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“Well, you don’t have any lass, do you?” Thorin says, quite reasonably, really. Dwalin snorts and shoves another forkful of food into his mouth, and Thorin feels compelled to add, “It’s only in name, and only until he’s of age.”
Dwalin must have broken his nose again, because he swallows his mouthful of food, then breathes heavily through his mouth. He looks unimpressed and unconvinced, saying as much. “What’s wrong with the boy, then?”
Thorin doesn’t scowl because that would only prove Dwalin right, and there isn’t anything wrong with Kili, not--not really. He closes his eyes and sighs, as though he’s tired of the whole thing; it works, peaking Dwalin’s obvious interest.
“There’s nothing wrong with the boy,” Thorin says, “but there are rumors going around.” Dwalin lifts his eyebrows and Thorin elaborates, “Some are saying that his ears have been clipped.”
“Clipped?” Dwalin asks, frowning, and Thorin tucks back his own hair and mimes snipping the top of his ear, where it is curved. Dwalin’s curse is truly foul, even for Dwalin, and Thorin turns his head to hide his smile.
“An elf?” Dwalin snarls after a moment. “They think that Dis, with an elf?”
“Rumors,” Thorin repeats. “Even if no one believed it....” He trails off, then says, “If Dis’s reputation is ruined, she’ll never be able to protect the interests of the boys.”
“Is it that bad?” Dwalin is truly focused on the conversation now, leaning forward on his bench, and Thorin is grateful for it.
“It’s--” He hesitates, turning the words over in his mind. “It’s bad luck, perhaps,” he settles on. “An unlucky coincidence. The Stonefoots are moving further east again, another colony, and Andvari is leaving by the end of the season to meet with his brothers. There was talk of Kili going with him, but he’s too young, so he’ll be left behind. You know how rumors grow,” he says, leaning back a little. “Soon people will forget the dates of things; they’ll say Andvari left years ago, that Kili is a bastard.”
Dwalin glowers, which Thorin takes as a good sign; Dwalin has a moral thread running through him, as strong as a line of mithril, and Thorin knows that if he can just appeal to Dwalin’s loyalty, Dwalin will agree to whatever Thorin asks of him.
“That’s not it, though,” Dwalin says after a while, still glowering. “You wouldn’t care about the boys being called bastards if all their inheritance comes by way of Dis. You’re upset over something else.”
“Dain’s wife bore him a son. Last fall,” Thorin adds after a moment. Dwalin’s eyes snap to the side, then back to Thorin’s face.
“I hadn’t heard that,” Dwalin says, and Thorin shrugs, says,
“The news is just now being sent around. Most of the nations should know soon, if not already.” Thorin pauses, tapping the table, then lowers his voice further. “Before, there were two thrones and two heirs. Now there are two thrones and three heirs. The talk is getting worse.”
Dwalin’s face looks incredulous, then horrified; he’s got the implications, then. “You think they’d kill Dis’s boys. Or the younger one, at least.”
“No,” Thorin says slowly, dragging it out. “They wouldn’t kill him, but they wouldn’t do him any kindness. We have a surplus of princes and a dearth of kingdoms, they’ll see no problem in letting one child get lost in the shuffle.” He taps the table, then scratches it with his thumbnail. “They’ll just say it was a culling, letting the faulty lines die out.”
And there, he’s got Dwalin now; he can see it, in the way Dwalin’s mouth is twisted up tight and his shoulders are broadening out. It’s all of Dwalin’s loyalty, bound up in Thorin and in Dis (and now in Dis’s children). He is a good dwarf and a better kinsman.
“And you want me to be a protector,” Dwalin says more than asks, “for the younger one.”
“Kili,” Thorin prompts. “Until he reaches his majority, yes.”
That, apparently, is enough talk for Dwalin, because Dwalin ducks his head and tucks back into his food. Thorin himself isn’t hungry, and instead looks around the little room that Dwalin has been living in. Most of Dwalin’s things are piled together, ready for a hasty departure, but there are a few odds and ends scattered around the room: a coat lying crumpled under the cot in the corner, a spare pair of boots knocked over behind the door. Dwalin has been here for months, Thorin thinks; long enough for Dwalin to become comfortable in the room, but not so long that he’d consider it a home. He idly thinks that it’s good he came now, when Dwalin is certain to begin feeling the urge to move on; it’s a lucky chance in a long season of unlucky happenings.
“Well,” Dwalin says when he’s done eating, pushing his plate away and resting his hands on the edge of the table, “when are you going back to Ered Luin? Imagine I’ll be going with you, get everything taken care of.”
“Tomorrow morning.” Thorin shrugs and affects a smile. “I can wait some days, if you need to put things in order.”
Dwalin snorts but he still looks good-natured. “Aye, right,” he says. “Am I expected to move to Ered Luin as well?” He doesn’t wait for Thorin’s answer, though, just goes on. “I don’t have much to clean up. I can leave within a day.”
“That,” Thorin says, pleased by Dwalin’s complacency, “shall be soon enough.”
x
In the end it takes two days to clear out Dwalin’s life in the town, and that is with Thorin working in the forge alongside Dwalin. The men of the town seem indifferent about Dwalin’s departure, but the women more than make up for the men, being surprisingly vocal about their disappointment. They plead and cajole and flatter Dwalin, two or three deep at the front of the forge, and Thorin has to turn and face the back of the forge so no one can see him laughing.
“I charge a fair price,” Dwalin says in explanation when the women have left, and Thorin wisely holds his tongue.
When they leave, it is with a baggage-pony, heavy laden with the things Thorin insists Dwalin take with them. Dwalin argues, so stubborn and self-sacrificing, and nearly drives Thorin mad.
“I don’t need much,” Dwalin says, and Thorin resists the urge to knock sense into Dwalin’s skull.
“How,” he asks instead, as patiently as he can, “will you find work without any tools? No, Dwalin, don’t argue. Just pack your things so we can leave.”
Dwalin truly balks at the idea of riding back to Ered Luin, making noises about the cost of ponies. Thorin sighs and prepares himself for the long walk ahead.
“The cost,” Dwalin mutters again, truly scandalized, “for such a short trip--”
“It would have been at no cost to you,” Thorin says back, perhaps a little sharper than called for, but he hadn’t been planning on walking home. “The coin is all Andvari’s.”
Dwalin’s eyes widen, just enough that Thorin notices, and Dwalin says, “I hadn’t expected you to accept another’s coin so easily.”
Thorin doesn’t flush, because Dwalin is a century too young to question Thorin’s decisions or where Thorin’s pride should rear its head. He does scowl, though, at the tone in Dwalin’s voice, and says, “Andvari is a brother, if through marriage, and Kili is as much Andvari’s son as he is Dis’s. It’s natural he’d take an interest in his son’s welfare.”
Dwalin’s face goes tight. “This was Andvari’s idea, then?” Dwalin asks, and Thorin shrugs, says,
“A joint decision. It was my suggestion, but he was happy with it.” Thorin grins then, and adds, “He likes Balin.”
“Balin hates Andvari,” Dwalin says with a snort.
“That,” Thorin says, “is why Andvari likes him.”
In the end, they leave with only the baggage-pony, even when Dwalin relents and says that, perhaps, ponies would not be so bad. Thorin’s irritated, though, and he refuses to buy ponies; his mother always said he would cut off his nose to spite his face, and he thinks she might have been right. He’s a stubborn dwarf though, perhaps a little too stubborn, and so he walks the entire way back to Ered Luin, with Dwalin at his side and a baggage-pony trailing behind them.
The trip is uneventful and awkward, full of long silences as Thorin tries to remember what it is like to have Dwalin by his side. Dwalin seems hesitant and unsure, a very un-Dwalin-like state, and Thorin thinks that Dwalin may be as thrown by Thorin as Thorin is thrown by Dwalin.
It is only when they are three weeks on the road that Thorin realizes that this is the first time he has traveled with Dwalin without a battle waiting for them at the end of their journey. It is a strange thing, to realize that a dwarf he’d always thought a friend is someone he only knows in the context of war. (It is stranger to think that he is putting his nephew’s life into the hands of a dwarf with whom he seems to be unable to have more than seven civil words at a time, without stepping on unseen toes.)
He tries to broker the terms of the engagement, but that seems to make things even more awkward.
“While the engagement stands,” he says once, as tactfully as he can, “it would be impolitic to have any other relationships.”
Dwalin gives Thorin a look as though he thinks Thorin is very stupid indeed, and says, “You said yourself, I have no lass.”
“Of course,” Thorin says, a little flustered, because he is never the one to take care of the delicate bits of politics. “Or a lad?”
“I have no one,” Dwalin says, in a bland and flat voice. Thorin has to stomp ahead on the road, because he’s not sure what to say to that, and being unsure always makes him angry and disgruntled with everyone around him, and he’s sure that killing his subjects, particularly those whom he calls friend, is not the way to go about becoming a king worthy of anything at all.
It takes nearly four more weeks to reach the settlement in Ered Luin, and the weeks are spent in near-silence. The season has ended, spring turning into summer, and the days grow hotter and longer. By the time Ered Luin is in view, Thorin feels as though he will never be clean of sweat and road-dust again.
“You’ve changed,” Dwalin says, when they are only days away from their destination. Dwalin’s words surprise Thorin, and he wipes sweat away from his brow and asks Dwalin,
“How so?”
“Heavier, somehow,” Dwalin nearly grunts. Thorin has nothing to say to that, and that seems to be entirety of Dwalin’s speech; they walk in silence a while longer, and then Dwalin asks gruffily, “There’s still been no sign of Thrain?”
No, there’s been no sign--there hasn’t been a sign of Thrain since Thror’s death. For all the messengers sent to the dwarven nations, and for all the offerings Dis has slaughtered and burnt, and for all the time Thorin has spent listening to gossip and rumors, there has been no sign of Thrain. The thought of Thrain is still painful, a guilt that perhaps Thorin hasn’t done enough, but the guilt lessens each year; he has moved on.
(Dis, he knows, has not moved on; Dis still pours her libations and burns her offerings, still spreads ashes on her face during the days of remembrance.
When he’d returned from Khazad-dum, she had shaved her head and her beard and had smeared ashes over her face. She hadn’t torn her clothing, because she was far too practical for that, even when mourning, but she had wept bitterly, for days upon days.
“They are all gone,” she had cried, even when Thorin had held her cold, shaking hands.
“I’m here,” he’d said, feeling helpless, afraid that madness had taken his sister, too.
She’d torn her hands from him and had said, “You are not my brother--I have lost my brother and gained a king.”
She had wept for all the days of mourning, as long as they could afford her sorrow. Then she had dried her eyes and washed the ashes from her face and wrapped a scarf around her head, and she had told Thorin, “We will go west.”
They went west, Thorin and Dis together, because Thorin had nothing else to give his sister: neither kingdom, nor comfort; neither father, nor mother. They went west, Thorin and Dis together, because if he could not build her a kingdom, then he would at least build her a sanctuary.
But on the holy days, Dis still weeps for her father and for her mother, for her brother and for her grandfather. Dis still weeps for all that has been lost to their family, and she does so alone and uncomforted, because Thorin isn’t strong enough to stay beside her.)
“No,” he says, and he twists the baggage pony’s lead in his hands. “There has been no sign.”
“Then you are still my king.”
Thorin scowls at the road ahead. Dwalin’s words irritate him, and it takes him a while to puzzle out why. When he has, he asks, his voice cold in his own ears, “And is that all I am to you?”
“My king?” There’s humor in Dwalin’s voice, something that has been missing for weeks (and perhaps years, perhaps since they had talked long into the night while on the warpath). “No, not only my king. I suppose you’ll be my uncle now, too.”
It startles a laugh out of Thorin, and the laughter feels good, as though he has lanced some wound inside him. “Dis,” Thorin says, “would be your mother-in-law,” and when Dwalin affects a shudder of terror, Thorin laughs all the harder.
x
“You’ve found him, then,” is what Dis says when she opens the door. She looks thinner than the last time Thorin saw her, only months ago, and her face is pale. She’s standing in the doorway like a wall, as immovable as any dwarvish woman, and she does not look to be in a mood to let them into the house.
“I have,” Thorin says carefully, unsure how to tread. “Has Andvari already gone?”
“Two weeks back.” Dis’s mouth thins, and Thorin thinks that it must be Andvari’s departure that’s put her in such a foul move; he hopes it is Andvari’s departure, and not Thorin’s return. When he shifts, pointedly looking over his shoulder at the dim street, Dis sighs and says, “Come in, then.”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Thorin says as he slips past her, and Dwalin says,
“My blessings for you and yours.”
It is polite, very polite, and Dis’s face is losing some of its sharpness. Thorin smiles at her, just enough, and Dis finally smiles back at him.
“Well,” she says, “you’ve made it in one piece. How were the roads?”
“Long,” Thorin says, and when she holds open her arms, he steps close enough to embrace her, to tuck his head in against her hair. Her hair smells sweet and fresh, and he only feels dustier by comparison, tired and sweaty and thoroughly sick of being on his feet. “The boys?”
“Napping. They’ll sleep for another hour at least, maybe two. It would be best--” She pauses, hesitating, and it is unlike her, enough that Thorin takes notice. “It would be best if Dwalin meets Kili, before we discuss anything,” Dis finally says.
Dwalin leaves quickly, with only a single look back. Thorin watches Dwalin go, then says, “That was sharp of you. You didn’t even offer him food.”
“I’m sure you’ll offer him plenty of food when he returns.” Dis is already turning away from him, moving back through the house to the kitchen. Thorin takes just long enough to pull off his dusty boots and drop his bags out of the way of the door, before he follows her.
She has already set a small bucket beside the fire, and she is prodding at the fire, building it up higher. There is a kettle hanging over the fire, and Thorin feels a rolling sense of gratitude through his body at the thought of hot water for washing. He rolls up his sleeves, then sits on the edge of a chair next to the table as he waits for the water to boil.
“How were the roads, then?” she asks as they wait, and Thorin tells her. He describes the city in which he found Dwalin, and the way Dwalin’s shop had been overflowing with business. She looks only marginally interested, but she makes thoughtful noises as Thorin talks about the roads, about the late thaw and the heavy spring rains and the roads that had been more mud than dirt.
“That would explain how long it took,” she says as she takes the kettle from the fire and pours the water into the bucket. The water is steaming, and Thorin dips his hands into the water slowly, hissing as the water scalds his skin.
He washes up as Dis moves around the kitchen. His skin is caked with the dirt from the road, and he scrubs roughly at his hands, then his arms. When his hands feel clean enough, he goes to toss out the water, then fetches more water from the water barrel to wash his face. The chance to wash, even if it was only spot-washing, leaves him feeling nearly refreshed, and far more ready to talk with Dis.
She is standing on the far side of the table, her hands mixing flour in a bowl. She must be making bread--there are eggs resting on a towel beside her bowl, and there is a cloth-covered pitcher set near the middle of the table. She catches him looking at her, and she lifts her eyebrows and says, “You’ve still got dirt on your face.”
“I’ll bathe later.” He sits back in the chair, sighing as he stretches out his legs. Now that his face no longer feels itchy, he can feel the exhaustion of the road creeping over him again. For all of Dis’s irritation, she’s still let him into her house, and he is grateful for it. “Thank you,” he says, and he knows it sounds awkward when he says it, “for letting me into your house.”
“You’re my brother,” she says, as though there is no question that she would let him into her house. Thorin shifts in the chair, then begins to reach across the table to grab an egg. His hand is not even halfway there before Dis is swatting at him, snapping, “Leave them alone, Thorin.”
Thorin yanks his hand back, then murmurs, “You’re upset.”
“Of course I’m upset,” Dis says in a hard voice. She’s cracking eggs into the bowl with brisk, quick twists of her wrists, and Thorin watches her, the way her fingers curl around the eggshells. “You brought Dwalin into my house, even though I told you I didn’t want this engagement. This isn’t how I want things to be.”
“I’m trying to protect Kili,” Thorin says.
“As am I!” Dis snaps back at him; she looks furious, her face flushed and her mouth thin. It almost seems as though her hair and beard are bristling, like the fur of an angry cat, and she nearly hisses when she says, “You don’t even know him.”
“Of course I do.” Thorin is hurt, on both his own behalf, and on Dwalin’s. “I trust him above anyone else. His loyalty--”
“Not Dwalin,” Dis interrupts, scowling at Thorin, “Kili. He’s not so--” She hesitates, looking unsure, then says, “He’s so very small, and he cries so much. Thorin,” she talks over him, when he tries to interrupt, “he is my son. You will never know him like I do.”
Dis’s accusations--and they must be accusations, he is sure of it--sting him. Thorin bites his tongue, holding back words he knows he will regret. When he is sure that he will not say something needlessly harsh, he says, as calmly as he can, “Dwalin is a good dwarf. He won’t hurt Kili.”
Dis laughs at that, right in Thorin’s face, and her laugh sounds horrible.
“Thorin,” she says, and she says it so pityingly, as though Thorin knows nothing; but maybe she is right. Thorin never stays for long, and his nephews are nearly strangers to him; they are children that he loves, but he doesn’t know how to speak to them, or how to play with them; maybe he knows nothing. “Thorin,” Dis says, “everything hurts Kili.”
She says nothing else, and he has nothing to say in return. The silence in the kitchen feels sullen and heavy, but it is better than Dis shouting at Thorin or Thorin cursing at Dis; it is better than Thorin’s last few visits.
He watches Dis knead the dough, her strong arms dusted with flour and her thick fingers caked in dough. She has taken to this life far better than he has; she seems, for all intents and purposes, to be nothing more than an ordinary dwarvish woman, no longer a daughter of kings. He wants to ask her if she misses Erebor, if she misses the weight of power and the burden of royalty, but he is afraid of what she might say, so he turns away and holds his tongue.
He is fiddling with a strangely carved spoon when Dis sighs, as heavily and loudly as Thrain used to sigh, and says, “I don’t dislike him.”
Thorin is still smarting from their earlier row, however small it might have been, and he knows better than to assume he knows what Dis is talking about. He looks up from the spoon and asks, “Who?”
“Dwalin,” Dis says, and she looks over her shoulder to roll her eyes at him. That is good--that means Dis isn’t angry at Thorin anymore. “I don’t dislike him.”
Thorin snorts and looks back down at the spoon. “He’s frightened of you.” He sets his thumbnail into a deeply carved line, and begins to follow it down the length of the spoon. “It isn’t--you know it’s only a precaution.”
“I know,” Dis says, and her voice is going dark again.
“Dis,” he tries, but he can’t look up from the spoon. “If something happens--you know how fragile things are.”
“I know,” Dis says back, “that no one will listen to me. Neither my husband, nor my brother--why would my people listen to me?”
Her words sting, and Thorin has to swallow down his anger. “That’s not--”
“They would never,” Dis says, “have me as a regent. Dain or Balin, or even Dwalin, but not me. Never me.”
“You wouldn’t want,” Thorin begins to say, because he has never thought of Dis as a queen, nor regent; he’s only ever thought of her as a daughter of kings, a sister of kings, a mother of kings. He’s never thought that she could be a king--has never thought that she would want to be.
“I want,” Dis snarls, and she slams her hands down on the table, “to protect my own children. No, Thorin,” she says over him, her voice rising, “not you, not Andvari--me. They are my children, they are my sons, and I don’t want--”
Her voice breaks, and her face is crumpling, like she is about to cry. Thorin has never been able to comfort his sister, not when their mother died, nor when their father--not when they lost their kingdom, nor when they lost their future. She looks at him, then turns and leaves the kitchen in a rush. Thorin stays at the table, his feet resting firmly on the ground, his hands clenched tight around the strange spoon.
Dwalin returns hours later, after the boys have woken from their nap. Dis is in a better mood, or at least, she is playing at it. She’s in the front room with the boys, reading them a story from a beautifully illustrated book. Kili is sitting in Dis’s lap, his hands resting on top of hers, and Fili is sitting beside her, leaning heavily against her.
Thorin is sitting in a chair he dragged in from the kitchen, and he is listening to Dis read, and he is wishing he’d thought to pull the chair behind her, so he could see the pictures, too.
“Look,” Dis says softly, a break from the reading. “Kili, look at the boar.”
Kili laughs, his odd, breathy laugh that sounds as though he’s about to cry, and Fili mumbles something that Thorin can’t hear. When Dis reads, she does so with voices: a crackling voice for the old woman, a sad, breathy voice for the young mother, and high, excited voices for the children. The voice of the boar is low and gruff, and the voice of the river is long and drawn out, like a snake hissing.
When the knock comes at the door, Thorin watches Dis tuck Kili’s head closer to her breast and wrap an arm around Fili’s shoulders.
“The river,” she reads, “was cold and dark, and it cried through the night.”
Thorin opens the door, and as Dis reads to her children, he says to Dwalin, “Come in, and meet my heirs.”