It does not take long for Nori to handle the dwarf in question. One of the benefits of working out his identity before Kíli did is that she was able to search for all the ways in and out of his home and watch to find the best way to deal with him. One would have thought that a member of Thorin's council would have guards of his own, but apparently this one is as convinced of his own invulnerability as he is of his family's right to take control of the line of Durin.

As a rule, Nori hates poison, too many things can go wrong with it, she prefers a garotte in a dark alley, but on this occasion it seems appropriate, perhaps even traditional for a council member to die this way. The politician in question is a widower with a daughter a year or so older than Fíli. The girl is supposed to have gone with the caravans come spring in order to do her five year guard duty with them, much as Fíli will in several weeks since the threat is now being dealt with and caravans leave Ered Luin for Ered Nimrais and the towns in between the two mountain ranges until early autumn. Unlike Thorin, however, the girl's father has no interest in getting her to do her duty to her people and has already bought her out of it. Nori has very little respect for the kind of dwarves who do that.

Discovering that Dís had wanted to keep both Fíli and Kíli from their time on the caravan routes had made Nori lose respect for the princess a little bit. Especially knowing that in twelve years or so she will allow both to go to Erebor without challenge.

Still, respect for the lads' mother aside, Nori had decided that with only the daughter in the house, and with the father's obvious taste for hard liquor poison was the way forward. Nori dislikes poison, but this does not mean that she knows nothing about it. The only reason she wants Briar to teach Kíli is Briar knows more than almost anyone Nori has met in her profession. The poison Nori chooses is one Briar told her about, and it is a slow acting one which killed her target in his sleep, making his death appear peaceful and not something to cast suspicion on. The only reason that she is late to meet Kíli for his training is that she lingered to empty, clean and refill the crystal decanter that her target kept his drink of choice in. The last thing she wants is a load of dwarves to drop dead after passing it around. She sighs as she reaches to open the door into the training room which has unofficially become hers and Kíli's over the last several months. She is tired, and the few hours of sleep that she managed to grab were hardly satisfactory, but she never sleeps well after she has killed someone for money, regardless of the reason she took the job. Nori takes just enough contracts to keep her registered as an assassin as well as everything else. It does not mean that she enjoys it. She yawns and with that pause she hears the low murmur of voices on the other side of the door, Fíli and Kíli discussing something in quiet tones and she stops to listen.

Kíli likes being home. He likes being in his own bed, he likes eating hot and varied meals at a table with his mother, brother and uncle. He likes ducking and dodging while Dwalin and his brother attempt to beat him into a pulp. He likes the day to day training with Nori while feeling rested rather than tired after days on the road. He likes the way that he does not have to consider whether his purse is getting light enough to worry about because when the day is done he has a home to go to rather than worrying about the inn. On the other hand, being on the road was fun, he learnt more in the almost year he spent travelling with Nori than he has in years, certainly more about his craft than he ever managed to take in about smithing after Thorin declared he would have to learn something.

Given everything that has happened since Kíli returned to Ered Luin he still cannot figure out why Thorin was so against him learning to become what he was made to be, especially since there was apparently once a recognised position within the court in Erebor. Nori is also baffled by it, but she has told him to pay it no mind for the moment, likely because she thinks he will be hurt by whatever the real reasons might be. He likes Nori, the few others in their trade that he has had cause to interact with are a lot more closed off and suspicious of him and each other. Even the other apprentices that he has seen are not treated quite as well as Nori seems to treat him. He is well aware of the fact that he has been very lucky, something that Fíli reminds him of when he has complained recently about the late nights and early starts.

"Uncle says I'm leaving in a week," Fíli comments as he throws one of his axes at the target in the small practice room. Kíli winces as it sinks in far deeper than it usually would. Fíli is either upset, the target is overdue replacing or both.

"That's a good thing," Kíli says. "The sooner you start the quicker the five years are done."

"You sound like you're looking forward to me leaving," his brother grumbles. For a moment Kíli debates making a crack about not missing Fíli's ugly mug first thing in the morning, but he knows his brother well enough to know that it would be poorly received. It is very clear that Fíli does not want to leave with the caravans.

"Course I'm not," he replies simply. "Feels like I just got back to be honest, but you have to do it, and it isn't like I'm going to be around much anyway really."

"Ma won't let you leave again," Fíli warns. "Not with me and Dwalin both gone."

"I'm not sure Nori's going to give her much of a say in the matter, honestly," Kíli shakes his head. "She's been… since everything that happened at your party she hasn't had much patience with what Ma wants for me." He picks up a couple of the weighted wooden daggers that they have been using to practice throwing and catching blades. "Anyway, it wasn't long ago we were plotting how to get me out so that I could join whatever caravan you were with. What changed?"

"Nothing," Fíli says quickly, "I want you with me, of course I do."

"Good," Kíli nods.

"But we're only going as far as Bree this time, Ma doesn't want me going much further my first time out and after what happened…"

"Technically, you're an adult now," Kíli points out, "nothing to stop you from signing up to going further afield once you reach Bree you know. Nori and I can even meet you there and join you, she wants me to get a couple of caravans under my belt before I get as ancient as you. That way I won't be gone as long when I come of age." They only need to do one caravan a year, although five caravans only as far as Bree will not reflect well on Fíli when he is older.

"Not a bad idea," Fíli muses. "But that's something they expect of you."

"I can't be a bad influence?" Kíli grins, juggling three of the weighted wooden daggers with rather more deftness than he knows his brother expects. He and Nori had, occasionally, posed as travelling entertainers on the road. "But if you want to go further, just go, Dwalin isn't going to tell you no. Nori and I are joining one of the caravans out of one of the southern towns," there are dwarf settlements spread throughout the Blue Mountains and the two of them will head to the southernmost point of the range across the river Lhûn to join a caravan there. "They usually pass through the Shire and stop near Bree before heading south to the dwarf settlement in the White Mountains." Of which there is only one, although it is relatively large, in the part of the range which runs along the western coast.

"Hela talked about her home a lot," Fíli observes, "I'd like to see some of it."

This is not the first time that his brother has mentioned wanting to see Hela's home in Ered Nimrais since the silver-haired dwarf left. Being honest with himself, something Kíli only really does in the privacy of his own head these days, he had been more than a little put out to return from his travels only to have to play second fiddle to the lass during the party. Fíli has taken lovers in the past, but he has never seemed as enamoured of them as he had of Hela. She seemed nice enough, he supposes, pretty as well, and she had ticked a number of the boxes on the list of requirements for a bride that Kíli had found in his uncle's desk drawer when he was in his late fifties.

"I thought she was just a tumble," Kíli observes.

"Maybe," Fíli shrugs, "doesn't mean we didn't talk, and I'm allowed to be curious. That isn't just your department." Kíli hums and throws one of the false daggers at Fíli who manages to fumble a catch, something Kíli's lie at the party has forced him to learn. "What about you? You going because you're curious? Or because of your training?"

"Bit of both," Kíli flings another false dagger and this time Fíli catches it easily. "People aren't always what they seem, I'm evidence of that and so's Nori. You're my brother, I don't want to see you get hurt."

"Everyone ends up hurt at some point, if you listen to Ma," Fíli flips one of the wooden blades easily. "What do you think Nori's hiding? How much can she have hidden after spending months on the road with you?"

"There's a lot she's not telling me, and some things that she did which don't really seem to add up either," Kíli muses, gesturing to his brother to return the daggers.

"Like her and Dwalin?" Fíli asks, flinging three of the practice daggers back at Kíli.

"Among other things," Kíli says around a yelp as he catches the first two but misses the other one which smacks into his chest hard enough to leave a bruise. "She told me some stuff that sort of makes it all make sense," he rubs at his chest and his brother gives him a smug look, "but I don't completely buy it, couldn't tell you why though."

"Maybe that's because you've got rocks in your head," his brother suggests. "She seems sound to me."

"Dwalin trusts her," Kíli confirms. That is normally good enough for his family. Dwalin tends to be a good judge of character.

"What's it like?" Fíli asks suddenly and Kíli tilts his head, confused. "Out there, past the hunting grounds and everything." Before Kíli had left for his journey with Nori neither of them had been more than a few days outside the town walls as part of hunting parties. They had encountered orcs, although they were mostly small bands of outcasts and stragglers from larger raiding parties who had been left behind, but there had always been enough of Thorin's guards with them to render any threat as little more than momentary entertainment.

"Not much different from what I told Ma and Thorin," Kíli replies. "Nori kept us well away from anywhere that large numbers of orcs can be found. Mostly it was either too cold, or wet or hot, and more often than not there was some root or rock under my back when we bedded down for the night." Fíli pulls a face. "But it was fun. And it wasn't as awful as Ma and Uncle like to paint it, the Men weren't the most welcoming, but they didn't try to swindle us out of extra coin. Didn't really see any elves, a couple with Men in dark clothes around the borders of the Shire but nothing to give me any idea if what Uncle and Dwalin say about them being haughty tree-shaggers is true. And the hobbits were more welcoming than I thought they would be. Probably because we were with Briar," who is another one of those people that Nori seems to have a stronger bond with than she should and Kíli is not entirely certain whether he completely accepts her story there either.

"You never said if you and Briar managed to…" Fíli gives Kíli a smirk.

"No," Kíli mutters, cursing the heat that he can feel rising in his cheeks. "It wasn't really the right time, and it would have been disrespectful to her mother."

"Did my brother come back?" Fíli asks. "Or did Nori switch you for someone else out there?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kíli demands.

"It's just… sometimes when I'm talking to you I don't know if it's you or the face you put on or Cadan," Fíli elaborates. "The you before this trip wouldn't have been coy about whether he'd tumbled with someone."

"When it's just you and me," Kíli replies softly, "or you, me and Nori, it's always me. When it's Ma and Thorin or anyone who knows me as 'Prince Kíli'," he almost sneers the name, "then it'll be different, I can't be honest with them, because they aren't you and I need to be someone else if I'm going to be able to do my job. Cadan is someone else entirely. You'll meet him on the caravans." He hates that he has to be different people, especially around his mother and uncle, but they have done things in the past which have proved to him that they cannot be trusted with certain things. That hurts more than he wants to let on, and is something that he has promised himself he will never share with Fíli.

"If you're Cadan on the caravans you won't have the proof you've done it," Fíli warns.

"Nori knows someone who can fix that on the contracts," Kíli assures him. "I'm still your brother, Fee," he adds. "You know that, don't you?"

"I know, I do," Fíli approaches so that he can touch their heads together. "It's just going to take a bit of time to get used to the idea that you aren't the goofy idiot who always followed me everywhere."

"Yeah," Kíli agrees, "it…"

"Lads!" Nori flings the door open and marches in with a wide grin which does not quite hide tired eyes. "Sorry I'm late, it was unavoidable. Let's see if you've been practicing."

A.N: Yeah, I started the Kili and Fili conversation from Nori's point of view outside the door, but some of it just didn't fit together without the stuff going on in Kili's head. Guest POVs will probably pop up every now and again from here on in. But it was fun, I liked getting into his head.