My mind raced as I read the note a second and a third time, trying to make sense of it. What came next? What came next, what came next, what came next? For a torturous moment I couldn't hear my thoughts over the noise of panic. I stepped out into the street. "Faramir! Faramir!" I called, but he was nowhere to be seen. I swore loudly in Rohirric.
"Well, pathetic my Rohirric may be, but I know what that means!" His voice came out of the dark. "I am shocked at you, Cous...'
He came back up the street, and I ran down to him. "Faramir, I need you to escort me somewhere and not to ask any questions."
"Where? Why?" I gave him an exasperated look. "Oh, right...no questions. I don't know about this, Lothíriel..."
"For the love you bear me!" I insisted. "Please..."
He looked grim. "Lothíriel..." he said softly. "You know that I don't like the kind of games that you and Amrothos get up to..."
"It isn't a game! I have to do this, and it has to be tonight. Cousin, I have never asked you for anything in my life! And I never will if you just do this for me."
He swallowed, seeming to know that this was something he didn't want to do. "Lothíriel, if I see anything unsavory I am going to put a stop to it."
"Fine," I said. You won't be coming that far with me anyway, I added silently.
We went first to Lady Winweld's house, taking the guard from the gate with us. They were at the dinner table but, with the aid of a coin, I managed to convince the maid who answered the door to slip her a note and let us wait in the garden.
"What is this about?" Faramir asked while we waited.
"I'll tell you when Winweld arrives."
When Winweld came out into the garden she looked confused.
"Lothíriel? What's going on?"
Her belly was so big these days she moved only with great difficulty. It made me uncomfortable to be around her. Irrationally, I worried that she could trip or go into labor at any moment. But I shook my head. "Faramir has to take you to the barracks now. I don't have time to explain but there are some knights from Dol Amroth there and you are to tell them that I said they should take you to my father's castle in Belfalas, leaving immediately. Tell them tomorrow won't be soon enough."
"There are no knights of Dol Amroth in the barracks," Faramir contradicted me. "Any Swan Knights would be at your house..."
"They came back two weeks ago and I ordered them to stay in the barracks," I interjected, shaking my head with a violent, nervous movement. "I didn't want anyone to know they had returned."
"What? Why?" Winweld asked, glancing back at the house to the light emitting from the dining room where her father would be supping. He couldn't be seen since the garden sloped down from the main house but the warm glow of the safe, known refuge spilled out into the darkness like a beacon.
I shook my head. "I don't have time to explain," I said, trying to keep the hard edge of frustration out of my voice. "And you can't tell your father, but something is going to happen tonight and I want you safe and out of the city as soon as possible in case things go badly."
Her face went utterly blank. She wasn't the kind of girl to go riding out in the night without permission and on the advice of one of the most notorious court schemers. She turned away from me slightly. "Lothi, I can't do that. You know I can't. Not after everything I've already done..."
I bit back a scream of frustration. I was terrified of what would happen if this went wrong – to me, to Éomer, to her – that I mistook it for anger, an easier emotion for me. All the planning and pain and danger I had risked for this plan, everything I had done to lead this stupid cow of a girl practically by the nose away from the wolves that surrounded her, and she was refusing at the crucial moment? I wanted to strike the impudence from her with the palm of my hand.
But then, unexpectedly, an image filled my head of Éomer reaching down to pull me onto the back of a horse and carry me into the mouth of the Paths of the Dead. I too had balked at the unknown, shied away even from something I knew was best, out of cowardice. Éomer had literally pulled me by the hand out of my cowardice. Éomer... the thought of his courage, dedication and unyielding determination to do what was right at any cost, and most of all the precious, unexpected kindness he had shown towards a girl he had no reason to trust or love, caused the rage to ebb as quickly as it had swelled. It left behind a tender empathy I had never felt for her before.
In the dark I reached out and took her hands in my own, drawing her close to me and forcing her to meet my gaze. "Did you love him? Did you love Daeron?"
"More than anything. He was my sun and stars."
"And do you want his progeny to have a chance at a life away from Minas Tirith?" Instinctively her hand wrapped over her belly, as if to pull the child, already inside of her, closer still. She didn't have to answer past that. "Then why are you hesitating? If you have an opportunity to protect him, then seize it, danger and consequences be Valar-cursed. If you aren't willing to risk a little for love, Winweld what are you going to be ready to risk for it?"
Her head swayed from side to side to avoid my gaze, almost like a horse trying to throw its bridle. Even in the dim light I could see tears shimmering in the deep blue pools of her eyes. "If I do this and I fail, my father... will never look at me again," she said, voice thick with emotion.
"You won't fail, Winweld," I said as firmly as I could. "Even if everything goes wrong for me tonight I will protect you in this. I swear it. I have done everything I can to arrange things for you, but you must trust me."
She met my eyes then and I could see in them a wholly reasonable doubt. I was asking her to gamble with her life based on whether or not she trusted me. And she had very little reason to. Finally, after a long pause, she let out a long, whistling sigh like a kettle beginning to boil. "If I had been told a year ago that you would come to me in heartbreak offering to help me, I would have laughed and asked whose heart you were planning to steal so that you could then break it. But I've seen you these past months and I know you aren't lying to me about that at least. I know you think I'm silly and naïve and I understand that's how I must seem to you, but I know what sorrow looks like, even on your proud brow. And I think you are telling the truth about the rest. Even if you aren't I couldn't live the rest of my life if I didn't take the chance now. I will go where you tell me to."
I pulled her into a hug, crushing her swollen chest against mine tightly. "Thank you, Winweld! Thank you!"
Whatever happened next she would at least be safe — free to raise her child away from the court if she chose to. That, at least, was sure. I wouldn't allow anything to happen to her.
As if echoing my own thoughts, Faramir spoke up when we fell apart, me still grasping her hand and beaming. "I'm not sure I can allow this. The Lady doesn't have her father's permission to leave the city and in her current condition..."
I ignored him and began to tug Winweld by the hand toward the gate. "Just take her to the barracks. The captain of the knights is named Rollis and he will explain everything there," I said. "For now you have to believe me and hurry up."
"Are you leaving, my lady?" The gate guard asked as we passed.
"A short walk to the citadel," I lied before any of the more honest members of our party could ruin everything. "The lady's condition is troubling her some."
Faramir hesitated when I turned up the street to break away from them. He put out a hand on my arm to stop me. "Lothi...," he began.
"Just take her to the barracks. The captain will explain everything to you. If you don't like the explanation you can return Winweld home before her father even begins to worry. But for now, Cousin I really cannot delay any longer."
He frowned. "Where are you going?"
"Into Shelob's lair." I pulled my arm gently from his grip. "And I can't be late and neither can you. Get a move on."
The walk in the dark to the library was a welter of emotion. I felt as I had on the bank of the stream at Yule, poised to plunge into dark, unknown and freezing waters. Dread made my legs feel leaden but I forced them to beat against the cobblestones with a steady, even rhythm. My heart beat fast and furious against my chest and my fists clenched at my sides.
The streets seemed somehow deserted, though the night was still young. I felt utterly alone walking through them. Even the noise and explosion of light from the odd tavern I passed seemed distant and muted somehow, as if the night had been plunged into murky water or suddenly transported into the bowels of a deep and enormous cave. I should have known it would be so. In all my favorite stories the hero is always left on their own in the end. The descent to the final battle is a private thing.
As I pushed open the familiar door, strange and forbidding in the weird, luminous moonlight, I felt as if I was entering a great maw in the earth instead of a building. Harra must have chosen the library out of whimsy. Destroying me in the closest thing I had to a home in the city was the kind of poetry that would appeal to her.
Inside, Lady Harra was standing perfectly straight with a roaring fire behind her. She made quite a tableau with her long legs spread slightly and her head thrown back in an air of perfect relaxation. I had no doubt that she knew it too. She watched me approach with an amused expression. "Hello, kitten."
"Hello, Harra."
"Did you bring what I wanted?" she asked. I nodded, involuntarily touching the sheaf of paper I had been carrying in a small silk purse since I had returned from Marie's brothel. I had slept with it under my pillow for weeks. I would be glad to get rid of it as it was rather thick and made finding a comfortable place to put my head a delicate matter. "Good girl." She held out a slender hand.
"Don't you want to know what they are?" I asked.
She frowned. "Does it matter? You've promised they could destroy your brother."
"I didn't lie. They would ruin Amrothos' reputation in the court... but then again they would do just as much damage to yours. These are the love letters Amrothos wrote to you during your affair... and the ones you wrote back," I said. "The last physical remnants of the time in our lives when we were friends, Saeril."
Real surprise flashed across Lady Saeril Harra's face. But as soon as it came it was gone and her usual expression of hateful indifference returned. "We were never friends, little kitten," she said lazily. "I bedded your virgin brother in a whorehouse while you waited in the library and thought up alibis for the three of us. Or is that what you think friendship is?"
"No. But it is how you conceive it. We were friends, Saeril."
She ignored that, snapping, "Where did you get them?"
"Marie gave them to me. That whole summer you stashed them in a drawer in the room she let you use so that your husband and my father wouldn't find them. And she kept them for all this time after you left."
"I had always wondered if those letters were still around somewhere. Marie was always smart for a whore," she said lazily. "I should have had her driven out of the city with a whip and burned her slattern's den to the ground."
"In retrospect things always seem clearer."
"Well, it's never too late," she mused. "There's always a lesson to be learned."
For a moment she considered me, raking eyes like talons over my body. With some effort I managed to stare coolly back. "So," she said finally, "what do you want, kitten?"
"I want you to let my brother go," I said without hesitation. "I know you've taken to bedding him again. I want you to stop meddling around with his thoughts and emotions. He was always miserable enough without you doing everything you could to twist him up just to watch him dangle. And I certainly want you to stop sending him to me as your headsman, telling me you 'forbid me' Éomer! I know you made him come to me on Beltane! He never was as desperately mean as he was when he was dancing on the end of your string, Harra!" Without intending it, my voice had turned gradually into a shout.
"Leave your brother alone?" She smiled wide enough to swallow a mouse whole, showing all her poisonous fangs. "Not very sisterly of you to make decisions for him without even bothering to ask how he feels. I think we should consult him before we make any rash decisions. Amrothos! Amrothos come here!"
He had been leaning against the wall in the deep shadows cast by the fire, invisible in a dark blue cloak and pants, and so seeming to appear almost as if conjured by her voice. He slunk into the light like a beaten dog, not looking directly at either of us. His face was a frozen mask.
"Hello, Amrothos," I said, keeping my voice even only with some effort. I had expected this of course but the sight of him was like a physical blow.
"Hello, Lothíriel."
"Amrothos," Harra tittered, "what do you want little Lothi to do with the letters?"
He looked between us for a long moment, not directly at either but at the floor just exactly between us. Then finally, voice low and almost unreadable said, "Give me the letters, Lothi."
I couldn't see his face since it was turned away from the fire, but I hesitated. "Amrothos," I pleaded. "Please think about this. I'm trying to give you a chance to get away from her. You don't have to do what she says if you don't want to."
"Give me the letters," he repeated.
Slowly I extended them to him and he took them gently. He turned toward the fire and the moment I saw his face I knew what would happen next. Amrothos' face was contorted in a mask of pain, like a man with a dagger in his bowels.
"Oh, Amrothos... please don't."
He flicked the letters into the fire. Between two breaths they were kindling rapidly.
He swallowed hard, as if around a lump in his throat. "I am sorry, Lothi," he whispered.
From the table Harra chuckled throatily. "Come here my good boy," she cooed at him.
He went to the edge and took his kiss. It was hateful the way he mashed his lips down onto hers but the indifference with which she met his desperation was infinitely more cruel. When they broke apart he was sweating and panting like a man in a fever and she was smiling languidly. Her eyes were on me, her lover already forgotten.
"I taught you everything you know, little kitten and you aren't going to outsmart me. The letters are burned, the knight is dead and your power is gone. Go back to your room while we decide what your punishment will be."
For a long moment I was speechless. The precipice, the fatal moment, had finally come, and I found myself robbed of breath and will for a second, so laden with a plethora of emotions all contending for a prime spot at the front of the line. Harra stared down at me with open, obvious glee and Amrothos simply stared down at the floor. I looked at my brother and for a second I saw him not as he was, but as he had been: a sincere little boy with wide somber eyes and a stubborn, troubled little mouth. He had been my mother's darling, and the most feminine of my brothers: not a strapping warrior like my father, but a scholar. For years he had been my only confidant as well. He was the only person in the world who knew the exact measure of my wickedness and loved me in spite of it. Erchirion, Éomer, even Gænwyn, could only guess at what I had done during all those years in the court. Amrothos had seen me do my worst, and he had never turned away from me.
I looked at him, not at Harra, as I spoke next, grinding the words out through clenched teeth. "You taught me everything you know. Not everything I know. I wish I didn't have a talent for this sort of sport but I do, and one of which you only ever saw the beginning. Allow me to correct your ignorance.
"Sir Daeron isn't dead, he's in Belfalas. You were just too impatient to wait for him to be found and so lied to me because it suited you. I wanted to wait for him to come to Minas Tirith and to be settled with Winweld before I brought you the letters. It's no matter though. He will wait for Winweld there, where she is headed tonight on a very fast ship. I expect she has already left the city, which means that she will be in my father's house in three dawns and married to the man she loves before breakfast that day. The baby won't be a bastard but Daeron's true born heir. They're going to live in his home fiefdom of Lanfast.
"I put the letters between you and Amrothos into the hands of one of my father's Knights weeks ago. He took it to Edoras in a sealed envelope, along with a letter to Erchirion implying that they were love letters Éomer wrote me and asking him to keep them safe for me. What Amrothos threw into the fire was just a bundle of old paper I've been carrying around. If you ever threaten me or anyone dear to me again, I will get them back and pass them around the court so fast it will astound you."
I spoke without joy because I truly felt none. I had imagined that it would feel good to explain to her just how thoroughly I had beaten her but this was no victory to gloat over. It was true perhaps that I had won, but there was no glory in it. "If you have no other leverage against me then we are done with each other. For good this time."
Her eyes narrowed sharply, glancing swiftly between me and my brother. But quick as a spider she thought, hissing out, "If you publish those letters you would destroy Amrothos as well. You wouldn't do that to your brother."
"I would save him from the court by publishing them!" I lashed out. "If I could, I would publish them now. Give me the opportunity and I would be glad to sever his ties to you and your kind."
"You would do it against his own will?"
"Gladly! I told you Harra, I am better at this sort of game than I would wish... more like you than I would choose."
For a moment she stared at me, eyes wide, calculating. Fleetingly I thought she might spring at me. But finally the tension in her shoulders relaxed somehow and she grinned widely, though completely without mirth.
"You know..." she said, with a small little smile, "under almost any other circumstance I would be proud of you for this little maneuver. The strategy is admirable and the heartlessness of using your own brother like that... I can't help but admire it. And I suppose it's not a total loss on my end either. I imagine you managed to drive a dagger into that barbarian king's heart better than anything I could have done with some trivial bit of gossip about Winweld. I saw his face that night at Beltane when he danced with you. The great savage truly did love you, kitten. I've never seen a man so obviously besotted with a woman. To have you reveal yourself to be just what he'd always been told and never believed, right at the height of his love... it's enough to drive a man like that –so honest and noble and sure of his own judgment—mad. But I expect you already know that. A broken, pathetic little look has crept into your once cold, distant eyes, and I wager it's there to stay."
The words 'get out of my sight' rose in my throat and were quelled. As satisfying as it would be, what I wanted more than the last word was to be finished finally and completely with Saeril. If I started up the insults again, if I gave her any provocation, I would only end up tangled up in her web again.
She slid off the table, lithe and serpentine. "But it isn't enough, Lothi. The letters are enough to let you and your barbarian go free, and your little pet Winweld too, but your brother stays with me. It isn't a fair bargain otherwise."
"It's not a bargain at all. Either you do what I want or I release the letters."
"And that will damn you and Winweld to lives of misery. For if you do that there will be nothing to stop me from hunting the two of you down like the little vermin you are. You see how this works? You can't have all of it for the price of one." She paused with a grim little smile. "However, I'm not unreasonable. I am not unaware that my husband will soon return from his seat, as he has the unfortunate habit of doing, and my little dalliance with your brother will have to end. My husband is after all... nothing if not observant." She shuddered slightly. "I am willing to let you have your brother for a small, extra token."
"What token?"
She grinned and came close, almost as if to embrace me, but at the last moment simply trailing her long, slender fingers over the silver bracelet at my wrist. My Yule gift from Éomer. Instinctively I drew it back from her, clasping it protectively with my own hand. She grinned widely.
"Oh, yes. I suspected it was a gift of his. You wear it even when it doesn't suit. And now I know that I was right. I will have it from you now."
It was almost the only thing I had that physically reminded me of him. Worse, if I ever saw him again, if I ever had the chance to try to explain my actions, how could I possibly account for its loss? My hopes that he might ever make his offer again were almost nothing, but without the bracelet he might never look at me again with anything but anger and contempt.
"Not prepared to offer me even a petty little bauble for your own brother? And I always though loyalty was one of your weaknesses."
I could have sliced my wrist open with less pain than it took me to slide the band from it and drop it into her outstretched palm. Éowyn had accused me of keeping it as a trophy, and as Harra slid it onto her own wrist I finally understood some of the rage she'd felt at seeing me wear it. I wanted to tear it from her, but I bit my lips hard and said nothing.
She considered it on her delicate arm fondly for a moment. "The craftsmanship is surprisingly good. I think it will become one of my very favorite ornaments."
"Is that all? Are we done?"
She chuckled, looking me once from head to toe. "Yes, kitten, we are done." She turned to go but then came back, leaning close to me and cupping her hand to my ear, hissing like a little girl whispering a secret. "Amrothos will always hate you for what you did tonight you know. I took your lover from you and now I've taken him as well."
She didn't look at him though as she left the library. To me she tossed a sly, saucy look, but she couldn't bear to look at him. She had been young when she married her husband and he was a cruel, hard man. My brother hadn't been her first, nor likely her most recent, seduction but I had always suspected that he meant the most to her. The reckless, joyful abandonment that had suffused her in those first days of her acquaintance with him I had never seen since. The hunger in her for power, of any kind at any cost, had found a fount of adoration in him that was unquenchable. And even more than that, the keening loneliness in her very deepest mind had found an answering note in the shy, introverted young man he had once been. In another time and place perhaps they could have been happy together. But she was married and he was young, and so instead they had destroyed in each other all those things in which they'd seen their likeness.
"I'm sorry, Amrothos," I said when the door closed behind her, meaning it.
The moment was a knife's edge. What said and passed between me and my brother next would define our relationship for the rest of our lives. I didn't dare breathe or move.
His eyes never left mine and we stared at each other for a long moment. Then, to my surprise he stepped forward and tucked an errant piece of hair behind one of my ears, letting his fingers linger next to my face and smiling down at me like he used to do when I was a girl and he was still my hero.
Joy broke open in me like a flood. The man looking down at me was my brother again—painfully damaged and exhausted, but returned somehow as if from the dead. Harra had been wrong about him. She'd understood perfectly all the worst parts about him, taken the exact measure of his weaknesses, but his strengths she'd never quite seen clearly. And what she knew about his goodness, she had long forgotten. With those he cared for he had always been generous with his forgiveness and malice was not his when he didn't want it to be. He wouldn't always hate me. He had already let the bitterness that could have been his (that would have been Harra's and might have been mine in his situation) slide away from him somehow.
I clutched him to me, whispering, "I really am sorry, Amrothos."
He kissed my forehead. "Don't be sorry. If there is an apology owed between us it is mine to make. I never wanted to hurt you like I did, you must believe me." He sounded tired beyond believing— sadder and older than a man his age had any right to be.
"I believe you," I said honestly. "And I forgive you."
If anyone understood telling a brutal, hurtful lie for the sake of love it was me after all.
"I wanted this to be over," I said. "For both of us."
"This isn't over, Lothi," he said simply. "It never will be, not for me."
"Not if you don't want it to be."
He smiled sadly down at me. "I know, Lothi. I don't expect you to understand but I would rather have the memory of her—the husk of what we felt for each other— than anything new that might contaminate or dilute it."
I laced my fingers into his and squeezed reassuringly. "I think I might understand better than you think."
When we returned to the house, the walk back having passed in exhausted, delicate silence, Faramir was waiting for me at the gate. Amrothos left me there with a small squeeze on my fingers and no words. He walked up towards the house in a daze, not bothering to greet our cousin. "Care to explain any of this?" Faramir asked pointedly.
I shrugged. "I sent Lady Winweld to Dol Amroth," I said. "The knight who is the father of her child is waiting for her there. I had to thank Lady Harra for helping me find him."
"Rollis told me all of that already. How did you find him?" Faramir asked.
"I borrowed some knights from my father and sent them south. I told them not to look for the knight but to simply spread the rumor that Winweld was with child and set to marry a Haradrim prince in Dol Amroth. He turned up at Dol Amroth on his own within the week. I had a letter, waiting for him to explain the truth of the matter."
"You sent them to spread a rumor?" he asked, shocked.
"I sent them to find him," I replied coldly. "And it worked. Better that Winweld find a bad start to her reputation in the south than that she not go at all."
"She might feel differently. You made that decision for her though..." he pointed out.
I didn't care. To keep Éomer safe I would make a thousand morally ambiguous decisions. It was stupid, he wouldn't have approved of what I had done, wouldn't have made the same decision himself. But I couldn't bring myself to care, even a little bit. I would keep him safe, despite of himself if need be. "If she has complaints she can write me a letter," I said pulling my arm from his grip. "Good night, Cousin."
As I walked up the gravel path he called after me, "But why would you do all that?"
I didn't bother to turn back or to break my stride. But I shouted at the top of my lungs, letting the single word ring out into the night with all my sorrow and despair and bitter frustration. "Love!"
TBC
Dum dum DUUUUUM! Well here it is kids, the chapter I've been planing since word one. I hope you like it! Let me do if you do, let me do if you don't! Reviews make my world go 'round. As usual a huge thanks to everyone who reviewed. It was so nice to hear all your thoughts. And of course the story wouldn't be even half so good without my wonderful beta LBJ. She is such an integral part of each chapter!