Uncertain Seas by Grundy

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Chapter 1

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The storm was relentless, and the spray of the wind-whipped waves felt like tiny arrows on her face.

For the first time in her life, the sea did not feel like coming home.

Ambarussa had finally let her up once the ship was underway, but they had long since given up trying to convince her to go below deck. They had sought that dubious safety – or at least dryer space – themselves, leaving her to stay out in the storm if she would.

She hadn’t had words to explain to them that it was better for all of them if she wasn’t around them right now. She’s not sure there’s enough room in her troubled heart for childhood loyalty and this sudden, more adult rage to coexist.

Today changed everything.

She had yet to wrap her mind around the sheer magnitude of it.

Kinslayer others on this ship – her grandfather’s ship! – had hissed at her, as if their hands were any cleaner than hers.

When your father’s kin attack your mother’s kin, what do you do?

She had done the only thing she saw to be right – she had defended her mother’s people. She hadn’t realized when she began that it would be a fight in which no holds were barred and no surrender save death accepted.

Yes, she had killed today. But not first, nor even with first intent. That honor belonged to her uncle’s followers. To her cousins.

She’s defended Tyelko before – shielded him from discovery, shielded him from consequences, kept her silence, kept his secrets. He tried to kill her today.

Today changed everything, and she couldn’t begin to say what the consequences would be, but one thing she knew: she was done protecting Tyelko, done carving out space for him and Irissë. Her loyalty is not like his – hers is unshakeable, and it is to her heart-sister, not to her murderous half-kin.

It’s a modifier that never mattered before, ‘half-’.  She’d never let it be real, following her father’s gentle explanation that her uncle did not mean it truly, not in his heart.

It mattered now.

And that hurt.

Half-kin. But which half? The better half, or the worse?

Tyelko had tried to kill her.

Maitimo and Curvo and Ambarussa had insisted on saving her, despite her vehement insistence that she did not need saving.

But why?

Because they were kin? Or because slaying her mother’s people was easier without her standing in the way?

She didn’t know what to trust anymore, not even the sea. Ossë and Uinen have ever been her friends, but she doubted they would come to her aid were she to be swept over the rail now. She wasn’t even sure that they should.

She felt, rather than saw Maitimo hovering just at the edge of her peripheral vision.

“Artë,” he called, trying for gentle, trying to pretend that nothing has changed even though everything had. “Please go below. I do not want to explain to your father how it was that you were lost overboard in the storm.”

Perhaps he means that in the way he would once have meant it – “Not only do I love you, little one, I do not wish to fail so abjectly in the care of my younger kin, much less to explain it to my beloved uncle”. But he may also mean it in a different way, one which would never have occurred to her before today – “I do not wish to deal with the political fallout that would come from having to admit to Finwë’s youngest son that his only daughter died while in the hands of Finwë’s eldest son and heir, our new king.”

She did not like that such thoughts occurred to her now, or the breaking of the absolute trust she had once had in him that allows such treacherous ideas. She did not like feeling like she did not know which way was up, or where solid ground was.

So she said nothing. She did not trust herself to speak, not when she was not sure of what was true. If she could but find something true, at least there would be that to hold onto.

“Artë…”

A sigh almost too quiet to be heard over the wind reached her ears.

“Please, little one?”

She hardened her heart. She was a princess of the Lindar as much as of the Noldor, and this was her grandfather’s ship. Getting a little wet is no bother to her. The water on her skin and the water under it are one and the same.

“Enough of this foolishness! Nelyafinwë, you have other tasks to attend to – get on with it! Artanis, take yourself below this instant!”

So that was why Maitimo had come. Not out of actual concern, but in an attempt to preclude his father having to deal with her.

One could almost think, hearing his words, that nothing untoward had occurred today, and this was simply another family outing he was leading, patience worn thin with the foolishness of sons and nieces alike.

Almost.

She had the minor satisfaction of seeing Curufinwë Fëanaro flinch when she met his gaze. He may be a spirit of fire, but fire will avail him little now. The Noldor had never listened to the Lindar when they explained that water was no less powerful than fire, and she was the water in that moment.

“I will not.”

“I have no time for your childish petulance, little girl. Get below where you belong, and stop causing such a fuss.”

She was tempted to make a sarcastic remark on the irony of one constantly pontificating on the purity of the language redefining ‘fuss’ as ‘not speaking and shunning company likely to cause further violence’, but she had enough sense to choose her ground more carefully.

“I will do as seems best to me. I find at this moment I desire neither company nor to go below,” she replied grimly.

She could see him recalculating, trying to decide how best to phrase his demand to achieve the desired end. He wanted to keep this family, not political – the worried uncle, not the king facing defiance.

 “You are soaked to the bone, Artanis. Be sensible.”

He had chosen his words less carefully than she had.

“I have been soaked to the bone since scarce three minutes after I set foot on the quayside in my grandfather’s city,” she snapped. “To be dripping sea water is hardly worse than other liquids I have been soaked in today!”

“That is your own fault!”

She saw red – the red of blood, Lindar blood, in her veins and on the docks and staining the water, the Lindar blood that has been all her uncle ever saw when he looked at her and her brothers for as long as she can remember.

“No, Fëanaro, it is yours!”

She will yield him no title, for by his own actions he deserved none from her. He has ever proclaimed himself only half-brother to her father, so she will not call him uncle, not now. And her grandfather himself had held himself un-kinged when the Valar rebuked his failure, so by that precedent his son is no king either.

“You began the slaughter in Alqualondë, you came to my grandfather’s people in friendship yet decided to take what could only be made once with force, with steel and blood! The red on my dress and on my hands is your doing, and if I wish to stay here to let it wash out, I will!”

She could see fury in every line of Fëanaro’s face and body, hear it in the crack of his voice, and knew satisfaction for it, for she was certain no one else would force him to face what he had done this day.

“I am your king and I command you to take yourself below and speak no more treason!”

“You are no king of mine,” she spat, meeting his fury with contempt as broad and deep as the sea itself. “My king is in Alqualondë, as you have made frequent mention of all my life. Since I have been forced to choose, I will follow a king, not a tyrant.”

“I could have you cast overboard right now for defying me!” Fëanaro hissed, looking as though he might actually strike her.

“Do!” she snarled. “But know that I will take you or any of your followers you order to lay hands on me over with me, and I say this to you, son of Finwë – the sea is no place for a spirit of fire!”

Her cousins – her half-cousins? – had long since stripped her of any weapon, so when Fëanaro’s hand drifts toward the sword still at his side, she can scarcely stop herself baring her teeth. She will fight with her bare hands if need be, and if the sea no longer loved her, she knew it loved him even less.

“Your precious Telerin sea won’t save you if I give the word,” Fëanaro snapped derisively.

“Give the word? You have not even the conviction to do it yourself?” she demanded scornfully, long past caution. “Finwë must be proud of such a son! What fine deeds you lay at his door, and burnish Miriel’s memory with!”

If Fëanaro wanted her dead, let him do it himself. He will not be able to conceal such a crime, and she knew full well that even if her uncle would still be bound by his word to follow his half-brother in his madness, her cousins – her cousins, whole not half – and her brothers would not follow him if they knew.

That was when hands like iron closed around her upper arms.

“Enough.”

Maitimo’s tone was quiet, but there was something in it that would brook no opposition – not from her, and not from her father.

She might have argued, but for one thing – if she held to her notion about Fëanaro being unkinged, Maitimo was the Noldoran.

She bowed her head in acknowledgement of the order.

“As the king commands,” she murmured.

She was vaguely aware of Fëanaro taking a threatening step forward, but with his firstborn’s body between him and her, there was little he could do as Maitimo walked her toward the hatch.

Curufinwë’s face was paler than normal as he reached up to take her from his oldest brother, and she could feel his heart racing as he clutched her to him. Perhaps it was he who had sent Maitimo to intervene. She supposed the argument had been loud enough to carry.

“Keep her out of sight until we put into land,” Maitimo instructed.

He frowned, and then added as an afterthought, “And keep her away from Tyelko.”

“How long?” Makalaurë’s voice was hoarse, as if he’d strained it, and he looked as though he’d been sick, though she knew that he sailed frequently and enthusiastically with his wife.

“Very few of the ships have provisions for a long voyage,” Maitimo replied, sounding as if he was reasoning out the answer as he spoke. “Our host is scattered, some on the ships, some marching on land with our uncles, trying to keep pace. Our baggage is in complete disarray, and there is no order to any of it. We cannot hope to sail more than another day at most. If Father sees sense, we will regroup as soon as possible.”

“And when we do?” Artanis asked. She kept her voice neutral, though her oldest cousin held her fate in his hands – and he was trying not to let them shake. Curvo gave her shoulders what was probably intended to be a reassuring squeeze.

“When we do, I am taking you to your father, who you will endeavor to stay with for the remainder of this march.”

“So be it.”

“It is for your own good, Artanis,” Maitimo said tiredly. “Though you refuse to see it.”