Alabaster, Gold, And Onyx

Golasgil had not been shy with uttering assurances that when Nida needed him, he was willing to help in any way he could. He was a lord, and though he had mentioned that it was a minor province that was under his rule, it was enough that he was coming to Minas Tirith with the sole purpose to be to speak with the Steward. Nida had hoped that he would be willing to use his name to aide her, it seemed though that Golasgil’s promises did not extend to all things, as he had earlier implied.

“An audience with the Steward? Lady, I’m not sure that I could, in good conscience, counsel you to walk that path. No doubt, the information you possess can not be valued in gold or jewels. But…to hear it from one…of your race….”

Nida’s mouth for a moment dropped agape, and she raked a quick breath over her lips. Her race? She knew that it marked her as an outsider, as one that might not be trustworthy. Indeed Gondor had long hated her people, and her people had not cared for the westerners in return. Still, the color of her skin, the lilt of her tongue, the place of her birth—none of this Nida had control over. What she did have was valuable information, and it could not simply be kept secret because of her origin.

It was her risk to take, she just needed his name to get the chance to speak for herself.

“I am not afraid of your Steward,” the woman answered in a low drawl, for a moment frowning up at him. If he thought she had toiled under lash for three years in service to uruk of Sauron’s lands and yet feared an old man in a white palace, prisons, or even death, he was very mistaken. Still, Nida was never one to fight; not outwardly, at least. She had said enough. She would simply find another way; Golasgil could not be the only person in such a massive city to have the power to let her see this Lord Denethor.

”Perhaps…perhaps I could think of some other way to…to place the information you are willing to share in front of him. Let me consider it, and we can talk again…”

Well, short of asking her to relay all she knew to someone else, or write it in a letter, Nida could not see another option. Details were lost in each retelling, words on page could not speak to horrors in the same way. The Steward would forget her words, burn them, leave them in a stack of untended missives. And then it would be far too late.

Still, there was a finality to what Golasgil seemed to offer by way of words, and Nida did not utter a single thought upon it. The silks in the window were far brighter than her mood. A snaking shadow of a fear began to slither through the deepest parts of her thoughts, the ones that tread closest to her heart. All of this had been for nothing.

She had made the vow to make up for the fact her greatest vow, the one she had made when she became a mother, had been broken unwillingly. Bahadur and Hala were gone from her, and her heart ached daily for her own lost purpose. Moving against Sauron, trying to undo the very land and lord who had been her own undoing—it was all the woman could focus on now. Soon, perhaps, she could find a way to seek for news of her children and see if there was any reason to hope and pray for a return to her primary purpose. Until then, she had to make the world a safer place for them. If they yet lived, Sauron was their enemy as well as her own, whether Maalik was fooled or not.

Golasgil moved to stand beside her, peering at the reds and purple raiment in the display. His silver eyes seemed keen upon them, so when his words came to her, Nida could not tell at first if such had been a slip of tongue, or pointed statement.

”That shade would bring out the color of your eyes…”

The woman flicked those eyes to him, watching as the look of assuredness tumbled into a scramble of sorts. It seemed the man was looking immediately to figure out how to salvage his words, though whether it was because he had meant them too earnestly or perhaps meant them not at all, Nida was not certain she could say.

”I mean, it…it would suit you well, Lady. Let…let us go within and see what else catches your eye.”

Maalik had been the only man that she had heard such flattery from. She had been so young when he had taken interest in her, and the moment he had laid claim, all had feared to speak so brazenly to her.

Nida glanced back to the silks in the display before giving Golasgil a wry smile that did not reach the very eyes he had complimented and moving for the doorway. “My eyes are the only part of me left,” she hummed darkly. She knew the scars her skin now carried, the way her body had lost the soft curve of her body. “I think linen for me now.”

If Maalik saw her, he would not recognize her, she was certain. She no longer had a body worthy of the silks and gowns she had adorned back in Harad—not after three years in Mordor.

The door was propped open, and as such Nida passed inside with light step and little hesitation. While her eye did examine once more the rich colors of the lovely gowns in the window, she turned herself toward the simple raiment along the other wall instead. There were bolts of fabric hanging behind the counter, various colors and patterns, and display dresses along the wall that spoke of the skill of the tailor. A man with brown hair and fair-lengthed beard poked his head smiling from the back room, though as he laid eyes upon his customers, the smile faltered. “My lord,” the man offered to Golasgil. He looked to Nida with trepidation. He knew one of the southerners when he saw them.

Nida looked to him with no reservations of her own, though, and the man puffed air through his lips in an almost helpless motion. He supposed he could not throw the woman out, though she looked a ragged mess, despite her clean skin and hair, and likely had no coin.

“How can I help you?” He asked, shifting his eyes back to Golasgil. The man, at least, looked of Gondor. He did not look too fine a state for dress either. Perhaps there was a disaster in town he had not yet heard of; it took a while for news to reach him in the back of his shop, tucked under layers of fabric and thread.

Nida paid the shopkeep very little mind, for she had not expected a warm welcome anywhere in the White City. Perhaps the Gondorians’ distrust of her people came well deserved; Maalik was not the only chieftain of Haradwaith to turn eyes to Gondor’s lush, green lands, or her wealth therein. Nida wondered if there had ever been peace between the nations, though she could not even recall a thread of the Haradrim’s own history where the warlords of Near Harad had not fought between themselves.

Maalik’s throne had been hard won and hard kept over the years of his line’s reign; always someone sought to push back his boundaries, claim their crop or resources for their own, and gain the title—and the target—Maalik wore for his successes.

Golasgil, though, seemed to take some offense to the eyes and hesitancy the shopkeeper offered him. There was a command in his voice she had not yet experienced, and Nida paused in her fingering of a yellow linen to peer at him over her shoulder.

”I am Golasgil, Lord of Anfalas. I was summoned by the Steward, to hear his counsel in regards to the enemies at our borders.”

He looked a different man now. There was something sharper about his features. Perhaps his eyes. Silver once, but now like steel and fire…Perhaps even he, a man Nida had come to think of as kind and gracious, had limits for the affronts he would accept.

Maalik had wielded power like a saber; one could look upon him and see the command he held of his men and the iron of his spirit. Golasgil was different. He had regality about him, but he did not need drive his lands with iron fist. That was apparent by his demeanor, and the words he had passed with Nida first on the banks of the river as they traveled through Ithilien, then onward toward the city she stood in now. It was something that, truthfully, the woman was in awe of. How he kept his people loyal, how he kept his lands safe with such gentleness…it was surely remarkable indeed.

His tone to the shopkeeper, though, was almost like watching him draw the blade of power, and the shopkeeper certainly noticed it as well. He immediately tugged upon his beard with wide eyes, and dropped into a short, hurried bow. “My Lord,” he said quickly, breath catching in the back of his throat.

”Having met with pirates on the river, my lady and myself now find ourselves in need of suitable attire.”

Nida’s surreptitious eyeing of her companion became outright and bold as she turned. He had called her his. She had never been called that by someone other than…

The shopkeeper missed the strange, somewhat haunted, light of Nida’s eye; he was too busy reeling for something to say, sensing now that he had offended someone that he should have, in any other instance, would have been sure to shower with proper accolades. “The pirates have been getting worse as of late,” the man blurted quickly. He certainly had lost one of his own shipments of silks from Near Harad to the corsairs that plagued the waters. He grunted, mind now locked upon thought of the thieves that sailed. “Nothing good comes from the South!”

“As someone who sells our silks,” Nida hummed, shifting her slate eyes to the shopkeeper with a slight crackle of lightning within them. “I would think you should be the last person to say such a thing.” She had not missed the added insult that she was one of those ill things from Haradwaith, and it seemed that her words reminded the bearded man to catch it himself.

Immediately, the man was stammering, trying to figure out how he could escape the mess he had made. “I—I didn’t mean…” Perhaps the man saw it was fruitless. Nida’s eye remained steady, though cold, and he did not wish to anger the Lord of Anfalas any more. “I trust your credit, my lord,” the man uttered next. “Though perhaps as token of Minas Tirith’s, and my own goodwill, an arrangement can be made to…lessen the credit. Our city is not so poor in reputation as to let the Lord of Anfalas pass through with such misfortune.”

Nida looked to Golasgil, a heavy study in her eye. Maalik would have likey called for imprisonment—or worse—for such affront as this by now. Curiosity, and beyond that, true interest made her hold her own tongue to see what this man, one of the West, allowed himself to do.

Golasgil

The shopkeeper could not understand why Golasgil seemed to suddenly bristle, and the color he held in his face was quickly draining. There was a power about the man, one that surpassed his own mussed appearance. Pirates had befallen them? He shuddered to think on the man’s fury with a blade; something about the steel of his eye belied a talent.

”I do not need or ask for a hand out, and I have no thought to deprive you of your livelihood. Name but a fair price, and you shall have it.”

“That isn’t what I—my lord, I meant merely I have caused enough trouble for you and your lady, I wish to make reparations,” the man gushed hurriedly. “A discounted price, for your trouble—it is all I meant, my lord!” His voice seemed to rise in pitch the further down the plea he moved, and he hurriedly glanced to Nida, and found the woman’s slate-grey eyes upon him, a command in her visage that he perhaps should have noticed right away. The lift to her chin was regal, a command that was certainly befitting the Lord of Anfalas’ bride.

”I will leave her in your hands, and I instruct you to provide her with whatever she desires. I will return within the hour.”

“She will want for nothing, I assure you,” the shopkeeper declared emphatically, already moving from around the counter to begin his work, though Golasgil was already moving toward her.

Nida’s gaze shifted to him, and the woman looked to him curiously as he came nearer. He did not press in too close, though the referral to her as his lady was yet fresh in her mind. She wondered at it. Surely a lord was not allowed to be without a wife; the chieftains took one the very year of their rise to power, and worked immediately on securing their line through heirs. She supposed she had not thought on if Gondor practiced the same traditions. It seemed a poor choice to leave the line to your house empty, for a lord’s head always carried with it a great price.

”Choose what you will, Lady. For myself, I have need of a weapon, a want I have felt keenly since first I awoke on the shore of the river. And now…I feel the need even more urgently than when I awoke this morning, since you have opened my eyes to your…intentions.”

Nida frowned at him slightly. “What I will?” She repeated in question. “Careful, my lord. Those words can be more dangerous than the sword you seek.” There was a playful lilt in her tone, something that swept and swayed like warm sands in a lazy breeze. Her playfulness, though, ebbed as she added in a murmur, “My intentions are set. You need not feel obligated to protect me from them.”

Truthfully, she had no intention of taking care of the Lord of Anfalas’ deep purse. She did not wish to draw attention to herself, not in a place of strange faces—strange faces that longed to be enemies.

Golasgil turned and left, the door closing behind him, and Nida and the shopkeeper watched him go through the windows at the front of the shop.

“Ah…” The man began, turning to Nida, giving her an once-over that held less judgment and more tailor’s consideration. “Perhaps silk? Surely your husband wishes you to have fine things.”

Nida merely smiled, the motion like silk by itself. Golasgil was not her husband, though something nagged her in the back of her mind; something that made her fearful to admit such a thing aloud now that he was gone. This land was strange, full of hatred for her people. If she revealed she was of no import to the Lord of Anfalas, perhaps the guards would be called, and she would be locked away, unable to give her news to the Steward of these lands, her task unfinished.

If she could but get a presentable appearance, something that was not stained rags made from coarse fabric of Nurn, she could plead her case in earnest. If they saw fit to arrest her after that, she would have at least tried to share the news she bore; proclaiming would come at a cost, but as long as the words were able to leave her lips at least once, perhaps someone, somewhere could be saved. Someone, somewhere could rise.

So, she spoke nothing of the misunderstanding Golasgil had allowed to pass. “No need for silks,” the woman drawled, her lilt easy. “Silk does not care for travel.”

Rips, stains, snags; perhaps silk had made her wardrobe when in Near Harad, in Kahf Al’asad, but she had been a dove in a gilded cage. Never did she venture beyond the walls of Maalik’s city, and rare were the times she ventured even beyond the halls or gardens under his roof.

“Perhaps some of my finest linens, then?” The tailor offered, he was already turning and reaching for his dressmaker tape.

--

It did not seem to take long before the man had outfitted Nida in an elegant burgundy raiment, trimmed in gold along the neck and sleeves, a bright metallic belt that dangled near to her ankles, and more fabric at the arms than she had ever seen used before. The tailor assured her that such was the height of style, indicated the embroidered ribbing at the bust area, and the beading interspersed in the floral pattern at the hems.

Nida felt ridiculous.

Nothing in Harad looked like this; the fabric draping down made her feel like a flightless bird, and the amount of fabric used in the skirt seemed absolutely wasteful. More than one dress could have been made from what was included in the one she wore, she was certain.

“Your husband shall be entranced, my lady,” the tailor assured, seeing the strange look on Nida’s face as she looked into his full-length looking glass.

“I did not need something quite so…extravagant,” Nida offered after a moment.

The tailor was already shaking his head. “Nothing but the best for the Lord and Lady of Anfalas,” the man replied easily. Motion caught his attention at the window, and his eyes flew to see an approaching figure making for his door. “Ah, and speaking of your husband, I believe he comes now.”

Golasgil

Golasgil stepped once more inside the shop, and Nida met his entrance with a small frown. Surely he, too, would think such wanton use of fabric was wrong. Yet, even as her eyes met his he stopped barely a few strides from the doorway. There was a look of awe upon his face, and the Lord of Anfalas’ eyes gazed upon her with the same intensity as the Haradric sun.

She felt herself fall still, even her breaths falling quiet. No, Nida realized. It was not an intensity; intense had been the eyes of the chief, the desire like the burning orb hanged in the sky. Golasgil was nothing like the sun. He was glittering like a canopy of moon and stars in a velvet wash of cloud.

”My Lord…I hope you find this…satisfactory?”
”My lady, you look as fair as any I have ever laid eyes upon.”

Satisfactory indeed, it seemed.

No one had ever gazed upon her in such a way, and she was unsure if it was unwanted or not. He seemed to be admiring her, like many admired Maalik’s gardens at home; his light eyes did not look ravenous, nor did they burn. And yet, their rapt attention was familiar enough that Nida’s mind began to whisper that perhaps she might be able to play upon that should she need to try and press the man into allowing and obtaining her audience with the Steward.

Her heart felt warred, though; Maalik was her chief, and she had been bought long ago to be his alone. She had never used such wiles before, nor indeed had she ever thought someone other than Maalik would have such boldness with her.

“And surely many of the men of Gondor speak such things to those any,” Nida hummed in return. If ever she could manage to get a traditional Haradric dress, she would not hesitate to rid herself of the tent she was wearing.

”She bestows an air of nobility to your work, master tailor, does she not?”
“Oh, indeed…indeed, my lord. I’m sure none of my garments have graced so fair a form before. It…it is an honor to…to be allowed this…this privilege…”
”Good. Now, find something suitable for me and I’ll return in a moment.”

Nida prodded the tailor onward as he skittered away, her slate eyes flickering in annoyance. Groveling had rarely been tolerated in Maalik’s halls. Perhaps in this Golasgil was similar. The Lord of Anfalas drew near, though she did not note his coming until he was reaching for her hand.

She had no time to protest the motion, though she snapped a quick breath and lifted her eyes as if prodded by iron. Her own look did not look as glittering, and her face remained even and unchanged, even in the shower of his attention.

”I have to say, I could not have chosen better myself. I’ve brought you a gift.”

“Do Gondorians often gift their ladies with clothes fit to be tent dressings?” Nida asked quietly in reply. The sleeves were flightless wings, and her legs were lost amidst the many folds of the linen hanging from her waist.

”I think you’ll find is fits quite nicely in those sleeves of yours.”

“A child would fit nicely in these sleeves,” Nida uttered quickly before looking down to her hands before seeing the knife Golasgil had settled in her hands. For a moment she was silent, her fingers delicately tugging the ornate hilt until she could see a glimmer of silver beneath the guard.

Real.

Her lips flicked down for just a flash of a moment as she resheathed the blade before looking up to him with a smile that was made of the same luxury as silks. “I do not draw blood. I have other weapons," she said in a low, sweeping hum, pressing the knife back toward the man. Most women of Kahf Al’asad were masters of the tongue; only those deemed barbarous looked to wielding a blade themselves.

“Ah!” The tailor’s words came from the far end of the shop. “My lord, I have just the thing for you.” He turned, moving back toward the couple with a clean, crisp white shirt, a dark blue tunic with silver-crafted clasps at the neck, ornate threaded trim, and thick britches of an even darker shade. “Befitting of a man of name,” the tailor added hurriedly. “You shall match your lady, and all shall known of your claim!”

A bright sound of laughter outside on the street in the market called Nida’s attention away from the approaching clothing, and immediately settled an ache in her chest that nearly had her eyes awash in water. Laughter. Clear, saccharine laughter.

Children.

The shop bled away as she made a slow pace toward the window, fighting her breaths to remain even for every step she took. Their hair was mussed in a way only children might get away with, dark as soils though not all as night itself. The ages spanned many a year, though her own eyes fell first on the youngest of the group; she looked no more than five or six years of age, and her littler legs were having a harder time keeping up with the longer strides of her friends. Her face was round, clinging to the youthful shape those who were younger bore, and her eyes round and wide in wonder.

Nida wondered for a moment at it, trying to draw to mind one of the faces she remembered dearest in her heart, morphing her visage in such ways as to wonder what it was Hala looked like with the three years added to her. And yet, she could not settle, and the imaginings changed Hala’s face from one shape to the next, fluid and undecided while she watched the children laugh and play upon the street.

"Do you have children, my lord?" The tailor asked the Lord of Anfalas as he lead him back toward a room fit for changing. "Your lady seems entranced by them."

Golasgil