The first thing Nori does the following morning, after a quick breakfast with her younger brother who seems torn between asking her if she had a good night and ignoring the reason she went out in the first place, is go to the Guild to speak with Mavik and Tibar. Mavik needs to be updated on her status as Wolf. Tibar needs to organise Kíli's thief test and the sooner that is out of the way the better. The boy is ready, more than, and Nori wants to have that out of the way and his spy test done as well before they go back to the Shire for Yule in two and a half years. She does not want to be in Ered Luin that long, certainly not in Thorinuldum alone, Nori knows that she and Kíli need to get onto one of the Iron Hills caravans so that they can poke around for further evidence of the White Orc. It would not hurt for them to poke around Esgaroth on the way past either if one of them can slip away. She did not like going into that place blind to the political alliances of the area in her first life, no matter how necessary, and she would prefer to avoid being in that position again if she can help it.
The problem with getting to the Iron Hills is that there are no direct caravans from Ered Luin. They will have to join an early spring, barely out of winter really, caravan to Labamgarel Zarrakh and then find another mid to late summer caravan from there to the Iron Hills and the same back. They could do it alone, of course, two dwarves travelling without a caravan is hardly something that will be remarked upon, but with everything she knows about the future crossing through the Misty Mountains she would rather take the caravan routes and if they need to do that they may as well be paid for it. Either way, they will be on the road getting there and back for about eighteen months at best, so she will need to have things in place and stable before they leave and she knows that, realistically, it probably will not happen until Kíli comes of age. There is too much to do and she cannot establish a pack and then abandon it only a year later. It does not work that way. She huffs a small laugh as she turns a corner, Thorin certainly knew what he was doing by declaring her his Wolf in the manner he did. Not only is it supposed to have gotten Dís off her back, though how effectively remains to be seen, it will stop her from taking Kíli out of town for a couple of years while she establishes herself with a pack and a second that she can trust. She suspects that Kíli has learnt his cunning and ability to think on his feet from his uncle, Thorin certainly came up with no real shortage of harebrained schemes over the course of the quest. Just because their king is good at thinking on his feet on occasion, however, does not mean that all of his plans were successful, but that is neither here nor there. This one has panned out well enough, whether Thorin realises it or not, and so Nori might as well make the most of it.
Mavik is not overly happy to see her when Nori strolls into his office with a wide grin.
"Hear you and your boy got into it with Ordan," he says.
"Ordan got into it with me," Nori shrugs, "set his lad on me and tried to go through my pockets. Didn't like that I caught them and didn't let it go either. You know I don't just let people come for me and walk away from it."
"I know you well enough to know that you don't go after someone without cause," Mavik admits. "Not your style to invite trouble in, if you ignore taking your lad on. But bastard or not, Ordan's Da is high enough in the local Guild that there were rumours he was going to be the next boss. I'd told him he would have my support. He wants your head and that of your apprentice. Which puts me in a very difficult position."
"Going to make it more difficult for you," Nori smirks and passes him the contract detailing her new position. "Best way to train the boy to take on the position is to have him be my shadow," she smirks, "and leave him something functioning to work with instead of forcing him to build from the ground up." Mavik swears. "Still, Ordan's Da being the future boss explains why he was so cocky. Saw no problem telling his apprentice, who was terrified of him incidentally, that it was just fine to steal from one of his own. Wasn't like I hadn't declared myself to the watcher. They knew I was in town. I doubt I was the first he'd done it too either, but he was too well hidden beneath his daddy's beard for anyone to risk taking him to task."
"Why did you?" Mavik sighs. "The second time."
"No one told you?"
"I want your version."
"Came after me with four lads," Nori shrugs, "the way two of them took off when Cadan decided to join in, and when I pointed out why we had come to blows in the first place, I doubt he had told them the truth of it. Two of the lads and Ordan were killed. The other two pissed themselves and bolted before the fight even started." Mavik pulls a face. "That not the story they're telling?"
"It is," he huffs. "Get this thing to Alstin and get it in your file. You setting up your headquarters out of here?"
"No," Nori shakes her head. "Thorin's guard dog likes to go sniffing around, mostly because of the boy. I don't want to be the fool who brought him here. It's why I keep the boy as far away from the place as I can. Thorin's paying me well enough. Figure I'll use the coin he's paying me to rent a house with a couple of extra rooms and work out of there. It doesn't need to be fancy and I still have the boy to worry about."
"He's tied you down," Mavik smirks, "he's more cunning than I thought."
"If it keeps the lad's Ma off my back, I'll live with it," Nori admits. "She's not any happier about it now than she was when we started. I can handle her, but I don't really want to stab the boy's mother just because she won't lay off. And it's going that way."
"You knew it might," Mavik shrugs. "It was one of the reasons I was so happy to accept her pay offs. Didn't want to be contending with the mad Durins."
"They seem pretty sane to me," Nori tucks her contract back into her pocket. "All things considered that is. I've seen insane people, they aren't."
"You'll be the one turned insane if you have to stay in town too long," Mavik observes. "What ever will you do with yourself?"
"Get the lad's first two tests out of the way to start," Nori says, sounding more confident than she feels. "He's ready for it, and Tibar could use a fresh challenge, and he'll know the best lot for me to look at hiring too."
"You're actually going to take it seriously?" Mavik seems surprised, which baffles Nori slightly since in her last life he had been relieved to get her out of the way.
"No reason not to," she replies. "And letting you know was a courtesy. I'd appreciate it if you keep your mouth shut about it."
"Done," Mavik agrees. "You know you won't be able to make a bid for Guild Master now?"
"Never wanted it," Nori assures him. "If that's all?"
Mavik waves her off and turns his attention back to whatever he had been working on when she arrived. Nori would take a moment to be nosey, but she has bigger things to worry about today. The quicker she gets everything sorted out here, the quicker she can go about finding somewhere to live. Alstin is only down the hall and it does not take her long to give him her copy of her contract for safe keeping. The elderly dwarf raises an eyebrow and then cackles in delight.
"Always told Svejir you'd end up going great places," he chortles. "It had to happen once you took on Cadan. Good for you. Enjoy it."
"I doubt it," Nori mumbles, "not much looking forward to Thorin sticking his nose in."
"That's the job," Alstin informs her. "Better get used to it. Better get used to working with that hound of his and all."
"Spent a winter working with him already," she shrugs it off. "We get along well enough, won't kill each other any time soon either." Alstin chuckles.
"Heard that before," he mutters. "They're married now."
"We'll have Erebor back before that happens," Nori snorts, the relatively recent phrase easily hiding the fact that there is still a large part of her that hopes that she might one day actually have that with Dwalin.
"Hmm," Alstin grunts, jotting a note onto the file he holds. "Well, you'll want a pack. When you talk to Tibar about Cadan's tests you might want to ask him about the last two decades or so, he can tell you who scored highest on their tests."
"That was my next stop," she admits.
"Get on with you, then," he tucks the file away. "Let me go back to my nap."
Tibar is a little more difficult to find. He does not linger in the small office that he has been given so that he can organise the testing of the various apprentices within the Guild, preferring to keep his skills honed out and about in the town. If Nori is skilled, Tibar is whole world's beyond her. Nori is good, she's one of the best, but Tibar is the best there has been for generations, although the loss of one arm twenty years ago has made it a lot more difficult for him to work effectively. He should have been Guild Master when Mavik took the role, but he has no interest in it, preferring to evaluate how well others are training those who would join their ranks. Nori suspects he is keeping an eye out for potential competition, though only her and her second apprentice have ever come close, and she knows that it is very likely Kíli will one day give him a run for his money. She has not set foot in this room since the day that Staal failed his test while she and Tibar debated whether her third apprentice deserved a second chance. Those who fail their tests are killed; they know too much and have seen too much, and frankly their death is usually the result of a bad job done during the test anyway. It is one of the only things about her Guild that Nori actively hates and only the fact that she had trained two skilled young ones before Staal had stopped her from being temporarily shorn for her failure to the boy.
That, and Staal was known to have fought her every step of the way. They had only foisted him on Nori out of the belief that if anyone could train the boy it would be her and she still feels her failure to him to this day. It is different to the way that she failed the Kíli of her other life. She never even got the chance to teach that boy to rise to his greatest potential and she had formed a far more powerful bond with him than she ever had with the combative Staal. Dwalin had commented while they were all in Labamgarel Zarrakh that Kíli seemed more focused when he was fighting, more settled and less flighty. Nori does not know everything about how the lad died in her last life, though she knows it will not have been for lack of will to live, but she does believe he would have stood more of a chance of surviving if he had the focus of his craft to help him prepare properly. Staal never even had that. Staal would have preferred to be craftless. She had vowed after Staal that she would never take on another apprentice and she had been offered the opportunity more than once before coming across Kíli, that boy is the only one in this life or her last that she would ever consider breaking that promise for.
"I wondered how much longer you were going to put off registering your boy for his tests," Tibar comments from the door as Nori runs a finger over a small, gold statuette of a bear.
"We ended up spending some time with the caravans," Nori shrugs. "I wanted to see how he fared somewhere unfamiliar." She turns to look at the other thief.
Tibar has the same mousey brown hair that many Broadbeams do, with a slightly stocky build which disguises his litheness of movement. His eyes are pale brown, almost amber, and like many thieves he wears his hair caught back in three thick braids which are coiled out of the way to stop them from snagging on anything if they need to run. His clothes are simple, though less worn than those of most thieves due to how skilled he is at getting the coin he needs, and at a glance he would seem to be a moderately successful shopkeep or trader if not for the soft leather boots he wears instead of the heavy boots the majority of dwarves prefer. Thieves shoes are always light and many of the more successful thieves, Nori included, have heavy work boots made which they can pull on over their light boots.
"Just thief?" He asks, careful to keep his distance as he passes her.
They have been associated with one another for long enough that Nori knows he would not try to steal from her, but he is also the embodiment of the old adage 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer'. Tibar is not her enemy, as such, but nor would she call them friends exactly. They were both trained by the same thief, but Svejir was smart enough to see that the two of them had different paths ahead of them and while their mutual connection will cause them to support one another, their relationship is more one of casual rivals than actual friends.
"Thief in the next few weeks, spy a couple of months after that and assassin in a little over two years," Nori says. "Already got the contract for that one set up, just need to wait for the target to get out of lock up to act on it."
"That last one is for you to judge," Tibar reminds her.
"I know, but I have to register it with you either way," Nori shrugs. "Might as well get it done now."
"Is it true what Mavik told me?" Tibar asks. "Your Cadan really Prince Kíli?"
"What if he is?" Nori asks.
"Then I'm impressed. You've done a good job on that boy's cover. Wouldn't have thought he was one of us at all, even with his mother turning Dori's place over."
"Svejir taught us well," Nori huffs. "Couldn't have done it without the way he taught us to make an alias for a con. Dís making a ruckus over me kidnapping him just sort of solidified the whole thing I think. Everyone knows I'll take a travelling job if it pays, and if my own brother believed I'd done what the princess is accusing me of then it can't be at all likely that my Cadan is Kíli, can it?" Tibar grunts as he pulls a few sheets from his desk and starts to look over his meticulously planned timetable for testing. "How is Svejir?" Nori asks.
"Old," Tibar replies shortly, "dying. He remembers you sometimes, me as well, but his wife and children? They may as well be elves for how familiar they are to him. Won't be long now. You should see him before he goes, if you can." Something in Nori's gut clenches. She had forgotten what her old mentor had been like in the months before his death, and the one time she had seen him in her old life she had left after only moments and never returned. Never said goodbye to the closest thing to a father she had ever really had.
It's one of the few regrets about her life that she has.
"Maybe I will," she mutters softly. "Since I'm going to be here for a while."
"Mara would welcome it," Tibar tells her. "She asks after you still, you know."
"I'll go," Nori promises. "One more thing…"
A.N: Don't worry, there is a time skip coming up. I don't intend to go through the rest of the next ten or eleven years in this much detail (looks at the beginning of chapter 60) mostly not in this much detail. Hell, I haven't completely decided whether I'm writing the quest (not in all that much detail, we all know what happened) to go over what changes due to everything that happens, or just do a post quest epilogue where we find out who lived, who died and whether Nori stays in Erebor or runs for the hills. Depends on how much procrastinating I decide to do I guess.