Chapter 15

If, by some caprice of Mahal the Maker, the road between the Tower Hills and the Blue Mountains had been caused to loop around in an endless spiral so that Var and I would spend the rest of our lives walking but never reaching its end, that would have been fine with me.

All the way through Eriador, up along the Lune River toward our destination at Ered Luin, Var and I talked, argued, and laughed. At night we made love, relishing our slow exploration of every inch of one another's bodies. I could touch her and make her laugh; stroke her and watch her shiver. It was magnificent.

Not a word passed between us about what would happen next.

But no matter how much we dragged our feet, at last they carried us to the settlement of the Durin's Folk in Ered Luin. Var seemed pleased to be back among Dwarves, and walked through the great central hall enjoying everything—the market stalls, the bustling crowds, the noisy taverns, and the stately facades of the Guildhalls.

But it was all too noisy for me. There was no escape from the sounds, the smells, the body-heat. Even the air seemed close and confining, although I knew the ceiling vault soared so high over my head I could not see it. I'd become accustomed to the vast blue of the sky and the wide carpet of green, and now the warmth and closeness of the dwarf halls felt suffocating by comparison. I gritted my teeth as people jostled against me while we walked through the marketplace.

"Oh, look at this, Dwalin," Var said, darting over to a weaver's stall. She stroked a length of red fabric stitched with gold thread, holding it up for me to see. The price tag was printed with a very large number. "What do you think?"

I shrugged. "Nice."

She rolled her eyes, a tiny show of exasperation that was evidently meant for me alone, and turned back to the weaver with a pretty pout. She put the fabric down. "Oh, dear! What a pity, but if my husband doesn't like it, I simply can't justify buying it."

"But I do like it," I protested.

Var frowned at me over her shoulder, her lips pressed shut.

The weaver, a snaggle-toothed old dwarf woman with a salt-and-pepper beard, jumped up from the stool she was sitting on and pointed at me. "But he does like it, Madam! He just said so. It's lovely fabric, very costly to make. Cheap at the price. It's your color, too. Buy it! Make that handsome lad smile when he sees you wearing it."

Handsome lad? My ears heated up with embarrassment. I never know what to do when women say these things. It's total nonsense, too. I'm 169 years old, hardly a lad, and have never been accused of being handsome—not even before I got the broken nose, the bitten-off ear, and various battle scars.

Var waved her hands in front of her face. "No, no, I can't. Seriously, I'm not interested."

I shook my head. Did she want it or not? "If you like it, buy it."

We weren't short of cash—Var had been managing our funds, and I was surprised to discover that we had much more money than I expected when we arrived in the Ered Luin settlement.

"You darling man!" Var rushed over to me and wrapped her arms around my neck, kissing me. Then she grabbed my face in her hands and whispered, "Would you please shut up? You're going to ruin everything. Just…look disapproving. Scowl for me. Please?"

The weaver was shouting at Var's back. "For you, Madam, half-price! You'll never find a better deal. Oh, Mahal, I can't believe I'm doing this, my children will starve, but for you, Madam—just call me sentimental. I love to see a lady who treats her husband right. Half-price, my final offer."

Var went back to the weaver, and I scowled as ordered. I probably looked only half-disapproving, since I was mostly confused, but it was the best I could manage. Why was she making such a drama out of a simple purchase? I could have bought an entire armory of weapons in the time she was taking to buy a single piece of fabric that she hadn't even wanted until the moment she'd set eyes on it.

Var named an even lower price, somewhere around one-third of the original number. The weaver howled. Var turned and walked away. Just as she reached my side, the weaver sagged back onto her stool and agreed to Var's price.

With a great show of reluctance, Var returned to the stall, paid the weaver and collected her parcel. The weaver shook her graying head, apparently mourning a sale that had yielded very little profit.

Var took my arm and hugged it as we walked away. Her eyes were shining. "What an absolutely glorious day this is," she said, and sighed happily.

"If you say so," I replied, and patted her hand.

The day ceased to be glorious as we entered Aunt Nott's offices in the Goldsmith's Guildhall. Aunt Nott was seriously displeased with both of us, on account of our southern-style marriage-in-fact.

Her office was very dwarven: Massive desk, huge plush chairs, opulent light fixtures dripping with jewels. In addition to her six bodyguards and Nandi, who was back in his usual butlerish black robes, she had a female dwarf companion in the room with her. I'd seen her before, a dull, serious woman with a face like a horse. Lady Ran was actually a noblewoman, very well-born and with plenty of the blood of Durin running through her veins, but she wasn't the type who made a positive impression. Today Lady Ran looked gloomy—or maybe her shapeless gray velvet robes just depressed me.

As I've mentioned before, female dwarves stay home, but that doesn't mean they don't stay busy. We men are miners and craftsmen and warriors, but for the most part we leave the boring organizational details to our mothers, aunts and wives. In or society, dwarven women handle the laws, business deals and social arrangements including marriage. As a bachelor who had never considered himself potential husband material, I'd never had a problem with that, but now apparently I'd run full-tilt into the murky, mysterious, and wholly female territory of dwarven marriage protocol.

Aunt Nott's face turned red, and she pounded on her desk. Behind her, Lady Ran's pale eyes darted from Var to me and back again as my aunt gave us a piece of her mind.

"I did not give my permission for this, Var," she roared. "He was supposed to be your bodyguard only. You had no right to take him as your husband without consulting me first. By Mahal, he's a member of my household. One of my own kin!"

Var stood straight-backed, chin up, hands on her rounded hips. Her blue eyes flashed and those pink lips curled into a sneer. "There were extenuating circumstances, Nott. Neither of us expected things to happen the way they did. But they did, and I don't regret it for a moment. Dwalin is my husband, and we'll just have to work out an agreement we can all live with."

Aunt Nott pinned me with a glare. "Dwalin, I'd like a word with you alone. Var, I trust that you will permit me to speak to my own nephew in private for a moment?"

"Is that really necessary?" Var asked. "Dwalin is not to blame for this." Her voice was calm, but she stepped to my side and gripped my arm in both of her hands, as if afraid someone were going to drag me away from her.

"It would reassure me immensely," Aunt Nott said. "And will probably go a long way toward reconciling me to this…irregular and possibly actionable behavior."

Slowly, Var let go of me. "I'll wait in the outer office for a few minutes, then." She gave me a look that was part-warning and part-plea, then turned and walked out.

The door clicked shut behind her. I waited, every bit as tense as I'd been the moment before we charged the goblins outside Moria. Aunt Nott narrowed her eyes at me.

"You idiot," my aunt said in a soft, deadly voice. "Didn't you listen to me, in Bree? I told you to BE CAREFUL!" Her voice rose to a shout on the last two words.

"I listened to you," I said indignantly. "You said, 'be careful.' You didn't say, 'don't rescue Var if armed assassins come bursting through the door.' At that point, I thought it might be nice for us to stay alive."

She shook her head in disgust. "Mahal protect me from fools. Didn't it ever occur to you that she might have planned all that, just to get you into her power?"

"No," I retorted. "She didn't plan all that."

"How do you know?" Aunt Nott inquired softly. Her return to that quiet and deadly tone of voice made me hesitate. What was this all about?

What was it always about, with Aunt Nott? Information. It suddenly occurred to me that she didn't know anything about Var's midnight visit to the chest of gold in Bree, or about her father Gamil's mystical ring, or the wizard who would have killed to possess it.

I decided she wasn't going to learn about those things. At least, not from me. I looked Aunt Nott in the eye. "Because I know Var."

She scowled at me. "Sentimental fool. Did she bed you?"

Behind Aunt Nott, her assistant, Lady Ran, shifted in her seat. The plain, gray-clad woman was watching me very closely, with a look that was almost like hunger. I got a sudden chill up my spine.

As I've said, I was never the prettiest fellow to begin with. Now I am well into dwarven middle-age, and although I'm physically fit and still have all my teeth, no one can look at me and not see that I've been through a few wars. But I am of Durin's line, related to the wealthy and powerful Nott, and perhaps that makes me eligible as a potential bridegroom.

So it seemed to me that danger lurked in this spacious, elegantly-appointed office. If I admitted that Var and I were lovers, then we would have a basis on which to claim we were married. But then, Aunt Nott would be losing a valuable asset, a bargaining chip in some future womanly business transaction: namely, me.

Of course, if Var wanted me, she would have to make it right with my aunt—to compensate her for having lost me. What Aunt Nott was really asking was, how much did Var want me? Had she bedded me often? If she had, she might pay more for the privilege of keeping me. I hated the idea of giving Aunt Nott such a negotiating advantage.

But if I pretended that Var and I had not slept together, then we couldn't claim we were married, even under the customs of the southern dwarves. And if I was not committed to Var, Aunt Nott could give me in marriage to the dwarf woman of her choice—and my guess was, she would probably choose Lady Ran.

I looked down at my boot toes. "We spent the night handcuffed together on a bed at that inn in Bree. We have witnesses to prove it. That's enough to qualify Var and me as committed in marriage. Isn't it?"

"No."

I sighed. "Yes, we made love. Often."

My aunt growled and frowned down at her hands, fingers laced, in front of her.

Behind Aunt Nott, Lady Ran seemed to shrink into herself. I felt bad. Here was someone who I'd managed to hurt, without even knowing I was doing it. I didn't much care for her, and certainly never expected that she'd be interested in me, but that didn't mean I was insensitive.

Then Lady Ran rose to her feet. I tried to catch her eye, send her a look that would express my regret. But I could have spared myself the self-reproach. When she lifted her gaze to mine, her eyes were blazing with anger.

Lady Ran spoke, but not to me. "I'll contact you later, Nott." Then she stalked out of the room.

If my ears had been burning before, now my whole head felt like it was on fire. All I wanted was to be out of that office, out of that guildhall, out of everywhere—just go far, far away. Was there a reason why I preferred fighting in wars and going on quests and just generally putting a large distance between myself and my own people? Why, yes. Yes there was.

Aunt Nott glared up at me from beneath her white eyebrows. "I hope you're proud of yourself, laddie."

Var walked into the office through the door Lady Ran had left open. She came over to me and stroked my arm. She whispered, "Don't worry. I'm proud of you."

Then she turned to Aunt Nott, and they had a staring contest for a moment or two. Finally, Var said, "Whatever the deal was with Ran, I'll double it."

"No!" I said, shocked at this extravagance. In the marketplace, I'd seen how much Var liked to bargain closely. Why should she let herself be taken, even if it was by my own aunt?

"Triple," Aunt Nott said promptly.

"Well, Nott, I don't think you understand my position here," Var purred, pulling a chair up opposite my aunt and sitting down with her elbows on Aunt Nott's desk.

My aunt's white eyebrows rose high on her forehead, and she leaned forward on her own elbows, matching Var's posture. "Oh, but I think I do understand, Var."

Nandi the butler left Aunt Nott's side. "Come on, Dwalin. Let me get you a mug of ale."

"But," I said, pointing at the two women as he took me by the arm.

"Don't worry. They'll work it out." He led me out of the room. "It's easier not to be there when it happens, though. In the meantime, Thorin Oakenshield has asked that you join him. He's holding a meeting of some sort. Got a wizard with him, I believe."

I tensed. "A wizard?"

"Someone named Gandalf, I hear. The meeting is taking place right now in Thorin's Hall. Go on," Nandi said. "I'll let Nott and your lady know where you've gone."