For all that he had signed a contract as a burglar, Bilbo felt that for most of the months they had been away, he had done very little burgling indeed. And in fact, even the little burgling he had managed had been accomplished with the help of Gollum's ring, which certainly no one could have expected in advance for him to come across; Bilbo did wonder what Gandalf could have been thinking, bringing a hobbit along on such a quest as this.
But in any event, Bilbo was certainly doing his fair share of burgling now, though admittedly it was mostly food and drink for himself, for although the elves were keeping the dwarves locked in cells, they were feeding them more than adequately, but of course they were not feeding any invisible hobbits! Bilbo was certain that if he revealed himself the elves would graciously feed him too, but certainly they would do so from the other side of a cell door. So Bilbo kept his ring on at all times and grew quite adept at sneaking cakes and breads and eggs out of the kitchen, and even wine and ale from the cellar, though any more than a few sips of those was enough to set his head spinning, and he grew quickly cautious of any elvish drink other than water. It would not serve him well, he reasoned, to let his head become muddled in such a place as this.
The elves had placed the dwarves in separate cells, far away from one another, and it took many days of careful sneaking around for Bilbo to locate all of them in the dungeons, and even longer to begin to learn his way well enough to get easily from one cell to another and another. But Kili he could not find, no matter how much sneaking he did, and as the days turned over one after the other, he began to grow quite concerned indeed, for he could not imagine what had happened to the thirteenth dwarf, but was certain it was nothing good, as the elves seemed to bear no love at all for their captives.
Bilbo revealed himself to the dwarves as soon as he had located Thorin (which took quite some time, as Thorin the elves had placed in the very deepest, darkest part of the dungeon). From then on Bilbo spent many an hour relaying messages back and forth between the dwarves, so much that by the end of each day, he was quite thoroughly exhausted from all the running around. The dwarves were all relieved to hear news of each other, but Bilbo felt he must admit to Thorin that Kili could not be found, and Thorin, to Bilbo's great relief, was almost as concerned about this as Bilbo himself.
"They would not have harmed him," Bilbo said in a rather hopeful tone. "He poses no threat."
"None of us pose any threat at present," Thorin said sourly. "Kili least of all."
Well, Bilbo did not believe that was quite true; Kili was young and hale — or as hale as any of them had been, before weeks of starvation had taken their toll — and certainly he was perfectly capable of defending himself in a fight. But perhaps Thorin meant nothing more than that Kili had been trained from birth to be obedient and subservient.
"I will continue to search for him," Bilbo said. "He must be here somewhere. It is only that I have not found him yet." For he had seen Kili caught along with all the other dwarves, so he must be somewhere within the palace, even if Bilbo had as of yet seen no trace of him.
Thorin thanked him gravely, frustrated at not being able to do more, but what more could be done from within a locked cell was beyond Bilbo. Thorin also extracted a promise from Bilbo that he would devise some manner of escape, but privately Bilbo was very doubtful he could accomplish this (as he was hardly the sneakiest of creatures). Anyway, he had no intention of implementing any such plan until all of their party was accounted for.
In the end it was sheer luck that Bilbo found Kili, but Bilbo had always been more lucky than most, at least he supposed he had until he set out on this cursed quest! And also, it happened that Kili was in fact within the palace after all. In truth, the elves were taking no great pains to hide him — it was simply that they were not holding him in the dungeons, and of course, they did not know Bilbo was looking for him so they were not so considerate as to lead Bilbo there directly.
How Bilbo came to find Kili was this: Bilbo spent the whole of one day outside the gates of the palace, hoping to find some way out of the forest, that being at least half the part of any plan to escape — the other being freeing the dwarves from their cells, but he was at last beginning to have ideas about how to accomplish that. It was true too that some little part of his heart hoped that he might find a hint of Kili's whereabouts outside the castle. Though it seemed on the face of it to be very unlikely, he was beginning to feel quite desperate since it had now been weeks since the dwarves were captured, with no sign of Kili at all.
On this particular day he found neither a way out of the forest nor any clue to Kili's whereabouts, and returned quite dejected to the palace on the heels of a hunting party; but when he crept to the kitchen later it was filled with elves merrily planning how they should carve and cook the hart they had brought down that day. It was altogether too crowded for even an invisible Bilbo to risk entering the kitchen himself, even though he had nothing to eat all day but a small, stale roll for breakfast.
It was a measure of how very much Bilbo had changed that he went to sleep with no dinner and only the slightest bit of grumbling about it in his own head, but by morning time he was so very hungry that he resolved to make straight for the kitchens and burgle some breakfast, no matter how many elves were present. But when he got to the kitchens, there were only two elves there: one with responsibility for the king's breakfast, and another dressed in the muted greens of the Forest Guard.
"I just don't see," the cook grumbled, "why we must make so much of an effort for a single dwarf bastard."
"He is no bastard," the guard said. She was tall and slender, as were all the elves Bilbo had ever seen, and quite lovely to his eyes. "He is igthierion."
"Oh," the cook said. "Well, then, that is tragic indeed."
"More even than that," the guard said. "To the dwarves it is a curse. He has been enslaved his entire life."
The cook looked intensely outraged. "A motherless babe is to be cherished and protected!" And at this, Bilbo's heart leapt, for certainly the elves could be speaking of none other than Kili, not unless there was another khazd khuv dwarf in the elves' custody.
"So the Eldar believe," said the guard, "but the dwarves are not so civilized as we."
"Foul little creatures," the cook said with a frown. "Would that the king will send them on their way soon." He had been preparing a tray all this while, and it was stacked high with breakfast foods: rolls pulled straight from the oven, over which he had poured copious amounts of freshly churned butter, the bread still so hot that steam furled lazily upwards toward the ceiling; there was also warm porridge with apples and cinnamon, and a healthy portion of breakfast meats that Bilbo suspected were freshly carved from the previous day's catch. "Here," the cook said. He reached up to a shelf and pulled down a tray of pastries. "They seem to love these. The fat one in particular would eat them and nothing else. I hope the poor lad enjoys them half as well." He wrapped two of the pastries in a cloth napkin and added it to the pile of food.
"You are soft at heart," said the guard with a grin. "I will make sure he knows the pastries are a special gift." She lifted the tray then and nodded her goodbyes.
As soon as she left the room, and while the cook's back was turned, Bilbo in a flash grabbed two rolls and a link of sausage, then scurried silently into the corridor after the guard. Thank goodness she carried a breakfast tray, for otherwise the delightful fragrance wafting from the rolls and meat he carried would certainly have caught her attention for accompanying her down the hall; to be safe, Bilbo ate his pilfered meal quickly and quietly as he walked, grateful that the elf's pace was leisurely enough that he could follow her without running.
The path they followed from the kitchens led up and around and up some more. Weeks before, he would have found himself quite thoroughly lost, but by this point he had learned enough of the elvish manner of design to keep a sense of where he was going. And this was up into the palace proper, to his great surprise, and that in itself explained why he had never found Kili, for it had never occurred to him to look for a captive dwarf in such a grand place.
The guard stopped in front of a very plain door, unadorned but for some intricate carvings in the wood, and overall so ordinary that no hobbit would have been satisfied with it in his house. "Master Dwarf," the guard called, knocking lightly on the door. "I have brought your breakfast." Then, balancing the tray easily in one hand — which was a bit astounding to see, considering how heavily it was laden — she unlocked the door and opened it watchfully.
Bilbo half expected Kili to come barreling out, though he was not sure later why he should have expected this, even by half, for certainly if Kili had been likely to do such a thing, the guard would not have so casually opened the door. In any event, Kili did not come barreling out, and so Bilbo very, very cautiously followed the elf into the room. He noticed immediately that this room was much nicer than any of the cells in which the dwarves were imprisoned — in fact, though neither Bilbo nor Kili ever learned this, it had been the nursery for the king's son when he was a young elfling, and had Bilbo but known to look, he would have seen the scratch marks where the little prince had crudely carved his name into the wall with an arrow point.
The room was furnished with a very comfortable-looking bed covered with plush blankets and fluffy pillows. There was also a small table with a chair, and on the table were books and scrolls with titles in Common. There was even a full-sized bath, which Bilbo looked at quite longingly, for he had not had a proper wash since they left Beorn's house, and he was dirtier than he had ever been in his life. And also, to Bilbo's great surprise, there was a window, and though it was barred, the sun and sky could be seen through it.
Kili himself was sitting on the edge of the bed, and he looked healthy enough, his cheeks round and full of color. His clothes were clean and of elvish make, though they were not the ones he had been given in Rivendell, but they were of a similar cut and quality, and they fit him very well. His eyes tracked the guard as she set the tray down on the table, but he did not speak to her, although he did not seem very anxious or overly hostile, but simply silent.
"The cook has provided pastries," the guard said. "They are best eaten fresh. Your fat friend would be jealous, if he knew."
Kili did not respond, though Bilbo imagined he saw a glint of amusement flash in his eyes.
The guard did not seem to expect any reply, for she turned to look out the window. "It promises to be a fine day," she said. "If you are of a mind, you could accompany me on a walk in the afternoon."
At this, Kili frowned. "Your king grows ever more creative in his attempts to sway me. Pastries and an excursion in a single day."
"The pastries were the cook's idea," the elf said mildly. "And the walk is just a walk. A chance to stretch your legs and gaze upon something other than these four walls."
Kili's eyes flickered to the window, his gaze full of longing, but then he set his jaw and narrowed his eyes at the elf. "It matters not what you offer. I will not change my mind."
"As I said," the guard replied, her tone still airy and light, "it is just a walk. You need not come if you do not wish it. But there is no need to make a hasty decision. I will not in any event be leaving until the afternoon. Perhaps you will feel differently after lunch, when the sun warms the air."
"Perhaps," Kili said, though he did not sound at all as if he was wavering, and his jaw was set quite firmly.
The guard stood straight as if she was to leave, and Bilbo quickly darted out the open door, though he had considered briefly staying with Kili and perhaps sharing some of his enormous breakfast, for the rolls and meats he had stolen had hardly put a dent in his appetite. But all things considered, he felt certain it was safer to be on the other side of any locked door — that is to say, the side with the lock!
"Enjoy your breakfast, Master Dwarf," the elf said politely, and she took her leave, not noticing at all the little invisible hobbit flattened against the opposite wall of the hallway, holding his breath. Bilbo waited until she was safely gone before bending down to whisper in the keyhole. This he did with great care, for when he visited the dwarves in the deep dungeons, there was no risk of anyone coming except guards with great rings of noisily clanking keys, and so he was never very afraid of being discovered, but here in this wide and brightly lit corridor he felt very exposed and vulnerable, even with his magic ring, for it offered no protection at all against being overheard.
Kili was quite astonished to hear Bilbo's whispered voice, for it had been many weeks since they had been captured, and he admitted that he had begun to wonder if he had been quite left behind. "Though I thought it unlikely," he whispered back, "for if the Company had truly left, the elves would have no need to try to win me to their favor."
"Is that what they are trying to do?" Bilbo asked.
"They say many things to me," Kili said carelessly. "It is all the same as the elves in Rivendell, and Beorn too, I suppose. They tell me of my worth, and that I have been mistreated my entire life and I am just too thick to see it. Not that they use those very words, but that is what they mean."
Bilbo was quiet for a moment, for he had a horrible feeling that Kili lumped him in with the elves and all others who thought him stupid.
Kili did not wait for him to speak. "These elves have invited me to stay if I choose, if only I will tell them Thorin's purpose."
"But you have not," Bilbo said, alarmed, for Thorin was quite insistent that the dwarves breathe not a word of their quest to the elves.
"No," Kili said crossly. "Thorin hates the elves, and I am sure this captivity has not further endeared them to him. If he had told them himself, they would have no need to ask me, so I assumed he had not told them, and therefore I kept my own council."
"Well," Bilbo said, "Thorin will be very pleased to hear it, and also to hear that you are well, of course."
"I am well fed," Kili said, "and well bathed, and well rested, and well bored!"
"Not so bored as the rest of the Company," Bilbo said, "for at least the elves have given you something to read."
Kili grunted. "Yes, and I have never read so much in my entire life. You must thank Mr. Balin for me, as he was the one who taught me."
"I shall pass it on," Bilbo promised. "I am sure he shall be very pleased to hear that you are well enough to read, just as I am sure they will all be pleased that you have been found safe and sound. Everyone has been quite concerned."
This was perhaps a small stretching of the truth. Certainly Thorin was very concerned, and Fili was quite bothersome with his constant asking after Kili, and Ori too had taken to inquiring after Kili every time Bilbo came by his cell, as if it were possible that Bilbo might have accidentally stumbled across Kili and forgotten to mention it. But Bilbo was quite certain that none of the rest of the Company wished Kili any harm, even if they were less vocal in expressing their concern for him.
Kili made a noise that might have been mildly skeptical, but he did not otherwise contradict Bilbo's claim.
"And now I think I must leave," Bilbo said, "for Thorin is expecting me today and he will grow very anxious if I am late. Oh!" he cried then, though still in a whisper, for he had not spoken in any other manner for many days, "you should take the opportunity offered you to leave your cell, for perhaps your eyes will see something outside that mine have missed, and we may yet plan an escape."
Kili promised he would, and Bilbo took his leave with his heart far lighter than when he had woken in the morning.
A/N: A little bit lighter, this week, right? Next up - barrels. Because it wouldn't be The Hobbit without barrels! And also, Things Get Said.
Thanks as always to SapphireMusings for the beta, and to my dear hubby as well, who may find himself consigned to proofreading duty from now on.
Thanks also to everyone who takes the time to comment. Your thoughts and suggestions are always most appreciated!
