," Jane called. "Not now."

"I was not going to," Pippin called back, which meant he had been. Gandalf's shoulders shook once with a laugh he did not let out.

They camped without a fire. Bread, dried meat, water. Gandalf set watches without argument. Jane lay on her cloak, one arm flung over her eyes, and counted her breaths until sleep came. In the night she woke once with her palm curved over her lower belly, no idea why. She turned on her side and slept again.

Morning was a crisp coin flipped into the sky. They rode. The land changed slowly, the way people change when you live with them. The color of the grass shifted. The wind tasted different. Jane felt a pulse in the ground that did not belong to Rohan. Somewhere a long stone spine ran under the earth, and the horses knew it.

Gandalf dropped back to ride beside her for an hour. "You ride well," he said. "Your mare trusts you."

"I am trying not to embarrass the entire Westfold," she said.

"You are doing the opposite," he answered, and the praise sat warm in her chest for longer than it should have.

They spoke of practical things. How often to let the mare blow. How to read Shadowfax's ears. How to judge distance when the horizon lies to you. Jane tucked each piece of advice away like medicine in a field kit. The day wore on with the satisfaction of work done properly.

In the afternoon the wind shifted again and carried a smell that was not grass or horse or river. It was something harder to name. Distance, perhaps. Or stone that had watched many years from the same height. Gandalf lifted his chin as if some note had finally sounded that he had been waiting to hear.

They pressed on until the light began to thin to gold. Then a rise opened ahead and the world beyond it stood up. Jane pulled the mare to a slower pace without meaning to. Shadowfax climbed the last yards like a tide rolling over a bar and then stopped with a toss of his head.

"Look," Gandalf said, and he did not say it loudly.

Jane lifted her eyes and forgot to breathe. The White City rose from the mountain like a crown of stone. Seven circles stepped upward into the sky. Light moved along the walls and pooled in the cut of the gates. At the very top a banner lifted and fell as if a heartbeat lived in the cloth. She had known many cities. None had ever felt like a promise and a challenge at once.

Beside her, Pippin made a small sound that belonged to neither fear nor joy but borrowed from both. Shadowfax stood proud and still. Jane's mare flicked an ear and settled, as if even a horse could be struck quiet.

Minas Tirith waited in the distance, white against the mountain, clear under the late sun.

The chapter's page felt ready to turn. She let herself breathe again and held the sight as if it could anchor her.

They would ride the rest of the way tomorrow. Tonight, the City could stand at the edge of the world like a thought finally given shape, and that was enough.

Chapter Text

They rode for three days, the distance refusing to shrink just because Shadowfax could fly. The White Rider set a relentless pace, but even he bowed to hills and rivers and the long pull of the land. Jane's mare held steady beside him, ears flicking to the sound of the great stallion's stride. Pippin clung like a determined burr, learning the rhythm of hard travel with stubborn grace.

Day bled into day until the plains finally broke and the mountain shouldered up into the sky. When they reached the last rise and the world opened, Jane reined in without meaning to. Minas Tirith stood there, built into the mountain like it had been poured straight from light and then hammered into shape. Seven circles climbed one above the other. Banners pricked the wind. The walls shone so clean it hurt to look.

Gandalf's voice cut the silence. "Minas Tirith," he said quietly. "The last defense of men."

Pippin swallowed. "Do we really have to go inside it?"

"Yes," Gandalf answered. "Before the storm does."

They crossed the Pelennor where farmers paused with scythes high and children forgot to shout until they remembered at once. The great gate accepted the name Mithrandir as if it had been waiting for it. Inside, the city turned upward in a tightening spiral. Each level narrowed. Each gate clanged behind them with a promise it meant to keep. Jane kept her mare close to Shadowfax and matched the big horse's breathing because it steadied her own.

At the seventh circle they dismounted. The court was pale stone and long shadow. A white tree stood at its center, leafless and still, its bark like bone under the light. Jane had seen neglected things before; this felt like mourning the city had not stopped doing.

The Tower Hall breathed cold. Its floor was black and white like a game board no one had finished. Torches fought shadows high on the pillars and lost politely. At the far end, beneath an empty throne, a man sat on a black chair that understood weight. His cloak was dark, his hair streaked with grey, his eyes the kind that had taught themselves to watch before they felt.

Gandalf's staff tapped once on the stone. "My lord Steward," he said evenly.

Denethor did not rise. "Mithrandir," he answered. "Unlooked for, as ever." His gaze slid over them like a blade testing armor and caught on Pippin. "And this... creature."

Gandalf made the introduction with no flourish. "This is Peregrin Took of the Shire," he said. "He traveled with Boromir. He has something you should hear."

Pippin stepped forward, bowing so low his hands almost touched the floor. His voice wavered and then settled. "My lord... Boromir died to save us. To save me. He fell fighting many foes. He fought bravely and... and would not yield."

Something in Denethor's face cracked and then set harder. He reached beside the chair and lifted a broken horn. Jagged edges caught the torchlight. "This," he said softly, "was found. The Horn of Gondor. Cloven." He stared at Pippin as if the hobbit could explain why the world had dared to continue turning. "Tell me why your life is spared when his is not."

Jane took a step forward before she thought better of it. "Because he chose," she said. "He chose you and this city and men like him. He chose Pippin's life to make sense of his death."

Denethor's eyes cut to her, and she felt the measure of them like hands. "And who are you," he asked, "to speak of my son's choices."

Gandalf's staff clicked once. "She is under my protection."

"I asked for her name, not your patronage," Denethor said.

Jane kept her voice even. "Jane," she said. "I bind wounds. I rode with the Rohirrim."

Denethor's mouth curved without warmth. "Rohan sends me a healer who speaks like a captain." Then to Pippin, with sudden gentleness that did not soften his eyes: "And you offer service for a debt no one asked of you?"

Pippin drew a breath he had to fetch from his boots. "I offer you my service, such as it is," he said. He knelt, small and stubborn, and put his short sword before him with both hands. "I swear to be faithful to Gondor, in peace or war, in living or dying, from this hour until my lord release me."

Denethor rose. The movement cost him nothing; authority wore him like a coat. He set a hand upon Pippin's head. "Rise," he said, voice lower. "Peregrin son of Paladin. I accept your service." He paused. "We will call you Pippin."

Gandalf almost smiled. "We call him Pippin," he said dryly.

"Yes," Denethor answered without looking at him. "You call many things as it pleases you."

The warmth in his face vanished when his eyes returned to Gandalf. "You come with tidings of grief and peril," he said. "Why should I welcome you." The last words were not a question.

"Because you need me," Gandalf said. "And because the Enemy marches."

Denethor's mouth flattened. "You would supplant me," he said, the line knife-clean from the film. "The rule of Gondor is mine, and no other's."

"Until the king returns," came Gandalf's quiet reply. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.

A silence that remembered other arguments stretched from one pillar to the next. Denethor broke it first, gaze returning to Jane with unwelcome interest. "You stand as if you know where a choice will fall before it tips. That is a useful posture in a hall like this."

"It is only habit," Jane said. "I try to know what to do with the next five minutes."

"Five minutes move battles," Denethor said. "Sometimes kingdoms." He studied her, then made it personal with no warning. "You are not wed."

Gandalf's attention sharpened. Pippin's head turned quickly enough that his curls flopped.

Jane kept her hands loose. "I am not."

"My younger son returns soon," Denethor said, tone gone casual to make it worse. "Faramir is dutiful, a good captain, educated. Unwed. He requires a wife who steadies men, holds a hall quiet, and does not faint at blood. You would suit."

There it was. A proposal that was not a proposal, made in a cold hall because war made people practical and power made them forget to be kind. The lines in Jane's chest pulled tight, not from the insult, but from the thought of Théodred's knot against her shoulder.

"With respect, my lord," she said, "my heart is not empty ground to be garrisoned for policy."

Denethor's eyes did not change. "Policy keeps this city standing."

"And love keeps people standing in it," Jane answered, surprised to hear herself say it out loud.

Something like disdain flickered. "Love is a banner men hold under when they must," he said. "It is not stone."

"Both are needed," Gandalf said. "Unless you mean to build walls around a graveyard."

Denethor ignored him. "You will dine with me when Faramir returns," he told Jane. "If you still object after you meet him, I will not speak of this again." He let the lie sit where kindness should have gone. "You may go. Both of you. The halfling will be given livery and taught the ways of the Citadel. The woman will be given a room near the Houses of Healing. And Mithrandir," he added, turning back to Gandalf with the old contempt, "you may roam my city and unsettle my men as is your habit. But know this: I see through you."

Gandalf bowed the width of a breath. "Then see clearly. And quickly."

They left the hall into light that felt earned. The White Tree stood with birds testing its branches for charity that did not exist. Beyond the walls, the fields lay like a map children had drawn, all green squares and little houses, the comfort of order in a world with less and less of it.

Pippin's first breath out in the open was almost a sob. "I thought he would bite," he said, then flushed. "Sorry. That was rude."

"It was also honest," Jane said. "You were brave."

He peered down at his hands. "I was shaking too much to be anything else."

A captain of the guard came to claim him, a tall man with a careful face and a kindness he did not announce. He bowed to Gandalf and Jane, then to Pippin as if the new livery were centuries old. "Come," he told the hobbit. "Learn gates and passwords before you forget how your legs work."

Pippin threw Jane a helpless look that wanted to be a grin when it grew up. She squeezed his shoulder once and let him go.

Gandalf and Jane stood for a time under the dead tree. Wind climbed the tower and came back down with secrets it did not share.

"He tested you," Gandalf said at last.

"I noticed," Jane said.

"He will test you again," the wizard went on. "He will ask for more than is his to ask. Never be alone with him if you can help it."

"I do not fear him," Jane said.

"You do not have to," Gandalf answered. "Just do not be polite to the wrong question."

They were given a small room in the Sixth Circle for Jane. A narrow bed, a window with a slice of sky, a basin, two towels thinned by many washings. The practical kindness of it steadied her more than ceremony would have. She unlaced her boots and washed her face and let the water take travel from her skin. She retied her braid, checked the small knot Théodred had tied into it, and left it alone.

A soft knock brought Pippin, already in black and silver that almost fit. He wore the uniform with the solemn concentration of someone wearing a story bigger than himself.

"They gave me a belt that wants to trip me and a list of places I must learn by dusk," he said. "Also a sword I am not to draw without being told to, which feels like a trick."

Jane smiled. "Eat first. Then remembering will be easier."

Pippin produced a heel of bread and a wedge of cheese from somewhere inside his new cloak. "Already fixed," he said around a mouthful. "The captain says I am to follow him until I stop looking like I will fall down the stairs."

"Wise captain," Gandalf said, stepping in behind him and helping himself to the last bite of cheese with complete innocence. "When Denethor sends for you, I will be at your shoulder. The same for you," he added to Jane. "If I cannot be in the room, be where many can see you. Denethor starts with words. He ends with traps."

"He asked me to marry his son," Jane said.

"Of course he did," Gandalf said, with the tired amusement of a man unsurprised by bad behavior. "It binds Rohan tighter, slaps me in front of my face, and gives him the illusion of shaping the board. It is neat. It is wrong."

"I said no without saying no," Jane said. "He will try again."

"He will," Gandalf agreed. "He convinces himself that anything done for the City cannot be wrong. That is a thought that has ruined many men."

"Will Faramir want this," Jane asked.

"No," Gandalf said simply. "He will want the truth."

The afternoon stretched into work. Gandalf disappeared into corners of the Citadel that opened for him as if he still carried keys from another age. Pippin learned which guardhouse held the kettle that boiled fastest. Jane asked for the Houses of Healing and was led through white doors into a long hall that smelled faintly of thyme and clean linen.

The Warden, a narrow man with a tidy beard and a surgeon's exact gaze, looked her up and down and found her useful before she spoke. "You have hands that know what they hold," he said. "We will take them." He set her to work washing and binding and measuring bitter draughts, and the rhythm of it settled her more than talk could have. The herbs were different. The work was the same. People got hurt. People got better or they did not. The math was honest, even when cruel.

She mended a young mason's split scalp with neat stitches while he told a story about a stone that refused to sit square and the curse he had invented to convince it. She cleaned a cut on a washerwoman's palm and listened to news about which baker cheated on flour and which did not. People were already waiting for war's first blow, and yet they talked about bread. That helped.

By sunset a runner came with a message that felt like a trap as soon as she read it. The Steward desired her presence for a private word before the evening bell.

Gandalf caught her halfway down the corridor to the hall. "You will not go alone," he said, and his voice was the kind that made people step back.

"I was not planning to," Jane said, relief a small trickle that did not show on her face.

They entered the Tower Hall together. This time there were fewer men, no ceremony, only a map unrolled on a table and a man who had lived too long with both power and fear. Denethor stood with his fingers on the Anduin like it would pulse if pressed correctly.

"News from the river?" Gandalf asked.

"Not yet," Denethor said. "Not since dawn. He holds the crossings. He always holds. Until the world refuses to be held." He lifted his gaze. "I will be plain. I believe the Enemy moves toward us with everything he has. I believe Rohan will not ride in time. I believe the West has been out-thought for a generation, starting with my father." He returned his attention to Jane. "You look at me as if I have said something indecent."

"You have said something lonely," Jane answered. "That is different."

He blinked, as if the angle had not occurred to him. "Lonely," he repeated. He almost smiled. "A woman's word."

"A true one," she said. "You would be less dangerous if you remembered you were not alone."

He snorted softly. "I do not forget that I have sons. One dead. One not yet returned." He paused. "When he comes, you will eat with us. If you still think me indecent after that, I will give the match no more thought."

"Matches belong to candles," Jane said. "Not people."

He ignored the quip. "What did you see when you looked in the stone."

Gandalf's staff hit the floor with a sharp, warning tap. "No."

Denethor did not glance at him. "I ask the woman who looked. Not the meddler who brought her to it."

Jane held his gaze. "I saw an eye that does not blink," she said. "I saw a hand reach and not touch. I heard a voice try my name and fail. Then I looked away."

He studied her for the length of a slow breath. "You did not bargain."

"No," she said. "I have nothing I want from it."

"Everyone has something," he said. "Even if it is only the chance to have an answer."

"Not from that thing," Jane said. "It would tell me what I feared and call it truth."

Denethor's mouth tilted. "You are not a coward. Good." He looked to Gandalf. "You dressed her well for my hall."

Gandalf did not take the bait. "She dressed herself. You will not undress her with questions."

Denethor laughed once, not kindly and not cruelly, and waved them both away like smoke. "Go, then," he said. "Rest. I will wake you when the city can no longer pretend to sleep."

They left to find the court tinted with the last of the light. From the high wall, the Pelennor lay patched and tired. Lanterns were blooming. A woman called a child in. Somewhere, someone argued over the price of a chicken with the energy of a person who believed tomorrow would still want dinner.

Pippin found them there, livery straight, eyes bright. "I know three passwords," he said proudly. "None of which I am allowed to tell you, except that one of them is about a river and that is not helpful."

Jane touched his sleeve. "Good work," she said. "Let the belt stop bullying you. You are the master of the belt. Not the other way around."

Pippin looked offended. "I am perfectly in charge of this belt," he said, and then tripped over nothing and caught himself. "Mostly."

"Eat," Gandalf told him. "Then sleep. You will be called early."

Pippin bobbed and was gone, a small piece of bravery riding its own momentum.

When the bells marked the hour, Jane returned to her narrow room and barred the door the way the women in the caves had taught her. She untied her braid, retied it, and checked the knot again, though there was no reason it should have come loose. She lay down with her boots off and her knife within reach, a habit that no longer felt like a story from someone else's life.

Sleep did not argue. It took her quickly. In the deep middle of it, a dream rose that did not feel like a dream: a field black from fire breathing green from underneath, a sky pulled back together by a hundred precise stitches, a small brightness curling safe in the dark soil. She woke with her hand on her belly and no idea why, then rolled and slept again.

Dawn came pale. The city stretched and found all its stairs again. Jane went back to the Houses and lost herself in work. Men who had mashed fingers under stone did not care about politics. Women who had cut hands on baskets and knives wanted to know whether a salve would sting. Children came for bandages and stayed for stories told while stitches went in. Ordinary things insisted on existing. She let them.

By midmorning, a boy in livery appeared at the door with his chin up to make the message seem bigger. "My lady," he said, tripping over the title, "the Steward requests your presence. And the halfling's."

Jane and Pippin met in the corridor like two beads finding the same string. He looked better for a night's sleep and food, though his hair had opinions his comb could not manage. They went together to the Tower Hall and stepped inside to a change in weather.

Denethor stood in front of his chair, a letter crushed in one hand, a map forgotten on the table. He did not speak. He stared past them at a point only he could see.

Gandalf came in behind them, sensing the wind before any of them. "What news."

Denethor's voice seemed to come from another room. "Osgiliath," he said. "Taken at dawn. The enemy crossed in force."

Silence stacked up. Pippin reached for Jane's hand without looking. She let him have it.

Denethor's eyes found Gandalf again. "You would send me hope," he said. "Send me kings and songs. Give me fires on hills and proud horns. I have a river and a city and my last good son in the middle of both."

"Faramir will return," Gandalf said. "He knows the city better than the enemy knows his own foot."

"He knows mercy," Denethor said, bitterness burned dry. "And mercy makes men slow when the world is not."

He turned to Jane with a suddenness that would have been theatrical in a weaker man. "When he comes, you will sit at my table," he said. "You will see what he is. Then you will tell me whether you still carry someone else's word in your hair." His gaze ticked to her braid. He had seen the knot. "And if you do, I will call you unwise but not foolish." A pause. "If you do not, we will speak again."

Jane lifted her chin. "We may speak," she said. "But I will not be bartered."

He considered her for a heartbeat and gave a small bow that was not polite so much as precise. "We understand each other."

Gandalf stepped between them without moving his feet. "We understand that the Enemy moves and that this city must be ready," he said. "Where are your beacons, Denethor. Where is your call."

Denethor's face shuttered. "I know my own business," he said. "Mind yours."

Gandalf's voice did not rise. "My business is the West. And it is yours, too."

"The rule of Gondor is mine," Denethor repeated softly. "And no other's."

Then he gestured curtly, and they were dismissed in a way that turned courtesies into spears.

Outside, the world smelled of stone warmed by first sun. The ordinary had not given up. Jane clung to it because it gave the big things somewhere to sit. She stood with Gandalf at the parapet and watched the Pelennor while the wizard talked softly to himself in a language the stone seemed to respect.

Pippin came to lean beside them, lighter than the night before and heavier than the day before. "I met a guardsman who says the best stew is in the fourth circle," he reported. "His name is Beregond, which sounds like the kind of name you can lean against. He says I should not go anywhere alone, which is fair because I get lost with great dedication."

"Do not go anywhere alone," Gandalf said.

"I hear you," Pippin said, and for once did not joke.

They stood a long time without needing to speak. The city breathed around them. The mountain watched with its old stone eyes. Far off, the river held its line as if that could save anyone.

When the bells counted the hour again, the boy in livery came running a second time, breathless. "My lord Steward calls for music," he told Pippin. "He would hear a halfling's song."

Pippin's face did something complicated. "Now," he said. "He wants me to sing now."

"Yes," the boy said, eyes wide. "In the hall."

Pippin looked at Gandalf. "Do I have to."

Gandalf rested a hand on his shoulder. "You owe him your service," he said gently. "Give him your voice. Keep your heart."

Pippin nodded, small and square. He walked back toward the hall like a man who had decided to do something he did not want to do and to do it well. Jane watched him go until the shadow of the door took him. Then she looked at Gandalf.

"He will sing," she said.

"He will," Gandalf said. "And it will be a kind of courage."

They did not hear the song from where they stood. They did not need to. The look on Pippin's face when he came back out later said everything. He had sung for grief and for pride and for a man who wanted music where warmth should have been. Jane put her hand around the back of his neck for a second, a small anchor. Pippin leaned into it and then away before he could need it too much.

The sun slid down the mountain. Lamps lit one by one in the circles below. The city tried to pretend it could be an ordinary evening. The sky refused to play along. Far to the east, a stain had started to gather on the horizon, a weight behind the light.

Jane stood on the wall until the wind finally pushed through the knot of fear in her chest. She thought of Théodred standing at the gate in Edoras, not waving because waving would have broken him. She thought of the vow in his mouth and in hers. She thought of a table she would sit at with a man she did not know and a father who thought love and policy were the same thing and would find out he was wrong.

Gandalf touched the parapet with his fingertips, then straightened. "We are in it now," he said. "Rest while you can."

They went down to their rooms through corridors that had learned all the different ways footsteps can sound. Jane barred her door, took off her boots, and lay on her back with her hands on her ribs until her breath remembered its job. She did not cry. She did not break. She counted the things that were still true. The mare would be fed. Pippin would sleep in black and silver and snore gently and deny it later. Gandalf would sit somewhere high and think about beacons. Théodred would go to sleep, then get up, then go to sleep again, like a prince who has decided to out-stubborn fate.

The city held its breath with her. Somewhere a bell marked the hour. Somewhere a woman laughed once and then again in spite of herself. Somewhere a man kissed his child's hair in a doorway and told the dark that it could wait outside.

Morning would come and ask for more. She would give it what she could. And when the summons came to meet the Steward's son, she would carry her yes to the edge of it and keep it there, unspent and alive.

Chapter Text

Morning in Minas Tirith began with bells. Not grand ones. Work bells. They stacked the day in even blocks and gave tired people a way to move through it. Jane woke to the first bell, stared at the pale ceiling for a beat, then swung her legs to the floor and found the small tin mirror someone had left on the washstand.

The glass was wavy and a little scratched, but it showed enough. Her hair had grown. It reached the middle of her back now, thick and bright, the color of wheat when the wind runs over it. It should have split and dulled after months outdoors. It had not. The strands lay heavy, clean, and healthy in a way that made her think of all the little things her old world put into food and water without asking permission. No additives here. No strange plastics sneaking into her body. Fresh bread, milk that remembered the name of the cow, meat from a market stall where the butcher could tell you the source. Her skin was warmer than before, a soft tan earned from sun and not from lamps. The blue in her eyes looked awake, alert. She studied her face until it felt like a friend again, then braided her hair in a smooth rope and tied the end with plain thread. The small knot of wheat-blond hair Théodred had given her still lived there, braided in. She touched it once, then drew her hand away.

When she stepped into the corridor, the city had already started. A woman hurried past with a stack of folded linen. Two boys argued about whose turn it was to scrub a stair. A guard with a crooked nose and careful eyes gave her a short nod. She took the stairs down to the Houses of Healing and let the day take her hands.

The Warden met her at the door. "We are light on sleep and heavy on worry," he said, and handed her a tray before she answered. They moved together down the long white hall, through light that smelled faintly of thyme and boiled wool. A young mason needed three stitches from a dropped chisel. An old man needed his bandage changed and a story while it happened. A kitchen girl came in with a knife nick that looked worse than it was. Jane worked without show. She washed, cut, tied, soothed, and quietly made pain into something that could be carried.

Ioreth appeared by her elbow around midmorning, all quick hands and quicker opinions. "You are the one from the north," she said without waiting for a yes. "You wash like a midwife, not like a soldier. That will save us linen. Do you eat? You look like you forget and then pretend you did not."

"I eat," Jane said. "But I forget to admit it."

"Typical," Ioreth sniffed, already reaching past Jane for a jar. "The City is full of people who will skip breakfast and then faint at noon and blame me. If you fall over, I will step around you and complain while I do it."

"That sounds fair," Jane said, hiding a smile.

By late morning her hands had found the day's rhythm. She was rinsing a cloth at the basin when Pippin burst in with a guardsman who looked equal parts exasperated and fond. Pippin wore black and silver now as if he had been born to it. The livery did something to him. It did not make him taller. It made him carry himself as if height did not matter.

"Beregond says I should know where to find you," Pippin announced. "In case I need the kind of sense you have."

Beregond cleared his throat. "In case Captain Mithrandir needs you quickly," he corrected. "Or you need someone who will give you bread before you fall over."

"I already had bread," Pippin said. "Twice. And I know three passwords that I will not say out loud even once."

"Good," Jane said. "Let me see your hands."

Pippin held them out, palms up, obedient as a child at a school desk. A new blister had formed across the base of his fingers where a sword hilt had rubbed. She cleaned it and wrapped it with quick, neat turns while he chattered about staircases, bells, and a boy named Bergil who ran as if the wind were in trouble and needed help.

"Your belt still wants to trip you," Jane said, tying off the bandage. "You will win that argument if you stop staring at it while you walk."

Pippin looked down, offended in principle. "I am not staring at my belt."

Beregond lifted an eyebrow. "You are."

They left with promises to return if something hurt or someone said a foolish thing too loudly. The Warden set Jane to crushing dried leaves into a powder that would dull pain without putting people to sleep. The smell rose green and bitter. Work steadied her even as the city around her shifted toward a different kind of day.

A runner in Citadel livery appeared in the doorway close to noon. "My lady," he said, tripping over the title the way boys do when they are new to responsibility, "the Steward calls for you. And for the Perian."

Jane and Pippin met at the foot of the tower steps like two beads sliding onto the same string. Pippin had been drilled into a neat stride and managed it until they turned into the Tower Hall. Then his pace went small and careful again. Gandalf waited beneath the high windows, white and still. He fell in beside them without words.

Denethor stood before his chair. The broken horn was gone from the table. In its place lay a wound map covered in ink and fingerprints. His eyes were different today. Less flame. More stone. He stared past them at a point only he could see.

Boots sounded in the corridor, tired boots with mud dried almost to dust. The doors opened, and Faramir came in.

Jane understood Denethor in that first glance. This was a son a father might have asked for if asked on a good day. Tall but not imposing. Dark hair unbound, eyes quiet, face drawn from lack of sleep and the habit of thinking before speaking. He carried weariness the way good men carry it, without making it anyone else's burden.

He went to one knee before the Steward. "My lord," he said. The voice was gentle and even a little rough. "Osgiliath holds no longer. The enemy crossed at dawn in force. Our men fell back by companies. I brought as many out as I could."

Denethor's jaw moved. "And still you came back breathing," he said softly, so that only those near him heard.

Faramir lifted his head. His gaze caught Gandalf's for a heartbeat and then moved to Jane with surprise he hid well. He gave her the slightest bow with his eyes, then returned his attention to his father.

Denethor wanted to wound and could not help himself. "Your brother would have held the City-side longer," he said. "He would not have spent men so quickly."

"Boromir would have done what the day asked," Faramir answered. "So did I."

Gandalf spoke then, cutting a deeper line before Denethor could. "Tell me of the River," he said. "Tell me who crossed."

"Haradrim, many," Faramir said. "Easterlings in armor that drinks arrows. Trolls in chains pulling war-engines. Orcs beyond counting. And something else that makes men forget how to hold a line." He paused. "We met travelers before Osgiliath fell. A halfling and his gardener, moving east. They had a guide who made the hair rise at the back of my neck."

Gandalf stood very still. Pippin's hands tightened at his sides. Jane felt her pulse shift.

"I let them pass," Faramir said. "I judged they were on a road that must be walked by someone, and they were the ones walking it."

"Which road," Denethor asked, voice suddenly attentive.

"To the Black Gate," Faramir said, choosing the safer lie. "Or near enough."

Gandalf's mouth quirked. He did not thank him. He did not need to.

Denethor's eyes narrowed, measuring a new place to press. "So," he said, almost to himself. "You let strange creatures slip past your guard and brought me only retreat." His gaze slid toward Jane like a knife changes direction. "And Mithrandir brings me a foreign counselor and a small sworn servant and calls that help."

Jane felt the look and did not let it inside. Faramir's eyes were on her again, curious without edge. Denethor noticed, which made it worse.

"My lord," Jane said, because someone should speak that was not trying to win, "your son has given you truth. It is the only coin that spends in halls like this."

Denethor stared. Then he waved a hand as if clearing smoke. "You will all eat with me at the sixth hour," he said. "We will have bread and decide whether we can afford meat. Until then, rest or make yourselves useful. I care little which."

They bowed and were dismissed.

In the corridor, Faramir slowed to let them draw beside him. Up close he looked younger and older at the same time. "You are far from the Mark," he said to Jane. His tone made it a question without asking one.

"Far," she said. "I am Jane. I could help in the Houses if your men still come from the River."

"They will," he said. "And they will be stubborn. Say what you see anyway." A faint smile touched his mouth. "I am Faramir."

"I gathered," she said, and he laughed once, brief and tired.

He looked to Gandalf, and something easy moved between them that had nothing to do with Denethor. Respect is a quiet thing. It was there.

When Faramir had gone, Pippin leaned close to Jane. "He is not for you," he whispered. "And you are not for him. But I like him."

"Me too," Jane said. "A lot."

They split for the afternoon. Jane returned to the Houses and let the hours work on her nerves. She bound a raw scrape on a runner's knee and sent him out again. She steadied a man coughing up river water he should not have swallowed and turned him on his side until the shaking ended. Ioreth complained about men who broke and pretended they hadn't and then pressed sweet tea into their hands like a general rewarding courage. The sun climbed and then began its long walk down the far side of the sky.

At the sixth hour, Jane climbed with Pippin to the Steward's table. Gandalf was already there, as was Faramir, washed and changed but still carrying the day around his eyes. The food was what it had to be: dark bread, soup that had given up most of its meat to someone else earlier, a wedge of hard cheese, a small jug of decent wine. People ate and pretended not to be concerned with anything but salt.

Denethor talked with a calm that felt like a sheath. He asked Faramir for counts and routes. He asked Pippin for a song from the north that would not embarrass him. He asked Jane about the Houses as if patients were a kind of supply that could be managed by ledger.

"You carry the look of someone who knows how many beds are left without walking there," he said.

"I count while I work," Jane said.

"That will serve us," he answered, and left it there.

He spoke of Rohan without speaking of beacons. He spoke of kings without saying the word. He did not mention marriage. He did not need to. The idea sat like a card face down on the table, waiting for someone to turn it.

After, when they stepped into the cool of the court, Gandalf did not wait. "He will not call for Rohan," he said. "He thinks the Mark will not come, or that if it does, it will demand a price he cannot pay. Either way he would rather fail alone than ask in time."

"So what do we do," Pippin asked.

"We light what he will not," Gandalf said. "Tonight."

He led them along a narrow stair that most people did not see even when they looked at it. They climbed into the shoulder of the tower where stone became ladder and ladder became a dark space that smelled of pitch. Pippin breathed carefully. Jane breathed quieter.

At the top, a watchman sat with his cloak wrapped tight, a man built of patience and winter. Gandalf stepped into the light of his small lamp and said a few words that made the man look down and then away.

"We will take the roof," Gandalf told him. "Watch as you would."

The watchman nodded like a person who knew when to move and when not to.

They climbed again and then they were out under stars. The first beacon crouched like a sleeping animal, piled wood and oil, a wick protected against rain. From up here the world looked thin and close, as if a person could reach out and steady it with a hand.

"Quickly," Gandalf said, voice kept low for the sake of habit and caution. He placed a brand into Pippin's hands. The hobbit looked at it the way a farmer's son looks at a snake and then remembers it is only a stick on fire.

"Me," Pippin asked, surprised and a little proud.

"You," Gandalf said. "Your service has many forms."

Jane set her shoulder to the windward side of the beacon and shielded the tinder. The gusts up here were playful and cruel. Pippin crouched, brand poised, and for a heartbeat she thought of the Shire as he must have seen it as a boy, bonfires on autumn nights and the smell of apples. Then the brand touched, the oil caught, and flame walked out of the wood with a sound like joy disguised as work.

The beacon leapt. It found its height and its voice, a tall orange flower on a dark stalk. For a moment, the three of them stood very still and watched hope pretend to be fire.

"Look," Pippin whispered.

Across the dark, another hill answered. A second blaze. Then a third, farther off. Then another, barely a spark on a ridge so far it might have been a star changing its mind. The mountains carried the news better than any rider. The line of light ran north and west, leaping valley and snowfield and river.

Jane felt the wind press tears into her eyes and let them sit there. She thought of Théodred standing on the high steps of Meduseld, the way he had not waved because he would not trust his hand to carry that weight. She leaned forward into the heat and held the braid at her shoulder with two fingers, gentle as if it were a live thing that could startle.

"Ride, you stubborn men," she said under the sound of the fire. "See us."

They stayed until the first rush of light became a steady glow. Then they traced their way down stone and ladder and stair while the watchman pretended he had seen exactly what he was supposed to see and nothing more.

In the court, the White Tree stood silver under smoke. The stars looked closer, as if fire had invited them in. Gandalf's face was set, but his eyes were lighter.

"He will rage in the morning," he said. "Let him. The warning runs where it needs to."

"Will the Mark come," Pippin asked.

"They will," Gandalf said. "If they can. They will try even if they cannot."

Jane's throat tightened until the swallow hurt. In her mind she saw the Golden Hall flooded with orange light, saw men lifting their heads as the door opened and the night shouted good news. She pictured Theodred on the steps, his hand on the rail, his face turned to the mountains, and the line between them pulled tight as a bowstring.

Far away, a king rose from a long thought. Far away, horn and hoof answered old promises. In the high city, three figures stood by a dead tree and watched the mountains talk to each other in the only language they still shared.

"Go sleep," Gandalf said at last, gentler than he had been all day. "Tomorrow will be unreasonable."

Jane slept like a stone dropped in deep water and woke before the bell with the taste of smoke in her throat and a strange, quiet strength in her chest. She tied her braid, checked the small pale knot one more time, and went to meet the morning.

Down in the Houses, Ioreth was already scolding people for forgetting to be tired. On the wall, Pippin was already practicing the complicated art of looking dignified and not tripping over it. Somewhere in the Citadel, Denethor woke to a city that had lit its own hope without asking him. And somewhere to the west, Rohan turned its face toward Gondor and began to move.

Jane washed her hands, set out clean linen, and told her heart to hold its line.

Chapter Text

It had been five weeks since the White City first climbed into view, five weeks since Jane had watched beacons run like a necklace of fire across the mountains, five weeks since she had last seen Théodred's face in daylight. Time did not pass in Minas Tirith the way it did in Rohan. Here it gathered and pressed. It stacked itself on staircases and hid in corridors. It lived inside bells and duty and the slow scrape of whetstones on spearheads.

Gandalf said little about it at first. He watched the sky and the roads and the rhythm of the guards, and the silence between his breaths changed. On the seventh morning he led Jane up to the outer parapet and stood until the wind arranged his hair to its liking.

"The pattern is wrong," he said.

"What do you mean," Jane asked.

"By now he should have struck. He tests, he raids, he rattles the fence, and then he waits." Gandalf kept his eyes on the east. "Someone made him cautious."

Jane felt the knot of hair at the end of her braid brush her shoulder. "You think it is me."

"I think he saw something in you that did not fit his sums," Gandalf said. "Enough to make him weigh and measure before he spends his first blow." He looked at her finally. "It will not be forever. But he waits. And when he moves, he will try to account for what he does not yet understand."

"So I have bought us time," Jane said. "I should feel relieved. I do not."

"Time can be a mercy," Gandalf said. "It can also be its own siege."

He was right. Waiting was work. The City rose early and moved through its days with the kind of discipline born from fear and pride in equal parts. Jane settled into a pattern because patterns keep people whole. Every morning she braided her hair and checked the pale strand Théodred had tied into it. Every morning she went first to the Houses of Healing to make sure the night's hurts were simple ones. Every morning she walked the long hall with Ioreth at her elbow, counting what could be counted and trying not to count the things that could not.

They built stores. They boiled linen until the steam turned the windows into cloudy mirrors. They layered bandages in chests and tucked sprigs of thyme and marigold between them. The Warden walked the rows with a tablet in his hand and a pencil cut to a stub. He never smiled and he never forgot who had eaten and who had not. Ioreth scolded him without mercy and then made sure his cup stayed full.

"If men go to war with empty stomachs, it is not only their own fault," she told Jane, stacking clean cloths like bricks. "You can build a city out of bread. Not out of pride."

Pippin learned the watch. He learned the gates and the passwords and the ways the wind came off the mountain at the seventh circle. Beregond taught him how to stand politely and look like he belonged there without letting anyone know he was memorizing their faces. He learned where the good stew was and which guardhouse had a kettle that boiled quickest. He learned to carry messages and not repeat them. Sometimes he came to the Houses and Jane wrapped his new blisters and did not tell him he was brave because he would have laughed and then believed her too much.

"Bergil says the wind up here smells like rock," Pippin reported one afternoon, legs swinging from a bench while Jane stitched a seam along a soldier's forearm. "He says when it shifts, we will know before anyone else because the stone will tell us."

"The stone is a gossip," Ioreth said briskly, handing Jane a threaded needle. "It tells whoever listens."

Faramir moved between the river and the city like the tide. He rode out at dawn with companies that were too small for what they faced and came back after dark with men who should not have made it home and yet did. He brought news that did not sound like news because he did not dramatize it. He brought names, and the men who owned those names arrived on litters or on their own feet or not at all.

Jane learned his footsteps before she learned his voice. He came quietly so as not to disturb the sick and then disturbed the sick anyway by standing at their bedside like someone who had been both carried and the one who carries. In the spaces between his duties and hers, a friendship grew without ceremony.

He discovered that if he stood near the eastern windows and talked about Ithilien, her shoulders came down from around her ears. He told her about a small pool where the water fell in a thin line and made a sound like silk tearing and mending again. He told her about the bright winter sun on the Emyn Arnen and the way kingsfoil smelt when you crushed it between your fingers. He never asked her where she was from. He asked instead how she had learned to hold a needle without shaking.

"A surgeon who liked to swear if you did not follow his hands exactly," she said, drawing a stitch and tying it with practiced fingers. "He taught me that the suture matters less than how you look at the person whose skin you are putting back together."

Faramir smiled. "A good lesson," he said. "I had a captain who taught me something like it. He said orders do not mean anything if you cannot read the faces of the men you are giving them to."

They did not talk about Denethor unless the conversation could not avoid it. Sometimes it could not. The Steward took to summoning Jane weekly. He never spoke of marriage again with his mouth. He set the idea on the table with his eyes and left it there like a knife young men forgot to put away.

He questioned her on small things and measured her on large ones. He asked how many beds could be made ready in an hour. He asked whether she judged the eastern quarter more likely to break than the western. He asked how often a person could climb to the sixth circle before dizziness made them stupid. She answered with care, keeping her words tight as bandages.

"It is not the stairs," she said once, when he asked about dizziness. "It is the way the air thins and the way fear makes people breathe wrong without realizing."

"So you correct the breathing," he said.

"I try," she answered.

He watched her a moment longer. "You are more useful than pretty," he said. "I do not mean that as an insult."

"I did not take it as one," she said, though she could have.

"You are different," he said. "You make people behave as if they will live."

"They should plan to," Jane said.

He laughed once without amusement and dismissed her. As she left, she saw Faramir waiting in the corridor, face composed, eyes tired. He bowed slightly, not to play at court, but as if to say I see you leaving and I am glad you are leaving.

There were days when Jane felt fine and then there were days when she climbed the long stairs and the stone tilted under her. The first time it happened, she gripped the wall while the world breathed too fast. She tried to laugh it off to Pippin.

"You did not eat," he accused, mimicking Ioreth so perfectly that even Jane had to grin.

"I ate," she said. "Bread and something I think used to be a carrot."

"Not enough," Pippin decreed. He fished in his pocket and pressed a small round apple into her palm. "Beregond says apples are food even when they want to be only smell."

The scent hit her and went straight to her knees, warm and clean and impossible to ignore. "I did not know I needed this," she said, taking a bite that felt like relief.

That week her bodice needed a new hole in the lacing and she told herself it was bread. The fourth week, the smell of boiled cabbage in the Houses turned her stomach so suddenly she had to step into the courtyard and lean against the wall until the spinning passed. Ioreth found her pale and blinking and tried to press onion broth into her hands. Jane made herself drink it and kept her face plain.

Late one night on the wall, Gandalf came to stand beside her in a silence that asked no questions and told no lies. After a while he said, only, "You are tired in a new way."

"I am," she said.

He studied her profile the way a physician studies a wound to see whether it is clean. "Make time to rest," he said. "Even if you must steal it."

"I will," she said, though she knew rest owes no one favors.

He looked east then and the line of his mouth went thin. "He looks for you," he said. "Not with horses and iron. With thought. Keep your mind heavy. Fill it with small things. The bigger things want to live there rent free."

"I am learning," she said. "My mind is full of bandages and rope and the way the wind changes at the seventh circle. It is very boring inside my head."

"Good," Gandalf said. "Bored minds are hard to conquer."

The days sharpened. Scouts came in with rumors that felt like weather. They spoke of fires seen at night high on the ash plain. They spoke of new engines dragged by trolls. They spoke of riders scouring the Pelennor for stray men and finding only field mice and pride. The Enemy was gathering. He was also waiting. Gandalf's patience did not run out, but he began to measure it.

When the watch reported strange clouds piling above the Ephel Dúath without wind to bring them, Gandalf said nothing for a long time. Then he said, "The lid." He did not explain. He did not need to. The light felt different the next day and the next. The morning started gray and stayed that way. Men told jokes to each other about night coming for a visit and refused to look at the sky.

Jane took comfort where she could find it. In the way Ioreth flicked a towel over her shoulder like a general with a banner. In the way Pippin learned to walk in black and silver without tripping and then showed Bergil how to do the same. In the way Beregond listened to his son without pretending it was not important. In the way Faramir paused in the Houses, even when he had no proper business there, to ask if a mason who had lost two fingers needed work that did not ask for ten. In the way the Warden grumbled and then gave the man a job counting bandages because counting is work and dignity sits better when it has numbers in its lap.

One afternoon, Faramir arrived later than usual, helmet under his arm, dust ground into the seams of his mail. He stood at the door of the Houses as if asking permission to come in. Jane waved him to a bench by the window and poured water into a cup. He took it, drank, and set it down with care.

"You look like the wall feels," she said.

"That bad," he asked, amused.

"Exactly that bad," she answered.

He hesitated, then said, "I have been to the Henneth Annûn more times than a captain should in a single season."

"The window," Jane said. He had told her about it in pieces, a hidden place with falling water and men who had learned how to make a fire that did not smoke when it needed not to. "Is it still safe."

"For now," he said. "For as long as men keep their promises."

Denethor summoned them to supper again that night. The table was the same as always. Bread, soup that did not brag, cheese that would keep another month. Denethor had a way of asking questions that looked polite and arrived with a point. He asked Pippin for a song that did not love the Shire too much because he could not love it with him. He asked Gandalf where the wind went when the sky refused to move. He asked Jane whether the Houses would break if the first blow were heavier than expected.

"Not if we put the right people at the door," Jane said.

"The door," Denethor repeated. "I remember doors."

His fingers moved as if counting something he did not like admitting he had to count. He turned to Faramir with deliberate calm. "You saw halflings on the road east," he said. "Tell me the truth you did not tell me earlier."

Faramir held his father's eyes and chose his words with a care that looked like love from some angles and like exhaustion from others. "They were walking a path someone had to walk," he said. "I judged that the City was not saved by bringing them in at sword point."

Denethor's mouth went sour. "You have always judged yourself a better steward than I am," he said. He stood so abruptly that the bench slid. "Enough." He dismissed them with a jerk of his hand and walked out into the court alone.

Faramir sat very still for a long time. Then he pushed back his stool, nodded once to Gandalf, once to Jane, and went in search of air that did not hurt to breathe.

"Do not be alone," Gandalf called after him.

"I am almost never that lucky," Faramir said dryly without turning.

Jane found him later on the wall where the dead tree could not watch. He stood with both hands on the parapet, looking toward a country he loved like a person.

"I do not know how to be both son and captain," he said. "On some days it feels like a riddle I will not live long enough to solve."

"You do it already," Jane said. "That is why it hurts."

He gave her a sideways look. "You are kind without being foolish," he said. "It is a rare skill."

"I learned it from a dwarf," she said. "He practices blunt tenderness."

Faramir smiled at that. Then he fell quiet, and the quiet was not painful.

The fifth week began with a wind that moved nothing and a sky the color of old pewter. The watch changed how it stood on the walls. Men wore their helmets longer. The Warden slept in his chair. Ioreth muttered to herself about storm lamps and fools who forget the difference between courage and care.

Jane woke in the dark before dawn and did not know why. She sat up and the room swayed once and then steadied. She pressed a hand to her stomach without thinking. The gesture startled her. She got to her feet, dressed by feel, and went out into corridors that had not remembered morning yet.

In the court, Gandalf stood by the withered tree, head tipped back, eyes on a sky that had decided to smother its own light. He did not look at her when he spoke.

"This is the lid," he said again. "He covers the sun to make men feel smaller."

"Does it work," Jane asked.

"It works on some," Gandalf said. "We will have to be the ones it does not work on."

They walked to the outer wall together. From there, the Pelennor spread in a dim plain, all its ordinary courage muted. Far to the east, something like a bruise had begun. It thickened while they watched, the color of smoke that has decided to become a shape.

The first horn sounded late in the morning. A single note carried by a tired man who had been waiting a month to blow it. It spread around the walls and down the staircases and through the markets. People looked up and then looked at their hands and made them keep moving.

Bells answered. Men ran politely. The Warden stood and forgot to take the blanket off his knees.

Pippin's face appeared at Jane's elbow with the sober brightness of a person too small to be allowed to feel as big as he does. "Beregond says I should stay near the third gate," he said. "Gandalf says I should stay where he can see me. I am going to do both. Watch me."

"I will," Jane said. "And you will be fine."

"You do not know that," Pippin said, very honest.

"No," she agreed. "But we are going to act as if it is true until it is."

He drew himself up as if that were a password he knew by heart. "Right," he said. He trotted away with his short sword properly belted and his courage sitting up straight. Bergil ran beside him, eyes wide as a door.

Jane turned and almost knocked into Faramir. He looked like a portrait of himself, all the color stolen by the sky. He still managed to smile.

"Will the Houses hold," he asked.

"They will if you keep sending me men who listen," she said.

"I will send you who I have," he answered. "And give them your name to keep in their mouths."

"Keep yours in yours," she said. "Come back."

"That is the plan," he said, very mild.

Denethor came down the steps with two servants at his heels. He wore black and silver and a face that had decided which enemies were outside and which had always been inside. He saw Jane and did not say anything. That was also a decision.

Gandalf spoke from the parapet without raising his voice. "Osgiliath will fall before night," he said. "He will send his first anger across the river to make us spend fear before we spend strength. The great engines will follow by dawn. Make ready the lower circles. Clear the streets."

Denethor did not respond. He had men for that. He had pride for something else. He looked at the sky that had stopped trying to be a friend and said, "So it begins."

It did.

The wind came from the east with a smell like a forge that has been working for months without cooling. The ground carried a tremor only the horses seemed to feel. On the far side of the Pelennor, dark lines began to move. They were not lines, not really. They were many small things, each of them heavy, each of them hungry, all of them believing the same lie loud enough to make it sound like truth.

Jane went where her hands were needed. The Houses filled, emptied, filled again with men who had been struck by fear and memory and iron. She cleaned and tied and turned people on their sides when they forgot how to breathe. She told Ioreth to stop talking long enough to drink water. She told the Warden to sit down for four minutes and counted the minutes out loud. She did not stop to be afraid because fear wastes time and time is the only currency that still buys anything.

Late in the day, before the sun would have set if the sky had remembered how, she ran to the outer wall because the sound had changed. The city had learned the drums. It was learning something else now.

Huge shapes moved along the eastern rim of the world. At first they were only shadows, big and wrong. Then the light from the watch fires found edges. Towers rolled on wheels taller than houses. Engines dragged by trolls moved like tired mountains. Black banners hung and did not stir because even the wind was hiding.

A cry rose above the city, not word, not song. It was the sound of men learning a new kind of silence and refusing to take it inside them. Pippin stood on the wall with Beregond, small and steady, eyes enormous. Faramir found a place two embrasures down and watched as if he had promised to never blink again.

Gandalf lifted his staff. Light climbed it as if it were a ladder. For a breath the city remembered what white looked like when it was warm.

"Hold," he said. Only that.

Denethor stood under the dead tree and listened to the drums. He lifted his face to the lid of the sky. He did not move.

Jane set her palms on the parapet and felt the stone talk. It said, We will be asked to do more than we have done. It said, Hold anyway.

She thought of Théodred in a field that was not this one, with wind under his horse and his mouth set the way it is when someone has decided to be rude to fate. She thought of the braid, the pale knot, the night they had made a small bright covenant of their own. She thought of apples and the smell of marigold and the way Pippin had squared himself under a weight many times his size. She thought of Faramir's voice when he described water falling like thread.

She did not think of the Eye. She kept her mind heavy with small things. She filled it with bandages and rope and the path from her room to the Houses with her eyes closed. She filled it with the measure of a jug and the point where a stitch should turn. She filled it with the rhythm of the city's breath and the ridiculous stubbornness of people who refuse to stop loving each other when they are told it is too expensive.

The first stone came out of the dark with a sound like thunder forgetting itself. It arced high and heavy and slow enough to be seen and fast enough to arrive before a prayer could finish. It hit the lower circle with a roar that pulled air out of lungs. The wall shook under her hands. Dust lifted in a long sigh.

Bells answered again, everywhere at once. The watch cried out orders without wasting words. Gandalf's voice went down the line like a straightened spine. Pippin pressed his mouth into a line and did not look away. Faramir's hands tightened on the stone.

"So," Jane said, to no one and to the city and to the parts of herself that would listen, "we begin."

The wind brought smoke and ash and the iron smell of a forge working too hard. The sky pressed closer. The ground hummed in the soles of her feet. Far to the west, beyond everything she could see, a horse threw its head and reached for speed.

Minas Tirith braced. The war stepped across the river and set its hands against the gate. And above it all, a woman from another world took one breath, then another, and refused to yield any of them.

Chapter Text

The first stones had fallen in the gray morning, heavy arcs that seemed to cross time as much as sky. The city shook, caught itself, and learned the rhythm. By midday the lower circles were a living map of men moving where they were told and women making impossible things happen with clean cloth and hot water. Jane held her post in the Houses of Healing and counted what could be counted. One more cart of kindling. Four more kettles to replace. Three more beds freed because their owners insisted the floor would do. She thought in short lines and straight cuts. She did not look at the sky unless she had to.

Gandalf found her in a side yard that held a square of winter herbs and a stone bench worn smooth by old fear. He did not speak until the door closed behind them and the sound of the hall lost its edges. He looked older than the city and younger than Pippin, both at once.

"Walk with me," he said.

They went along the narrow path between the beds. A small wind rifled the sage and made it smell like hands that had worked all day and were finally clean. The ground shook once under them and then remembered to hold fast.

"What is it," Jane asked. She braced for orders. She expected a new list. She did not expect the look he turned on her.

"Be careful," Gandalf said quietly. "You carry another life."

The words hit her in the chest and kept going. She sat on the low wall before her knees decided to try that for her. For a moment she heard nothing at all. Then she heard everything. A hammer somewhere. Pippin's laugh from two days ago. Ioreth scolding the Warden as if the man were a bowl left unwashed. The memory of Théodred's breathing in the dark. Her own breath came back to her in small pieces.

"How do you know," she managed.

Gandalf's face had the softness of a person who has delivered both good news and bad and does not call them by the wrong names. "I have watched many ages and many kinds of hurt and many kinds of hope," he said. "The body speaks, even to someone as rude as I am. You have been tired in a way that is not only war. You cannot pretend away the smell of boiled cabbage. Your skin holds the sun differently. Your mind shields itself as if for two."

"I did not know," Jane said.

"You suspected," he said gently. "Do not be afraid of having hoped."

She pressed her palm against her belly, light as if the touch might startle what could not be startled. "I am not afraid of the child," she said, surprised at how sure she was. "I am afraid of where we are."

"Good," Gandalf said. "Fear that looks in the right direction is useful."

She let out a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. "Now you tell me."

"I tell you now," he said, "because it is time to be practical. You will not climb the outer wall unless I ask you by name. You will not run to the openings when the Nazgûl pass. You will guard your mind as if it were a hearth, not a door."

"Because he looks for me," she said.

"He does," Gandalf answered. "He knows there is a woman in the City whose thread does not fit his loom. He has tried your name already. He will try again. You will keep your mind boring and your heart even. Let him starve on small thoughts."

"I can do that," Jane said. Then the truth arrived whole. "My God. Theodred."

Gandalf's eyes warmed. "He is why this is not only terror," he said. "Hold on to that. Hold on to him. It will help you stand when other things try to make you fall."

She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and was grateful they were dry. The tears would come when they had time to. The city shuddered again and steadied. The sound of the wards rose and fell like a sea working itself against rocks.

"Do I tell anyone," she asked. "Pippin will give me away if I tell him. He will glow like a lantern."

"Tell no one you must nurse or command," Gandalf said. "Tell me what you need. Tell Pippin when you are ready and no sooner. As for Denethor, we will not give him another tool to break himself with. Not yet."

"And Faramir," she asked before she could stop herself.

Gandalf considered. "He is your friend," he said. "He will hold the knowledge as a shield for you if he must. Not today. Today he carries the city's weight in his hands. Do not give him yours as well."

She nodded. If she spoke more, she would say something for which there was no energy.

Gandalf touched her shoulder, light as a blessing. "Eat when Ioreth tells you even if you think she is wrong. Sit when Beregond gives you a chair even if you can only sit on it for the time it takes him to look away. Sleep when the bells forget to ring. The work will be there when you wake."

"Are you this kind to everyone," she asked, steady again.

"I am this kind to people who listen," he said, and then he smiled and the smile was a hinge that let air in.

They went back into the light and noise and heat. She picked up her tray of boiled cloths and the day took her hands again. The knowledge did not make her lighter. It made her stronger. Fear stood in the same room as joy and they both agreed to give her breath.

The Nazgûl came lower after noon. You did not need to see them to know it. The sound their beasts made drew breath from lungs and courage from hands. Men forgot which way to hold a spear. Women stared down at bandages as if the linen had changed language. Jane kept her head down and her thoughts small. Count, she told herself. Two kettles at a rolling boil. Sixteen bandages folded. The bottle of spirits half full and two more under the bench. A bruise on a boy's cheek that would not matter tomorrow and mattered to him very much today. She breathed around the fear and did not let it inside.

Beregond burst through the doors with three men carrying a fourth, the litter jolting as they tried not to run. The wounded man's mail was pierced at the side and the cloth under it was already dark and sticky.

"Arrow," Beregond said, too calm. "We cut the shaft. It was no black dart. He breathes."

"Put him on the next table," Jane said. "You two, water. You, press here. Do not let go until I tell you."

The men obeyed because her voice did not waver. She cut the lacing, peeled the mail back, found the wound, and let the tunnel of work narrow her world. Her hands were sure. So was her mind. She told the story of the steps to herself as she walked them. Lift, cleanse, pack, stitch. Talk quietly while the needle goes in. Tell the body to stay. Mean it.

Pippin slid into the corner as if fear had pushed him and he had decided to use the motion to his own advantage. He held a jug and poured water for anyone who held out a cup. When he reached Jane he did not look full at her face because he would have seen what he was afraid to know and said it out loud.

"Drink," he said.

She did. The water tasted like stone and air. He said nothing about her shaking hands because they were not shaking.

Toward evening Denethor called another council and then turned it into a hearing. The circle of officers stood with their hats off and their mouths tight. Faramir reported from the river with clean words and no garnish. Denethor's grief looked like anger because he did not know what else to do with it.

"If Boromir had been at the river," he said mildly, and every man there flinched as if he had shouted, "he would have held the cityside until night."

"Boromir would have done what the day asked," Faramir said, no edge in it. "So did I."

Gandalf cut across the room before the old wound could be opened farther. "He brought back more men than anyone had a right to expect," he said. "You should thank him and then feed him and then let him sleep."

"I will thank him," Denethor said, "when he brings me the river."

"What do you want now," the captain to Faramir's left asked, careful.

Denethor smiled thinly. "Osgiliath," he said. "Retake it."

"You cannot be serious," the same captain began, and then stopped because he had learned a long time ago what happened to men who spoke the truth too quickly.

Faramir did not look at anyone. He stood like a young tree that has learned how to bend and still insisted on being wood. "If you wish it, I will go," he said. He turned to his father. "I will go gladly."

There was a sound from the doorway that did not belong in a hall. It was Ioreth's disgusted breath. She had come with a tray she pretended needed to be brought personally. Jane saw her eyes go flat and bright and knew the woman was counting what she would have to do later and hating that she had already begun.

Gandalf took one step toward Faramir and stopped. He would not pull a man back from duty. He would not deliver him into his father's pride. He settled for speaking to the room. "Do not throw your men into a river that is already full of iron," he said. "Keep them for the gate."

Denethor looked past him at the dark windows. "Bring me Osgiliath," he repeated, polite as a knife put back in its sheath.

The company formed in the sixth circle. Men checked girths and buckles and the parts of their courage that stay where they are put. Pippin stood by a post and pretended he was only watching. Beregond did not pretend. He stood at his side and did not let him fall apart.

Jane found Faramir by his horse. He had changed into mail that had been patched in three places and polished in none of them. He smiled when he saw her and the smile was like a cup of water offered without comment.

"You will be careful," she said. It was not a question.

"As careful as a man can be who has just been told to do something impossible in front of witnesses," he said. The humor was dry and did not try to hide the fear. "There is a pool in Ithilien I intend to see again. I require my lungs to do that. I will keep them."

"You will come back," she said. "We will be here."

"I know," he said simply. He hesitated. "You are different today."

She held his gaze. The truth wanted to stand between them and be admired. It would cost him too much to carry it out there. "I am the same," she said instead, and he accepted the lie because he saw the love behind it.

He swung up. The troop moved with a low sound that was mostly leather. They went down through the circles and out toward the river, small against the plain, brave in the way people are when they refuse to look at odds.

Jane returned to the Houses and let herself fold into work like a blade into a scabbard. The hours dragged and sprinted by turns. At some point she sat down and woke with a start because she had fallen asleep upright for no more than a breath. Ioreth shoved a cup of broth into her hands and told her to pour it into herself or she would pour it on her. Jane drank and did not ask what it was.

The sky deepened from pewter to something like bruised iron. The drums cut the air into pieces. When the horns blew again, they sounded different. You could hear in them the shape of men learning something they had not wanted to know.

On the wall, Gandalf stood by the eastward cusp where the parapet offered a view of the long road to Osgiliath. Pippin and Beregond watched with him. The companies of Gondor came back in pieces, first by squads and then by twos and threes and then by men who had lost their unit and kept their feet. Behind them the Nazgûl came low, their mounts folding and unfolding in the air like nightmares with a rhythm.

"Open the gate," Gandalf said, and the order ran without argument. He went down the stairs like a man who already knew the footing. Jane reached the court in time to see Shadowfax thunder out with white light riding his shoulders. The wizard met the black shapes with something that was not fire and was not the sun and the beasts broke upward, screaming with mouths that had not been built for mercy.

Faramir rode in the tail of the retreat with three men around him. He was bent over the neck of his horse. Even from where she stood, Jane could see the wet shine along his side where a spear had found him. He swayed. Shadowfax reared. Light slammed the air. Horses stumbled and then surged.

The gate closed when the last man was inside. Men cheered the way people do when they need the sound to keep their bodies upright. Jane moved with the flow toward where the wounded were taken. She did not run. She did not have to. The crowd opened for her because she moved like a person who knows what she is about.

They brought Faramir to the Houses on a door taken from its hinges. He was very still and very white, which is its own terrible color. Denethor walked beside the makeshift litter with a face in which nothing lived. He did not speak. He did not touch his son. He looked at Gandalf as if the wizard were the one who had placed the spear.

"Take him in," Jane said, her voice steady enough that men obeyed without being sure why. "Clear that table. You, cut the lacings. Not you. Your hands are shaking. You, wash. Use the hotter water. We will need it."

She cut the ties herself. The gash along Faramir's side was deep and ugly and clean in the way a new wound can be. The bleeding had slowed. That was good and also not good. The skin around the puncture looked wrong, as if the air itself had made up its mind to harm. The smell made the back of her tongue taste of iron and old apples.

Ioreth hovered with a bowl of athelas and hot water and the fierce look of a woman daring anyone to tell her that leaves could not be a weapon. Jane crushed the green between her fingers and the scent rose sharp and clean. Faramir's breath eased a fraction. Around them the room breathed out as one.

"Hold him," Jane said. "Two on the shoulders. Two on the legs. Do not let him move. If he thrashes, you will regret it."

They did not let him move. She cleaned and packed and stitched with a speed that did not once let her hands get ahead of her mind. She talked to him because bodies listen even when men cannot.

"You are not done," she said to the place where he lived. "You have a pool to visit and a boy who looks up to you and a city that needs your voice on the wall. Stay."

Denethor watched from the door. The light from the braziers turned his face into a thing carved out of something harder than wood. When Jane glanced up, he did not blink. He did not breathe. He was an idea standing in a doorway, waiting for a reason to turn into an action.

Gandalf stood at the foot of the table, hands on the wood, eyes on Faramir's face. He did not speak. When the last stitch drew closed and the last bandage lay smooth, he placed two fingers against Faramir's temple, not to bless him, but to remind him of where he was.

"Come back," he said, low. "Do not leave your body to men who do not love you."

Faramir did not wake. His breath stayed shallow and regular. His pulse counted time without enthusiasm. It would do. It would have to.

Denethor left without a word. That was almost worse than a curse.

The night was a long corridor with no doors. The engines creaked in the dark beyond the walls like ships working against a storm. The stones came in a slow rain. The Nazgûl made another pass near dawn and the light lifted on the end of their tails like a challenge.

In the hour before the bells should have rung, Jane sat on the floor with her back against the leg of Faramir's bed and let her head rest on her knees. She closed her eyes and saw fields in Rohan and the gold of a thatched roof and the way Théodred laughed when he forgot not to. She did not cry. The grief that might have come down on her instead held itself like a horse at a door. She touched the braid at her shoulder and found the small pale knot with her fingers and that was enough for now.

Gandalf came and crouched beside her without alarming her body. "How is he."

"Alive," she said. "The wound is ugly. The breath is wrong. But he is stubborn."

"He learned from the best," Gandalf said. He studied her face, which felt more like being warmed than being measured. "And you."

"I will not break," she said. It was not a promise. It was a description.

He nodded and then tilted his head as if listening to something under the floor. "He will try you," he said. "The Enemy. Not only because of what you carry. Because you are in the habit of saying no without saying it loudly, and he hates that kind of refusal."

"I will give him nothing," she said.

"Good," Gandalf said. "Give me your hand."

She did. He placed his palm over her fingers and his other hand lightly on her crown. He did not speak in a way anyone in the room could hear, but something in the air went clear for a breath, like water settling after a thrown stone. Her mind felt heavier and cleaner at once. It was easier to keep the large things out.

"Thank you," she said.

"You are very practical," he told her. "It infuriates evil."

That earned him the smallest smile she had to spare. He stood and moved to the door, called Beregond by name, and gave him a job that was not written down. The guardsman nodded and took up a post near the Houses that did not look like a post and meant he would not let Jane walk into a rain of stones without forgetting where she was.

Pippin slipped in later with a heel of bread and a cup of something that looked like broth and tasted like someone's attempt at comfort. He sat near Jane's feet and leaned his shoulder against her knee without asking if he might. She let him. He watched Faramir's breath the way people watch a fire when they will not admit it has them in its hands.

"Do you think he will be all right," he whispered.

"Yes," she said, because sometimes the truth is the thing you choose. "He is in the part where your body takes a vote and then decides you should stay."

Pippin nodded as if that were the kind of math he understood perfectly. "Bergil says his father is going to the wall," he said. "I told him that was very brave, and I tried to say it as if I had not just decided to be terrified for the next three days."

"You decided well," Jane said. "Be terrified and do the job anyway. That is most of courage."

He went quiet for a while. When he spoke again it was to say a thing that made her throat ache. "If I do not see you, I will come find you. That is a promise."

"I will make it easy to keep," she said.

Morning finally arrived, but it did not look like morning. The lid held. The wind did not move. Men who had been awake all night learned how to be awake all day. The Warden stood and forgot he had fallen asleep with a blanket over his knees. Ioreth made a sound like a battle horn and set people moving with cups of water and slices of bread and the confidence of a general who has never once in her life accepted the world as it tried to present itself.

Jane rose and flexed her hands and felt the familiar ache at the base of her thumbs. She tied her apron, checked the knot in her hair, and went back to what would need to be done next. The knowledge that she was not alone inside her skin had settled into a quiet place. It did not float to the top of her thoughts. It bided its time and warmed her from behind the ribs.

She did not go to the wall when the battering started. The sound came to her anyway. It was deep and wrong and patient. The first blows shook dust from the rafters. The second found a harmony that made the hair on her arms lift. Men whispered the name of the ram and then whispered it again as if one more repetition might make it less true. Grond. The sound of it seemed to carry weight.

In the Houses, the light shivered with each strike. Bowls rattled, then stilled. Jane set her palm on Faramir's shoulder and felt the body refuse to be thrown from the bed. He was still far away. He was still here.

Denethor came at noon like a storm that had put on a cloak. He walked straight to the bed and stood over his son and did not touch him. His eyes held the kind of despair that turns into decisions people have to stand in the doorway to stop. He looked at Jane as if she were a figure in a dream.

"You bind," he said.

"I do," she answered.

"And you keep men where their bodies are," he said.

"I try," she said.

He looked back to Faramir and something in his face closed. "It would have been better if you had died," he said to the sleeping man. "Better for you. Better for me." The words struck the room like a dropped plate. He left before anyone could answer.

Jane's hands trembled for the first time that day. Not because the man had said the unsayable. Because she could feel in him the shape of what he might do next if no one tugged him back by the collar. She looked at Gandalf. The wizard did not look back. He was already moving toward the door.

"Watch him," Gandalf said to Beregond, not shouting, and Beregond nodded because the words had the weight of an order and the sound of a plea.

The battering changed again. The rhythm deepened. The Nazgûl cried once and it was not hunting, it was triumph given voice too soon. Jane leaned over Faramir and pressed her hand to his sternum and felt the lift and fall. "Stay," she told him. "Do not go anywhere because men with bigger names are making poor choices."

He did not answer. He did not have to.

In the corridor beyond the ward, men ran politely. The bells worked themselves into a single long tone. The city took one breath and held it as the gate learned what it was to be tested past pride. Somewhere below, Pippin shouted Bergil's name and was answered. Somewhere above, the White Tree stood and did not bloom and did not mind that it did not.

Jane did the small things. She mixed a draught for a man whose hands would not stop shaking. She changed a bandage before it struck up a quarrel with the flesh under it. She let a child crawl onto her lap for the time it took his mother to wash her face. She kissed the curl of the boy's ear and did not think about what she carried except to know that this was how you shielded someone who had not yet learned how to be afraid.

Gandalf came back at dusk with smoke in his hair and the kind of stillness a man wears when he has been throwing himself against mountains and expects to do it again at any moment. He stood at the foot of Faramir's bed for a long minute, as if the sight of the captain lying there could arm him better than any spear.

He looked at Jane and she felt the next order before he spoke it. It did not land like weight. It landed like truth.

"Stay inside when the ram comes again," he said. "The blow will shake the bones of the city. You do not belong on the wall when it lands."

"I hear you," she said.

"You will want to go," he added. "You will reason with yourself. You will say there are hands missing up there that could pull someone back from falling."

She did not argue. "You are not wrong," she said.

"Stay," he said again. "Two lives."

She nodded. The word did not frighten her. It steadied her. It put her feet in the right place and kept them there.

Outside, the sky had given up pretending to be anything but a lid. The plain crawled with dark shapes and the light along the walls moved like breath. The great engines rolled forward another body length. Men shouted names to hold themselves together. The deep sound of the ram gathered, then fell, and the city braced with every stone and every pair of knees.

Jane stood with her back to the wall and her hand on Faramir's wrist and her eyes on the door. Ioreth stood with a bowl of athelas as if it were a shield. Beregond took two steps closer without appearing to move. Pippin's voice somewhere in the stairwell said the word courage and made it sound like a small, plain thing you could carry in your pocket.

The blow came. It came through the floor and through the bones and through the thought that said walls are forever. The braziers rang as if they were bells. The White City took it and held.

Jane did not fall. She did not flinch. She held to the pulse under her fingers and felt it answer. She looked up at the ceiling and thought of a thatched roof in a hall where men had sung with their arms around each other and the smell of horses and smoke had been the best thing in the world. She thought of a prince who had tied a strand of his hair into hers and called it luck. She thought of a seed in good earth sinking a root that would hold when the wind started shouting.

"Two lives," she said out loud, to keep them both steady.

Faramir's breath came and went. The city staggered and set its feet again. The ram gathered itself for another word. And the night drew up its shoulders and leaned in, sure that it would finish the work it had begun.

Jane squared herself to meet it, as she had met every other impossible thing since she fell into this story. Not with bravado. With the steady, stubborn insistence of a woman who has learned the worth of small actions and has decided to live through all of this, and to make room for someone else to live through it too.

Chapter Text

Grond spoke in a language of weight. Each blow wrote a line in the bones of the city. The Houses of Healing learned the rhythm first. Bowls rattled. Windows ticked in their frames. Men paused between stitches and then found the thread again. Jane counted the beats without meaning to and set her hands to work in the spaces between.

The day held no sunrise. The sky sat on Minas Tirith like a lid. Smoke gathered in the hollows and did not climb. The air tasted like iron and bitter herbs. Somewhere high on the wall a bell tried to sound brave and only managed honest.

Jane moved through the long hall with her sleeves rolled and a voice that stayed level no matter how much fear people loaded into hers. A boy with a gash at his hairline. Two men with burns from a lamp that went over during the last strike. A woman who had been steady all morning and then shook so hard her teeth clicked. Jane fed her water and names. Sometimes names are heavier than fear. The woman breathed around them until her hands remembered what they were for.

When the door at the far end banged hard enough to startle the dust from the rafters, every head lifted. Denethor walked in with his cloak crooked and his eyes sharpened until they were worse than dull. He went straight to Faramir's bed. He did not speak at first. He stood and stared, as if he could burn his son with the look alone.

"He is lost," Denethor said at last, voice flat.

"He is breathing," Jane answered, because that was the truth in the room. "That is the only argument I need."

The Steward's gaze slid to her. It cut and weighed in the same glance. "You will bind a corpse and claim victory," he said.

"I will bind what lives," Jane said. "That is what I am for."

Gandalf appeared in the doorway as if the stones had made a path for him. White cloak, ash on his hair, eyes clear as if he had rinsed them in cold river. He took in Denethor, Faramir, Jane, the hall. His staff touched stone once. Not loud. Final.

"Leave him to us," Gandalf said.

"Leave him to fire," Denethor answered, and the quiet he carried with the words was more dangerous than a shout.

He turned and went, and the room breathed again because he was no longer in it. The breath did not last long. A runner pelted in on sliding feet, almost skidding into a cart stacked with clean linen.

"My lord commands a pyre in the House of the Stewards," the boy blurted. "He sends men to bear Lord Faramir there."

Jane's mouth was already forming the word no when Pippin crashed through a second door, cheeks flushed, eyes huge.

"Gandalf," Pippin gasped. "He means to burn him. Alive."

"I know," Gandalf said. He did not flinch. "Where is Beregond."

"Here," said a voice from behind Pippin. The guardsman stepped forward with his hand not quite on his sword, which told Jane everything she needed to know about what kind of man he had decided to be.

Gandalf's tone left no room for doubt. "You will go to Rath Dínen," he told Beregond. "You will stand in the way. You will delay by any means. You will not let fire touch him."

Beregond glanced at Pippin and then at Jane and then back to Gandalf. "I will be cast out," he said, calm and sure.

"You will save a life," Gandalf said. "The rest is tomorrow's accounting."

Beregond nodded once and went without drama. Pippin looked between Gandalf and Jane, waiting to be told to do something too large for him.

"You will show me the quickest path," Gandalf said. "And you," he added to Jane, "gather what we need to keep him breathing when the cold air hits him. A basin. Cloths. A pot of athelas."

"Ioreth," Jane called. "Leaves, hot water, two clean blankets, and the jar marked bitter willow."

Ioreth had already started moving. She protected her heart with complaints and she had sharpened them for a day like this. "I knew men would set a fire where a meal belongs," she muttered, hauling the kettle from the hook with a purpose that would have made kings step aside.

They lifted Faramir onto a door wrenched off a storage room. Two men took the front, two the back. Jane carried the basin and the leaves and the small jar of powder that would dull pain without taking him from them. Gandalf moved beside the litter with his staff grounded and his jaw set. Pippin ran ahead to clear stairways with a voice that somehow carried through stone.

Rath Dínen was a road of white and echoes. The Silent Street held its name even when men shouted on it. High walls shut out everything that was not mourning. Torches smoked without courage. Jane had never walked here before. Her bones wanted to look behind her for a door they knew. There was none.

They met resistance at the door to the House of the Stewards. Men of the household barred the way with pikes set. They did not look eager. They looked like men who had decided to obey until someone gave them permission not to.

Beregond's voice came from inside. "By order of my own conscience," he said, "you will not lift that brand."

The first guard at the threshold shifted, as if a word in his head had turned. The second reached for the torch anyway. Beregond cut the shaft with one swing and the flame spilled and died.

Pippin squeezed past before anyone could think better of it. He was small and fast and polite. He got exactly where he meant to go. "My lord," he called into the dim, and his voice carried more than it should have. "You cannot do this."

Denethor turned. Fire had already found his eyes. He held oil as if it solved things. The bier behind him was built too neatly, too quickly. Faramir was not there. He was on the door in Gandalf's hands. Denethor saw and fury made him younger for a breath.

"Thieves," he said to Gandalf, voice too even. "Grave robbers. You take my son from his pyre."

"I take him from murder," Gandalf said.

"This is mercy," Denethor answered. "He burns before darkness takes him. He goes where the hands of healers and the hands of orcs are both kept from him. I felt the east in him. He is poisoned through."

"Then we will draw out what we can and keep him where he lies," Jane said, stepping to the door with the circle of men. Her voice did not shake. "I have done it for others. I will do it for him."

Denethor looked at her as if she had spoken a language he refused to learn. He poured oil over wood that had been laid too well. It soaked and glittered. The smell of it made Jane's stomach turn.

Gandalf did not wait for persuasion to work. He raised his staff. The light it summoned was not bright. It was clean. It pushed the smoke to the edges and gave the room back its shape. "Set him down," he told the bearers. They obeyed because their bodies had loosened under the light, like people who had been holding a weight between their shoulder blades without knowing it.

Beregond planted himself between Denethor and the bier. "Put down the oil," he said. His blade stayed low. His voice did not.

Denethor's gaze slid to Pippin as if the hobbit were the easiest thing to break. "Small one," he said. "Do you choose the wizard over me."

Pippin swallowed once. He did not look away. "I choose what is right."

Something in Denethor broke without sound. He lifted a brand with a shaking hand.

The guard nearest him did the math in a breath and chose the wrong sum. He lunged. Beregond moved without thinking. His sword flashed once, just enough. The man fell with surprise on his face. The second guard hesitated with grief in his eyes and then came because he did not know what else a man is supposed to do. Beregond struck again, less clean this time, heart terrible with knowing what he was doing. The door of the House of the Stewards learned the sound a blade makes when it kills out of love.

Denethor stared at the blood and then at Beregond as if this, somehow, had proved his worst thoughts. "So it begins," he said. He turned to the bier and threw the brand into the oil.

Gandalf moved. He did not run. He crossed the space like someone taking a cloak from a sleeping child. His staff lifted. The light stamped down and the fire died. Smoke lifted in a single cloud and clung to the rafters with nothing to hold.

Denethor stood very still. The torch in his hand burned to the knuckles. He did not flinch. When Gandalf took it from him, the Steward did not resist. Then he bared his teeth at the world because that was the shape his grief had learned.

"Leave me," he said to them all. "Take your thief. Take your perian. Take your pity."

"No," Gandalf said. He put a hand against Denethor's chest and pushed him back from the bier. He did it without anger. He did it like he was shutting a door against a storm.

"Help me," Jane said to Pippin and Beregond. "Lift him."

They raised Faramir from the door and set him in a blanket. He groaned, a small sound that made every person in the room let out a breath they did not know they had been holding. Jane pressed the athelas into hot water and crushed it with her fingers until the scent rose clean and green.

"Breathe this," she told Faramir, as if his body could be taught by being told. "Follow the leaf. Stay with us."

The color in his face moved toward the world again. Not much. Enough to call it hope. Denethor watched with a look that had no room for hope. He saw it and called it insult.

"Go," he told them again. "Go before I throw both of you on the wood. I am Steward yet. I am fire and law."

"You are neither," Gandalf said. "You are a father and a man who has forgotten how to ask for help."

Denethor struck at him. It was not a soldier's blow. It was a man trying to hit the shape of the world. Gandalf stepped aside and the strike met air and shame. The Steward turned, caught up a new torch from a wall sconce as if his hands had a mind of their own, and set his own cloak alight.

For a moment he was only a man burning. Then he became a line the City would recall as a warning for a hundred years. He stumbled from the House and into Rath Dínen and then up the steps toward the outer court. He ran with a sound like laughing and sobbing arguing inside the same mouth. Men scattered because they did not know whether to stop him or let history do its work. He reached the edge above the high court and fell, a streak of fire against white stone. The wind blew and the flame flickered and then went out because even madness obeys the rules of air.

No one spoke. The silence felt like a thing that had weight.

"Carry him," Gandalf said to the bearers. He did not look back.

They took Faramir between them and followed the wizard and Jane and Pippin out of the Silent Street. Beregond came last, sword lowered. He did not look at the men he had killed. He would look later for the rest of his life. Now he watched the litter and the hobbit and the narrow shoulders of the woman who had spoken to a sleeping man like he could hear her and had made others believe he could.

The path back to the Houses ran through air that had learned a new sadness. The city had lost its steward. In the hall the Warden made a sound under his breath that did not decide whether it was prayer or curse. Ioreth did not stop moving. She wrung out a cloth and told the nearest wide-eyed apprentice to fetch another kettle and another and to keep fetching until she stopped asking.

They set Faramir in a bed in the back room where noise thinned. Jane and Ioreth worked in a braid that needed no words. A soldier stood in the doorway with his helmet in both hands. Pippin kept time by wiping the basin when Jane snapped her fingers. Beregond took the far corner and watched the door and the window and the world through both with the same attention.

Jane cleaned the wound again and set new dressings. She poured the bitter willow into water and coaxed it into Faramir with a spoon and encouragement. She crushed more athelas. The scent rose and ran along the corners of the room and under the beds and up into noses that had forgotten they knew that smell. Faramir's breath settled into a rhythm that did not scare her. Not strong. Sufficient.

"Stay," she told him, because she had no new speech for him and he did not need one.

Gandalf stood at the side of the bed like a wall a person could lean on. He did not touch Faramir. He placed a hand on Jane's shoulder and let the steadiness run through skin and cloth. "Good," he said. It was the kindest word he had said all day.

From the sixth circle the sound of Grond returned. The blows were closer now, deeper, confident. Each hit carried dust down the stairwells. Each hit made the light in the braziers move with a small soft roar.

"It will break," the Warden said quietly, as if speaking softly made him unthreatening to the truth.

"Then we hold after it does," Gandalf answered. He looked at Jane and at Pippin. "You stay here," he told them. "You keep the Houses standing. You keep him breathing. If I fall, you still do those things."

Neither of them argued. Pippin only said, "Do not fall." It was a request a child would make. It carried the weight of a command.

Gandalf left with the sound of the gate in his ears. Jane went back to counting because counting keeps a mind safe. Two towels clean and folded under the bed. One kettle on the brazier and one cooling on the table. The powder box three-quarters full. The jug of boiled water that needed to be refilled. She sent Pippin for it and he went at a trot and came back at a trot and did not spill.

The strike that broke the gate told the City the truth before the City had time to lie to itself. Men flinched and then checked their hands. Children stopped crying and then started again for a different reason. The air changed. The street changed. The white stone learned a new note.

Jane did not run to the wall. She did not go to the door. She sat Faramir up and eased him forward so he coughed and then settled. She kept her mind full of the pattern of breath and the smell of leaves and the cool cloth on his throat. She thought of kettles and ladders and knots. She did not leave one inch of space for an eye that did not blink.

Cold pressed against the panes. Men said a name without saying it. The Witch-king passed under the broken gate and the city felt something that knew how to show its teeth without opening its mouth. Jane squeezed her eyes shut and still saw nothing. She had learned how to keep her mind boring. She stored the list of beds and the way to retie a cut artery and the taste of clean metal from the instruments. She remembered the back corner cabinet where the spare lamp oil sat and the weight of the key to the storeroom. She built a small house of ordinary in her head and braced against its beams.

There was light. Once, like a hand held up between a person and a storm. It came from the Gate and moved along the wall and through the hearts of people standing there. It did not drive everything dark away. It said stop. It was enough.

Then there was sound. Horns. Faint at first, as if the City had dreamed them. Jane did not hear with her ears. She felt the way bodies in beds eased at once and the way hands in the hall stopped clenching and the way Pippin's head came up as if someone had spoken his name on the wind.

"Do you hear that," he whispered.

She did. It had crossed fields and river and fear and had found its way through the lid of the sky. It sounded like green moving in long waves. It sounded like many hooves packing a promise into dirt.

"The Rohirrim," Pippin said, with a grin that made him look like the boy he had been before the world argued with him. "They have come."

Jane swallowed and it did not hurt. She did not go to the window. She did not have to. The sound cut through her cleanly. It found the knot at the end of her braid. It tugged. Her heart answered with a yes that was not a word.

In the ward, men lifted their heads as if the horns had set strings in their chests humming. Ioreth wiped her hands on her apron and pretended not to cry. The Warden stood with his eyes closed and counted his dead again and found he could count his living once more without breaking.

Gandalf's absence felt less like a hole. It felt like a line drawn across the City from the broken gate to the high courts, steady and bright. Jane pressed a new cloth to Faramir's temple and spoke into his ear.

"Listen," she said. "They ride. Hold for that."

Outside, the horns grew. They did not make men immortal. They made them remember they were not alone.

The night refused to lift but the sound crawled under it. The first crash of iron meeting iron reached even the Houses. It was not like Grond. It was men shouting their names at death. It was horses saying no with their feet. It was a king calling orders and hearing them carried and obeyed.

Jane wanted to run to the wall and see with her eyes. Every part of her that loved Théodred strained toward the noise. She did not go. She held to the bed rail and to the truth that had been handed to her by a wizard she did not worship and did not disobey.

Two lives. She repeated it like a charm. It did not make her less brave. It made her brave in the right direction.

Time gathered and spilled and gathered again. In the low room the work continued, stubborn and unglorious. A boy slept against the leg of a chair with his hand in his father's boot straps. A woman drooled on her own shoulder and did not care because she had been awake two nights. Ioreth snored in the corner for seven blessed minutes and then woke with an apology and a command. The Warden wrote numbers in a small book no one would ever read and felt better for it.

Faramir moved. Not much. Enough that Jane saw it without having to look hard. His eyes shifted under lids and then opened a crack. They were grey and unmoored. They found the ceiling first. They found the sound of horns next. They found Jane at last.

"You," he said. It was barely a breath.

"Me," she said. She took his hand because her own needed something to do. "Stay put. That is an order."

"Orders," he whispered, and then an attempt at a smile. "I always knew you were a captain."

"You always knew too much and not enough," Jane answered. She fought tears without drama. "You were on a table in a very unhelpful house. Then you were here. Denethor is gone."

The news moved through him like a shadow. He closed his eyes. For a moment she thought he had left again. He came back and found her.

"You saved me," he said.

"We saved you," she corrected. "Gandalf took the torch away. Beregond stood where he was not supposed to. Pippin ran. I swore at a needle."

"Good work," he murmured. His eyes drifted. Then they sharpened as if a thought had finally found him. "You are different."

"I know," she said. "I will explain when there is nothing trying to push the walls down."

He accepted that and let sleep take him by the hand. Jane leaned back in the chair and let her head fall against the bedrail. The horns called and the drums answered and the City turned all its faces toward the plain.

It is one thing to stand in a hall and tell yourself you will be brave. It is another thing to stand still while death shouts your name and answer with work. Jane wiped a brow and turned a patient on his side and counted bandages. She made small corrections to mattresses so that men would not wake with new hurts. She tucked a blanket around a child's feet. She drank water and made Pippin drink water and did not leave the room. Her world was the space around this bed and the breath of this man and the hope that sat in her womb like a lantern.

The noise outside changed shape again. Horns scattered and then reunited. Voices rose and fell. A cry like a king's name stretched thin over many throats and then broke into something too personal to call a cry. The sound rolled up through the circles and reached the Houses as a single sharp thread. Jane did not ask what it meant. She knew. Love always recognizes its own language.

She stood. Her hand found the braid at her shoulder and the pale knot tied at the end. She closed her eyes and pressed. "Hold," she whispered to a field she could not see. "Hold, love."

Pippin came to her side without being called. He looked as if he had aged a year in an hour, which is the way battle tithes people. "Beregond says the king of Rohan rides like a storm," he said, as if reporting a fact from a ledger. His mouth trembled. "He says he has never heard a horn like that. He says it cuts orcs in half before men reach them."

"He would know," Jane said.

Pippin glanced toward Faramir. "Do you think he will live."

"Yes," she said, because the answer had decided itself the moment Faramir's eyes found hers. "He just needs time to remember which parts of him belong where."

"Good," Pippin said. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and then looked offended by his own dampness. "I hate crying in uniform. It makes the silver look silly."

"It makes the silver honest," Jane said.

He nodded at that as if she had given him a strategy for a kind of fighting he had not trained for. He went to check a jug in the other room because he needed a task. She let him have one.

When the light finally changed, it did not brighten. It shifted. The lid of the sky thinned one shade. The city drew a breath that did not hurt. Somewhere on the plain, a woman cried a name until her throat gave out and then cried it with her whole body. Somewhere a horn dropped because its owner could not hold both it and a man he loved. Somewhere an orc learned that despair can be a blade in the hand of anyone it happens to.

Gandalf returned at full dark. He came with smoke on his cloak and something like frost in the tips of his hair though no frost had formed. He stopped at the threshold and let the room tell him its news. Then he came to Faramir's bed and set two fingers over the bandage without pressing.

"Good," he said again. He looked at Jane. "You did what I asked."

"I stayed," she said. "You did what I asked."

He allowed himself a tired smile. "Riders," he said. "A king. It is not finished, but it is moving."

"Denethor," she said.

"Gone," he answered. "He chose the fire. It was not the city that burned him. It was his grief."

They sat in the same quiet for a moment. It was not defeat. It was the kind of quiet people earn.

He studied her face as a friend would, not as a general. "You look as if you have grown and not because of too much bread," he said.

"Ioreth would say it is because I finally take my own advice and eat," Jane answered. "She would be wrong and right."

He nodded. He did not ask more. He did not need to. "Rest when you can," he said. "Keep him from fever. Keep your mind heavy with small things. Do not go looking for what is looking for you."

"I know," she said.

He left to climb again and Jane envied him nothing. She let her head drop for a single breath, then went back to the work. The city bruised but held. The night did not end. It moved. That was enough.

Hours later, when the ward slept in patches and the kettles barely remembered heat and the last horn had not yet decided whether it would sound again, Faramir woke properly. He found her without wandering. "You saved me," he said a second time, clearer.

"We proved you were stubborn," she said. "Not new information."

He looked toward the door as if he could see through it. "I heard horns."

"Yes," she said. "They have come."

He exhaled slowly. "Then we are not alone."

"Never were," she said.

He turned his head a fraction, studying her face. "You are someone else," he said softly. "And also the same."

She let him see what she had not let anyone else read, not yet. "I carry more than myself," she said. She did not name it. He did not need the word to understand.

His eyes warmed with quiet happiness that did not try to own anything. "He will be a good father," Faramir murmured. "If he is half the man his city has learned he is."

She closed her hand over his. It was not a promise. It was a shared certainty.

Outside, the night rolled its shoulders and waited for dawn to find the courage to try. Below the wall, men and horses contested a plain that would be green again if given the chance. In the Houses, a woman sat between a sleeping captain and a brazier that needed feeding and counted small victories until they added up to a kind of peace. When the wind shifted, it brought with it a faint scent of trampled clover and sweat and leather and a note from a horn that had been carried too far. It found the knot at the end of her braid and tugged. She tugged back and did not let go.

Chapter Text

The Houses of Healing breathed a tired rhythm. Men slept hard and shallow. Kettles complained. A brazier clicked as coals settled. Outside, the city wore the sound of siege like a tight band across its temples. Jane checked Faramir's bandages again, lifted the corner with two fingers, nodded, and tucked the linen back. His breath was steadier. Not strong, not frightening. Ioreth called it good enough to argue with death. Jane would take that.

The bells did not ring at dawn. There was no dawn. The sky sat on Minas Tirith like a lid, dull and close. The ram beat the gate in patient sentences and the stones answered with tired phrases of their own. When the rhythm faltered, the city forgot to breathe. When it resumed, everyone breathed again and pretended not to notice.

Pippin stood in the doorway with his helmet crooked and his chin set. He looked small and brave and entirely himself. "Beregond says the lower circles hold," he reported. "He says we are made of more than walls."

"We are," Jane said, and handed him a cup. "Drink. Then you can say it louder."

He drank as if it were an order. "Gandalf said to tell you he is at the gate."

"Of course he is." She let a smile soften the stiffness in her mouth. "Tell him to keep his feet under him."

Pippin grinned, because you must grin sometimes when the alternative is letting your face remember how to cry. He left at a trot, livery swaying, curls refusing to obey the city's need for order.

Faramir stirred and looked at her through a narrow crack of eyelids. "You are still here," he murmured.

"Someone has to bully your pulse," Jane said. "It responds poorly to neglect."

A shadow moved across the windows. Not a cloud. Not a bird. The sound came next, a high tearing cry that drew courage out of ribs like a pin pulling thread. The Nazgûl had flown low all night. This was lower. The glass shivered though no wind touched it.

Jane's skin went cold from the inside. The pull found her the way a river finds the line it cut last spring. A pressure at the back of her eyes. A weight in her knees. A voice with no words pressing the corners of her mind. She had been careful, the way Gandalf taught her, filling her thoughts with small steady things. Bandages, knots, the path to the kitchener's stair, the weight of a kettle. The pull slipped under those stones as if it had marked them. It pressed and waited.

She set her hand on her belly without thinking. Two lives, she reminded herself, and the reminder met the pressure and did not move it. The room tilted very slightly. She steadied on the bed and spoke as if everything was ordinary.

"Ioreth, I will fetch water." A simple errand. A reason to walk. A way to breathe.

"Take Bergil," Ioreth said without looking up. "He runs like a boy and remembers like a man."

Bergil was near at once, thin legs, quick eyes, a boy made of wire and purpose. "I can carry two," he said, proud.

"Then I will carry three," Jane answered.

They slipped into the corridor and down the stairs, choosing a path that took them behind thicker walls, not because she felt fragile but because she felt hunted. The pull did not lessen. It skated along the underside of her thoughts, the way a fingernail tests a loose thread. At the third landing she stopped and leaned a shoulder to stone and counted her breath.

"Fine," she told the air, as if she were correcting a patient who refused to admit pain. "Fine, I hear you. You do not get to decide where my feet go."

The pressure shifted. It did not leave. It coiled. Bergil did not notice. He jabbered about how Beregond says men stand straighter if you address them by name. Jane filed that away because it was true and because names are lead weights against fear.

They reached the kitchener's court without trouble. Men and girls moved with arms full of pots and ladles. The smell of soup was thin and stubborn. Jane filled three buckets from the big copper tap, tightened her hands on the handles, and started back.

On the stair the pull came again. Harder. She would have called it a hand if it had been a hand. It was colder than skin. It pressed just behind her eyes and slid down her spine, whispering in a voice that was not language. Jane set the buckets down and closed her eyes.

Katrin, she said in her head, and pictured her friend's hands and the way she laughs like a person who has decided to make a day liveable. Coffee, but she did not linger on it because the thought hurt. Theodred's mouth and the weight of his hand on her belly while he slept. The knot at the end of her braid, pale against the darker gold. The smell of thyme on clean cloth. Rope. Ladders. Bandages. Kettles.

The pressure retreated a single step, like a beast testing a fence. She gathered the buckets and climbed.

On the next landing the world went wrong. A window blew inward without breaking. Cold flowed through the corridor as if the stone itself had learned how to exhale. Bergil's mouth opened and no sound came out. Jane's hands tightened on the handles. The pull became a shove.

The corridor swam in and out. For a heartbeat she saw something that was not corridor or city or world. A vast thought focused on her the way people focus on an insect they had not expected to find under a cup. It was not Sauron, not the Eye that had pushed at her in the stone. This was nearer. A shard of that will carried on leathery wings and rotten wind. The Witch-king had noticed her.

He did not speak to her. He did not need to. The shove was invitation and chain. It pulled and she stepped as if her foot had decided for her. Bergil grabbed her sleeve and cried out. The sound came back. She set the buckets down again, because a woman who has learned to save lives in a room cannot stand the sight of clean water wasted.

She could have turned back. She could have dropped to sit and held the banister and told the world to choose a different victim. Instead she moved, not away from the Houses exactly, but toward the cold. That was the strange truth of it. The pull wanted her outside the thoughts of other people, in a place where terror had room to work. She knew it and she went anyway, because sometimes resisting is a slow walk made of very stubborn steps.

Bergil clung and she pried his fingers loose. "Go back," she told him, very calm. "Find your father. Now."

His eyes went wide and wet. "But you."

"Go," she said, and he obeyed because the tone in her voice was the one adults use when they have decided to be obeyed and will pay for it later.

The lower corridors were full. Men ran with orders and ran back without them. Women shouldered baskets. Each clang of Grond rang through the stone like a cracked bell. The pull drew Jane toward a postern gate, a small door tucked into the side of the second circle, used by messengers who do not have time for parades. Two guards stood there with pikes crossed.

"You do not want to open that," she told them, almost conversational.

They exchanged a glance, uncertain whether to laugh. The pull pressed. The gate shivered on its hinges as if the wood could feel what waited beyond. A breath like the inside of a tomb washed under the sill. Jane's knees buckled. She caught herself and set her back to the wall.

Gandalf had told her to keep her mind heavy with small things. She filled it with a list as she slid down the stones until she sat. The weight of a full bucket. The way to fold linen so the edge does not bite a fresh line of stitches. The knot Theodred had tied into her hair, finished one-handed with a little twist. The way a horse breathes when it is about to throw its weight up to a gallop.

The pikes did not waver. One of the guards cleared his throat. "You had better move, mistress. There are orders." He did not say whose. He did not want to.

"Good," Jane said, and stood. "I am under mine."

The floor trembled in a way that was not Grond. A shadow slid across the little court and the cold pressed harder. The gate rattled. A breath came under it again and the guards flinched because fear is contagious and no one is immune. The latch jumped. The pull surged.

The door flew wide.

Wind hit her like something alive. It brought with it the stink of the fell beast, sour and old, and the knife song of the Nazgûl above, a sound that turns courage into sugar in the mouth. The guards cried out and threw themselves against the jamb. The pikes clattered. Jane lifted an arm and the shadow dumped itself over her like water.

Claws scraped stone. A wing beat once and the gust did the rest. She felt her feet leave the ground as if someone had cut her out of the picture and tossed her into a different one. Her stomach rose into her throat. Her braid snapped like a flag. The world filled with black sky and gray stone and one slant of white wall slipping away.

She reached for anything. Her hand closed on leather. A strap run through a ring on the beast's harness. The Nazgûl's will pressed at her like dark snow. She hung in cold, breath punched out of her. Below, the Pelennor opened in a dull blur. The gate of Minas Tirith broke the field into near and far. The near was full of men. The far moved like an illness.

The creature lurched. A spear from the wall glanced off its shoulder. The tug on the strap jerked Jane's arm near out of its socket. Pain burned along her ribs. Something in her mind that had nothing to do with fear flared and said no. Two lives, she thought, not to the horror above her, but to herself, to the small fury in her belly, to the part of her that had refused to be taken when the palantír turned its eye.

Her hand found the little bone-handled knife at her belt. Not the big blade she had left with the bed. The little one she used to cut linen, to slit thread, to trim a bandage to just the right shape. She saw the strap, saw the tension in it, and cut.

She fell.

Wind tore the cry from her mouth before she could make it. The field rose fast. She turned as best she could and hit hard, rolled, and hit again. Grass and mud and a taste of iron. She lay for a heartbeat as the world sorted itself back into up and down. Her ribs screamed. Her right shoulder blazed. Then the ground shook with hooves and the shout of men.

Rohan poured across the plain like a river of green and white. Horns carved the air. The thunder of hooves folded into the roar of many voices. Banners snapped. Horses foamed. A line of Riders broke left and crashed into a squad of orcs with the sound of doors being kicked in. The smell of sweat and leather and blood and trampled clover lifted and made the sky feel closer.

Jane pushed to hands and knees and grinned through grit because this, somehow, was better than the inside of fear. Men cursed and prayed and laughed in the same breath. A Rider swerved and shouted at her to get down, then saw she was already down and nodded curt thanks for her compliance. Arrow, he spit, and a black shaft whispered past and stuck in the ground where her braid had been a second earlier.

"Up," she told herself, and got there. Her legs shook but held. The field tilted right and then steadied. She did not have a sword. Fine. She had hands and sense and a body that had learned how to move when everything wanted it still.

A horse with no rider barreled near. Trained instinct and a lifetime among stables moved her before thought. She sidestepped, reached, and grabbed the trailing rein with her left hand, letting her body swing with the momentum. The mare checked, eyes rolling white, sweat dark on her chest. Jane murmured nonsense and the mare's ears flicked toward her and listened.

"Hello, brave girl." Jane ran fingers down the hot neck, felt the shudder under skin, felt the beginning of calm. She turned the mare's head with her hand and body both, set a boot to the stirrup, and swung up. Pain lit her shoulder again. She grunted and ignored it. The mare sidestepped, then squared when she felt legs she understood.

The field reorganized itself around her. On the far left, a mass of Haradrim pushed their mûmakil forward, tusks bright with badges and blood. To her right, a knot of orcs tried to break through a line of footmen from the City who had learned in a night to move like one creature. Above it all, the Nazgûl tacked and cried, their mounts dropping low and rising again when white light bit at them from the gate.

She did not ride into the charge. She was not a Rider of the Mark. She skirted the edge, keeping a line parallel to men who knew what they were doing. She looked for small things she could fix. A man pinned under a dead horse. A boy trying to free his spear from the ribs of an orc and looking at his hands like they were strangers.

She slid down beside the pinned man. The mare stood over them, wise enough to place her hooves careful. "Do not thrash," Jane said, and put a hand on the man's forehead, the way you put a hand on a horse's neck to stop the fight there. The horse that lay across his legs still had heat in it. She found the girth strap, cut it, and the saddle slid. She braced her shoulder against the dead weight once, twice, three times, and on the fourth a Rider saw and swung down to help. Together they rolled enough to free a leg. The man cried out and then bit his own hand and held still.

"You are free," she said. "Now move if you can."

He moved. Pain made his face hollow for a second, then filled it again with relief and fury. "My spear," he grunted.

"Leave it," she said. "Take that one," and she nodded to the orc's fallen crude weapon, because steel is steel when a moment wants it.

He took it. He stood. He looked her in the eyes and said thank you with a sharp nod. Then he went.

Jane mounted again with her foot in a stirrup and everything inside her complaining. She put it somewhere she would listen later. She kept the mare at a hand gallop where the ground held and a careful trot where it did not. She held her body over her knees to spare the jolt to her belly. She braced a palm against her ribs when she had to and called it nothing.

There was no center to the Pelennor, not for her. There were many small centers that flickered in and out as men grappled and let go. She helped where she could without getting herself killed by zeal. She fetched a dropped shield to a man who had forgotten he missed it. She led a horse out of a knot of screaming and sent it back to a boy who had thought he had lost it forever. She pulled a hobble pin from the leather of her boot and used it to fix a stirrup strap for a Rider who was trying to work with one foot swinging free.

A shout rose, not left or right. Above. Jane looked up and felt the world shrink to a point. The Witch-king bore down from the east with his winged mount folding into a dive, all rotted leather and naked teeth and that smell of old tombs and damp iron. The cry that came with it ripped sound out of the air. The stallion beneath the golden king to her left shied and then held. The banner of Rohan streamed. The line of Riders gathered.

Théoden rode at the fore, helm bright, eyes clear as winter water, mouth set in a line Jane knew from his son. For a second the distance between them fell away. She saw the man who had sat in a dark hall and let a snake speak through him, and she saw the king who had ridden out of that hall and refused to be old. He lifted his sword and the Riders lifted their voices in answer. The fell beast screamed and stooped.

Snowmane reared. Claws raked. Théoden fell with his horse. For a moment the body of the stallion was all she could see, white and heavy, legs tangled, a golden man under him. The beast rose and screamed at the king pinned beneath his friend. A figure in a helm barred its way, small beside the towering monster and yet somehow the only thing standing. Another small figure slipped behind, blade dull with hobbit hands.

Jane's breath stopped. She knew this, and yet seeing it was like watching a story tear itself out of a book and become the air.

"No living man may hinder me," the Witch-king declared, voice like a door on its hinges after years of salt air.

"I am no man," the figure in the helm answered, clear and terrible, and the words fell into the field like a thrown stone. Merry's blade flashed low and found the back of the monster's knee, soft in the join, old spells wounded by new courage. The captain of the Nazgûl faltered. The white figure drove steel between crown and collar. The scream bled the world. The beast twisted, thrashed, and was still.

Silence fell in the space around that act and then shattered under noise. The battlefield swallowed the miracle the way hungry people swallow bread. Jane did not run toward the fallen king. Her body did. The mare carried her and then stopped with the sense of a good mount who reads a rider's mind.

Snowmane thrashed once more, then stilled, his massive body pinning the king beneath. Théoden's breath rattled, each one pulled with effort, but when Jane fell to her knees at his side his eyes sharpened, alive with pain and something fiercer.

"Lady..." His voice cracked, low, but it carried. "You should not be here."

"I had to be," Jane said, pressing trembling hands against the useless weight of the horse. She tried to shove it back, her palms burning against the bloodied hide, but it was no use. Her body sagged. "I couldn't leave you."

A flicker of the old smile touched his lips. "Stubborn... like my son. He learned it from me, I think. And you."

Jane's throat closed. "Don't speak—"

He shook his head, weakly but with the authority of a king. "I will spend what little I have as I choose. Listen to me." His hand twitched, and she caught it, holding it against her own. It felt thin, frail, but his grip still bore command.

"You saved Théodred when no man could. You gave me back my son. No father could ask for more." His chest rose shallowly. "I was blind too long, let Wormtongue's poison weaken me... but I see clearly now. I see what he sees in you."

Jane bent over him, tears dropping onto his tunic. "I think—" her voice broke, then steadied, softer, raw—"I think I carry his child."

For a moment his breath stilled, then a rough sound escaped him, half sob, half laugh. "Then the House of Eorl is not ending. Not with me. Not today. By the gods... what gift you bring me, even now." His hand lifted with effort, trembling, and brushed her cheek. His eyes glistened. "Tell him. Tell him I died glad. Glad that he lives. Glad that you are his. And glad... that I will be a grandsire, though I never hold the child."

Jane pressed his hand hard to her face, sobbing quietly.

The sky above screamed with the Witch-king's cry, rattling steel and bone alike. Théoden's gaze shifted upward, defiance still in his eyes. "I go now to my fathers... in whose mighty company I shall not feel ashamed." His breath rattled once more, and his head eased back into the earth. The life left him slowly, a candle guttering but bright to the last.

Éomer's voice roared across the din, broken and furious. He fell to his knees at his uncle's side, clutching his arm, calling his name again and again. Riders gathered, horns blared, their grief turned to fire.

Jane lifted her head. Éowyn lay nearby, hair spread, face pale and still, Merry leaning over her with a desperate patience that would have shamed saints. Men ran by, leaping the fallen as if the bodies were logs in a flooded river. The Haradrim pushed their great beasts forward and the ground quivered under every footfall. The Nazgûl were gone but the air still remembered them.

Jane stood because her body remembered that upright is what it prefers. The world tipped to one side and then to the other. She set a hand at her ribs, breathed a slow count to four, and held. She had not meant to let go of Théoden's hand, but Éomer took it gently, and that was right. She stepped back to make room.

Noise gathered and stretched. From the far edge of the field came a sound that was not horn and not drum. Marching. Many feet making a promise in iron. Men turned their heads without meaning to. Jane did not look. She did not care who came next. She had done what she could here. Her heart found a single job and held it.

A call came through the noise. Not above it. Through. Her name, said once by a mouth she knew better than her own, cut from a distance and carried by wind or grace or both.

"Jane."

She turned toward it and the edges of her vision darkened at once, as if hearing him had pulled all the light to one place and the rest of the world had to make do with what remained. She took one step. The ground felt wrong under her boots, soft and shifting. She took a second, her hands out in front of her like a sleepwalker.

Theodred. He was close. He had to be. She could hear the taste of his breath in the way it broke on her name. She could hear the way he would be angry at her for being out here and at himself for not being there fast enough. She could hear love like a rope thrown to a person on a slick bank.

The sound of the battle folded down to a low hum. Her legs went warm and then empty. She felt the knot at the end of her braid graze her neck, then her shoulder, then nothing. The field rose. She did not fight it. You do not fight sleep when your body has decided to keep you alive by ignoring you.

She fell. Not hard enough to hurt more than she already hurt. Hard enough to stop.

The last thing she knew was his voice, calling a second time, closer. She shaped his name and the word did not reach her mouth. The world slid shut like a door on good hinges. The smells of blood and leather and trampled grass faded. The weight in her belly felt, for one sweet second, like a small warm stone in a pocket. Then that, too, slipped away into dark and quiet.

The field went on without her, as fields do. Men ran. Orders cracked like flags. Éomer's grief turned into rage turned into courage. Somewhere on the far side of the smoke a new banner lifted and light moved with it, strange and cold. The city held. The gate stood broken and stubborn. In the Houses of Healing a hobbit slept sitting up, head on his arms, and dreamed of green hills and a kettle that never quite boiled. And on the Pelennor, next to the spot where a king had died with his honor clean, Jane lay still, turned toward the voice that had called her, waiting for the world to give her back.

Chapter Text

At first there was only the sway.

Up, a breath. Down, a heartbeat. Up again, steadier. She floated inside the motion, tucked against heat and leather and the dull ringing of iron. Somewhere far off the world was breaking itself apart and putting itself back together as battles do, but here there was the rhythm of a man who would not stop moving.

"Jane."

The name reached her as if spoken through water. She felt it more than heard it. Arms tightened. Mail rasped. The smell of sweat and horse and blood said field, not hall. She slipped again, then rose toward the light of his voice like a swimmer who knows where the surface is only because the body insists on air.

She opened her eyes to a strip of sky ruined by smoke and, closer, a jaw gone hard with restraint. Theodred. Dark hair loose from its braids, eyes fierce, a smear of blood across one cheek that was not his. His armor had been burnished black for war and it bore the day's argument in scratches and clotted edges. He looked like a carved answer to a terrible riddle. He looked like the picture she had once kept on a phone screen, something from a different world: a grim knight with a kind mouth. He looked like home.

A single tear had cut a clean path through the dust on his face.

"Hey," she tried, the word a thread.

His gaze dropped to her. The fierceness broke. "I have you," he said, voice low and rough, and the sound ran through her bones and settled everything that could be settled.

He shifted her weight and she felt the flex of him, the strength and the tremor under it. She noticed then the blood spattered along the edge of his pauldron and the dark stain on his sleeve where his hand held her. She reached for his cheek and found she could not lift her arm. The effort took the world away from her again, and when it returned it came with green fire rolling over the field like weather.

Shapes like men but thinner swept the ground in a strange tide. The smell of old stone and cold water rose. Men screamed once and then did not have breath to try again. Banners snapped and then held as the living found their feet. A new standard broke the smoke, bright where nothing should be bright, and hope changed its shape from sound to sight.

She drifted.

Hands worked at buckles. Cloth touched her face, cool and clean. The scent came like a message from before fear. A sharp green that cut through the sour of blood and the weight of smoke. Athelas. She knew it now the way you know a friend in a crowd. Voices circled, one grave and calm and commanding without raising itself. Another full of indignation that always seemed to be angry about the right things.

"Kingsfoil," said the indignant one, as if the plant had wandered off and needed to be brought to heel by its proper name. "Boil it properly. Not like that. Honestly."

The grave voice bent close. A hand, human and sure, touched her brow, then slid to her throat. The touch felt like a door being opened to let light in, not to move her, only to make what was already there easier. The world cleared a little. She slept without falling.

When the smell faded and the footsteps moved on to other beds, the room left behind became itself again, full of breath and work and the quiet that comes after people have done something difficult together. She skimmed the edge of waking and let it go, as bodies do when they have been given permission to rest.

The next time she rose, night had finished and day had not started. The sky beyond the high windows was the color of cooled iron. A single candle painted a small circle of gold on plaster. She was in a narrow bed with a thin quilt that smelled of soap and smoke. Someone had loosened her hair. The pale knot at the end of Theodred's braid, the small one he had tied into hers, lay against her collarbone like a warm coin.

A chair scraped. "Good," Ioreth said from the foot of the bed, managing relief without surrendering even an inch of scold. "You have the sense to wake when there is broth and not when there is only water. Lie still. Your ribs know it is best for them."

"How long," Jane asked. Her voice belonged to someone who had swallowed sand.

"Long enough for a king to come and go," Ioreth said, already sliding a hand behind Jane's shoulders to lift her. "And long enough for others to see sense and do as they were made to."

"A king," Jane repeated, memory offering the green-silver scent, the grave voice, the door opening. "He was here."

"The hands of a king are hands for healing," Ioreth said, and the pride in her mouth could have lit a stove. "He walked among us like a man who had work to do and did not mind doing it. He set three back on the road when they were nearly over the hedge. Your captain is one. The shieldmaiden another. The small one with the sword and the large appetite the third." She pressed a cup to Jane's mouth. "Drink. It is not poison, but you can pretend if it helps."

The broth was thin and perfect. Jane closed her eyes and swallowed carefully. "And the others," she asked. "Gandalf. Aragorn. Theodred. Éomer."

"Gone," Ioreth said, no flourishes, only the fact. "South and then east with the host. To knock on a black door and tell it some truths it will not like. They left as dawn forgot itself. There were words. There were horns. The city stood up straighter and the kitchens went quiet because even kettles hold their breath when a thing like that happens."

The cup shook once in Jane's hands. Ioreth pretended not to see. "Did he..." Jane began, meaning Theodred, and could not choose a verb that did not want to be bigger than the question.

"He carried you in himself," Ioreth said, refusing to meet her with gentleness and choosing respect instead. "He set you down very carefully and said your name as if it were something to breathe out again and again. He was a prince and a man and both of those were being pulled in every direction at once. He asked nothing. He only looked. Then the king called for athelas and he watched you breathe. And when it was time, he went where he was needed and not where he wanted. That is how you tell a good one."

Jane swallowed around the ache. "Thank you."

"Do not thank me," Ioreth said briskly. "Eat. Then you can stand and discover you have the sense to sit again."

When the cup was empty, Jane found the wall with her free hand and used it to prop herself while she swung her feet to the floor. Her body had opinions about this plan. Her ribs burned and then settled into a steady complaint. The bruises along her side spoke up and then lost interest when she put no attention on them. Her shoulder protested, then agreed to share the load. The light swam once, then steadied.

"Slow," Ioreth said, pretending she was speaking to the floor and not to Jane. "Stubbornness is best measured, like spice."

"I remember," Jane answered, and moved anyway, deliberate and careful. She could feel the difference in herself now, not only the hurts. A deeper weight under her skin, a presence that made her step more cautious and her breath more valuable. She set a hand there, almost without thinking. Two lives. Be practical.

The Houses were quieter than she remembered. The great hall still thrummed with work, but there was space between the sounds now. The siege had passed like a fever. What remained was healing, slow and repetitive, one task after another until a day had the shape of rest baked into it.

Merry lay two beds down, small and pale, with his curls flattened and his mouth open in the sleep of people who have earned it. Pippin was not beside him. Pippin had not been beside anyone since he had gone with Gandalf. Jane's chest tightened and eased on the same breath.

Past the row of cots, behind a hanging that someone had washed that morning despite everything else, a quiet court had been claimed for those who wanted air without spectacle. At one end of the bench sat a woman with hair like winter wheat spilled from its braids. Her face was beautiful in the way cliffs are beautiful. She stared at nothing with determination, a warrior learning how to be a patient and hating both lessons. At the other end, a man in a simple shirt watched his own hands as if they belonged to someone who had been less foolish yesterday. A linen bandage crossed his ribs and vanished under the collar. When he turned his head, Jane saw the unhappiness set like a line in his mouth. Faramir. Éowyn. Alive by a king's hands, held now by time, angry at their own survival and not sure what to do with anger that had nowhere to go.

Jane could have left them to the slow work that people must do themselves. She had spent enough years in rooms like this to know when you let grief sit where it is and when you slide a chair closer and knock it off the table politely. She slid the chair.

"Lady Éowyn," she said, taking the space between them like she had been invited. "Captain Faramir."

Éowyn looked at her and did not bother to hide the calculation in it. She took the measure of Jane's pallor, her guarded breath, the stiffness in the way she stood. She set those away on some shelf in her mind where she kept useful things. "You stood at Helm's Deep," Éowyn said. "You stood here. You do not look like a shield, but men have not died when your hands were on them. I will forgive your lack of armor."

"It chafed," Jane said mildly. "I chose linen. It breathes better."

A line at the corner of Éowyn's mouth expressed the faintest respect. Faramir's gaze lifted, curious despite himself. He inclined his head. Formality fit him like an old coat. "I am told I owe you some of the breath I am using," he said. "It is not a small debt."

"You owe me nothing," Jane said. "You owe yourself the patience to use that breath well."

"That is harder," Faramir answered, honest enough not to make a joke to get away from the truth.

They sat. They listened to a bird try out a song on the parapet and decide the day deserved more practice. Éowyn's hands were steady and angry. Faramir's were calm and ashamed. Neither looked at the other.

"You both tried to meet despair by running toward it," Jane said, not unkind. "It did not take either of you. It turned aside for reasons that have nothing to do with worth. That makes the morning hard."

"It makes me useless," Éowyn said, flat as a knife put down on a table. "If I cannot fight, what am I. If I live, was it to be dismissed to a bed and told to look out of windows. I am no caged thing."

"You broke the dark on the field and spoke a truth into its face," Jane said. "No cage from that. You have to learn a different form of strength. Swords are simple. This is not. It is harder to stand when no one is watching."

Éowyn looked at her then, properly, as if Jane had revealed a weapon she had not seen before and wanted to know its weight. "You talk like a counselor," she said.

"I talk like a woman who has watched strong people lose their names to grief and learn them again," Jane said. "And like someone who has failed at patience often enough to recognize the shape of the lesson when it walks in."

Faramir's gaze had not left Jane's face. "And what do I learn," he asked, tone dry enough to crack. "That I am not my brother. That my father's last words were wrong about me. That I should be content to live. I am content to live. I simply do not know what to do with the hours."

"You could start by walking," Jane said. "Not far. To the gardens. There is a bench that does not wobble. Sit on it at the same time every day until your body believes you mean to keep going. That will offend despair. It expects you to be dramatic. Confuse it by being ordinary."

Éowyn snorted, a very small laugh grudgingly loaned. Faramir's mouth twitched. "That is insultingly practical," he said.

"Yes," Jane said. "It works."

They did not go to the gardens that hour. Bodies and pride need time. But the suggestion sat between them like a cup of water put within reach and ignored only until thirst admitted itself.

Jane stood and the world stretched tall and far for a breath. She steadied with a hand on the wall, then found her feet. "I will be in the wards," she said to them both. "If you want to be ordered about in a way that leaves no bruises, I am very good at that."

Éowyn lifted her chin. "I will come when I am ready to be sensible."

"Then I will keep a chair for you," Jane said, and meant it.

She spent the next hours doing the work that brought days back into shape. Counting jars. Replacing a cracked basin. Teaching a boy to wrap a sprain in a figure-eight instead of strangling an ankle with good intentions. She did not think about the road east except in the small way of imagining a man she loved adjusting his seat in the saddle and telling himself lies about how much water he had drunk. She added bread to the picture. She added a coin in her boot. She added the weight under her heart and the way it made her reach for a stair rail now without seeing that as defeat.

On the second day, Faramir found the bench at the proper hour without admitting it was the proper hour. He went because his feet needed to see what his mind hated. On the third day, Éowyn arrived in the courtyard by accident and discovered that her accident had a schedule. She stood at one end of the colonnade and looked at the city as if it had said something rude. Faramir sat, back straight, like a man practicing how to be still without feeling like prey.

Jane fetched a tray with two cups and set it on the low wall between them. "The tea is indifferent and the honey almost not there," she said. "The sun is free. Take your portion."

Éowyn eyed the cup like an enemy and then accepted it. Faramir wrapped his fingers around the clay and let the warmth bargain with his ribs. They drank. They watched the wind lift a banner on the highest tower and lay it down again. Neither spoke for a long time. Jane did not fill the space with talk. Silence is a skilled healer when someone holds the room open for it.

At last Éowyn said, "You loved your father."

Faramir did not flinch. "He loved what he could. He knew how to love pride and city and an idea of my brother better than he knew how to love me. I am learning how not to make that the only story."

"That sounds like forgiving," Éowyn said, frowning as if at a poorly made spear.

"It sounds like not letting him write the last page of my book," Faramir said. "He is not here to read it anyway."

Éowyn drank and considered that. "I am trying to remember how to be anything but a blade," she said, low. "The city does not need my sword this week. I do not know what it needs. When I try to ask, men speak in low voices and tell me to be patient."

"Then they are fools," Faramir said, and some heat came into his voice. "The city needs what is alive. It needs men and women who can stand on the wall and say the sky is still there. It needs hands that can carry water and eyes that can see children and tell the truth. If you can do any of those things, you are useful."

Éowyn's mouth tilted. "You speak like a captain who has learned not to despise small work."

"I have earned the right," he said. The corner of his mouth tilted back.

Jane let them have that small exchange to themselves. She collected the cups and left them exactly as they were, two people each trying not to stare at the same piece of sky in case it told them too much.

That evening, at the turn between light and not-light, Merry woke fully and asked for Pippin. When he learned that his cousin had gone with the host, he swallowed and nodded and did not cry where anyone could see. Jane sat on the edge of his bed and talked to him about food he could not stomach and naps he did not want to take, and for a moment it felt like home in a place she had never lived.

On the fourth day, Éowyn came to the ward with her jaw set and announced that if she was not allowed a sword she would settle for a broom. Jane handed her a broom like it was a hilt with a story. Éowyn cleared a corridor of dust with such vigor that two apprentices saluted her without irony. She slept well for the first time after that.

On the fifth day, Faramir drifted into the small library near the inner court where Jane had gathered a few things to keep hands busy. He picked up a piece of scrap leather and a bone awl, sat by the window, and made a belt pouch with slow, precise movements. He did not look at Éowyn when she passed. He did not look at the door when she paused and stood there a full minute. He did not look at Jane when she smiled into her sleeves. He kept stitching. When he finished the edge, he set the awl down and went to the garden. Éowyn followed him without seeming to.

The days lengthened and then shortened depending on what fear did to them. The air over the mountain kept its breath. Sometimes it pushed a smell like rain down into the city, and men lifted their heads as if news had come on the wind. Sometimes it lay still and everyone moved softly for an hour because sound gets nervous when the sky is heavy.

Jane felt the line of her dress change. It skimmed over her belly in a way it had not before. She started spending more time sitting and made peace with that without calling it surrender. She took Ioreth's scold like medicine. When she was alone she touched the place where the new life set its small weight and spoke to it as if it were a traveler who had just arrived at an inn and wanted reassurance that the food would be honest and the bed clean.

"I would prefer you meet your father under a sky that is done threatening to fall," she told her belly with a candor that felt like prayer. "But if you insist on joining us in chaos, we will make a place for you anyway."

That evening, Éowyn and Faramir found themselves again in the garden at the same time. No one arranged it. Their bodies had learned a rhythm and arrived where it made sense to be. The light turned the leaves along the path into small lamps. The city's noise held itself back from that corner the way polite people keep their voices down near the sleeping.

"You were angry with me," Éowyn said without preface. "For going to the field in a borrowed face."

Faramir shook his head. "I was angry with the world for asking it of you," he said. "I was angry with myself for not being the kind of man who could have stopped you. I was not angry with you. I understood too well."

She stood with the posture of someone trained to use her body like a declaration. It softened slowly without losing its readiness. "I am learning a different kind of courage," she said. "I despise it less today than I did yesterday."

"I may yet learn a little of your kind," he answered. "Though the city will be grateful if no one hands me a sword any time soon."

They stood like that a long while. The words were small and ordinary and that was why they shook the world. People wage war with large gestures. They build futures with quiet agreements.

Jane watched from the doorway, unseen and pleased in the way an aunt is pleased when two children finally stop shouting and discover that conversation has more uses than throwing plates. She did not push. She had placed a chair and a cup of tea and a time. They had chosen the rest.

Night fell and brought nothing with it. The city slept in fragments — a lamp guttering here, a murmur of prayer there, footsteps fading into the dark. Jane lay longer awake than she wished, listening to the kind of stillness that comes when every soul is braced for word. In that hush she felt something in herself shift — not a kick, not anything she could have explained in her old life, but a small acknowledgment, as though her body whispered present. She pressed her hand there, tears slipping without sound. For a minute she allowed herself joy, even as dread crowded the edges of it, and then at last she slept.

Morning came with a change in the air. The wind had swung eastward, carrying a thin edge, cleaner than hope but sharper than fear. It set men on the walls to scanning the horizon. Ioreth boiled water simply because boiling steadies the hands. Merry listed meals he would share with Pippin when he returned, adding new ones whenever his courage wavered.

Éowyn came and sat without her usual duties, pale but resolute. Faramir joined her at the window. Their silence was no longer emptiness; it had begun to take shape, like cloth on a loom, threads finding each other. They did not touch, and yet Jane could feel the beginning of something strong.

She sat with yarn in her lap, teasing out knots. "When they return," she said, and placed the word when into the air as though it belonged there already, "we'll need to be ready with food. Men who have lived on fear too long turn foolish if you don't put something warm under their noses."

Éowyn's mouth tilted. "You mean to keep me far from a kitchen?"

Jane smiled faintly. "I mean to put you where you'll do the most good. Even if that means bullying kettles into order."

Faramir kept his gaze east. "I'll stand at the gate. It's not commanded of me, but the men will need to see me there. They must know someone has come back from the edge."

"Then I will stand with you," Éowyn said.

Their eyes met. It did not glitter. It did not need to. Jane watched it take root, and her chest ached with a kind of cautious gladness.

The city itself gave no sign. No bells, no horns. Only absence, stretched thin. Birds wheeled lower than they should. Smoke lay against the rooftops like a hand that refused to lift. Men moved through their duties slower, pausing without meaning to, listening for hoofbeats that never came.

Toward evening, Jane stepped into the inner court. The light was faint and dusted with ash, but it touched the stone with the stubborn glow of gold. She looked east, beyond the mountains, beyond the smoke, toward the place where men she loved faced the storm. Somewhere out there Theodred rode with a promise in his keeping. He did not know what she carried. Théoden had known, had blessed her with his last strength, and the weight of it rested in her bones.

Her fingers found the knot at the end of her braid, where his hair was bound into hers. A laugh escaped her, small and defiant, the sort of joy that knows the world is still dangerous but insists on breathing anyway.

She would keep Éowyn stubborn. She would keep Faramir honest. She would keep Merry from drowning in worry. She would let Ioreth scold her and answer back. She would be ordinary on purpose, because the extraordinary had not finished with them yet.

And when the road gave back what it had taken, she would take Theodred's face between her hands and tell him what lived within her — not as news, but as a truth that had always belonged to them, waiting only for breath and daylight to be spoken aloud.

Chapter Text

She kept Éowyn fed and obstinate. She kept Faramir honest and walking. She kept Merry from despair by pretending his jokes were new when they were not. She sat with Ioreth and was scolded and liked it. She chose ordinary on purpose because the extraordinary had already had its say and the city still stood.

When the road gave back what it had taken, she would take his face in both hands and tell him what she carried. Not like news. Like a truth that had always belonged to them, waiting for breath and daylight to be named.

That promise held her up for two days. On the third, the waiting grew teeth.

The wind came from the east and brought nothing on it. No dust. No rumor. No smell of rain. It slid through the Houses of Healing and left bowls ringing in their shelves. Men moved softer. Women set cups down as if the stone could be offended. Faramir stood at the gate for a time each day and showed the city what living looks like after you have fallen and risen again. Éowyn stood near him, back straight, not guarding him, guarding hope. Merry learned the habit of sleeping and being woken for food. Jane worked and did not think about how thin a promise can feel when the world makes a silence and asks you to live inside it.

That night she woke with her heart galloping and the taste of iron in her mouth. Not fear of hoof or blade. Fear with no animal to hang its name on. She sat up and listened. The ward breathed like a big animal asleep. A kettle ticked as it cooled. Someone in the next room coughed and then settled. The air had a flatness in it she had learned to recognize. Someone was thinking about her.

She had not dreamed exactly. She had been looked for. A pressure at the back of her eyes. A weight at her knees. The memory of a voice that never uses words. The Eye would not stop searching until it burned itself out or was taught where to look instead. She could not carry a sword to the Black Gate. She could do one thing the captains could not risk.

The palantír sat somewhere above them in the high house of the city, veiled and watched. Denethor had stared into it and been poisoned by the piece of truth it had offered. Gandalf had covered it and carried it out from fire like a midwife with a child who did not deserve the house it was born in. He had told her once, softly and with weight, to keep her mind heavy and her hands on small things. If he had been here he would have barred the door with his staff and his body both. He was not here.

Gandalf trusted her to be sensible. He had also taught her that courage sometimes looks like making a very poor choice with your eyes open because no one else can do it without breaking the line of fate.

Jane swung her legs from the bed and dressed without lighting a lamp. Her body complained and then cooperated. She tied her hair back and felt the pale knot of Theodred's strand under her fingers. She pressed it once and let go. In the outer hall she took a clean cloth and a handful of athelas leaves and tucked both into her pocket. She told no one. Not because she did not trust them. Because she did not want anyone else to have to be brave about this.

The White Tower had always felt to her like the spine of the city. The stairs circled and climbed. The guards at the lower landing nodded at her because she had become part of the furniture of the Houses and people get used to furniture. The guards at the upper landing reached their pikes across. One recognized her and frowned without hostility.

"Lady Jane, the high chambers are closed."

"I know," she said, and let tired honesty do the work of charm. "I need to fetch something for the Warden. I will be quick."

"What thing," the second asked. Sensible question.

"A covered thing," she said. "Heavy for its size. I would rather not describe it in a corridor."

The first thought about that, decided to send a boy to check, then remembered there were no boys standing by at this hour, and then looked at her face and saw a person who seemed too weary to be dramatic. He lifted his pike.

"Quickly then."

The chamber was not grand. Stone, a table, a chest, a tall narrow window. The palantír sat on its cloth with another cloth thrown over it like a diner's napkin. Even covered it seemed to gather the light and keep it. Jane closed the door and set the bar. The room shifted in her ears the way rooms do when you seal them and suddenly hear how much your breathing matters.

She washed the bowl, crumbled athelas into hot water from the pitcher by the coals, and let the steam rise until the scent settled the room into itself. Then she pulled the cloth free. The stone was black at first and then not black. Like the surface of deep water when a cloud moves and the sun thinks about the work of day.

"Look at me," she said softly. "Not at anyone else."

It caught her at once. Not like the Nazgûl's cold hand, not like the palantír in Orthanc that had snarled at Pippin and bitten. This was a deep well, and something at the bottom turned its eye. She felt the pull and did not resist it. Resisting breaks things. She chose to fall.

Fire. Not around her. Through. A plain like a forge. A mountain bleeding light. A gate with teeth. The mind that watched her was old and patient and full of contempt. He knew her. He had tasted the edge of her once and been interested. Now he had time to look closely.

Little light, he said, without sound. Little thief of attention. You think to turn my gaze with a woman's trick.

"Yes," she said. "I want you to look where I want you to look. You will enjoy hating me for it."

He showed her a vision of Theodred broken on a field of ash. He showed her a child burned before it could draw breath. He did it because cruelty is efficient. She did not turn away. She had worked too many nights in rooms that smelled of blood to be shocked by pictures. She let the ache come and pass. The ache is not the same thing as defeat.

"You have one wrong belief," she said into the fire. "You think you are the only mind that can think more than one thought at once. You think the rest of us can be crowded out. I have two lives to protect. I also have time to waste yours."

He pressed. He took the shape of someone she loved and broke that shape. He took the shape of herself and threw it into a sea. He tried to peel the layers of her open like a fruit. She answered with things too boring to grasp. A kettle that hums when it is about to boil. The way Katrin tightens a scarf and makes a knot sit just so. A list of herbs and their best uses. The exact feel of Theodred's hand on her belly. The number of steps from the Houses to the Tower. The name of a mare she had only met for an hour. The taste of clean metal when you bite a loose needle back into its case. The smell of athelas when it is crushed between fingers.

He grew impatient. You exist because I permit it.

"You exist because someone sang a song you cannot bear to listen to without wanting to be its only audience," she said. "You think the Ring is at the Gate. You should keep watching the Gate."

He stilled. Not suspicious. Interested. She had offered him a piece of what he wanted to believe. He wanted to believe it so badly that the rest of her did not matter for a moment. He set the weight of his will against the Black Gate and pushed. The stone under her hands went warmer. Her skin prickled. She held the edge of the table until her fingers hurt.

"Keep looking," she said, and put memory after memory between them. The way the Rohirrim's horns had sounded in her bones. The white flash of Éowyn's blade. Théoden's last words said without poetry. The green fire rolling the field clean. A man with a small face and a large appetite snoring himself into safety. She let him eat all of those. They were true and they distracted. She kept back the little strips of Frodo and Sam that she had never seen and yet knew. Darkness. Light. Rope. Bread. A small hand on a bigger hand. Tears that are not weakness.

He felt her holding something he could not name and hate hit her like heat. He leaned in. He leaned so hard that the stone under her palms vibrated and the floor hummed. The room darkened and the air thinned. She smelled old iron and the dampness of caves. The window rattled in its frame. Her ribs remembered Pelennor and complained and she did not care.

He found the pale knot at the end of her braid and tugged for the satisfaction of it. She let that hurt be a small one she could afford. He pressed everywhere else until pain blurred into white.

Look at me, he said. Only me.

"No," she said through her teeth. "Look at the gate."

He did. He threw so much of himself at it that he forgot to be clever. She felt the shift. She felt the attention he had held on everything else loosen, not fail, not for long, but loosen. The world moves in the little moments when tyrants cannot bear to think of anything but their pride.

"Take it," she whispered to whoever needed the breath of it. "Take it now."

The backlash came like a crack under her feet. The stone blazed. The table jumped. She felt herself lifted, not by a hand, not by a wind, but by a change in the rules of being. The last thing she knew in that room was the smell of athelas turning sweet as it burns. The last thing she heard was the tower singing, a high thin music in stone.

She slammed into her bed so hard the mattress barked.

Air conditioning hummed like a tame beast. Light lay in straight stripes across a rug she had bought on a day when money had felt like proof of a life. The sky beyond the window was a flat urban blue, cut by glass towers and a crane. Someone on a balcony played a song through a speaker too loud for the hour. The faint roar of Sheikh Zayed Road carried like the sea. The diffuser on her counter released a polite scented cloud.

Dubai.

She sat up too fast and almost passed out again. The room was wrong in that subtle way that makes your eyes water. The bed was wrong. The air had all its old comforts and none of its use. She pressed her hand to her belly and felt the answer there, small and steady. She set both feet on the floor and took inventory like a medic stepping into a crisis.

Phone. Keys. Wallet. Body that felt held together by will and the patience of tendons. Hair that had gotten longer than anyone in this city would suppose natural and did not care about supposing. The pale knot at the end of her braid lay against her collarbone like a promise someone had left on her and never meant to take back.

She walked to the window and looked down at the pool deck ten floors below where a maintenance man moved chairs into rows. In the street beyond, a woman in a black abaya wheeled a carry-on while speaking into her phone and laughing as if her voice could push back the heat. She opened the glass and the city's breath came in, hot and salted by concrete. It touched her skin and did not know her name.

For the first hour she did nothing clever. She washed her face and drank water and ate half a piece of bread and stood in her kitchen with one hand on the counter and the other on her belly and told herself that the world does not end when you wake up in the wrong one. Then she began to fail upwards.

She searched her bookshelves for maps that did not belong on this earth. She poured tea and forgot it. She wrote down every dream she could remember, then crossed out everything that felt like wish. She opened her laptop and found that the news did not contain anything about a mountain breaking or a shadow falling. Of course it did not. She closed it. She went to the cupboard where she kept a box of receipts and held Theodred's braid with fingers that did not shake because shaking wastes time.

On day two she went to the desert. She drove past the outlets and the last ring roads and let the city dissolve into scrub and sand. The dunes looked like ocean stopped in the middle of breathing. She walked until her calves burned. She sat and waited for a door in the air. The only doors were heat and her own stubbornness. She slept in the shade of the car and dreamed of a white horse breathing, of a king dying without feeling ashamed, of a hobbit who would try to order two breakfasts and be told to be patient.

On day five she went to a stable near Al Qudra. She did not ride. She put her hands on warm necks and took deep breaths of hay and leather until her heart stopped climbing fences inside her chest. A bay with a crooked blaze put his nose in her hair and snorted as if to say that people are foolish but forgivable. She cried into his mane for exactly four breaths and then stopped because she did not want to teach the child in her that despair stays.

On day eight she fainted in her kitchen. It was graceless and unromantic. She woke on the floor with her cheek pressed to cool tile and the taste of lemon from a spill she had not cleaned. She called the clinic she had used for checkups when life was simpler and a woman with a soft voice told her to come in now.

The doctor was brisk and kind and wore a hijab the color of sage leaves. The room was clean and quiet. The machine in the corner waited with its dark screen like a pool at night. They asked questions that made sense in this world. When was your last period. Have you been under stress. She answered as if she were not a woman who had learned to count days by horns and drums and the pause in a wizard's breath.

"Lie back," the doctor said. "Let us look."

Gel, cold. Wand, cooler. The screen filled with snow, then with a pocket of dark that was not empty. Something small pulsed inside it, fast and stubborn. A flicker that refused to be argued with. The room tilted again. She put her hand over her mouth and laughed and cried with the same breath because sometimes the body does not have categories for joy that does not fit.

"There," the doctor said, and her voice lost its clinic tone and found something older. "See. That is the heartbeat. It is strong."

"How far," Jane managed.

"Eight weeks, perhaps nine," the doctor said, measuring and clicking like a careful soldier. "Very early still. Eat. Rest. No lifting. No riding. No foolishness."

"I do not know how to be foolish anymore," Jane said, and believed it.

The doctor wiped the gel. She printed a single picture and handed it over without drama. "Come back in two weeks. Bring someone if you can."

"I will," Jane said, and took the picture and the advice into the bright corridor and out into the heat. She sat in her car and did not start the engine for a full minute. The paper warmed under her fingers. The image looked like nothing and like everything. There was a person on that paper and in her and a life in a world that did not feel like home anymore.

The month taught her what grief does when it cannot find purchase. It migrates. It tucks itself into small habits. She made coffee and found it tasted like a memory that had gone stale. She went to dinners and found her friends kind and shining and far away even when they sat at her own table. She answered emails in a language that had never learned how to talk about carrying a king's blessing on your ribs. She laughed sometimes. She did not pretend badly enough to fool herself.

At night, the dreams sharpened. Not like before, not like being hunted, but like being called from a distance. Sometimes she dreamed of the Houses with their steam and thyme and ticking braziers. Sometimes she woke with Theodred's name in her mouth and his face so clear she could see the smudge of dried blood that never quite rubs out between thumb and forefinger. Sometimes she smelled athelas. Not incense, not a diffuser, not anything a store sold. Clean and green, like a leaf crushed between fingers under a sky too bright for city glass.

On day twenty-two she woke with that scent in her apartment. It was not a memory. It moved through the rooms as a real thing moves, eddying in corners, slipping under doors. She followed it to the window. On the sill lay a single leaf, not from any plant she kept, pale veining catching the light. She picked it up with both hands as if it might bruise.

"Gandalf," she said aloud without embarrassment. "If this is a joke, it is a cruel one. If it is a rope, pull."

The air did not answer. It felt thinner, that was all, like the space between skin and shirt on a very hot day. She put the leaf in a dish and poured warm water over it and watched the steam rise. The scent unrolled and remembered her. She breathed it and sat on the floor and closed her eyes and did not try to think clever thoughts. She let her mind fill with small heavy things. The ladder in the Houses. The distance from her bed there to the window where she had once watched the sun change its mind. The weight of a kettle when it is almost empty. The knot of pale hair in her braid. The feel of Theodred's hand on her wrist when he had kissed the pulse there. The sound his voice made when it said her name without armor in it.

On day twenty-six she went to the sea before dawn. The beach was mostly empty. A man with a metal detector combed the line of the water. Two women ran in long easy arcs, ponytails painting commas behind them. She walked into the surf up to her knees and let the push and pull forgive her for staying and accuse her for not going. Gull cries drew lines across the air. The horizon did what horizons do. It pretended to be a line when it is a door.

"Help me," she said, and did not pretend she knew who she was speaking to. The One who sings. The wizard who meddles. The friend who scolds. The man who rides. The child who listens.

On day thirty, the power went out for six minutes in her tower. The elevators stopped with polite beeps. The air conditioning sighed and waited. The city outside still glowed as if nothing had changed. In the sudden quiet she heard a sound that made the hairs on her arms lift. A staff on stone. Not near. Not in the corridor. In her head, but not imagination. A single firm strike.

Jane stood. The athelas scent unfurled again, stronger this time, and with it came something like wind through tall grass. A horse blowing into a cupped hand. A voice, not a sentence, only her name, not said the way anyone in this world said it.

She crossed to the table and untied the pale knot at the end of her braid. The strand of Theodred's hair slid into her palm. She had not taken it loose since Edoras. Tonight it felt necessary. She twisted the strand around her wrist and tied it with a surgeon's knot. She lifted the dish where the leaf sat now dried at the bottom like the idea of a leaf. She poured warm water and watched the ghost of scent rise again. Then she went to the bedroom and lay down on top of the covers and placed one hand on her belly and the other on the braid at her wrist.

"Keep your mind heavy," she told herself. "Keep your hands on small things. If there is a door, walk. If there is a wall, wait."

Outside, the city remembered its electricity and sighed back into its routines. Inside, the quiet kept its shape. She slept and did not dream of falling. She dreamed of a hall with gold on its roof and a door at the far end that had always been open but rarely used. She dreamed of a white tower that sang when you leaned your head against it. She dreamed of a field that had learned to carry its dead without breaking its back. She dreamed of a man riding toward her with dust at his knees and anger at his mouth and relief already trying to get in.

Morning came to Dubai and found her apartment smelling faintly of green and horses and clean metal. It did not belong. It held.

She rose and began to plan not as a person running away, but as a person going home. She made a list with a cheap pen on hotel stationery she had stolen years ago. Food that travels. Clothes that do not lie about who you are. A letter to leave with Katrin if the road took her at an hour when words do not carry far. A small knife with a bone handle. The picture the doctor had given her, tucked into a cloth envelope and tied with a strand of pale hair.

When the door appeared, it would not be polite enough to knock. She would not pretend to be surprised. She would be ready to step through it without asking permission. She would carry two lives. She would carry ordinary things because the extraordinary, for once, could meet her halfway.

Somewhere beyond the circles of this city, men who had stood before a black gate were packing away banners and trying to decide whether to laugh or sleep first. Somewhere a wizard was turning his face toward the west with a look that people mistake for sadness and is only a particular kind of joy. Somewhere a prince was riding harder than was wise because wisdom often learns to wait when love has a better plan.

The leaf in the dish browned at the edges and curled. The braid on her wrist warmed under her fingers. The window threw a bright square on the wall. The world did not look magical.

It felt like a promise about to be collected.

Chapter Text

The world narrowed to a line of shields and the black mouth of the Gate.

Dust rolled on the plain like a second skin. Orcs stood in ranks that looked endless until you stared hard and saw the gaps. Stones from broken engines lay half buried. The air had the taste of old iron and something sour, like water that has sat too long in a helmet.

Theodred held his place on the left flank with the sons of the Mark. Éomer kept the center close to Aragorn. Behind them banners lifted and fell in the thin wind. Men were quiet in the way soldiers become when words have nothing left to do. He could hear bridles tick, leather creak, the breath of horses working against fear.

At the front Gandalf's white horse stood still as if planted. Aragorn had stripped away kingly signs and looked like any captain who has carried too many dawns. The Council had spoken the night before and there had been no romance in it. They would knock at the Enemy's door and dare him to look away from them. Theodred had listened and said nothing, because there was nothing clever left to say. He had slept in his mail with his sword against his hip and when he rose the world felt thinner.

They had parleyed, if you could call it that. A mouth too full of words had smiled under a cruel helm and held up a small thing that had made Pippin cry out. Theodred had gripped his own thigh to keep from moving. The hobbit had been wrong. Even if the captain at the Gate had intended to break them with that lie, purpose had already set like steel. They rode anyway.

Now they waited.

The Eye burned above the black tower, a wound that did not close. It watched everything at once. That was how it felt from the line. Your bones know when they are seen by something that does not have hands and does not need them.

Theodred set his jaw and kept his seat. He had done his worrying in Edoras. He had learned to be quiet near Meduseld's fire while Wormtongue filled the hall with poison. Later he had learned to be quiet while men counted the dead from the Fords. Quiet served him now. He waited for the order.

"Forward," came at last, more breath than voice. The line moved, first as a thought, then as a fact. Shields lifted. Banners leaned. The ground began to carry the beat of hooves.

They went at a walk, then a trot. Theodred felt the horse under him take the weight of choice and steady to it. Arrows hissed. Men lifted shields and did not break. Out on the right, a company of Dol Amroth knights dropped their lances and made the plain sound like thunder. On the left a harp string of fear plucked through the men and went silent because there was work to do.

The Enemy poured from the Gate and from the slopes and from the cracks where rock meets shadow. It should have eaten them. Theodred knew this. Every man there knew it. Courage is not stupidity. You take the measure and stand anyway.

And then the air changed.

It was not a wind. It was not a sound. It was the look of the world when a hawk takes the sky and everything that might have been prey looks up without meaning to. The Eye faltered. It did not blink. It tilted. The heavy weight that sits on the back of the neck when you are watched slid sideways. Men looked at each other with small, quick movements. No captain gave a cry. No banner signaled the shift. And yet it went through the host like a breath when someone who has not breathed for too long finally remembers how.

Theodred felt it as a pull in his chest. He thought of a woman in a high room with a stone that knew too much. He thought of a cloth thrown back and a mind like a hand reaching out to turn a face. He had no proof. He did not need any. The world had a shape again. Someone he loved had set her shoulders against the dark and said look over here and the dark, greedy, had obeyed.

"Now," Gandalf said, and in that single word something like joy came back to the voice of the field. Aragorn lifted his sword, not for show this time, and the men of the West went forward as if the gate had already forgotten how to be closed.

The first clash burned. Steel found meat. Men cried out and did not stop what their hands were doing. Theodred's horse shuddered when an axe bit at its barding, then plunged with a fury that would have embarrassed a prince if he had not already thrown away pride. He fought like a rider who loved his land and meant to see it again. His sword was not a line of poetry. It was a tool and it did its work.

Somewhere Pippin shouted "Took," as if his own name were a weapon. Somewhere Gimli's laughter found a new notch between growl and delight. Somewhere Legolas called arrows and then called them again. Theodred kept his eyes ahead and let the rest be proof that the world still contained familiar noise.

The tilt in the Eye deepened. It was no longer looking at the Gate with both its malice and its hunger. Part of that hunger had swung away. Theodred took a breath he had not expected to take on that field. He did not call her name. Men near him believed him strong. He did not need to shake that belief by putting prayer into the air where it could make other hands clumsy.

The mountain beyond the plain began to burn like a brazier knocked on its side. Light rose, not clean, not kind. The Eye flared red and then spread thin as if painted on a dome and being washed by rain. The ground muttered. Orcs turned their heads like dogs hearing a note humans do not. Some broke and ran. Others stood as if they had not been told what to do next and would rather die of confusion than choose.

The tower in the distance trembled. It took a long time to fall. Great things do not collapse quickly unless someone has made a mistake with calculation. This did not feel like a mistake. It felt like a bill come due.

When the signal reached them it was not a horn. It was the simple fact that the Enemy's line stopped being a line. It came apart, ugly and fast. Men who had braced for a last stand found themselves standing. Theodred drove his horse forward to turn the break into a rout. He did not enjoy it. There is no joy in cutting down those who have lost their master and their mind in the same minute. He did it because leaving a defeated force at your back is a good way to be killed by someone who no longer knows fear and never learned sense.

By the time the dust settled, the plain had become a place where news would be born for years. Men wept like boys and boys boasted like men. A captain from the south sat down in the mud and laughed himself sick. Someone started to sing and stopped because there was no tune fit for a sight like that. Gandalf sat his horse and understood more than any of them and looked old and new in the same breath. Aragorn did not smile. He breathed out and in as if learning how to use a chest that belonged to a king is complicated.

Theodred turned his horse before anyone could ask him to speak. He did not care if this looked rude. He needed to climb out of the smell of the Gate and ride toward white stone and a small, stubborn woman who did not know how to keep herself out of the path of trouble. It carried him in clean waves through every watchline, through the camps forming by habit, through men who nodded and men who tried to stop him and then decided to save their breath. Éomer saw him go and gave him the exact look a brother gives another when words are not as quick as need. It was a benediction and a charge in one.

He rode harder than was wise. He did not spare his horse and he did not apologize to it. He only took breaks when they couldn't cope anymore. He knew the others were not far behind him. His heart kept to a beat that had nothing to do with the rhythm of hooves. Up the long roads, through the lower circles, past people who had already started to smile at strangers because that is what cities do when they survive. He threw himself from the saddle at the Houses of Healing and ran the last twenty paces because royalty has no use when the person you love might be in a bed that is empty.

The bed was empty.

Ioreth turned before he reached her, as if his footsteps had been enough to announce him. She had flour on one cheek, which meant someone had bullied a kitchen into making bread in celebration and she had not washed her face before coming back to scold it into slices.

"She is not here," she said. There was no play in her voice this time. "She went to the Tower."

"When," Theodred asked, and the word sounded like a stone kicked against a wall in a long tunnel.

"Last night," the Warden answered from behind him, quieter but with more weight. "She asked no leave. She spoke to no one. She was seen going, and she was not seen returning."

"The palantír," Gandalf said from the doorway. His staff made a single click on the flagstones. His eyes had sorrow in them, and something that was not quite sorrow. "She did what I would have forbidden. She did what I would have tried to do myself if I had been as brave or as reckless or as well suited."

Theodred turned to him. "Where is she."

"I do not know," Gandalf said. He did not pretend. He held Theodred's gaze as a man holds out his hands to a snarling dog and asks it to trust him. "Only this. The Enemy turned his face at a moment that saved many lives. He did not do that for love of us."

That answer went in like a blade and then sat there. Theodred took a step back because standing too close to the wizard made it harder to keep his throat from closing. He turned and crossed the floor and then turned again because motion was the only thing that seemed to keep the body from deciding to lie down and not rise.

Gimli came without ceremony and shoved his shoulder into Theodred's ribs just hard enough to stop that spin. "She bought us minutes," the dwarf said, voice thick. "I hate the price. I would pay it myself if I could steal it after the fact. I cannot. I am sorry, lad."

Legolas stood behind him, pale with more than battle weariness. "Her thread has gone from here," he said. "Not cut. Not burned. Drawn fast, like a line pulled through a needle's eye. I do not know where."

Theodred closed his eyes because there was no way to see the world he wanted to see with them open. When he opened them again he was still a prince. Grief is private. Duty is not.

"Théoden," he said. The name steadied him. "We will take him home. We will do that first. Then I will return to stand when Aragorn is crowned. He is owed that from the Mark. And from me."

Gandalf nodded once. There was relief in the motion. The city had many captains and only a few men who understood what it means to stand where people can see you. "You do Rohan honor," he said, and then softer so no one else would need to carry it, "and yourself."

The Warden spoke of orders and litters and slopes and streets. Men moved to their business, grateful to be told something they could do that was not thinking. Theodred bent to the simple tasks in those hours. He helped bind a bier. He walked beside the body of his father. He spoke to the old and the young of Rohan with a voice that had both command and kindness in it. He thanked Gondor where thanks were owed and he did not let his face bleed when it wanted to.

They rode west the next day, a slow progress because grief has its walk and it is not a gallop. Éomer kept close. Éowyn sat a horse again with careful pride. Merry rode in a cart for part of the way and on a saddle bow when he insisted. Pippin had found him by then and wore his helmet like a crown too big for his ears. Faramir stood in the gate as they left and Éowyn's eyes met his. That was one of the few things that did not hurt to see.

At the Rammas a company broke off to turn south with Aragorn and his own. Theodred reined in and called out. "I will come back for you," he said. "I will be here when you enter your city as king."

Aragorn saluted him with the hilt of his sword. "I will count on that," he said. "The Mark has kept its word through a dark year. Let it keep it into morning."

Legolas came alongside and spoke low. "If I hear a song with her name somewhere in it, I will follow the sound," he said. "If there is a door, we will find where it opens."

Gimli swore to a mountain to bring a jewel that would do a promise proud when the time came. He kept the rest of what sat in his heart where a friend should keep it, behind the teeth and close to the chest.

They rode. The plains opened. Even with grief on them the fields still had a look of stubborn gold. When Edoras rose before them, Theodred felt the old ache and something new. He had come to that door as a boy, a son with a head full of ideas. He came now as the man the Mark would ask to stand for it.

They set Théoden on the high bed. They sang for him. The mounds above the city had lifted their shoulders to the sky for years. Another would rise there but not that day. Songs first. Wine. Bread. Stories told without lies. Tears when they did not break a voice. Many men slept upright that night because they did not want to leave the hall.

In the morning the council came to Theodred with words that were all true and none of them kind. The Mark needed him crowned. It needed the feel of weight in the right hands. It needed a king who had been part of its sorrow and would be part of its crop. He did not ask for time that would only hurt more people while trying to heal one. He stood in the place his father had stood.

Days passed. Preparations for the crowning of the new king were in full swing.
The wind on the plain of Rohan had always been restless — sharp, quick, carrying with it the smell of grass and horse and freedom. But this wind was not born of the Riddermark. It came heavy and sudden, tumbling down from the high airs like a cloak thrown across the sky. The banners of Edoras snapped so hard they cracked their poles, and men stumbled on the steps of Meduseld as if the earth itself had shifted beneath them.

Then the light changed.

It began as a paling at the horizon, a wash of gold that should have belonged to dawn but came instead at the hour when shadows lengthen. Theodred stilled, every hair at the back of his neck rising. This was no storm. Storms belonged to the will of weather. This belonged to something older.

The clouds gathered in a circle above Edoras, dark and immense, yet rimmed with fire. Lightning licked their bellies in silence first, then broke loose with a crack that shook the city to its stones. Mothers drew children close; warriors drew blades though there was no enemy to meet.

Theodred did not move. He felt the air charge around him until every breath scalded like wine. His people looked to him, but he had no command for them — for once, the world moved beyond the reach of kings.

The lightning came again, and with it sound like the voice of mountains breaking. White, searing, not the common fire of storms but a light that carved shadow into nothing, a light that belonged to the beginning of days. For the space of a heartbeat, all were blinded.

And then they saw her.

At the foot of the great stair of Meduseld, where moments before there had been only rain-washed stone, a figure stood, draped not in jewels or crown but in the raw glory of having been delivered back. Jane.

Her hair caught the storm's afterlight, gold made wilder than any forge could master. Her skin gleamed as if the air itself burned away the long exile of her absence. Her eyes — wide, uncomprehending, yet unbroken — drank the sight of Edoras as one waking from a grave dream.

The people gasped as one, a sound sharp enough to wound. Some fell to their knees. Others whispered words they had only ever spoken in prayer. For in that instant none could doubt: she had been sent, and not by chance.

Theodred's hand slipped from his sword hilt, useless metal in the presence of miracle. His chest tightened until he thought his ribs might break. She had been gone, torn from him, vanished like breath into night. And now the storm itself had carried her home.

He descended the steps without thought, boots striking stone, rain cutting across his face in lashes he did not feel. Every stride shortened the impossible distance. She swayed, exhaustion pulling her down even as the light that had borne her flickered away.

Her knees buckled, but he caught her, arms locking around her as though to prove she was no vision. Her weight was real, her head falling against the black steel of his armor, her breath warm for one fragile second.

"Jane," he whispered, but his voice fractured on the name.

Around them, the storm broke and bled into silence. Rain fell softer. The thunder moved off like a retreating army. But in the hall of Edoras, and in the heart of every man who had seen, it was known: this was not storm. This was sign.

And in Theodred's arms, Jane went limp, slipping once more into shadow, her return marked not by triumph but by collapse.

The king-to-be lowered his face into her hair, the salt of rain and the salt of his own tears mixing there, and the hall of Meduseld, long used to the weight of destiny, trembled as though the hand of the Valar had touched it.

Chapter Text

The last thing Jane remembered of the world was rain in her mouth and Theodred's voice cutting through it like a bell. The next thing was not rain, not sound, not even darkness. It was a place without edge, the way a dream feels when it is made of nothing but light and the sense that something is near.

She floated. She was held. She was not alone.

A sky unfolded, not black but deep, as if a million small fires had been pinned there for company. The ground did not behave like ground. It was a hush that supported her. Wind moved, but it did not push. It tasted like salt, like snow, like the air above mountains. Somewhere, very far and very close, waves met a shore that did not need water to exist.

"Child of another morning," said a voice like stone warmed by sun. "You have learned to stand in two places at once."

Another voice followed, softer, bright, like starlight that knows your name. "You climbed where you were not meant to climb, and you did not fall when you were pushed."

Jane wanted to answer, but her mouth was not a mouth here. Her thoughts did not have to squeeze through bones and teeth. They went out as they were. I did not know how to do it. I just knew I had to.

"Which is what courage often is," said the first voice, approving as a teacher who has waited a long time for a student to discover the obvious.

Figures took shape by the shore. They were not crowned, yet everything in them spoke of rule. They wore no mail, yet the weight of battle lived in their posture. They were beautiful and terrible in the way of stars. You would want to look away and you would not forgive yourself if you did.

Jane instinctively bowed her head. Respect can live in a body even when the body is elsewhere.

"You touched the seeing-stone," said the softer voice. "You offered yourself as flint to strike a spark in the old night. You bought minutes with pain. You did not flinch. That is worthy."

"You also broke a path between what was and what is, and what lies above both," said the warmer voice, perfectly calm. "Paths cut like that do not go unused."

A third presence entered then, and Jane understood that if the first felt like the earth and the second like stars, this one was a wind across a wide sea, the idea of horizon made into a person. It said nothing for a long time. It did not need to. It was the kind of silence that makes people honest.

She thought of Theodred asleep in a chair because he refused to lie down while she was in danger. She thought of Éowyn standing at a window, trying not to make her strength into a cage. She thought of Faramir learning how not to despise quiet work. She thought of Merry listing meals to hold off fear. She thought of Katrin, who had offered friendship without taking anything back. She thought of a small pulse inside her that had not asked to be brave and would be anyway.

"I want to go home," she said. The words were simple. They carried everything.

"Which one," asked the sea-voice, and did not sound like it was testing her for sport.

She closed her eyes, though here eyes were only a memory. Dubai had been home once, built with her own stubborn hands. She had gathered work and friends and a view and a life there. The apartment would still be clean. The city would still make a clever noise. Her name would still open doors.

It did not call to her.

The White City had become a harbor for sorrow and hope. The Golden Hall had learned her footstep. The Mark had given her mud and bread and laughter and the kind of respect that grows wild, not cultivated. A man there had said I love you without turning it into a demand. He held a promise that matched hers. A child had begun to write itself into her bones.

"That one," she said, and the starlit figure seemed to brighten.

"You ask to be returned to the woven story," the earth-voice said. "The story will take you, but the place you cut in it cannot stay empty. You have opened a way between days. We will close it behind you, as is right. We will do one thing more."

Jane waited. She felt like a child and a queen at once, which is a feeling that would have made her laugh in any other room.

"The flame you carry should not be put out quickly," the star-voice said. "It should be allowed its span. Your life will be longer than the lives of those around you, and the man who loves you will share that span. Do not outlive the world, but outlast sorrow. Your children will carry something of this gift too. Not for pride. For usefulness. For stewardship."

The words struck her as both blessing and responsibility. She had not asked to be anything but a woman who could ride and heal and love. She would not say no to extra years if they meant extra chances to do those things. She would not use them as a shield against grief.

"Will it hurt," she asked, because honesty was why she was still alive.

"Sometimes," said the earth-voice, kind for the first time. "Living well always does."

The sea-voice moved closer. Light gathered, not harsh, not soft, right. "Tell him," it said. "Tell him quickly. Joy does not get stronger by waiting in secret. Say the truth out loud to make a place for it."

"I will," she said. Her whole self meant it.

The starlit figure lifted a hand, and for an instant the place she stood seemed to be both a shore and a high green hill and a great hall with lines of light running in its roof. "Go, Jane," said the voice that held music, "and keep your ordinary strong, for the world eats it when people forget to guard it."

She felt a pull. Not the cruel drag of the Eye. A homeward tug. She breathed in. It smelled like horses.

The light broke, not like lightning, more like a curtain opening too quickly for eyes to follow. She fell, and she rose, and she woke under a roof she recognized by the way it shifted when wind wanted to put a hand on it.

Meduseld.

Rain had become a soft tattoo on the thatch. Firelight showed itself in the lines of the carved posts. The room was hushed in the way rooms are when a city has decided to hold its breath together. Her skin was warm, not with fever now, but the kind of warmth that comes after cold and fear have left you like a room a storm has passed through.

Theodred sat by the bed. He had taken off the crown and laid it on the table like a man who knows where real weight is. He looked both young and old, which is what love does to a face when it has been kept waiting. He had his elbows on his knees and his hands folded. He was not praying. He was making a bargain with the universe with stubbornness alone.

She moved her hand. The small shift of linen on straw made a sound he knew the way a rider knows the voice of his own horse. He was at her side in a heartbeat, and in the next heartbeat he remembered not to jolt the bed. He gathered her hand in both of his and pressed it to his mouth. His shoulders went loose in a way that made them look wider. Relief can change a body faster than grief.

"I went somewhere," she said, her voice a scrape of stone smoothed by water. "I met... not people, exactly."

"Then you have me beat," he said, voice rough with not-sleep. "I only met fear and a very large storm. Your return was the only thing in my life that has ever made a whole city silent."

"That was not my plan," she said, and a laugh shook her, then turned into tears before she could stop it.

He did not tell her not to cry. He had learned something about women and about himself. He brushed the tears away with the back of his fingers and laid his forehead against the place where their hands met. "I thought I had lost you beyond even the reach of songs."

"I thought I would never find the right door again," she whispered. "I was somewhere in between. The world holds more rooms than people admit."

"Are you hurt."

"Tired," she said. "Emptied. Also full."

He lifted his head. She saw then that fear had cut a single deep line between his brows that had not been there before. She also saw that his joy had sewed a new light at the edge of his mouth that had not been there either.

"I have to tell you something," she said, because the sea-voice had told her to be quick with joy. "Not the kind where you dig for news. The kind that makes its own table to sit at."

He stilled. He did not guess out loud. He would not take that from her.

She took his hand and laid it flat on her belly. It was a gesture as old as anyone had ever known how to make, in any world. "Life," she said, simple and true. "Ours."

For a heartbeat he did not move. Then he bowed over her hand, not to worship, to thank. His breath hitched against her skin. When he looked up his eyes held that dangerous warmth that had undone her the first time he had looked at her as if she were a place he could take off his armor.

"How long," he asked, careful, a soldier asking for a battle plan.

"Not far," she said. "A small traveler. The road will be long. The midwife will say no to some of the things I like doing. You will say yes to bringing me bread."

"I will bring you the entire loaf," he said, and almost smiled. Then he pressed his mouth to her forehead. "You have brought the Mark the single best piece of news since a horn sounded above a certain valley. I do not know how to hold this much happiness without staggering."

"You can stagger in here," she said. "Just not near the edge of the bed."

He laughed, a short, clean sound that looked surprised to hear itself.

Katrin slipped through the door then, half nervous, half fierce, hair pinned in the way of the house and cheeks flushed from sprinting over flagstones to bring broth. She took one look, read the room as women do, and set the bowl down without clatter. Then she put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at Jane with an affection too sharp for softness. "You make dramatic entrances," she said. "Next time knock."

"I tried," Jane said. "Lightning does not like doors."

Katrin's mouth wobbled. She crossed the small distance and kissed Jane's forehead above the place Theodred's mouth had just been. "Welcome back," she whispered. "I kept your scarf. It still smells like the soap you hate."

"I do not hate it," Jane said, and let the normal fall over the extraordinary and fix it in place.

The day ran forward then, practical and kind. The healers of the Mark came with their linen and their honey and their good sense. One examined Jane with the dignity of a woman who had seen everything and found none of it too big for her hands. The verdict was all relief. There would be no fever to fear, only rest to practice and a city to keep from carrying her. Theodred went and returned and went again, because a king does that even when he wants to stay and watch another person breathe. He told people what they needed to know and did not tell them what they could not be trusted to carry carefully.

In the afternoon, when she was stronger and sitting up on cushions that Katrin had decided to bully into shape, there was a small ceremony in the hall. No one had planned it. It happened because the right people were in the room at the right time and because the Mark knows how to bless a thing without choking it with words.

The court gathered, not stiff, but with the kind of attention that makes a silence feel like a woven rug underfoot. Éomer stood on Theodred's right, then stepped back with a smile that looked like a bond given away and not regretted. Theodred took Jane's hand and walked with her to the dais. He moved slowly because her body asked him to. No one in that hall was impatient.

A circlet waited on the green cloth. Gold worked like sunrise, not ostentatious, strong. It had been forged by hands that understood both beauty and endurance. Along the band were set stones that called the eye to their depth. Not rubies. Not diamonds. Emeralds, clear and deep, flecked like new leaves after rain. The green of Rohan's fields when the first foals stumble free and the old mares jerk their heads and pretend not to be pleased. The green of banners when the sun is almost behind them and the wind treats cloth like a toy.

Theodred lifted the crown. He did not make a speech. He did not need to. He set the circlet on Jane's hair, and his hands were steady.

"Jane of the Mark," he said, the name true now, "queen among us, for you have already acted like one."

The hall breathed out. It was not a cheer. It was acceptance. The sound people make when something fits.

Katrin started it, because of course she did. A single word of love and triumph, half laugh, half cry, escaped her before she could stop herself. That gave everyone else permission. The cheer rolled up and hit the roof like a friendly wave that wants to lift a boat and see if it floats better when it has been acknowledged.

They did not make a feast of it. Not that day. Too much had already been demanded of her body. Theodred kept the hall open so anyone who wanted to might step through and look and be satisfied that miracles are not only for stories. People came with their own practical blessings. A woman put a cloak over Jane's shoulders with a nod that said you will be cold before you admit it. A boy brought a wooden toy horse clearly carved with blunt teeth and said nothing. An old man touched the hem of her skirt as if to take some courage away on his fingertips and distribute it later like seed.

When evening came, the storm that had delivered her had moved off, but its clean edge had polished the sky. The stars above Edoras looked new.

They left at first light. The city on the hill poured out to the gates to see them off, a river of cloaks and braids and lifted hands. Theodred gave his people a steady smile, the kind that says I see you, the kind that can carry a whole country for a day. Jane rode beside him on the dark mare she had come to trust, the reins familiar in her palms, the leather warm. She wore no jewels beyond the slim emeralds on the new crown that sat easy in her hair. She did not feel like a pageant. She felt like part of the road.

The Mark opened in long golds and greens. Creeks crossed their path and sang among stones. Skylarks climbed invisible ladders and tossed music over the riders' heads. When they turned east the air sharpened, mountain-cool in the morning and gentle by noon. The army was no longer an army. It was a company, close as kin, loose enough to breathe. Gimli told stories at a pace that made even the horses listen. Legolas smiled and added three words when the dwarf got carried away. Pippin rode ahead and then back again with the elastic energy of someone who has learned what fear is and refuses to be ruled by it. Éowyn kept near Faramir and let the silence between them work like a loom.

The White City announced itself long before they saw her plain. A reflection caught the morning and held it. Then the mountain revealed the terraces like a stack of alabaster shields, each ring lifted toward the sun. Minas Tirith did not look like a place that had groaned under shadow. It looked scrubbed. Banners ran the wind like bright fish. Water leapt again from the stone basins where soot had settled only weeks before. The smell at the great gate was lime and wet mortar and rosemary crushed underfoot by too many boots carrying good news.

The crowds made a sound that was not only cheering. It was relief, and pride, and the simple shock of seeing friends alive. People flung petals. Some had kept them through winter and they came down brittle and fragrant. Children clapped their hands and did not know where to look. The old lifted their chins and let the noise wash the years from their faces.

The climb through the seven levels was a lesson in how a city heals. Lower tiers swarmed with carpenters, masons, cooks, traders returning to stalls that had double lives as shelters. The middle rings held soldiers put to practical uses, hauling timbers, mending gates, laughing like men who have learned the value of a good nail. Higher up, voices turned softer, footsteps lighter, linen cleaner. At the summit, the air tasted like the first sip of cold water.

They dismounted in the Court of the Fountain. The White Tree's dead branches still stood, pale as bone, yet something bright in the bark made Jane pause. A whisper of life under the surface perhaps, or her own longing making shapes where none had settled yet. The Tower rose behind it, cut so cleanly from stone that it looked as if it had grown there. The floor was white marble veined with gray. The sunlight turned it to milk.

Faramir waited with the Guard of the Citadel. He looked like a man who had been taken apart and put back with care. The black of his hair and the pale of his skin set off the clear blue of his eyes. He went to Theodred first and clasped forearms. Then to Jane he gave the softer courtesy, a bow that was not elaborate, only correct and warm.

"Welcome," he said. His voice carried without force. "The city has been eager for your footfall."

"The city holds its own," Jane answered, and saw something pleased flicker through him, as if she had passed a small test she did not know she was taking.

The horns sounded then, three notes that folded the court into attention. Conversation thinned and then ceased. Gondor breathed in together.

Gandalf came first, white as a winter morning. He carried the crown on both hands like a man bearing water. The metal did not glitter. It shone with a light that belonged to the skill that made it. Wings arched from it, not gaudy, elegant and spare, as if a bird of the sea were poised to lift again.

Aragorn walked up the long stair in black and silver. He wore no other ornament. His hair hung loose on his shoulders. A sword hung at his side that had already decided more than most men decide in a lifetime, but the blade did not do the talking. The man did.

Faramir stepped forward. He held the white rod of stewardship. Its paint had been scrubbed clean; the grain showed still beneath, a reminder that even symbols are wood first. He knelt, not with servility, with relief.

"My duty is ended," he said. The words were simple, the cadence formal, and yet his voice softened on ended, carrying both gratitude and the steady grief for what had been lost on the way.

Aragorn took the rod and returned it, the exchange quiet as a handshake, and the court understood the meaning: not dismissal, but trust restored. Jane loved that detail, the human scale of it in all the light.

Gandalf lifted the crown. "These are the days of the king. Let them be blessed." His words did not need the echo of walls to carry. He did not place the crown himself. He offered it into Aragorn's hands. For a heartbeat the line of the world seemed to pass through the metal and the man and into the stone under their feet.

Aragorn bowed his head. When he spoke it was in the high Elven tongue. The sounds had the cleanness of water over rocks and something more, an ache that had been waiting centuries for this throat. Jane did not know the words, but she knew the meaning because everyone knew it. I come from far off, I come home, I take what is mine only to give it.

He knelt before Gandalf. The wizard leaned and set the crown upon his head. It was like watching a circle find its center.

The horns went again, not louder, deeper. Trumpets answered from the walls, thin and bright like birds. The court seemed to expand. People shifted, pulled by joy. Theodred squeezed Jane's fingers once and let go, so that she could lift her hand and learn how to clap like a Gondorian. Éowyn's lips parted and she let herself smile without hiding it. Pippin made a noise that was part cheer, part sob, then stood straighter, remembering his livery. Gimli blew his nose and announced loudly that dust was a blight upon art.

Aragorn turned to the people. He did not hold himself above them. He descended the steps and walked through them, and as he moved, men and women bowed and knelt, not from fear but from affection so plain it could have been daylight. He touched hands. He paused where an old woman could not get down and bent his head so that the greeting did not ask her bones to do extra work. He smiled at a boy until the boy forgot to be terrified of uniforms and grinned back.

When he reached the cluster of small figures in livery, all four hobbits went down as one. They were already crying, which meant Pippin and Merry had given up telling each other not to. Aragorn put out his hands and stopped them. He shook his head. Then he dropped to his knees before them.

A hush tore through the square like wind. Then it became a wave and went outward. The king knelt, so the city knelt. Guards sank to stone. Nobles folded their fine clothes into humility without shame. Jane put a hand to her mouth and laughed softly through the tears she had not meant to let loose. Theodred bowed his head and smiled in a way that had nothing to do with politics. He had bled beside men. He had seen people turn days into banners. He had never seen a crown bend like this.

Aragorn rose and kissed Sam's brow. He clasped Merry like a brother. He held Pippin's shoulders until the hobbit stopped shaking with laughter and weeping at the same time. He looked at Frodo last and did not say anything that could be overheard. He did not need to. Frodo's face answered with a small light that had nothing to do with the sun.

Music climbed the walls, strings and pipes and a low drum that sounded like the heart of a city finding its beat again. The high doors opened and a group of elves stepped into the light. They did not look like they had been traveling. Elves rarely do. Their garments held the color of clean dusk. Their hair gathered the light and made it slow.

At their center came Arwen.

Her gown was the silver of river water at night. Her hair carried jewels that caught the day and gave it back in small stars. Yet it was not the jewels that held the crowd. It was her face when she saw him, the kind of joy that tests the strength of bone. She crossed the space like someone who had crossed much more than a court. He bowed. He reached. The kiss was both promise and rest.

Gandalf smiled like a man who has put down a load. Éowyn leaned closer to Faramir without thinking. Legolas' eyes softened, the cool of a deep forest after sun. Gimli muttered that elves always do this, and Merry told him to hush so he could see better.

As the cheers swelled, Jane became aware of her own breath. She was tired, yes, but a good kind of tired, the kind that comes after fear has been asked to step aside for a day. The baby made itself known in a quiet way, not movement, just a presence. Theodred's fingers brushed the back of her hand, then settled around it. They stood like that and let the city do the celebrating for all of them.

Aragorn and Arwen turned to the court together. He spoke a few words to the closest captains, no grand text, only the right thank you to the right faces. Then he looked past them and found the friends who had made the road with him. The fellowship drew together in a loose crescent. Gandalf inclined his head. Legolas and Gimli traded a look that was half challenge, half affection. The king's eyes moved again and found Theodred and Jane.

He came to them. Theodred went to one knee out of habit and respect. Jane followed the movement, and when Aragorn put out his hands they rose together.

"My friend," he said to Theodred. He used the Mark's word for it, and the Rohan contingent behind them made a pleased sound at that. "Your father would have been proud of today."

"He would have been proud of you," Theodred answered, and if his voice roughened on would, only Jane and Éomer noticed.

Aragorn turned to her. "My lady. There is joy in your return that belongs not to one house but to many."

"I am grateful to belong," she answered, and meant it.

He moved on, because kings must move on. The court breathed again. People spread and fell into small eddies of talk. The sun stood higher and rinsed the marble with light.

There were more rites. Too many would have turned the day stiff, too few would have left the city dissatisfied. Gondor had had time to think about what it wanted to say when it finally had someone to say it to. Faramir brought forward a gift of land and allegiance. Envoys from Dol Amroth laid a pennon at the foot of the steps with a flourish that still managed to be tasteful. A woman from the lower circle presented a basket of bread so perfect that three Lords of something or other broke rank and asked if they might smell it. She told them that if they were gentle they could taste it. They were gentle.

The sun slid west. The court softened. Jane and Theodred drifted to the edge where the wind could find them and let them think without talking. Below, the Pelennor had begun to remember what a field is for. Green stung the eyes in patches. Black soil slept where it still had work to do. Far off, a farmer led a mule across a line that would be a furrow tomorrow. The ordinary was already creeping back, doing what it always does, reclaiming what the extraordinary had used.

Pippin presented himself in his black and silver and tried to salute without grinning. He failed. "I kept out of trouble," he announced. "Mostly."

"You did not," Merry said, arriving two steps later. "He climbed a small wall to see better, and then three small boys climbed after him, and a guard had to pretend not to see any of them, and then the guard asked for pie."

"There was pie," Pippin said, perfectly dignified. "It was very good pie."

Jane kissed the top of his head because not doing so would have been a crime against the day. "I am very fond of you," she said.

"That seems sensible," Pippin declared, and ran off to find more pie.

Gimli and Legolas came next. The dwarf executed a bow that could have bruised the marble if marble were the kind of thing that bruises. "Your Majesty," he said to Theodred, then rolled his eyes at himself. "I am practicing. It does not sit well on me, but I will do it again if it makes you happy."

"It makes me happy," Theodred said, deadpan.

Legolas' gaze flicked over Jane with the quick accuracy that had first unsettled her in the stables of Edoras. "You are thinner by worry and fuller by fate," he said softly so that only they could hear.

"Correct on both counts," she answered, and the look they shared was not a secret, only a recognition.

Evening pearled the sky. The White City softened. The light on Mindolluin cooled to lavender. Torches were set at regular intervals, practical and beautiful. The square did not empty. People did not want to leave the place where a new age had folded itself open in front of them. The music shifted keys and found a tune that did not ask feet to follow steps. It only asked hearts to notice they were beating.

Aragorn and Arwen walked once more across the court, not to do anything official, simply to be seen together at the beginning of their work. The city responded with a murmur that sounded like the sea. Theodred squeezed Jane's hand again. She turned her face toward him and let the day draw in around them like a cloak.

Tomorrow they would ride home. There would be plans to make and bread to bake and a wedding to build with human hands. There would be visitors, and among them a king of the forest and a woman with a life that bent in the same strange direction as Jane's. There would be vows spoken not in marble but in wood and straw and song.

Tonight the White City held the last of the light as if cupping it for a friend.

And on the high court under the shadow of the mountain, two people from different worlds stood quietly at the edge and watched history look back and nod.

Chapter Text

Morning put color back in the thatch and set the spears along the walls to a clean shine. Smoke curled straight from kitchen vents. The smell of oats and honey drifted through the lower streets. The city woke like a body that had finally slept.

They rode home from Minas Tirith without haste. No armies now, only friends and kin and a handful of guards who looked relieved to be escorting something good for a change. The road over the green rolled beneath them. Foals stared, decided to be brave, and trotted along a fence until their own courage surprised them. Larks climbed in a frenzy and spilled their songs clean over the company.

Gimli took the lead on storytelling again, because of course he did. He made the fall of the Dark Tower sound like a tavern brawl and the breaking of the Gate like a good door finally giving way to a proper hinge. Legolas added two precise corrections and one insult so gentle it counted as affection. Éowyn rode near Faramir and let her horse pick the easy line; their conversation barely rose above the creak of leather, but every time she laughed, the sound moved down the column like a promise. Pippin ranged up and down like a cheerful scout, reporting the obvious with pride. Merry kept him from falling off anything interesting.

Jane's mare settled into a steady gait, the kind that lets thoughts catch up. Theodred matched her pace. He did not crowd. He kept an easy hand near her knee, and when the road roughened he reached without looking and steadied her. It had the same effect on her chest as a long drink of water.

By the second day the hills of the Mark rose like the backs of sleeping mares. The thatch of Meduseld flashed through a break in the ridge and was gone. The company came up under the city and the people were there, not in panic this time, but in that unruly joy of a folk who have decided to believe in good news. They had kept their banners mended through the winter for a day like this. Ribbons blinked bright as new grass. Someone had tuned a fiddle badly and gotten better fast.

Theodred dismounted in the gate-yard and the crowd surged. He did not wave them back. He let himself be touched. A hand on his sleeve. A palm against his shoulder. The quick kiss of a grandmother's fingers to the back of his knuckles. He said names. He asked after roofs and colts and an aching knee that still hurt when it rained. He was crowned already in the way that matters most to a place like this. Jane stood a little behind, the weight of the small emeralds in her hair light and right, and watched the city claim him.

Then the city claimed her. Katrin hit her like summer, arms hard around Jane's ribs, soap and wool and the faint scorch of the oven following close. "You were lightning," she accused without rancor. "I nearly died from the drama."

"I tripped the fuse," Jane said, and got laughter, which was worth every road mile.

"Come," Katrin said, eyes bright, cheeks high with plans. "You can't hide. We have work that wants your opinion and I refuse to guess at your opinions. Also you must sit in the big chair just once to see how it feels."

The big chair felt exactly like carved oak, which is to say good for the back, honest about its intentions. The hall glowed. Someone, many someones, had scrubbed it from the door hinges to the farthest beam. Gold and smoke made a warm marriage over the rafters, and the long fire carried food-smell and comfort in equal parts. The carved horses along the pillars threw soft shadows along the floor. People moved through the space with their voices held at a kind volume, as if trying not to shatter a new bottle of luck.

They did not decide the wedding. They discovered it. That is how it felt to Jane as the next days unfolded. The city seemed to have kept a ceremony in a drawer waiting for the right pair. The drawers opened. The things in them were exactly as they should be.

Katrin bullied a sewing circle as if she had been born to command tailors. Lace from Minas Tirith, fine as frost, met Rohan linen that knew how to catch the wind and not look foolish. The dress that took shape on the trestle table was white without being fragile, a high neck that made her stand tall, sleeves that ended where a pulse says hello, a skirt that moved like water and allowed a person to walk, climb steps, maybe even dance if she felt like it. A narrow belt sat just under the curve that had begun to show. The sight of it made Jane's throat ache in a good way.

"You will not faint," Katrin said, pinning and unpinning with surgical speed. "If you feel like fainting, you will sit. If you feel like sitting, you will sit. If anyone worries out loud in a way that makes your head hurt, send them to me. I am in a mood to cure worry the hard way."

Gandalf took charge of the words. He did it the way he does everything when he cares, quietly, with a mouth that looks like it is telling a joke and a mind counting the beats of a heart. "In the Mark," he said to Jane while he inked three lines and crossed out two, "they have old phrases that deserve to live. We will keep them. We will add only what we need to make this your day. You will not be asked to say anything you do not mean."

"What about you," she asked. "Do you mean the words you say."

"More often than not," he said. "Or I hold my tongue."

Gimli vanished for a day and a night, which meant he was conspiring. Legolas vanished for an hour and returned with a green bundle, which meant he had conspired faster.

Éowyn took Jane to the high terrace where the wind knocks bickering out of people and taught her the old Mark custom of braiding a strand from the bride's hair into the groom's and the groom's into the bride's. "We tie them low," she explained, fingers deft. "So when life pulls, it tugs on a place that does not mind pulling." She looked up. Her smile was lighter than the one she had worn in the Houses of Healing. "If you ever need to untie, you do it together, not alone."

"I like the rules here," Jane said. "They were made by people who have fallen off horses."

"Repeatedly," Éowyn said. "And with style."

News ran quicker than the wind. The Woodland Realm would send royal company. Messengers came on the third morning with bows like silver branches and voices like water. Thranduil would witness. Jane thought of the first time Legolas had told her of another wanderer made queen in the halls under the trees. She felt a thread pulled tight across distance.

The day of their arrival was clear. The city dressed itself without orders. Fresh rushes in the hall. New ribbons on the pennants. Buckets of flowers appeared with the shrug of women who have their ways. The lower gate stood open like a mouth ready to sing. A horn sounded once from the watch and rolled back on itself under the roof of sky.

They came like a wind from a different forest. Elven horses, grey as dawn. Riders whose motion blended with the animals under them so well the eye could not say where one began and the other ended. At their head a figure whose hair fell like a pale river and whose face looked carved from something older than the wood that crowned him. Thranduil did not announce himself. Presence announced him.

At his right walked a woman whose beauty would have been too much if there had not been kindness in it. Height to match his, hair to catch fire in the sun, a bearing that said I have learned how to be both guest and queen. Her gown folded shadow and green into a moving story. She scanned the crowd once and found Jane as if she had come only for her.

Vivienne stopped a breath away. The noise around them dimmed. "We are not strangers," she said, and the accent under the Elvish music of it was not wholly of that world.

"No," Jane said. "We did not have this room before, but we know the house."

Thranduil inclined his head to Theodred with ceremonial correctness, then broke it with a smile that had edge and humor both. "It pleases me to see a hall that loves its king," he said. "It pleases me more to see a king who loves his hall."

"I am learning the trick," Theodred said. "It begins with listening."

"Few master it," Thranduil returned. "We will be easy guests and difficult friends. The first is a promise. The second a hope."

Legolas stepped between father and friends with that unflustered grace that makes other men adjust their shoulders. He stood beside Vivienne with a son's pride softened by something like awe. "You remember," he said under his breath to Jane, "you called the forest by a new name before it had it."

"Eryn Lasgalen," Jane answered, and the word hung in the air like a leaf caught and not falling.

Thranduil's eyes sharpened. "Hopeful syllables," he said. "We have not yet earned them. I will not forget hearing them here."

They were led to places of honor. The hall held them. Elves do not gawk. They also do not hide amazement when a place manages to surprise them. Meduseld did. The lamplight poured up into the vault where the carved beasts ran. The mead smell coaxed even dignified noses into interest. Thranduil's mouth tilted, and Jane saw Legolas relax by a measure only a son would notice.

That night Rohan remembered how to feast without losing sense. The meat was good but not ridiculous. The bread came hot. The ale was strong and clean. A singer with a voice like a river was made to stand on a table and sing it twice because old men insisted. A child fell asleep under a bench and was not tripped on because people in this hall had learned to lift their feet. Someone tried to teach a line dance near the door and failed and laughed and tried again and failed better.

Gimli found Jane and put a short, square hand on her elbow. "Come away," he said, trying and failing to sound casual. "Before we are interrupted by a poem."

He led her into a side chamber with a chest carved with leaves. Legolas was already there, which meant the conspiracy had been pleasant to watch and dangerous to interrupt. The dwarf opened the chest as if it were a story.

The ring sat on a piece of green cloth. The center stone had the clear gold of sunlight caught for a minute in late summer. The cut made it honest. It did not pretend to be more than it was, which made it more than most things. On either side, thin leaves ran along the shank, pale and impossible, the sheen unmistakable. Mithril, folded and chased into living metal.

"Yellow for your fields," Gimli said quietly. "For joy that shows its face. The leaves for what grows. The metal for what endures. Forged by a friend and a stubborn fool who argued about the right width for three hours and were better for it."

Legolas inclined his head. "My father released a small portion of our store," he said. "Not because we hoard it, but because it should belong where it will be worn thin by love. Mithril shines with use, not with glass."

Jane could not speak at first. She put her palms to her mouth and breathed once the way you breathe when you find something that makes you feel both more yourself and more part of the world. "You are ridiculous," she managed. "And the best."

Gimli waved it off and scowled with damp eyes. "Save your thanks for the day you wear it. If you thank me now I will turn into a legend before I have eaten dessert."

The day came. It was the kind that looks like it has been ordered from a catalog and somehow arrived as requested. Blue no one would call gaudy. Wind that kept people awake and flags lively. The distances around Edoras clear enough that a hawk could sit on a fence post in the foothills and still feel seen by someone on the terrace.

They married on the long stone before the hall, between the carved doorposts where horses run and the view that sends the heart out into the plain. People stood without being told where. Lines formed themselves. The old took the front because they had earned not to strain. Children were lifted onto shoulders by men who pretended to complain. Éomer stood at Theodred's right with a face that looked like a brother trying not to feel everything at once. Éowyn held the ties they would use for hair and hands and did not smudge them with tears because she is that kind of person. Gandalf stood at the center with a book he did not open.

Jane stepped from the hall with Katrin's palm firm and loving at her back. The dress moved as if it had been waiting for her. The lace at the throat framed her face and made her stand even straighter. The belt held her with a quiet accuracy that made her feel held by more than fabric. The emeralds in her crown caught the light like leaves shaking. The crowd breathed as one again.

Theodred looked like a man who had been awake his whole life only to discover that this was the first day his eyes had decided to take their job seriously. His hair was bound, his beard trimmed close. He had chosen a simple tunic under the ceremonial cloak, green shot with a thread of gold that had more to do with morning than with treasure. When he reached for her hand he did not glance at the crowd to see if anyone approved. He did not need a witness. He had one.

Gandalf's words were not many, but they found the chest. He spoke in the Mark's tongue first, phrases that smell of smoke and horse and bread. He spoke the meaning in Westron after, so that Gondor understood as well. He asked them if they would be equals. He asked if they would keep the ordinary fed so the extraordinary did not starve the day. He asked if they would say what needed saying before sleep and forgive what could be forgiven.

"I will," Theodred said, like a man giving orders to himself and meaning them.

"I will," Jane said, and her voice startled her with how steady it had become.

Éowyn came with the braids. She tied a thin strand of his hair into hers, and a thin strand of hers into his. The knot sat low. The tug when they tested it made both of them smile. Gandalf bound their hands with a plain strip of linen. He chose linen for a reason. Silk is lovely. Linen is stronger when wet.

"By the witness of your people," Gandalf said, "by the sight of the hills, by the patience of this hall, be married."

"Wait," came a voice like gravel arranged into humor. Gimli took two careful steps forward with a small box in both hands. "Now."

Theodred took the ring and slid it onto Jane's finger. It settled as if the space had been waiting its whole life to be filled. Jane slid a band of worked gold onto Theodred's hand, a plain piece with a pattern that only shows when the light stands at a certain angle. He turned it once and smiled like a man who enjoys secrets that are kind.

The cheer rose from the lower steps as if it had been living there for months and had finally been released. Horns answered without command. Ribbons went up and refused to come down. Thranduil raised a hand, not in formal salute, in blessing that had nothing to prove. Vivienne's eyes shone. The look she gave Jane held pride and a little ache, the kind shared between people who have been thrown by fate and decided to get back on the horse anyway.

They kissed. It was not long. It was not shy. It told the truth without worrying about the neighbors.

Then custom reclaimed them. The mead horn. The shared bread. The first steps of a dance that did not demand clever feet, only a willingness to be foolish together and call it joy. Riders brought out horses with braided manes and bells tied at the throat. The couple mounted and rode the circuit of the upper terrace so that the city could see them close and so that the nervous could decide the new queen sat a saddle as well as anyone had promised. She did.

The feast blurred in the best way. Smoked lamb that fell apart under the knife. Trenchers warm enough to steam when torn. A stew of root and herb that smelled like a grandmother's kitchen. Someone managed a tiered cake that stood despite the wind, and an argument broke out over whether slicing from the top or the side brought luck, and in the end Jane cut where she pleased and everyone decided that was the rule now.

Toasts came. Éomer's was short and he nearly got through it before his voice betrayed him. Éowyn's was clear and clever and ended with a line that made half the men in the yard decide to be better husbands. Pippin sang a Shire song that sounded like the smell of yeast and grass, and Merry joined on a second verse they both pretended to remember. Legolas sang low, one of those tunes that threads the edge of hearing and leaves a person looking at the horizon for comfort. Gimli recited a poem that began as a brag, fell into a joke, and ended with something so true the hall went quiet and let it land.

Thranduil rose last. He did not speak long. "Kings rule houses," he said. "Queens make them worth ruling. May the years be long for you," and here Jane felt the weight of a different blessing ripple through the air, "and may you use them well. May your children walk farther than you did and still know where their door is."

Vivienne took Jane's hands after, in a space between songs and responsibilities. "It eases something in me to see you here," she said. "I fell into this world with no map. I made my own, and I found love along the path. Your road bends like mine. If you ever need a place where the trees remember a woman, you have it."

"I will come," Jane said, and meant it. "And when you tire of crowns we have a spare bed and a fence that needs mending."

Vivienne laughed, the sound bright as struck glass. "I have never mended a fence."

"It is mostly swearing politely at wood," Jane said. "You will excel."

Evening warmed the hall. The door stayed open to the west, the last light laying a path from the terrace to the fire like a ribbon. A boy slept with a wreath on his head and a dog under his arm under the high table where no one would step on either. A girl reinstated a dropped flower to Jane's braid with all the seriousness of a knight sheathing a blade. Theodred's crown sat on the table below the dais without looking neglected. It knew the room had other work to do.

They slipped out for a while, not to flee, only to breathe together. The grass above the mounds shivered in the evening draft. The barrows drew the last of the color from the sky and held it. They stood before Théoden's hill and did not speak for a time. Words are not always respectful guests.

Jane set her palm on the fresh earth. "He knew," she said finally, soft. "I told him on the field. He gave us his blessing with what breath he had left."

Theodred's hand covered hers. His body found its shape beside her with that bone-deep rightness that makes the brain stop searching for better words. "Then he is content," he said. "And if we have work, we do it for him too."

They stayed until the stars made a net above the ridge. Rohan's constellations are fewer than a sailor's, but their names carry stories that have nothing to do with water and much to do with stubbornness. Jane found the one Éowyn had shown her that first week, the Mare's Eye, and felt a small, fierce rush of belonging.

Back in the hall, the last songs ran their last miles. Gandalf blessed the room with a look and vanished to smoke somewhere stars could admire. Gimli went from argument to argument the way a bee goes from flower to flower, collecting opinions like pollen. Legolas had been trapped by three old men who wanted to know whether leaves change color because they choose to. He answered them as if the question mattered. It did.

The night thinned. People drifted out, not because they had been told to go, because their bodies reminded them morning still exists in a new age. The door closed with a sound that had rung here for a thousand years. Quiet put a hand on the room's shoulder.

They were alone in the place where oaths live.

There are details a story does not need to show to prove they happened. The first touch when both rings are warm from hands and the crown has been set aside. The conversation without words that finally repeats what has already been promised in public. The tenderness of a man who has learned what asking looks like and does it again even when he is sure. The gladness of a woman who has learned what answering looks like and does that too.

They slept finally in a house full of old music and new breath.

Dawn laid a clean coin of light on the floorboards by the bed. The wind went up the hill with the sound of a horse beginning to canter. The Golden Hall took the day into its rafters and sent it back warm.

The old era had ended. It did not slam the door. It set the cup down, said thank you, and made room at the table. The new one stretched its legs, not yet sure how to sit, but willing. Outside, the Mark spread itself like a map someone intended to use. Inside, a king and a queen woke to the ordinary, which is where eras actually begin.

Chapter Text

Summer had ripened into that soft, heavy stillness before harvest, when the plains hold their breath and the air tastes like warm straw. Meduseld's high windows were open to the night. Crickets sang. Lanterns guttered and were trimmed again. In a quiet room off the queen's chamber, water steamed in bronze basins and clean linen lay stacked in careful towers.

Jane gripped the carved edge of the bed and decided every woman who ever did this without anesthesia deserved a statue.

"I want an epidural," she said through her teeth. "A nice, large epidural. Two would be better."

Katrin slid a cool cloth over her neck. "We have willow tea, athelas steam, honey with clove, and my voice. You may also squeeze Theodred's fingers until he cries."

"Done," Jane said, and crushed his hand when the next contraction rolled in like a wave that had spotted a shore it meant to conquer.

The head midwife, Hild, looked pleased at the depth of Jane's swearing. "Good lungs," she said. "You shout like a Rider."

Jane swore in German next. Katrin arched a brow. "New vocabulary," she observed. "Please teach me later."

Theodred bent close, a cup at her lips, his thumb steady at the hinge of her jaw. "Small sips," he murmured.

"Do not tell me 'small sips' while my pelvis is reinventing itself," she hissed, and then laughed through the next breath because his face was so serious it nearly broke her heart.

Against custom, he had refused the corridor. No pacing with a cup of watered ale and the company of worried brothers for him. He had set his crown outside the door like a polite guest and said he would be where his wife was. Hild had tried to argue once, then measured the set of his mouth, decided he would faint far less than half the men she had assisted, and put him to work. He fetched water, held basins, lifted her by the shoulders when the back pain found a new knife to twist. Once he simply leaned his forehead to hers and breathed with her until her grip loosened and breath remembered how to happen.

Another contraction rose. She felt it coming, gathering low, cruel and honest. She closed her eyes and rode it with all the old muscle memory of galloping a horse across ground that will not be gentle. Sweat stung her eyes. Katrin's palm held fast at the small of her back, right on the knot. The athelas steam curled from the bowl, sharp and clean, clearing the muddled edge from her thoughts. Outside, voices moved and stilled. Rohan's women had gathered like a wall around the chamber. Éowyn kept order with tea and threats and the unblinking calm of someone who had faced darker doors than this.

"Breathe," Theodred said softly, and counted with her. His voice was a rope. She held it.

"Do you remember when I said I wanted three children," she managed between waves.

"Yes," he said, far too quickly.

"I was so young then," she said, and bit a laugh into a groan as the pain broke and slid back.

Katrin snorted. "You were twenty-seven and opinionated. Now you are a queen and correct."

Hild peered, nodded once, and the room changed temperature. "There you are," she said, like a hunter catching the first sign of a stag. "She comes when she wishes. Good girl. Not long now." She glanced at Jane. "When I tell you to push, you push like you are angry at a mountain."

"Excellent," Jane said, hair sticking to her temples. "I have always wanted to fight geology."

A knock thumped softly. Éowyn cracked the door and slid inside with the balance of someone who could win a duel in a broom closet. "The hall is restive," she reported dryly. "Gimli is threatening to tunnel under the threshold. Legolas is singing through the keyhole. Pippin has eaten two loaves meant for the father."

Theodred lifted his head. "Tell them to sing softer and bake more bread."

"Done," Éowyn said, and her smile was quick and real. She paused, leaned, and kissed Jane's brow. "You are the bravest person I know."

"That cannot possibly be true," Jane breathed, and then the next contraction wiped speech clean away.

The night stretched. Time broke into pieces that were only work and heat and Katrin saying "now" and "again" and "rest" like a bell. Hild's hands were sure. Theodred's hands were warmer than the water and steadier than the table. Once, in a lull that felt like a gift, Jane's mind wandered to the shore of light where she had stood when the Valar returned her. A voice like a sea-breeze had said, Be quick with joy. She had been, each day since. Now it felt like joy had teeth and was dragging her toward itself.

Another wave hit and she rode it hard and low, a growl leaving her that she would later deny. She pushed as Hild commanded, anger at geology fully engaged. Theodred counted, then stopped counting and simply breathed her name like a benediction. Katrin pressed a cup of water to her mouth and whispered, "It is almost the hilltop."

Jane bore down again. The world narrowed to a bright point and a ring of fire and a sense that she might split clean in two. She swore so loudly people three rooms away flinched and then cheered, because the swearing in Meduseld had never sounded like this before and they decided to like it.

"Good," Hild said, voice calm as the plain. "Once more, my queen. Do not be polite."

Jane did not bother with polite. She pushed. She roared. Something moved through her, the most natural and impossible thing in the world, and then the pressure changed to a slither and a heat and a space that could hold stars.

A thin cry cut the room.

Silence followed, the kind that is not empty but full. Hild's hands were busy and sure. She laughed under her breath, an old woman's laugh that has earned it. "Stubborn," she declared. "Hungry. Loud. Perfect."

Jane sagged back, shaking, tears leaking without instruction. Theodred's head was bowed, shoulders shuddering once, twice. He reached, then hesitated as if he needed permission to touch a miracle. Hild glanced up, and whatever she saw in his face moved her. She nodded and lifted the small, wet bundle onto Jane's chest.

Warmth. Weight. The smell of new skin and wool and the faint tang of birth. A fierce little mouth searching. A fist that thought it could defeat kingdoms flexing and unclenching.

Jane looked and forgot pain as if someone had reached into her head and stolen the word. Pale hair already damp across a small, stubborn skull. A serious little brow. A loud opinion of air. She ran a finger along a cheek the size of a plum and the baby turned, rooted, and found what she wanted with the authority of queens.

Theodred made a sound she had never heard from him. Not battle, not laughter, not court. Something cracked open and poured out. He bent and kissed Jane's temple, then the damp curls at the baby's crown. His tears hit the blanket and sank in, accepted.

"Hello," he said to the tiny tyrant, reverent and hoarse. "I have been waiting a very long time to meet you."

Katrin wiped at her face with the edge of her apron like a woman who has kept order and will allow herself exactly sixty seconds of being human. "She has her mother's mouth," she announced. "And the eyes will be blue. I have decided."

Hild finished her tidy work and tied the linen with hands that could have bound wounds in a storm and had. She laid a blanket over them. "The hall will wait," she said. "They are not in charge. You are."

Jane laughed, a wrecked, astonished sound. "What is her name," Katrin asked, though she knew.

Jane and Theodred looked at each other. They had spoken of names on calm evenings and on rides between cities, had tried them out in idle talk, had tucked their favorites away like stones in a pocket. But when the moment came, the name did not feel chosen. It felt discovered.

"Theodora," Jane said, and heard how right it was.

Theodred smiled like dawn. "Theodora," he echoed, tasting it. He said it again, softer, to the small ear. "Theodora, daughter of the Mark."

Outside the door, the muffled press of bodies shifted. Éowyn's voice carried, quick and bright. "She is here," she called. A roar answered from the hall, then memories of quiet returned like a tide. People in Rohan know how to celebrate without breaking the new.

Gimli did not wait for permission. He shoved the door open a finger's breadth and slid his beard through the gap like a burglar. "All right," he demanded gently. "Is everyone in one piece."

"Fewer pieces would have been nice," Jane said. "But yes."

"Good," he rumbled. "I carved a spoon. For her. Small hands should have proper tools."

Legolas's song slid in behind him, a thread of sound leaning on no instrument. He did not enter. He did not need to. The melody perched in the doorframe and watched. Somewhere down the corridor, Pippin tried to whisper and failed. Merry shushed him in a whisper only slightly quieter. Laughter ran like a cat and then curled up to sleep.

Theodred sat carefully on the bed's edge, one hand still on Jane's shoulder as if he could anchor her to the earth by touch alone. He looked dazed and sacred and a little terrified, which was exactly how a new father should look. The gold of his wedding band caught the lamplight where it rested near Theodora's tiny foot. He tucked the blanket closer around them both like a man who had spent his life protecting many and was amazed at the privilege of protecting two.

"Do you forgive me for the lack of epidural," he asked low, smile crooked, eyes wet.

"Never," Jane said solemnly, then broke into a grin so wide it hurt. "Completely."

They sat like that while the room remembered how to breathe around them. Hild moved about with practiced quiet, clearing, washing, tending. Katrin, who could bully a city into order, now did the smaller work of smoothing a sheet, tucking a curl behind a damp ear, finding Jane's hand and pressing it gentle as a blessing.

"Do you want the hall to know her name," Éowyn asked from the doorway, and the care in her voice made the question a gift.

"Wait," Jane said, surprising herself. She looked down at Theodora, who blinked as if mapping the rafters. "This hour is ours."

They kept it. The city held its breath and did not complain.

After a time that felt both like five minutes and a lifetime, Theodred stood. He wrapped the blanket around his daughter with the caution of a man handling a treasure given by higher hands. He turned to the door.

"Stay," Jane said, and he paused. She shifted, reached, and tucked one end of his braid into the end of her own, the old knot snug and sure. "For luck."

He bent and kissed her once, the kiss of a man who has run out of words and is fine with it. Then he stepped into the hall.

Silence rolled out from the threshold like a soft-edged wave. People straightened. They drew nearer and then remembered to give space. Theodred lifted the small bundle so faces could see without crowding. His voice carried clear and low, the way it does when a king is not trying to sound like a king and succeeds anyway.

"Friends," he said. "Your queen is well. Your daughter is loud. Her name is Theodora."

The cheer shook the timbers and then gentled itself, as if the hall had learned to put a hand on its own mouth. Ale met clay. Horn met lip. Someone wept into a fresh-baked loaf and apologized to no one. Éomer crowed, then pretended he had not. Faramir bowed his head, gratitude written into the angle of his shoulders. Legolas's hand found the doorframe and he smiled like a man given proof of a thing he already believed. Gimli raised his axe in a salute so soft it counted as tenderness.

In the quiet after, Gandalf—no one had seen him arrive—leaned in the far archway with pipe unlit, eyes bright. He did not speak. He inclined his head, and the movement seemed to place a seal on the moment that would hold longer than ink.

Theodred brought Theodora back to Jane. The baby had fallen asleep as only the newly arrived can, mouth slack, fist still clenched around a fold of blanket like a victor claiming land. He set her again on Jane's chest and slid in beside them. Jane turned her face and breathed in the smell of both of them, grass and steel and milk, and felt a happiness so ordinary and so enormous it scared her a little.

She looked at their daughter and thought of a storm over Edoras that had not been weather but mercy. She thought of a shore where stars had voices and time bent itself. She thought of the feel of reins in her hands and the way a good horse will carry you if you meet it halfway. She thought of a promise made in a crowded hall and kept in a quiet room.

"Welcome, little Rider," she whispered. "Welcome home."

The hall outside took up its low hum again—laughter, a pot clinking, a lullaby two corridors over. The wind went along the thatch and made the old house sigh. Somewhere on the barrows a fox lifted its nose and decided the night held no malice. The stars over the plains burned steady and patient.

And in the Golden Hall, at the turning of an age, a queen closed her eyes with her daughter on her chest and her husband's hand over both of theirs, and slept.