Chapter Text
“What do you think?”
Fili sits with his arms folded across his chest, chewing on a thumbnail. Balin’s dark eyes scan the letter silently, giving nothing away. Kili watches from his position, against the wall in his black clothes, so still and quiet that he melts into the shadows. Where he belongs.
“Mm, good.” Balin’s tongue is poised delicately between his teeth. “Do you think it wise to mention her mother?”
“Because she’s not a Longbeard? I thought about that. But wouldn’t it be worse to say nothing and let people’s imaginations fill in the gaps? I don’t want to look like we have nothing to hide.”
“Very true. What about this part – a ‘brief’ courtship?”
“It is... officially.”
“But unofficially...”
“If we told everyone what happened unofficially, I’d never be allowed to marry her.”
“As long as you’re comfortable with your story, my lad.”
Kili studies the room, the play of light and shadow, the shape of the heavy furniture, the luxurious hangings. Everything in here screams money, too much of it. It still unsettles him, and he knows it unsettles Fili, too. Both of them are still struggling to come to terms with the fact that Fili, quite possibly, is the richest of anyone – dwarf, man, elf or orc – in the world.
“Have you got your announcements ready?” Fili looks over his shoulder. “The call, I mean. You’re taking on two, right?”
“Two recruits is as much as Nori and I can handle at once.” Kili’s voice rasps for a moment, from disuse. “As soon as you declare the betrothal, I’ll declare the call. Three months is long enough for the message to reach the East, and for anybody who wishes to come here.” Not as far as the Orocani’s, but no matter of that. Kili is more interested in the hired swords, the mercenaries, who have a little blood on their hands and could be persuaded to turn straight. There were plenty of Ironfists who had fallen on harder times and left their homelands, but not made it all the way west, yet. He would test them.
“Then we’re all settled.” Balin folds the letter and pushes his chair back. “I’ll get Ori to scribe a royal decree, it should be ready by noon tomorrow for you to sign and seal, and we’ll get it out to the bell-tollers and ravens.”
He leaves with a knowing grin, and then Kili and Fili are left alone – not quite alone, for Teitr the second guard is standing there too, like Kili, with his back against the wall, one with the darkness.
“You ready for it?” A note of something light, something teasing creeps into Kili’s voice. He can’t help himself. “Betrothal, the wedding... marriage.”
Fili looks up at him, oddly grim in his resolution. He won’t play tonight. “I’ve been married for years.”
That night, Kili dreams that he’s lying in bed – not in his bunk but a wide, soft mattress, draped with furs and linen. He looks down to see that he’s naked and then he looks to his left, and there’s a naked dam beside him, lying on her side, turned away, her long golden dreadlocks spread over the pillow.
He watches her, and then after an agonizingly long time, she turns to face him. The skin is burned black; her eyes empty sockets and her teeth flash like those of a skeleton, the lips burned away.
“Oh, Kili,” Vala says, softly, her voice straining through a smoke-burned throat. “Why did you let me die?”
Kili gasps awake. For a moment her face lingers, the skin peeled back from scorched bone, the blistered hands reaching out to clasp him. Lingering panic claws at his chest, sets his heart racing, and he closes his eyes, breathes in deeply, waiting for the shock to fade. “Fuck,” he whispers, barely audible. The memory doesn’t leave him for a long time.
The next day begins as normal. He rises early, alongside his brothers, when the night guards come back from their shift. They breakfast together at the long table with its two benches; twenty hearty, hale dwarves, handpicked by Kili as the strongest, the smartest, the most loyal to Fili. His King’s Guard. They all wear identical black woollen shirts covering a mail vest and long trousers and high boots and hidden knives. Twenty cloaks, with ornate silver clasps and deep hoods, hang on the wall alongside twenty polished swords.
Kili reads through his papers as he eats. Everything goes through him. Every letter sent to the king, every record and report, every proposal and message, was read, and signed, by Kili first. Nothing slips past his watchful eyes.
The report from the Front Gate has already come in, a record of every dwarf that has entered, or tried to enter, Erebor. Kili reads it carefully, making occasional notes in his own thick ledger, ignoring the jokes and chatter along the table. The usual story – merchants selling their wares, hunters coming back from the plains, nobility from the Iron Hills attending an upcoming wedding. Nothing interesting, until he catches a name that makes the breakfast drop a notch in his stomach, and his throat close.
He looks up, studying the dwarves. “Styrr.” Kili calls out. His voice was deep and serious, and the others fall silent. “I’m going into the city and you’re coming. We need to visit Stoneplough. Peasant clothes, but wear a mail shirt beneath them. Knives only, no sword.”
Styrr swallows back his surprise. “Sure, boss. When are we going?”
“Now.” Kili sets down the scroll of parchment. “Nori, finish reading through these. If something’s wrong, then handle it.”
They take one of the carriages to the edge of the inner wall, and walk the rest of the way, down to the clusters of houses near the mines, where the poorest dwarves lived. The sort of people who couldn’t be helped, who drink and smoke and gamble their way through moment the moment it lands in their greedy palms. Kili pities them, in a way.
“Who are we seeing?” Styrr finally asks. They head into one of the streets that had been taken up largely by Ironfist immigrants, who came in a flood after Kili returned from the East, and then trickled in slowly in the years afterward, hungry and desperate. It’s why he chose Styrr – with his golden dreadlocks, he’d fit right in. “Someone get in that might cause trouble?”
“No, nothing like that.” Kili says. “It’s, uh, Freja.”
“Shit. Does that mean Mýr is with her? Did they think they’d just slip in? How did they get through the gates?”
“Mýr isn’t with her. It was her, four children and a nurse. She lied and said she was a miner’s widow. It’s a common enough name.”
“How do you know it’s her, then?”
Kili clenches his hand into a fist. “It’s her.”
They start out at the market stalls. It only takes a few copper coins before the fishmonger points down a narrow alley, greedy eyes gleaming as he clutched his prize. “Wait here,” Kili says when they’re a few doors away. “Keep me covered, all right?”
“Sure, boss.”
“Don’t call me boss. You know I hate that.”
“I know you do, boss.”
He knocked on the door. He can hear chatter through the warped wood, the crying of a young child. Then it opens a crack to a girl with wide blue eyes, perhaps twelve or thirteen.
“Yes?” She asked quietly. “Who are you?”
“Is your mother home?” She nods. “I need to speak to her. Tell her it’s—”
“Tell me what?” A hard voice snaps, and the door flings open. Freja sneers in the doorway, thin and dishevelled, in a plain, ragged dress. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Amad, that’s a naughty word!”
Freja ignores the girl. “Why are you here?”
“I was going to ask you the same question.” Kili struggles to keep his voice low and calm. Last night’s dream comes back to haunt him, lingering in his mind. “Is Mýr with you?”
The girl’s lip quivers, and he realises immediately. “My husband died a year ago of a fever.” Freja seems cold to him already. Maybe she always had been. “I just want to be left alone with my children, Kili.”
“You don’t have to live like this.” Kili reaches into his shirt, pulls out a small bag of money. “It should be enough for a few weeks. I can get you one of the villas in the square, all on me. Anything you need.”
Freja laughs, cold and high and mocking; the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. “What is this, blood-money? You think that if you buy me off, you won’t feel guilty?”
“No, I just—”
“To hell with you, Kili. We don’t need your pity.” She tries to close the door but Kili catches it, holds firm.
“This isn’t about that. It’s for your daughters. I know you want the best for them. You came all this way for them, didn’t you? So they wouldn’t live the life that you and Vala had.”
“Don’t pretend that you knew her.” Her teeth are gritted. “You had no idea.”
Kili swallows. “I did know her.”
“Mahal. You loved her, didn’t you?” Freja laughs again, a dry, tired cackle. “She didn’t love you, Kili. You were just the means to an end for her. But she fucked it up and you fucked it up, and now she’s dead. Don’t try buying off your conscience with me. I don’t want it.” She wraps her hand around Kili’s wrist to pull him away, and numbly, he lets her. “You’re just like Úni. You thought you saw a broken little flower and just had to rescue her. She played a stupid, dangerous game. And we all lost.” Freja spits on the ground at his feet. “I don’t want your dirty coin. Do us all a favour, Kili. Leave us alone.”
The door slams shut, and Kili stands numbly on the threshold for a moment, the little bag heavy in his hand and heart thumping. It was all lies – Freja being bitter, nasty, spiteful, the way Úni said she always had been. She didn’t mean it. But the uneasiness gnaws away in Kili’s gut, the realisation that there may be a seed of truth there, that Freja knows something that Kili doesn’t about Vala. She probably knew her better than anybody, in the end.
He turns away, but the creaking of a shutter makes him stop. On the second floor, above him, is a middle-aged dam, leaning out the narrow window. “Your Highness,” she says as loudly as she dares. “Meet me at the Boar’s Tusk in an hour.”
Styrr is halfway through his second beer and Kili his first when the dam enters, looking furtively around her. She makes her way to their corner table, checking the face of everyone around them. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” she mutters as she sits across from them. “Lady Freja would have my skin if she knew.”
“You’re the nurse, aren’t you?”
“Aye, Your Highness. Brunhild. I raised Her Ladyship from a babe, and Master Úni and Miss Vala too. They’re all the family I have.” She gives a small, sad smile. “Her Ladyship hurts, Your Highness. She doesn’t mean all she says. She’s just always had a sharp tongue.”
Part of him wants to ask if it’s true, then, everything Freja said about Vala. But he’s afraid of the answer, so he doesn’t. “Can I give you the money, then? Maybe she’ll take it from you.”
“Mayhaps. I can use it to keep the larder full, at least. She doesn’t pay attention to the house. I’ll spend what I can and save the rest for the girls.”
“Of course.” Kili sets the small purse down on the table, and Brunhild sweeps it up into her skirts. “Anything you ever need, send a message to the palace. Say it’s from you, and it’ll come straight to me.”
“You’re a better soul than they’ll give you credit for.” Brunhild murmurs. She lets out a long, long sigh, and shakes her head. “I-I’m sorry, Your Highness. But I must… Ooh, she’ll go wild if she knew I told you.”
“Told me what?”
Brunhold bites the inside of her cheek, looking past Kili at the wall. “She… She didn’t die that day, Your Highness.”
Kili’s heart throbs, heavy and low. “Vala?”
“Aye. It wasn’t her in the fire. It was poor Signí. I didn’t hold with all she did, but she shouldn’t have gone like that. I suppose Sir Húni wanted to teach Miss Vala a lesson. He tried to do the same. But she fought back and stuck him one. They locked her up while they tried to save Sir Húni. You may have walked right past her.” Kili listens silently, growing cold. “She was all burned when we found her. Lady Freja managed to get a little cottage, so a healer could tend to her in secret. I was with her day and night. We knew if we said a word to anybody, they’d drag her to the Ring for murder and collusion.”
“I could have—”
“Lady Freja wasn’t one for forming alliances with you after you murdered her nephew.” Her eyes flashed at that, and Kili knew he would never be forgiven. “That poor boy. Slitting his throat like an animal. But you couldn’t let him live and come back as your enemy, could you?”
“I—I thought Vala was dead. I wasn’t thinking straight at the time.” But it’s all bullshit, and they both know it.
Brunhild seems troubled. “You were the last person Lady Freja would have told. But you were probably the only one who could have saved her. Anyhow, it’s not my place to make those judgements, begging your pardon. We waited until she was healed, and then she arranged to send Miss Vala somewhere she’d be safe, and wouldn’t cause trouble for anyone.”
“Where.” Kili leans forward, wild-eyed. “Where is she?”
Brunhild stares up at the ceiling, lips moving silently. “I can’t, Your Highness. I just can’t. Lady Freja would know I told you. She’d send me away and I could never bear it. Those girls need me more than ever. But she’s alive. And she’s safe. Please, trust me on this.”
She leaves then, thanking them once more for the coin with wet eyes. Kili’s head sinks into his hands and he remained that way for a long time, the waves crashing against him, grief and hope filling him slowly.
She’s alive. Kili feeds himself on the thought, hungry and greedy. She’s alive. Weeks pass in a blur. Kili struggles to concentrate on the world around him. Brunhild’s admission has struck at the core of his being, at something he had forced down and squeezed the life of and hidden from the light. Now, the spectre of Vala hangs over him, breathing against the back of his neck, leaning over his shoulders as he bent over his work. That strange, bewitching girl, who managed to wind herself around his heart like a piece of string, then slipped away, just out of his grasp, her memory has returned to him.
“You all right?” Fili asks one night, the both of them hunched over a table stacked high with papers. “Something’s different. Anything I need to know about?” They work on a tenuous code of silence, where Fili doesn’t ask for some of the darker details of what Kili did, where Kili doesn’t tell him.
“Just... thinking.”
“About what?”
“You know.” Fili does know. It could have been anything, really, after the years they’d had together. And it seems to be enough. Fili just smiles, looking like he wants to reach out and touch him, but thinking the better of it.
“How’s the search?” He asks. “Are people going to write you, or...?”
“No, it’s an open call this time.” Kili has already handpicked enough dwarves from the army, from his close circle of confidantes. He knows there’s good talent out there, who will name come forward for their own reasons. “Anyone who shows up in on the day at the foot of the mountain can try their luck.”
“Anyone?”
“Anyone. They just have to pass the first step.” And what a first step. A hundred-mile hike along a marked path through the foothills of Erebor. Anyone who could do it in two days can progress – but Kili knows they’ll be very few.
“And then what?”
“A series of tests. Physical strength, code-breaking, intelligence, memory, fighting, reading and writing... Just throwing everything at them and seeing how they can take it.”
“Do you ever thing that it’s too much?” Fili asks. “What if nobody passes your tests?”
Kili shrugs. “Then I don’t want them.” He’s hard and unrelenting about this, and thankfully, Nori agrees with him. “I only want the best of the best, when it comes to protecting you.”
Fili looks downward, a little abashed, and shakes his head. “You should be proud. All of this... it’s you. You’re holding this place together. Erebor owes you everything.” But all she did was take. The thought hung in the air for a moment, unsaid.
Kili wonders often if he should tell Úni. He finds himself standing in the square, staring at the grand villa that he had paid for, filled it with pretty things, where Úni now lives with his wife, drinking himself to death. He thinks of his own bubbling outrage at having the truth kept from him, and how he nourished himself now on the hope that Vala, somewhere, could be out there. And when he receives a receipt for two casks of wine amongst Úni’s household expenses, and sits down and worked out how long it has been since the last one, Kili knows he has to say something.
He waits in the fabulous sitting room, full of tapestries and silks and porcelain pottery. He had thought, stupidly, his generosity would help ease the aching guilt. “Your Highness.” Ásta, a young dam of thirty and the young wife of the household, smiles at him, showing six gold teeth. The blacksmith had done well for her. Kili remembers when he first laid eyes on her, all skin and bone and bundled up in rags, her face scarred from the pox and her teeth blackened and splintered. Úni pledged to marry her on the spot, after she’d been brought out by the inn-keeper to entertain their party in one of the many Eastern towns they’d sheltered in during their long journey westward. It was such a desperate, misguided act of chivalry, but Úni was so blind with grief, so wounded, and so bitter and hateful at the world, that Kili didn’t dare speak out about it. Nobody did. “Úni’s upstairs. Come with me. We weren’t expecting you.”
Úni’s drunk, which isn’t unusual for him, even this early in the day. Kili had tried to find work for him in the palace at first, coding secret messages and managing intelligence from their spies, but Úni instead took the allowance Kili offered and stayed at home, playing Māta with Ásta or the servants, reading, or just drinking on his own, watching the fire and stewing in his melancholy. He didn’t seem to have the will to pull himself out of his grief so he drowned slowly, inch by inch, while everyone else just looked on, helpless.
Úni just grunts as Kili enteres the study, gestures at the jug of wine in a silent offering. “I’m all right.” Kili can’t look at him and instead studies a painting on the wall behind him, gold leaf and paint on wood, the colours already dull and faded from the smoky room.
“What brings you here?” Úni’s single eye glitters at him through the gloom. The scar was white and puckered, a hasty seam drawn over his cheek and brow, sewing his empty eyesocket closed. “Ásta call you?”
“No. Not that.” Strange, now that it’s so close, the words struggle to eek out of him. It’s such an old, heavy wound that Úni bears – not just in his missing eye and his dead, withered arm, but in his soul, his shame and failure a blackened rot that poisoned his blood, turned him inside out. “I— Saw someone recently. Freja.”
“Eh? What’s she doing here?” His good hand tightened.
“Her husband died. She had nowhere to go. She’s down in Stoneplough, with four children. Three girls and a boy. And her nurse... Brunhild, is it?”
“Still around, huh.” Úni leans back in his chair. “Stoneplough is full of poorhouses. We—We need to give her money.”
“I tried. She wouldn’t take it. She told me to fuck off, actually.”
Úni chuckles, dry and bitter, reminiscent of his sister. “She always was a spiteful bitch. Bet she wouldn’t have it from me, either. She hates me, you know, for what I did. She blamed me for Hekyr’s death as much as she did Húni.”
Kili’s heard the stories in dribs and drabs, usually when Úni was drunk. “I spoke to Brunhild,” he knows it’s better to try and pull Úni out, rather than let the memories enfold him. “She took the money. She’ll make sure the girls have enough.”
“Good. Someone in our family deserves some damn happiness.” He leans forward, his hands trembling a little, sets his empty goblet on the little table at his elbow and refills it with a jug of wine. The redness slops shakily over the rim.
Kili waits until he’d taken a long drink before speaking. “She told me about Vala.” The tension is immediate; Úni seizes up, his raspy breathing still.
“What about her?”
“She’s alive, Úni.”
“Bullshit.”
“You think I’d lie to you about this?” Kili’s voice rises and breaks. “I wouldn’t. Never.”
“Freja’s fucking with you. She’s making Brunhild tell lies. She’s dead, we saw her. We...” Úni swallows his wine heavily, convulses.
“It was Sígni’s body we saw. Vala was locked up somewhere else. Húni burned her, but she didn’t die.” Those words, which were so stiff and unsure at first, tumble out now. “Freja kept her hidden, looked after her until she was healed.”
Úni scoffs. “Freja would never do that.”
“She disliked Vala, but she’d never want her to die. Not like that.”
“Fine, let’s pretend my sister has a heart for a moment. Where is she now, then? What happened to her?”
“Brunhild wouldn’t tell me.”
“Of course she wouldn’t. You’re being had, Kili. She’s doing this to torture you. To drag it on and make it hurt.” Úni’s lax again, crumbling into the fine tapestry of his chair. “Trust me. I know her. You’re a fool to think she’d ever do something out of love.”
Kili saw the scorn on Freja’s face so clearly, the hard, merciless lines of cruelty. The choking gasp of laughter when she realised that Kili loved her sister. He wonders for a moment if it was all a fiction, a fantasy he clung to in denial. His eyes sink then, to his hands, to the space on his wrist where, just out of the hem of his shirtsleeve, the edge of an old brand gleamed white.
Resolve hardens within him. “Nothing’s hopeless.”
That night, Kili has what he sees as his most cherished, duty, although he’ll tell nobody. It’s his turn to guard Tova.
When Amad first held his hand and gently said she was pregnant, it felt to Kili like a betrayal, a whiplash of outrage that burned in his chest for a moment, protesting that no, he was the youngest, the child, and he always would be. It was such a silly, lost little thought, of a reality that had been abandoned so long before, and he immediately regretting himself for feeling it.
It brought a lightness to his mother that Kili hadn’t seen before, even though she bent further under the weight of her child. And when Tova was born – a daughter, with her father’s chestnut-dark hair and her mother’s brilliantly blue eyes – and Kili held her in his arms for the first time, there was a fierce surge within him, the fire of protection, for this infant. His sister. It still tastes a little strange on his tongue to whisper it now.
“Kili!” She looks up from the rug before the fire as he opens the door. A soft gleam of Styrr’s golden hair is barely visible from the deep shadow in the corner. Tova claps her hands. “Nanny said you were coming!” The tired nursemaid rests with her chin on her fist, propped on the arm of her wooden chair, eyes half-lidded. She grunts. “Will you be here all night?”
“I will.” He reaches out to take her. Tova flings herself in his arms, and Kili whirls her in the air as she screeches with laughter.
“Can we see Nardur?” She asks, wide-eyed trusting. “Please?”
“Hm, I’m not sure.” He looks over his shoulder and winks. “Does Styrr have time to get him before he goes down for dinner?”
“Yes! Yes he does!” Her little hands grip his woollen shirt. “Mister Styrr, please?”
“As you wish, Your Highness. Boss.” He chuckles to himself as he goes out.
“While we wait, let’s look at your toys.” Kili kneels on the rug. He’s not supposed to do this. He should be waiting in the shadows, watchful, alert for any sound or movement out of the ordinary. But this is the only time they have together, and it’s precious to him.
Tova thrusts figures of horses and dwarves at him, gabbling in her little-girl voice, her hair falling messily over her face. When Nardur is finally brought in, she squeals, buries her face in his fur and grabs at his ears and he lets her.
“Can I ride him?” Her voice is low, sombre. “I won’t fall.”
“All right. But don’t tell Amad I let you.”
“I won’t.” Kili puts her astride the warg and walks alongside her, one hand on Nardur’s back in a silent bid for him to stay calm. “Is it true you rode him all through Mirkwood?” She screws up her face, probably trying to imagine the enormity of it. She’s only seen it in maps and drawings.
“Nearly.”
“With Fili and Adad?”
“No, I’ve told you. I was with someone else.”
“Who?”
“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
“I’m old now.”
“You’re not two years out of your swaddle-cloths, Tova.” He hardens his voice a little, a warning. “I’ll tell you later. But not now.”
Later, Tova sleeps in her low wooden bed close to the fire and Nardur curls up beside her, as long as the mattress, his nose in her ear. Sibba, the nursemaid, works on her darning, pausing every few minutes to yawn loudly.
“Go to bed,” Kili says. “We’ll watch her.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.” Sibba groans as she rises to her feet.
“Oh,” She pauses as she walks past him. “You don’t tell Tova anything about what happened to me, do you?”
“Of course not, Your Highness.” Her voice is low and breathy. “But she’s a smart little girl. She knows there’s something you’re not telling you.”
“I want her to be old enough to understand.”
“Begging my pardon, Your Highness, but I would say she’d understand better than near most everyone in this castle.”
He hasn’t thought about it like that. Kili looks over her shoulder, to Tova. She’s lying on her back, half her face reflected by the fire, her breathing low and steady. So innocent.
Kili smiles weakly. “Good night, Sibba.”
The morning is cold and fiercely windy. Kili bites back a shiver and pulls his hands out of his pockets. In the valley before him stand fifty dwarves, wrapped up in cloaks and hoods and tunics, their faces bent against the chill. Some of them are sandy-haired, their dreadlocks whipping in the wind. Others are dark. He spots a few red beards in the scattered crowd and waves, beckoning them to come closer to hear his voice.
“Listen!” He calls out. Fifty faces turn towards him, some wrapped up in scarves and caps and hoods that all he can see are eyes, looking at him, waiting silently for their orders. “I have marked a path of one hundred miles through the foothills of Erebor. You will be crossing open plains, hills, mountain ranges, and forests. Markers of red cloth will guide you along the way. You have two days to walk this trail, back to this spot. I will be waiting for you. Anyone who does not make it by sundown on the second day will not be permitted to continue the trials. Do you understand?”
Silence, a few nods. “Now, of course, some of you may think to cheat.” Kili is no fool. “That is why ten of my guards are stationed along the path. They will carry these.” He holds up a stone token between his forefinger and thumb, marked with several runes. “Each guard will have a separate stone. You must return with all ten to be considered successful.”
“This will test your endurance. You will receive no food or water. You are to carry no packs or skins with you. You will need to march all day and night to make it back in time. It will also test your ability to negotiate the land. You will need to ford rivers, climb trees, traverse steep hills and gullies. Other guards will patrol the course on pony. If you cannot continue, they can take you back and you will fail. But you won’t do that, will you?”
“No sir!” A voice calls out from the crowd. There’s a tense moment of silence, uncertain, that ends when Kili’s face cracks in a smile. The dwarves seem to let out long a breath in unison. A few chuckle.
“I should think not.” He looks over his shoulder, at the rim of gold along the horizon. “The sun is up. Move, you’re to go westwards along the valley until you see your first marker! And leave your packs behind, I’m watching!”
Kili stands, his hands on his hips, a strange warmth swelling inside of him despite the cold as the dwarves break away. Some break into a jog already, determined to be one of the first to return and win Kili’s favour. Others keep a strong, steady pace. A few talk among themselves. Kili waits until they’re all a few hundred yards away, tricking down the valley in their dark, wintery clothes, before jumping down from the rock, his hands back in his pockets.
“Not a bad crop, by my reckoning.” Nori shrugs. “Two days. You’re a hard bastard, you know that?”
“Has Ori completed the written tests?”
“Yep, saw him last night. He’s made twenty copies. If we get more, he can whip them up with his scribes. We’ve got lodging ready for them?”
“Yes, beds enough. After the march, we’ll put them up in the training room. I want the rest to get a feel for the group. If they’re not getting along, then I don’t want them.”
“So when do we come back out here?”
“I’d say tomorrow, before noon. I’m seeing Fili this morning, he wants to talk about his visit to the Iron Hills.”
“Are you going?”
“I’m trying to get out of it. I’d be going as Prince Kili, not in the King’s Guard, and Fili knows I hate doing that. If Amad and Dwalin aren’t going, I’ll stay behind too. And Tova’s too young to go anywhere. You’ll go for me, won’t you?”
“You know I hate that lot just as much as you do.”
“But you don’t have to wear a crown for them.”
Nori chuckles. “You make it sound such a burden.” It’s supposed to be a wry joke, but it cuts too close for Kili, and he just shakes his head. Truth is, it is.
Kili finds Ori bent over his papers at his desk in the royal library. It’s a heaving behemoth of wood, tucked away between the narrow shelves of manuscripts, with innumerable little drawers and shelves and cubbies crammed with books and rolled up pieces of parchment and scraps of paper. His brass cipher is out of its little leather case, so he must be coding. Ori looks up, makes to turn the sheet of paper, but he sees it’s Kili and relaxes.
“Morning. Nori said you might be in to see me. Are they off then? How many did you get?”
“Fifty.” Kili finds a stool and drags it closer, sitting down. “Better than I thought.”
“All Longbeard, or...?”
“Mix. There’s some Ironfists, I think some Firebeads and Broadbeams. Maybe a few Stiffbeards. Not sure about them. I’ll get their names and send a raven to our spies in the East.” He looks down at the paper. “What did you get?”
“That letter from Balin to our allies in Belfalas. About the whole Anduin fiasco. I think you’ve already read it.”
“Oh, shit, that barge that went down. I remember now, they want to cancel the trade deal and Thranduil is throwing a fit about it. Fili too. Didn’t even get the first shipment. Apparently the nobility will go mad. They wanted their first taste of oranges and it’s the only major trade point to Harad.”
“I know. Hence...” Ori held up the letter. “Why does he want this coded? Do you know?”
“He doesn’t want anyone in the Iron Hills to know about it yet. And he suspects someone might be light-fingered. Or the messenger might be tempted to divulge its secrets for a price.”
“So that’s why Balin wanted the elvish cipher. Is Thranduil going to decode it?”
“I just hope he doesn’t make his own additions,” Kili mutters.
“Oh, he won’t. He’ll just want his tariffs, he won’t jeopardise that to spite us. He likes making a fool of you, but he likes gold more.”
There’s a pause. Kili leans an elbow on the table and sighs. “What is it?” Ori asks, leaning in, sensing the unease. “It’s about Vala, isn’t it?”
Kili told him the day after he learned. He nods now, unable to look at him. “Don’t. Don’t torture yourself over it. We’ve sent out messages. We’ve got our allies on the lookout for her description. What else can we do, pull half the guard to scour the world for her?”
“No, of course not. I just...” Kili shakes his head. “I should have known, Ori. It just... didn’t feel right. You know? Maybe I didn’t want to believe it, because it was so awful. And I didn’t see her, properly dead. There was always this part of me. But I told myself it was just denial. A fantasty. So I put it away. And now...” He laughs at his foolishness. “All this time, she was alive.”
“I know.” Ori reaches out, takes Kili by the wrist in a rare moment of intimacy. “I know, Kili. It’s the most awful feeling in the world.”
“If I saw her again...” Kili swallows hard. “She wouldn’t be the same. She wouldn’t be Vala. How could she be? She lost everything.”
“You’re still Kili, the one you used to be.” Ori says, his fingers tightening. “I still see flashes of him, now and then. He’s not dead, you know that.”
They both look at their clasped hands. Kili’s nails bite into his, in desperation, in longing, in that brotherhood of empathy, the deep wound of a shared experience, of a brutal amputation of love in a mistaken death. “I know,” Kili finally chokes out, not really believing it, but not knowing what else he can say.
The morning haze has lifted and the sky is bright and clear. Nori and Kili sit before a long table with ten woven baskets. It’s a few hours until sunset. Already, about ten of the dwarves have returned, their pockets bulging with stone. Kili and Nori take them, examine them, confirm their authenticity and then the victorious dwarves stagger to a long hut where a barrel of beer and a spit-roasted hog awaits them.
“Still some time to go.” They see the dark shapes in the mouth of the valley, moving like ants in the distance. Nori is marking their names, the name of their father and tribe on a sheaf of parchment.
The afternoon wears on and dwarves continue to trickle in, and when the shadows stretch low and the rocks above them burn orange, two dozen exhausted dwarves huddle in the hut, talking low amongst themselves, drinking deep pitchers of beer, or snoozing on one another’s shoulders, their thick beards rising and falling.
Kili watches the dwarves – some stone-faced and silent, some young and nervous, some deep-chested and hearty, belly-laughing in their victory despite their fatigue. Nori takes their names and Kili watches, looking for any suspicious signs. A few dwarves niggle something inside of him – a thin-faced dwarf who said he was a Stiffbeard with sharp, cunning eyes, an Ironfist with waist-length dreadlooks who didn’t look in Kili’s direction, a very young dwarf, with his face wrapped up in a thick scarf who barely spoke above a whisper.
“Is he of age?” Nori asks as the boy retreated.
“He made the march. See how far he goes, doesn’t look like he can take any of the other fellows down in the combat trial.” But there’s another dwarf approaching that snatches his attention away, and Kili doesn’t think anything more of it at the time.
When the sun disappears and the sky fades to violet, Kili enters the hut. A hush immediately falls over the dim room, and two dozen or so pale faces turn to look at him.
“Congratulations,” and a rare smile breaks across his face. “You all made it. Rest tonight, you’ll be shown to your rooms. Tomorrow and for the next two days, you will be tested on your intelligence, your ability to decipher code, your skills in reading and writing, your memory, your strength, and your combat. Testing will be overseen by Nori and myself in two groups of twelve. From you, I will select six dwarves who will undergo a final test of resilience. And from there, we will uncover two dwarves who will join our guard. Understand?”
There’s a nod, a mutter of understanding, and Kili leaves them. The sun has vanished and the sky ahead is purple, littered with a few pale streaks of gold. The jagged peak of the lonely mountain is black, encompassing his vision, and he takes a moment to look at it.
It’s a rare moment of silence, when he’s not thinking about the trials, about Fili, about the guards, about the dozens of letters going back and forth from the castle, about his reports. His mind is like a wide, still pool. But then there’s a ripple, a whisper across the skin of water like a soft breeze, a breath of air from a ghost.
She’s leaning over him again, ethereal, imaginary. He can’t touch her. Kili thrusts his hands deep in his pocket, hunches his shoulders so his face is hidden. It had been going so well recently. He was able to put it almost completely out of his mind – not just Vala, but all of it, Azog, Ilzkhaal, Nazarg, the long months of suffering that had robbed him of that fragile innocence. Ori worries about him, he knows it, and so does Amad and Dwalin. Amad used to say that he worked too hard, barely sleeping, spending his days and nights absorbed in the minutiae of keeping Erebor and her young, untested king, afloat. She begged him to find others to share the burden.
But he turned away from her advice, said he was all right. This was what he wanted, to be busy, to be always focused on something else. If he stops for too long and lets it all return to him, what might happen? He’s heard stories of dwarves driven mad by their own memories of what they had endured, pushed down for years and only later allowed to return to light. He wasn’t going to let that happen to him.
The past is the past, Kili reminds himself, trudging through the lonely twilight. No point in resurrecting it.
Tonight is a special mission. He’s spent all day with the recruits, watching from the front of the room, their heads bent over their papers, in tests of skill and intelligence and memory. He watched out for dishonesty, people trying to cheat, watched for those who finished early and set down their quills and waited for the small bell to ring, for those who went back carefully over what they had written. But they’ve returned to their long room now, to drink and eat and laugh with one another and the guards not on shift, while Ori and three of his scribes bend over the tests and tally up their answer.
But he has another duty. Kili slips out of the palace in a secret door, known only to a select few. He has the only key. He makes his way into the square, in the late hour when nearly all are sleeping, to one of the grand villas that belonged to the nobility. The guards recognise him, let him in. He’ll need to thank them later for their discretion. The threat will be implied.
Astríðr is already waiting for him, a cloak thrown over her long blue dress, in the entranceway. A thick stack of letters are in her hand.
“Here,” She pushes them into him. “I coded them as soon as I received them. Burned the originals.”
Kili looks through the papers quickly, nods. “Thank you.” He whispers, not knowing who may hear them. “And remember, don’t tell Fili.”
“Of course not, I’m not a fool. How are we getting into the palace? Do we need a disguise?”
“The back way will be fine, no one is out tonight. You didn’t have any trouble with them, did you?”
“No. The announcement hadn’t been made yet. I was just a countess to them, doing my duty. But I can’t go back, can I?”
“Not now. It’s too dangerous. The betrothed of the king caught in the Al-Malik’s private library would ruin Erebor. But thank you for these.” He tucks the papers inside his shirt. The best spies, they both know, are the trusted ones, hidden in plain sight.
When they reach Fili’s room, in the heart of the palace, clinging to the shadows, Kili gives his knock. A small latch opens, and a pair of familiar eyes stare at him. Styrr.
“Good to see you, boss. You got her?”
“Yes, let us in.”
A lock clicks, and the door creaks open. Astríðr pushes past them both and walks to where FIli, where he rises from the couch, his arms held out.
“Darling.” She murmurs, buries her face in his shoulder. They embrace one another tightly, murmur at one another in low voices.
“Can we give them all night?” Styrr asks quietly, so Fili won’t hear.
“Until just before dawn. I’ll come back then. You and Teitr wait outside the door. Listen for anything unusual.”
“As always, boss.”
He gives Styrr too much rope, Kili thinks as he walks down the hallway. But he’s sharper than most realise, he’s got a steady head on his shoulders, and since Geirr succumbed to the fever two years back, he’s needed his humour, in a way, to overcome it. Kili can’t begrudge him that.
When he gets back to the quarters, a few of the guards are still up, talking to some recruits. There’s a little beer flowing, and they bid Kili to join him, so he does. Better to build camaraderie with these dwarves who may one day need to lay down their lives for him. Besides, a little drink is always good for loosening the tongue.
They’re halfway through the memory test when Styrr enters, saying that Fíak needs to see Kili. Now.
“All right.” It can only mean one thing – one of the recruits is a possible traitor. Kili had given Fíak a list of the Ironfists, asked him to check each one carefully, search his own memory or ask his friends if there was anything amiss. “Ori’s leading the test. Just make sure nobody’s cheating.”
Fíak is in a bright little room near the front of the palace, one that isn’t used much. He groans, rises to his feet as Kili enters. They briefly clasp hands.
“I got this.” He waves the paper. “Been doing some thinking.”
“And?”
“Most of them are clear.” The servants have done their duty – Fíak already has a cup of wine, that he clasps as he spreads the parchment out over his knee. “This fella, though. Gríss, son of Grímsi. His uncle was married to a daughter of Fræg’s.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“I think it will be all right. I didn’t have much to do with Grímsi, but I know someone who did. Apparently he and his uncle didn’t get along. But keep an eye on him, anyway. They’re all interconnected, these families, but this is a link stronger than most.”
“Is that it? Is that why you wanted to see me right away?”
“Ah, no.” Fíak takes another sip of wine. “This one, here.” He points near the end of the brief list. Árni, son of Bjárki.”
“What of it?”
“Bjárki didn’t have any sons. Two daughters. Then his wife died.” Fíak frowned. “Thought I was going mad for a moment. But I checked with one of his cousins. No sons. Whoever this is,” he taps the paper, “they’re not telling the truth.”
Kili bids him a short goodbye, and runs downstairs into his quarters, not sure why his heart is hammering so hard. It’s all right, they caught it in time. But what has this stranger already learned? They’ll have to question him – he’ll get Teitr, he’s not squeamish, or maybe Nori. Hopefully it won’t take long for the truth to be revealed.
By the time he’s there, they’ve already broken for dinner. He doesn’t want to make a big fuss, so he finds Nori, asks him to find the dwarf that calls himself Árni, to take him down into the dungeon. They’ll do this quietly.
The fire is already lit. Hopefully they won’t have to use it. Kili opens the door to one of their small rooms, with a narrow table and two chairs, sits and waits. Sure enough, he hears the lock click in the hall, two pairs of feel make their way towards him.
It’s the boy, with his face all bound in a scarf and cap. Nori pushes him in the room, shuts the door and bolts it, leaning against the iron lock with his arm folded.
Kili breathes in. “Do you know why we called you here?” The boy shakes his head.
“Is your name Árni, son of Bjárki? Answer me.” He keeps his voice firm, yet flat, without emotion. This is cold and clinical.
“Yes.” The boy mumbles, barely audible, his mouth obscured in grey wool.
“I’ve just heard from Fíak, King Víli’s closest advisor, that Bjárni had no sons.” He pauses for a moment, lets the silent speak for him. The boy is very still. “Take that shit off. Let me look at you, properly.”
Árni – or whoever he is – hesitates. All Kili can see is a pair of blue eyes, a few wisps of bright golden hair sprouting up from beneath the woolen cap. “Come on, then.” Nori says behind him. The boy jumps.
Then the boy sits down. Slowly, laboriously, he unwinds the scarf from around his face and neck. His skin is browned from the sun, sparsely littered with golden hair, but for a massive scar that stretches across his neck, his cheek, tugging at the corner of his mouth.
It takes Kili a moment. But then he realises. He’s seen those eyes, that mouth, that nose, before. The cap is removed, but he doesn’t need it to understand; his stomach drops out of him and for a sickening moment he feels like he’s falling, and flying, all at once, spiralling away from reality, in a dreamworld, refusing to believe what’s in front of him. Oh, shit. No. It’s impossible.
The name is strangled on his lips, nearly without air. “Vala.”