Chapter Text
"So," Ethiron said to Nessanie as they walked through the bustling, rebuilding city, "Ah. I understand that you must have...diversified....your business, since the end of the Ring War."
Nessanie looked back at the northern Captain, coolly unimpressed but too polite to actually say so. "Tavan," she cautioned her son, "Not too far ahead. The city will not disappear if you do not get to see every street first."
The boy called back an absent affirmative. Ethiron had given the child little thought, beyond it being clear that the blond, blue eyed Boromir had not been Tavan's father. He'd like to ask, but that would be beyond the pale. Implying that the woman was a whore might already have been too much. Ethiron really wasn't accustomed to getting information from women. He was much better with men.
"Several years ago, I was a minstrel." Nessanie eventually replied, her musical voice level and even. "I still sing and play on occasion, but now I also manage the pay of two dozen or so soldiers, including a handful of officers."
"Good work, I suppose, if you can get it." Ethiron answered, wondering if 'sing and play' was a euphemism, and wondering even more how- and why- it was that warriors had come to trust this Gondorian fashion plate with their hard-earned wages. He supposed that it must have been a sinecure from Lord Boromir, but perhaps the lass had earned it. She seemed to truly grieve her lost love.
"It allows me to spend more time with my son. I receive a percentage of the increase between the money they give me, and the amount I turn it into." She looked ahead of him as she spoke, keeping an eye on the dark, bobbing head of her son. Tavan stopped to play with one of the dogs crawling into the rubble of buildings destroyed in the siege, and Nessanie turned to Ethiron, a bit of amusement in her ebony eyes. "Given the recent upheavals, business has been unpredictable, but good."
While Ethiron absorbed that, Nessanie's head snapped forward. "Not one step further, Tavasond!" The boy had been about to follow the canine back into the collapsed building, but he did quickly obey. Ethiron's eyes widened, both at how quickly the child had been about to wander into danger and at his full name.
"You named your son after the Lord of the Lebennin's fallen heir?" He asked Nessanie incredulously.
"I named my son after his father." She met his eyes when she said it, and he felt like a fool. There was power of personality behind those eyes, power and and intelligence and self-control as well as grief.
"Young Lord Tavasond must have been a better man than his father." He offered gruffly, in both condolence and apology.
Nessanie's fair features became troubled. "Yes." She replied shortly.
So far as Ethiron had been able to absorb, Tavan's grandfather, the Lord Tarsten of the Lebennin, was a windbag and possibly a coward. He was clearly no friend to Lord Faramir, and probably had not been one to Lord Boromir, either. Whatever Boromir's faults, Ethiron acknowledged that he had been a brave man, and one dedicated to Gondor. The Lord of the Lebennin, on the other hand, had shown up nearly a week late to the Battle of the Pelennor with his levies, and at that they had been undermanned.
Nessanie interrupted Ethiron's musings by calling her son back again. This time young Tavan had been distracted by a street minstrel. Ethiron began to wonder whether they sold leashes for children.
He figured that wasn't the right question to ask, either. Instead, he inquired about Minas Tirith's recovery from the siege. Nessa indulged him readily, showing a surprising knowledge of the underpinnings of the economy of Gondor's capitol. Ethiron's respect for Nessa continued to grow, as every time he plumbed her for more personal information about Faramir, she expertly evaded the question. Tavan assisted her in that endeavor by running around like a may fly, and providing a multitude of distractions. Ethiron supposed that the late Lord Tavasond must have been a very energetic fellow.
"I'm impressed that you know so much of what is going on in the city, Mistress Nessanie." Ethiron complimented her matter-of-factly, "You must have returned to Minas Tirith mere days after the battle ended." The women and children had been evacuated from Minas Tirith before the battle began. Some of the city's boys, even some as young as the ten year old Bergil, son of Beregrond, had stayed in the city, to run messages and fetch and carry for the defenders.
"I never left." Nessanie replied evenly.
Ethiron raised a skeptical eyebrow. If Boromir had yet lived, he certainly would have wanted his light o' love safely away from the fighting.
Nessanie was not in the slightest bit fazed. Steady on, she explained, "The people of the city know whose lady I am. Or rather, was. Still, my having stayed, to roll bandages, and cook, and carry water and oil, lent many others faith that there might still be hope."
"False hope." Ethiron had to point out, although he was impressed again despite himself. Boromir's leman had a backbone of steel. The city could have fallen at any time, and a woman as attractive as Mistress Nessanie would likely have found a particularly unhappy fate. The thought bothered him, of course it did. But he was surprised by how very much it bothered him.
Nessanie smiled faintly. "Perhaps. Perhaps not."
"And your son?" Ethiron asked, looking around for the boy who had disappeared again.
"Get down from the instrument-maker's roof, ion-nin." Nessanie called to him, without missing a beat.
"But, Mama! I nearly caught that pigeon." Tavan objected, though he slid down the stone gutter quickly enough.
Ethiron stopped still for a moment, wondering what on earth the boy would want with a pigeon.
"And what were you going to DO with the poor bird, my love?" Nessanie asked, fondly bemused.
"I think it's a lost messenger pigeon!" Tavas enthused. "I was going to take it back to Master Leithion at the Citadel Mews."
"We shall send him a message about the sighting." Nessa said calmly. The boy accepted that with a pleased nod, as if proud of his mother for being so clever. Than he took off again, skipping up to a pair of carpenters cutting wood to shore up a damaged store.
"Surely he is too young for war." Ethiron murmured.
"Surely he is, as are many others." Nessanie agreed, "However, Tavan would not leave me. Tavan takes after his brave father, and he idolized bold Boromir. Neither would have left the city. Nor did my son."
"A wise mother might insist." Ethiron pointed out, not unkindly.
Nessanie tilted her chin, stubborn and proud. "I know my son, Captain Ethiron. I knew that the best I could do in this situation was to know where he was. He worked mostly at my side, and when not with me, with Bergil and the other lads but a few years older than him, who stayed. They were as well looked out for, as possible. If I had fallen and he had lived, Faramir and his Dol Amroth kin would have seen to it that Tavan was well cared-for."
Ethiron wasn't quite sure what to say to that. It turned out that he didn't have to say anything.
"MAMA!" Tavan screamed, from just out of sight. Ethiron started running towards the child's voice only a breath after Nessanie. Mother she was, but he had learned to run in a hard school. He reached the boy just before she did.
Tavan's dark brown eyes were wide with fright. Ethiron wondered what could have so shaken this sturdy lad.
"There's a boom stick, inside a hole in the stairs." The boy whispered to his mother. "Come quickly, but lightly." With that he took off again, running as carefully as a young wolf over deep snow.
Ethiron's heart had caught in his chest. He was VERY familiar with many types of explosives. Elladan Elrondion was somewhat of an expert when it came to anything that went 'boom,' and he'd taught the northern Dunedain well. Ethiron hesitated even to think of the damage that a bomb could cause in the tightly packed tiers of Minas Tirith.
Nessa followed after her son, similarly light of foot. Ethiron cursed under his breath and had no choice but to follow, at least until he could catch up with the woman and child he'd been charged to protect and hurry them elsewhere.
Tavan was in the center of a knot of people, gathered around a ruined cellar. Taking a look around the place, Ethiron deemed that the cellar might have been a secret passageway, running under the stair from the fifth level of the city. Whatever it had been, the entrance was mostly blocked now. A lantern had been rigged beside a narrow opening, at the end of which could be seen a familiar shape. It was a semi-cylindrical iron vessel, inside of which would be several chambers. The first would have fire-powder, and the second lamp oil. Down the center of the metal cylinder would run a fuse, and a flint. Normally, a boom-stick, as the boy had called it, would be stable enough to be carried in a ceramic case lined with sheep's wool from one place to another, before being thrown at an enemy. But Ethiron recognized this type of bomb as one which was intended to go off with much lighter pressure. Just joggling it might even be enough. Dropping it on the floor would certainly ignite it. And it stood on the edge of a step, surrounded by debris from buildings which had been destroyed by the boulders rained down by the enemy trebuchets.
"Clear out, Mistress Nessanie, and take your son." Ethiron ordered quietly. He might have been speaking to the wind, for all the mind she paid him.
"You!" She called to a gangly young man with potting clay on his hands, "Bring me a wide, deep crock with a lid, and one just a size smaller."
Ethiron wondered if every acquaintance of the Lord Steward's was infuriating. But the woman obviously wasn't leaving, and the problem needed to be dealt with. At least she had a hand on her wandering son.
"Is there a weaver amongst you?" He called to the gathering crowd.
"There is one who has a stall beside my husband's store." A woman called out.
"Go." Ethiron commanded her, "Tell him that we need a basket of wool, payment to be delivered later. Then the northern Dunedain captain began to wonder how to clear out most of the on-lookers, including his erstwhile charges, Mistress Nessanie and her peripatetic son. An armed man showed up with two fellows, the crowd parting around them.
"Captain Salabros," Nessanie greeted the tall, spare man.
"Mistress." He replied with a brief, respectful nod, his intelligent gray eyes surveying the scene. "Another one?" He asked, as he gave the men with him orders to clear out the citizens within the immediate area.
Ethiron felt like hitting his head. "There are MORE?"
"We found several others on this level." Salabros said levelly, stepping over to peer into the narrow hole in the rubble and then wincing. "None this compromised, or so challenging to retrieve."
"The reserve officer in charge of defense for this level of the city died during the Battle." Nessanie explained, sotto voice, to Ethiron, "If he'd lived, he would have been able to coordinate their removal."
Ethiron felt like holding his head again. "You lot put bombs in your own city ON PURPOSE?" This particular one would have collapsed the gate down to the fourth level of the city, making traversing the two levels practically impossible for armed men - or orcs. Ethiron eyed the set-up more thoughtfully.
"We of Minas Tirith know other ways around." Nessanie said, kneeling down to assess the entrance to the bomb's uneasy resting place. "The invading army, on the other hand, would have found the collapsed gate a greater obstacle, had they made their way this far."
"An' they had some of us set to ignite them, if the orcs got in. To kill more of the enemies, when they went by the gate." Tavan told Ethiron, wiggling around his mother to get closer to the tunnel to the bomb. Ethiron nodded absently as he got a hand into the boy's collar to yank him back. Setting a fire on a long fuse towards one of the unexploded bombs would cause it to ignite, and give a nimble man - or, evidently, boy - time to get away.
The boy tried to pull away for a moment, then shrugged and let the northern Captain hold onto his tunic. "Have your men extend the perimeter another 200 yards further away." Ethiron curtly instructed Captain Salabros. "And have someone go into the townhomes and businesses and put out any fires in all of the intervening buildings."
Salabros gave Ethiron a weighing look. Ethiron didn't flinch. He'd been managing explosives for Elladan Elrondion and the northern Dunedain for over sixty years. If anyone in this crowd - anyone in this city- had more experience with the blasted things, then Ethiron would eat his own tunic. Salabros evidently saw some of that, since he nodded and bade his men to do as Ethiron had dictated.
Ethiron and Salabros knelt down to examine the access to the partially collapsed stairway.
"A grown man wouldn't fit." Ethiron noted. The hole was small enough that even a youth of fourteen or fifteen would have trouble. Moving the rubble to better the access would be cursedly dangerous, given the precarious position of the bomb.
Salabros cursed quietly, but didn't disagree.
"I'll do it!" Tavan volunteered, wiggling expertly out of Ethiron's loosened hold and straight towards the hole in the rubble.
"No!" Nessanie cried, as she tried to grab her son. Salabros cursed, also reaching out a hand to catch the child. But it was Ethiron who was fast enough to snag the boy around his waist and return him to his mother. Ethiron couldn't help applying a firm swat to the seat of the child's bottom as he did so.
"Thank you, Captain Ethiron." Nessanie gasped, throwing her arms around the child.
"But I can help!" Tavan protested. "I can fit in there, and get the boom-stick. Properly, I mean. You can lower me with a rope, and I'll be careful."
Nessa's lips tightened and her face turned white, but no one immediately rejected the offer, to Ethiron's horror.
"No." He told the boy. "In fact, you take your mother away from here." Maybe putting the one in charge of the other would work to keep them both safe.
Nessanie took a steadying breath. Again ignoring Ethiron in favor of her son, she knelt to look the boy in the eye. "I hope that we can find someone better suited, Tav. A little older, I hope." Nessanie eyed the hole herself, as if measuring by eye whether or not she would fit. Fortunately, she came to the right conclusion, which spared Ethiron the trouble of pointing out some vulgar if true things about her voluptuous chest and wide hips, despite her general slim elegance.
The slight patter of running feet brought Ethiron and Salabros to their feet, ready to quietly snap a command to 'walk, curse it all.' When the Gondorian saw who it was - two boys who looked just slightly older than Tavan, one of them the pick-pocket from the day before - Salabros sighed in relief. So did Ethiron.
Both volunteered. The pickpocket was Beren, and gave no father-name. Ethiron hadn't known his own father's name until he was two years old, so he knew better than to ask. The other was Bergil, son of Beregond, the guard who had risked execution to save Lord Faramir from his father's pyre. Ethiron didn't particularly want to send either of them down after the bomb, but at least Beren claimed to be twelve and looked like he might be.
Ethiron and Salabros carefully tied a rope about the boy's waist, and lowered him down. Nessanie had sent the protesting Tavan away with one of Salabros' men, but she remained herself. While the men helped the boy Beren down into the ruined stair case and Bergil crouched beside them, ready to be dropped down if Beren found trouble, Nessanie carefully constructed the ceramic pots and the sheep's wool into a 'safe box,' of sorts, for the bomb. Elladan had better ones - made of special metals developed over several thousand years by the alchemists, smiths, and craftsmen of Imladris. But from what Ethiron could see, Nessanie was doing quite a competent job with the materials to hand.
Fortunately, Beren managed to bring up the incendiary device without setting it off, and Ethiron himself delicately handled it into the wool-lined bed of the pot. Salabros carefully took it from him, "We'll take it down to the river. We're getting good at this part." He related grimly.
Ethiron nodded tightly and left the man to it. Faramir's pick for command of Minas Tirith's temporary civilian guard was evidently a good one. Ethiron heaved an inadvertent sigh of relief, and turned to offer Minstress Nessanie his arm. "To the Captain's, then?"
Her dark eyes laughed, though her expression stayed solemn and grave. "Yes." She agreed. "Barring further distractions, of course."
Ethiron couldn't help but smile at her. After their recent experience, he felt like he'd made a friend. And a female one. He didn't have many of those, and most of those who remained were elves.
Tavan made to dart off again, ruining the moment. The crowds were heavier than they had been before their stop, and Nessanie reached for her son, just missing his shoulder. Ethiron sighed and scooped the boy up. Tavan yelped indignantly.
"If I let you down, will you stay with us instead of wandering off again?" Ethiron asked levelly.
Tavan glared at him, but nodded. Nessanie didn't look pleased at the northerner's interference, but she let it go. Her son took her hand of his own volition, with a 'so there' look for Ethiron.
They did have to stop again. Evidently it was necessary for Nessanie to buy pastries for Captain Arnaut and his family, since she would be imposing on their hospitality (even at Lord Faramir's instigation). Ethiron tried not to show his impatience. If this meander through the city took much longer, than he would be late to meet his contact and interview the one of his network's Minas Tirith informants who had actually been up to date on Faramir's impressive amount of influence in the White City.
Instead of dwelling on that, Ethiron spent his thoughts on reevaluating his previous impression of the people of Minas Tirith. Soft, he'd thought them. A great people whose time had passed. Not as practical nor as hardy as the remains of Arnor, Ethiron's people, who dwelt in small villages so as to avoid the predations of the Enemy, while the people of Minas Tirith huddled in their stone city and dreamed their dreams of past glory.
He had not expected what the people of Minas Tirith had been willing to do to their own city in the late battle. Not even to fight their Enemy in hopes of saving their own skin, but even once that hope had died. What the people of Minas Tirith had been willing to do just to hamper the Enemy. To make taking the White City a costlier prize. And it hadn't been just the soldiers and men of the city, but the women and the children, too. Including this woman and child. Aye, the northerner captain would see through his charge from the Steward, even if it made him late. Not just for Faramir, but out of respect for Nessanie and Tavan as well.
A warrior and a spy for most of his life, Ethiron kept a good eye on their surroundings. If Faramir had wanted a truly competent guardian for his late brother's mistress and her offspring on their way to a safe haven elsewhere in the city, he could hardly have found a better one. Ethiron was pretty sure that Faramir knew that, and it made Ethiron more alert than the bright day and the happy, busy crowds would otherwise merit.
A stir moved through the crowd, as people made room for a rather officious fellow and his retinue. Ethiron paid careful attention, anticipating another opportunity to learn more about the cast of players in the city which was Gondor's heart. His interest piqued when he noticed that individual at the center of the hub bub was Lord Tarsten of the Lebennin, the grandfather of Tavan. And more significantly, from Ethiron's point of view, one of the Lords who had made clear, in the previous day's council meeting, his opposition to young Faramir. Tarsten himself had been quiet on the question of the Returned King, but there were many things about the man which Ethiron did not trust.
Nesssanie stopped, beside him, moving their little threesome subtly out of the way. Ethiron watched with interest. This man was the grandfather of the small boy who clutched her hand. Surely she - and her child - had nothing to fear from him.
Lord Tarsten froze when he saw them. His lips moved, although they couldn't hear the sound from where they stood. Ethiron could read lips, though. From Nessanie's infinitesimal flinch, he thought that she perhaps could, too. 'Whore,' the Lord had said. 'The whore and her spawn.' The boy stood still, reading his mother's tension, if nothing else. Ethiron hoped, nothing else.
The Lord swept away without formally acknowledging them. Nessanie exhaled, the tiniest sigh of relief. If Ethiron were not a trained observer of men, he wouldn't have noticed it.
For a moment, he marveled at this woman. How contained and yet simultaneously powerful this she was. In this whole difficult morning, he hadn't once seen her actually challenge anyone. Instead, she just DID whatever it was she thought needed doing. People like that were rare, and Ethiron spared a moment to think what an excellent Steward's Lady that Nessanie Saelasiel would have made, if her father hadn't been a common minstrel. Aragorn wouldn't have cared, if Boromir had lived and cared to marry this one. It made Ethiron think better of Lord Boromir, if this was the woman he'd chosen and the type of son he'd had a hand in raising.
"I would hope," Nessanie said softly, "That you would take certain...imprecations, which you might hear from certain persons, with a grain of salt." Ah. So the lass could, indeed, read lips.
"I have eyes, Mistress." Ethiron answered her solidly. "I look at you, and see a somber young mother and business woman. He, on the other hand, seems a worthless blowhard, Lord though he may be."
Startled, Nessanie's dark eyes met his own. Hers showed pleasure, joy unexpected like the moon breaking through the clouds. Ethiron wondered at how much that affected him, and how he might make her eyes smile at him again.
Fortunately for Ethiron's peace of mind, the boy broke the tension. "Captain Arnaut!" Tavan cried happily, running forward to embrace the grizzled old seaman.
"Well, hello, lad!" The white-haired captain replied with a laugh, catching Tavan and swinging him around. He was a remarkably spry man for his age, Ethiron noted.
Ethiron saw his charges settled with Faramir's garrulous merchant friend, and then headed off to make his next appointment, thoughts of Nessanie's smile still distracting him.