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Loki goes instantly where Huan tells her. She has a safety against landing intersected with solid objects, her or any of her belongings, so dramatic as it would be she can't just appear with her opponent already impaled. She has to actually stab him.
So she stabs him, spikes him from there. And hollows out Lævateinn and channels ice into the wound.
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purposeful_glory
They are happy to. This is as badly matched as the last time she tried sparring, but entertaining for all involved.
purposeful_glory
And so very much not being cooped up alone in a room listening to music and manipulating spell symbols! Almost the opposite of that!
And when she is done there she goes to Doriath.
And when she is done there she goes to Doriath.
Lúthien and Maedhros are sitting in his cell talking again, and both express delight to see her.
"My father."
"Maedhros was saying that sometimes serving his father's best self isn't the same thing as doing what his father says and he gets really stuck whenever that's true, and we were talking about where - that might be true for my father, and who can sort of interface with him the way Maedhros and his brothers do."
"The difference," she says, "is that Maedhros' father trusts them and they're all really capable and he lets them do most of the work of governing. And even if I could get that capable, there's one of me, not seven."
purposeful_glory
"And apparently it matters - negatively - for your political prospects that you're a girl, that surprised me."
"I don't even - that's not even a thing Eru says, that's just the way things are. Here and in Valinor. There aren't any women leading tribes of Elves, and people don't think of it."
purposeful_glory
"It doesn't seem to have any marked improvements over the other way around."
"Both seem stupid, honestly. But Father's not going to start seeing me the way he'd see a son."
Maedhros was saying that he thinks, in practice, that isn't really what I need, and I could end up running a lot of things without being seen as suited to run them or as having much hand in them. That sounds hard.
purposeful_glory
It's nice work if you can get it. I don't have quite the stealth for the full blown version of what he recommends but I wound up running Asgard's foreign policy because it exasperated Odin and Thor.
Foreign policy definitely exasperates my father.
purposeful_glory
Is that why I have not been steered into talking to him instead of always going to you first with questions and comments?
I wasn't doing anything deliberate, just - figured I'd have an easier time finding the words for him. Maybe that's the same thing, though. He just really does not like surprises and tends to overreact when hearing them.
purposeful_glory
I've found your help very useful in mediating between him and me.
She smiles. Then she looks back at Maedhros, unhappily. Did you try to talk him down from the Kinslaying?
No, he says after a pause. I didn't. We didn't think we were going to a Kinslaying, obviously, and my father's decisiveness is also sometimes one of his best governing skills, and I'd already offered my aid in the capacity I could most meaningfully offer it - I'd said that if he were willing to wait a few months I could perhaps change Olwë's mind about the boats. He was not willing to wait a few months. Another skill that is helpful for running things quietly is always having good alternatives to offer your king when the course he's considering is a bad one. When there are no good choices people, unsurprisingly, make bad choices.
She's frowning at him. Most of us don't kill people.
Every course forward from that beach killed people. The difference was that some courses meant we wouldn't have had to watch them die. If we'd sat there and it'd taken me a Year to bring Olwë around - and it might have - would you hold me guiltless in the fall of Brithombar? It wouldn't have stood that long...
It wouldn't have been your fault.
I'm sure they'd have taken much comfort in that.
No, he says after a pause. I didn't. We didn't think we were going to a Kinslaying, obviously, and my father's decisiveness is also sometimes one of his best governing skills, and I'd already offered my aid in the capacity I could most meaningfully offer it - I'd said that if he were willing to wait a few months I could perhaps change Olwë's mind about the boats. He was not willing to wait a few months. Another skill that is helpful for running things quietly is always having good alternatives to offer your king when the course he's considering is a bad one. When there are no good choices people, unsurprisingly, make bad choices.
She's frowning at him. Most of us don't kill people.
Every course forward from that beach killed people. The difference was that some courses meant we wouldn't have had to watch them die. If we'd sat there and it'd taken me a Year to bring Olwë around - and it might have - would you hold me guiltless in the fall of Brithombar? It wouldn't have stood that long...
It wouldn't have been your fault.
I'm sure they'd have taken much comfort in that.
So you don't regret -
I regret it very deeply, it was an awful wrong and an awful crime and a terrible terrible mistake. The regrets are just mostly further upstream than the moment we tried to steal the boats - I should have anticipated the problem and gone out ahead to make our case to Olwë, I should have pushed harder on developing things that would let us cross the Helcaraxe back in the noontide of Valinor, when the Noldor started forging swords it should have occurred to me to take precautions, to do training, so we knew how to do things other than stab orcs, I should have broken the news of the King's death to Father more gently so it did not nearly kill him...
And even after you hadn't done all that, you shouldn't have tried stealing boats.
We shouldn't have. It... matters to me that it was a costly series of mistakes rather than a costly single one. I have to prevent all future errors in that category and I cannot prevent every mistake but I am very confident I can prevent another Kinslaying precisely because of how many mistakes led us there. But yes.
All of the other mistakes are ones anyone could make, but no one else would try stealing boats.
Do you think that?
Yes!
The people you know would not even consider stealing things that are treasured by others and whose owners might defend them because they'll keep your own people safe?
The Silmaril glitters brightly on his chest.
We gave it back, she says. You burned the boats.
About that I have no nuance to add, no catalogue of subtle failings, no defense at all. We did and it was an unspeakable evil.
But for the Kinslaying you are bursting with nuance.
For the Kinslaying I am bursting mostly with grief. I lost friends that day, people I'd known since early childhood, people who'd helped raise me and helped me raise my little brothers, the people they'd fallen in love with and their children who I'd watched grow up. And we cannot mourn them, not aloud, not - with nuance, because there's something abhorrent about making a crime all about the scars it left on the perpetuators. But it's there. I loved them, and I miss them, and I would answer for their crimes a thousand times over if I could find a place along the way to cry out that if we had given them any good path they would have taken it, that they cannot earn their redemption in this land but - but aren't monsters even without it.
I don't think I blame your people.
Thank you.
You ordered them into a Kinslaying.
An evil at least as great as personally committing one.
And now you are using them to get sympathy for -
No, he says, I'm not; we have just discussed at length that this is not your decision to make, or I would not have mentioned them. I will not use the dead in my defense, but you and I can speak of them, striving as we are to stop Kings from erring terribly.
She frowns. Sighs. Looks at Loki. Lovely topic, isn't it?
I regret it very deeply, it was an awful wrong and an awful crime and a terrible terrible mistake. The regrets are just mostly further upstream than the moment we tried to steal the boats - I should have anticipated the problem and gone out ahead to make our case to Olwë, I should have pushed harder on developing things that would let us cross the Helcaraxe back in the noontide of Valinor, when the Noldor started forging swords it should have occurred to me to take precautions, to do training, so we knew how to do things other than stab orcs, I should have broken the news of the King's death to Father more gently so it did not nearly kill him...
And even after you hadn't done all that, you shouldn't have tried stealing boats.
We shouldn't have. It... matters to me that it was a costly series of mistakes rather than a costly single one. I have to prevent all future errors in that category and I cannot prevent every mistake but I am very confident I can prevent another Kinslaying precisely because of how many mistakes led us there. But yes.
All of the other mistakes are ones anyone could make, but no one else would try stealing boats.
Do you think that?
Yes!
The people you know would not even consider stealing things that are treasured by others and whose owners might defend them because they'll keep your own people safe?
The Silmaril glitters brightly on his chest.
We gave it back, she says. You burned the boats.
About that I have no nuance to add, no catalogue of subtle failings, no defense at all. We did and it was an unspeakable evil.
But for the Kinslaying you are bursting with nuance.
For the Kinslaying I am bursting mostly with grief. I lost friends that day, people I'd known since early childhood, people who'd helped raise me and helped me raise my little brothers, the people they'd fallen in love with and their children who I'd watched grow up. And we cannot mourn them, not aloud, not - with nuance, because there's something abhorrent about making a crime all about the scars it left on the perpetuators. But it's there. I loved them, and I miss them, and I would answer for their crimes a thousand times over if I could find a place along the way to cry out that if we had given them any good path they would have taken it, that they cannot earn their redemption in this land but - but aren't monsters even without it.
I don't think I blame your people.
Thank you.
You ordered them into a Kinslaying.
An evil at least as great as personally committing one.
And now you are using them to get sympathy for -
No, he says, I'm not; we have just discussed at length that this is not your decision to make, or I would not have mentioned them. I will not use the dead in my defense, but you and I can speak of them, striving as we are to stop Kings from erring terribly.
She frowns. Sighs. Looks at Loki. Lovely topic, isn't it?
purposeful_glory
Not exactly flowers and nightingales, but there's no need to change the subject on my account.
I don't know that there's more to say. They did it. They wouldn't do it again. - would you do it again if it had worked?
Maedhros frowns. If we'd gotten away with no one dead? For some reason that was persistently going to be true? Yes, unless I also had the information that time wasn't particularly essential to our odds of winning the war here.
You're pretty bad at repentance.
I really really want the Enemy dead. Of all my faults it seems particularly forgivable.
Maedhros frowns. If we'd gotten away with no one dead? For some reason that was persistently going to be true? Yes, unless I also had the information that time wasn't particularly essential to our odds of winning the war here.
You're pretty bad at repentance.
I really really want the Enemy dead. Of all my faults it seems particularly forgivable.