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“I will have no son in Beleriand,” said Finrod solemnly. “I have foreseen it.”
“I will bring no child into the House of Fëanor, to be bound by our Oath and smirched by our doom,” said Maedhros.
“Everyone expects me to get married,” said Fingon, “but I won't do it.”
Finrod threw a wad of parchment at him. “You’re it, I’m sorry. It’s your duty.”
“Bags not,” Fingon said, and threw it back.
“Oh, unfair!” Finrod said. “If I throw it at Maedhros, I’ll be picking on him.”
“I can catch as well with one hand as you might with two,” Maedhros said. “But, by all means, keep holding the baby.”
Finrod tossed the parchment ball at him, and Maedhros caught it, shot it swiftly at Fingon's face without fumbling, and Fingon said “Aaaaah,” tossed the ball from hand to hand like a hot coal, and sent it flying into the fire.
“I may have to agree that you shouldn’t propagate,” Finrod said. There was a faint smell as the parchment caught alight, and the thin leather began to crackle.
“Good,” Fingon said. “We three, in alliance against all of the Noldor this side of the sea!”
“Be fair@” Maedhros said. “My brothers have no strong opinion about whether you should bring forth little Fingons or not; several of them might even be rather against it.”
“Yes; but your councillors aren’t wrong,” Finrod said. “Forgive me, Fingon, for saying so, but with you newly crowned, it might be time to formally hammer out the succession details and make them law. The High Kingship has turned over three times since we came to Beleriand, and that’s if one doesn’t count the interregnum Maglor filled with such, er – well. After you, who inherits?”
“Turgon,” said Fingon.
“If we can find him,” Finrod said. “And if Turgon falls?”
A pause.
“I don’t see why Aredhel or Idril might not rule, in principle,” Maedhros said. “However, in practice-”
“In practice, Aredhel should be as far from the throne as possible,” Fingon said. Someone had to. She was his sister; and he loved her, and the crown would be horribly misplaced on her dark head for however long she would let it rest there before tiring of it and tossing it aside. “I don’t know Idril’s mettle – she was so young when she disappeared with Turgon and all his people. In any case, if we are to make a new law here, allowing women to be kings and to pass the kingship in their line, we’d have to bend it so it skips Aredhel, and I don’t know if we can do that without it looking pointed.”
“I don’t know that the House of Finwë is so large that we can afford to omit both the entire House of Fëanor and our remarkable sisters and nieces,” Finrod said. “I think we ought to count them in.”
“You would think that!” Fingon said. “Artanis is a very different prospect from Aredhel; and I haven’t met little Finduilas yet, but I’m sure she has all the gifts of your line as well as the golden hair. I do love Aredhel,” he added hastily.
“Who could not?” said Maedhros, laughing. “Very well; women inherit, after the male heirs of the House of Finwe, in order of – age or birth? I said age, when I passed the crown to Fingolfin; but that was politics.”
“Age would be a horrible mess. No; exhaust the House of Fingolfin, and then pass it to the House of Finarfin.”
“Thank you,” Finrod said; “can I throw the crown back at you?”
Maedhros said, “So the official succession will be male heirs of the House of Finwë, in order of birth. Fingon, then Turgon; then you, Finrod, and then – oh dear – Orodreth.”
“And then we run out of men, and must turn to women,” said Fingon. “Which, again – to Artanis, gladly; to Idril perhaps; to Finduilas, who can say? But Aredhel, never!”
“It is not so very long a line,” Finrod said. There was a pause, as they thought of the names of brothers already burnt from that list. Argon, Angrod, Aegnor. The whole point of this evening had been to think of anything rather than his father's death, of the High Kings who had already died, whose crowns had not come down to Fingon with the deadly kingship because they had been lost with their bodies, but he thought of them now: Finwë, Fëanor, Fingolfin.
“Forgive me,” said Fingon to change the subject, “but idea of Orodreth as high king doesn’t please me either.”
“If you like it so ill, you know what you may do,” said Finrod, firing up in his brother's defense. “Marry!”
"You marry,” Fingon said.
“There aren’t many options for the future of the House of Finwë,” Maedhros said, playing peacemaker. “Turgon will have no son now, and Orodreth’s wife is dead; both of you have sworn not to marry. Should we ever reach the stage where Orodreth is King of the Noldor and falls – and I don’t like to imagine your deaths; you’ll stay alive, Fingon, please! – I fear things will get very bloody. There are several different women in our line who could then take up the crown, with competing claims; and if the male lines of Fingolfin and Finarfin die out, I don’t know what my brothers would do, but I fear that the abdication of our line might be challenged, and our people are not so very progressive that some of them wouldn’t rather follow a Fëanorian than a woman.”
He drew in a deep breath and fixed Fingon with his beautiful grey eyes. “I would do my best to corral them – but I cannot imagine a day where you might die and I don’t die first at your feet, for they will surely have to cut through me to get to you.”
“Well, that’s cheerful,” Finrod said.
There was a bleak pause while they considered the notably brief lifespan of the Children of Finwë in Beleriand in general, and of their High Kings in particular.
Then they all drank a great deal more wine.
-
“No, I think it would work!” Finrod said, his golden hair falling around his face. He’d taken off his circlet, and it sat on the ground by his feet, studded with emeralds the size of goose eggs and white jewels like chunks of ice. Fingon was High King now, and his crown was only a braided golden circle set with a single stone. He didn’t have issues about its size – it was what it meant that mattered, after all –
“ – What would work?”
“Finrod, it wouldn’t,” Maedhros said. “No child of mine could ever wear the crown of the Noldor.”
“What’s this about Maedhros having children?” Fingon said, sitting up suddenly. “He can’t! You can’t, that’s not the plan. The plan is no marrying; together forever, the two of us, before all others –”
“Oh dear, I’m temporarily deaf and didn’t hear anything, and certainly not anything that sounds like unorthodox marriage vows,” Finrod said. “Anyway, my suggestion isn’t that Maedhros marry, Fingon, and I think it would work, Maedhros – We wouldn’t have to tell anyone that it was your child. In fact, much better if we didn’t! But we could hold that fact in reserve in case of future, er, problems from your brothers; I’d like to see them argue with an heir to all three princely houses, and to their own older brother; even they couldn’t claim precedence over him!”
“I don’t know how you would make certain it would be a son,” Maedhros said, and Fingon slammed down his goblet.
“Someone tell me very clearly what it is you’re suggesting here.”
“Science,” Finrod said, and his face lit up the way it did when talking about another new species of poisonous plant, or the interesting body hair growth patterns mortals sported. “It was something I was working with the Yavannandili before the Exile; you do need one of the Ainur to help, but I’m on excellent terms with most of the river-Maia around Nargothrond and up to the fens of Serech. Ringwil might do it, for the advancement of knowledge; or Ginglith. Or even Mindeb, although he’d have to alter his fána for the duration! I wouldn’t dare ask Narog; he’d be certain to take issue–”
“I don’t know that a part-river heir would be any more palatable to the Noldor lords,” Maedhros said.
“No, no; the Ainu helps shape the child – you need them to Sing the seeds apart and weave them anew into the right conformations, to make the hröa take form properly; but they don’t give of their own essence.”
“You’ve gone quite demented,” Fingon said.
They drank some more.
-
“You think Círdan would really bring up a child of – of mine?” Maedhros asked. He’d been declaring Finrod’s Great Idea to be impossible; he’d argued one angle that could cause problems, and then another, and another – and now, between the wine and the dying fire and all Finrod’s blithely brilliant answers, it was clearly becoming more real to him, and his longing was palpable.
Such a thing couldn’t be. There was the Oath, and what he had sworn to Fingon once, quietly, the two of them clasping hands as they walked the shores of Lake Mithrim together. Fingon would give Maedhros anything he could, but he couldn’t give him a child; and even if he could bear to set him free to find a wife, and if Maedhros would let him do it, it wouldn’t help. There was always the Oath.
Maedhros loved children.
“Perhaps we ought to try it,” Fingon said. “Although if it comes out with gills, I’m denying any part in this business, Finrod, and pinning its parentage entirely on you and your strange tastes.”
Finrod said, "That might even work better! Cirdan has no quarrel with me, or with my house.”
“Nor with mine,” said Fingon. “If it comes out all right, I don’t see why we can’t call it my son, and shut all my councilors up.” Then he paused. “Well – does Thingol know how many of us blooded our swords at Alqualondë?”
“I endeavoured to save your name,” Finrod said. He paused. “However, Angrod was present.”
Maedhros covered his face with his hand.
“Well, that’s torn it,” Fingon said. “No wonder I received no answer to the diplomatic greetings I sent to Doriath last Tarnin Austa.”
“You see why I think it would be best to ask Ringwil for her aid, and not Melian!”
“What would would we tell Círdan?” Maedhros asks. “Orodreth had twins?”
Fingon began to count on his fingers back to before the Dagor Bragollach. “Wouldn’t work.”
“Split the difference,” Finrod said. “Tell Círdan it’s Orodreth’s; I don’t think they’d have heard about what exactly happened at Tol Sirion at the Falas. Tell the Noldor lords, who do know, that it’s Fingon’s, but that we need the cover story to keep the child safe until he’s grown. Orodreth would agree to lend his name, gladly, to keep a son of Fingon’s safe.”
“Not yours? You won’t tell even him you played a part?”
Finrod paused. He looked rather wistful, but that was, perhaps, only the wine. “Best to keep it neat.”
“Neat!”
-
“I’ll need samples,” Finrod said, and took the wine-glass between his fingers. “I can Sing a fixing on them – ”
“What, now?”
“When else will we three meet again, now the watchful siege is over? You don’t get crowned every day, Fingon; certainly Orodreth can hold the fort for me for a while, but I can’t think Maedhros could long bear leaving the Ever-Cold in Maglor’s hands, even if his presence here didn't cause so many problems –”
-
“We never speak of this to anyone,” Fingon said in the morning, because he’d seen rather more of Finrod than he’d ever expected to see, and whatever some people – Turgon – said, it wasn’t cousins in general which pleased him, but rather the particular. However pretty Finrod was, or how yellow his hair.
Maedhros said, “Agreed,” and Finrod said, “But what if there’s ever an opportunity to write up the process properly? I’d obscure your names, of course; but if it works, we really ought to publish-–”
-
The baby had eyes of proper Noldor slatey blue-grey, and its hair was dark, and it was already able to focus on the jewellery worn by whoever was holding it and snatch at it with little fists. It was patently a Noldor Prince, as clearly as if it had been cast from a mold.
“He looks just like Grandad Finwë,” Finrod said. “How fascinating! I wonder if the proportions of our mutual inheritance encouraged those traits to predominate –”
“Ugh,” Fingon said. He touched the baby’s soft cheek with his finger. Its neck was all crinkles of baby-skin, and while Finrod was happily explicating the work he and Ringwil River-daughter had done on weaving a proper new spark of fëa from the samples together, he discreetly checked the creases under the baby's chin to make sure everything was quite right.
“You ought to hold him,” Finrod said, breaking off his explanations.
Fingon snatched his hand away from the baby. “No thanks!"
“Fingon," Finrod said. "One of you should, at least.”
Finrod had been able to consult with the River-daughter while she was shaping the child from spark to hröa and fëa, to monitor its growth, to take it in his hands when it was born at the year-mark after its strange and slightly belated conception. He’d brought it across the Ered Wethrin as soon as it was old enough, strapped snugly to his chest.
Now he was here to give it to Fingon, for Fingon to present to his councilors, having already prepared them shortly after the coronation a year prior with a sad tale of a Silvan woman who would wed him but not live with him, because of the Doom and the blood on his hands. Then Fingon was supposed to send it off under heavy guard to the Falas, where it would grow up as safely as it could in Beleriand, as far from Morgoth and as close to the West as possible. It was possible that Fingon might see it again after that, if he lived as long as he meant to, and had the success he hoped to against the Dark Enemy of all the World; but that was far from certain.
Maedhros might never see it at all. For the child to be safe, to carry on the fight and the line of Finwe into the unknown future, to prevent the future bloodshed and discord between their houses Finrod had foreseen, it had to grow up in the Falas. Where Maedhros was not welcome, and where he could not go, so far from Himring. Where Maedhros would not go, lest the Oath touch and taint the child.
It wasn’t fair; so Fingon tried to push the baby back at Finrod.
“Don’t toss this one into the fire!” Finrod said, and his voice was still casual, but his eyes rather soft. “Take him. I know you wish it could be otherwise, but – I won't ask any questions I shouldn’t, but memories can be shared mind-to-mind between certain parties, you know.”
"Oh, unfair,” Fingon said, but this time he took the baby from his cousin. It grabbed immediately at the gold braided in his hair. It was warm and surprisingly solid and quite, quite real, and Fingon clutched the baby against his chest and tried to fix in his mind the precise weight and shape of him, his fat cheeks and the outrageous pink bow of his mouth.
“I’ve been calling him Artanáro – we’ll say it’s his father-name from Orodreth. You can give the other.”
“I like how you’ve worked things out so I get to give the mother-name,” Fingon said, eyes still fixed on the baby. “It should probably have a Fin in it, shouldn’t it? What do you think of Hair-Grabber?"
“You do know how to make me regret procreating with you,” Finrod said. He wrinkled his nose. "Finbrimbor? You know that'd cause a fuss."
"Finbor," Fingon tried.
"Findor," Finrod suggested. "After you?"
"Ereinion," Fingon said, seized with sudden inspiration. It was a great and noble name: and it was after Maedhros, dispossessed King of the Noldor; after himself, the current king; and for Finrod King of Nargothrond. They meant this child for a great and noble destiny, after all. But it wasn't much good as a use-name, and neither was Artanáro -- Rodnor, because Finrod's taste in names was as loudly clashing as his taste in everything else -- and Fingon, in the month between presenting the baby to his court and sending him away, fell into calling him little Gill.
"A beautiful epessë," said one of his councillors; "for Gil indeed he is; the star of our people, our hope!"
"Oh, yes," Fingon said vaguely, and peered with suspicion at Gill when the baby blew a series of bubbles at him, exactly like one of the silver carp they had once kept in the fountains of Tirion.
-
Maedhros smiled when he shared the memory with him long after. "They do that, Fingon," he said, "babies; you clearly never helped out with Aredhel or Argon, or you'd know!"
"I didn't think I'd have to know!" Fingon protested. "Even then I had designs on you; I had no reason to practice with the infantry! I could hardly have foreseen I'd ever -- we'd ever --"
"He is very beautiful," Maedhros said, and although his eyes were sad, the grimness he had worn like a grey mask since Thangorodrim lightened somehow. "I'm glad, Fingon. To know that something of us will go on, whatever happens; to know that there is some light in the future, however dark it seems to me. Gil is a beautiful name."
"Er, yes," Fingon said. "Ha."