Assertion by Elleth

Chapter 1

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The abyss below Himring's parapets is deep enough for Fingwen's sight to swim whenever she looks down past her and Maedhris' dangling legs. Those rare days of her visit when it rains or snows, and only the summits of the surrounding hills peek from the mist below make her a little more comfortable – at least then, were she to fall, Maedhris would not need to see her shatter on the rocks, merely see her plummet and be swallowed by the clouds below.

Maedhris never pulls her back, though there is a steadying hand on her shoulder in between official talks, a warm arm around her hips. Sometimes they lean forehead to forehead with their noses barely avoiding touching – that would be too intimate, Maedhris tells her at night when Fingwen has stolen through the escape tunnels into her very bedroom, with the fires stoked to heat that sets both their skins aglow.

That is when no touch and crook of fingers, no trailing lips, are too intimate. That is when they revert to their old selves and names, Maitimë and Findekániel, and pretend those are still true, that Maitimë has two hands to run through Findekániel's gold-wrought hair, along her sapphire-studded ears, that Kániel's legs are not riddled with fine white scars, or Maitimë's back with a patchwork of rough skin. Instead she lies back in the pillows and pulls Kániel close to her until a horn-blast from the east walls makes them pull apart reluctantly. There comes another, then a third, and on and on and on, and then the bells begin to ring alarm.

"Enemies," says Maedhris, a different woman in an eye-blink, her voice a knife-edge and her movements stiff and swift. "Help me dress." For of course that night she has dismissed the maids, both of them tittering down the corridor and away, hands slung together in an all-familiar gesture to those who know where to look.

Fingwen drops a kiss on each freckled shoulder and begins to lace her up into crown and armour before donning her own. When they stride out onto the walls of the inner keep together (for in that moment, although people may at least suspect, no one dares question why the High King's firstborn was in Maedhris' chambers for the night, and later nobody will question diplomacy for an answer) there are riders already standing to attention, and Maedhris' right arm lifts to send them off in direction of the river Gelion, where Maglor's distant signal beacons flare.

"We are not going?" asks Fingwen with a frown. Maedhris stands among lords and guards, a head taller than most, and looking ready for murder, and the expression fits on her face like she has worn it a hundred times or more – more so when the torches flicker and throw her face in shadow: the only light then is from her eyes.

"I am not permitted on the battlefield," she says, and her voice is thick with yellow bile just underneath. "My lords and my brothers all claim that I am too important a figure of defiance to go out – they know I can fight as well as any soldier, if not better, but they hate unpredictability, saying that if I, as figurehead, were to fall, then my brothers would all follow, and the eastern leaguer break down. But I have my ways."

Fingwen's face knits into a frown, and something that has long irked her makes its way to the surface. "Is that why you call yourself Queen, by name but not title? Some among my father's people – not a few – think you are being preposterous; my brother and others that think of you less kindly for Helcaraxë and our losses even murmur it was treason, and how long my father will continue to laugh that away I do not know."

Maedhris hisses through her teeth and her eyes flash like lightning behind clouds. "It is no less and no more than I must do. You are content with being called a maiden, perhaps, but you have no realm to rule, with your father keeping you coddled like a brood mare for some prestigious match - "

"- and you sit on your mountain thinking you have won this freedom, not that it was handed to you by your father when he died? What would you have me do, wish death upon mine sooner? You also heard the Prophecy of the North – death will come for all of us at some point, can you blame him for wishing to secure the succession of the Royal House with all others dead or hidden away?"

"You have no idea of my... freedom." Maedhris smiles, and the light of the torches glints on her teeth – sharper than they ought to be, a remnant of Angband perhaps, or a simple trick of the light. Fingwen shudders and keeps her sight locked on Maedhris' face, beloved like no other, but at the moment just as vexing as any other politician's. "And I do not blame your father, no. But -" and here her voice drops, low enough that Fingwen must nearly read her lips to discern her words, "- perhaps I am jealous that you will be married off. Perhaps I am angry, because you are kept well beneath your potential and the bravery that I know you possess." She raises her right arm, touches her stump to Fingwen's cheek tenderly – a test, certainly, and although Fingwen's teeth clench, she refuses to flinch, all too aware of Maedhris' eyes on her, and those of the lords beginning to turn to them.

"There," Maedhris mouths. "You walked into the Enemy's stronghold, you sang until you found me, you cut me loose and saved my life – for the time being." Her lips thin, perhaps thinking of some past resentment, remembering that she had begged for death and been denied it, but she carries on. "Not all of that has been gentled away – I do not think it can be gentled away, indeed."

"Perhaps not," replies Fingwen, and there is a note of caution in her voice. "But there are other sorts of courage that do not need your kind of blustering. You have not answered my question – why Queen when any other name might do? Why wear armour when all you do is stand on the walls and make a spectacle of our – friendship?"

"Assertion. Do you think they would let a woman rule uncontested? It needs something that I am about to show you." Maedhris' voice has dropped yet lower; she is leaning yet closer, and Fingwen takes a step back when she finds Maedhris' hand on her sword. "Watch."

And indeed, there are bestial sounds shrieking up the road to Himring's gate. The portcullis lifts, and amid a group of net-bearing riders come, limping and jabbering like apes, a gaggle of orcs – ten, perhaps twelve in number that are herded into the empty courtyard below.

Maedhris pushes past the lords, forward to the balustrade and looks on with steely eyes, her fingers curling and uncurling around the hilt of her sword, while the orcs below have fallen silent, clustered together in the middle of the courtyard and staring at the silent Elves all around. Surely they must know there is no escaping alive. On the walls, archers nock and draw, and wait.

Silence falls. The air crystallizes into something cold and alive, and Fingwen thinks, briefly, of Helcaraxë, for all this House's association with fire. The name for Maedhris' fortress is well-chosen.

Fingwen does not dare breathe, yet unsure what she is waiting for, until Maedhris makes for the guarded stair down into the courtyard, and her drawn blade flashes a shining, glowing blue the closer she gets to the creatures. A first shriek goes up from them, perhaps terrified recognition of an erstwhile captive, then Maedhris has reached the group, another step, and --

-- she begins to dance.

Maitimë had always been a good dancer – courtly and poised at their grandfather's feasts, slender fingers holding up her dresses' hems, flashing views of legs and ankles that tripped the other dancers but not her, and then twirling beneath the chandelier in Finwë's ballroom, speckled in a shower of light glinting upon her hair, her dress, her skin, even in her eyes --

-- and below another woman, reckless, fell and fey and nearly feral, twirls a last time, glinting in her sword-blade's light, a cold and pallid figure tall amid a heap of corpses, smeared with black about her hand and the smiling mouth that Fingwen kissed not long ago, and one orc still alive and cowering at her feet.

The courtyard is entirely, eerily, silent, and Fingwen at last understands why they do not let her out – she fights like one returned from death and thus immortal even beyond such ordinary things as swords or arrows, where she is not. But here, under guard, she makes more than up for it.

"Go," says Maedhris to the orc, dragging it to the portcullis. "Go, and tell your master that my doom is long in coming – it is not by his arm or army I will fall. He has not yet bested me, nor will he ever best the Queen."

Maedhris lifts her eyes to the walls. Fingwen begins to breathe again.