Chapter Text
1.
Kili’s first memory was of an argument between his mother and Uncle Thorin. He didn’t remember the words, only that he was in Mama’s arms and it did not feel safe and he wanted her to put him down. Mama kept turning away, but Thorin would step around her so she was facing him over and over. It wasn’t like the rows that he watched Dori and Nori have, years later, with smashed crockery and insults fired liked arrows and shouts so loud they shook the windows. Instead, his mother’s low voice was jagged and cutting right down to the nerve like the shudder of a wrench scraped across smooth steel.
2.
Dwalin was his favourite. Dwalin was the captain of the royal guard. He always smiled (later, Kili would wonder if it was just that he always smiled when Kili was looking at him). He let Kili tug his beard and run stubby fingers over Dwalin’s finely-carved axes and stand both of his small feet on Dwalin’s boot, hugging Dwalin’s leg while Dwalin lounged outside the throne room. Kili felt safe there, a small bird alighting on the flank of some great beast where it knew no predator could strike.
3.
He remembered an argument between Thorin and his mother – years after the first one, and there were many in between – in which Thorin had shouted, “It’s unworthy of our line, it’s foul of a widow to show such indiscretion, let alone with a common soldier!” and Mama had slapped him so hard that Kili, playing in the corner, had flinched.
“Our line is worthy of nothing, brother, and it sickens me that you refuse to see that,” she had spat at him. “We should be nothing but dragon-ash and heads on pikes. Mahal, see it done.”
4.
When he was very small, he and Fili were woken by the clash of steel and the shouts of dying men. Their nurse came in, wearing only her petticoats and a busty nightshirt, and made them get up and put their coats on over their nightgowns. She took their hands and led them to the little door behind the bookshelf and told them to stay there until they heard her or their mother calling for them.
They stayed in the darkness and fell asleep. When they awoke it was to silence and more darkness, ending and heavy. Kili had wet himself and the dampness was cold and clinging in his nightgown. He cried for mama and Fili got angry at him, and that made him cry harder.
For hours and hours they waited, sleeping on and off.
It was a young stranger named Gloin who opened the door and called them out. The light filled the world and hurt their eyes. Kili’s underwear was sore against his skin because the dampness had been rubbing at his legs. Hungry and confused, they went with Gloin and his retinue of guards. The air stunk of smoke and there was blood on the shield of one guard. They were taken to a storeroom and left there, and then moved to Uncle Thorin’s study. The chairs had been overturned and the curtain pulled down. Fili complained that he was starving and someone brought them cold, boiled potatoes and carrots, which they ate so fast it smeared across their faces and hands.
They were brought at last to their great grandmother, who scolded their guards and cleaned them in freezing water straight from the well and sent for fresh clothes.
“What’s happening, Amma?” Fili asked. Her birth name was Gullhring, but everybody called her Amma, ‘grandmother’, even her maids. “Where is everyone?”
“Your mother has done something very foolish,” Amma said, scrubbing Kili’s face as he whined and struggled. “She was always a foolish girl, oh yes. I said so from the beginning.”
Mama’s coup had failed.
5.
They executed Mama and Dwalin three days later. Fili and Kili were brought to watch from a dais constructed above the crowd. Mama and Dwalin knelt before the blocks. Kili remembers that her eyes were dry and that she looked towards him and her mouth moved, saying something he couldn’t hear above the roar of the crowd. The cheers were for traitors’ blood. Mama’s mouth made words and afterwards he always wondered if she was saying, “I love you” or “Goodbye” or if it was a prayer to Mahal. And sometimes he wondered if she was really looking at him at all.
(And later, so much later, Thorin told him he had never been looking at Kili but at Thorin himself, and had said, “I will see you again, brother.”)
They did Dwalin first. Later, Kili didn’t remember what it looked like. But Kili remembered that soon the axe came down and Mama’s head came off and there was a lot of blood. It was bright like silk, brighter than the blood that had been on the guards’ shield.
Kili began to cry. His brother put a hand over his mouth and whispered, “Don’t, don’t please, Grandpa will punish you.” Kili couldn’t stop, but Thrain was easily distracted even then and did not see him.
6.
They had many nurses and nannies and governesses after that, but Amma ruled the nursery. She loved the boys and doted and praised, giving them anything they wanted and tempering their grizzles with her enfolding arms and the powdery scent of her skin. When they misbehaved she sat them down and spoke to them at length about the proper conduct of princes, and she seemed the wisest creature in the world. From the earliest Kili could remember, her beard was long and white as fresh-fallen snow, braided elaborately every morning. She looked like how Kili imagined the maiar of Mahal would appear in dwarven form.
But she was impatient often. If the tantrums didn’t abate within a few moments she would leave them to the nannies. She grew angry if she wanted to see the boys and they were asleep or having a bath or just took too long to come to her side, yet if she was busy and they wanted to visit her or show her something she would scold their guardians for not keeping them out of her rooms. Kili scolded the nannies too, if he did not get his way, promising them, “I’ll tell Amma! Give it to me, or I’ll tell her!” and they never disobeyed him.
Once a week, Kili was expected to appear for dinner with his uncles and Amma. He hated these long, boring meals and did not want to wear the tight, itchy suit in which he was supposed to be presented. On one particular day they were already late and Kili wouldn’t stop struggling and screaming. When his dressing-nurse tried to button up his shirt, he sunk his teeth into her wrist hard enough to leave imprints. She grabbed him and put him over her knee and hit him twice on the backside with her right hand.
Amma walked in just in time to see it. Kili’s screams turned to sobs as the nurse set him quickly on his feet and stood up. She asked Amma to forgive her, she was teaching him not to bite. Amma had the nurse’s right hand cut off and she was dismissed.
Nor did Amma like the governesses being too friendly. She did not like to see them comforting her great-grandsons, or singing to them, or rocking them in the huge wetnurse’s chair that still stood in their bedroom. Amma would slap any dam who stole too much of her boys’ affections. They soon learned. And so Kili was raised mostly by clockwork nannies and governesses, reeking always of fear. They were stiff-voiced and cold in stance and touch. Instead, it was Amma who held him and told him stories in bed and wiped away his tears when he fell over. But never on demand. He got everything he wanted when he wanted it, all except for that, and that not from anyone.
7.
Fili was Kili’s first and only friend, at least for the first twenty-one years of his life.
It began some time after Kili had reached his tenth birthday. Before then he had regarded his brother as a villain and a distraction, who knew best how to please Amma and get her attention, who wouldn’t share his toys. They had always had separate nannies, separate rooms, separate lessons, and neither of them had ever complained about this. They fought more than they played together.
But then something changed in Fili. He became patient and quiet. He was no longer interested in the same toys as Kili. He insisted on dressing himself, and his brother too when the nurses would let him. When Amma was busy with other important things – the design of Thorin’s new standard, the food for Thrain’s next feast, the friends she did not approve of Frerin making – Fili would sit up in Kili’s bed and tell him stories about the desolation of Smaug and the creation of the first father until he fell asleep. Sometimes he would smuggle Kili away from the nannies and take him to see Papa’s marker on the Wall of Rememberance. He sat cross-legged with Kili in his lap and told him about how Papa was a hero who had died in the goblin wars before Kili was born. Other times he taught Kili the secret passages of the palace and showed him the best views of the city, even sneaking him outside to see the sky and the mountain peak and the green growing things that clothed their home. Fili was holding his hand walking across the mountain paths when Kili saw and felt rain for the first time. It was like magic – not necessarily a good magic, for it was cold and uncomfortable after the first few minutes of delight – but a strange and wild magic. Kili had never known about weather, nor forests, nor the towering peaks of outer Erebor and the distant Misty Mountains; all things in the world in which his grandfather did not rule absolutely.
Kili began to run to his brother’s room in the morning and burrow under the blankets to curl beside him and put his cold feet on Fili’s legs until he got up. He began to follow Fili to his lessons and threw tantrums when he was shut outside. But even this Fili managed to head off if he could, gripping Kili’s arms and ordering him to calm himself or waiting the tantrum out if it was already too fierce to contain.
Slowly, Kili grew out of the tantrums. He shot up tall and was noticed by Thorin for the first time, like something sprouting out of a crack in a familiar path that had suddenly flowered. Fili carefully coached Kili on how to behave around Uncle Thorin, how to speak and when to stay silent and when to know he was dismissed. Afterwards, they would sit in the bay windows that looked over the underground city and giggle about how severe and grim Thorin was, doing impressions to each other until Kili’s sides hurt from laughing.
Frerin must have noticed Kili too, as he began to speak to Kili during family dinners or the concerts that Amma occasionally dragged them to. He always seemed very kind and interested. “How are your lessons, nephew?” and “Are you enjoying the music, nephew?” But Fili told Kili not to speak to him. Without an answer, Frerin would soon end their conversations with something like, “You must pay attention; we all worry you’ll end up as brick-headed as your father.” Kili always felt small and stupid after talking to Frerin, but Fili told him not to listen.
Fili always knew what to do. Kili wondered who had taught him. It was years later that he realised Fili had learned alone, by trial and error.
8.
Thorin decided it would be best if his nephews took their lessons with other children. He said that Fili already had the makings of a good leader, but he must be equal with others in order to grow well. By the time Kili was in his teens they were sent to a school for the sons of the wealthiest nobles in Erebor. At first they were given fake names to use, but very soon everyone found out who they were and there was no point anymore.
Fili always seemed to have other boys gathered around him like a ram with his flock, but Kili found it hard to talk to strangers. He had never had other children in his life before, except for servants, and he knew only how to order people about, which just made the boys at school laugh at him and mock him. Before long he sat alone at the back of the class day-in and day-out, watching Fili sit in a circle of friends who desperately fawned and copied the crown prince and turned coldly away from the younger.
He didn’t mind being on his own, but the work was difficult. He could make his letters and notch out his sums easy with his left hand, but the scholars who taught them would not let him do this. They were not supposed to hit him, prince as he was, but they called him names or pinched his ears to make him write with his sword-hand. They said he would develop asymmetries and weaknesses if he used the wrong hand. Kili learned to sit staring at his work with his pencil gripped on the right, watching for the teacher in the corner of his eye, and then swap over very quick and quiet until he saw them coming.
At last the teachers tied his left hand behind his back every morning, painfully tight, until the blood pooled in his fingers and it felt like needles were stabbing all over his palm. They would not untie him even during the meal breaks. He learned to cut his food with the side of his fork. It was clumsy work. He couldn’t sit straight up in his chair. When he walked through the halls, other boys laughed and pushed him when Fili wasn’t looking. He couldn’t keep his balance, couldn’t always catch himself with his right hand. He hated them all. He wished they would hurt him or hit him properly, leave a bruise or a bloodied mark, so that when he went back to the palace he could tell Amma and she would have them all executed. But they never hurt him seriously and when he tried to tell Fili, his brother told him to be the stronger dwarf and not react to their torments. They were only words, Fili said. They would soon grow bored and leave him be, Fili said. Don’t be so cowardly, Fili said.
Kili tried to be the stronger dwarf. He spoke less and less, hiding behind his fringe, and tried to focus only on his work. But the more he forced his hand to make the letters the more his head hurt.
Soon he began to stutter when he spoke. Fili laughed at first. “Why are you doing that?” he asked.
“I c-c-can’t h-help-p it,” Kili mumbled, clutching his books to his chest as they walked up the long steps to the palace. The teachers had finally stopped tying his arm behind his back, and his letters with his right hand were not even ranked the worst in the class. But it still took him longer to write anything.
“You c-c-can’t help it,” Fili mocked. He thought it was a game.
It wasn’t a game. The stutter got worse. Amma began to worry that Kili was feeble-minded, especially with his poor writing and fidgety nature, as reported by the teachers. Worse still, Frerin soon learned about the stutter and took every opportunity to corner Kili and ask him about his day, interrupting him to echo him clearly every few words.
“…I h-have to g-g-go, Frer-r-rin…”
“You what? Oh, you have to go,” Frerin smirked, stepping neatly in front of him. “But where are you going?”
“T-t-to f-find Fili.”
“What? What’s that? To find Fili. Say it with me now, Kili, it’s not hard.”
Kili boiled with rage. He wanted to hit Frerin, but he didn’t dare. His uncle was still a foot taller then him and twice his weight, his arms honed by his warrior’s training. Frerin was going to be the commander of the army one day, when Thorin became king. Then he would have thousands of dwarves behind him, thousands of armed soldiers to help corner Kili in the halls and ask him how his day went, where he was going. They would be like the boys at school, who fawned and sighed around his brother but as soon as Fili was gone, turned dark laughs and cruel m-m-mockeries on Kili.
It was all too much.
9.
One day, twenty-one years old and still too skinny to swing an axe, Kili panicked and skipped school. He told Fili he had forgotten his stylus and had to return to the palace. He promised he would only be a few minutes. Fili went on with the royal guards that walked them to the lower halls each day. Kili ran back to the palace, but he wasn’t looking for his stylus. He thought he would go down to the kitchen and sit with the cooks all day, eating scones and listening to them gossip.
As he was hurrying down the long, winding stairs to the lower floors, he looked along one of the grand hallways and locked eyes with Frerin. His uncle was talking to some minister of the court, but his head jerked around as he saw Kili. For half a moment, Kili thought Frerin must have important business and would ignore him. But then he saw the gleam in his uncle’s eyes and he knew he was caught.
He ran, throwing himself down the stairs three at a time. He heard Frerin’s voice calling, and Frerin’s swift, heavy footsteps along the marbled halls. “Hey! Hey, little N-n-nephew! Why aren’t you at school?”
A lump swelled in Kili’s throat. He felt cowardly and sick, but much more than that he was frightened of being caught, of being sent back with permission to finally have him caned for his insolence, or worse still being dragged in front of Thorin. Uncle Thorin would not lay a hand on him. Uncle Thorin would simply talk at him, in a cold and disappointed voice. It would be worse than dying.
Kili ran. He took side passages and doors without thinking about his direction. He had been raised in the beehive of the palace, set deep into the bedrock of Erebor, but there were only a few paths that he knew well enough to navigate in a panic. Soon he found himself in a silent, high-roofed hallway. The walls were set with the horns and scalps of prized beasts, deer and elk and bison. Kili hurried along it, sucking down air to ease his burning lungs. Tears pricked in his eyes and shame spread through his blood. He felt unworthy as a child of Durin’s line. He wished he was a miner’s son. He wished he was dead.
He heard a pair of maids coming from the other direction and ducked into the first side door he could find. The room beyond was dark as pitch and smelled of dust and stretched leather. As his eyes adjusted he realised he was in a records room. As he crept on towards the light, he found himself on a cloister above the grand library. The huge, branched room was lit by myriad wax lamps hung on scores of chandeliers, high above the precious, flammable books.
The tears were coming fast and unquenchable now. Kili reached an alcove halfway along the cloister and sat down in it, pulling his knees up to his chin. He sobbed in silence, trying to wipe his eyes over and over again and always finding the flood replenished down his cheeks. Finally the heaving of his chest slowed and the pounding in his head diminished. He rested his brow on his knees, exhausted. His ears were ringing. There was a growing thud out of tune with his heartbeat.
Kili realised that footsteps were approaching. He raised his head with a jerk. Through his blurred eyes he saw a figure in brown, baggy clothes. It was a boy no older than him, with greyish-red hair like a faded dustcover and no beard. The boy stood hunched a few feet away, his hands hanging entwined at his waist.
“Are you looking for a book?” he asked.
Kili rubbed his arm across his eyes. “D-d-o I l-look lik-k-ke I want a b-book?” he snarled.
The boy pressed his lips together and fumbled with a thread on his sleeve. “I suppose not. But it’s the only reason most people come in.”
“G-go aw-way!” Kili wrapped his arms around his shoulders.
There was the sound of a door slamming shut some distance off. The boy jumped and leaned over the rail of the cloister. From the floor below came Frerin’s loud, familiar voice. “Ho! You, lad, have you seen a young dwarf come through he? Dark hair, sour face, talks awful funny?”
The librarian glanced across at Kili, who had frozen in place with his shoulders hunched and his arms locked around his knees. No, no, no he wanted to disappear, to be anywhere but under Frerin’s eye. He wanted Fili. He wanted to be alone completely and utterly.
But the boy just leaned over and called, “Not through here, sir, it’s quiet as the grave. I’d have heard him for sure.”
Frerin responded with a low grumble and his footsteps receded. The door slammed shut. Kili raised his head to look at the boy standing over him.
“Don’t I get a ‘thank you’?” the boy asked.
Kili wiped his nose on the back of his. “I d-don’t have to thank s-servants,” he scowled.
The boy laughed. It was a bright, careless sound. He did not sound as if he feared anything. He asked, “Do you want some wine?”
“W-what?” Kili frowned up at him.
“I’m all on my own today. It’s dead boring, and the head librarian never notices bottles missing from his cabinet. I'm Ori, by the way.”
He held out his hand. After a long moment, Kili took it and was pulled to his feet.
And this was how he met his second friend in the world.
10.
“W-why do y-y-…” Kili swallowed and drained the last of his cup. “…You work here?” he finished, putting the cup down with a loud clack.
“My brother Dori thinks construction is too dangerous,” Ori said, resting his head on one hand. They sat in the head librarian’s office. It stunk of stale meal-scraps and unwashed dwarf, but it was also accessed only by a small, heavy door hidden in the shadows behind the reading desks in the main room. No one would find him here, Kili knew. Ori shrugged. “He says I’m too dreamy to operate a sledgehammer. And I know how to read. Construction would be a waste, Dori says.”
“N-no, I m-m-m…” Kili closed his eyes and took a breath. The wine was making his joints tingle and his heart race, but it swept his thoughts along too. He wanted to get them out properly. “No, I mean, why do you h-have to work at all. W-why aren’t you at s-school?”
A wrinkle appeared in Ori’s brow and he giggled. He had a whole range of odd little chuckles and sniggers, like a jeweller’s toolbox. Kili couldn’t help smiling at each new one. Finally Ori said, “My Mam is sick and and my brother Nori is hopeless so it’s only Dori and I can work really. School’s for rich folks. Dori taught me my letters and fixed me up the job here. I’m paid a mahb a week that goes to home and I can read whatever I like if I’m careful with the pages. That’s better than school.”
“W-why doesn’t your f-father look after your m-m-m—” he couldn’t get it out, but Ori picked up the thread without blinking.
“We never see my dad. Or Nori’s dad. Or Dori’s dad,” he gave a new laugh at Kili’s face, a chesty guffaw that echoed around the small room.
Kili smiled and reached for the bottle. “M-me neith-th-ther.”
They finished the bottle and talked for hours. Kili’s stutter came and went but Ori never seemed to even notice it. When they got hungry they ate flat oatcakes with dripping inside, prepared and wrapped in cheesecloth by Ori’s older brother, and then had another half a bottle. Kili no longer had any clue what the time was or whether anyone would still be looking for him, but at last he decided that he had to face the outside world.
As he reached the door he turned back to Ori, his heart suddenly racing again. "My name's K-k-kili."
A ruddy blush touched Ori's cheeks. "I know," he said. "I've seen you around."
"Oh. I d-d-didn't r-remember you," Kili said, feeling his own cheeks flood with heat.
"I expect that happens a lot," Ori said, and gave the stupidest and most carefree giggle so far. Kili couldn't help laughing in return. For a moment they paused where they were, but Kili didn't feel angry as he often did when people professed to know more than him. There was a comforting fire in his belly. He was thrilled with anticipation for something he couldn't even name. And then he remembered how much trouble he would be in and he took a step back into the corridor, turned and hurried away.
11.
He went back to his room. Fili was sitting on his window sill, gazing out over the sunless, unchanging lights of the city. They were like stars from here, arrayed in lines like crowns and hanging strings. They could not see the deep mines, nor the refuse pits, nor the streets of cheapside from here; in later months Kili would find he would not have been be able to pick out the warm lights of Dori’s restaurant even with a hawk’s eyes, and as it turned out, Ori’s window looked out over a brick wall and an alley full of refuse. Erebor had many halls and it took many years to learn that not all of them were grand and beautiful.
Tonight Fili did not look over as the door opened. Kili could see that there was a tense set to his shoulders.
“Am I in t-t-trouble?” Kili asked, levering himself up onto the sill to sit across from his brother.
Fili glanced towards him. His eyes seemed hollow, to be looking through Kili. His expression was on the verge of breaking, and then he swallowed and seemed to pull himself together. He forced a smile, “The worst trouble, little brother.”
“I d-d-don’t c-care,” Kili pouted, leaning back against the bars of the window. He kicked his foot lightly against Fili’s leg. “W-what’s wrong w-w… y-you?”
Fili looked quickly out over the city again. “I heard – I heard the boys at school saying –” he shook his head. “We can’t trust anyone, brother. Not a single one of them.”
He never finished the story. It was one of those things that Kili meant to ask him, years later, when he thought the sting would have faded. But it never came up.
After a long moment, Fili got up and grabbed Kili’s hand. “Come on. We’re going to see Uncle Thorin.”
Kili protested and begged and whined, but Fili insisted it would be alright. He dragged him all the way to Thorin’s huge study behind the throne room, set back high above the city in the solid bedrock of the palace, the marbled walls lined with books and bulging cabinets. Thorin was sorting through piles of papers and he did not even glance up as they entered. He always knew the sound of their footsteps.
“Go away, boys. I’m busy,” he said at once.
“It won’t wait,” Fili said. Thorin looked up. Fili stood in front, his arms crossed. He was many years away from coming of age and his beard was not even a prickle on his cheeks, but he was already close to reaching his full height. He lifted his chin.
He told Thorin that both of them must be taken out of school and given private lessons. He told Thorin about how the teachers treated Kili, how the other boys teased him and pushed him, how the stutter had come about as a result of his maltreatment. Kili squirmed and hung his head as Fili exposed his weaknesses one after the other. He was sure Thorin would simply tell him he was being pathetic and send him back. Finally, their uncle raised his hand.
“Is this true, Kili?” he asked.
“Y-y-yes, Th-thorin,” Kili mumbled.
“Speak clearly. Don’t stammer,” Thorin growled.
He was silent. Thorin tilted his head, “Speak, Kili.”
Kili raised his head. He would not cry. He would not. Not in front of Thorin. He said, “I c-c-can’t.”
Thorin pulled them out of school.
12.
The private tutors were numerous and varied, but they were as different as they could possibly have been from the school teachers. Balin was in charge, organising the other lessons on a week-to-week basis according to where he deemed the boys lacking in and what he thought would hold their attention. He spoke to his charges like adults and listened when they spoke back. There was discontent from Amma – she did not like Balin, because he was the brother of the infamous general who had helped Mama – but Thorin held firm in his choice. Balin’s father was a war hero who had taught him and Frerin much of what they knew, and the family deserved a chance to eke back the honour that the traitor Dwalin had lost.
Kili flourished under the private tutors. He was still expected to swing one-handed weapons with his right hand because it would be necessary in battle, but his sword master patiently let him move through the lessons ambidextrously, learning his strengths with his left before he repeated it with his right. His archery teacher didn’t care at all what side he shot with, and Kili took to archery very quickly as a result. Soon, his stutter faded and then disappeared entirely, only returning occasionally when he was very nervous.
Their new regime gave them a lot of free time, and most afternoons they were released to do as they pleased. Most of this time they spent together, travelling outside to spend long hours exploring the forest that clothed the Lonely Mountain, hunting or swimming if the weather allowed it. Sometimes they would dress up in the plainest clothes they could find and wander the streets of the city. They had to be careful not to be caught by any of the family on the way out, because then they would be forcibly accompanied by guards, which rather ruined the thrill of exploring the dingy lower quarters.
But very often Fili had extra homework, martial forms and stances he had to get perfect, or history and philosophy books he was supposed to be reading, and so Kili took such opportunities to visit the library. He would wait in the shelves for Ori to pass during his rounds with the shelving trolley. He was very careful not to be seen too much in the library; he did not like the idea of other people knowing about his friendship with Ori. The reasons for this were like many-headed beast in his mind, striking and receding in a fog. Partly it felt like a guilty secret, something precious that the rest of the family would not approve of – because Ori was poor, because Ori was common, or perhaps because Ori was kind and that was not something the family ever seemed to trust. In particular Kili was sure that Frerin (in his cruelty) and Amma (in her loving jealousy) might have made life difficult for the young librarian if they had known.
Ori himself seemed to have had similar thoughts. When he finally brought Kili home one day, he quickly agreed that they should not use Kili’s real name outside of the palace. In Ori’s house he went by Ginnar and pretended to be a second cousin of the head librarian. And they soon became the most liberating days of his young life.
Ori’s house was cramped and small, a hodge-podge of mismatched rooms above his brother Dori’s restaurant, which was little more than a well-decorated cavity in the city wall. His brothers argued constantly but doted on Ori and welcomed Kili in as if he’d been there for years. At first they warily admired him as if he was a piece of art that Ori had brought home – his clothes and bearing must have made his status more obvious than he’d ever thought – but soon they bantered and bickered with him as easily as they did with each other. In the beginning Kili lost his temper quite often. He’d never had people speak back to him and contradict him so frankly. But soon he saw that Dori and Nori thought less of him or simply laughed the more offended he got, and he realised how silly it was to take it all personally. He rolled with their insults and slowly, steadily, learned to speak his mind without resorting to shouts and sulks.
He still preferred his conversations with Ori, though. Everything was different with Ori. It was not like speaking to servants, who agreed with everything or stayed silent. Nor was it like talking to Amma or Frerin or their more distant relatives, where one had to constantly be on one’s guard for traps and tricks, and say nothing of value, knowing that nothing that was said would stay a secret. Kili could say anything he liked to Ori and loved to hear everything that Ori had to say in return. When they were in company they still wanted to hide Kili’s identity, however, and so developed endless inside jokes and word-plays that danced around the truth, until they had almost a whole language running under their normal conversation. They would often break into fits of laughter at some obscure inneundo while Dori and Nori stared blankly at them and Ori’s mother shouted from her chair for them to explain the joke.
Ori’s mother was a wrinkled globe of a woman, dressed in several flowing layers of loose gowns and dresses, her huge arms and thighs spilling out of her faded armchair. She had been a tough and muscled builder once, Ori said, able to hammer an iron peg into granite with only three blows, but when he was a baby she’d fallen from a scaffold and hit her head badly. She slept up to twenty hours a day now. Headaches and forgetfulness dogged her every waking moment, and she could not focus on building so much as a house of cards for more than a few minutes. But her eyes still sparkled and her wit was as sharp ever.
She was the one who eventually figured out who Kili really was. Maybe she could hear their jokes better than Dori and Nori or maybe Kili just slipped up, dropped some fatal clue while he was telling Ori about his day. She told Ori’s brothers, of course, seeking Dori’s council on the danger of his friendship with a prince and how to handle it. Dori must have decided that they shouldn't oppose a prince, because he assured Kili that he was still welcome in their house. But things were never quite the same after that.
13.
In their thirties, Kili was accepted into the scouts’ academy while Fili entered officer’s training for the army. Back with high-born peers for the first time, Kili found himself far better off than he had as a child in school. Sleeping in cold barracks and training six to ten hours a day bound all the cadets together in the common goal of protecting and defending Erebor, and also in a lot of games involving fire and hiding smuggled mead in increasingly more creative places. There were rivalries and spats on occasion, but they were not malicious. Kili’s fellows were aware of his position as fourth in line of the throne, but once it became clear that he didn’t expect special treatment they treated him like any other trainee.
He saw Fili only a couple of times a week, on their day off or when the young officers’ dinners coincided with the scouts’ meals. Kili always forgot how much he missed him in between those times. He was busy constantly, not just with official training but with trying to fit in, mimicking the way the other scouts spoke and treated each other. And then he would see the burst of Fili’s gold hair across a hall or feel a familiar hand on his shoulder and at once, instantly, the rest of the world dropped away and was filled up with his brother, both of them talking non-stop, Fili trying to pinch his ears and Kili trying to pull his braids out. He was not unhappy when Fili was absent, but as soon as they were in the same room everything changed. He felt normal again. He felt whole.
He missed Ori, though. There was no chance of getting to the library or into the depths of Erebor’s slums, especially not in his distinctive scouts’ uniform. He wrote letters to Ori in the evenings, and got many back in return. Ori wrote better than him – every word seemed more cleverly chosen, every phrase more elegant, even the letters themselves perfectly formed – but Ori insisted he enjoyed Kili’s letter immensely (he said the spelling mistakes were endearing).
It never seemed strange to Kili that the rest of the cadets, if they wrote often, were sending their letters to sisters and sweethearts. Kili wrote perfunctory letters to Amma and Balin to let them know he was well and working hard, but they might as well have been public notices to pin to boards. He never wrote to Fili. He felt he did not need to, and not just because they saw each other so often. We was sure, without ever thinking it in such words, that Fili always knew how he was feeling.
14.
Thrain was not happy that Thorin had allowed the princes to join the military schools. He feared another coup. His daughter had created the greatest threat to his dominion since Smaug the Terrible had wiped out a third of Erebor’s population and killed King Thror and Thrain’s wife many years earlier. But Smaug was an enemy of all dwarves, whereas Dis had divided the nation – and so Thrain cultivated a deep hatred for her that seemed to grow sharper through the years rather than fading.
Fili and Kili did not see the king often. He was always “on important business” or “locked in deliberations” or “replenishing his strength”. What exactly this business was and how Thrain resolved it, Kili didn’t know. Nobody needed to tell him that Thorin was in charge of most of the day-to-day running of Erebor. Thorin ate at his desk most nights and walked everywhere with a flock of clerks and messengers. He had never visited his nephews in their own rooms nor even looked in on their name-day parties. He did not have time to watch their progress in the gymnasiums nor listen to their stories. Thorin had time for one thing only, and that was being a king without actually being a king. Thrain was the one-eyed face of the monarchy, the man who led parades and watched army drills and shouted at courtiers. He seemed to make decisions – he declared that the law must become this or the treasury must pay for that or the people must change their ways – but how such decisions were carried into reality was almost certainly through Thorin’s hands.
Once or twice a month the princes were still expected to family dinners, which Thrain often made an appearance at. He had grown heavy over the years, his hair streaked thick with grey, but beneath the rotund belly from his rich diet he was still strong as an ox. Kili had once seen him throw a dwarf over the railing of a mezzanine floor because the man would not shut up while Thrain was trying to speak to a bosomy duchess from the Blue Mountains. He smiled broadly during family feasts, but it only made Kili hunch lower in his chair.
He knew that the broader the king smiled, the more quickly he might begin to shout and thump his fists. Conversation at these dinners was rather like trying to cross a frozen lake on the cusp of spring. Even Frerin watched his tongue in his grandfather’s presence. Only Thrain never curtailed his thoughts. There was one evening he came straight out and ordered Thorin to be married and produce more heirs.
“I don’t want that bitch’s whelps taking over when I’m gone,” he roared, waving his goblet at where his grandsons sat at the other end of the table.
Fili and Kili did not react to this at all. It was just the sort of thing Thrain said. They had gotten used to it. Only Amma clicked her tongue and leaned across to put her arm on her the king’s hand. “Don’t use that language at the table, my darling,” she said coldly.
“I’ll use whatever language I like, mother,” Thrain barked. But he did not, Kili noticed, swear again that evening.
Meanwhile, Frerin had raised his head. “I could get married, Grandpapa,” he said brightly. “That would work, wouldn’t it?”
15.
Frerin married a pale-skinned, black-haired girl from Borin’s line, albeit by marriage. She spoke in a small, squeaky voice and simply smiled if someone said something she didn’t understand or subtly insulted her, as the court dwarves often did. Her reticence made her difficult to talk to and nobody was very kind to her, except Amma, who bossed her about and demanded her company when Frerin was not around.
Two years after the marriage, Frerin’s wife began to grow ill. It was consumption, the royal physicians said, moving unusually fast. When it grew so bad she could not walk, they took her into isolation and she was tended and watched over constantly by a flock of nurses. She seemed to recover after a fortnight, even returning to court for a few of days before she went home to the rooms she shared with her husband. But within the month she had sickened again and finally died suddenly during a festival day.
Kili didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back, he felt a terrible guilt that he did not even remember her name unless someone mentioned her.
16.
At around the same time that Frerin’s first wife died, Ori’s mother began to get pain in her bones and sicken. When he had a day off, Kili visited the house and gave Ori money for a doctor despite his protests, calling it an early name-day present. Ori began to cry at that, which shocked Kili right through to his heart – he had never seen Ori cry. He awkwardly put his arms around his friend and stroked his hair, the way he remembered Amma sometimes doing when he’d been a child. Dori found them and took the money with a mumbled thanks. Kili could see that it hurt him to do so, and he didn’t understand why. He had so much, and he had been eating their food for years without paying them anything for it.
Nori left two days later and did not come back. Ori’s mother fell into an unbreakable sleep. Her last words were to ask whether Nori had come home yet and she died within a couple of days. Kili never saw the middle brother again.
He was training on the day of the funeral, but by luck he had the next day off. The restaurant was closed and strung with white, ceramic mourning-tiles. Dori let him into the house and he went straight up to the room that Ori had shared with Nori for as long as Kili could remember.
Ori sat curled on his bed, which as in most common dwarf households was a flat mattress on the rug-covered floor and was usually rolled away for day use of the room. Instead it had been left open and unmade and Ori had scrunched himself up on top of the duvet like a dirty sheet.
Kili did not know what to do. He had never seen grief; emotional displays were considered distasteful in court, and the strength to appear unmoved was expected of any male relatives of the dead. Frerin had been drinking and boasting at parties only hours after his wife had died, and of course after his own Mama was executed, they were not even supposed to acknowledge her absence. But it hurt Kili to see Ori so broken down, so he moved to sit beside him. Ori pulled him close and clung to him. He rocked and wept into Kili’s chest, his movements slow and aimless as a newborn pup. He was so heavy that Kili had to lie back against the wall, and Ori buried his face against the curve of Kili’s neck. His sobs subsided. For a while they stayed like that. Ori’s hand found Kili’s and their fingers entwined. Kili’s thumb rubbed across Ori’s knuckle over and over and he felt as if the mere smell of Ori was provoking an intense emotion in him that he couldn’t name, that he had no frame of reference for. And then Ori broke away from him suddenly, wiping his eyes, apologising.
“It’s fine,” Kili said. “I’m sure she’d rather you cried than you didn’t.”
Ori laughed and called him horrid for thinking of it like that. Shortly he stood up and began to pace, raging at Nori, at the doctors, at the unfairness that his mother had never seen the grandchildren she’d always longed for. He had started on Nori again when he suddenly stopped, his mouth snapping closed.
In the next moment, he was on the carpet. It was as if an invisible wraith had seized him and was bending him like a bough in a high wind. His arms were held stiff by his side and his back arched, and then released again, and arched, his eyes rolling into the back of his head and a low rumble emanating from his throat like a growl.
Kili tried to hold Ori’s straining limbs down and screamed for Dori, who came up the stairs from the kitchen at a gallop. He grabbed a pilow from the crumpled bed and pushed Kili off.
“Don’t hold him down!” he scolded Kili, lifting Ori’s head to tuck the pillow beneath.
“What’s wrong with him?” Kili croaked, clutching his collar. His clothes felt too tight and hot. A trail of drool slipped from the corner of Ori’s mouth. Dori shook his head, his hands resting at Ori’s temples as if cupping a baby bird.
“Dori, t-tell me!”
Dori lifted his eyes. “He has these fits,” he murmured. “Once or twice a year since he was a lad.”
For several minutes the shaking continued. Kili pulled his legs into his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees as it went on, Ori’s throat making a strange crooning that seemed completely disconnected from Ori himself, as if there was some sick, dark spirit inside him trying to get out. To go so quickly from that moment of intimacy to this, to his friend lying possessed upon the floor – it was as if someone had slapped Kili so hard in the face that he himself had fallen.
Slowly the fit subsided like the earth settling after a landslide, Ori’s limbs thrown wide as if he was sleeping through a nightmare. At last his eyes opened, and Dori seemed to come alive with his baby brother. He sent Kili to get the bucket from the laundry, but Kili had never been through the cupboards there and he didn’t quite make it back before Ori threw up into his brother’s lap. He was dozy and apologetic, pink-cheeked as he mumbled in Kili’s direction as if he had embarassed himself by drinking too much wine.
It explained a lot about why Dori had always been so insistent that Ori not take on a labourer’s or smithy’s trade. It was still a shock, somehow, that Ori had kept such a secret from Kili.
17.
It was a season for bad omens, the winter Ori’s mother died. A rare coal seam was discovered under the east arm of the mountain, but the Erebor miners were not used to mining coal and a fire from a broken lantern almost grew out of control. Unquenchable infernos in coal pits had left whole cities uninhabitable in the past. They got lucky this time; Thorin was in the area checking on production and managed to rally enough dwarves to break in a thin ceiling and redirect a creek into the mine before the fumes reached the neighbouring tunnels. He returned to the palace drenched from head to toe and black with soot. Within the hour he was clean, his hair rebraided, his new clothes spotless. Only a faint redness in his smoke-stung eyes remained.
The Cult of Mahal took to the streets, chanting for the Creator’s protection. When two young dwarrowdams were found naked and strangled in a refuse pit beneath the city, the chants turned to pleading for the king to bring his people back towards the ways that Mahal had meant them to live. Thorin arranged a team from the city watch to search for the murderer, but Thrain insisted that no killer would be found, that the dams were simply the worst manifestation of sin and idleness among Erebor. He wanted to know how to make his people better; the Cult of Mahal were happy to send priests to advise him.
18.
Old Gamil retired the next year. He had been in charge of the outer city guard, the first major line of defense if Erebor should ever come under attack. Fili put his name forward as a candidate for the position, though he was the youngest by far and knew he had only an outside change. He asked Thorin personally to consider him. He felt ready to lead.
When Thorin delivered the candidate list to the king with Fili’s name at the bottom, Thrain panicked. He brought the whole palace to a standstill, locking down his quarters, calling his reserve guard to defend him and accusing every courtier that tried to calm him of treason. He said Fili would turn against him and kill him. Finally Thorin was admitted to the king’s rooms to try and calm his father’s fears.
Both Fili and Kili were pulled out of the army within hours. Frerin, who in fairness was far more experienced and familiar with leading the troops, would be raised to the captain of the outer guards instead. Kili was irritated by the news, wondering what he was supposed to do with his time after so many years of the strict scouts’ routine, and so close to being admitted to the patrols. He felt adrift, or as if he was trying to hit a moving target made of smoke. After searching for Fili in vain, he grabbed his cloak and stormed out of the palace and down the city streets to Ori’s house. He had found little time to visit in the past few months, but he barely noticed how thin and grey Ori seemed. He ranted and raged at his grandfather, calling him demented and a drooling old fool.
Dori sat in the kitchen watching Kili with a sour look on his face. With Ori staying so quiet, Kili turned on Dori at last.
“What?” he snapped. “Are you so loyal to the monarchy you think I’m wrong?”
Dori sneered at him. “We don’t have the choice,” he said. “If I said such words outside that door or in front of my customers, I could be arrested and hung by dawn.”
Kili fell silent. He went to stand over Ori, gripping his shoulder. “Are you ill?” he asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of his tone. He was the aggrieved party, after all. Why couldn’t Dori just let them be alone? Why was he standing there with that wrinkle between his brows?
“I’m fine,” Ori put his hand over Kili’s and turned his face up towards him. There were shadows under his eyes.
Dori said sharply, “His fits are growing more frequent. He’s had to stop work at the library,” and Ori got up and shouted at him that they’d agreed not to tell, and why was Dori being such a boar around Kili these days? A row started up, as bad as the ones that Dori and Nori used to have when the house had still been full. Kili had never seen Ori fight with his older brothers. And he did not miss the edge of exhaustion in Ori’s tone.
It was all too raw. It felt like the wrong time to be there. He excused himself as soon as he could and hurried back to the palace.
All the news had well and truly done the rounds by the time he snuck in the kitchen doors and found someone to repeat the gossip. Fili had been ordered to remain in court at all times and to study only in law and politics. Kili found him on the highest balustrade of the palace, sharpening his sword over and over until it was too much, until it was clear he was simply weakening the blade.
The loss of his career, so swift and in such a moment of hopeful ambition, was a crushing blow for Kili’s brother. It must have been that – the loss, the void – that catalysed everything that happened next.
19.
Two days later, they went out the main gate and took ponies around the west road. From there they turned north into the wilder hills that backed the cold side of Erebor. It was summer outside of the stone halls and the air was mild as it rippled through the grass at the edge of the tree-line. They left the ponies at a tarn and raced each other down the slopes, tripping and rolling back onto their feet until they were both overheating in their outdoor clothes, faces pink and lungs heaving with laughter.
“We’ve been soldiers too long,” Kili groaned, collapsing down onto the tussocks. He’d taken several tumbles near the finishing line and the sky spun around him, a clear orb bluer than even the brightest sapphires. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to play.”
“You want to go back to being a spoiled brat?” Fili asked, flopping down beside him. He propped himself up on his elbows and stared away at the jagged teeth of Ered Mithrin. “Shall we try it? We can dress in silks and furs like courtiers and demand anything that comes to mind, throw tantrums when we don’t get it.”
“Thorin would kill us,” Kili sniggered. “Grandpapa is difficult enough.”
“Fuck Thorin,” said Fili. His tone was grey-black as the far-off peaks. Kili looked up at him, at the grim line of his mouth beneath the short braids of his new moustache. “And the rest of the family. They can all fall down a mine shaft for all I care.”
…dragon ash and heads on pikes…
“It’s alright,” Kili smoothed his thumb along the soft line of golden fur beneath Fili’s nose, trying to push the corner of his mouth back into a smile. “We’re not like them. We’ll never be like them. They’re all alone and we’ll always have each other.”
“I know,” Fili murmured, breaking off a grass stalk and tossing it to the wind. He looked down at Kili, his lips sliding absent-mindedly against Kili’s palm as his head turned. With a sigh he leaned down into the grass and pressed his face to Kili’s, cheek-to-cheek like Amma greeting her old, widowed cousins. His torso was heavy and languid against Kili’s chest and his arm snaked around Kili’s shoulders.
And then his mouth was pressing close against the prickle of Kili’s chin, and moving to meet Kili’s mouth. Kili flinched and made a noise – a soft grunt of surprise, but Fili gripped his face and his lips were against Kili’s, wet and pushing in and Kili could feel so much, so suddenly, that it overwhelmed him and he let it happen. His hand lifted and clutched Fili’s shoulder, but he didn’t know why, because now he wasn’t letting it happen, he was helping, or his body was helping. He felt so saturated in the movement of Fili’s mouth that he didn’t even think twice when Fili shifted closer and swung one leg over Kili’s hips, and suddenly all the blood in Kili's body was pooling there.
For a few minutes he went still, but for his lips still moving, shifting over Fili's wet mouth. He felt as if he was in a faint, as if he'd suddenly been turned on his head and could not right himself. And then Fili's hands were on the buckles of his coat, pulling it open, tugging at buttons to tear his shirt down over his shoulders. Kili's arms were trapped against his sides and his breath quickened. Fili kissed the pulse in his neck, and Kili jerked with a gasp as Fili's leg slid up the inside of his thigh, feeling the heat of muscles on muscles even through two layers of clothing. He didn't understand what was happening, not really.
But Fili must know what he was doing, Kili thought. Fili always knew what he was doing. And it felt so much like the right thing to do.