The Scribe and the Heir by Dawn Felagund

The Scribe and the Heir

"--like Fëanáro."

Maitimo slid to a stop in front of the door, his hand poised to knock and his lips already parted and prepared to announce his presence. He wasn't stopped so much by his uncle's words--innocuous enough, to speak of one's half-brother--but by his tone, that tremulous edge that Maitimo closely associated with scraped knees and pointed fingers and little voices near to tears.

"Now, now," came Arafinwë's reply. Maitimo drew back his fist to knock. But he stopped. Again. He could picture Arafinwë poised on the corner of Nolofinwë's desk, ankle crossing his knee. Such was the position his young uncle was wont to assume when visiting Maitimo, who he assumed was in regular need of company, and taking up station on the corner of Maitimo's scribe's desk, sometimes chattering away for hours. And Maitimo should resent this. He was in his first year as a King's scribe and assigned the mule's share of the work, copying sometimes into the silver hours of morning, and his eyes and neck and fingers perpetually ached. But Arafinwë and his frothy natterings about horse races and strawberry wine and the difficulty of clipping porpoise-shaped topiaries washed those things away in the same way as a bright silver waterfall will wash the away both dirt and pains after an arduous journey.

Maitimo could nearly imagine him drawing the deep breath needed for such a flight of frivolity. Eärwen's earrings, Maitimo thought. Earlier, he was telling me that he wanted earrings for Eärwen with four pearls, one each to represent Love, Faith, Hope, and--

"This is my son, Arafinwë!" There was a dull thud: a fist slammed into a desktop. Maitimo was jerked back to the present. His hand--still ready to knock--lowered. I should creep away. Scribes are not supposed to listen to the conversations of lords, to matters of court--

Of course, he was himself a lord and also--whether he liked it or not--a matter of discussion at court. And he felt not for the first time a lurch of sympathy for his father, who had protested his appointment as a mere scribe, calling even upon his son's exalted status--which had always been ignored in Maitimo's childhood, made almost a shameful thing--as reason why he should not serve in so lowly a position in the palace at Tirion.

Nolofinwë went on. "Not just my son, my heir! And he is wholly enthralled with Fëanáro!"

The unspoken, that Maitimo nonetheless sensed like a breath of wind with the scent of coming rains: As is everyone else whom I love.

His cousin Findekáno, he knew, was growing headstrong in the way of a yearling colt, and Fëanáro's loud boasting about the family's coming summer in Formenos had done little to encourage Findekáno to pay closer mind to matters of court, as Nolofinwë wished. Instead, Findekáno had announced--not even asked … announced--that he would be joining his half-uncle and cousins this summer, forgoing the visits to the southern cities that Nolofinwë had set up to embark upon with his eldest son and (Maitimo suspected) was secretly anticipating tremendously.

"Findekáno has always loved his cousins," Arafinwë said, and his voice was soothing, beautiful. Maitimo felt his eyelids flutter. "That is all that it is. This suspicion … Nolofinwë, it is unwarranted."

"Is it?" Nolofinwë replied. "Is it truly, Brother? He goes more than a day's steady ride to the north, locked away with all those other nutters--"

A stern noise from Arafinwë. "Nolofinwë …"

"Pardon: craftsmen. He takes my son, year after year, yet sends only the blandest correspondence that dances in that way of his around what they actually do up there and why they feel the need to return, year after year, to a land both ugly and inhospitable--"

And Maitimo thought then of the conversation with Fëanáro, reluctantly undertaken barely a week prior. Fëanáro had made a show of forgiveness for his eldest son, who against Fëanáro's wishes had taken the station of a scribe when his knowledge and training dictated that he should be so much more, but Fëanáro's eyes had been guarded, his words (indeed, as Nolofinwë had said) numerous and saying nothing. He'd known, perhaps, why Maitimo had appeared on one of his coveted days off--usually spent wrapped in his quilt, in bed, sleeping like a stone until an indecent hour--and asked for a private council. He'd made a big show of delegating the numerous tasks he'd single-handedly been undertaking at once to his many apprentices and assistants. He'd removed his gloves with extra care, folded them, chided an assistant for a failing that wasn't, and then finally had no choice but to follow Maitimo into the laboratory where they'd once spoken freely and now stood opposite the other--arms folded--like master and subject, Maitimo's eyes lowered but Fëanáro also unwilling to look to long into his eldest's face, studying instead his grimy fingernails, picking at a scab on the back of his hand.

"I won't be joining you this summer in Formenos."

His head bobbed in a nod. "Of course. I understand."

But later that night, creeping to the kitchen for a glass of wine to help ease himself to sleep, Maitimo overheard his father to his mother, his voice raw and so like the half-brother he despised, speaking in a hoarse whisper the same fears.

Why the obsession with those people and their inane goings-on? What are they saying to him there, to take him from his home? His own family? Where have I failed that I can no longer keep him here?

Now Nolofinwë: "I have failed to provide a worthy heir. Failed my father, my people," and at last, Maitimo was driven from the door, sprinting soundlessly down the hall and wishing that he'd departed sooner. For there was a helpless rage twisting in his chest. They are both so alike in their selfishness, their self-centeredness, like all that Findekáno and I embark upon is done only with them in mind!

They are alike in their hurt.

Maitimo paused then, only a few steps from the scribe's chamber. The pages he'd meant to deliver to Nolofinwë were crumpled in both fists, ruined. He'd have to begin again, he realized, and the ache behind his eyes grew heavier, and he wondered if his father had been right, if this was the wrong work for one such as he.

He strode forward into the deserted chamber, unfolding the pages, preparing to begin again.

He hoped suddenly that it would take long, till maybe the silver hours of the morning.