Happy birthday to me-e-e-e! Haha, indeed it is my birthday, and it's my fourth one in the fandom! Oh how time flies! :D Good to have you all here with me! 3
If you feel like it, have a look at my Wattpad dot com page (the name is Katya Kolmakov). I'm back there, with modern romance, humour, and mystery - and of course modern Wren and Thorin!
Love you all!
Cheers
K. xx
The next time Eorwyn saw the Dwarven King was three days after their first meeting after the war.
She often thought how fortunate she had been to become of use to the Head of the Netmakers Guild in the first few weeks after the Battle. Master Bryn was one of the few former prominent members of Esgaroth's society, who retained their status after the fall of the old Master of Laketown. King Bard was obviously intent on replacing most of the men in power, but Master Bryn had the reputation of an honest man and an efficient official. Eorwyn had come to what was left of Master Bryn's household and asked for any work they could give her. A week later she was busy scribing and bookkeeping for three of the major guilds in whatever was left of the town. Two moons later she accompanied King Bard to Erebor.
That day she had returned to her tent, the one she shared with a few others who worked in the newly established Town Hall, which was just another tent at the moment as well. She climbed under the blanket on her bedroll, covered herself completely, rolled into a tight ball, and closed her eyes. Since she was small, that was Eorwyn's way of meditating after some exciting or terrifying events. The visit to the Mountain had been both. She had hoped of course that her former, short term companions would be willing to keep her secret - but she could not be sure. The visit had gone well; and being preoccupied with the actual work had been a proper distraction from her worries. Seeing King Thorin and Lord Balin had also been a pleasure. She had forgotten the sense of safety and peace she had felt near them, even during their short shared misadventure. All and all, Eorwyn decided that for now, she didn't have more worries that she'd had before the visit. On the other hand, Eorwyn was a firm believer in the idea that anything that could go wrong in life would go wrong in life. And that there was always a way for things in life to get worse.
The King's second visit to Erebor was an excellent example of the aforementioned notion.
The Kings argued. The Counsellors - two elders from Esgaroth, Lord Balin, and Lord Boin - were adding to it. The winter cold had been settling in the land; and with it came more exchanges, higher prices, and less moral scrutiny. Both sides seemed to blame the other. Neither saw any fault on themselves. Eorwyn quickly scribbled with her quill and kept squeezing her knees tighter and tighter together, expecting any of the men in the room to lose their temper at any moment.
"Look at these contracts!" King Bard barked and pushed a disarrayed pile of parchments towards King Thorin.
"Each one of them - and I mean each - has plenty of discrepancies between what was promised to my men and what was delivered!" the Dale King said.
"I will not waste my time going through some minor contracts," King Thorin grumbled back. "I'm certain you have enough of bureaucrats to go through every bag of grain and every goat that had been purchased."
"It is not goats and bags that are our concern! It is the sheer fact that we do not seem to be establishing any good of a relationship between our people!" King Bard firmly patted the desk in front of him with an open palm. "It seems that every bargain we make falls short! For one side or another," he added diplomatically.
King Thorin raised an eyebrow, but he seemed somewhat pacified by the accession and stretched his hand to the parchments. He picked up the first one, read it, and then picked up another.
"It seems your men tend to come up short on many of these deals," he grumbled; and King Bard gave him an exasperated look.
"We will not find the root of the problem if we blindly place blame," he started patiently again.
King Thorin threw him an amused look.
"I remember similar words from your predecessor," he said, and continued before King Bard could answer. "It is just a jest, Master Bargeman. I'm looking at the bonds and agreements, and it seems there is blame on both sides. Or more of a..." He hummed pensively. "Misunderstanding."
"Exactly," King Bard rushed to agree. "People are desperate, the Winter is upon us. And it seems they just can't find the middle ground. They need some sort of a-"
"Marketplace," King Thorin finished.
"Indeed!" King Bard's eyes shone. "Some sort of a shared ground, a place or an office, which would allow them to negotiate easily."
Eorwyn had been listening to their conversation for quite a while, and since she had nothing to write down, she could pay it her full attention. She'd been nodding through the last few sentences exchanged, and then, without realising she'd said it outloud, she added, "And a weightmaster guild."
Silence fell in the chamber, and then King Bard asked, "A weightmaster guild?"
Eorwyn stared at him in mortification.
"The boy is right," King Thorin said, as it seemed to Eorwyn, in an unnecessarily loud voice.
But then she thought she would be the only one to know that his statement had a lie hidden in it.
"Judging by these contracts," the Dwarf King said and pointed at the parchment in front of him, "Your Men and my Dwarves simply use different systems of measurements."
"You people have traded with others in Middle Earth for ages," King Bard said exasperated. "Surely, you use the same measurements!"
"We do, but not when we store goods," Lord Boin said.
"See? These parchments here? Your Men use the old contracts, from before the Fall of Erebor, as templates." Lord Balin followed the lines of a document with his finger. "They had the ancient system of measurements then, and the conversion is erroneous." He chuckled. "In some. In some it hadn't taken place at all."
King Bard frowned and peered into the parchments. Eorwyn craned her neck trying to see.
"Well, why don't you just come over, weightmaster!" one of the King's counsellors said venomously.
It took Eorwyn a second to understand the snide had been addressed to her, and she winced away.
King Bard looked between her and the Man, and then he gave the counsellor a grave stare.
"Perhaps the boy knows more about it than any of you. It had been moons since we started the trade, and look at the shambles!" He then turned to Eorwyn. "Come here- Eoren, was it?"
Eorwyn swallowed a knot in her throat and slid off the chair. She approached the table and stopped a few steps away from it.
"Come, come," the King encouraged her again.
She crossed the distance to the desk grudgingly and stretched her neck to peek.
"This is aban. 'Stone.' My Uncle called it 'Dwarfstone,' but I believe it just means 'stone,'" she said and pointed at a rune with one finger. "And this is ethan, 'cart.' But I'm probably pronouncing it wrong," she muttered apologetically.
She dared to look at the Dwarf King and saw a smile hide in his eyes.
"Nay, that is exactly what it is," he said. "Did your Uncle trade with Dwarves, Master Eoren?"
Eorwyn nodded.
"I was raised in Enedwaith, my lords," she said to King Bard and the Counsellors.
The explanation surprisingly seemed to satisfy the Men.
"I know the names for some runes, the mathematical symbols, but I'm not sure whether the conversion I had been taught is correct," Eorwyn said. "There was no measure between the 'cart' and sejer, the caravan, and that always seemed like a discrepancy to me. It is a 662.386 hundredweight of difference!" Eorwyn's voice started growing more confident around her favourite subject. "And I've always suspected that the system had to be organised around the degree of fifty, but it wasn't when my Uncle used it. He kept saying that the Dwarves were swindling him, but I think he was just miscalculating."
She was interrupted by King Thorin's laughter. While others were just staring at her, the expressions ranging from irritated to bewildered, the Dwarf King burst into guffaws. His eyes were squinted, and he clapped his large hand to his knee.
"Mahal the Maker, you're like an abacus!" He shook his head. "Weightmaster, indeed."
Blood rushed away from Eorwyn's face. How could she have been so careless? She had managed to stay in the shadows for so long, first on the road with her Uncle's company, then in Esgaroth. She bound her chest, spoke to no one except to talk shop, hid from everyone's eyes as much as she could. No one among her present peers even suspected that she wasn't born in Laketown! And in the course of five minutes she'd announced to the King that she wasn't even his subject and then she blabbered away about numbers and runes. She'd shown herself foolhardy and audacious - over Dwarven measurements! In front of Dwarves!
She unconsciously took a step back, her hands starting to shake. An image of how exactly she would pack her scarce belongings in her hand-down sack and what she would need for a journey flashed through her mind; and she was just starting to ponder where she could even travel to, when the Dwarf King spoke again.
"I say, Master Eoren is the most useful of your Counsellors, Bargeman," he said. "And that idea of a weighmaster guild - or at least one weighmaster - seems the wisest I've heard today."
King Bard leaned back in his chair, too short for his handsome stature, and sighed.
"I believe Master Eoren had just earned himself a promotion," he said and gave Eorwyn a wink.
The latter wasn't certain whether this was good news at all.