the sound of scales
Lithwaloth Mornion investigates a murder in Hollin. A Silmarillion/LOTR fic for @urloth- here there be OCs.
---
Word came that a body had been found, and Lithwaloth knew.
He didn't question how he knew, and he tucked the knowledge away as he was led by the least-populated route to the long hallway that led to the store rooms, abandoned now for Hollin and her gem smiths had outgrown them in favor of newer, better-lit shelving.
"We apologize for the inconvenience," the City Captain said, though she didn't look at that sorry. "but he was last seen in your company."
Lithwaloth could have read something there but he didn't. Instead he moved past the younger guards who had been keeping out foot traffic, what little could be found.
The body was slumped by a wall, half-curled. One hand was out, palm flat and fingers clawed against the stone floor. The other was clenched in a fist over a red bloom that had wept into the grout.
Lithwaloth did not need to kneel and interrupt the investigators, but he did. He did not need to turn the body with a hand carefully covered by a piece of cloth, but he did.
He did not need to look into the lifeless maroon eyes of his cousin Sila, but he did.
Lithwaloth sat on his heels and listened to the world slow down. He observed in a distant way that the blood on the floor was looped strangely, that Sila was holding his hand strangely.
Lithwaloth opened his hand and took what he held; none stopped him.
Sila was still smiling- that wry, half-mad grin.
"Lord Healer," asked a warden, hesitant and afraid, "You knew him?"
"I did." Lithwaloth said, and stood back up.
---
"I am truly sorry for your loss." Celebrimbor said and Lithwaloth almost believed him. He gave the Lord of Hollin a long, cool look and said, "This investigation is mine now."
No one argued. Lithwaloth had known they would not. One less tatyar in the world- even now- was nothing to cry over.
---
Lithwaloth visited the dusty corridor many times in the next month as he waited for the north wind to bring him Duol. With his underlings, with escorts, alone, he went until the blood had been washed away.
He thought of it- of Sila alone against some unknown assailant.
He'd probably deserved it- finally cheated someone who wasn't going to let go, who wasn't fooled by the witchery of his Voice. There were many good elves, men and dwarves dead beneath the sea and land who had crossed Sila, or hadn't amused him, or had tried to get the justice he owed them.
Sila never paid what was owed, not when he could take. This was a long time coming.
Still.
Still, he had been.
Family.
And he had lived so long, despite the danger he created and courted. Lithwaloth had thought that after Beleriand went to sleep beneath the waves- yet Sila had survived even that, riding a stolen horse with a maelstrom gleaming in his teeth.
---
A diamond.
that had been what Sila died holding- a pure and perfect diamond, unspeakably radiant in its cut and shine. perhaps he had been smuggling them. Perhaps a gem smith had taken offense to their stores lightening.
There had been a fight. Nafaer confirmed that, their gaze hooded and grim. Nafaer the wulfenite knew battle like cats knew coming rain. Sila had defensive wounds, had drawn in close in the end- to cut the throat, as was his habit, with the little snub bladed dagger he'd always claimed to have won off a dwarf king?
Fat lot of good it had done him.
Lithwaloth danced through the motions. Sila was no whelp, no stranger to fights. Had his opponent been bigger, stronger? Had he been too fast?
There was an answer but Lithwaloth couldn't see it. Gray fog had clouded his head and his mind. He found himself sitting before the fire, drinking tea, and remembering the sound of a lyre.
Sila had played with all the beauty of the outside world, never once showing that ugly soul.
---
Sila had known he would lose.
This Lithwaloth concluded as word came that a rider on a pale horse wearing a blue shawl was approaching. The north wind blew, and Duol stalked past noble and hostler alike, and his eyes were not dry.
Duol had more mercy in him than Lithwaloth ever had. He had loved Sila, in spite of…
everything.
"I can't find him." He said to Lithwaloth that evening over sketches of the scene, staring into his cup. "He can't have gone far, but Litsewe- I can't find him."
This was worrisome, indeed; for the dead could not hide from Duol Lowion.
"He knew his opponent was going to win," Lithwaloth said. "He drew them in on purpose."
"Sila was not suicidal." Duol said.
Lithwlaoth shook his head. "He was outmatched. He made a choice."
"A choice for what?" Duol cried and Lithwaloth could feel his frustration, tangible as a thick treacle. On the Shadowed Paths, there were many forks; if Duol could not find Sila soon..
A choice for what.
For what?
---
"It doesn't look like a random spatter." Duol said to Lithwaloth, tracing the drawing of the blood that streaked the floor. "Look. Do you see them?"
Lithwaloth squinted.
Not serati, no. Not cirth, either. Something even earlier, a child's game designed by a beloved cousin on the lakeshore. Make sounds into pictures. Do my name next, Rog!
Lithwaloth traced his dead cousin's blood.
"Snake." He murmured. "Grass."
---
Sila had hated his mother name. It was truthful and ugly and blunt, everything Sila was not or did not want to be. He had fought to leave it behind and for good or ill many had let him.
Lithwaloth never had, and Sila had never forgiven him for it.
"What is the point?" Lithwaloth asked his dead cousin's corpse, wrapped and prepared. They would be the only family at the pyre; Sila had not spoken to his siblings or their families in centuries, and his father was not well enough to make the journey.
Lithwaloth held the diamond in his pocket and watched Duol wrap Sila's beautiful, crooked face.
---
Snake.
Grass.
Why?
That was the question that burrowed like a boring insect in the wood of Lithwaloth's exhausted mind. Why? Why would Sila- who had hated his mothername so much- leave it as his final words? Why would he write it not in sindarin or cirth but in the picture letters Rog had created so long ago? For someone as bombastic as Sila had been, someone as prideful and vain and demanding, it was hardly a fitting epitaph.
Why had Thurlhug written his name?
Duol slept fitfully, tossing and turning. Lithwaloth watched him. Duol had eaten Sila's ashes. He hadn't asked Lithwaloth to, but he hadn't turned his back either.
It was Duol's small revenge, perhaps. Maybe Lithwaloth deserved it. After all, he had cared for Duol through all of his fits and starts, had worked long and hard to understand.
He…could admit a certain lapse in such study and compassion, where Sila had been concerned.
"He left that message for you," Duol had said, and Lithwaloth was forced to admit that his cousin was probably right. That didn't answer the question. If it was a message, why?
Lithwaloth opened a book and found the words swimming on the page. This happened more now that he was older. Words and days sometimes got away from him.
Words.
Snake.
Grass.
Sitting in the dark Lithwaloth who once was Litsewe mouthed the words over and over until they ceased to be a name and became a description, a statement, a truth.
Snake in the grass.
The diamond in Sila's clawed hand had been of unusual clarity and brilliance. It had been perfect. A radient, perfect...
gift.
---
There was no bringing Sila's murderer to justice and Lithwaloth made peace with this.
One couldn't go accusing the beloved pet maiar of the Lord of Hollin of being a-
Well.
Still Lithwaloth watched and he watched and as he watched a conversation returned to him, a warning his cousin had given regarding a recruit before departing at the tip of a warden's sword.
"Watch that little one with the braids."
"Why?"
Sila had smiled.
"You can't con a con man, Litsewe."
He had died with that same smile on his beautiful crooked face.
Lithwaloth made preparations to leave Hollin. Sila could have cared less about the pretty gem smiths, the great city of Khazad Dum, the wealth of mithril. His message had been for one elf alone, and he had died to give it.
---
On the Shadowed Paths, where night and day bore children with teeth, Duol Lowion embraced his dead cousin and whispered, "I thought I'd lost you."
"You could never lose me, Duol." Sila said. "Is he leaving?"
Duol nodded. "Soon."
"Good. Too much to hope he'll avenge me. Would be stupid."
"Stupid as confronting a corrupted Maiar?"
"Just about that stupid." Sila grinned. "Won't think I'm worth avenging, anyway."
Duol sighed. "Maybe."
"Ever the peacekeeper, you are." Sila said. "I think I'm sorry about that."
"It doesn't matter if you are. Let me guide you, Sila. It's a long journey."
"I know, Duol. And I'm fine."
"Sila, it's dangerous here."
"That's half the fun."
"Sila-"
"Go on, Cousin." Sila said, "it must be cold here."
Duol bit his lip, wrapped his shawl a little tighter. He looked around and said, "If you follow the far fork, you'll reach the mansion of an old friend. He might help you, if you ask nicely."
"When have I ever asked nicely?"
"You know how. Sila?"
"Yes?"
"I'm going to miss you."
"You know it's funny, Duol. I think I'm going to miss you, too."
---
Lithwaloth Mornion, called Litsewe, sat at the head of a train of wains and opened a small muslin bag.
He tipped its contents- gray and dusty- into his palm.
The horses pulled forward. His healers rode from Hollin.
Lithwaloth Mornion ate Thurlhug's ashes, and bid his cousin goodbye with a fine diamond hanging from his left earlobe.
