The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster  

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The Tea Gardens

LAST TIME ON The Mirror Crack'd: A thrall was welcomed into Himring, and Fingon named him Anniavas, "gift of autumn."

THIS WEEK: Maedhros gives Anniavas a task, and Anniavas does his best to learn about his new home.

No major chapter warnings for this one.

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After an initial few days spent aching and miserable in bed, Anniavas healed swiftly.  Apart from his eye, he had not been terribly injured.  The strange artifact in his back appeared quiescent.  Soon the Lord of Himring pronounced him well enough to get up and move about.  He reiterated that Anniavas could leave if he so desired.

“No, thank you,” Anniavas said, soft and polite.  He was still unsure if the offer was genuine, a test of loyalty, or some strange combination of both.  He had already tried to kneel, but the Lord of Himring said he would not have anyone kneeling to him.  “Is there no—work for me here?”

“There’s work.  Plenty of it.”

Menial labor, probably.  A shard of pride, hidden deep within Anniavas, reared its head rebelliously, but he quashed it ruthlessly.  He had come here with nothing, he had been succored, and he owed a life debt to both the Lord of Himring and the Elf named Finno.  No matter how skilled he had been before—if he had been skilled—he was nothing, here.  (No—not nothing.  Anniavas.)

“What would you have me do?”

“What are your skills?”

Anniavas swallowed, tensing, and hunched his shoulders forward.  “I—I do not know, my—Lord of Himring.”

A swift pause.  “You don’t remember,” the Lord of Himring said.  His voice never changed in tone, but it had grown slightly quieter.

He could not force the words past his lips, but he nodded.

“Ah.”  The Lord of Himring turned abruptly away from Anniavas, sitting unmoored and fearful on the edge of the bed, and crossed to the window.  “I see.”

“I’m certain I can still be useful!” Anniavas blurted before he had the chance to think about what he was saying.

The Lord of Himring stood for an instant, staring out.  “I’m sure you can be,” he agreed, in the same tone and at the same pace as always.  The rabbit-quick beat of Anniavas’s heart evened out slightly.  “I hadn’t realized that Finno’s name for you—would you prefer to name yourself?”

Sudden sharp pain stabbed directly through his chest.  Am I not a gift?  He tried to answer, but his throat closed on the words.  There was only the soft sound of his choked breathing.

After a moment, the Lord of Himring turned and looked at him.  “Ah,” he said again, easily.  “If you like it, you may keep it.  Finno is very good at names.  He calls me Russandol.”

“Please,” Anniavas(?) choked out.  “I will do anything you ask of me, Lord of Himring, if only I can keep this one thing.”

A heavy breath.  “I ask nothing of you, Anniavas.”

The terrible roaring began to fade slowly from his ears.  His lungs expanded with one breath and then another.

“Freedom is fearful, I know,” the Lord of Himring said.  “Moreso, perhaps, when your soul and not your mind remembers captivity.”

My soul remembers nothing.  What memories he had were nothing more than a disparate collection of truths, impersonal—worse, disordered.  Anniavas could not be sure if, grasping for a relevant piece of information, he would find it, or if the hand of his mind would come back empty.  He closed his lips together and nodded mutely.

He was not sure if the Lord of Himring took this sign of agreement as sufficient, or if he simply did not want to bother punishing someone for a small deviation, but either way, he moved the conversation onward.

“So you don’t know what your skills are, which means you will have to rediscover them,” he said, in that same impossibly-measured tone of voice.  “Are you aware of having any preferences?”

Not having to answer needless questions.  Anniavas froze in horror at the thought, ducking his head.  Surely the Lord of Himring could not overlook that.

And yet—he could, or unlike whatever Anniavas had known previously, he did not have the trick of seeing into another’s mind.  “No,” he whispered, after a moment.  “No preferences, Lord of Himring.”

Another pause.  The Lord of Himring was very still, and it occurred to Anniavas that this was not what he expected from a lord, but from a slave.  One remained still, so as to remain unnoticed.  Yet he could find no information suggesting that the Lord of Himring had ever been a thrall, as he claimed.  Still—his perceptions had been more trustworthy thus far than his memories, so perhaps he must simply take the lord at his word.  But then, why should any ex-thrall try to help another?  Either you chose to return, or you chose to run as far away as you could.

“I suggest the gardens,” the Lord of Himring said into the stillness, scattering Anniavas’s thoughts.

He was so startled that he responded automatically, “The gardens, my lord?”

“I believe the lower west tea-garden has need of another pair of hands.  And in my experience, being surrounded by growing things is a boon for an ex-thrall.  Also—Lord of Himring, if you please.”

“Lord of Himring,” Anniavas corrected himself hurriedly.  

Why?  Why will you not be my lord?  Perhaps he had not yet proven himself sufficiently.  But if that was the case, why was Maedhros not angrier when he failed to remember it?  He reminded himself that it was not his place to question his—to question the lord of the fortress in which he found himself.  His thoughts buzzed around, hard to control.  Had they ever been so?

Irrelevant.  He took a long, deep breath, and pushed away the doubt.  The Lord of Himring had given him a task.  “The gardens, Lord of Himring.  I will do as you say.”

“As I ask, Anniavas.” Maedhros turned away from the window.  His scarred face remained expressionless, his voice monotonous, but his shoulders stooped slightly, and Anniavas realized he was deliberately avoiding eye contact.  “As I ask.”

* * *

A chilly early-morning wind went down the back of Anniavas’s neck, and he slouched forward.  Himring’s quartermaster, a grim Elf who went by the name of Palandin, had given him a heavy wool cloak, old but well-made, and told him to start wearing it when the days grew colder.  He would have to start soon, but something inside him rebelled at using such fine material except at greatest need.  Besides, it was scratchy.

Perhaps he should have worn it this morning, though.  He hadn’t realized until he was already skirting around the inside of Himring’s western wall that a gentle rain was falling, quiet but icy-cold.  He could have avoided it by cutting through the stables, but the stables housed not only the large horses with their alarmingly sharp hooves and rolling eyes, but also the kennels where the hunting-hounds slept.  Anniavas did not know why, but the very thought of approaching the hounds made his breath stop and the hairs go up on the back of his neck.  No, it was much easier to leave a little earlier from the dormitory into which he had recently been moved and go right around the walls to reach the west tea garden.

This was his third day working there.  The gardens were housed in a small glass enclosure, warmed by sunlight when possible, but more often by a complex system of furnaces emitting heated steam.  It was not just tea, actually—there were rows upon rows of green and growing things—many of them not rooted in the earth but in tightly-packed shelves of rocks, with long strings running from the shelves into a nutrient-rich broth.  

Melweril, the head of the gardens, had called them wicks when showing Anniavas around the greenhouse for the first time.  In addition to the plants, there were bright jewels ringing the top of the enclosure, which shone with the light of the Sun whenever the day was cloudy.  Anniavas’s fingers itched to pick them apart and understand how they worked.  (Fëanorian lamps, the Lord of Himring had called them.  They were mostly reserved for the gardens—the rest of the fortress was lit with guttering torchlight.)

By the time he arrived at the greenhouse, he was wet and sneezing, which he felt was an unreasonable bodily reaction.  The sensation was deeply unpleasant.

“Anniavas, what are you doing?” The door to the greenhouse opened, and he stumbled inside, fighting against the continuing tickle in his throat and nose.  It didn’t work; he sneezed again, and then again.  The noise was irritating and even frantically putting his arm in front of his face, he was miserably aware that he was making a mess.  He could not understand how he had failed to foresee this outcome.

“Sneezing,” he replied in some confusion.

“No, I mean—” Echeleb, one of the other workers in the area to which he had been assigned, sighed.  “Do you not have any warm clothes?”

This was a particularly difficult question to answer, because Anniavas was still unsure what was expected of him.  After a moment, he settled on what seemed like the safest response, “I didn’t realize I was going to need them.”

“Well, you need to come in and warm up.”  Echeleb was a tall Elf, flesh and hair all the color of fading dust.  They had the characteristic blue-flecked black eyes that Anniavas’s extensive-but-unreliable font of information associated with the Nandor.  This was the first time Anniavas had had any significant interaction with them.

“I’m fine,” Anniavas said cautiously.  “Thank you.”  His treacherous body chose that moment to sneeze again.

“Evidently,” Echeleb agreed dryly.  “Come on, don’t argue.”

They didn’t touch him, but they stood blocking his path: a threat, or perhaps just a strong instruction.  Anniavas gave up and followed them over to a comfortable-looking basket-weaved chair that had been set up beside one of the furnaces.  There was a neatly-folded blanket on it, which Echeleb picked up and shook out.  “Here,” they said, holding it out.  “Put this around your shoulders.”

Gingerly, Anniavas obeyed. The blanket was heavy and stiff, not conforming well to the odd shape of his back, but between that and the heat of the wet steam, his body did not sneeze again.  It also had the courtesy to stop shivering, which he hadn’t noticed until the unpleasant vibration diminished.

“Have you had anything to eat yet?” Echeleb asked.  They were busying themself with something by the furnace.

“No,” Anniavas admitted.  He had gone to the mess hall, as he had been instructed by the Lord of Himring, but the noise of talk and laughter bouncing off the walls had been too much for him almost immediately, and he had beat a hasty retreat.

“You shouldn’t skip meals,” Echeleb said tartly.  “Eat this, I’ll get you some tea.  It’s just the leftovers, but it should wake you up.”

Had Echeleb been watching him?  Anniavas had thought he was being as unnoticeable as possible, but this was not the behavior one displayed towards a low-level maintenance worker.  He sat and worried uselessly until he remembered he had been instructed to eat.  Then he ate the jerky slowly and focused on that instead.  It tasted different, but different from what, he didn’t know.  After a little while, once he finished it, Echeleb returned again with a steaming mug and told him to drink.

Anniavas’s body flinched, probably at the heat.  He had to take a moment to school himself.

“I’ll put it here,” Echeleb said smoothly, setting it on the seat of the chair.  “Smell it before you taste it.  If you don’t like it, don’t finish it.  Once you’re ready, I’ll get you started—we’re harvesting today.”

Thus far, Anniavas had mostly been taught how to maintain the greenhouse, which, to his surprise, was rather complicated.  Possibly he did not have much experience with growing crops; certainly, his mind offered nothing other than bewilderment over the first few days.  Possibly it was just the rapid change in his situation instead—now, as he slowly risked lifting the warm mug and found it an acceptable temperature for the palm of his hand, he was beginning to catalogue ways to make the basic maintenance work more efficient.  They didn’t really need an extra pair of hands; what they needed was a more careful schedule of rotations, although in order to devise an efficient one he might still require a more thorough understanding of plants.

He didn’t seem to know much about plants.

Obedient to a direct order, Anniavas sniffed cautiously at the mug.  The experience was odd: wet, not unlike the sneezing, but warm, which confusingly made the sensation almost as pleasant as the other one had been unpleasant.  Frustratingly, the best other word he had to describe it was green, which was a color.  Anniavas did not feel that a color should describe a scent, but somehow his mind refused to find any other referent.  At least the green was no more unpleasant than the warm and the wet.  Wrinkling his nose, he tasted it.  Warm and green again, not very strong.  

Well—he didn’t dislike it.  He supposed he might as well finish it.

Task completed, he rose, set the cup on the floor, folded the blanket and replaced it neatly on the chair, and then picked up the cup and set it on top.  Echeleb was waiting for him near the bright green rows of plants, as was Dernodhos, the other person assigned to the lower west tea garden.  Dernodhos was thin, wiry, and stooped, too skinny and gnarled to have been anything other than a thrall subjected to some of the worst torments, but she kept her teeth sharpened in the fashion of many in Angband. She did not speak, and her bright eyes tracked Echeleb in a way that Anniavas did not understand.

“Today we’ll show you how to pluck the tea,” Echeleb was saying when he arrived.  “Once it’s plucked, we’ll take it to be steamed and dried.  Most of Himring’s tea comes from this garden.” Their voice was sharp with pride.

Dernodhos pulled one of the plants expertly toward them, spreading out the young lush leaves and indicating a plump bud with her thumb.

“You don’t want to pick any leaves that are too old,” Echeleb told him.  “Take the young ones and the buds, and do it carefully—you don’t want to tear them.  Understand?”

Simple enough.  Anniavas nodded.  “What is the purpose?” he asked after a moment.  “It cannot be that nutritious, surely?”

Then he wondered if he ought not to have asked a question at all.  Neither of the other two seemed perturbed, however.  Dernodhos chuckled in a cracked voice, and Echeleb grinned in a way that was almost but not quite a threat display.  “Well, it’s a stimulant,” they said.  “But it’s also a craft.  We experiment with steaming time and style, with additions that can change the taste.  It’s a labor of love, and love is how we say fuck you to Angband.”

The final obscenity was delivered in the harsh, familiar language of the Orcs.  Anniavas schooled himself not to react, though his hands began to tremble slightly.  He clutched them together.  The idea of experimentation was an interesting one—different parts of his mind lit up instantly with a thousand questions, which he didn’t quite feel ready to ask.

“I see,” he said, after a moment.

Dernodhos patted his shoulder.

“She says you’re welcome,” Echeleb said.  “Now come on, let’s get started.”