Chapter 7: A Cat May Look At a King

Gollum kept his rock collection under the bed. That was a comfortable place for him to be, and he was in the habit of secrecy, and he was not certain of how much he was supposed to be a prisoner, and whether he was allowed to own things, and whether the Men would block up his window if they realized he was picking up items from outside and carrying them off. It had not been blocked up after he had been seen outside of his room at night talking to hobbits on two different occasions (and one of them Bilbo Baggins, who probably wanted him locked up), and the hobbits knew he was using the window. Either the Men had not been told, or they did not mind him going out for a little while at night when no one was around. But perhaps, if they did not mind him going out, they would begin to mind if they knew he was taking things- even if they seemed to be things no one wanted.

When he 'looked' at his rocks, which were mostly a plain gray and looked quite similar to each other, he picked up each one and felt it over with his fingertips to explore its texture. He had a particularly smooth, rounded rock in his hand when the knock came on the door.

Gollum put the rock away and scrambled out from under the bed. He had learned that saying he was busy did not deter anyone from coming inside and often caused the person entering to want to find out what he'd been busy with, so he didn't try it.

Instead he approached the door and sniffed at it. He thought he caught a familiar scent, but he could not place it; perhaps it was someone he knew but the person was wearing cologne or using a new soap. It certainly was not someone he saw often, like Eardwulf or the younger one- Faelon. And it was not a hobbit. And there was no scent of food- and no one should be feeding him at the moment, he had just eaten. "Who is there?" he asked.

"It is Aragorn," came the answer. "I suspect you remember me quite well."

Gollum backed away. Yes, he remembered. "Why is Aragorn here?" he asked.

"I feel I must speak with you. Therefore, I must enter your room."

"Talk through the door," said Gollum, his mind racing. Did Aragorn need information? "Sméagol has not done anything wrong."

"That is good," said Aragorn dryly. "That is not why I am here. Please let me in, I wish to speak face to face. You are not in trouble."

There was no Precious to keep safe anymore. The only information about Gollum himself that could endanger him was his current location and Aragorn knew where he was already. Frodo and Aragorn were friends, so there was no cause to keep back anything about him either. It seemed that if Aragorn did want to interrogate him, perhaps it would do no harm to cooperate, and perhaps that would make Gollum's life easier. Of course- he might find that he had some reason of his own not to want to answer Aragorn's questions, but he may as well hear what they were.

In any case Aragorn was massive and quick and strong and Gollum could not prevent him from entering the room.

He stepped forward and opened the door- he found that less disagreeable than the thought of Aragorn popping in, as he would any minute. Gollum was certainly dexterous and strong enough to open a door (as many had had cause to lament in the past) but he was not used to the action of standing up, grabbing something that was about at the level of his own head and walking upright and backwards with it. He overbalanced and fell into an undignified sitting position, which was how Aragorn found him.

Aragorn looked wearily disgusted. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Yes," said Gollum, who almost never fell over backwards on a flat surface due to not standing upright frequently enough to cause such a thing to happen. He was so taken aback that he did not think to get angry, or find some excuse to blame it on Aragorn.

He flipped around into a crouching position and scuttled away from Aragorn, who stepped inside, closed the door behind him and took a seat at the table. He positioned himself far from Gollum, with his long legs stretched out before him (the chairs were not quite hobbit-sized, but they were low). He was placed so that he was not blocking either the door or window- the room's escape routes- nor the paths Gollum would take if he wanted to hide under the bed or in the wardrobe, or climb the wardrobe. He was making it clear that Gollum could get away, in other words, to keep him calm and hopefully prevent him from becoming upset enough to actually get away or to try to defend himself. This was a bit similar to how Gollum had positioned himself around Bilbo Baggins in their last meeting, and he resented now being in the role of the prey.

"Sméagol has done nothing wrong," he reiterated.

"No," said Aragorn, "I am sure you are as innocent as the tiniest hobbit babe in the Shire."

Gollum drummed his fingers on the floor. "I have done nothing wrong today," he said acidly. "This week. Since I woke up in the Man-place, with Precious gone." Since it started being any of your business, he thought but just barely refrained from saying. "I can't do any better than that, can I, eh? Not now. Can't go back and do different, no, nobody can. Unless Aragorn is so clever and so quick that he can go back and do things different when it suits him?"

"I have not that power," said Aragorn. "I apologize for my hasty words. But, perhaps, with your history, you might understand why it jars the ear to hear you insist that you have done nothing wrong?"

"Aragorn has done things wrong too?" Gollum asked as politely as possible, cracking his knuckles. "Aragorn lied about us."

"I promise you I have not," said Aragorn. "I am not a perfect man, there is no such thing; but I am an honest man, which is rare enough, though not as rare as some believe. What lie do you think I told?"

"Master thought we was let go from the Black Lands, you told him," said Gollum. "He thought we was false over it." And at that time Gollum almost had been, but not because he was on good terms with Mordor! "It's not true. I escaped. No one helped, no one let Sméagol go and it was hard and lonely and wretched, miserable, we were not let go."

Gollum glowered and crouched low against the floor. He had not intended to say so much, he knew it was not in his best interest to make Aragorn cross with him.

Aragorn leaned back, considering him. He did not seem cross. Rather, he had the look of one who was debating whether an unappetizing little creature was worth the effort to catch and eat. "I told Frodo what I believed to be the truth at the time. I did not lie about you, not knowingly. And is it not possible that you yourself were deceived in part?"

"No," said Gollum. "Orcs tried to kill us. Didn't want us to get away."

"The communication among orcs is poor and creatures of the Shadow often attack first and are later told a hostage was meant to be kept alive. It is very possible that you were marked for survival but a few of the orcs you encountered had not gotten the message or not cared to hear it. Particularly if you did anything that would annoy them, Sméagol. Or if they saw you and thought you would be weak and easy to hurt. But did not you yourself tell us you had friends in Mordor?"

"Don't remember." His tone was surly. "No friends in the Tower. No friends there." But perhaps Aragorn felt he deserved what had happened to him there.

No! he thought. I have done some things that were not very nice, perhaps, but that was not why they hurt me, they did it because I had something stolen from me and it was not fair. If he says I deserved it I will hate him! They hurt me so.

He began to rub his fingers together and whimper. How dare Aragorn say he had not escaped!

Aragorn did not say that Gollum had deserved it, and if he was thinking that he had, it did not show on his face. "I told Frodo that you had been tormented there. I was under no illusions on that front." Aragorn looked at him a moment, then leaned back and looked away. "I have already told you I am not here to punish you, and this is not what I came here to discuss. I freely apologize for anything I have said about you that was false, even if I did not know it to be false. May I move on?"

"Yes, yes," said Gollum. It sounded as if he had won the argument, but he felt dissatisfied and hollow and did not know why. He was happy to move on.

"I have two orders of business. Firstly, I wish to ask how you feel about your accomodations." He glanced over the room. "You have adequate food and water, I hope? You seem to be in better health than I have ever seen you in. You've put on weight."

"Yes, we have, precious," Gollum told himself with some satisfaction. He couldn't wrap his hands all the way around his own waist and have his fingertips able to touch anymore. He could not recall the last time he had had an opportunity to put on flesh instead of shedding it, watching his bones emerge through the skin, and finding that they had strange shapes...

"I suppose that means we feed you often enough?"

"Yes, yes." He had never eaten so well in his life as he had in this place, and could not bring himself to complain, even to Aragorn. Perhaps if he were to try to find fault, which he was well skilled at, he would have preferred to have fish rather than meat a little more often, or to have food that had been alive a little more recently, but he was reasonable enough to understand why this might not be feasible. Gollum considered himself to be very reasonable indeed.

For the first time it occurred to him to wonder why his keepers and possible captors appeared to be incredibly wealthy.

"You have been provided with clothing," Aragorn said. "Does it fit?"

"Yes, well enough, the sleeves are funny on us, sometimes."

"Is that why you are wearing so little of the provided clothing?"

"It is hot," said Gollum. "Don't want clothes just now."

"Fair enough," said Aragorn. "It is a warm evening." He glanced over the room. "Galil has said you don't wish to keep the mirror, but we have not found another place for it."

"There is no hurry, it does not bother us when its nassty face is to the wall like that."

"There is a candle burning," remarked the Man.

"Yes." Aragorn still had eyes, good for him.

"I am surprised to see that," said Aragorn, "since you hate light and fear fire. Does the candle not bother you?"

"The Men needs the candle. It is high up the wall." It was in a little stand, on a bare patch of wall with nothing under it. He did not exactly like it, but he had been reassured that it could not possibly catch anything on fire. "We don't look at it. If it is put out the next person to come with food for Sméagol or something nice will light it again, and make us wait and be hungry while someone fusses with a silly candle, so we leaves it alone." He paused, wondering why he ought to explain a candle in his own room to Aragorn. "The room is nice enough; why does the Man want to know?"

"Perhaps you do not remember the last conversation we had?" Aragorn said. "Or perhaps you did not understand it. I am your host. This is one of my guest houses. I am paying for your food and clothing and the people tending you are in my employ."

Now Gollum wondered why Aragorn appeared to be incredibly wealthy, and why he wanted to do all of this, and if he was lying about any of it.

Aragorn added wryly: "I appointed a team of six to look after you, selected based on recommendations from my Steward and my Captain-General, both of whom it seems you have met. Of that team, I told them they may be discharged of this service at once if they found you intolerable. I must say that I chose so many because I was braced to find myself, after a week or so, with one Man remaining out of the six who was willing to care for you, if that- and you needed care, you were starved to almost nothing, burned from the heat of Orodruin, and as weak and dry as a minnow left in the sun. I would not see you left to suffer. I could not attend you myself, with so many others who needed me and had more of a rightful claim to my services, and I feared no one else would be willing to treat you with the pity you must have if you were to live- or at the least, to be given a comfortable death. But I was pleasantly surprised. I underestimated the fortitude of the people of Gondor, or their compassion, or their loyalty to me- I am not sure which." The ghost of a smirk touched a corner of his mouth. "Or perhaps you are able to make yourself pleasant when you are not being observed by myself? Only two of the chosen six asked to have no further dealings with you. Four remain, still looking after you, and taking turns so none of the four have a need to stay up all night or neglect other duties, and even more have volunteered to have a hand in bringing you meals and looking after your quarters."

"Is that so. Yes, we sees many people, these days," said Gollum, who did not entirely understand all of this. "But two did not like Sméagol?"

"One chose to leave when he found that you bite. He did not care to risk the use of his hand."

"That is fair," Gollum said, scratching his nose and not looking at Aragorn. "We doesn't bite anymore, no, precious, good Sméagol doesn't bite; only he was confused after he woke up, yes. Is that, eh, why the other Man left?"

"He left due to reasons I could not have foreseen," Aragorn said. "Your skin secretes something that we cannot quite identify. Touching you caused him to break out in hives."

"That was Sam, we guess," said Gollum.

Aragorn laughed dryly. Gollum was unaccustomed to anyone laughing at his flat, cynical jokes, or even acknowledging them, and this made him view Aragorn with even more suspicion. "Samwise, I think, has a moral allergy to you, but it does not give him hives. But, you see, you are here as my guest and I have taken great pains to ensure you are cared for. It is my desire that you be comfortable and safe; you are not a prisoner and will not become one if you continue to 'do nothing wrong'. I am even willing to forgive your propensity to bite when you are frightened or in pain. Many are not reasonable under those circumstances."

"Yes, yes," said Gollum quickly.

"You are not going to be forced to work." He studied Gollum. "You've been helping my Captain-General with some information, I hear."

"Boromir?"

"Indeed, that is his name."

"Yes, yes, we helps, yes," said Gollum. He was still chewing on the idea that Aragorn was in control of his living situation and whether or not he got food. "Nice Man, we has been very good."

"Yes," said Aragorn. "We have established that. I hear you have been behaving about as well as can be expected. Boromir says your information is good, as far as he knows."

"Wouldn't lie. Nice Sméagol."

"And you have been polite to him, I hear."

"Peoples is always telling us to be nice to Boromir, as if we was some brute that would bite and hurt him when he has never done anything nasty to us," Gollum said. "Boromir is always nice to Sméagol. Sméagol is nice to him."

"I see."

"Boromir is Master's friend. Sméagol would not hurt him."

"That is well. And you have offered to go into tunnels where my men expect that Orcs have denned themselves up in hiding, and scout them."

"Yes, yes."

"That is unusually brave of you," said Aragorn. "You implied just now that Orcs put you in fear of your life."

"They would not see us, would we?" Gollum said, scratching at his knee. "No one can hurts Sméagol if they can't find him, precious." He was a bit afraid, of course, but if he said so perhaps Aragorn would think he could not do the job. He glanced up. "Aragorn had troubles finding us."

"I did," said Aragorn.

"Boromir says Aragorn is the best tracker?" Gollum asked, very politely.

"Yes, Sméagol. You can be very difficult to find when you choose. You evaded the elves of Mirkwood twice. As one hunter to another, I recognize you have a great deal of skill."

"Orcses will never find us," Gollum all but purred.

"I do wonder," said Aragorn, "how they took you captive to begin with."

"How is that, precious?" Gollum blinked. His face felt warm, when it had not a second ago. He pressed the back of his hand to his cheek- yes, it was warm.  The room was warm, but his skin usually remained cool and clammy. "Captured- ach, yes- we wasn't hiding."

"No?" Aragorn was looking at his cheeks and ears.

"No," Gollum said defensively, turning his face away from view. "Made a mistake, we did. Didn't know the place. Someone was telling us..." He took a shuddering breath. "Someone was saying 'come here, come here, it is safe, I want you here' and it was not safe... not safe."

"Perhaps they did not know what to make of you or where your loyalties lay either," said Aragorn.

Gollum trembled against the floor, a rabbit crouching in the grass and hoping the hawk would pass by- all the while knowing it was seen and as good as caught already.

"Not with Him," he whispered. "Never with Him."

"No. Not with him."

"He is gone," said Gollum. "Gone forever, gollum!" He glanced at the candle on the wall and for a second it looked like an eye. He turned away, shivering and closing his own eyes. "He is gone. He will never be back."

"He is gone indeed," said Aragorn.

"Only normal orcses left, now... running about like chickenses with no head."

"Indeed. Yet they must be dealt with or they will continue to do harm. This task you offer would be useful to us, and if you are inclined to help I am inclined to let you, if my Men are willing to work with you. You have quite an appetite, after all- I may as well accept some form of repayment when it is freely offered."

Gollum looked up sharply. "Sméagol can hunt, precious, if they needs him to- if he is expensive. We doesn't want to cause any trouble, gollum, does we? No, precious. Never asked for nothing, never asked for all of this, we won't make them keep doing it, if they doesn't want to! Eh- if he shows us where to hunt we can, yes. Or a river, a pond, with fishes, gollum."

"Do you want to hunt?"

"We... can," said Gollum. He did in fact miss the chase a little bit, now that hunting was no longer a tiring task he needed to constantly undertake in order to stay alive, and he had had a long break from it. And he liked his food better if it had been alive a second ago (or still alive; but that was a good way to catch a flailing claw or teeth in the face, so he did not attempt it normally). But he was not sure what Aragorn wanted to hear.

"Would you rather I turned you loose instead of feeding you?"

Gollum hesitated and stammered. He did not want to be set adrift completely. But if the time had come that Aragorn did not in fact want to keep him, Gollum would rather leave amicably than be driven away. It was so terrible to be driven away!

How dare he turn us out when we have done nothing wrong, he thought furiously, but at the same time... Of course he does not want to keep us! He's right- I don't do anything useful to him, and I eat a lot. But I can't help it if I get hungry, eh, can I?

Aragorn peered at him keenly. "You would not like that?"

"We can hunt if he wants, if he is tired of having to feed us. If he wants us to go, he needn't chase us off, gollum, gollum, we will go."

"But you would rather not fend for yourself?"

"No, no- but I can," Gollum insisted. "I did, gollum- I can- gollum!"

"I will not require that of you," said Aragorn. "I have chosen to take you in, and I can well afford you, and you are not so difficult to care for as some of the Men I have been forced to give accomodation to. You only require your meat to be cut up and not cooked, you only drink water, you don't want your baths heated, you do not criticize the talents of the minstrels I employ, you do not ask me to cause no one to know of things you did very visibly in public, you do not attend public functions and certainly do not care where the people at my dinners are seated, you do not want to marry anybody, you have no opinions on who ought to marry anyone else, you have no views on public policy, you do not care what form of language I address you in or how I stand or where I sit as long as I don't make any sudden movements, you don't ask to use any rooms other than this one and for entertainment you only want to have pen and paper and for all of us to pretend we do not know you climb out of the window and dig holes in the garden and carry away rocks."

Gollum stammered. His face was warm again. He did not understand most of this, apart from the fact that he had been caught. "He needn't cut our food if it is a bother, no, we can-"

"I have asked for it be cut up into pieces on your behalf," said Aragorn, "you do not have many teeth, sharp as they are. And whether you see it as such or not, I consider it cruel to throw chunks of meat to you as if you were 'some brute' without even a hint of preparation. I would like to know why you want to help us. I don't want you to do anything because you fear us, or because you think you will be cast out for not working. It sounds as if you are fearful that I will decide you are too much of a nuisance to house. I will grant you, you are a bit of a nuisance, but I knew that when I took you in and I only ask that you cause no more trouble than you can help."

Gollum was not a bit reassured by this. Rather it made him wonder why the leggy Man wanted to faff about and play mind games instead of just admitting he wanted Gollum to earn his keep. But he could play along, if that was what was wanted.

"Yes, yes!" he said. "Nice Man, we just wants to help, good Sméagol, gollum, gollum!"

Aragorn looked him up and down. "That is possible," he said. "Improbable and impossible are not the same, or I could not be having a civil conversation with you right now. You have spoken more to me today, and spoken more calmly, than you spoke in all the time on the road as I brought you to Mirkwood."

"Didn't want to talk then."

"Evidently not."

"No reason not to talk now." This made perfect sense to Gollum.

"You must have some reason for offering to do this specific task beyond a simple desire to help."

"We are good at it," said Gollum. "Good at not being seen. And we knows orcs, yes. We..." A thought struck him and his blood ran hot. "Aragorn thinks we will give him away, yes precious. That is it, tell the orcs about the city, yes? We will not! No!"

"It seemed unlikely that you would choose to do so," said Aragorn, "since orcs are on the losing end of matters these days. and you have done something that places you as their enemy forever. Boromir has been telling me what you shared about your knowledge of orcs- does that bother you?"

"No," said Gollum. "It was not secret."

"You may correct me if I am mistaken, but I have the impression that although you will not scruple to work with orcs if they have something to offer you, you despise them. There is likely nothing remaining that could tempt you to put up with them as they now have nothing you want that we cannot provide to you more comfortably."

"Hates orcses," Gollum insisted. "Orcs hurt the Master. Squeeze them. Kill them! Sss. Can't tell orcs about the city, if we wanted to. Don't know what it's like, haven't seen it. Don't know who lives here or who is important."

"You don't know who's important in the city?" Aragorn asked mildly.

"Boromir, I suppose, yes," Gollum corrected quickly. He did not want to seem untruthful- and he wasn't lying, not on purpose, he had just spoken in haste without realizing he did know some important people. "The Master. The other hobbits. But we don't know where they live, or where they stays, can't even see them, can Sméagol, if they will not come to him, no. So we can't give anyone away if we wants, no."

"Yes, Frodo is very important, perhaps the most important person here," said Aragorn.

Gollum nodded. He could not quite make out Aragorn's expression- he suspected he had somehow said something amiss, and wondered what it was.

Aragorn sat up decisively. "You have been trusted with tasks that were more difficult and more important, and succeeded, so I believe I will say that I wish for you to do the job. You are well able to do it. Both my Steward and my Captain-General are advising me against it. My Steward thinks you are not to be trusted, at least, not yet. Boromir, however, is concerned for your safety. He has a soft heart for things that appear small and helpless. I have tried to tell him that you are not as helpless as you appear but I am afraid he does not believe me."

Gollum said nothing. He wondered what exactly Aragorn thought he was capable of. The Man had wrestled him into submission before. But the mention of the mysterious Steward made him only more certain that it was high time he proved his loyalty and usefulness.

We must look like some big ugly dog to them, he thought with a shudder. That makes everything damp and is always hungry, and bites, sometimes, yes... we would not keep us if we was a Man, would we? But I can't help it.

"It will take some time to arrange how best to do this," said Aragorn. "Do not expect to hear about it for several days."

"What is needed to arrange? Sméagol will go in by himself, just show him where," said Gollum.

"How will you get there?"

"Walk! We will walk, precious, Aragorn has seen how far we walks. Aragorn made us walk a long way, he did."

"You do indeed walk far when you choose. Or when I choose for you to do so. But in this instance I do not think it best for you to go alone," said Aragorn. "The Men I send with you will not be willing to walk."

"Of course not," said Gollum. "Sends little hobbitses if someone needs to walk."

Aragorn's eyebrows rose. "What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing, nothing, nice Man! Only that hobbits go a long way on foot, they do, if they needs to," said Gollum. Of course his remark had been something of a complaint but he had not expected Aragorn to take it seriously. But he didn't really know what he did expect from Aragorn.

He wished Aragorn would leave and the conversation would be over.

"You do not have a high opinion of Men, do you?"

"Some Men is nice enough," said Gollum. "Nice, yes!"

"Be honest," said Aragorn. "Your impression of a cringing courtier is accurate enough but I do not want it."

"Men are... not as good at things as hobbits, that is all," said Gollum, thinking that no one wanted him to lie, but no one liked what he said when he was honest, and perhaps he should be more careful about mentioning his opinions. "That is not their fault, that they are noisy. It is because they are too big. Didn't get so big on purpose. But it is useful to be so big, sometimes, too! Men can pick up Sméagol when he gets tired, and carry nice big heavy buckets of water to take baths in, and fight orcses, and..." He tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip. Surely there was more. "Fights each other, too, sometimes, yes..."

Aragorn tipped his head back and looked up at the ceiling. "We can indeed do all of those things. And indeed, we sent a hobbit when the time came to do something difficult, dangerous, and important... though he did volunteer. It was not our choice for him to try to go alone, either."

"No," said Gollum, eyeing him. He decided not to embarass nice old Boromir by bringing up the fact that someone had given Frodo a reason to go off alone. A Man. "But Master did not quite go alone," he said diplomatically instead. Whatever his personal feelings were towards Sam- and he was no longer sure he knew what they were- it was plain that Frodo could not have gotten far without Sam, for all sorts of reasons.

"No," said Aragorn. "In the end he was not alone. It is well that he was not! And it was well that the choices of hobbits decided his fate, in the end, or things may have been very different. I cannot truly tell you that you are wrong about us. You've seen a great deal in your time. I am sure you have seen things that are not flattering. And I have seen how long and hard one of my kind must train to, in the end, not be as quiet or as sensible as a hobbit who has grown up smoking pipeweed and planting turnips and not bothering overmuch about anything else. I have seen hobbits with no ambitions for anything larger than a good meal and a mug of ale pull off incredible feats and then only say they wished to go home to their burrows and forget all about it. I have even seen hobbits whose actions saved the world, and they did not believe they had done anything notable enough to change their standing in that world afterwards. In fact, one of them could not be persuaded that he had done anything that was of great import, and was utterly bewildered when he was rewarded for it- and rewarded with nothing more than basic hospitality and healing. His was an unusual case, but perhaps not as unusual as I first believed."

"Hobbits can be a bit silly too," said Gollum. "All peoples is silly sometimes, eh?"  

"That they are. Men do have their talents. We can indeed pick you up when you allow it, and fight orcs. We can fight each other. We can ride horses as well. I presume you cannot ride a horse."

"No. We hasn't tried it, but horses are nervous when they see us, they are. And Sméagol is a bit nervous when he sees horseses, too," he added in a low tone to himself.

"Perhaps you can be drawn behind one in a cart."

Gollum had snuck onto traveling carts before and found that they suited him fairly well provided the horse did not notice him. "Perhaps, but- why? We can walk."

"But you do not know where you are," said Aragorn, "or how to get to your destination."

"So they will tell us," said Gollum. He frowned. "Men are not coming with us. No."

"Yes, they are," said Aragorn. "Why do you insist on going alone?"

"That is the point," Gollum said. "To go alone. To be quiet, yes, the way Men cannot be quiet! Why would we take Men along with us, then? Is he afraid we wants to escape?"

"If you do, that is not the right way to go about it. You are not under any requirement to remain here. If you wish to depart you need only ask and we will make arrangements."

"Don't want to escape," said Gollum. "Nowhere to go. Nothing to find. No home. No people. Nothing."

Aragorn sounded decisive. "We will not bring you all the way to the mouth of the tunnel, because indeed, the purpose is for you to go where we cannot- but we'll bring you part of the way, and be where you can quickly reach us if you need help. You cannot change my mind about this." Aragorn stood up suddenly- Gollum jumped backwards. Aragorn looked down at him. "I apologize, I was too abrupt. I am leaving now," he said, "if there is nothing else- nothing on a new subject," he said, holding up one hand with the palm out. "I do not want to hear that you think you should go alone or that you have been very well-behaved. You have made those things clear. Is there anything else? If you need something I would like to hear about it."

"No," said Gollum. He could have thought of something if he wanted to, particularly if he were able to interpret 'need' generously, but at the moment what he wanted most of all was for Aragorn to leave.

"Good," said Aragorn. "You will be summoned when we wish to discuss the matter of your offered services. Boromir will likely be the one to speak with you about it from now on. I bid you a good night."

He turned and left the room. Gollum shuddered and shook himself as if to fling the clinging film of their conversation off of his skin.

He heard a cry from out in the hall: "My Lord King!"

Gollum tilted his head, like a curious dog.

Aragorn's voice replied: "Good evening. I have a question- do you have dealings with the creature kept within?"

"Sometimes, my lord. I'm here to bring him some water. He seems always to be thirsty."

"I have heard from very good authority that he is on his best behavior, is that true?"

"I am- not quite sure what his worst behavior is. He is always pleased to see the water, and will thank me for bringing it- after his fashion- his speech is odd."

"I am familiar with his speech- you need not try to explain. Has he ever given cause for complaint?"

"No- no, my King."

"Not ever?"

"He has been rude and snappish, at times. But I do not grudge him, sir, I believe he is frightened easily, and does not always know how best to act."

"Has he been cruel or violent?"

"Never, my lord, only impolite, at worst. I- I do hear he will bite, if given offense. I once saw a woman try to pick him up by putting her hands around his waist, and he put his teeth close to her arm and growled until she let go, though he did not bite. And he had angry words."

"What were his words?"

"I believe he- called her big and stupid and asked how she would like it, if she were lifted thus. He has asked not to be picked up in that manner before. And she previously made an attempt to move him by nudging him with her broom, which had put him out of temper. He has never threatened me in any way, my lord, and in fact he seems to wish to keep his distance."

"I see. His words were unpleasant, but I must confess that I myself would not enjoy being lifted thus."

"She squeezed him, my lord. It looked uncomfortable. And- a bit degrading."

"I suppose it is not unreasonable to express displeasure in such a circumstance. I ask about his conduct because in the past a sort of poison afflicted his mind, and it caused him to act in a most vile manner."

"Yes- I was cautioned against something of the sort."

"I am hopeful that he is recovered. If you see him behaving without reason, or with cruelty, please tell someone."

"Yes, my King. The creature Sméagol behaves no worse than I would expect from- from... from someone who is ill at ease and surrounded by those so much larger than himself."

"I can expect no better. I will take my leave. I thank you for treating him kindly."

There were multiple facts of interest in that conversation, but Gollum found himself preoccupied by one thing above the rest:

Is Aragorn... the King?

He had little interest in the political affairs of Men, especially now that there was no Ring to look after and therefore no factions that might be trying to get it. It would not have occurred to him to care who was the King of the Men.

But apparently he should be keeping track of these things.

He did not want to! He had assumed he did not need to bother about anything like that anymore. He sat down and whimpered.

Days passed and Gollum was not sent for. He knew why not, of course. He might not understand very much about Men, or grasp why he was here at all or why he was being so nicely fed and kept in such comfortable conditions, but he knew, or thought he knew, that the Men did not trust him to do a mission, and believed that he wanted to betray them to the orcs.

"Put our foot in it now, you did," he muttered to himself when he was alone. "Could have stayed quiet and stayed here nice. Could have gotten ourselfs out of it when Boromir said we didn't have to. Sss! Maybe they will forget, if we do not ask again- they may. Sss, sss! We shouldn't have said anything."

He could not believe that the Men would forget. Aragorn especially would not.

"He is the King," he told himself. "The King! He can throw us out- starve us- puts us in jail- ach! And he thinks we are false. And when Kings think they've had tricks played, they doesn't just kick you away. No! He's put a rope around our neck before. The next time the other end will be in a tree!"

He shuddered and felt at the smooth, soft skin of his throat.

The solution began to seem obvious.

GON OWRSELFS he wrote on the surface of the table. WIL BE BAK WEN DUN. DONT FOLLO. That ought to be plain enough! The Men would likely follow him anyway, of course, but they wouldn't catch him. He was an expert!

In one respect he was lucky. The Men had made a rather silly mistake, and in the drawer of clothes he had been provided with- plain, bare items, suitable for someone who tended to get buttons caught on things and tear knees and elbows and make fabric slimy- there was a hobbit-sized mantle with a hood, made of dark gray fabric. Perfect for hiding in shadows, and the hood could be drawn low to hide the bright gleam of his eyes. It was a very silly thing to let him have.

And they still had not blocked up the window.

He would go to the orc-tunnels himself, and bring back a report, and not betray anyone to anybody.

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