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The door to the royal chambers opened and Bilbo strode through. He left it standing open and made his way further into the makeshift luxury of the receiving rooms that graced every noble bedchamber; his eyes didn't glance at any of the scavenged furniture that marked the 'privilege' of the kings, instead moving unerringly towards the royal bedrooms. His jaw was set, though his face was calm, moving with a swift, steady gait that betrayed nothing. By the time Thorin arrived and closed the door with a weary sigh the door on the other side of the room was firmly shut. His royal robes were sprayed with blood, now drying, and he grimaced as they dripped stickily onto the polished granite floor.
"Ghivashel?" He asked, knowing the usual solution to upset hobbit sensibilities. "Shall I send for food?" As he might have predicted, there was no response. With another heavy sigh, he went to wash in the bathing chamber, leaving the stinking, sodden mass of robe outside for the servants to clean.
+++
Later that night, as they lay in bed, Bilbo was a tight knot of disapproval, curled up around a book he must have gotten from Dale; Thorin couldn't imagine the Erebor library having a volume in Westron, let alone one with so plain a leather cover. Hiding a grimace, he decided it was time to seize the troll by the tusks. "Bilbo..." the dwarf murmured softly, sitting up against the carved headboard. "I'm sorry. Again. I truly am. I know you hate it, and I wish I could have spared you that, but you were..."
"Yes, you said," Bilbo replied curtly. "I know." During the interchange, his eyes never left the book in his hands.
Thorin sighed in spite of himself. "Do you know why dwarven justice is so strict?" He asked. For the first time, Bilbo's eyes flicked up and over to him before snapping back to the book.
"I... no," Bilbo said brusquely, clearly caught off guard. "Though I'm sure there's a reason." He rolled his eyes briefly, heaving a deep sigh of his own and causing the rich fabric of his nightshirt to ruck around him. "There always is." Nettled, Thorin made a sour face.
"I'm not sure what you mean by that," he began before catching himself. "At any rate," the king replied with a touch of asperity, "there is, yes, a very good reason. Fear." Bilbo paused, book sinking to his lap, before peering over at his husband.
"What?" The hobbit asked, brows cocked and voice flat and sarcastic. "Fear? Fear of what, exactly? Being spattered with blood? A reasonable fear, I'd say, given today's exercise, though I can't say any of the dwarves present seemed particularly worried about it." Thorin closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing himself to remain calm. It was clear that Bilbo wanted a fight, but Thorin most definitely did not. As no answer was immediately forthcoming, the hobbit gave a short huff and threw himself backwards into the pillows again, book propped up in front of him like a declaration of war.
"Fear of consequences of their actions," Thorin finally replied, forcing his voice to be even. "Fear of the wrath of the House of Durin." BIlbo glanced over again, clearly poised to make some remark, but Thorin caught his eye and continued speaking. "Dharùk tried to kill you, ghivashel. He wanted to. Indeed, he gave it his best try. He had to pay the price, and more importantly, be seen to do so." Thorin gritted his teeth; he wasn't particularly fond of executions, but the idea of losing his consort to the machinations of some filthy plotter had made this one quite acceptable to administer. "And as much as I love you, it's not just for you, or both our sakes, or even that of my family," he went on, cutting off Bilbo's anticipated retort. "Think of the many dwarves - good dwarves - who depend on the House of Durin. I have a duty to protect them as well. Even if I were to set aside my obligations as king to enforce the law, I am still one of the nobles. Each noble House has dependents, and the leader of that House has obligations to them. We must consider the merchants who wear our sign and trade goods in our name, the workers who dig our ore and smelt our metals, the craftsdwarves that make our tools, the servants who clean our rooms... To all of them and everyone else, the sigil of Durin's house must signify protection to those who bear it. It must instill absolute confidence in hostile eyes that any harm done to even the least dwarf wearing the stars and anvil will result in swift and painful retribution. If a House gets the reputation for not being able to protect its own then all who wear their mark are in danger, and they will go elsewhere. They must." Thorin shrugged helplessly. "It is the way of things. All the Houses operate the same, though our House must be the most strict in this mountain, since we are the kings of the Longbeards, and have been since Durin awoke. I promise you, though... the other kings do likewise, whether they will or no." His face was soft but steadfast as he met Bilbo's eyes. "It must be so. But it grieves me that it grieves you. I am sure where you are from, things are different."
"Different is a bit mild of a term for it," Bilbo said waspishly, before sighing wearily and running a hand over his face. "Thorin..." he paused, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I don't even know how to explain. The only blood we see in the Shire is from accidents, and we all run to help the person bleeding, not stand about cheering. Perhaps..." he paused, brows drawing down. "Perhaps in the days of the Great Kings in Arnor, there were executions; I don't know. We don't have records of them. Politics in the northern kingdom was a fraught business, as it is here, so I expect there were such things in Annúminas, or Fornost, but... not among the hobbits. Never with us." He traced the ridges of the book's embossed leather cover over and over with one finger. "Our oldest stories tell of our departure from the eaves of the Forever Woods long ago, though we don't know how long ago that was, or really even where that was. If Thranduil is to be believed," he ignored Thorin's reflexive snort at the name, "we used to live in Gladden and our departure was only a bit more than a thousand years ago. I don't know if I credit it but..." It was Bilbo's turn to shrug. "But we never killed each other, Thorin. No hobbit takes the life of another. Even when we fight, we fight with fists, not..." He shook his head, curls bobbing and eyes distant. "I hear your point about fear, I do, but I can't countenance all the killing. I'm sorry." Thorin sighed and venture to put an arm out and wrap it about Bilbo's shoulders, currently bunched up near his ears.
"What are hobbits made of?" Thorin asked with a small grin. "You say that your tales tell that Javun made you, yes? Like Mahal made us. From what?" Bilbo cut his eyes over at his husband, though he didn't throw off the arm.
"She grew us," he said, sniffing as though Thorin would mock this. "In the gardens. As she did for all her creations... the animals, birds, the trees-that-walk, and all the rest." He paused and peered over at Thorin with a suspicious expression. "Why?"
Thorin snorted loudly and this time he did allow himself to grin. "Mahal shaped us from stone, love. Stone doesn't bend on its own, you have to shape it, carve it. And it crumbles if it's stressed enough." A shadow passed briefly across his face. "But one thing stone doesn't do is change its mind. You either shape it properly or..." he glanced away then back, face resolute. "You break it."
Bilbo nodded, weary eyes showing less irritation and more pensiveness. "I suppose," he murmured. "We don't do things that way. Hobbits are flexible. We bend so that we don't break." He snickered. "Even when some would dearly love to see us do so. I'm reminded of Dain's nobles who kept insulting me and didn't understand why I kept smiling. You told me later that a dwarf would have been fighting, or at the very least called them out."
Thorin snuggled closer to his husband, delighted to find that the argument-in-the-making seemed to have passed. "You sorted them all out in the end," he said in a delighted though soft voice. "I was ready to fight them on your behalf but the way you used their words against them and made them look stupid was..." He leaned over and kissed Bilbo's cheek, then his lips. "You reminded me that day of the cleverness which is the first thing I loved about you." He smiled lazily. "Not that I need much reminding, as you are never far from my thoughts." The harrumph that Bilbo produced in response was practically dwarven, though the blush and half-smile were not.
"Think you're smooth, don't you," Bilbo said with an unwilling half-grin. "Ridiculous dwarf. Come here." He arranged Thorin's arm a bit more comfortably around him. "But please, Thorin. This is what I would ask of you. If another of these cases arises..." he held up his hand to forestall Thorin's response, "let me handle it. Let me try," he said with a grimace. "If there needs to be... well... all the killing and executions and such, you will have to do it. But let me see if I might settle things in a way that won't give me nightmares, hmm?" Thorin made a non-committal grunt, content to leave it there, but Bilbo turned over and met his eye directly. "Please, Thorin. I can't..." he winced. "I can't face another one of these bloodbaths. If you must, you must, but just... let me try?" Thorin's attempt to reply was cut short as Bilbo's hands begin to wander and at the next request, he ended up agreeing. By that point in the evening, truth be told, he would have agreed to anything.
+++
BIlbo nodded along with the singer, though of course he didn't know the words - the song was in Khuzdul, of course. Even so, the beat was hard to miss; not only were the lyrics set to the usual hammer-beat sound popular with dwarfish bards, the crash and thud of mugs on the granite tabletops and stamping of steel-shod boots on the floor could make even a deaf person nod in time. Voluntarily or otherwise, the hobbit thought with a sourness he was trying to put down, but in time nonetheless. The Feast of Khazad-Dûm's Founding had been a success in the food at least - Bilbo had seen to that. Even the sourest of the nobles had complimented him on the... a hurtling form knocked him sideways in his chair, followed quickly by shouting, the reek of spilled beer, and a heavy body sprawling on top of him.
"What..." he started, just as he saw the dagger. Oh, he thought numbly. It seems someone else is trying to kill me. He rolled sideways in a frantic attempt to escape just as one of the royal guards landed on the strange dwarf like a block of iron. The ensuing moments were a blur of shouting, grabbing, and frantic motion, but in short order the attacking dwarf had been subdued (a hammer to the head tends to produce calm of a sort) and Bilbo was left staring at the uproar where cheerful singing had been only moments before wondering what had just happened.
Later, as Bilbo sat in their chambers shaking - and why, he wondered, do I always tremble after these things happen? - he watched wearily as Thorin paced in front of him like a frustrated cat. "I will have him flayed," the king ground out. "Filthy, motherless, wretched..."
"Thorin," Bilbo said softly. It did nothing to interrupt the tirade so he was forced to repeat himself a bit louder. "Thorin!" The king turned, suddenly solicitous, all the fury packed up and put away for a moment.
"Ghivashel, are you hurt? Shall I call Oin?" Bilbo shook his head wearily.
"No, I'm no more hurt now than I was when I walked in here," he replied with a touch of asperity. "But... who was he? Why did he attack me?" Bilbo's face fell a bit. "He had to know..."
"I have no idea," Thorin said, once again enraged now that Bilbo seemed fine. "But I will make an example of him that..."
"No." Bilbo sat up, grimacing at how his fingers were still trembling. "No, you won't. You promised me that the next one of these, I could handle in my own way, Thorin. And I intend to follow through." The king drew in a breath to shout and stopped, recognizing the look on his consort's face; stubborn could recognize stubborn, even among dwarves. "He will stay in his cell until Nori is able to tell us who he is and at least speculate on why he attacked me, and then... then I will speak to him. Without you there." He gave a bitter chuckle. "After all, I'm the one he wants to kill, aren't I? Oh stop looking like that, I'll have Ori there and a guard and he'll be chained, I'm not going to be in danger." Thorin's scowl had immediately darkened into fury, but at Bilbo's assurances it reverted to the more common 'this is a bad idea' face instead of 'absolute opposition', so Bilbo considered it a victory of a sort.
"Bilbo..." Thorin sighed, grinding his teeth. "As I told you the last time - I need to make an example of him. We discussed this." Bilbo lifted his chin and stared back.
"Well, yes, I recall that you said it, though there wasn't much discussion," Bilbo replied, eyes narrowing. "Even so, you promised me and I intend to hold you to it. If..." he scowled and looked away, then back at Thorin. "If I cannot solve this any other way, then I will let you have him and you can do, well, whatever you feel you must. Alright? But I have to at least try the Shire way." After a moment, he slumped disconsolately onto a battered couch, once elegant but now only acceptable because of the makeshift nature of all accommodation in an Erebor dragging itself back from ruin. His fingers picked unconsciously at the tattered fabric of the couch covering. "Besides... it's not as though anyone seems keen to learn anything from these 'examples', no matter how many of them get made, now is it? What is this, the fourth attempt to kill me since we announced our betrothal three years gone? Fifth?" He shook his head bitterly. Dwarves. He still didn't even understand what he'd done! "Why..." he decided it might be worth trying again to ask. "... Thorin, why do they want to kill me? I don't... I've never understood." He folded his arms around himself, squeezing tightly.
Thorin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "I've told you, Bilbo, it's nothing you've done in particular, beyond be..." he shrugged, but loud as thunder Bilbo heard the rest. A hobbit. Be a hobbit. His eyes dropped to his bare and unbooted feet, a reminder of everything he never would be. "You are seen as too kind to be a proper consort, I'm afraid. Setting aside the matter of how it's not particularly convenient that my One didn't turn out to be the heir of Mur the Builder, heir to the Stonefoots or some such nonsense," Thorin cursed, rolling his eyes. "These dwarves are stupid, and stubborn in their stupidity, but if I have to kill one, or a dozen, or a hundred more, they will bow their stiff necks to me... and to you."
"But you will let me try to talk to this one, yes?" Bilbo persisted, though a terrible sinking feeling told him he was likely wasting his time. Thorin grumbled and groaned, but in the end he nodded heavily.
"Talk as you wish, then," the king said heavily. "Find out for yourself what you're dealing with." Bilbo nodded, suspecting that Thorin was right but... well, he would admit to himself at least, dwarves weren't the only ones who could be a bit stubborn. "But don't take Ori. He'd be taking notes while the dwarf picked his own locks and stabbed you with a fork. If you insist on this madness, have Nori there. He can... er..." Thorin trailed off uncomfortably. Bilbo suspected that the words pass as a scribe would be a bit too difficult for a dwarf as devout as Thorin to say, but the meaning came through. He shook his head sourly, mouth a thin line, but finally shrugged.
"Alright," Bilbo sighed. "Nori it is. Tell him to... dress appropriately." He snickered as Thorin scowled and looked away. "I may be wasting my time. I know." The king glanced back at him, seeming a bit surprised. "But I have to do it, Thorin." Bilbo hugged himself again, feeling silly but unable to resist. "I just have to."
+++
"Name is Kharg, son of Marg. Broadbeam." Nori murmured to Bilbo in a low voice as he walked next to the hobbit through the halls of Erebor. Thorin had been livid when Bilbo announced he was meeting with his would-be assassin that morning, but the king's visit to a critical early-warning outpost on the north side of the mountain couldn't be postponed. For his part, Bilbo was just as glad not to have his husband breathing down his neck about the whole thing; he was sure Nori would give Thorin the blow-by-blow when the king returned the next day anyway. Speaking of Nori... Rustling fabric was a constant and somewhat odd susurrus next to the hobbit, who refused to glance over any more. The sight of Nori in scribal robes and sash was... unnerving. It made the angular, foxlike dwarf look softer somehow, though Bilbo knew better from their long acquaintance - Thorin's spymaster was about as soft as the polished rock floor they walked on, and infinitely sharper. The customary hood hid the elaborate coif that the whole Company - likely the whole mountain - knew him by. Even his style of moving had changed, becoming the long, stately gait of the scribes instead of his usual fast step. Eerie, the hobbit thought. Though certainly useful. "Wife and child, neither of whom knew anything about the attack or that he would even consider it. Worked as a silversmith; no history of work problems. Broadbeams are a straightforward lot, for the most part; surprised he'd do such a thing. Coworkers said he was prone to rants about how soft you were, though, and how 'the Consort should be a proper dwarf'." Nori's sigh was loud. "Whatever that means to him, I suppose."
Bilbo nodded, lips a thin and bloodless line in his face. He felt vaguely ill, but he had demanded the chance to do this, no matter how much he wanted to go hide in the bed at this particular moment, so he pressed on. "Was his wife... upset?" Bilbo asked, feeling a bit of a tit for asking. "Or did she agree with him?"
Nori snorted. "She was livid. Utterly furious. Called him quite a mouthful of things in two languages, since the pebble wasn't about." The false scribe's hood shook, momentarily obscuring the dwarf's foxlike face. "Lad will grow up without a father as we did, I suppose." Before Bilbo could respond, Nori turned to meet his eye, motioning at the door. "Lead the way, Lord Consort," he said with a vulpine grin. Pausing for a moment at the threshold, Bilbo finally gathered his nerves and stepped through the door. A heavyset dwarf was chained to the floor at a small table in the center of the room, with a mail-clad guard on the back wall. Bilbo stepped over to the throne set at his end of the chamber, with Nori peeling off to take a lower seat at a table. The hobbit hated set ups like this; the whole point of this was not to be a dwarven lord passing judgement, but the whole chamber was constructed with that in mind. Changing his mind at the last moment, he stood in front of the throne examining the dwarf. Glancing at Nori, Bilbo realized he was still standing - and with that he remembered that Nori couldn't be seated until he did.
"Sit," he said, motioning Nori towards the writing desk, and watched as the 'scribe' settled himself exactly as his younger brother would have done. Eerie. Turning back to the dwarf, Bilbo squared his shoulders. "Kharg son of Marg?" he asked, hoping he remembered the name correctly. There was no response. "You know, this will go a lot more easily if you answer," he said after a moment made it clear no response was forthcoming. "The purpose of this is to talk, not to... well, whatever Thorin would do to you." A bitter coffee-colored eye glanced up at him, then back down, but there was no further motion from Kharg. "Why did you attack me?" Bilbo asked plaintively, knowing he likely sounded petulant and knowing how the dwarf likely found that irritating, but unable to help himself. "I'd done nothing to you as far as I know, and if I had you could petition..."
"You are weak," the dwarf said in a raspy voice, then coughed. He sounded as though he had taken at least one fist to the throat. "Not a fit consort."
Bilbo sighed, scowling. What had he expected, though? "Well, so you think that's justification to just randomly stab me? What would happen if you tried to stab another dwarf?" There was no response, but there didn't need to be. "You're lucky I'm not a dwarf, truth be told. Imagine if I were to order you shaved," Bilbo said, not seeing Nori's eyebrows go up behind him. "Or... or decided you didn't get to be a dwarf any more!" A blaze of fury went through him. The unfairness of just being attacked by this disdainful... creature! Kharg's eyes came up for the first time properly, meeting Bilbo's gaze belligerently.
"Not a dwarf?" came the sneering reply. "You don't have the power to change me into anything else, halfling." Never had the term been uttered with such scorn, and Bilbo felt a fresh wave of fury wash through him. Kharg laughed bitterly. "Think you're some sort o' wizard? Bollocks. Kill me if you want. It will change nothing. A dwarf I was born, a dwarf I'll die, and you'll never be one... no matter what." All this was said in a flat, no-nonsense tone that went through Bilbo like a hot knife.
"Is that so?" Bilbo replied, gritting his teeth. "Well, if I were my husband, I could order your thumbs stripped off, couldn't I? Then you couldn't hold a weapon or a tool ever again. I could ban your name, couldn't I, and have everything you ever made melted down and slagged, the silver sent for scrap." Kharg was still looking at him, but his expression had shifted.
"You... couldn't do that," Kharg said. "It's not allowed."
"I'm the bloody Consort!" Bilbo shouted. "Thorin would do it, and unless you've another king in your pocket, who would refuse me? Your child would change their name in shame; your wife would be free to keep all you own. And if you can't make, and you can't fight, and you can't work, and you've no family nor kin nor even a bloody beard..." Bilbo said, suddenly listening to himself with horror, he stammered out "well, then, y-you'd hardly be a dwarf, would you?" He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "But, er, well, as you say, I wouldn't do that, of course." He chuckled awkwardly, glancing at Nori who seemed to be staring at him in utter shock for some reason. "But I still don't know why you thought you could just attack me." Bilbo scowled. "Or, for that matter, why so many dwarves think they can just attack me."
"It..." Kharg said, staring as though Bilbo had turned into a dragon before his eyes. "It was all a... terrible mistake." Bilbo was beyond taken aback; in fact, flabbergasted was a word he'd often heard, but this was one of the few times he could remember feeling it.
"I - I beg your pardon?" he managed to stammer out.
"It was a mistake, a mistake I deeply regret," Kharg mumbled, eyes fixed firmly on the floor. As if that weren't enough, he actually tried to bow to Bilbo, which was several steps past unexpected. He couldn't, given that he was chained into a chair in the middle of the floor, but watching him contort himself downwards made it clear enough what was happening. "I beg the Consort's forgiveness, and will accept whatever punishment is given to me." This last statement was made with gritted teeth and wide eyes, but Bilbo's glance around at Nori was just as surprising. The narrow face was grinning fiercely, not at all a reaction Bilbo had expected.
Now let it be said that Bilbo was no stranger to a telling-off. Giving, or (it must be admitted) receiving. The folk of the Shire were, to be fair, not prone to Erebor style exhibits of their opinions - very few stabbings, as a rule, the hobbits not being much for bodily harm and assault - but sharp tongues grew there as abundant as pipeleaf, and just as prone to overwhelm the unwary. Bilbo was accounted 'sharp' even by Shire standards, meaning that his was not the eye to fall under if he was aggrieved; many a hobbit had faced a Bagginsish dressing-down that left them feeling very small or (occasionally) in tears, and as for the Tooks the less said the better. However. This sort of full admission of guilt and abrupt collapse of the opposing side was not something he had often encountered in any such conflict. Usually there was a great deal of posing and posturing about what was actually said and what was meant and so forth, not 'you were right, I was wrong' which left Bilbo feeling quite wrong-footed. "Well, I, er," the hobbit murmured, glancing around at Nori who was very unhelpfully hiding in his hood and looking down at his documents. Pest. "I'm sure you see that it's very difficult to trust your word not to cause trouble again after all this." He was about to say more, but Kharg was nodding already.
"Aye, but I do swear before Azaghâl father of my clan and Mahal himself to oppose you nor the king no further, come what may." Bilbo saw Nori's eyebrows climb up into the hood at this statement. He himself had heard Thorin swear things by Durin a few times, but even the king was hesitant to invoke their Maker for oaths - such things had a way of not just binding but pinching, as his grandmother might have said. Even the guard's carefully cultivated expression of malevolent watchfulness cracked at this. Bilbo sighed and nodded.
"I thank you for that," he said. "I'd... well..." At a loss, he cast his thoughts back to other cases he'd seen Thorin adjudicate. What was considered reasonable? The typical dwarven solution, beheading, was right out by hobbitish standards. Labor, certainly, but you couldn't exactly set someone to work once they'd tried to kill you; that was more for petty thievery than being stabbed at a feast. If he resorted to bodily mutilation he was no better than the dwarves himself, and the whole point of this was moot. Nori hadn't given any indication that the silversmith was exceptional by dwarven standards, so having him make things for free as penance was right out, even if Thorin would let him have the work of any other set of living hands in their rooms... He glanced up and met the eyes of Kharg, hunched and astonishingly small-looking for such a burly dwarf. A thought occurred to the hobbit; it was a punishment from the Shire, but given the stiff necks he'd found dwarves to have it might bite the same. "Alright. Since you've sworn on your clan-lord and Maker, just... just go about and tell those you know that you were wrong, eh?" He sighed, wandering back and sitting on the stone chair because his feet had had enough of the stone flagstones in the Room of Judgement. "And don't cause trouble. Any more issues from you, and... well, it won't be pretty," Bilbo said in his best no-nonsense Shire tone. A worried nod was Kharg's only response, though Nori was audibly snickering - quite unscribelike, Bilbo thought in annoyance. Really, he won't fool anyone like that. Bilbo waved at the guard. "You can, er, release him in the usual way, I suppose. But do let me know if he makes trouble again." The guard looked singularly unimpressed with this statement, though Kharg's eyes were fixed on the hobbit.
"The Consort has spoken, let his will be done." Nori sounded official enough, if one discounted the expression. Even so, as Bilbo was leaving, he saw the spymaster grinning viciously and waggling both his thumbs at the dwarf being led out - how rude. Bilbo wondered what the gesture meant, but was glad enough that the matter was settled. He hoped Thorin wasn't too upset.
+++
A night spent alone was both unfamiliar and unwelcome, so it was a surly Bilbo indeed who was picking at the remnants of his breakfast when Thorin burst into the room in a swirl of motion, pinning Bilbo with his shocked expression. "Bilbo. What judgement did you pass on that dwarf that attacked you?" The king demanded, eyes searching Bilbo's face.
"And good morning to you too, my dearest," Bilbo replied sourly. "So nice to see you, sorry to be gone, I have missed you, and so forth." Thorin's face fell for a moment as he thought about it, then the king was hauling Bilbo out of his chair and into an embrace and kiss. "Better," the hobbit said snidely, though a half-grin could be seen on his face. "Somewhat."
"Seriously, ghivashel, what did you do to that purg-khumrun Kharg? Nori caught me at the gate and told me he fled the mountain in the middle of the night with his wife and child, claiming to all who would hear that you were some sort of monster worse than the dragon," Thorin said. "Not that I'm not proud, but... perhaps a bit confused." Fled? Bilbo was shocked.
"I'm sure I have no idea," he admitted, mouth drawing down. "He wasn't particularly upset when he left. He had sworn by both Azaghâl and the Smith not to oppose me... us... so I just told him he had to tell everyone he knew he was wrong." The hobbit shrugged. "I thought it might curb his pride a bit, but I certainly didn't expect him to flee the mountain." He paused, thinking. "Hold on a bloody moment! Said I was a monster?!" Bilbo said indignantly. "The nerve of that wretched...!"
"Ghivashel," Thorin repeated, "what did you do to him?" He was curious to see if Bilbo knew how far beyond the limits of normal dwarven thought he had ventured. After another blank yet irritated look Thorin paused, glancing away and clearly calculating. "Although, to be fair, this is the best outcome possible, far beyond what I thought... er..."
"Oh do continue," Bilbo said quietly, brows down and eyes piercing. "Beyond what you thought? Pray, what did you think?"
"What I think," Thorin said with a smile and pressing a kiss to Bilbo's furrowed brow despite his half-hearted attempts to get away, "is that I seriously underestimated hobbits' ability to shape stone the way they wish." A raised eyebrow was his reward for this statement, but he was already continuing. "I also think that perhaps a meal wouldn't go amiss. Have you breakfasted?" As he escorted Bilbo to their morning meal Thorin felt a tension he'd carried since their betrothal begin to subside. He suspected that Bilbo would never know just how much terror he had sown in the mountain, which was fine. Public shaming was bad enough, threatening to remove someone's ability to work and just leaving them alive and helpless... Thorin snorted in spite of himself, earning himself a sharp look despite the savory egg and ham pastries currently occupying the hobbit's focus. "Remembering Nori's face," Thorin explained with a grin. The spymaster had been at least as shocked as Kharg from Bilbo's words in that room. Still... there would certainly be no more foolishness about the Consort's weakness; Thorin suspected more folk in the mountain than him now realized there might be more than one sort of strength.