Chapter 19

"Not even a full day and the vultures are already descending," Thorin growled as he headed toward the throne room. Dis, Bilbo, and Dwalin walked with him.

"Thorin, Dear, you've got a little-"

Thorin looked over at Bilbo, eyebrow raised in question. When Bilbo rubbed at his own cheek in a hint, Thorin wiped at the same spot on his face.

"Other side," Dis said.

Thorin tried again. Reddish brown flakes came away on his fingers. Dried blood. Great. He'd missed a bit when he'd hastily cleaned up from the fight earlier. How much of it was in his hair? Did it matter? Perhaps the sight of it would scare off any of Fili's potential Challengers. Surely someone would have to be mad to willingly join a family so often under attack.

"Here," Bilbo said, stopping Thorin briefly and wiping at the spot with a pristine handkerchief. "There. All better."

"If we're all done primping?" Dwalin demanded, eyes scanning the halls around them. "Let's get this over with so I can get down to the dungeons and see if any of our nasty little friends managed not to find a way to die in my absence."

"We need to get our own soldiers on guard duty," Thorin growled. "I don't know as I trust the loyalty of Dain's men. We've lost too many prisoners to apparent self-poisoning or hidden assassins for my own comfort."

"I don't trust them either," Dwalin grumbled as they continued to the throne room, "but we barely have enough loyalists from Ered Luin to guard the royal quarters and yourselves. The caravan later this year will have more of our soldiers. We'll have an easier time then."

"Good," Bilbo said. "It seems senseless that so many would die uselessly."

"They may not see it as useless," Thorin reminded Bilbo as a guard opened the doors in front of them just before they would have had to break stride to wait for him to finish. "They believe their cause is just."

"I'll never understand fanatics," Bilbo sighed.

They took their places at the throne, greeting Balin and Ori as they did. Fili and Kili soon arrived, the former wearing a scowl very reminiscent of his uncle's and the latter grinning as if the entire situation were all the most amusing joke.

"Let's get this over with," Fili groused as he took his place at Thorin's left next to his mother. He glanced around and then a look of confusion briefly relaxed his features. "Where is your council?" he asked.

"You left before we could tell you," Dis said. "Ereborian law states you will judge if the gift is acceptable or not."

"Wait, what?" Fili asked, head whipping around so fast one of the beads on his mustache bopped him on the nose and some of his golden hair tangled in his coronet. It really did fit ill. Why hadn't he made a new one yet? Thorin would have to remind him he was welcome to make something for himself if he so chose. Mahal knew Fili was a skilled enough jeweler to create a coronet fit for the crown prince.

"The council will not have the final say in your spouse. You may reject her as long as there is the minutest reason for you to refuse the gift."

"Praise Mahal," Fili breathed and wrapped his arms around his mother in gratitude. "I'm not doomed after all."

Kili clapped Fili on the shoulder with a laugh as Dis pulled Fili's hair back into order. "See? No reason to be plotting to escape with the next trading caravan."

Fili turned, hand fisted and ready to strike when the doors at the far end of the walkway before the throne opened noisily.

"Behave," Dis hissed, giving one of Fili's braids a final, sharp tug. "Remember they have to get through Dwalin first."

Fili's grin was almost feral in its glee.

An entourage of dwarrow approached the throne and Thorin would have sighed if he hadn't already spent almost two centuries having diplomatic lessons drilled into his head. "Lord Grurfastr," Thorin greeted, somehow not surprised he was the one to already have a child prepared to Challenge for Fili. The social climbing, greedy, backstabbing dwarf that he was. "Why have you come before me?"

A dwarrowdam handed a scroll to Balin. He opened it and read the formal Challenge for the Crown Prince Under the Mountain's hand in courtship by one Lady Burfastr and their hope for a continued alliance between Erebor and the Iron Hills and so on and so forth and Thorin was no longer listening. He glanced at Fili out of the corner of his eye. His nephew leaned against his cane, irritation still in the lines of his shoulders but absent from his face. Thorin made a mental note to remind Fili to work on his body language, not just his diplomat's expression.

Bilbo discreetly nudged Thorin's foot with his own, signaling that Balin had finished reading the grandiloquent scroll. He looked down at the dwarrowdam.

She was dressed in chainmail, an ax held tightly in her fist. She was pretty enough, as dwarrowdams went, but not nearly as beautiful as Nori's Lira or even Dis and did not even hold a candle to his own Bilbo. Fili could easily do better.

"Do you know what you ask child?" Thorin asked.

"I am prepared," Burfastr said.

"So be it," Thorin said and waved Dwalin forward. "Let the trial begin."

The fight was almost laughably short. Dwalin had Burfastr pinned to the ground with his axes at either side of her neck in less than three minutes. If that was the level of skill that would regularly be seeking Fili's favor, Thorin might take on a few of the fights himself. Dwalin wouldn't need to always be his guard after all.

Oin was soon called to attend to Burfastr's wounds. Thorin and all other members of the royal family bid the Challengers a good day and left without further comment, ignoring the dark looks being sent their way.

"Whatever became of the bureaucratic nonsense your Thain sent you?"

Bilbo looked up from the book he'd been reading while sitting slumped deeply into his armchair, painstakingly trying to translate cirth into the proper sounds in khuzdul and then trying to remember what each word meant in Westron. "Pardon?" he asked and sat up a bit.

"Your Thain sent you forms to fill out last spring after Dis left the Shire. The ones you needed to fill out to prove you still live?" Thorin prompted as he took his seat. He had a sheaf of papers in his hands. Music, Bilbo realized, seeing the notes drawn on lines.

"Ah yes, the ones referring to you as Queen Under the Mountain." Bilbo grinned widely and unrepentantly.

"Forget I asked," Thorin grumbled and bent further over his sheet music, fingers twitching as he looked through it, perhaps mapping out how to play it? Though he could read music, Bilbo had no idea how to take those little dots and lines and squiggles and turn them into methodical plucking and strumming of strings on a harp. He left that to Thorin's wonderfully talented fingers.

Bilbo resumed his slumped position, feet towards the fire and elbows barely keeping him in his chair with his book propped on his chest. "I sent them back with the proper corrections a month or so after we got them."

A bit of tension fell away from Thorin's frame.

"I'd never let your status as King Under the Mountain be in question," Bilbo said and turned a page.

"That wasn't my concern," Thorin said. "Queens are just as powerful. Dis would make a perfectly adequate ruler of Erebor. I've no doubt she would make it thrive if she were to have been allowed and had been born first."

Bilbo blinked at his husband, eyebrows furrowing as he thought. If Thorin weren't worried about being emasculated, then why was he concerned about having his gender misidentified on the papers declaring them wed in the Shire? He thought and thought even as Thorin retrieved his harp and sat to play through the piece he'd been studying. He was on about the fourth page when Bilbo slammed his book shut. "Then what is it?" he demanded and Thorin startled, his hands immediately flattening against the strings of his harp, ceasing all sound.

"What's what?" he asked.

Bilbo's lips compressed into a thin line. "What has you concerned about that paperwork? If you aren't worried about being referred to as a queen, then what is it?"

Thorin tipped his harp back up until it stood on its own, no longer resting against his shoulder. He ran a hand across his bearded chin and the rasp of his fingers along the course strands rivaled the soft crackling of their fireplace for the only sound in the room.

"Well?" Bilbo asked when Thorin didn't respond.

Thorin breathed deeply, not quite sighing, more an attempt to control rampant nerves. "You've said yourself that your people do not acknowledge relationships such as ours, do not condone them," he finally said and the tremor in his breathing lingered under his voice. "I worried that you would not correct them of my gender. That you would rather lie to your kin than to acknowledge the truth of our relationship."

Bilbo set his book aside on the table, making a conscious effort not to slam it down before struggling to his feet. He started pacing. "I am not ashamed of our relationship," he insisted furiously. "I love you. I married you. I left the only home I ever knew for you. I have sex with you regularly. By the Valar Thorin, I let you kiss me in public!"

"Yes, around dwarrow where we are not seen as something shameful."

Bilbo stopped in his tracks and turned to glare at Thorin, tipping his head to the side and pressing his lips into a thin line. He jabbed one finger towards his husband. "And I would gladly kiss you in full daylight in the middle of the market in Hobbiton. I will never deny that I love you to anyone. I wouldn't even lie to my own mother or father, Yavanna keep them in peace."

Thorin pushed Bilbo's pointing finger away as he stood. "And would they accept your choice?" he demanded.

"My mother? The quintessential Took who accepted everything and everyone she ever came across in all her wanderings? Yes. Perhaps? I can't be sure as I'm her only son, mind you. My father? The quintessential Baggins who shunned all things unnatural, dangerous, and remotely strange other than my mother? Not a day in his life would he have been all right with our marriage." Bilbo rocked back onto the balls of his feet, his hands going to bracers he didn't wear. "In fact, he's probably rolling in his grave as we speak."

Thorin recognized the nervous habit for what it was. Still, he couldn't keep himself from asking, "And you would still marry me if they were alive?"

"What kind of question is that?" Bilbo demanded. "Of course I would! I love you."

"You didn't always."

"Yes, well," Bilbo cleared his throat and looked away from Thorin. "You were a right pain in the beginning. Still thought you were too handsome for your own good."

Thorin couldn't keep the slow smile from creeping onto his face as relief pushed away the last of the doubts he felt, at least for the time being. "Too handsome for my own good?" he asked. "Does that still apply?"

Bilbo huffed and went over to Thorin. He nudged the harp out of the way and climbed onto Thorin's lap, looping his arms around his neck. "What do you think?" Bilbo asked and leaned up to kiss Thorin firmly.

"Thorin hates Tauriel."

"In Sindarin," Bilbo said automatically, setting his teacup back in its saucer and then setting it on the table.

Kili glared at him but opened his mouth to do as ordered.

"Never mind," Bilbo said, waving a hand absently. "It was a kneejerk reaction. Why do you think Thorin hates Tauriel?"

Kili snorted and turned the biscuit in his hands over a few times. That more than anything cued Bilbo into just how upset Kili was. Normally the prince devoured the biscuits with his tea faster than any other Bilbo had ever seen, including Bombur. "Have you ever seen him interact with her?"

Bilbo's brow furrowed as he thought. "No," he said, drawing the word out. "I can't say that I have."

"That's because he doesn't." Kili broke the lotus biscuit in half, still seeking the answers to his problems in the ornate edging. "He avoids her at all costs. Never speaks to her, or of her. He won't acknowledge her existence at all."

Bilbo tapped a fingertip on the tabletop. "Perhaps," he said and paused. "Perhaps he doesn't acknowledge her because he doesn't know how to interact with her."

Dark brown eyes glanced up at him. "What do you mean?"

Bilbo stopped tapping his finger. "Thorin has detested elves for the vast majority of his life, right? Well, maybe because Tauriel saved his nephew, not once but twice, he finds himself in a difficult position of liking her-"

Kili snorted.

"Or at least accepting her usefulness and not outright hating her and not knowing how to show it."

"I don't know," Kili hedged.

"He allows her to stay in the Mountain, doesn't he?" Bilbo asked and retrieved a small sandwich from the plate in front of him, well, small by dwarrow standards. Kili shrugged. "It's more than he lets any other elf without them being guarded or constantly watched."

"Probably because she threatened Thranduil to his face," Kili said with a small smirk, a bit of mirth creeping back into his voice.

Bilbo suppressed a chuckle but couldn't help the small smile that tugged at his lips. He hid it behind his teacup, looking to the side. "Yes, well," he hedged and didn't continue.

"I just wish he would acknowledge her," Kili said. "She's my One. I know he won't grant special permission for us to get engaged before Fili marries or declares he won't take a spouse but we already know that we want to marry. Uncle's going to need to accept that or I don't know what's going to happen."

"I'll have a talk with him," Bilbo promised, setting his teacup aside again. "Now, when do you plan to put all these Sindarin lessons to good use and declare your undying love for Tauriel in her native language?"

Kili grinned and ducked his head. "I had this idea," he said and Bilbo settled back into his chair to listen to the over the top romantic gesture his nephew had planned for the pretty elf.

"Where is that blasted letter?" Bilbo wondered aloud as he scoured the desk in their rooms. "It can't have gotten up and walked away on its own."

"What was that Ghivashel?" Thorin didn't even glance up from the papers he was thumbing through, brow furrowed as he examined them.

Bilbo huffed and closed the second drawer. "You remember that nasty letter Lobelia sent all those months ago?"

Thorin stopped dead in his tracks and looked up at Bilbo from beneath his scowl. "What of it?" he growled.

Bilbo shuffled through the papers on the top shelf above the desk, standing on his tiptoes to do so. "Well, I can't find it."

"Why would you want to?" Thorin asked and set his papers aside on his armchair.

More papers shifted around. "We really need to clean this off on occasion," Bilbo muttered. "I wanted to address the problem she and others that included their words in that letter have with me and my choice."

"You mean us," Thorin said as he too started going through the papers on the desk. When Bilbo glanced up at him in confusion, he elaborated. "We are married. Any problem they have with you, they also have with me, especially where it directly addresses our relationship."

Bilbo smiled. "I knew I fell in love with you for a reason."

"Here I thought it was because I'm too handsome for my own good."

Dale's midsummer festival promised to be entertaining, Bilbo thought as he looked over the list of events Fili and Kili had brought back with them, as well as news that vendors from the Mountain were welcome to participate. Already Fili was down in the markets talking to merchants and entertainers that might be good additions to the festival about seeing Lady Sigrid about joining in the merriment. He promised to join them shortly.

"Perhaps we should take the time to observe," Bilbo murmured as he and Thorin walked to the throne room to once again receive a Challenger for Fili's hand.

"Observe what?" Thorin asked as they passed a group of dwarrow who bowed low to their king and his consort.

"The festival in Dale," Bilbo said. "It seems quite fun."

Thorin nodded to the dwarrow. "Does it now?"

"Yes," Bilbo said. "There will be games and performances, entertainers and competitions. All sorts of fun." When Thorin didn't respond, Bilbo glanced up at him. "Even a swordsman competition," he said.

"That does sound promising," Thorin finally remarked.

Bilbo stopped in his tracks when Tauriel bowed slightly to Thorin with a small smile. That in and of itself was not surprising. However, when Thorin – Thorin by Yavanna's garden – actually not only acknowledged her presence with eye contact but nodded and smiled – smiled – in return, Bilbo thought he'd started hallucinating.

"Bilbo?" Thorin asked once he realized Bilbo wasn't next to him any longer.

Flabbergasted, Bilbo glanced between Thorin and Tauriel for as long as the elf remained in the same corridor. "What just happened?" he asked, drawing out the first word a bit.

"What?" Thorin asked, his scowl deepening.

"You just smiled at Tauriel. I don't think I've ever seen you smile at any elf."

Thorin snorted. "Why wouldn't I?" he asked. "She openly threatened Thranduil."

"Which put her in enough of your good graces to allow her to stay in Erebor, yes, I'm aware but you've never so much as acknowledged her presence, let alone smiled at her."

"Don't be preposterous Bilbo," Thorin said. "Why wouldn't I acknowledge my nephew's One? Come along. We can't arrive after the Challenger."

Bilbo allowed Thorin to hook his arm and pull him along after him, still trying to puzzle out the strange turn of events.

Over the summer and into the fall, they searched the desk for Lobelia's letter together and came up empty. They searched the room and still, the letter didn't resurface. They searched off and on for weeks between their regular duties, another assassination attempt (this one next to a mineshaft they were considering reopening. They'd been talking to Bofur about the possibility when an explosion had gone off overhead, dislodging part of the ceiling and sending it down on top of them. Nori's sudden appearance seconds before the explosion and Dwalin's quick reflexes and an open doorway leading to a supply closet saved the small group and their guards, but it did take the better part of the day to dig them out again.), and two false alarms from Nori (he had Bombur scrap any and all ingredients used for their meals for an entire week as well as insisted on a taster for all their meals and informed them that the road to Dale would be crawling with assassins during the midsummer festival and thus forcing them to not go) before they finally found it.

"Why on earth do you have this?" Bilbo asked as he examined the sheet of paper in familiar handwriting hanging on the wall at about the level of his forehead with strings and strings of different colors of yarn trailing off it to various areas of the room, even to documents and scraps of parchment hanging from the ceiling.

"I finally figured it out!" Nori declared as he tapped the letter with ink-stained fingertips. His normally perfectly styled hair and beard looked a bit disheveled with dust and bits of cobwebs clinging to them and his clothing like he'd been crawling around in abandoned narrow tunnels all day.

"Figured what out?" Thorin asked levelly but with a note of concern in his voice.

"Who the mastermind behind the assassination attempts is."

Bilbo and Thorin exchanged a quick glance. "And what does a rotten letter from a woman I cringe to claim as a relative have to do with it?"

"Don't you see?" Nori asked as he clapped a hand to Bilbo's shoulder and pointed to the letter and then swept an arm out to encompass the entire web of information strewn across the walls and ceiling of the small room. "She's the one! She's behind everything!"

"Who? Lobelia?"

"You do see it!" Nori said. "Why didn't you tell me? It would have saved me a lot of trouble. I had to do a lot of traveling and digging to find the pattern and the trail."

"I'm afraid I don't," Thorin said. "Perhaps you'd care to explain, Nori?"

"It's right here," Nori said and touched a bright orange string and then pointed along its path to a rendering of a Man that looked to be around twenty-years-old if Bilbo had a handle on the way they aged.

"I don't understand. Who is he?" Bilbo asked.

"This is Korin, a minor lord from somewhere near the Sea of Rhun. He accosted Lady Sigrid a few months back not long after Fili gave her that pup of hers. Fili asked me to check on Korin, make sure he left Dale and the area but that doesn't really matter, what does is that he's been passing messages about the royal families of Erebor and Dale along to that she-halfling!"

"Elaborate," Thorin ordered.

Nori moved over to a corner of the room marked 'Erebor' and touched another orange bit of yarn. "See, the Thogrmill merchant caravan is the start of all the information movement. They came through here last spring and took messages from some of our friendly dwarrow that have since been locked in the dungeons and some that died one way or another when they tried to off you. Anyway, they traveled as far as the Sea of Rhun-" he followed the string to a map of the far east where it was pinned "-and visited Korin's household to sell them nutmeg and thyme. That's when they would have passed off the messages to a servant who gave them to Korin who gave the merchants-" here Nori followed the orange string to a parchment with the caravan's leaders picture on it "-messages to take this rogue ranger-" he followed another bright orange bit of yarn, climbing over his desk to get to the farside of the room where another piece of parchment was attached to the wall close to the floor with a single word on it "-known as Bruiser who was in cahoots with Azog-" another length of yarn led to the Defiler's likeness by way of crawling under the desk "-who was in league with one of Thranduil's lesser foot soldiers-" another thread led to a map on the side of the desk with a pin where the elf's kingdom resided in the forest "-who tricked the traveling minstrel Gentry-" another string to another drawing attached to another wall "-into passing the information along by coding it into a drinking song which I'm still trying to get the music for. The minstrel went through Rivendell-" back to the second map with another orange thread "-where she taught it to Elrond's twin sons-" another thread led to two really good renditions of the elves hanging from the ceiling above Nori's upturned chair "-who happened to sing it while on patrol only to be overheard by a mockingbird trained to cross along their usual route and learn any music sung by the elves. It learned the tune and went back to its master-" here Nori vaulted over his desk again and went to a picture of a greying Man "-this man in Bree who deals in pickled goods and-" he followed an orange thread back to the letter Bilbo and Thorin had been so desperately trying to find "-one Lobelia Sackville-Baggins buys pickled herring from him on a regular basis which is how he passes the final, decoded messages to her."

Bilbo stared at the orange threads crisscrossing the room. "How do the messages get to assassins here?" he asked finally.

"That's the beauty of it!" Nori explained. "They've had their orders all along! Ever since our first caravan went through the Shire over a year ago. She was seen among the dwarrow when they passed through and again when the second caravan went through."

"And the assassination attempts before the caravan arrived?" Thorin asked.

"Still working on that one," Nori admitted, fingering some fuschia yarn stretching in many different directions from Lobelia's letter, "but I'll figure it out! In the meantime, don't go near any open mineshafts and stay away from water when Thorin's not with you."

"Right," Bilbo said and shuffled his feet. "Right. Can I have the letter then?"

Nori crawled under his desk and emerged a moment later, holding up a copy of the letter. "This work?" he asked as he went back to staring at the threads and documents.

Bilbo took the paper and frowned at the back of Nori's head. "Yes, this will do fine," he said and looked to Thorin.

"Good. Good. Now out. I have to find the next attempt. One's coming soon, I can feel it." Nori pushed the two toward one of the secret doors before opening a trapdoor next to his overturned chair. "Don't be alarmed if I disappear for a few days. It's all part of the process. Mind what I said about water."

"Good luck Nori," Thorin said, a worried frown marring his face. He and Bilbo walked out and into the hall.

"Something's not right there," Bilbo said.

"No," Thorin agreed. "I'm afraid Nori is feeling the effects of Lira's absence much more than he'd like to admit.

"What can we do for him?" Bilbo asked as they slid into a public hallway from the hidden passage.

Thorin's lips thinned. "Support him the best we can until she arrives next summer."

Bilbo groaned. "It's going to be a long winter, isn't it?"