Dancing In The Dark by Grundy

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Ne'er Be Clean

This chapter definitely covers the 'Unclean Things' square on the Taboo card. I feel like it flirts with a couple others but doesn't really deal with them head on.

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It was several days before he had a chance to speak with Artanis again – tense days in which the court seethed with barely suppressed anger as the King deliberated in private how to respond to the Sindarin King’s insolent decree.

Artanis wasn’t exactly hiding, but nor was she her usual approachable self. The first few days she kept to her rooms unless Laurefindil or Irimë chivvied her outside. Though he could have sought her out, Curufinwë judged it wiser to let her brothers’ moods settle first. He did not mind serving as the outlet for others’ tempers when it was truly required, but it was not a role he favored when it could be avoided.

Messengers from Doriath arrived on the fifth day after the children of Arafinwë had reached Mithrim – and Curufinwë could easily see the insult in that, as if his cousins were liars not to be trusted to convey Elwë’s words accurately. (It would be understandable if it were him or his brothers, but Curufinwë was not entirely sure Findarato has ever told a lie in his life, and his younger brothers have yet to show so much as an ounce of anything like guile.)

The messengers refused to speak Quenya. As Nolofinwë could not converse in Sindarin, that meant one of Arafinwë’s children would need to convey their words to the king, for they were the only ones present fluent both in the language of the Grey Elves and the Noldor.

Artanis, on understanding the farce that was to be played out, excused herself from the great hall with alacrity, pointedly asking her uncle’s permission in the Noldorin tongue before taking her leave without deigning to acknowledge the presence of the Sindarin emissaries.

To his surprise, Curufinwë saw that her brothers were openly angry and refused to translate. In fact, if he had understood them correctly – and while the demand that he give up his cradle tongue was insulting, it irked him nonetheless that he could not yet reliably understand the language of the Grey Elves when spoken at speed – they had told the Sindar that as they were banned from using their father’s language, they could scarcely translate for their uncle, could they?

The looks they had been giving the one who seemed to be in charge of the small delegation were flatly furious, and Curufinwë dearly wished he knew what else was going on beneath the surface. He also appreciated that they’d then declined to speak Sindarin, speaking to each other in Telerin as they departed.

In the end, it had been Artaresto who took the place at the hand of the King and translated as the party from Menegroth repeated Thingol’s ban on Quenya.

How such a ban was supposed to be justice still eluded Curufinwë. It could only make for ill-feeling on the Noldor side, particularly since there were many both here and in Nargothrond who had taken no part in the Kinslaying, and the greatest part of those who had sincerely regretted having joined the fight without knowing how it had come to blows in the first place.

Had anyone bothered to ask him, Curufinwë could have easily predicted how Nelyafinwë would answer the Grey King’s demand when the news reached him – with utter scorn. Having already been condemned by a far loftier judge than Elwë Greycloak, and suffered the wrath of a more frightful opponent, there was little point to surrendering their language when they could expect nothing in return.

His half-uncle, unfortunately, did not agree.

“Tell the ambassador this,” Nolofinwë had said, his silver eyes flashing. “As a gesture of our goodwill toward the people of Doriath, we shall learn the Sindarin tongue. But we will not forget the Grey King’s singular brand of justice, and should he transgress against us, we will expect him to abide by our justice as we now abide by his.”

Given that the ambassadors looked as furious at Nolofinwë’s words as every Noldo in the room felt at Elwë’s demand, Curufinwë reluctantly decided that such an unsatisfactory draw would have to do.

Nolofinwë rose and left the hall, signaling by his departure rather than his words that he considered the audience at an end.

Curufinwë had not fully understood the next question put to Artaresto, but his cousin’s son spoke clearly enough that he understood the answer plainly – and that it carried with it the anger of all the Arafinwions.

“Of course you may see Merelin if you wish,” Artaresto said, his voice dripping disdain. “Unlike some, I do not seek to separate any from spouse or kin. Nor was it I who instructed her to choose.”

He then turned on his heel in what Curufinwë could only conclude was studied insult and left without another word.

Given that most courtiers wanted nothing to do with the Sindar, they were rapidly left alone in the hall.

Curufinwë smiled, and deliberately mangled his Sindarin when he spoke to them. Normally he would have scorned to make himself sound so uneducated, but it would force the Sindar to work harder to hold the conversation. At the moment, that amused him.

“I afraid most not care for you king revenge,” he said with a smile. “They see insult, grey king demand they give up much when not their actions he punish.”

“At least you make some effort,” muttered one of them. “They do not wish to do even that much.”

Curufinwë snorted, and in his irritation, spoke closer to normal than he had meant to.

“Little effort, as would you know if ever spoke the folk of Doriath to me. Curufin am I in your tongue, and my guard in Himlad makes safe your northeastern borders.”

They clearly knew who he was, for they looked appalled. Perhaps by their mores, they were now unclean merely for speaking to a Kinslayer. But their leader swallowed whatever answer he clearly wished to make.

“Your name is known to us, though we knew not you were he. As you are one of the few here that will speak to us, know you where we might find the Lady Galadriel?”

Curufinwë couldn’t resist twisting the knife a bit. If these trolls were party to the hurt done his little cousin, he was not about to make whatever errand they had been charged with easier.

“I know no Galadriel. Who is she?” he replied.

“She is the sister of Finrod, Angrod, and Aegnor. Finrod remains in Nargothrond, but Angrod and Aegnor were in the hall earlier, before your king spoke.”

“Artanis,” Curufinwë nodded as though only just understanding who they meant. “Where she is I know not. Her anger was great, she left before you spoke.”

Two of the Sindar, who by their looks were either brothers or cousins, exchanged a glance.

“We are unlikely to find her on our own,” the older one said. “We may not even find Merelin if none here are willing to help.”

The one who had spoken originally sighed.

“Can I trust you to give this to her?” he asked.

He held out a letter. The hand was unfamiliar to Curufinwë. If this was some fresh malice on Elwë’s part, he wanted none of it. Let the Sindar do their own dirty work.

“Who from?” he asked flatly, folding his arms across his chest, making it clear by his stance that he did not like the request.

“Her husband,” the Sinda replied quietly. “My cousin Celeborn.”

Curufinwë looked the other elf in the eye for a long moment, then finally reached out to take the letter.

“For her,” he said firmly. “Not for you or for him.”

The other man looked as though he would argue, but his companion tugged at his sleeve, giving him a pointed look, and he settled for nodding curtly before the pair of them turned to leave, presumably in search of Artaresto’s wife.

Curufinwë did not bother to wish them joy – in fact, he rather hoped they encountered Angarato’s son in their search. He knew he would have been livid if his pregnant wife had been forced to choose between her husband on one hand and her kin and home on the other. Many supposed that because his Arafinwion cousins were normally of good cheer and friendly to all that they did not get angry.

Any fool who thought so would discover their error the day they saw an Arafinwion pushed beyond the limit of his temper. He rather suspected Artaresto was well beyond that point and ready to explode.

While he might not know where Artanis was, Curufinwë knew his younger cousin well enough to guess where she was most likely to be. He headed straight for the private gardens, where the Sindar would not be admitted save in the company of a member of the royal family – none of whom were in any mood to invite them in. He nodded pleasantly to the guards as he passed them.

He found Artanis sitting in a concealed alcove on the far side of the fountain, nearly hidden behind the trailing branches of a young willow.

“Do you wish to know how it went?” he asked, dispensing with any false cheerful greeting.

She rolled her eyes.

Aikanaro and Angarato had little use for him, but Artanis, as one of only two girls in their large extended family – and the pair of them the ‘babies’ to boot –  had quickly discovered as a child that her older cousin Curufinwë was quite unlike the rest of the family in that he would answer nearly any question put to him honestly. Not only that, he would keep answering until she understood. He had become a great favorite of hers as a result, for she had had more questions in her tiny head than all three of her older brothers combined.

The only questions he had ever demurred on were those she had posed in her earliest years that trod too close to Noldorin and occasionally Vanyarin taboos for comfort – he had no wish to suffer his grandfather’s wrath, or his grandfather’s wife. Where babies came from he had answered up to a point, but the explanation of the exact process of making them he had decided better left to his aunt and uncle.

He had been scolded by Indis as it was, for talking to such a young elfling about such matters. That she had asked hadn’t mattered at all. Fortunately, his grandfather had intervened and suggested that young Atarinkë just needed to exercise better discretion about when to send a seven-year-old to ask her parents instead of her cousin.

He had shortly thereafter explained to Artanis that if she wanted him to continue to answer questions, she needed to not repeat who had told her the answers when they were questions that would upset her parents or her grandmother. She had been remarkably good at holding her end of the bargain.

“I assume it went badly,” she replied. “How could it not?”

“Your brothers refused to have any part in it,” he said, sprawling on the ground as he would not before anyone else here but her. If the others want to continue to treat him as though he was a lesser servant of Morgoth or an extension of his father instead of the cousin they’ve known all their lives, so be it.

“Good,” she said quietly.

He could hear the satisfaction in her tone.

“What did Thingol actually do?” he asked curiously. “Artaresto said something that made me wonder.”

Her mouth twisted.

“Cast us out. After all, we said nothing when others slew his kin,” she sniffed disdainfully. “As though they were not our kin also.”

“Did no one tell him you wielded a sword against us?” Curufinwë asked, still unable to fathom how it is that she had come in for such particular nastiness on the part of Elwë Greycloak.

“My brothers did, for all the good it accomplished,” she replied bitterly. “I am merely a different sort of Kinslayer in his eyes.”

“Who would have thought his judgement would align so closely with the Valar’s?” Curufinwë mused.

Her brothers could have turned back with their father. For Artanis, there had been no such choice – unless she had been willing to be branded a Kinslayer and seek pardon as such. Curufinwë knew he would never have abased himself so, and he couldn’t imagine it of her any more than of himself. If Artanis sought pardon, it would be from him and his brothers. The only other ones who could absolve her were in Mandos, beyond her power to ask.

Though some of his older brothers saw the matter differently, Curufinwë did not believe she had anything to apologize for anyway. She made her choices and held to them, and had not been daunted by the Valar or the Ice.

If that Sindar lordling whose greatness lay mostly in his choice of wife thought to intimidate her, he much misjudged Artanis Nerwen Arafinwiel. 

“What did Orodreth say?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow.

“He went by that name before Thingol’s decree,” she answered his unspoken challenge. “As I was Galadriel. Though he chose to take a Sindarin name to make it easier for his wife.”

“And you?”

“The name was given me by Celeborn,” she replied. “And I like it.”

Better than Nerwen, certainly, Curufinwë thought.

Not that his family could throw stones when it came to naming. Fëanaro had been better at creating both things and children than naming them. Their father names were, aside from his own and Tyelko’s, generally nothing to brag about. Nelyo’s and the Ambarussa’s had been thinly veiled slams at Nolofinwë (and to a lesser degree Arafinwë). Makalaurë’s was so generic it might have been any son of the House of Finwë, and Carnastir’s sounded like his father hadn’t even been paying attention.

“Your nephew told the Sindar that unlike some, he did not seek to separate anyone from spouse or kin.”

Like a thundercloud over the sea, a squall darkened her eyes.

“Thingol would have kept me in Doriath for Celeborn’s sake when he expelled my brothers, though it was made clear that as I had actually used a sword that day, my presence would defile Menegroth. But I said if my brothers were not welcome there, I would not stay either. I would not remain where it was clear that I was unwanted and seen as something unclean.”

Artanis had to resort a word normally used for objects, not for people, as whatever concept the Sindar had wielded against her was not one the Noldor recognized. They knew that Kinslaying was uniquely wrong, of course. But the notion that it somehow permanently contaminated those who had done it was not one they had the luxury of holding – too many among them, Artanis included, had shed Eldarin blood that day.

Serious though the matter was, Curufinwë still had to stifle a laugh. While she was not as restless as Irissë, trying to hold Artanis anywhere against her will was a doomed venture.

“I take it that was when he decided your husband should stay?” he asked lightly.

She went silent, which was all the answer he needed.

Her marriage could not be more than a few years old, for though she herself did not come to Mithrim, she wrote regularly to her uncle, aunt, and cousins. Had she married before his last visit, Curufinwë would surely have heard of it. Indeed, he rather thought his brothers would have spoken of the marriage with wonder had they known of it, for Artanis had refused many would-be suitors in Tirion. So perhaps not even a few years. A year or less.

Most newly-wed couples could scarce stand to be separated. Curufinwë could still remember how he and Tyelpesilmë had been constantly in each other’s company for the first months of their marriage, unable to bear a parting of more than a few hours. They had been married over a decade before he had spent a night away from her, and that had been for an errand of the gravest urgency.

He and his wife were the norm, not the exception. Even now, he felt her absence as a wound in his fëa. (It did no good to recall that particular wound was self-inflicted, and he usually tried not to think on the manner of their parting.)

As such, it was quite cruel of Thingol to insist on parting Artanis and her Celeborn – who was, from the sound of it, a kinsman of the Sindarin king.

“Indeed. Insufferable Noldo that I am, he would not see his kin come under our curse.”

At that, Curufinwë nearly laughed out loud, for Artanis had spent much of her youth hearing how very un-Noldor she was. His father had been one of her foremost critics, ever quick to spot Telerin habits and speech patterns in Arafinwë’s children. To now be told she was too Noldor must have galled her no end.

“It is unlike you to allow him to have the last word,” Curufinwë observed.

Artanis had the worst temper of her father’s children, and given that the Sindar king had pushed nearly every one of her buttons, he could not imagine her holding back.

“I didn’t,” she said ruefully. “I told him that little though he might like it, I was also his kin and had been long enough in his kingdom that any curse I might bear had already come to Doriath. And that if he thought that hiding behind the Girdle would let him escape Doom, the more fool he.”

“That’s more like the Artë I remember,” Curufinwë snickered, aware that the only regret on her part would be having lost control of her temper, not having told the Sindarin king unpleasant truths.

“The Valar do hold to their word,” she mused. “Tears unnumbered were we promised, after all.”

“And treason of kin unto kin, and fear of treason,” Curufinwë sighed tiredly. He knew the words of the Doom as well as he knew the words of the Oath. “Here.”

He held out the letter.

“The Sindarin emissaries knew they had little chance of finding Merelin without help, and still less of finding you. I consented to bear it for your sake, not for theirs, though I fear it contributed to their peace of mind all the same.”

The eyes that meet his held only the slightest hint of reproof, as well as exasperated admiration that he could manage to be both a sweet older cousin and an utter bastard at the same time.

She slid off the bench and tucked herself into his side, reading silently. He slipped a comforting arm about her shoulders and said nothing as she read, content to enjoy his cousin’s silent, undemanding companionship. He would have hotly denied it had anyone ever guessed, but she had often inspired in him the guilty thought that it might have been nice to have a pair of baby sisters instead of baby brothers.

She sighed when she finished.

“Thingol has not relented.”

“Did you seriously expect he would?” Curufinwë asked, surprised. Artë had more sense than to think that stiff-necked Sinda would back down so quickly.

“No,” she said with a frown. “But I did hope he would release Celeborn sooner. My unhappiness is nothing to him at present, but Celeborn’s he can see before him as long as he continues to demand his presence in Menegroth. It does not sit well with my husband to feel he is his uncle’s prisoner any more that it did with me.”