rulers make bad lovers by Chestnut_pod

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Chapter 12: Elwing

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Elwing was a handsbreadth away from knocking firmly but politely on another door in the shipbuilding part of Alqualondë, when Anairë, travelworn and a little wild about the eyes, forestalled her.

“Four days,” she heard, and little else of Anairë’s explanations and descriptions, though it explained the noise like a distant bell that had come ringing through the mountains near noon. Her heartbeat in her ears drowned the rest out.

In the same state of suspended, distant calm in which she had conducted so much of her business as queen, she reassured Anairë that her news was welcome, that all was well, that Anairë ought to go bathe and rest from her pell-mell rush back to Alqualondë, that Elwing preferred to try a few more doors before returning. It served well enough, as it always had, and Anairë turned to walk the distance back to the Queen’s House, though not without casting a concerned look over her shoulder as she went.

Indeed, Elwing did try another door, as though by rote, and had an entirely disastrous conversation with a shipwright who resented being told that the construction of new ships would likely help her livelihood.

Not the point, lady songbird, Eärendil murmured in her mind as she left the shipwright’s courtyard and wandered back towards the seawall that girded the Belegaer before this part of the city.

Eärendil! Ardamírë! She swung her leg over the top of the seawall, absently grateful for the freedom of her first set of Doriathrin trousers, delivered that morning along with another full sheet of signatures by one of Ninkwitāllë’s apprentices. Four days until he arrived, who knew how, and brought judgment with him.

The tide was in, knocking moonstones against diamonds against chunks of basalt battered from the rock pools and slapping against the riprap below the wall. Elwing stared down at the jeweled foam and thought of what would meet him.

Would an eagle bring him like the body of a High King, to see from above the minor cutters and fishing boats that were all that sufficed to bring any host across the rough ocean? Would he come with good news at all; that, though they were forsaken themselves as trespassers in this land of magic, their plea had been heard? Perhaps he would arrive as a prisoner, or a patient, to be handed over to Eärwen’s limited tolerance, another piece of grit in an oyster, not consequential enough even for a seed pearl?

A pinfeather burst from beside her brow, stinging sharply. Elwing flinched, plucked it out, flicked the drop of blood that clung to the quill into the waves. Where the little ruby struck the water, it flattened, smoothing into a mirror in a frame of froth. Her face, water-tinted and wide-eyed and nervous, gazed back at her.

Eärendil would arrive — a joy! A hope unlooked-for! — and find her with some support in this city, some curious or fervent or staunchly reciprocity-oriented Falmari willing to, at least, hear her out, sign her little petitions, agree to come to meetings and bring others. He would certainly be glad to hear that the city of his mother’s folk, which people spoke of as a sad shadow of its former glory, yet which had overawed her nearly to speechlessness when she rode through its lacework gates and gazed upon its ranks upon ranks of roofs, prepared willingly for war. Those ready when she left to remedy old wrongdoings, or at least miscalculations, of parents and siblings and friends, already numbered more than all the Elves in Sirion, however much they complained of their echoing-empty streets — and who knew but that the eager organizers she left behind had swayed even more to the cause of Morgoth’s defeat since she left them to their own devices?

It was, after all, something. Yes, she decided, she had done what she could with what she had. Whatever verdict Eärendil brought down to her must contend with her work. Whatever end now rushed towards them, here at the end of their quest, must pause and wait upon the instant they first saw each other, as when Vingilot came sailing home in the days before sorrow and the world held its breath for them.

The mirror in the sea-top returned to the gemmed ruffles of high tide. The water worked the clear crystals and black basalt alike to velvet-skinned spherules, then at last to glimmering jewel-sand. Four days of worrying in the waves might do little to a diamond born in the convulsions of the beginning of the world, but it might release just one small star for the marvel of the beach. There was more yet she could do, before Eärendil came home to her, perhaps for the last time.

–

As she had for the last several nights, Eärwen had dined privately with Anairë, then returned to the main room of the Queen’s House to work into the night. It was not that Elwing was disinvited from attending these dinners, only that she did not think they could end well, considering her last audience with Eärwen. Surely Anairë was keeping her appraised of all Elwing did — all that she herself did, for that matter — in the city.

It was not, again, that Elwing thought Eärwen approved of their movements throughout the shipwrights’ neighborhood and the converted dormitories of the Repudiators and the wharves when the sailors came home to dock. It was only that she did not stop them, and leveled charged looks at Elwing when they met in the corridors, some intensity breaking through her coolly serene countenance to drip over Elwing’s shoulders and follow her through the doors into Alqualondë’s swiftly breaking summer.

It was those exchanges of mutual consideration that led Elwing to the corridor outside that comfortably appointed main room by the courtyard, where Eärwen’s tall, straight silhouette knelt at a low desk, brush in hand.

A grand robe of Galadriel’s, hastily tacked up at the hem, nonetheless rustled with her footsteps, a magnificent court costume left folded in a trunk in a paper wrapper that itself would have been precious enough to buy a whole day’s catch in Sirion. The attendant who had helped her find and alter it, then to drape the layers upon layers of under-robes, each finer than the last, over her shoulders, had also taught her the full obeisance due a queen with a blank-faced professionalism that Elwing sensed held back a burning curiosity.

She rapped on the doorframe, then waited.

The door slid open of its own accord, and Elwing looked up to catch Eärwen’s level gaze just closing over some ripple of disturbance. She entered, made her bows, moved gracefully around the long sleeves, and pressed her forehead to the mats before her.

“Rise,” Eärwen said, her voice betraying nothing. Elwing did not rise.

“Rise,” Eärwen commanded again, just a touch faster than was strictly dignified. In the dim safety of her folded arms around her bowed head, Elwing closed her eyes.

“I am not queen here and did not ask for your reverences. Rise, Elwing!” Cloth rustled as she stood from her desk, and Elwing pressed her brow tighter to the mats.

Raising her voice to be heard through the layers of muffling silk and flesh, Elwing said to the ground and to Eärwen, “I do not offer reverence save if it moves your heart. I do not bow to grant honor; I fall to my knees to beg.”

Eärwen stood before her, Elwing could sense it, a column of heat against the nape of her neck where it bent.

“This is not the act of a proud woman,” she said flatly.

Elwing clenched her eyes shut. “I was proud when I had aught to lose. Now I have naught, save my life and the love of my husband, yet there is nothing, nothing I would not give if it moved any power towards the aid of my home. My pride is the least of it. I beg you.”

Silk susurrated again, and suddenly, a hard grip found its way into the carefully pinned loops of Elwing’s hair, fisting at the back of her skull. Elwing followed it upwards, a journey not quite of yanking but forceful nonetheless, and startling, her eyes squinting in the light of the room after the shelter of her arms. She shook her head against the pressure, still on her knees, leaning on her flat palms. Eärwen was very close, and if Elwing craned her neck, she could see small expressions chasing one another across the calm lake of her face, currents disrupting the surface. Their eyes met, and Eärwen released her immediately, making as though to step back.

Elwing reached out and grasped her hand as it retreated, falling forward as the silk pinned beneath her knees forced her shoulders down. She caught herself on her other hand and pressed her mouth to the back of Eärwen’s palm, soft and cool and scented with agarwood, its skin catching a little on the insides of her lips when Eärwen moved to jerk it away. Eärwen forestalled the movement, however, unusually ungraceful, and Elwing dragged her lips away to press Eärwen’s hand with both of hers to her forehead, tendrils of hair coming down around her field of vision.

“Please, lady,” she said. “For the sake of my people, and the sake of the land, and the sake of your people once Morgoth has sucked the marrow of Middle-earth and crunched the husk between his teeth and looks for more to feast upon. Even for my sake! Please, help me to send forth the doom of Bauglir.”

Eärwen’s hand twitched, but did not withdraw, though Elwing thought she could feel her pulse hammer on the edge of perception, fluttering against her brow.

Bitterly, Eärwen said, “It does not seem to me that my help is required. Nay, for all must love you and follow in your wake — if you do not have your army today, surely you will have it tomorrow, when turned-over Tirion comes to find you.”

Yet she did not take her hand away.

Elwing’s thighs began to complain of their awkward position. She let herself slide lower again, so that her head pressed above Eärwen’s knees through the smooth, fine fabric warming slowly between them.

“It is not for love of me that Tirion musters arms and makes speeches of redress and remedy,” she said, thinking preposterously of the angry shipwright she had so incensed in the afternoon. “They see that they have waited almost too long, to the brink of possibility; they see that doing nothing is another wrong to add to their tally.” She fought against the prickle behind her eyes.

“And it is certainly not only for love of me that some of your own city wish to aid me,” she added, and went on despite a sharp movement from Eärwen. “You must ask yourself why they do it! But know that if every shipwright in Alqualondë began shaping keels tomorrow, yet it would be too late; for it is too late for me, and my city, and my children, and every day of delay is another day of eating cinders with poor bread and drinking the same bane that poisons the rain that falls unseasonable and stunts the crops.

“Your aid wipes away those days, for every day sooner is one more child or tree or mountain saved.”

Elwing found herself panting, the light, precious scent of Eärwen’s skin and the incense over which she aired her robes coating the back of her throat. Suddenly, so quickly Elwing jumped, Eärwen knelt before her.

Eärwen brought her hand up to her breastbone, where her graceful neck rose above the folded collars of her robes, and Elwing’s hand followed with it. Elwing lifted her gaze from where her hand nestled against the hollow at the base of Eärwen’s throat to meet Eärwen’s eyes, blinking rapidly against the tears gathered in her own.

“A child, you say,” Eärwen murmured. “Middle-earth. Do you mean it? Truly?”

“I do not understand your implication,” Elwing replied. Eärwen tisked.

“Mean you every last soul on the continent? Strangers you do not know, ones who have done you harm? Mean you everyone, Elwing, or do you mean to make a pawn of my people’s hurts and say your tears flow selfless as Nienna’s?”

Elwing blinked harder. Eärwen’s eyes were bright, brighter than their usual Treelit glow, but it was with anger, not with tears. The place in Elwing’s belly where she had pressed down her passions all these years of wandering heated: she grew angry too.

“Yes,” she bit out. “Yes, or it is not a sacrifice, and I have made of myself a sacrifice. I have been made a sacrifice, and I shall fill that shape to the uttermost edge if I must. I said my pride was as nothing before the chance of your help — think you I lied? If my innermost heart must be pure as Nienna, then I must fail, but never will I argue for half a redemption!”

Her fist clenched involuntarily, her nails lengthening and sharpening into talons that dug into her palms. She curled them yet tighter to avoid pricking Eärwen, though she found she could not move away.

Eärwen’s voice rang as hard as her grasp. “You would stand on Alqualondë’s quays and ask, ‘Will you come with me? Will you support my cause — to save the ones who raped your ships and killed your lovers and children and friends?’”

“Yes,” Elwing said again, finding the words as she spoke them. “How am I to say, this person and not that person, this place and not that place! I am not Eru, to choose who lives and who dies, by sword or fire or grief. If I pick and choose my mercies, I will be as them!”

Eärwen’s face was once again opaque to Elwing’s eyes, but she hardly saw it; her vision blurred. Onwards she ran, leaning forward into Eärwen’s chest, noticing at the fringe of her awareness that Eärwen leaned into her in turn, bracing her.

“From the beginning they decided they would have no mercy, that they would offer neither forgiveness nor pity, that they would throw grace back in the face of the granter and return no ruth at all. Yes!” she cried, “I ask pity for all Middle-earth, Fëanorions and all, if that is how you mean to goad me; for although my heart is bitter, it beats still only because of mercies offered to me all-undeserved. I refuse to be like them once more.”

Her voice cracked on the last word, and she squeezed her eyes shut, tilting her head away from Eärwen’s face so the tears ran back into their channels and she could not see her expression.

“My principle,” Elwing said, “Is mercy. I will hold to it. For I have learned from cruel masters what it is to allow pride, or vengeance, or stubbornness to be one’s principle, and it is death. I live on grace and all I have to offer in return is grace, though it burns my hands to hold.”

That was all. What well of eloquence she had tapped ran dry, and at last a tear escaped the corner of her eye and ran down into the hairs at her temple where the white streak shot through the black.

She sought to shake away Eärwen’s hand where it still gripped hers, but the movement overbalanced her, her borrowed silks slipping beneath her knees.

Before she could fall, Eärwen let her hand go and moved her grasp to Elwing’s waist, where she held her still and centered. When Elwing dared look, her mien was calm as ever, though her eyes were wide, and her fingers clenched and released, clenched and released, tight over Elwing’s hips.

There they knelt for a timeless moment. Elwing opened her mouth, then closed it again, dry of words.

Eärwen’s eyes moved to her lips when they parted, then slowly back to her eyes. She made a false start at speech, then another, and Elwing felt a dizzy shock at her lack of composure.

At last, she licked her lips and spoke in a low voice, but without faltering.

“If you can convince my father, I will help you convince my people.”

Elwing’s knees gave out entirely. Eärwen caught her and brought her to rest against her breast, where her scent of precious wood stood around her as an aura.

“Do you promise?” Elwing asked, and heard her own voice small and high, as though she were one of her own boys seeking reassurance.

“I swear it,” Eärwen replied, and placed her hand once more in Elwing’s hair to guide her head and place a kiss upon her lips.

Perhaps it would have been a kiss as a liege grants a vassal in surety of an oath, but that Elwing gasped in surprise, and Eärwen slipped into the space she made. When she parted from her at last, she did not move her face away.

Eärwen opened her hand so it cupped the back of Elwing’s head, no longer grasping or seeking to lead her, but not retreating.

Is it like this? Elwing inquired of herself, feeling her body flush and fluoresce with every movement like Ulmo’s Fire on the waves at Sirion — victory, relief, surprise, desire. I wondered if it might be like this.

She did not move away. She did not move closer. She thought of Eärendil, and the lovers they carefully chose between them to go with him to sea, and of the woman whose clothes she wore, the daughter of the woman who had just kissed her, for whose sake she had never done the same. Eärendil, who even now made his way to her carrying Doom, and who had wanted her to stay on the ship, safe from reprisal for standing on this sacred shore.

If you can convince my father, I will help you convince my people, echoed Eärwen in her mind, and on their heels, her own words: I live on grace. Grace, and borrowed time.

Elwing closed her eyes and leaned forward to kiss Eärwen again.