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Nothing met the sharp wind on the shores of Losgar. It was bare rock: carved and bitten by dark grey water—the air that came through was brittle. A gust of it forced Makalaurë to tug at the edges of his mantle, and adjust his hood to brace against the cold. Still, here it was warmer than the Helcaraxë.
Around them, sheer cliffs stretched into the sky, crowned by stars. He craned his neck up until it ached to look; and an odd notion came to him: that the sky was clearer here than back home.
He stood there, in placid pause, listening to the sound of water on rock, voices, and their people disembarking, when a voice split his thoughts with—
“Father—enough.” It was Maitimo’s voice, and at the sound, Makalaurë whipped his head around, his attention seized. First, because Maitimo’s tone was so harsh; second, because he was addressing their father.
His gaze trailed down the strand to see where Maitimo—just disembarked—was striding up the cant after Fëanáro, who had been ignoring him the entire voyage. And, when not ignoring him, quipping with acid about his loyalty.
Maitimo’s expression was set—fed-up—as he passed a row of their people off-loading canvas from one of the ships.
Please, not now, Makalaurë thought. This could do nothing but kindle an argument, and it had already been such a long journey.
“Nelyo,” Fëanáro said. There was a false-level to his voice as the two of them stopped on a shelf of rock not far from the shore.
“Speak plainly—” Maitimo said, as Makalaurë drifted towards, “what wrong have I done you?”
“Nothing.” Their father arched one lying eyebrow.
Makalaurë, by this point, was hovering just far enough aside to remove himself from any barbed words. He couldn’t locate all his brothers, scattered as they were across the beach, but he managed to find Tyelkormo by the cliff edges. His expression was almost unreadable, but Makalaurë pinned it as smug. It was a rare spectacle to see Maitimo chided.
“I know it is not nothing,” Maitimo said. “At the least, tell me what I’ve done to earn your ire.”
“I saw your hesitation on the gangplank,” Fëanáro said. “Your perfidy.”
“Perfidy, Father?”
Tensions always rose at sea. Makalaurë wondered if it wasn’t some effect of the waves—of being over an unsteady deep, with the ability to peer over the edge of your vessel and look into something so dark it suggested the beginning and end of all things.
“Do you deny it?” Fëanáro said.
“What is there to deny?” Maitimo said. “I paused but a moment.”
“You question our course,” Fëanáro said. “I perceive this well.”
He went walking off, as if that was the end of the conversation. More cold. As if this beach didn’t have enough of it.
As their father’s form retreated, Maitimo turned to Makalaurë and they met eyes, incredulous. Fëanáro had tempers, but he’d never been this wild, this reckless, with who he aimed at, and when, and for what.
The what, in this case, was Maitimo’s heel on the ice, was Maitimo’s other on the gangplank, and his turned head, his hesitation as they set out. His expression grim and crumpled. Apparently, Fëanáro hadn’t forgiven him for whatever that pause implied. Perfidy, apparently.
If there was one thing their father was master at, it was grudges.
There must be opposition, said Maitimo’s gaze. Opposition to this semi-madness.
Don’t start another bout of this—please, Makalaurë answered in a clenched jaw and knit brows.
Unfortunately, Maitimo had inherited their mother’s intolerance for his passive-aggression.
“Condemn me not for looking back,” he said, and split from Makalaurë, who was bracing.
He chased Fëanáro up the rocks. Makalaurë followed him, always a pace behind. Fëanáro turned, as did a few others. Braided hair, damp cloaks, weary faces, and stoic onlookers alike. Maitimo paused, seeing their audience. Then—
“You know I love you, Father,” he said. “You know I am loyal to you. I love no one more, and swore the Oath as we all did. Your command is my doing.”
A murmur no louder than wind went among the crowd. Fëanáro appraised them.
“Well-spoken, Nelyo,” he said. “All is forgiven.”
Another beat. Another tension, and then finally—
“Thank you,” Maitimo said.
The murmur of the crowd settled some, and they dispersed, Makalaurë with them. He pretended not to still be listening, busied himself with unloading tarps and canvas and crates of rations. He didn’t know what there was to forgive, but these days, Fëanáro’s moods were all touched with a shroud of madness. One day he hoped Maitimo might pierce it.
“A son should above all else love his father,” Fëanáro was saying, behind him.
“And I do,” Maitimo said, “which is why it is my duty in such a place to remind you of those we left on the other shore.”
Makalaurë tensed. He dreaded Fëanáro’s temper, though Maitimo didn’t so much as flinch from it. Makalaurë wondered, as he gave up pretending to be busy, when that had happened—when Maitimo became so proud. In equal measure, he admired and feared him for it.
“I won’t hear this,” Fëanáro said.
“They fought in your name.”
“And now they curse it.”
“They killed for the ships.”
“Silence,” Fëanáro snapped. “I will hear nothing of the other shore. Make no protests.”
Makalaurë looked across the choppy water, then briefly shared a look with Maitimo. Was he imagining the look of betrayal there, that he wasn’t saying anything?
Across the black was the other half of their host, who would die there, the cold running through them like a blade. It was cruel, and in his gut Makalaurë wanted to go back, but not strongly enough to speak. His words were verse, not debate. He looked away, guilty.
“In earnest,” Maitimo said. “I speak not to protest, but to counsel.”
Makalaurë thought his older brother would make a fine diplomat once the war was over. An indispensable right-hand to their father. Maitimo listened where Fëanáro spoke.
“You profess to love me,” Fëanáro said, “so trust in my command.”
“Father,” he said, “I trust you to be a leader of wisdom and compassion.”
What was Fëanáro supposed to do, deny flattery? Maitimo didn’t have Tyelkormo’s gall, but Makalaurë caught a flash of pride in his eyes. Or was it stubbornness?
“Thank you, Nelyafinwë.” Fëanáro’s voice wasn’t warm yet.
“Now, what ships and rowers will you spare to return?”
Fëanáro’s face twisted into something cold. Makalaurë, afraid as he was, wondered if it was because he knew he was beaten. Maitimo, outmaneuvering their father. Maitimo who was deft with words where their father was enthralling. His challenge dangled in that pause. Later, Maglor would wonder if it all would have been different had Maitimo stopped there. But he didn’t.
“And whom shall they bear hither first?” he said, tipping his hand. “Findekáno the Valiant?”
Losing purchase, backsliding. Fëanáro’s eyes grew stony. Laughter: fey and chill. Carnistir and Kurvo exchanged looks in the periphery of Makalaurë’s vision.
“None and none!” Fëanáro said. And much else that Maglor would later remember as utter madness. “Let the ships burn!”
Let the ships burn.
Later, Makalaurë’s hand closed around the width of a torch. Rough wood. Splinters. Heat threatening to kiss the circle of his fingers just below. Flames touched the white wood and raced up its slats, but Makalaurë didn’t watch. He looked at Maitimo, standing aside, face unreadable if Makalaurë didn’t know him so well. He wasn’t angry anymore—he was sad. Possibly scared. Makalaurë never asked after, what he’d been thinking. Perhaps of Findekáno.
The smoke in the sky blotted out the stars. Later, Maglor would look back and think it must have been an omen. A starless sky behind a swan’s head, blackening, wreathed by flames.
Hours of silence follow Eönwë’s reply. They sit with a fire between them, sharing it like they do their condemnation. Maglor braces into its crackle and rush, and watches Maedhros. Waiting for his decision. Hoping they won’t draw swords again. This has already been so long a quest.
“The Oath says not that we may not bide our time,” he says, but his words don’t find their mark. He was never a diplomat.
“Everlasting Darkness upon us,” Maedhros says, biting, “if we kept not our word.”
Maglor knew before Maedhros said it, that he wouldn’t submit. He’s got his stubborn pride, hard-won on a cliff, in a cuff. Maglor’s gotten to know that stubbornness well, after following his brother through an age. Following Maedhros, always a pace behind as he loses limb and lives and mind. Always a pace behind as they together watch smoke blot their brothers out like stars.
Fëanor left them no body to mourn—just ash like that made of white slats—but these days Maglor sees their father writ all over Maedhros’s face.
He carries the unnumbered of Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and the deaths of their kinslayings. Spends days on end without speaking a word. He wears pain like a shroud that Maglor cannot pierce.
Maedhros, hunched by their fire now not meeting Maglor’s eyes. Maedhros, promising and planning another slaughter to paint their hands. Maedhros, saying, let the ships burn.
“Who shall release us?” Maedhros says. His voice is a steely rasp. In it, Maglor hears their father’s fey laugh. He cannot read him anymore, lost that ability somewhere along the way, and a chasm is between them now—a choppy firth of death and death and death.
“Less evil,” Maglor says, in vain hope, “shall we do in the breaking.”
But when he looks at Maedhros, his eyes are blackened like a swan’s head.