As tempting as it is to confront Dís herself, Nori knows that it is not her place. Nor will it end well if she were to do so. She had ample opportunity to observe Kíli and Dís as they interacted in her previous life, both privately and publicly. Publicly the entire royal family presented an entirely united front, even when Thorin announced that he was going to take as many dwarves as he could muster and attempt to retake Erebor Dís had saved her frustrated demands for the privacy of their own living quarters, a place Nori had access to at the time as she was courting Dwalin, rather than expressing it where a member of the Council or public could hear. Dís had been quite vocal about what she had referred to as her brother's impending lunacy, something that Nori knows turned out to be more prophetic than any of them had realised.

But it had remained behind closed doors and no matter her thoughts on the fact that her sons had decided to go with their uncle to Erebor, Dís had publicly supported them and made something of a show about the promise stones that she had presented both boys with. Nori has no idea what happened to them, though she doubts that either of them had forgotten the promise to come home, but she suspects that they were either lost in the depths of Goblin Town under the Misty Mountains or with what little remained of their belongings in Mirkwood. Not that it matters now at any rate.

What matters now is that the apparent internal strife of the royal family seems to have made it into the public eye. Which is how Nori had believed that Dís and Thorin would have wanted it. They wanted Kíli to be discreet during his training, they wanted no hint of what his true trade is to touch their name, and the best way to do that was to have Kíli act out in the way that many craftless youths seem to. It concerns Nori that Dís does not seem able to separate out this Kíli, who is being trained to appear as the least interested person in the security of the throne, from the Kíli who worries and cares for his family. At least the apparent wastrel will be safe from any plots against Thorin and Fíli for a while, someone with little to no care for the intricacies of running a kingdom would be easy to wrest control from and so mostly ignored. That was the whole point of pulling Kíli away from the public line of dutiful second son.

It is a shame that Dís has forgotten about this.

Nori understands, due to her past interactions with a different Dís, that there is an image that the family is expected to project. As long as they are united the people will continue to have faith in them and it is something that has been carefully cultivated over the years. For Kíli to be so obviously going against this must be galling. The royal family, for all their lack of throne and kingdom, remain very much in the public eye. Their people like to know what is happening in their lives and as loyal as they like to believe their employees are, Nori in her guard disguise has spotted more than one familiar face from her Guild. The family is always watched, although who is being paid by whom varies from week to week.

There are those in the Guild who have, for one reason or another, made it quite literally their job to sell their observations to the highest bidder on a week by week basis. They do not need to be concerned about what will happen to them if they are caught, because they already have a trade that they can use to their advantage elsewhere if they so wish. The nice thing about being a thief is that you can simply pack up and go if things take a turn for the worse. The downside is that it lacks security.

Whatever Thorin says to Dís seems to have an effect and Nori is happy to observe Dís' private interactions with her youngest son, which the thief deliberately sneaks in to observe, seem to improve for a time. Between ensuring that she keeps on top of Kíli's training and setting up her pack, Nori does not have much time for her own private nosiness. And Nori can be incredibly nosy when the mood takes her.

Galen's messenger bird, exhausted and battered by the weather, arrives just as Yule is fading into a new year. By the Men's reckoning Nori knows it is now 2932. She has about eight years until an aggravating wizard turns up to encourage Thorin to take back his birthright and a little over nine until the gathered Company will descend upon an unsuspecting Briar-Rose Baggins. She has, by necessity, become better at paying attention to the passage of those weeks, months and years which once so blithely passed her by unheeded, but now need to be monitored closely.

The bird is tended to first. Given how long Galen has been gone, nothing that he has written will suffer from waiting an extra hour while she tends to the messenger. Birds like this are expensive and take time to train. Nori would rather not have to replace this one if she can help it. It is concerning to note, however, that there are a couple of dark stains on the scrap of parchment that has been stuffed into the light oilskin tube that is strapped to the bird's leg. One is a finger print in the top corner, where it has obviously been held, the other runs along the tear which cuts diagonally across the paper. Careful examination, however, leads her to conclude that this scrap has been torn off the original piece of parchment that had been cut to fit into the tube and gives rise to greater concerns that have to be put to one side until she reads it.

It's him.

There is nothing else. No detail, nothing to say where the white orc was seen or how many were with him. She worries at a fingernail as she stares. The writing is jagged, hasty and nothing like the neat and carefully formed lines that she normally sees from Galen. Her friend could neither read nor write when he was training, and Nori helped him with that as much as she helped coach him in picking pockets. Galen was, is, by no means stupid, but his parents were almost the definition of dirt poor, craftless and desperate as they floated from menial job to menial job, married only because Galen's mother had fallen with child and lacked the means and craft to care for him on her own. It is a difficult world for those who do not have a craft and either will not or cannot work the caravans where there is at least a chance of decent pay if the dwarf is canny about it. Galen's parents had not been particularly good with money, which had ultimately resulted in Galen attempting to steal enough to feed himself and getting caught much in the same manner that Kíli had been. It is not the ideal life, even for those made to live it, but it is harder still for those who have been thrust into it through sheer bad luck and poor choices.

Galen had been grateful that her request had given him something legitimate to do with the skills he had been forced to learn. This brief message makes her worry that this opportunity might have cost her friend his life and she desperately wants to pack a bag and head out of town to see if she can find any hint of whether he is still alive and mostly in one piece. Her ties to her pack, which is almost established enough that she will be able to leave Trygve in charge for a season or two, are still fragile enough that she would not want to leave for the length of time it would take to get to Ered Nimrais, let alone all the way to the Iron Hills. Part of her, however, knows that it is unlikely she will find word of Galen. A scrap of parchment that had obviously been coated in blood is enough to tell her that he is probably dead. The thought that this investigation may have gotten her friend killed when she has barely even established herself as the Wolf is heartbreaking and grief slams into her with all the weight and force of a mountain. It hits her harder, in fact, than the deaths of Fíli, Kíli and Thorin had in the future that she plans to prevent. The difference, she supposes, is that while she had felt some guilt alongside her grief, it had been for not pushing harder to get Kíli trained and so there had been some comfort to it as well. Perhaps if Kíli had been trained he would have spotted something that she and Dwalin missed. Besides, they had only been there because they had wanted to gain their uncle's approval. Galen is different. If Galen got caught and killed it is because she set him on this path.

She stares at the parchment almost without seeing it for some time before noticing a pair of hands gently enfold hers.

"Breathe lass," Dwalin mutters. He knows this place, and has been here on more than one occasion over the past year when the two of them need to discuss some piece of information or another that has been uncovered. He always comes when it is dark, always through the back door which is accessed through a narrow alley that is almost permanently littered with rubbish and otherwise unused. It is dark outside and she half remembers that they had a meeting about the upcoming celebration of Fíli's birthday.

"I think Galen's dead," she whispers. Nori has lost people, and she knows that their work is dangerous, but she has never sent someone to their death before like this. She has killed, for money and in self defense, in her old life she had ordered the death of people who had become a threat to Thorin and his heirs before that threat could be realised, but she had never actually sent someone out on an investigation dangerous enough to kill them. She hands the large guard the piece of parchment.

"Could have been badly hurt," Dwalin says. "Until someone tells you otherwise there's no reason to think the worst." He frowns. "This mean what I think it means?"

"Best case, Galen saw Azog from a distance, I don't think he would have been able to write even that much if he had been close. I only wanted him to ask around in Labamgarel Zarrakh and the Iron Hills to see if he could find any extra reports. I didn't think he would actually run into the bastard."

"None of us would have," Dwalin shakes his head. "You need something to drink?"

Nori points to a plain earthenware bottle on a shelf. It contains some of the local moonshine, a hard spirit that she rarely indulges in unless it has been a really bad night or she has received some particularly difficult news. Dwalin pulls a face when he sniffs it, but pours a small measure for both of them into two cups made of the same plain pottery. They are rough, basic, and exactly what any visitor would expect to find in a house in this part of town. Kíli, as Cadan, stays often enough that her neighbours believe she is a single lass who is caring for her orphaned nephew. It is the perfect disguise, and even explains why Dwalin occasionally sneaks in if anyone ever spots him.

"Thanks," she gasps as she swallows it in one go, letting the burn of it ground her a little. "I've known him a long time, and I'm no soldier, I don't send people out to…"

"I know," he assures her, his voice gentle and almost tender and it makes her want to melt into him. "I know. What will you do with it?"

"Tell Thorin," she says. "I need to look into it more, but I can't do that from here. And I can't do it with the boy either. I'm taking him to the Shire for the summer so that he can learn some of the last things he needs and complete his contract. Then I'm heading over the mountains."

"Alone?" Dwalin demands.

"Of course," she tilts her head, amethyst eyes examining him closely.

"No," he shakes his head. "Not alone. I won't let you go alone."

"You don't get a say, Guard," she reminds him.

"I know," he sighs. "But can you blame me for caring?"

A.N: Ah, the drawbacks of being the one in charge. She's doing things differently this time, that changes the way that it all turns out for a few people and now Nori gets to see those consequences of playing with time first hand.