The faint smell of a fire rouses Filigereth from her own thoughts as Breigalph puts one foot in front of the other across the endless plain. No signs of struggle, no spreading smoke – not Orcs, then, or brigands, and she has already passed the outskirts of one peaceful hamlet today, with the next closest still farther away than a half-day’s travel. Nestled up against the cliff face in a rare wooded area is a camp, a shaggy pony on a picket munching contentedly.
A low growl comes from beside the fire, a wolf-dog snarling at the intrusion. And next to it…the white-haired bounty hunter who’d arrived in Rohan with the Order’s courier. It seemed an age ago now. She’d only briefly heard the rumors about the woman that had floated around the stables and soldiers’ tents – a horrible scar that forced her to cover her face, some fantastical stories about pirates and assassins and stolen children and even black magic.
“I’m glad you made it away from there.” The woman, who looks to be nearing middle age (as judged by a girl of four-and-twenty, so perhaps not so very old at all), has a rich alto voice and a lilting foreign accent, the cowl that had usually covered everything below her eyes pulled loose around her neck. The scar is really not as bad as people had made it sound, a silvery-pink burn mark that begins on the woman’s lower lip and travels down her throat, the texture making it look almost like a snake writhing in the firelight.
“You know me?”
“I was you, once.”
As if sensing Filigereth’s confusion at the cryptic statement, the woman continues.
“Some man’s pet project. A novelty to him, to take something weak and wind it up and watch it fight. He could make you into whatever he wanted, and because such men have no imagination and even less idea of beauty, he wanted to make you something which could never overthrow him and never threaten his security.”
Perhaps she was not so much untrustworthy as she was unwilling to believe nonsense. Perhaps you had to be, if you were going to survive as a woman in a man’s profession. They had not liked her because she was not mindlessly loyal, Filigereth realizes, and it would have been her fate as well had she stayed. She clears her throat.
“I did ask to learn.”
“But did he teach you? Did he show you how and why not to be afraid, or did he simply tell you not to be and expect that to be enough? Did he teach you how to be your own person, or did he make you into what he wanted?”
Even though Fil knows the answer, it stings to hear it from someone else, to realize that it had been that obvious to anyone with half a brain and a touch more life experience.
“He wanted the boy back. I was just…in the meantime.”
“I know.”
The two women sit across the fire from each other in silence, watching the embers dance up, sparkle, and fall.
“You said you were like me once. Where did you go…after? What did you do?” Filigereth begins, trying to decide whether the woman scares or interests her. Both, in equal measures, and a third feeling that she can’t place yet.
“Away. I ran. I couldn’t trust myself not to go back. Anyone – even if they only saw me as a tool – seemed better than no one at all. So I learned to survive on my own, to need no one, and to read men like writing. I spent my time studying people rather than seeking their approval. And fate was kinder to me than it is to many. The more you learn to see the worst in men, the more the few truly good ones become obvious.” The woman smiles into the fire as though there is something else to be seen there, invisible to everyone but herself.
“If you’re such a judge of character, what about me?”
Eyes flicking up, the woman regards the girl through the flames for a minute that feels much longer, light hair and light eyes seeming to reflect the firelight. She begins slowly, her voice low and steady like the crash of the sea on a calm day.
“Idealistic. Naive. Impulsive. Emotional. Unsure. Sheltered as to just how vulnerable you are. Desperate for the approval of anyone you compare to your father. You feel woefully inadequate at anything you try – too rough for a nobleman’s daughter, too refined for a sellsword. You feel like a ghost, already half-gone but clinging to what memories remain this side of the veil. You love those you have left behind, even when they do not deserve it. You do not know who you are, little bird, and it is tearing you in two, but you are too afraid to live and be hurt and so you choose a cause you think will kill you instead.”
For once Filigereth, usually always in possession of a witty reply or scathing comeback, has nothing with which to defend herself. The corner of the older woman’s mouth twitches, just slightly, into a smile — kind, and more than a little sad. “You asked. And you remind me of myself.”
Fair enough. She had asked.
“Where did the scar come from? People…they said it meant you had been a criminal.”
“Every pearl has a grain of sand at its heart, and every lie has a grain of truth.” The woman raises one eyebrow, amused rather than offended by the curiosity, though obviously not amused enough to answer. “Where will you go now, little bird?”
“There’s nothing at home for me. West, maybe.”
“Don’t go west. There’s nothing there either except more of the same.”
“Maybe I’ll get on a ship and see how far the sea goes. Or further east. Keep walking until I fall off the edge of the earth.”
“You can try. Never fell off anything myself that there wasn’t more earth at the bottom of. Decide tomorrow. Rest tonight.”
Fil hesitates, glancing over her shoulder at Breigalph and back to the woman. She feels more at ease around this woman and her cryptic way of speaking than she ever did in her time with that cult-like circle, but a stranger is a stranger, however much one wants to pry their secrets from them.
“You don’t have anything I want and no one’s paid me to want you dead. You’re safer here than alone.”
The third feeling, Filigereth realizes, is relief.
“Thank you…”
“Jacik. It rhymes with basic in this tongue, but don’t ask me how to spell it, because I never learned how.” The woman snorts, scratching behind the dog’s ears as she crosses one leg over the other. “Let your horse have a rest. I’ll take the first watch.”
Filigereth nods, and the women each go about their own business in a comfortable quiet, the evening shadows growing long and low around the little camp.
Rest tonight. Decide tomorrow. Perhaps their paths would intersect for a little while longer, and then the decision could be delayed again.
When sleep comes, Filigereth dreams of walking along the court promenade in Dol Amroth, watching the ships go by as she had when she was small. She leans over the edge, her foot slips, and it turns out that the edge of the world had been closer than she thought.
