Nori drags Kíli out of the guild building as soon as Alstin is done with them. As she had said earlier, they have a great deal to cover and her debate with Dwalin has put them behind. Although that is, in part, her fault. She has always enjoyed a bit of a debate with the large guard, although that was due to the fun that came after. They begin to make their way to the merchant's district, Nori intends to linger near the Guild for a time to see if she can determine whether Briar has left yet, but it is also the best place for her to point out various things that Kíli needs to learn over the course of his first days.

"Keep your fingers to yourself," she tells him. "I know you're good, but there are rules to all of this, and things you should know before you go taking anything that doesn't belong to you." She arches an eyebrow at him and he ducks his head, tucking his hands into the pockets of his too fine coat.

"Alright," he mutters. "I thought, since I know how to do it, we'd start right away."

"Do you need to?" Nori asks, slowly looking him up and down. "I know it's a game to you, lad, but for the vast majority of us this is what we do to live. You learn right and you'll be doing it to keep your brother alive once he's sat on his throne, or whatever it is your uncle lords it over the rest of us on."

"Uncle doesn't do that," Kíli objects.

"Does he not?" Nori mentally notes to dial back her annoyance with Thorin. She had thought that given it had been over a year since she had fallen into the past she would have made her peace with how the quest ended a little. The closer she gets to Briar, however, the angrier she becomes over the way that things ended during the quest. "As it is, your uncle has no bearing on how I train you. You're light fingered, I know you are and I wouldn't have noticed you if I wasn't on the alert for it," he straightens, "but you've signed the forms, you've taken the band, and now you need to learn to do things our way." She makes eye contact with him. "You're, what, sixty-three? Sixty-four?"

"Sixty-three," he says sullenly, "but I'll be sixty-four in three months."

"So too old to be acting like a petulant, spoiled brat," she informs him. Originally, he learnt this lesson after nearly dying from picking the wrong pocket in a few years. This time he will learn it, but she suspects that it is going to be a more difficult lesson all around. "And old enough that you should be coming to the end of your training, not only just beginning. I am double your age, lad, more than, and I have been doing this longer than you've been alive. And I'll keep doing it longer than you'll live if you don't calm down and listen."

"You're supposed to teach me," he complains.

"Yes, but I'm also supposed to keep you alive and as safe as I can," she sighs. "Our path isn't a safe or easy one, so we don't go looking for unnecessary trouble. We steal what we need, we don't get greedy and we don't play games." Mostly. There are still some who view it all as a big joke but many of those who do are missing fingers and even hands by the time they complete their first century of life. Which has no bearing at all on Nori's behaviour in Rivendell during the quest. Tweaking elf noses will always be necessary regardless of whether it is the best idea. Not that it usually is. Not that she really cares.

The lad nods but his expression is still downcast.

"Kíli…" she shakes her head. "That will be the last time I use that name while I train you. There may be the odd time where the use of your true name is necessary, but from this moment you are Cadan. I know you've had big dreams of this day. I had big dreams of mine too. But this is a trade like any other, only the consequences of not abiding by the rules are greater. Today, and the following weeks until we leave for the Shire, I'm going to teach you how to watch others and learn all you can from what you see of them."

"What's the point in that?" He demands.

"If you cannot watch, how will you learn?" She tilts her head. "How will you know if a person means you or your family harm if you cannot detect it until it's too late? But, more importantly, how will you know if the person you've chosen to steal from is off limits or not if you cannot see at a glance?" He stares at her. "You keep getting caught because you keep targeting Guild members," she explains, holding out her arm so that he can see the buttons on the sleeve of her coat. None of them match, as though they have been replaced multiple times in the past, and none of them are necessary, the cuffs are wide enough for her to get her hand through without them. Each button, however, has a marking upon it that is the same as the symbol stitched onto the fabric band Kíli now wears on his left wrist. The three buttons on her right sleeve are simple wood and all of them match. At a glance it would be little more than a quick repair job. "We have numerous tells, and they change over time as the guards become more aware of them, but until you learn how to spot them at a glance, I'm not letting you loose on purses."

She half expects him to argue again, she certainly did in his place, but instead he nods a little sullenly and it puts her in mind of all the times that she saw Thorin and Dís reprimand both Kíli and Fíli. Both boys have always taken such things strongly to heart, wanting both their mother and uncle to be proud of them with a desperation that Nori has never been able to understand, perhaps because she long ago made her peace with the idea that her mother would never be proud of her trade. The idea that Kíli might want her to be proud of him, even this early in their new relationship, is a strange one and it makes her wonder how desperate he was becoming for his trade to be acknowledged before this. She knows that Fíli has long been praised for following in Thorin's footsteps and somehow that makes the whole thing worse. Instead of drawing attention to it, and to the fact that she is more familiar with his behaviour than she should be, she gestures to the busy square in front of them.

"Tell me what you see," she instructs.

The square is full of various dwarves and Men going about their business. Much as her people dislike having Men in their towns, it is a necessary fact when it comes to trade and diplomatic arrangements, no matter how awkward it makes things. As she expects, Kíli's powers of observation are rudimentary at best in this kind of situation. She has not doubt that outside town when he is hunting he is among the most skilled, and she knows that he has an enviable amount of patience when it comes to some things, but that is a different kind of watchfulness and it will be a harder skill to learn when the mark he is watching is always moving.

Nori spots Balin before Kíli does, though in this life she does not know him, and she can tell that he is unhappy from the set of his shoulders and the way that he strides from the guild building without even glancing at the papers in his hands as he usually would. Balin has never been good at just walking away from his work. From the way he is clenching his fists about them, in fact, Nori would say that he has just been given some bad news. Which probably means Briar got her way, one way or the other. She watches the other dwarf leave for a moment before turning her attention to another that she recognises as another thief.

"Tell me about him," she orders Kíli, dragging his attention away from Balin.

He flushes at being caught with his attention elsewhere but Nori instead carefully guides him towards the things that he is meant to see and then explains the things that he should see. Much to her surprise he takes it in quickly and eagerly, absorbing the information that she gives him and applying it where he can. Nori is hardly surprised when Kíli correctly identifies three other thieves in the hour that follows until the empty feeling in her stomach tells her that it is time that they found something to eat. She gestures for him to follow her, lifting a purse from a passing merchant as she goes with a wink in Kíli's direction.

"You did that so easily," he whispers as they keep walking, matching her casual pace with his own. "It was like you didn't even think."

"Practice, Cadan," Nori replies, "and learning what my sponsor tried to teach me, even if it wasn't what I wanted to learn at the time."

She finds a street vendor, buying two meat pies which she would like to believe do not contain rat except that she knows better in this part of town with this type of vendor, particularly since she is familiar with this one and Dibl has been caught putting rat in his pies before. Still, there is no point mentioning it to Kíli, who is happily devouring it with the attitude of a starving creature. Less than necessarily palatable food will be something he will have to get used to eating. Finding out information about possible threats often means going into the places that are not at all nice. They carry on for a while, Nori pointing out the odd dwarf for Kíli to look over and tell her what he notices about them, until finally the lad pauses with a frown.

"Why are they all looking at me like that?" He asks her as another of their people walks past him with a suspicious look up and down.

"You don't belong here," Nori replies, taking another turn towards Dori's apartment. Now that he is noticing he will fight the need for disguise less. "Your clothes are too good, you're too clean. It's nothing a few weeks on the road wouldn't fix for that outfit, even the best made clothes wear quickly on the road."

"But I'm not of age," he reminds her.

"That's the fun thing about our trade, lad," she smirks. "We tend to ignore little rules like that." She dangles her pilfered purse in front of him. "The finer points of property ownership aside, a lot of the rules aren't particularly compatible with our lifestyle. Your mother wanted us to be discrete about this, so a lot of the early lessons are better off happening elsewhere. You're most likely to be caught in the first six months or so and all the town guard knows who you are."

"It was one of the reasons Ma and Uncle didn't want me training," Kíli admits.

"I had a feeling," she nods. "Well, either way I have contractual obligations that take me out of town for a while in a few weeks. It would be as good a time as any to spirit you away and make a proper start on things. Until then, I need to teach you how to fight the way we do, and how to run and dress. There's no point teaching you to steal if you're going to get yourself spotted in a moment."

"That makes sense," he nods. "Where are we going?"

"My brother's place," Nori points to Dori's small shop, "he still has a lot of my younger brother's old clothes, we can switch out some of what you're wearing for that, and Dori should have some idea of what we can do with your hair as well."

"I'm not the best with braiding my own hair," the lad objects.

"Better start practicing then, hadn't you?" Nori shakes her head. "You're an apprentice now. Time to grow up."

They slip into the apartment through the back door rather than using the steps that go up there from the shop, entering the living room on quiet feet to find Briar scowling at some of the papers she had brought with her from the Shire in the chair in front of the fire which she had claimed the previous night.

"Oh!" She exclaims as she looks up and sees them. "Hello."

A.N: I'm so tired. How do teachers do it with 30 kids every day? I only have to worry about two and my mind is swimming with it all.