Chapter Text
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He and his brother had lived most of their lives above ground, being born in the time after the dragon to Dís, only daughter of Thráin II and younger sister of Thorin. His earliest memories were not of halls of gold and the torch-lit darkness deep within the stone, but of the warm rolling plains and the view of the snow-clad mountains in the distance.
And the back of his Uncle, walking ahead of them on the long road. Always straight and unbent.
It was funny, upon reflection, that he had not known what the legendary towering piles of gold in the tales were for when he was a child because he had seen precious little of the ore. Durin’s folk had been penniless in their exile and there had been a pressing need for copper and silver, gold being much rarer in the world outside the mountain kingdom.
The royal line of Erebor would never stoop to banditry or theft. For a given value of never--Kíli and Fíli had nimble fingers and as children their small size was especially suitable for slipping between market stalls and carts.
Thorin would have thrashed them with his belt if he had known. Even for the tiniest sweet or the smallest, slightly bruised apple fallen from a farmer’s cart. And then their mother would have started on them until they cried with shame. Sharp-eyed Dís knew of their antics, of course, but she made her sons cry in private for their misdeeds because their Uncle had other things to worry about.
Their mother’s brother had dealings with Men in the time before the dragon and Thorin Oakenshield--as he had been known then after the Battle of Azanulbizar--had taken it on himself to work in their villages. Harnesses, horseshoes and pots--he took what needed mending and restored them with the fabled skill of Aulë’s children. The Men often walked away with better bargains than they had expected--oh if they knew that the hands that had mended their buckets and pump handles were that of a king and a war-leader!
And from his work came the copper and silver to buy the food and the things that their rag-tag group of wanderers needed to keep heart and soul together after the shattering aftermath of the great war. Their great-grandfather’s war, it was whispered.
They had been a sorry sight indeed after that battle, not that Kíli had seen it. Back then, they had been gypsies and nomads--injured, crippled and lame nomads. Dwarfs were supposed to live in the ground, behind stone, in grand halls by their mines and their treasures, not wandering the lands of Men and other races looking for work because they did not have anything more than the armour on their backs.
When they were lucky enough to find steady work or be commissioned to build their mechanisms, there was more food on the table--campfire, actually--and luxuries like soap, a better class of beer and ponies.
Kíli still remembered when their Uncle had gifted them with their first pair of ponies when he had just turned fifty after a particularly good run in a township that had need of a new wind-powered mechanism for their flour mill. They had helped to forge the parts required and were so proud of their fledging skill that their uncle would not have been remiss in taking them down a peg or two. But he had given them the ponies and it would remain a fond memory for Fíli and Kíli for all their lives. Even when their Uncle took them to task for their other faults.
Even when some Dwarfs of the other clans had looked at their ragged column in askance in the past. Thorin Oakenshield would not ask for charity and while kinship meant that the doors of other halls were thrown open for them, there was this thing that the Men said about dwarves when they thought Fíli or Kíli were not listening, but it stuck in their minds all the same--Dwarfs, tight bastards every one of them.
They understood what that meant after a few weeks with their distant cousins. Their prince--their king in truth--called for them to move on before the hints got broader. While relieved that they were leaving, their dwarrow kin had looked mildly scandalised when Thorin announced that he would seek work in the nearby villages of Men as he usually did to secure funds for their journey.
Stripling though he was at that time, Kíli had been that close to punching a few of them, but that would have shamed his uncle and his line as they were guests. He had not been the only one--Dwalin and a few others had contented themselves with muttering unsavoury things about the other House’s lineage and which side they had been on during the Last Alliance.
Kíli and Fíli had been too young and callow to understand how deadly those insults had been back then.
Dwarrow craft was sought after--there should have been no difference between going to a village to mend things and having Men bring their requests to their halls. But somehow there was. The dwarves in their cavern halls could haggle genteelly with the lords of Men and name their price, backed by their wealth of gems and ore. After all, what did the race of Men have to offer them? And Erebor had been the greatest, richest dwarf kingdom of them all.
Thorin knew it too. The prince--he would not be called King even though he was, in truth, the King in Exile after Thráin’s disappearance--knew what a comedown that was more than anyone else. But if he felt it more keenly, it did not show in his bearing. The older dwarves were often heard to say that Thorin had more dignity in his littlest finger while dressed in a leather apron and working at an anvil than Fíli or Kíli had whenever they were in their good clothes for Durin’s Day celebrations. And they both knew it too.
That same dignity was present in the grimly determined face that Kíli and his brother had known most of their lives. The face he wore in front of the Men who sought his services. Kíli remembered a time when the Men his Uncle had dealt with had been rude and untrusting because they had looked like bedraggled beggars, unkempt and dusty from days of travel. Their Uncle had not cut the rude Men down at the knee for speaking so churlishly.
They had watched from behind their mother’s sturdy leather travelling skirts when this transpired. Dís had glared daggers at the humans, offended on her brother’s behalf but keeping out of it as Thorin spoke with a face that did not change. Men had strange ideas and some of them did not like womenfolk of any stripe to interfere in their dealings. Which was just plain daft because Kíli knew that his mother could probably haggle these Men out of their boots at the end of a bad day.
It was the same face Thorin had when Kíli had brought him his clockwork soldier for mending after days of agonising if he should bother his Uncle with such a trivial thing. Only his expression had been quietly determined as the prince brought out the roll of velvet containing his smallest tools to fix the clockwork.
For as long as Durin’s line had ruled the mountain, fine-work had never been disdained by the dwarves of Erebor. The pewter hair clasps Kíli and Fíli wore on formal visits to the other dwarf clans had been crafted by their uncle. The crafting of moving parts smaller than the fingernail of a babe was just as marvellous as the making of crowns and axes.
It would have been the hobby of a king or a prince--to tinker with such things and make wondrous items like singing thrushes from metal and gems for people to come and gawk at. When they had been good younglings in the past--or just not so badly behaved--Dís would tell them of the now legendary toy market of Dale, where all children dreamed of going to in their sleep because the toys there were the most fascinating and amusing in all of Middle Earth.
But in exile, this skill provided another avenue of income for them. A merchant had seen Thorin mending the toy that day and commissioned a set of soldiers for his son. Stoic as usual, Thorin had accepted the order, no doubt thinking of the money he could bring in for his clan over being known as a toymaker for the children of Men. Horseshoes and fire irons could be gotten from any human smith after all.
The merchant had been quite wealthy and Kíli had, for a brief moment, envied the boy who would receive a score of clockwork soldiers for his birthday--each wielding a different weapon with specialised armour.
Later, as they enjoyed the small beer and good cheese that the merchant’s money had bought, Kíli realised that the human boy would not have anyone to fix his clockwork soldiers if they broke until another party of dwarves passed through and even then they would not be able to duplicate another craftsman’s work exactly.
Even then, word had spread and their Uncle was busy with commissions for a time. They desperately needed the ponies and supplies that the money would buy after all. The revenues brought in by fine-work funded their many journeys to Ered Luin and the creation of their settlement in the Blue Mountains.
And that was why the toy soldier still lay within Kíli’s cache of valuables to this very day, a thing to be treasured. Even when the dwarves of the other Houses called Durin’s scion the toymaker prince. Especially when they called their Uncle that behind his back, the smug bastards.
The mechanisms within those toys were things that some smiths would never have managed in their lifetimes. It was something to be proud of, Kíli felt as he joined his brother in playing pranks on those naysayers, never mind what their mother would do to them after she forced the truth from them and had a good laugh herself. Their Uncle had taught them how to hunt and move with more than just a little stealth while they wandered in the wild, so it took little effort to distract their distant cousins and slip in and out of their merchant caravans like will o’ wisps.
Durin’s folk were not to be looked down upon, Kíli thought as they rode away. The yelps of alarm as ponies slipped their traces and saddles slid sideways would keep a smile on his face for a while yet on the road to the trade fairs. They needed the entertainment to keep their spirits up when they met dwarves from the other Houses there and were the subject of much whispering behind beards and quick looks cast in their direction.
It was the look that asked why they had not gone with their kin to the settlements in the Iron Hills. Why had these dwarves followed the royal family into their hard exile in Dunland? The rumoured madness of King Thrór and Thráin II was often blamed for this. Never to Thorin and Dís’ faces, of course.
But they had a better place now in the Blue Mountains and no longer had to wander so far afield to find markets for their wares and services. They still had to trade to get food and other items that they did not produce themselves though.
At the bazaars and markets near Bree, Fíli and Kíli often manned the stall and used their younger lungs to good effect. They were also much more used to dealing with Men and other races. Standing on crates to be on eye-level with humans did not offend their sensibilities. Nor did calling to them in a mixture of trade tongues and Common Speech.
“Fine steel blades here! We’ll sharpen them for you on the spot!” they yelled over the clamour of tempered steel being turn on the anvil and the other noises of the market. Their Uncle always preferred to work than deal with customers and now that his sister-sons were old enough to speak to people with some degree of respect, he could avoid the eyes that sought him out for a while. The Men might not know him for the King in Exile, but the dwarves did. Durin’s Line, once first amongst the Seven Houses, was now the poorest and even their king had to work like a commoner.
“Clocks that won’t miss a minute for a year! Toys for the young’uns, missus? Entertain ‘em for hours while you get supper on!” They could never imagine their Uncle practising this spiel on the punters either--it seemed wrong somehow. So they took it on themselves to try to out-shout the other craftsmen on their row.
“Easy, lad, you’re not a fish-monger!” a passing dwarf growled, clutching his offended ear with one hand.
“But that’s what everyone does on market day, grandfather,” Kíli said easily, giving the older dwarf the title out of respect for his years and his white beard even though he suspected that the old gaffer was spying out the competition for his folk.
“If your wares are good, they’ll come anyhow,” the other dwarf said with a barely concealed sniff.
“None better,” Fíli boasted. “None finer than the work of the smiths of Erebor.”
“Men don’t care for the hand that makes their blade or our bloodlines, so long as they can make someone bleed with a sharp edge,” the dwarf remarked even as he raked their stall with what Kíli felt were dismissive eyes. He was beginning to dislike this fellow heartily.
“A pity--perhaps they should be told?” Fíli asked with mock-politeness and a twinkle in his eye.
“As well as educate a donkey by teaching it how to read,” the dwarf scoffed. “I would not even entertain taking one of them on as an apprentice.”
“Why not? They used to seek out the forges of Erebor to learn from the smiths there,” Kíli said, remembering the stories his mother had told them and the more recent memories of the human children they had played with sometimes when they happened to camp near a village. Not all Men were good, in fact some of them had been quite awful, but a few of them had been decent enough. Much like dwarves.
A shake of his grizzled head told them what the older dwarf thought of that. “Stealer of secrets. Thieves, the lot of them.”
Which was just the silliest thing in Kíli’s opinion because the Maker’s gifts were the Maker’s gifts and the most skilled of Men could never steal what came naturally to a dwarf’s hands just by watching them for a few years. He tried to come up with a polite way to contradict the older dwarf. “It would take a truly clever Man to do that--and perhaps he might deserve a secret or two if he could do it.”
The older dwarf scowled at him. “Rubbish! You’ve lived amongst Men so long that you’ve even begun to look like them! Grow a proper beard for the love of Mahal!”
Kíli had not known that looking like a Man was something to be ashamed of. And his family had never insisted that he grow his beard--it itched and the traditional length of beard would get in the way of his bowstring. It was fortunate for the merchant that he had not crossed the line to imply that Kíli’s appearance had something to do with a polluted lineage and unfaithfulness on his mother’s part. No, those were fighting words and even advanced age would not let this dwarf off the hook.
But it reflected badly on anyone who started a fight in a place of commerce. Starting a fight with a greybeard was even worse. Doing so with their Uncle just a few yards behind them was practically a death sentence for Thorin would banish them back to Ered Luin and forbid them from travelling to the trade fairs.
Summoning a poor approximation of his Uncle’s haughtiness, Kíli stared the other dwarf down. He was of the royal line--a direct descendent of Durin the Deathless--and he would not let some jumped-up merchant who was no better than he should be talk down to him or draw him into some pointless argument.
At his side, his brother Fíli was doing the same--only he had his new beard with the braids in it to add to his hauteur, the rotter. While respect for their elders been drummed into them both since they had been old enough to walk, the years on the road had made them more casual towards older folk and they would not brook any insult from another clan.
Kíli was glad of the support though--having few friends and even fewer dwarves near his age meant that his brother was his best friend and companion while growing up. The only back-up he could rely on at any given time.
Muttering imprecations about rude youngsters, the dwarf had turned and left after moment of grousing. Or perhaps he had heard the hammering stop and seen Thorin Oakenshield’s approach. While others might mutter about the toymaker prince in exile, they seldom dared to do it to his face. After all, he was still a dwarf in his prime, taller than many of his kind and still able to cleave orc skulls all the way through with his axe.
Or it was his hard face and his equally hard stare that generally reduced people’s knees to jelly. That stern gaze raked over his nephews and they got back to work with alacrity. It did not matter what they were up to, their Uncle’s presence would make them search their souls for traces of wrong-doing every time.
Kíli and Fíli kept that incident from their mother and Uncle. Dís would have given any impertinent dwarf a piece of her mind even if she had to march through all of Middle Earth to do it and being defended by your own mother was a little too much even for their young pride to stomach at that time.
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