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~ The only outward expression Vanimöré allowed himself at James Callaghan’s words was a faint uplift of the brows but his mind reached instantly to Edenel and Coldagnir. Since Fëanor had entered this world and Vanimöré had stated he himself must return to the Monument, they had been especially vigilant of his movements. He felt their mind-flares, sun-storm and the ice-wind of deep winter.

Contact Howard. Tell him that James Callaghan believes that Worth’s former wife Joanna is both his mother and David’s. It might even be true; we will need DNA testing.

Howard was only a few rooms away, but Vanimöré could not speak into his mind, or not without it causing pain. Some minds 'received’ far easier than others. While excellent at his job, Howard’s mind was not one of them. Insofar as was possible, he ignored the ‘paranormal’ elements of the DDE and concentrated on ensuring the general public ignored them too.

Neither did Vanimöré wish to pause the conversation lest James think better of speaking to him. He was in the mood now to open his heart and Vanimöré could not snap that fragile thread. But the DDE needed to act on this information (supposition?) quickly. Vanimöré wondered, smiling a little, if Howard’s bellow of annoyance would be audible across the villa. He could delegate and would but the DDE were a small team; the kind of people that Vanimöré needed were exceptionally rare.

James stood up, walked to the windows and looked out. Vanimöré watched the rigid set of his shoulders under the expensive suit jacket and thought how David had held himself just in that way: taut and braced. But there were differences as well as similarities. James had inherited more than a little of his father’s assurance; it had rubbed off on him through proximity. A child will mimic their parents. Vanimöré knew he had adopted some of Sauron's mannerisms.

Blaise once possessed the confidence of his schooling but, dropping into the black underbelly of London at age eighteen had known a very different, dangerous, shadow-life. There was no security, no-one to turn to. His taut wariness was borne of that life. Too, there were none of the signs that Callaghan had abused his only son, rather he had wanted him kept close, almost protected.

‘So you see why I want to find Blaise Worth?’ James asked, not turning.

‘If it is true,’ Vanimöré murmured calmly. ‘Then naturally.’

‘It’s true. I think…I’m almost sure.’ His shoulders rose and fell. ‘I should start at the beginning.’

‘Certainly, if you feel it is any of my business.’

James swung back to him, eyes oddly piercing; the dead father’s confidence showing, for a moment, plainly in the son.

What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. Vanimöré thought of Fëanor’s bloodline and Fingolfin’s. But James had inherited nothing physically from Callaghan. He must be all his mother’s.

‘I’ve never spoken of it to anyone else,’ James told him. ‘I can’t now discuss it with my father. I never would have. And you seem, Mr. Steele, to have connections with MI6 — and someone told them about Blaise’s past.’

‘Then I am at your disposal. More tea? Or a drink?’

James glanced at his watch. It was going on for six o clock.

‘Stay for dinner,’ Vanimöré suggested. ‘It will only be myself and Mr. Wainwright.’

‘I was going back to the Palace.’ James seemed to weigh something in his mind before accepting. Naturally. Raymond Callaghan had been lured here and died here, or at least very close by. Then, as if coming to a decision, James said, ‘Thank you, I will.’

Vanimöré nodded. ‘A drink then? Dinner is at seven.’

‘Thank you.’ His smile was genuine and appealing. A boy’s smile.

No, I do not think he is guilty of anything only ignorant and overwatched.

When the drink was poured, James took a sip and exhaled. Then he began to speak.

‘The beginning then: I vividly remember a night when I was young, four, five and couldn’t sleep. I had bad dreams, sleepwalked sometimes. Night terrors the nanny said. Still get them sometimes. Never mind that.’ He gestured it away with a motion of his glass. ‘But this wasn’t one of those times. I got up and left my bedroom.’

His father’s house in The Hamptons was enormous and mostly empty save for staff and his nanny who slept next door. Raymond Callaghan might have guests to stay there on occasion, but most of the bedrooms were empty, the staff living in their own quarters. James recalled the long dark corridors and how they had frightened him as a child. That night there were unseasonal high winds and rain and he could hear the rolling boom of the sea, the pebble-scatter of rain against the windows. It was that, he thought, that woke him.

Then, along the corridor he heard a woman’s voice carrying, a laugh trailing off. James trotted toward the sound but stopped when he reached the wide landing.

He saw a woman walk toward the head of the stairs, tossing a fur wrap over her shoulders. The low lighting illuminated her fair hair. He saw the gleam of gold on wrists and hands, and could smell her rich perfume. She looked, he thought, like a princess, fair and glittering.

She stopped, one hand touching the bannister and turned. She had smiled and even then, a small boy, he had seen something in it that made him shrink back into the shadows. A smile like a bared knife. No innocent Disney princess this, but something far more dangerous.

Raymond Callaghan had come to her. He was dressed as the boy thought ‘for bed’, in a short silk dressing gown. He was far too young to attach any significance to it; only years later did he make any connection.

‘I can’t remember everything that I heard,’ James said. ‘When you’re young, adult talk often goes over your head, unless it’s directed at you and then you recall it sometimes, especially if you were afraid or excited at the time. The woman said something to my father that I didn’t really hear, and then turned away and looked directly at me. I don’t know how she saw me; the corridor was unlit, but she did. She dropped her wrap and walked toward me. And I was…frozen.’
‘She stooped and reached out a hand. Her nails and rings seemed to burn me as she stroked my face and smiled again. And she said, “How’s my boy? Pretty little thing, isn’t he?” My father followed her and was obviously angry with both of us. He started to say something, but she raised a hand. She said—‘ He stopped and then clearly, enunciating each word: ’“He’s mine as much as yours. And he’ll be useful when he’s older, when you’re gone, Ray. No-one lives forever.” She laughed again but there was no laugh in her eyes and she was still looking at me.’

His own eyes came back from their frowning distance. ‘My father snapped, ordered me to bed, but she kissed my forehead and said, “Go on now, son.” I ran back down the corridor to my room. I could hear them arguing and she said something like: “He’s a baby. He won’t remember.” And: “Be sure you look after him.” And I did forget until I saw her photograph years later. Joanna Darling was at the house that night. She must have had Blaise nine months after that. She was wearing a long sheath dress, silver, it sparkled and she was slim.. I thought how tall and slim she was. She wasn’t pregnant then.’

‘She could have been very early in her time,’ Vanimöré pointed out. ‘And you have a remarkably good memory from all those years ago. So, you believe she was carrying on an affair with your father when she was married to Worth? And that she, not Solange Berkeley, is your mother?’

‘You think I’ve made up some kind of false memory,’ James stated.

‘A child’s memories would not stand up in court. And Solange is registered as your mother.’

James offered a cynical smile. ‘Wealth can buy anything, Mr. Steele. It bought her silence. I was a home birth. Solange received a very large divorce settlement not eighteen months later and from a man who notoriously hated to spend money unless it was on himself or his companies. He was not a generous man, my father.’

‘True.’ He steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘Well? You recollected that childhood memory when you met Blaise?’

‘Not then and might never have,’ James responded dryly. ‘Had not my father been so particularly interested in the fact that I met him. A week or so later we were back at The Hamptons and there was some bad weather. Maybe that was it: The rain, the wind, just like that night when I was a child. I woke up and lay there. And I remembered. It was so incredibly vivid.’

But he had said nothing to his father. He returned to Cambridge and considered contacting Blaise at Marlborough (so the loss of his phone number had turned out to be unimportant) or even driving down to see him.

‘I would have liked to see him again, but—‘

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t know…I felt that unless I had proof I shouldn’t involve him and even if I did, how would he take it? And I began to realise that even at Cambridge I was watched.’ A faint smile flickered. ‘Or thought I was. I was afraid I was becoming paranoid. As it turned out, I wasn’t.’
‘Then I finished university and went home and my father arranged my marriage.’ His expression closed like a door. ‘It was my duty and it would give me greater responsibility.’ The way he said it was a quote. Vanimöré could imagine Callaghan’s dry voice intoning it. ‘And we were to live at his homes, wherever he was, following him as part of his damn entourage. I wanted to buy my own place. I could have. He employed me — Yes nepotism at its finest!— but he wouldn't hear of it.’

‘No,’ Vanimöré drawled. ‘He wanted you under his eye.’

‘Yes, and I knew it. My then-wife Gina was a nice woman but—’ He stopped and then said coldly, ‘I’m sterile.’

‘I see.’

‘My wife wanted children, and I couldn’t give them to her.’

‘You were not married long. It can take time.’

‘She’d been married before, had two children one after another. She was older than me, but not so old that her fertility had dropped off a cliff. So…’ It was clearly difficult for him to speak of this but he went on with something of a snap: ‘We went to a clinic. It was me, not her.’ He shrugged, his colour rose. ‘My father was involved in a business deal with her father and thought the marriage would be a good idea. Security, if you will. Antiquated. But I went along with it because…I had no choice.’

Vanimöré left that for now.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ James went on quickly. ‘The marriage pretty much ended after that. Then I heard that Blaise had gone missing. I overheard my father shouting into his phone to Mortimer Worth. He was furious. I only caught the tail-end of their conversation. My father ended the call and turned his anger on me. Then he seemed to think better of it and sent me off to Dubai for a business meeting, with one in London on the way back.’

He was glad enough to go, he said, to be out from under Callaghan’s shadow even for a few days. He needed time to think about what had happened, what he had heard. The meeting went well, and he booked the return flight with a two night stopover in London.

That evening, he had contacted a private investigator to search for Blaise Worth. He had very little information to give the woman save age, appearance and name — and that he had been at Marlborough, but her voice, dry and clipped and businesslike, accepted that.

He explained that she must not call him and was given the link to a chat room where messages would be deleted within seconds of reading them. It seemed dubious to James and Ms. Evans admitted such rooms were often used for darker purposes, but they were also untraceable, at least at the moment. It was surprising, she added, how many people who used private investigators wanted to remain anonymous.

Payment was a problem, since his bank accounts were monitored.

‘Not really a problem,’ she told him, making a suggestion that raised his brows but agreed to, enacting an apparent sexual transaction that his ‘watchers’ (the security staff sent with him by his father) would only smirk at. Which they did.

Ms. Evans arrived at the hotel as ‘Lara’, a sex worker in a red wig and smoky-dark eyes. James had seen her when he went out for lunch (and almost laughed at how she walked up the street playing at her ‘game’). There was more than a little of the performer in Janet Evans or perhaps she was simply used to the vagaries of secretive clients. He arranged a meeting then and there, unable to will down the flush that rose to his cheeks knowing that his security detail were watching and commenting. But at least it bypassed a need for the computer.

Underneath her assumed appearance and the conformable suit that passed her as ‘business’ to the hotel staff, she was a dark haired woman in her thirties whose definite attractiveness paled against her intelligence. She seemed to find the situation more amusing than anything and left after two hours with a substantial amount of cash in her purse. She promised nothing which he said was fair enough considering the paucity of the information he had, and told him to check into the chat room weekly at a certain time.

‘Did she find anything?’ Vanimöré asked, interested.

‘Nothing,’ James replied flatly. ‘I employed her services for over a year. Blaise flew to London from JFK and just vanished.’

Yes, Vanimöré thought, he had.

‘I told her to keep looking, even if it seemed useless, which it was in the end, but I did find something else in London that I wasn’t looking for.’ He took another sip of whiskey. ‘Joanna Worth, who was supposed to have died in a boating accident years before.’

Vanimöré said softly, ‘Are you sure?’

‘I saw her,’ James said emphatically. ‘As far away from me as from here to the doors.’ He pointed.

‘Where was this?’ Vanimöré leaned forward.

‘Covent Garden. When we were leaving I saw her, she dressed to the nines and with a man. She turned toward him and it was her. She looked no different to her photograph or the woman I remembered, and I will never,’ he added. ‘Forget that smile. Or his.’

A ghost-breath blew on the back of Vanimöré’s neck. It came from another world, so far gone in time that only its dust remained and still, after everything, his muscles locked into tension.
‘Can you describe him?’

‘Tall. Not old. Maybe my age now. Slim. Fairer than I am. Almost white hair, long.’ He made descriptive gestures with his hands. ‘Drawn back in a ponytail. He wore dark glasses, which was strange, but some people do. He had this attitude about him.’ His eyes narrowed as if to bring something into focus. ‘As if he owned the place.’

The ghost-breath turned to ice.

Sauron.

Vanimöré had not seen him in this world. Sauron had sent out Thuringwethil — who died at the hands of Claire James. That must have irritated him, but there would be others. Sauron had never lacked followers.

‘It might be useful if you remembered the date and performance,’ Vanimöré said, controlling his voice.

‘I made sure to remember it,’ James said grimly and wrote it down. ‘I kept the programme; it was the first time I’d been to see a performance of the Royal Ballet. But I can tell you the date and time without that.’

‘You seem very sure it was her.’

‘Oh, I am.’ His posture tightened. ‘They were leaving the Grand Tier, so were we. They were ahead of us and walking quickly; most people were lingering, making their way out slowly, chatting, but not that pair. I wouldn’t have seen her if she hadn’t turned her head. And then she looked over her shoulder and straight at me. She was still smiling. She blew a kiss and then carried on walking. The man looked back, too, for a moment. The same smile, a closed smile, a dark smile.’ Straightening, he blew out a breath. ‘So yes, I’m sure. I thought of following them but I was a guest of Max Nelson and couldn’t just rush off. I wished after I had. I messaged Ms. Evans on that chat room, asked her to find out anything she could about Joanna Worth.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course she couldn’t. Joanna died in Bermuda. Except, she didn’t. And she didn’t give a damn that I saw her.’

‘”He’ll be useful when he’s older, when you’re dead,”’ Vanimöré quoted. ‘That is what you heard her say to your father?’

‘Yes.’ James’ eyes narrowed. ‘And now he is dead. Do you think — what do you think? You know something. Don’t you. Don’t you?’

‘I think,’ Vanimöré rose. ‘That your life might be about to become very interesting in the manner of the Chinese saying. And we should talk to Mr. Wainwright.’ He walked down the salon to the door.
‘Coming?’

~’We will speak again,’ Fëanor said to Edenel, not wanting to go wanting, with a dreadful ache, to pass through the Mirror Shard into that green world beyond the Sea, to hold his father in his arms.

‘Yes,’ Edenel affirmed. Beautiful and aloof and dangerous as the ice-winds atop Taniquetil, yet something in his voice and eyes had warmed as Fëanor spoke. He told Edenel things he would never tell Finwë, could not in all fairness, he did understand that Finwë was bound by kingship to the Laws of the Valar, even if he detested it.

But Fëanor did not tell him that he and Fingolfin were Edenel’s sons. The words had been there, imperative, clamouring to be spoken, yet Fëanor bit down on them. Not yet. Fingolfin must be present for that denouement. Nevertheless, Edenel learned of Valinor and the Valar, of their crippling Laws and that Fëanor and Fingolfin were determined to leave.

Speaking as if the very words made it a fact, an inevitability helped in the days after, when time seemed to go nowhere and nothing happened.
Tirion preserved an aloof silence. Fëanor assumed he was still under a cloud of disapproval.

He spent his days in his workshops teaching, overseeing but did little. He became conscious of a sensation familiar to him now; that he had experienced before creating the Lamps and the Palantiri. It was a growing emptiness, a hollowness as if his creativity were being drained away like water running into a crack in the earth. His soul was waiting for something. Making space for it. He did not have any inkling of what that was and knew not to push for it. The vision would come. Freedom, too, he reminded himself, would come. Still, the slow days seemed interminable. Only with his sons did he find any peace.

And of course things did happen. Even Valinor was not stagnant. Under Hilyaro, Maglor began to train his voice. They had to be somewhat careful. Fëanor believed that Formenos was one of those places where the Valar were deaf and blind, and with good reason, but there was the possibility of Elven spies. He thought ruefully that protection or no, precautions or not, Maglor’s voice might be heard on Taniquetil; it shattered glass, snapped metal, made crystals chime.*

In the end, they could not test to the limit of what Maglor might do. When the marble floor of the room cracked from end to end Fëanor, laughing helplessly as Hilyaro dropped his head in his hands, nonetheless decided to terminate that part of the music lessons. Maglor, glowing, proud, utterly unabashed, was clearly well pleased with his talents and reluctant to stop. He almost (not quite) rebelled, wanting to test himself but when it was made clear to him that such power was dangerous, that the Valar might disprove, he nodded solemnly.

Fëanor hated to involve his sons in the danger and secrecy of his life. Afterwards, he accepted that they acted as a rein on him, at least when they were young. But they comprehended much more than he thought they did — or should. Either others talked, Rúmil perhaps or his wife Laurorne, or they were simply subconsciously aware. Anyhow, another door closed on discovery. For now.

Fëanor’s impatience mounted, making him feel too tight in his own skin. Trapped. He wanted to do something, to act, to break out. In the world where Vanimöré dwelt it had been almost wholly dark, a state that did not exist in Valinor. Edenel, in the Outer Lands, had been in a forest where sunlight made moving dapples as it fell through the leaves. It was so different from the Tree Light.

So many worlds. So much to learn. All of it stymied — for now.

More than once, unsleeping and restless, he thought of the ring he had deliberately left with Vanimöré and contemplated returning for it. There was more than a little mischief in that but also that ever-present yearning to know more. Vanimöré fascinated him, so unlike the Valar and immeasurably more powerful. A Power that could send part of itself onto a world, leaving the Totality behind on the Outside. Fëanor had seen both.

The world beyond that one room he had stepped into (and that was interesting enough in itself) beckoned, but so did Endor, so did the terrible, lonely Monument and the Outside and that perhaps more forcefully than anything because it was far stranger. Boundless. It was perilous and danger fired Fëanor’s blood like levin.There was, he thought, an infinity of discovery. But not here, not in Valinor.

And then a cold wind sighed down from Ilmarin and cut through the ennui of sameness. It touched calm white Valmar, hurried down to hum through the towers of Tirion and raced further to Alqualondë and the glimmering shores of the sea. The wind whispered a rumour: Melkor was to be released from his long imprisonment.

The rumour grouped the Elves into quiet clusters of conversation, frowning and muttering.
When the murmurs reached Fëanor he reacted like one of the half-wild white cats that roamed Valinor and the hair of his scalp seemed to lift. He remembered the pain-vision of Edenel and his memory of earth-crushing and obliterating Power.

‘It is said he is penitent,’ murmured Rúmil.

‘Who says?’ Fëanor demanded. His nails dug into his palms carving bloody crescents. Rúmil spread his hands.

‘After what he did, how could they even think of releasing him?’ Yet Edenel had spoken of it, the other Edenel, relict of a dead universe. It happened there. It would happen here.

Does everyone and everything tread the same path, then? The thought brought a spark of panic.

‘Manwë enjoys a show of penance,’ Rúmil said with a wicked and accurate sharpness. ‘He does like seeing people grovel.’

Fëanor looked at him, gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Indeed.’ He thought of Ingwë, and Eönwë, chained. ‘He does.’

‘Now if only thou were to learn that art, he would look upon thee with favour.’ Fëanor thought he was jesting until he saw that Rúmil’s face was perfectly serious. ‘It is because thou wouldst not, that he deems thee dangerous and rebellious. That and the outrageous and public flirting with thine own sex.’

‘If that is what the Valar deem outrageous—’ Fëanor began. Then came a knock at the chamber door.

At Fëanor’s ‘Enter’ a messenger came in. His livery was Finwë’s and he bowed, holding out a sealed scroll.
‘From the King, High Prince.’

‘My thanks.’ Fëanor opened it and read. ‘My father calls a council of all his High Lords. That includes his sons.’ He drew vellum and a pen toward him and dashed off a response, handing it back to the messenger. ‘I will be there.’

‘The clouds lift a little it seems,’ he said dryly when the man had gone. ‘Politically at least.’ He slapped Finwë’s message with the back of one hand. ‘It will be about Melkor, naturally. What does he think a council will achieve?’ He doubted his father was going to object, yet Finwë knew, or at least must guess what had happened to his twin, and most of his High Lords were unbegotten. All of them had known someone taken by the Dark.

Nerdanel elected not to travel to Tirion and, as she was often in her own workshop these days, Fëanor took Maedhros and Maglor.

The mood in the city was somber; the people who watched Fëanor’s entourage ride in were quieter though they bowed and others waved. In the palace too, there was a sense of watchfulness. Faces were unsmiling.

Finwë came to greet him, mouth straight, though to Maedhros and Maglor he spoke kindly. He looked troubled, as if the kingship weighed heavily and waited until Fëanor’s sons were settled in bed before speaking.

‘Thou wilt have heard the rumours,’ he said.

‘Of course.’ Fëanor flung himself onto a cushioned settle.

‘Fingolfin,’ Finwë shot him a swift, wary look. ‘Advised me to call my Lords into council.’

About to reply ‘Good for him’, Fëanor recollected he was supposed to be unfriends with his half-brother.
‘Did he indeed?’ Seemed to suit. And: ‘Wouldst thou have done the same had I advised it?’

‘Fëanor! I would have considered it, yes. But the both of thee are young!’ He stopped, took a breath as if to curb his annoyance. ‘Others advised me also,’ he said shortly. ‘There is much discomfort in Tirion at the thought of the Dark God walking among us.’

Fëanor sat up and poured glasses of nectar. ‘Somehow,’ he said. ‘That surprises me not at all. So. Have the Valar spoken to thee of it?’

‘Eönwë came from Manwë. He went to Olwë, too. I am assured that Melkor has learned penitence and that he is on parole.’

‘Grovelled, has he?’

Finwë said coldly, ‘I do not know what has passed. But surely they know his heart?’

Fëanor’s teeth locked. ‘Just like they know ours?’ He raised a brow over his glass and drank, watching the colour come into Finwë’s face.

‘Fëanor—‘

‘Please. Spare me the homily. The Valar do not know us because they have never cared to. All they want is pretty little slaves! They only see what they want us to be.’ He replaced the goblet on the table. ‘What is this council supposed to achieve exactly?’

‘Thou art deliberately obtuse and understand nothing, ever,’ Finwë snapped, turning to the outer door. ‘We are to welcome Melkor — if he comes among us — as one of the Valar. That is what this council is about.’

Fëanor stiffened. Revulsion shivered through him in a cold, rippling wave.
‘Is that the command come down from Ilmarin?’ he demanded and when Finwë did not answer, he came to his feet. ‘Well? Do they expect us to worship him, too?’

‘Do not be a fool. But he is to be accorded the same courtesy and respect as the Valar.’ Finwë opened the door. ‘Thou may speak of thy concerns in council,’ he said and then, not to Fëanor but someone in the passageway beyond, ‘He is in no mood for reason.’

Fiingolfin’s lovely, steely voice replied, ‘I can but attempt it.’ And he entered the room, holding the door ajar. They looked at each other in a hot and fulminous silence.

‘Beginning to show some spine, half-brother? Beginning to think for thyself?’ Fëanor sneered, knowing Finwë would hear. ‘Asking for a council meeting?’

‘Any High Lord of Tirion may request,’ Fingolfin shot back. He closed the door behind him and his steps quickly crossed the distance between them. Fëanor saw the silver star-flashes, brilliant in the backlit eyes and then they clashed together, all heat and hardness and need.

But the marble walls of Tirion were thick and Finwë, departing, did not hear.