rulers make bad lovers by Chestnut_pod

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Chapter 10: Eärwen

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It was not that Eärwen did not trust Tirion under Anairë’s hand. However, when a messenger slid panting to her knees in the great reception hall, bearing tidings of some kind of political upheaval and Anairë banished, it took all Eärwen’s will to keep from calling the fisherfolk to arms. In the week and few days since she had sent Elwing out from the city, she had wound herself more and more tightly, tying herself in knots like a net twisting in the wind: action or inaction, safety in isolation or risk in war? One incoherent messenger bearing vague news of trouble that touched on Anairë, and she found herself wishing for a sword. What a hypocrite she was.

She rode out to meet them that very day. Sternly, she instructed her father that he must sit in judgment that day, for she had urgent business down the Alpasírë. If he thought that business had to do with the recalcitrant settlement of Avari at the stream’s mouth, it was no great hardship. It would not do to alarm him unduly before she commanded all the facts.

It was not entirely clear to her what she would do if she foundered four horses to reach Tirion, only to find the city — what, burning? Torn apart by mobs? Brought to its knees once more by some unknown slaughter across the sea? She could not imagine what might have happened in the time it took for the messenger to reach her, though she could feel Anairë’s presence in the back of her mind. She reached out again and again, but Anairë’s mind, usually so responsive, was clouded. Surely she would know if anything terrible had happened, but, well. She remembered Tirion’s last great upheaval all too well.

She took ten level-headed citizens who could ride and wield a spear or harpoon and kept their pace at a steady trot. It would not do to be cruel to the animals in the summer heat, and a gallop would not change whatever was afoot in Tirion. It would also not do to bring swords or ranged weapons, or, for that matter, the citizens who had learned to keep them at hand.

In the end, the horses’ flanks were only lightly lathered when Eärwen came across their party at the ford of the Alpasírë. She herself broke out into an unwelcome sweat when she noticed what was toward, however.

There was Anairë, crownless, hair in neat cornrows of alternating thicknesses and woven through with gold wires like Findekáno used to wear -– safe, unhurt, even smiling. Beside her sat Elwing, and beside her sat the orange-haired figure of Lelt.

Very quietly, she swore, and reached out to swat at Anairë’s mind. Anairë lifted her head and stood, and Lelt turned around and stood too, and Elwing hesitated for a long moment before standing — but no one was looking at Elwing, really.

The little settlement of Avari at the marshy mouth of the Alpasírë did have a name — in fact, it had two, in two different languages Eärwen could not understand a word of, one each for two factions whose war against the Deceiver in the lands beyond the Waters of Awakening had seen their spirits removed to Aman in death. Similarly, it had at least two leaders, one of whom was nowhere to be seen, another of whom bestowed her with a serene smile worthy of a Maia.

Eärwen dismounted to buy herself time. She decided to nod to Lelt, who had not made any gesture of deference to her. Elwing watched them both in a hawkish manner, and Anairë’s face was unreadable.

Eärwen decided to wait for an explanation rather than test her control over the situation. It had not been her finest moment when three hundred-odd Avari emerged from the Halls of Mandos speaking unfamiliar tongues during the very peak of the rebuilding in Alqualondë, having fallen in battle some centuries ago, before any murdered Lindar had been reborn. It had not been Anairë’s either — she had prevented riots in Tirion, but barely, and another swathe of Noldor had departed the city permanently for Avallónë, just in time to leave the acorn harvest shorthanded. Strangers released from Mandos? It was a wonder Alqualondë had kept as tight a rein on its squirming wound-sickness as it had.

Lelt spoke first, of course. He had learned Quenya, she thought, strictly to get one over on Targadej, the other would-be ruler here, but he spoke it well, in Falmarin accent.

“You are sending boats, then? We will crew them.”

One of the armed fisherfolk behind her knocked something —a spear butt?— against a stirrup.

“We have decided nothing,” Eärwen replied. “We have heard nothing from the Valar, and we have not put the question to the people.”

Elwing made a little movement, which she ignored, just as she ignored Anairë’s hand resting on Elwing’s shoulder. Lelt made a kind of shrug she had seen in the market with other Avari selling river pearls — one shoulder, with a nod of the head to the other side of the body.

“We are only a few of us,” Lelt said. “Had we ships yet, we would use them.”

Eärwen bit back her immediate answer -– you shall not use our ships — and decided immediately that the only thing to do was to leave. It was madness to try to bargain at a ford bridge, with no decision and ten armed Lindar, too many to disregard and too few to-– too many. Too many, only.

“I have come to greet and escort Queen Anairë and Queen Elwing,” she said.

Anairë shook her head almost imperceptibly, but she did not open her mind, so what did she expect Eärwen to do?

“You come in haste,” observed Lelt, eyeing the spear-bearers behind her.

“Great haste,” Eärwen replied.

“I hope to hear word of your decisions in the marketplace very soon, then.”

Elwing’s mouth twitched slightly. Eärwen kept her face smooth as the inside of an oyster. She looked to Anairë, her face similarly expressionless.

“I carry tidings relevant to any commitments,” she said, bland as milk, “and I look forward to discussing them in council with King Olwë and Your Highness the regent.”

The trickling of the stream could almost evoke a seven-and-five verse recited by a skill-mask performer. Eärwen mused on its recitative properties until she could be absolutely sure of the levelness of her voice.

“Please accept my escort with your guest.”

Elwing arched a brow but kept her peace, while Anairë murmured a gracious assent and turned to give an equally gracious farewell to Lelt, who loomed in an amused sort of way. Almost as if it were usual, she boosted Elwing into the saddle, mounted herself, and waited politely for Eärwen to indicate her place in the ring of spear-bearing citizens, whose mounts stamped and danced in an anxiety their riders would not show before Lelt.

Eärwen gestured Anairë into a position beside her, meaning to force Elwing into the triangle of space behind their two mounts and within the circle of Lindar, but the blasted woman clearly had not spent any of her time in Tirion learning to ride better, it seemed. She was ponied alongside Anairë’s Maldanar, unusually accepting of the close presence of another horse. In the end, Elwing and her walking dun mattress took up their position only half a pace behind Eärwen and Anairë. Thus arrayed was Eärwen forced to wheel the group around and set out for Alqualondë, with Lelt’s wryly intent gaze on their backs.

She led them half a mile through the cypresses at a trot that saw Elwing jouncing on the back of her poor mare like a sack of rice before she thought they were out of his hearing, which still left the problem of the Lindar. None of them were the type to gather outside the King’s House or the wharves to rattle harpoons and talk loudly of the inadequacy of the Repudiators’ reparative labors; neither did Eärwen think any were the sort who made tearful toasts of sweet potato liquor to the true but sadly reclusive King and Queen of Alqualondë, may they return soon to the steps before the throne. They would not have been chosen to accompany her on this errand if they had been.

Even so. Her daily audiences, slowly but perceptibly, had swelled in the last week since Elwing made her scene at the docks. Not more petitioners, but silent onlookers before the empty throne and Eärwen’s humble chair, watching her hand down judgements. The streets were less silent, buzzing furtively with rumor she tried to disregard or counter with ever-more stone-faced calm before the people. Further gossip was inevitable, but it was foolhardy to invite it.

Carefully, with an uncertainty she misliked to find within herself, she reached out the Anairë’s mind, so opaque to her these last days, and found it warmly, almost mischievously open. Swallowing past a traitorous lump in her throat, she let Anairë waft impressions and images over her, overlaying the wind-bent cypresses and redwoods with a gauze of Tirion’s golden oaklands, and Tirion’s tiled and stuccoed interiors, full up with round-faced, dark-haired Noldor, turning to look as—

Eärwen’s horse, a gelding trained with Anairë’s own steady Maldanar, shied sideways. Eärwen kept her seat, forcibly loosened her knees, and stared at Anairë. Her traveling braids, her plain garb, Elwing beside her.

What did you do, Anairë? she sent, as forcefully as she could.

It was near-impossible to receive words directly from another’s mind unless through a Palantír, but Eärwen had known Anairë long and long, and understood exactly what the rush of nervous pleasure she received back from Anairë meant. If not for the spear-bearers — if not, perhaps, for Elwing watching them under her heavy-hooded, dark-lashed eyes — she knew just what Anairë would have said.

I did exactly as I wished.

–

They arrived at the Queen’s House through the narrow back streets that hosted carts bringing sheet-weed and fresh vegetables to the royal complex, dim under the overcast sky of the habitual Nárië-gloom. Even so, whispers ran before them and trailed after them, surging out and meeting again in the middle, ripples around a dropped anchor.

She let the guards peel off before they reached the — still open — gates, uneasy at their glances, tracking from one group of murmuring onlookers to another, back to Elwing, then on to her. The staff waiting in the grand courtyard before the reception hall had no need to see it.

“Take the Lady Elwing to the baths in the King’s House,” she ordered them, watching with a vindictive curl of pleasure as Elwing slid clumsily off her horse and tried to suppress the bow-legged stride of one deeply saddlesore. When she had vanished, she commanded, “She is not to enter the city today.”

She set off without waiting for Anairë. Her own bathtub in the Queen’s House steamed gently already, milky with salts. The waterfall-shower served to briskly remove the grime of the road, and by the time she lowered herself into the bath, Anairë was wrapping an oilcloth about her head and stepping into the shower after her.

The steam nosed into the corners of the room and down into the loftways of Eärwen’s lungs, loosening them with gentle impartiality. She forced herself to breathe in deeply against the stinging-hot pressure of the water, then exhale on a low whistle, then inhale again. Before her, the graceful five-storied pagoda of the King’s House coalesced in pearly vapor, the way it appeared to her in dreams: a deep breath in, a whistle out, a new story added to the tower, a deep breath in, a whistle out, another level stretching serene and impossible towards the ceiling.

Anairë drew back the curtain and sent the steam winging away into mist once more. Eärwen looked away, but could not stop her ears from swiveling to listen to Anairë pad across the tiles, nor her skin from tingling when she stepped into the bath and brought the water up to her collarbones. A hand on her knee beneath the water made her turn her head to face Anairë at last.

They looked at one another for long moments. Nothing in Anairë’s dear, familiar face seemed to say she had run mad, or been coerced out of her city, or, in fact, felt anything but contentment, albeit leavened with nerves.

“She was not with you a month before you tossed your crown away,” Eärwen said at last. “If I were credulous, I would cry enchantment. As I am only suspicious, I ask what exactly you think you are doing.”

Anairë shrugged, her shoulders dipping in and out of the water. “I think I was waiting for an excuse. She had less to do with it than you seem to believe.”

She reached out and placed her hand on Eärwen’s knee, cool compared to the water. Eärwen watched the sharp turn her arm made between the air and the water, a disjointed shift in perception. She laid her own hand over Anairë’s.

“What will the city do without you?”

Anairë laughed. “Right now they are having a grand time debating proportional against direct representation, and whether to have a head of state and a head of government, just in case I decide to come back and they need somewhere ceremonial to stick me. I believe a spot of electoral politics was just what Tirion needed.”

Eärwen ran her finger down the tendons in the back of Anairë’s hand. “And you? What did they decide that you left the city crownless, with your girl enchantress braiding your hair for travel?”

“Enchantress,” Anairë scoffed. She half-stood and moved gracefully to sit beside Eärwen, smooth and strong along her side. “I gave up the crown, dear one, and no one forced me to it. You know this. I am not you; I never longed for it, nor grew to like it when I wore it. It was little to me but a reminder of loss and strife and the heads it crowned before.”

She reached over the side of the tub and drew a gooseneck kettle sitting in its enameled basin towards her. “I suppose I am an exile now, too. Tirion-city is forbidden to me for two hundred years or as long as the war takes, whichever is sooner. It does not feel like exile… It feels like freedom, in truth.”

Eärwen watched her fill the kettle from the bath and add a small portion of shampoo, stirring to dilute the mixture. The kettle and basin were Turukáno’s make, decorated with perfect imitations of kelp and sea urchins in cloisonné, the colors fortressed between high walls of gold wire. Anairë had kept it in this bathing chamber since before the Darkening.

“So Tirion is for war,” she said, for that was the point that must be of import to a queen, and she was the closest thing to that in this tub. Even so, she reached out and pressed gently against Anairë’s forehead, leaning her head back against the rim of the bath.

Anairë closed her eyes and hummed. “I left before it was formally decided, but that was the stipulation for my absence: until the war is over. I do not doubt they will choose to join Elwing, should a way be found across the sea. It seems only right.”

“Tch.” Eärwen dripped the diluted shampoo carefully onto the roots of Anairë’s braids, set the kettle aside, and began to carefully massage the lather into the hair. She watched her hands work gently, all the while keeping the confused storm of responses gyring in her throat at bay.

“And that way will be the use of our ships, of course, lest Ulmo lose patience once more and drag another island up from the seabed to ferry us all across. It must gladden my heart, I suppose, that the Noldor are not already at the door with swords and arrows — only an eighth-Maia witch-girl with a gift for stirring up trouble!”

Anairë kept her eyes closed, a line between her brows.

“And you! You come to me with gold in your braids, as did your son when he stormed my docks and turned a battle into a rout.”

Anairë opened her eyes, and her mouth too, indignation rolling off her, but Eärwen held her hands up.

“Peace!” she said. “Peace. That was low of me. I apologize.”

“It was low,” Anairë said. “It might do you good to remember you are not the only one to have suffered — are not the only one to be suffering now. I believe that is the crux of Elwing’s plea.”

“What you must think of me!” replied Eärwen, stung. “Of course others suffer. And yet-– to demand of my people that they lay their suffering aside— to demand they give succor to those who caused it-– is it not an insult to the sufferers?”

The bathroom was silent for a moment, but for the lapping of the tub and the tinkle of water into the basin as Eärwen called up a vine of warm bathwater and rinsed Anairë’s braids. When the water began to run clear, Anairë spoke.

“Would you say that is what I have done? I demanded nothing — I removed my own capacity to demand — and Tirion chose to send aid nonetheless. I chose, independently. Do I offer insult to myself?”

She shook her head against the rim of the bath, sending droplets of water flying.

“I think we are proving we are more than our suffering.”

To that, Eärwen had no reply. She turned to Anairë’s hair cream and began the process again, slowly and carefully, so that the neat gold-woven braids Elwing had made in Anairë’s hair would remain whole and smooth.