Chapter 7 - Elrond's confession
Rabêz disappeared into the darkness, and for a minute all was silent. Eventually, Elrond spoke, "I have some skill in healing, Teti, but I think you already know that there is nothing wrong with him."
"Yes," Teti admitted, "but I had to speak to you alone, away from Rabêz"
"You might have warned me!" I exclaimed, feeling a bit foolish.
"I don't believe your performance would have been quite as convincing if I had," Teti replied. "But we have little time." He turned to the elf. "You were not honest with me in our first discussion. I understand you may not have been able to be with Rûkhnar there, but now that we are alone I must insist you tell me the truth. What day did you arrive in Númenor?"
Elrond's face was impassive. "I arrived in Arminalêth on March 30, as I told you before," he said.
Teti stood suddenly, brushing the dirt from his tunic. "I'm sorry, I cannot take on a client who is not honest with me. I am accustomed to mystery at one end of my cases, but I cannot have it at both. Come, Abrazîr, I think Rabêz will forgive us if we wait for her at the top of the stairs in the light."
"Wait!" Elrond said, and suddenly his carefully cultivated stoicism dropped. There was panic in his eyes, and his voice wavered with desperation. "Please, you do not realize what you are condemning me to."
Teti stopped and sighed. "I have a good idea of how desperate your plight is, actually," he said quietly. His voice was apologetic, but resolved. "Even if I had failed to notice the bruises at your wrists where you have been restrained - the shirt you were given does not quite cover them - or that you have been fed poorly or not at all, I am familiar enough with how Sauron operated in my own country to know that he would try to coerce a confession from you, and that he has no shortage of methods to use. Please understand I am only refusing to help because my chances of solving this case drop considerably if I do not have your cooperation. If I cannot solve it, I cannot help you. There are dangerous people at work here, and I will not put Abrazîr and myself at risk if I am not confident it will end in success. If you will not be honest with me, then I advise you to simply confess. You will doubtless be found guilty either way, and it will save you a great deal of pain."
Elrond's face dropped and his slender fingers twisted anxiously in his lap. I saw now the bruises Teti had spoken of at his wrists, dark splotches of black and purple just barely protruding from beyond the hem of his shirt. "If it were only myself implicated in the confession Sauron wrote for me, I am ashamed to say I would have signed it already. But he would have me say that I was sent here by Gil-Galad. That would lead to war, and between the two peoples I love most. I must try to endure."
"Do you think you can?" Teti asked.
Elrond sighed. "Before this, I would have said that there is no torment that could lead me to sign such a confession," his voice cracked, "but this is so much worse than I could have imagined."
He took a few breaths to compose himself and continued, "Well, if I must risk betraying someone, I would have it be with the truth, not with the lies Sauron has written for me. I did arrive in Arminalêth on March 30, as I said, but it was not my first destination on this island. My arrival in Númenor was just before Yule, in Rómenna, or Azûlada as it is called now."
"That is a stronghold of the rebels!" I exclaimed. "Are you working with them?"
"I would hardly call them rebels, but yes, I am working with the faithful," Elrond replied. "I promise you though, we had no designs on the king. I am here for the sake of Míriel, the queen. I have tried to distance myself from the affairs of this country, but I cannot stand to know that such an evil man as Pharazôn has forced himself on her. Long I have tried to convince someone to help me save her from him, and eventually I was able to convince the faithful to help me take her from this place. I was to take her out by the window the next night. The poison was not in any way part of our plan, or of any other faithful plot I know of."
"Yes, that aligns with what I have found," Teti said, one hand stroking his chin thoughtfully. "You chose to your room for it's proximity to the queen's then? And the window was the one that overlooks the roof of the great hall, the seal of which you cut prior to the feast?"
Elrond nodded.
"But why send you?" I asked. "Surely they could have found someone less conspicuous."
"Surprisingly, I was the best suited. Very few among the faithful have the political standing to get close to the queen, and those that do were considered too valuable to their cause to lose," Elrond answered. "Additionally, it needed to be someone known to and trusted by her, for there was no way to inform her of the plan ahead of time."
"Once out the window, though, someone would have needed to help you to get beyond the walls. You had an accomplice then. Who was that?" Teti asked.
"Now this goes too far," Elrond said firmly, crossing his arms. "I will not incriminate anyone else."
"Nevermind, it's clearly Karrubên, the stable boy," Teti replied.
Elrond blanched.
"One of the privileges of being an independent investigator is that I can exercise discretion in such matters," Teti reassured him. "I was hired to investigate the poisoning. Unless I find he was connected to it, I do not intend to turn him in."
"Thank you," Elrond replied with relief. "Meeting you is the only bit of good fortune I've had since I came here. How did you know I arrived earlier anyway?"
"There was a mango pit in your pack at the inn. They have not been in season for months, and do not grow anywhere in the east you might have set out from."
Elrond shook his head incredulously. "You seemed so confident; I would have thought you had something more definitive."
"Such details can be highly definitive if one knows how to read them."
Elrond shrugged, "Well, it is an unusual method, but I cannot deny its effectiveness. What about Karrubên? How did you know he was involved?"
"I somewhat overstated my certainty there, though I had good reason to suspect him. He mentioned to me that he knew you, but the queen said she has not seen you since she was a child, and never on this island. From that I infer you have not visited, or at least not openly visited, in her lifetime. Since Karrubên is clearly younger than her, and since he does not seem like the type to travel -"
"Hold a moment," Elrond interrupted, raising a hand. He paused, as though listening to something far off. "I hear Rabêz returning."
"What should I do?" I asked.
"Lie down," Teti told me, "and try to sweat a bit, if you can manage it."
No sooner had I laid down, wondering how once tries to sweat, there came a smell of lilacs and the soft tapping of delicate sandals as Rabêz came running. A healer accompanied her, panting and rather irritated to learn that the situation was not nearly as dire as Teti has implied.
"Only a short fit," Teti explained. "It has mostly passed now."
Teti continued to speak with Elrond for several hours about his life. I learned a great deal about him, though little that seemed relevant to the case. He spoke of his brother, of how they had been separated from their parents as children. He told us how after the loss of their adopted guardians he had grown lonely and had come here to live with his brother until his death. As he spoke, I saw how deeply he loved this land, seeing in it the closest thing to family he had left. "I never thought I would be in a situation like this, locked up as an enemy by those I have always seen as kin," he said.
It was longer than I would care to admit before I realized Teti's motive in this long conversation: any time we spent here with Elrond was time Sauron could not question him. But even if I hadn't realized that before, it would have been clear to me once Teti called for dinner to be brought down to us. After a great deal of convincing, and some flashes of the brooch the queen had given us, Teti, Elrond, and I were each brought a bowl of something resembling food. (Rabêz wisely declined.) It was little more than a few bits of salt fish and onion boiled together into a pale mockery of soup, but Elrond gladly ate it and as much of mine and Teti's as we could slip him. His mood seemed much improved after he had eaten.
"It still seems strange to eat seafood here," Elrond reminisced . "My brother could not stand it, and forbid it from being brought inside the palace walls. His son, Vardamir, loved it though, and somehow he always managed to find some in the larder. That is where we are now, actually. Before this was a prison, it was the basement of the old kitchen, which burned down about a century ago. Vardamir would come down here and emerge with a pail of clams, or a few small fish. Once, even, a whole cod. How Elros would complain of the smell! He even started having all incoming supplies searched for illicit seafood, but somehow the only place he ever found any was Vardamir's plate." Elrond laughed, "To this day, I have no idea how he got it inside."
At that moment, our conversation was interrupted by a page.
"Is Teti here?" the boy asked.
"I am."
"They want you up in the great hall. There's been another poisoning. The queen."
