He carried her down the colonnaded corridor to the room she had slept in the night before; the coverlet was finely woven, and would stain, but that was of no account to him. She had put both her arms around his neck and was mumbling, both in the slurring Seanchan speech and in the elven tongue, but her words were too low for him to make out more than a little, and there was nothing coherent in what she was saying. Her head drooped on her neck, and her clasp on him was weak.

Some of the servants were emerging from the shadows behind him; "Light," he commanded them harshly, and with looks of pity, they went away, returning with glowing Seanchan sar-lights in crystal stands. Elrond felt a brief urge to smash them against the wall; it passed mercifully. He laid her down, and felt rapidly about Celebrian's body, finding the latches that held her strange armor closed and pulling the lacquered metal pieces off. Once he got it off her he could see better. The wound that Arisae had given her was high on her chest; it had almost certainly pierced her right lung, which accounted for the blood on her lips, but it was not likely to be immediately fatal.

That was her misfortune, he realized. For the Death of Ten Thousand Tears awaited.

A few sharp orders to the solemn servants brought bandages, water, medicines. He did what he could for her, his wife, trying to save her, trying not to think about the fate he was saving her for…wondering if he should save her at all. The servants watched, silently, from the shadows, as he poured forth his healing craft to save his wife.

"Father?" Elrohir faltered, and Elrond turned to see his son beside him, his face streaked with tears. When he had come in from the terrace, Elrond couldn't remember. "Father? Is—is Mother—will she--"

"I don't know," Elrond snarled at him, then softened, seeing the pain on his son's face. "I don't think so. I might be wrong. Here. Help me." The cloths he had been using to stanch the flow of blood from Celebrian's wound were red and dripping; he pulled them away. "Hand me those, over there, from the bowl, the ones soaking in the herbal water." He took them from Elrohir's hands, thinking curses to himself, remembering the last time he had done this for his wife; when Elrohir and Elladan had won her back from the orc-dens. This time was horribly like that time; with a flash of shock, he realized he was even in the same room where he had tended to her last time. As he laid the new cloths against her wound, he damned the Seanchan to the lowest level of hell, in the depths of his heart.

Elrohir took his mother's hand and sank down beside the bed, talking to her softly. Elrond could have chased him out, but refrained; perhaps her son could give her an incentive to live. He worked, trying to forget everything that had just happened, trying to focus on his wife alone, on saving her life, only that.

Bootheels clocking down the corridor jerked him back to the world, and he looked up from Celebrian's body to see Arisae, silhouetted in the doorway.

She was not alone. She had Deathwatch Guards with her, standing one to either side, and Sthenn was at her right hand, smiling. She was clad in armor, and helmeted, and the fatal blade was still in her hand, red and dripping with her mother's blood.

"How do you dare come here!" Elrohir's cry rang throughout the room.

Arisae ignored him. She stepped in, and Elrond suddenly realized where he had seen that level of smooth confidence before: High Lady Suroth, over a thousand years ago. She moved with her gray eyes half-lidded and her face utterly expressionless—but Elrond thought he saw a slight smile on her ruby lips.

Celebrian stirred as Arwen stepped into the room and opened her blue eyes; they wandered a little, then fixed on her daughter's face.

"Arisae," she whispered. The room went silent. The air was so thick it could be cut with a knife. Elrond realized he wasn't breathing.

Arisae brushed past her brother as if he were beneath her notice, and took her mother's hand. "Forgive me, Mother," she said softly. "I had to. Perhaps, if you had more time, you could come to understand." She raised her mother's hand to her lips and kissed it, oddly gentle. Then she rose to her full height. "Now, I, Arisae Moribet Paendrag, am Banner-General in your place. And I might," she added, "go higher yet, with luck. Take comfort in that, Mother," she said coolly; Celebrian's lips moved as if she were trying to speak, but nothing came out. "Your daughter has made Banner-General." She offered a slight bow, and turned; unhurriedly, she left, drawing the so'jhin and Sthenn in her wake.

Elrohir stared after his sister for a moment, his eyes wide, then he lunged to his feet. "Arwen!" Elrond heard him shout as he shoved through the doorway. His cry rang down the corridor hall outside. "Arwen!!"

Celebrian's eyes found his. Her lips moved again. Elrond leaned close to hear her; they might have been the only two in the room. "Go after him."

He closed his eyes and brought her hand to his forehead, clasping it close enough that he could feel the fine bones in her fingers. "I can't." I can't leave you, he thought, though he did not say.

"Go." She blindly groped toward him, clutched his shoulder. "Go."

He squeezed her fingers even more tightly, then put her hand down; he could not refuse her. Not now. He rose to his feet, and followed.

Even before he reached the terrace, he could hear angry shouts; it was enough to make him quicken his step down the colonnaded hall. He emerged into the moonlit dais. The blocks of Seanchan der'morat'raken had cleared the plaza; he guessed distantly that they had been dismissed by Arisae or by Riyath, not that he cared. All he cared about was the drama ahead of him.

"Arwen! Arwen!" Elrohir was screaming at his sister, with such force that the cords were standing out on his neck. "Arwen! How could you—how COULD you! She was our MOTHER! Does that mean NOTHING to you, Arwen? Does that mean nothing?"

His sister whirled in the moonlight, perfect and slender in dark armor, blade unsheathed. "My name is Arisae!"

"Our mother—"

"She is not my mother!" Arisae replied. "Arisae Minabet Paendrag has no mother. She was a traitor to the Crystal Throne, a traitor to the Empress of Seanchan, and I fulfilled my duty as a Supreme Der'Morat'Raken in protesting the installation of this traitoress as Banner-General. No, Elrohir of the Others," she said sternly, her face shuttered, "Briande Duchen Paendrag deserved to die. She deserved it, for her crimes against the Empress of Seanchan. I was simply carrying out the sentence. Should she die now, she will have received a more merciful fate than she deserved."

Elrond saw what happened next in a series of flashes; it was as if the events were too horrible for his mind to put them together into a coherent narrative.

The demon who wore Arwen's face raised her bloody blade.

Elrohir stared at her. His blue eyes were wide; he was shaking, trembling, his breath coming too fast. His eyes locked on her face.

Arwen looked at the blade that bore her mother's blood.

She looked back at her shaking brother

She smiled. That smile would haunt Elrond for the rest of his life.

The smile was all it took. Elrohir gave a cry of sheer agony, and launched himself across the terrace at Arisae.

At once, frenzied activity exploded on the terrace. With a look of shock on her face, Arwen's first reaction was to throw the sword from her, else Elrohir would have spitted himself on her blade. The blade clattered to the stones of the terrace, the heron engraved on the side shining uselessly in the lamplight. In the next instant, her brother had locked his hands around her throat and was doing his level best to choke her. Arwen had raised her hands and was clutching at his wrists. The so'jhin and the Ogier Deathwatch Guards rushed to her side, and had locked their hands around Elrohir's arms, trying to pull him away, but he was holding on with the strength of the insane, grinding his fingers into his sister's throat. Horrified, Elrond heard himself calling for his son to stop, but no one paid him any heed. It seemed to go on forever, it was as if the moment itself had fractured, split off from anything else, had no beginning and no ending.

"Stop! Stop!" he heard himself shouting as if from a distance. "Elrohir, stop this madness! Stop!" and even as he heard himself, he was aware of the real edge of panic in his voice; all he could think was that he had just lost his wife and now he was about to lose either his son or his daughter. As he shouted, Arwen brought her steel-clad knee up and kicked her brother in the gut. It was enough to break his grip, and Elrohir stumbled back, to be grabbed by two of the hulking Ogier and pressed to the stone flooring of the terrace. His son was sobbing, huge racking sobs as if his heart was broken. Arwen had bent almost double and was rubbing her neck, gulping air; her backrider—Sthenn—went to her side.

As she put her arm around him, she raised her head and looked right at her father. Her look struck him to the heart. The superconfident Supreme Der'Morat'Raken was nowhere in evidence there; she looked as she had looked as a child. Young. Stricken. He knew such a look was in his own eyes as well, because he knew enough of the Seanchan to understand what had just happened.

Arisae Minabet Paendrag was a member of the Blood. Elrohir had just attacked her without provocation. That was treason.

It is death by slow torture to lay hands on a member of the Blood of Paendrag.

Father and daughter stared at each other, as the Ogier hauled Elrohir away.

"You have to free him."

Arwen laid her helmet down restlessly on the small table in her chambers. "Father, I can't."

"You have to," Elrond insisted.

"Father, I can't!" She ran her hands through her short-cropped dark hair. They were shaking.

"Can you not forgive the attack? You are Blood, after all," Elrond said bitterly.

"Father, you don't understand. This isn't like the kingdoms you knew of old, where the rulers would dispense justice as they saw fit. Seanchan is a government of laws and not of men and women, and not even the Blood are above the law. Only the Empress of the Nine Moons (may she live forever) can set aside the law, and even so she cannot act with impunity. It has to be this way," she insisted as she saw her father's uncomprehending look. "Seanchan is too big to work as the lands of Gondor and Arnor did in the days of old. There has to be one set of laws that can be applied across the entire empire, or else the realm will fall apart. There is a saying," she continued. "'The hand of justice requires motive and proof, even for damane and da'covale'; this means that no matter how sei'mosiev or sei'taer in the eyes of the world, all those who dwell within the realm of Seanchan stand within the purview of the law, both protected and chastened by it. I do not have the power to overturn it—even for the sake of he who was once my brother."

"'He who was once your brother?'" Elrond spat. "And who does your Empress think she is, to make laws in this fashion? Does she set herself up as Ilúvatar?"

"That Empress is your Empress too, Elrond of Rivendell Garrison," Arisae said in such a forbidding tone that Elrond was chilled. "May she live forever," she added as an afterthought. "And no," she continued, less forbiddingly. "The Empress doesn't make the laws, most of them; they were handed down from the past, from a time before my time, one so distant and ancient for the sons of Men that no one really knows where they came from. The laws make themselves, Father. Seanchan is a bureaucracy—"

"A what?"

"Never mind." She raised her hands to cover her face; they were still shaking, and her voice was uneven. "Just understand, Father—I cannot set the laws aside. The Empress, and only the Empress (may she live forever) can do that.

"Father, Elrohir broke the law. He attacked a member of the Blood, without provocation—"

"Without provocation?" Elrond demanded incredulously. "You—You—" He choked on his next words.

"The High Lady Riyath was standing right there!" Arwen insisted. "What was I supposed to do, grieve for a traitor whom I myself had exposed?" But she flinched and looked away as she said it.

She knows she has done wrong. That, in itself, infuriated him almost more than anything else that had happened this long and terrible night. "I will tell you now, Daughter," he said, hearing an ugliness in his voice that he had not heard for a long time, "had Elrohir not attacked you right then, I would have struck you down the next instant." The moment he said it, he was ashamed of himself—more so when he saw the look in her eyes—but he could not call the words back. Arwen, what have they done to you? To me? To all of us?

They had been facing each other across the small, round table where Arwen's helmet now rested; as if by common agreement, they both turned away, pacing the confines of Arisae's room. For his part, Elrond was regretting what he had just said, but he knew of no way to call it back—and, he admitted, he would probably say it again, given the chance. Arisae, he saw when he glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, was pale under her tan, her eyes were hollow and haunted.

"Save him, Arisae," he said at last, pleading with her. "Please. Save Elrohir."

Arwen covered her face with her hands. From behind that protective shield, she said, "Father—"

"Please, Arisae," he went on, with no real strength to his voice--he was beaten, and he knew it, by these Seanchan. "Please. I have—I have lost my wife and my daughter and my son. Elrohir is all I have left. Arisae, you are Blood. You are of Seanchan. You have power. If there is a way to save him, you must know it. You must. Arisae, please."

Arisae looked at him. "He broke the law. And the law must be obeyed. Everywhere. For Seanchan's sake."

Elrond shook his head. Why does she keep saying that? What does that have to do with anything? She was the one offended against, he thought; she should be able to set aside the penalty if she so required, and he could not fathom the reason why she was not choosing to. She could free him, he was forced to conclude, she just does not want to. He said as much aloud, angrily. "You do not want to."

"Father, please. You don't understand."

He stared at her for a long time. She didn't meet his eyes. After a long moment, he asked, "What…what do you wish of me, my daughter? What is your—your price—for sparing the life of my son?"

"Father…"

"Name it. If it is—" He swallowed. "If it is within my power to give, it will be yours, my daughter. Name it. For the life of Elrohir—"

"You are asking for something that I cannot do, nor," she added as an afterthought, "do you have anything that would be of any worth to me."

"Arwen, he is your brother!"

She flinched; and he knew it for a mistake; the words were too close to the words that Elrohir had flung at her before. An icy pall descended over her face. "Arisae Minabet Paendrag has no brothers."

"Arisae—"

"Enough, Elrond of the Others. The subject is closed." She picked her helmet up from the table and raised it to her head, fastening its strap beneath her chin. She started for the door.

Elrond moved to block her path.

"Arwen," he said, and looked down into her eyes, trying to show her his heart. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open in shock. Her gray eyes were pools that seemed to go on forever. "Please. I—" He swallowed. "He is my son. He is all I—he is all I have left. All I have left in the world. I have nothing else beside him. Please. I cannot—I cannot save him, I do not-- You are the only one who can help me, daughter. Please, I beg of you."

"Father," she whispered back. "I can't."

Elrond stared down at his daughter, and he saw at once in her face that he had lost. Arisae was not going to help him. He was going to lose Elrohir, the only one of his children—the only one of his family—he had left. He was suddenly, acutely aware of the air in his chest, of each individual heartbeat. Elves were familiar with eternity, and now, it seemed as if each second had stretched out to eternity. He had failed to convince her to help him, and what avenue of appeal could reach her now?

He had not known what he was going to do next until he felt himself doing it. Slowly, he felt himself sinking before her, until his knees were pressed against the cold, hard stone of the floor. He had always wondered, he thought in some distant part of his mind, what would happen if he had ever met a Seanchan noble who demanded the full obeisance from him; had thought he could not bring himself to lower himself before a human. It was not a human he lowered himself before now. It was his daughter.

"Father, what are you doing?" Arwen's voice shook. "Father, what are you doing?"

He had seen Seanchan do this dozens—hundreds—of times before, in the presence of members of the High Blood, but he had never thought to do it himself; he had never done it before, either, and had to search his memory for what came next. After a moment, it came; his hands went flat on the floor before him.

"Father, stop! Stop!" Arwen cried, sounding frightened. "What are you doing? Get up!"

He looked up at her. Her face was white as a sheet, and her eyes were wide; he was careful not to meet her eyes, because as a Seanchan, she stood above him, and she had not given him permission to be sei'taer. She had been so quiet as a child, he remembered again, so helpful, so trusting and gentle. He swallowed again, around some sort of blockage in his throat; when he spoke, it came out almost a whisper. He tried to approximate the formula as best as he could, as he had heard it spoken by Seanchan before him. It came to him with difficulty; it was not natural to him at all. "Supreme Der'Morat'Raken Arisae Minabet of the Blood of Paendrag, this….unworthy one, Elrond of the Others….most humbly beseeches and implores your aid in this matter." He added to it, almost inaudibly, "Arwen….please. Your father begs you. Spare my son." And, completing the full obeisance, he leaned forward and placed his forehead on his hands where they lay flat on the ground.

He heard her voice coming to him from a distance, but did not see her; she was almost sobbing, "Adar, get up! Get up! Please get up! Don't do this! Don't!" but he did not move. He did not speak; he had exhausted speech. He heard the clank of her armor hitting the stones of the room's floor; she was begging him, pleading with him as he had pled with her before. Then he felt her hands, closing around his shoulders, shaking him, tugging at him, trying to pull him up. She was stronger than he remembered. "Get up, adar, please, adar, please! You're…you're hurting me! You're hurting me," she added in a whisper; he heard her give a choked sob.

And you, my daughter, are hurting me, he thought, but did not say. Inside, his heart was breaking. He felt Arwen tugging at him again; then the cold weight of the lip of her helmet as she rested her head on his shoulder. She was weeping; he could feel her hot tears soaking through the fabric of his robes. She had done so as a girl. He could not count the number of times he had held her and comforted her as a child, when she had wept in just this fashion at the simple hurts of childhood. "Adar, please," she begged him.

"Spare my son." He did not recognize himself as speaking the words.

"I'll—" She swallowed. "I'll see what I can do, maybe if I work—if I work on the High Lady Riyath, remind her that he's an Other and not a human, I may be able to get a lighter—maybe I can earn him the Flower Garrote, it's fast and painless, and maybe—maybe—" She did not finish. "That's all I can do, adar, please, I would do more if I could, but I—I can't. That is the absolute maximum I can do. All right?" Her voice was steadier now, though it still trembled a bit. She had removed her head from his shoulder; he heard her armor clank again as she sat up. "All right?" He did not answer. "Father, look at me!" Anger this time, he could hear the raw edge in her voice. "Be sei'taer, under the Light!"

He raised his head. She had sat back on her heels, and though the tears were still drying on her face and her lips still trembled, her eyes were shuttered again. He could tell that the moment he had opened up—the moment in which he could reach Arwen—had closed again. He would get no more from her.

He bowed his head again, till it touched the smooth stones underneath him; this time, not with the numbness that he had felt before, but with an exquisite, stinging bitterness. "This unworthy one, Elrond of the Others, expresses his humble gratitude for your graciousness, O Exalted Supreme Der'Morat'Raken." He was too tired, too weary and too defeated, to hide the biting sarcasm in his voice.

Arwen did not answer. She simply rose, and turned; he heard her footsteps as she walked away.