Chapter Text
Tavern talk murmuring around her, Celebrían tossed back another swig of ale. The Dragon’s Armpit was sticky, and it was dark. Fires and flickering candle flames cast shadow across its patrons – but it was warm, and she preferred the company of many strangers to the solitude of her box of a room in the rafters of the inn, furnished sparsely with her travelling clothes and her mallorn wood bow, a gift from her brother before setting off on this, the start of her adventures.
Her mother didn’t know about the boxy room – it wasn’t mentioned in the letters she sent back detailing instruction from tutors in Ost-in-Edhil. She would reach Celebrimbor’s city soon enough, she reasoned. There she would play princess and learn lore – perhaps even a craft. Ñoldorin though she was, her mother had never seen fit to pursue a craft of her own, instead surrounding herself with people and peering into their minds for strings of information to be hoarded and poised against them.
Diplomacy is about how people think, her mother always used to say, pressing her thoughts up against Celebrían’s until she felt resistance. You must not let them see into your own mind.
Mindspeak was a craft, Celebrían supposed, although it felt as much a necessity as learning to walk or to read when your mother could cast a glance through your thoughts or rifle through your memories at a moment’s notice. When she was an elfling, she used to wake to find her thoughts had been organised and tidied by her mother, straightened out into neat categories, bad dreams filed at the back, out of her reach.
Craft was what was practiced by Celebrimbor and his guild of artisans in Ost-in-Edhil. Craft was practised by Fëanor, her great-uncle (‘half-great-uncle’ was too much of a mouthful to bother with, despite her mother’s insistence. And it was fun to watch the refined Lady of Lothlórien’s cheeks redden with annoyance). Whenever she felt her mother pressing up against her mental barriers, testing and prodding for weaknesses, she offered some sort of technical question about Fëanor’s work – How was it Fëanorian lamps were made, Naneth? or Do you not suppose the tengwar script was difficult to compose? – all primed from the illicit stack of books in her bedroom, written by Fëanor’s apprentices or followers back in the day. She kept them, not out of any real source of interest, but to send her mother’s imperious presence away from her mental wards.
And to annoy her. That, too.
The steadily growing collection of books was enough to prompt her father to suggest studying with the Gwaith-i-Mírdain. This was no real freedom, Celebrían knew. She knew how to shape her own mind such that it felt like Galadriel’s own when she slipped inside, unnoticed. Celebrían was a piece on a game board to be moved and played in the grander scheme her mother had planned – that would have been clear without the oppressive proof of it spun like embroidery threads in her mother’s mind.
But Celebrían had some power yet. She could take her time dragging her heels to Ost-in-Edhil – and she could have some fun as she did it.
Handing over the coin she had won that afternoon in an archery competition, Celebrían ordered another ale and watched the patrons around her from her seat at the bar. Directly on a trade route, dwarves drank with edain and what Ñoldor there were sat shoulder to shoulder with Moriquendi. Her silver Doriathrin hair caught in the firelight, marking her out as yet another traveller, far from home. For once, she was invisible. She smiled.
“Why are you smiling? What is there to smile about?”
Pulled from her thoughts, her attention snapped to the speaker. An Avar crashed into the bar stool next to hers. Already, he reeked of booze and the bartender’s mouth thinned when he ordered.
“No trouble this time, Dark Elf, or I’ll cut you off.”
The Avar snorted, and when the bartender returned with his drink, he downed it. His cup slammed onto the table.
Rifling through the pockets of his ragged tunic, he finally produced another coin. For a second, he looked at it, and a dark rage flushed across his face.
“You know him?” he asked.
Celebrían glanced between the Avar and the bartender, before realising it was the stamped impression of the High King Gil-galad that the Avar was referencing.
She raised an eyebrow. “I have yet to make his proper acquaintance.”
It was true. The idea that she might one day marry the king before them, minted in silver, had been bandied around enough in her youth, but never more than speculatively. This, she knew, was her mother’s way of holding her tongue when it came to the cousin who had beaten her to the finish line. Gil-galad had sprung up out of nowhere to claim the Ñoldorin kingship in the War of Wrath, his leadership uncontested. Well, by all except Galadriel. Celebrían would be lying if she said she hadn’t studied the face printed on their coins and wondered at least once in her life. But a marriage plot was one scheme of her mother’s that she was determined would remain a scheme.
The Avar scoffed and handed the coin over. The bartender rolled his eyes and took it.
“Not this again, Heledir, I won’t hear it.”
He placed another pint before the Avar – Heledir – and turned to Celebrían. “This nut job reckons he’s related to the king.”
“Treacherous shite of a nephew that he was,” Heledir muttered.
Now, this was fun.
“They do say the king is half Avarin,” Celebrían said conspiratorially to the bartender.
“Spare me,” he replied, holding up his hands and turning away to serve other customers.
“My ungrateful sister-son,” Heledir muttered, more to himself than to Celebrían. He drank his second pint slower, as though considering each sip. “It’s the Ñoldorin blood, you know. Corrupts everything.”
“I’m half Ñoldorin,” Celebrían said, indignation flaring before she could stop herself.
“That’s how it starts,” Heledir murmured, a thousand-yard stare fixed far into the distance behind her.
“Of course. Do share the corrupting properties of Ñoldorin blood on your nephew the king.” The words fell in mockery from her tongue and he riled.
“We had a plan,” he hissed.
He is drunk and raving, she thought. The roiling coil of his thoughts more than proved that. A small glance was all she could manage before something akin to motion sickness washed over her and she snapped back out of his mind.
“He looked Ñoldorin enough. Pretend to be Fingon’s son, rob them blind. But no, he likes the riches and jewels, doesn’t he? He gets a taste. And then he’s developing graces and airs and they get their claws in.” He spat on the floor.
Celebrían’s heart stuttered. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” Heledir said, his eyes wild and locking with hers, “that your king is a fake.”