Chapter Text
Nori was not enthused at the idea of going to the Shire.
"Do you know how hard it is to get out of this mountain?!" He demanded. It had been two weeks since their small adventure in lock up, and it was late evening. Nori was counting copper disks. Where he'd gotten them, Smaug didn't know, and what he was planning on doing with them was a mystery.
Smaug was not worried, about copper disks or getting outside. "It is a very large mountain. No doubt you know plenty of bolt holes you could wriggle out of."
"Well, yeah," Nori said, "Only if I did then Uncle Sori would know!"
"Sori?" Smaug asked. "You've said that name before."
"Yeah. Uncle Sori." Nori spoke the name with a sort of reverential whisper. "He'd want to know where I was going and when I thought I might be back an' have you told Dori where you're headed." Nori paused. "Even though Dori hates him."
An uncle that Dori hated?
"Take me to him." Smaug demanded.
Nori stared at him. "Okay." He said. "How about you just get up, fit your huge arse out that door, and we'll go marching through the city to the Court and-"
Smaug, who had been about to point out that he could shrink at will and whining little thieves had no right to be so snarky when they were still in hiding, had his thoughts rather abruptly altered. "The Court?" He asked silkily.
Nori stared up at him. Then his eyebrows dove and his mouth shut up tight into a straight line.
"You don't mean the Court of the King." Smaug said conversationally. "The only way you'll ever show up there is in chains."
Normally Nori would have jumped at the insult, declaring he could go wherever he would and that Smaug was just a dusty old lizard. He held his peace and Smaug continued, "since that is not the Court you speak of, there can only be one other, and against it I have been set for as long as I have been Dragon under this mountain."
Nori made an interesting noise, sort of like a squeak but more like a whimper. Smaug grinned, and the grin was full of sharp silvery teeth.
---
Ever since the beginning of time, there have been thieves.
So long as an item was owned, there was someone else who coveted it beyond the owner. This Smaug knew with great intimacy, for dragons had been designed in the elder days to go forth and take with force what the good people of the world might have gathered.
Since taking up residency in Erebor, Smaug had stood as lone guard against a seemingly never-ending stream of thieves, brigands, and ner'do wells. There had always been a sort of organization to them. Rarely had Smaug ever encountered two thieves at the same time, and rarer still did they come close to him. No thief had tried to steal from Smaug's horde in a long time; most of the thieving happened above, in the city, to the eternal frustration of the Guard.
How, was the question. How did rogues, mistrustful as a rule, manage not to overlap their thieving? How was it, precisely, that hideouts larger and more impressive than Nori's could be discovered by one delve patrol and gone by the time a raid could be organized?
The answer was as simple as it was fantastic.
The various villains of Erebor held Court. There they debated rights to secret tunnels, made deals over loot, hired mercenaries or were hired. Counterfeiters could get the supplies they needed from industrious and cash-strapped metalworkers, spice merchants could bypass the laws of the King to obtain the medicinal, the rare and the dangerous. A shadow undercurrent, a mirror of the nobility who ruled from the heights of the mountain.
Most regarded it as fantasy, a story told to dwarflings to keep them inside during the sleeping hours. That was what dwarrowdams liked.
Smaug knew better. He had the years of experience and the nose to confirm that the Court of Thieves was much more than a bedtime story.
Yet In all his years guarding under the mountain, Smaug the Golden had never had reason to seek it out. The small lives of burglars and cut throats were of little interest to him. Mortal years rolled off of him like a tide over a boulder and no matter the skill, no matter the haul, every thief met their end eventually.
Now, however, Smaug knew the name Sori, and was aware that it rhymed with Nori, and therefore the Court that Fundin son of Farin sought was well within his claws.
Nori had, of course, made himself scarce. For three days Smaug waited and for three days, nothing.
On day four, Smaug the Golden again sang the spell that made him small, and leaving his simulacra behind climbed the stairs into Erebor.
Nori was not at home in the tea shop. Smaug made his way carefully to the hidden lair.
Nori watched him from the wall. "you know I could squash you right now." He said.
"But you won't." Smaug said. He sat up on his haunches.
"I'm not taking you to the Court." Nori said.
"Why not?" Smaug asked.
"I ain't no squealer!" Nori said hotly. "And I ain't takin' a dragon in to the court!"
Smaug examined Nori. "You're scared." He said.
"Of COURSE I'm scared!" Nori growled. "You think I ain't scared of you? EVERYONE is scared of you!"
"You're not scared of me." Smaug said, a bit miffed.
Nori wasn't afraid of him. In spite of his teeth, his great size, his power and his magic, Nori did not fear Smaug under the Mountain. Touched in the head? Quite possibly, or maybe it was simply the arrogance of youth. Whatever it was, Nori had little reason to think of Smaug as anything other than a peculiar employer.
Which meant this was another, deeper fear- one dwarves held close to themselves, and one Smaug had come to understand very well indeed.
"You need permission to leave, don't you?" Smaug asked.
"Not permission, per say, I just need- why am I talking about this with you?"
Smaug trotted over and put his tiny front paws on Nori's knee. Nori glared at him and Smaug could see the stress lines on his face. Nori looked at Smaug. He was weighing something in his mind, and Smaug could almost hear abacus beads clicking back and forth.
"You're Smaug under the Mountain." Nori said at last. "You eat thieves. There's a wall with all their names carved on it."
"If you expect me to apologize, I won't." Smaug said. "I guard that gold on an oath, and dragons do not break oaths." He crossed his small paws. "Regardless, I see your point. I am asking you to risk the only dwarves who respect you in this whole mountain." Nori winced but Smaug continued, "I've no interest in their activities. They seem to have taken my point. How old is the last name on the wall, Nori?"
Nori filddled with a loose button on his tunic. "Few years." He said at last.
"Nearly seventy." Smaug said. "So long as everything stays above my treasure rooms, you tiny troublemaker, I don't care."
"You're a shite guardian, then." Nori said sullenly.
"No, I am simply pragmatic." Smaug said. "Still, if it will ease your tiny conscience, I give you my word, on my wings, that no harm will come to your Sori or any other in the Court for the duration of our business."
"Should have been a barrister with that." Nori said.
"Oaths should always be specific." Smaug said. "Remember that. Now, we have things to do."
"I have to tell Uncle Sori something better than 'a dragon wants to meet a hobbit'." Nori said.
"I have something better." Smaug said.
A spark shown in Nori's eyes, chasing away the dullness that had pervaded. Smaug found, to his minor surprise, that he was relieved by its return.
"Tell me," Nori demanded, and Smaug did.
"Will that work?" Nori asked.
"We'll have to find out, won't we?" Smaug asked. Nori grinned at him. "Guess so." He said, and offered his arm. Smaug took the invitation and climbed up one worn woolen sleeve. Nori's braiding was loose, and Smaug wriggled in without much trouble. "You washed your hair." he said.
"Of course I did." Nori said. "I do wash when I get the chance, you know."
So that would be once in a decade?" Smaug responded.
"Oh blow it out your tailhole." Nori said. "Hang on. It's going to be a bit bumpy."
"Somehow," Smaug said as Nori exited his lair and made for another crumbling tunnel, "I am unsurprised."