That night, Betta cleaned and tightened the knots in her woven net while Fili looked after the ponies and Kili skinned the ground rats one by one. There was little meat on the rats they had, but it was fresh and they felt as if they were eating a full meal for the first time since the ravine. They had lit only enough wood to cook the raw meat and now sat round a dwindling fire, wiping grease from their lips and feeling their stomachs finally and comfortably full.
Yet even the cheer of their meal could not chase away the dark clouds that had followed them, and that only Kili seemed not to notice – or, if he noticed, at least he could ignore them. He leaned back with a sigh and said, "If only we'd thought to bring the fiddles. We might give these hills a rousing tune."
"And draw more unwanted eyes our way," Fili said, his voice low and wary. "No, we must travel quietly from now on."
But Kili gestured to the empty hills and asked, "What eyes? Who would live in this depressing, dismal place?"
Fili did not answer.
"I did not know that dwarves played fiddles," Betta said. "I thought your folk preferred harps and flutes and instruments of metal."
"There are many things that you do not know about dwarves," Kili said cheerfully and thumbed his nose at her.
"That is true," Fili agreed.
Betta said nothing in answer to him. She hung her head and ran her fingers through her hair, wishing that she could braid it back or cut off the greasy tangles.
Fili watched Betta toy with her long hair. It was a nervous gesture that he had seen her make before. In fact, he had seen it so often that he knew it by heart and might have mimicked the way that she twisted the strands about her fingers just so. It was strange that it bothered him tonight of all nights and the only reason that he could give was that he had tried all day to be kind to her and still she refused to look him in the eye.
"It is just as well," Kili said, trying to pick up the broken threads of conversation, "I do not know if my cold fingers could pick out a tune." He rubbed his hands together. "Perhaps we might have a song?" He looked at his brother hopefully, but Fili had looked away again and did not hear him.
"Well, brother? What of a song?" Kili insisted.
"No songs," Fili said. "I do not like the air of this place. I feel watched, and the quiet rings too loudly in my ears."
"I agree," Betta said.
They sat in silence for a long time, until Kili grew impatient and stood up. He left the camp and began to walk up and down the nearby hill, digging a path in the snow with his feet. The sun had set, but none of them felt able to sleep just yet. As the night came on, Fili felt again the itch between his shoulders, and it was stronger now; his senses told him that there was danger nearby and coming closer, but his head and eyes told him that there was no one here but three ponies, a woman and his brother.
He shrugged his to shake off the itch and said, "Well, guide, will you not take out your maps tonight? It is a strange road to be built by your people but not put on their map."
"You yourself have said that there is no proof that those people were my people," she reminded him. "In any case, Harandir did not say that the road was built by the people of Ankor, only that it was used for trade."
Fili scowled and rubbed the back of his neck where a knot of stress was forming. He felt an urge to draw his axe but did not know why. "Of course, we must listen to the wise words of Harandir," he said, drawing out the name with a sneer.
She did not look up and did not look at him, but she frowned, a worried expression, and touched her hand to her hair again.
"Why do you do that?" he demanded. "You have no reason to be vain with us."
Betta quickly put down her hand. "Do what? I do nothing?" she said. "You have no reason to be sullen tonight."
Fili frowned at that, knowing that she was right. Kili was still pacing up and down the hill, but he had come on his return trip to the camp and was near enough to hear what was said.
"Yes, brother," he said, "what has put you in this foul mood tonight? Does the rat-stew not sit right in your belly?"
Fili winced. He had sworn a truce with Betta so that Kili would not have to hear them fight, but here he was beginning to fight again after only a few days peace. He did not know what troubled him, but for the sake of his brother, he tried to put the anger from his voice and answer honestly.
"It is this land that does not sit right with me," he said. "But why am I put in the wrong for speaking my mind?" He stood and turned his appeal to his brother. "Should our guide not speak first? It is she who sulks. Come, tell us why you have been so quiet. There is something on your mind."
"Many things," Betta said, "but I do not know which one it is that troubles you."
Fili looked west where the sun had already gone down below the horizon, but the moon had not yet risen. The shadows were deep and dark, and they had no firelight to chase them away.
He knew that the strange itch that he had been feeling for several days now always seemed to grow stronger in the nighttime hours, and he guessed that it was that and the strange feel of the land around them that had brought all of their unhappy feelings to the surface. It would have been better for them to have this conversation while the sun still shone, but he had not been given the choice.
"You are angry with me," Fili said, turning back to Betta and trying to be reasonable. "I have seen it in your looks for two days. If our truce has kept you quiet, then I absolve you of your half of it. You do more harm in being silently angry than if you shouted for all the world to hear."
"Harm?" She stood and looked up at him with anger in her eyes. "What harm have I ever done to you or could do to you?" she demanded. "You absolve me, you say, as if you had any respect for our truce."
She shook her head. "We have not argued because it was convenient for you not to argue, but you have betrayed my trust. You used our truce to trick me, and I will not speak to you any more than I must for the remainder of this journey, for I do not know how far you will carry my words and to what strangers you will tell them."
"Do you say now that we should not have told the Ranger of our quest?" Fili asked her. "You were eager enough to take his advice."
"You were careful enough to reveal my story while hiding your own. Do you say that there was no other way to speak of my quest without betraying my dead family?"
Kili looked back and forth between them. He had been expecting this fight for days, but now that he saw them standing nearly eye to eye and equally angry, he was not sure that he was ready for it. If the battle turned from words to weapons, Betta would certainly lose; but Kili knew his brother, and Fili would never forgive himself for laying hands on a woman in anger, be she human or dwarf.
He stepped between them before it could come to that. "I will not take sides in the greater war," he said, "but in this battle, she is right, Fili. You did not need to tell the man all that you did. At least, you might have left it to Betta to tell her own tale."
"And can we trust her to tell her own tale?" Fili asked, surprising his brother. "How much of her story has she left unsaid while we have instructed her on the whole history of the Dwarves! How much are we only now discovering, hidden names and secret marks on stone and metal? You were not surprised when the Ranger told you there were cowards in your family. You had your suspicions, you said then, but where did they come from, I now begin to wonder. You have never told us what all is written on the back of those pages that you keep so close to your skin."
"'She needed protection and we were eager for adventure,'" Betta said, and her voice was as cold as the land around them.
"What?" Fili blinked at her, and even Kili was confused.
"Eager for adventure," she repeated. "You told Harandir that this was the reason that you and your brother came north. That is what you have told me, but it was a lie. When we made our truce, you said that you would not guard your words against me. You said that you trusted me not to carry them to others. At that time, I trusted you to do the same, but now I know better. I will guard my words, and if you insist on demanding more of my secrets tonight, then tell me yours. Why did you wish to leave so suddenly from Ered Luin? There was only one dwarf to farewell you, and that alone is suspicious. What is it that you whisper to your brother when you think that I am too far away to hear it?"
"That does not concern you," Fili said. "Once this quest is over, those things will concern me and my brother, but you will have taken your share of the treasure and gone your own way by then."
"Whether you know my true name or not, it will not give you the gold you are after," she said. "And by your own words, that is all that you are after, adventures and gold."
"Not only gold," Fili said, but he was not as certain as he had been before the Ranger had said the same thing to him, that a dwarf loves only gold. "If it were only the treasure, would I have bandaged your arm? Would my brother have spoken to you as a friend? We have done much to take you on as one of our company, a human and a woman, and yet you still keep secrets…"
"You did not take me on. You forced yourself upon my quest, and still you play the innocent dwarf," Betta told him. "If you demand answers from others, you must be prepared to offer them yourself." She glanced at Kili, but he had so far stayed true to his word and out of their fight.
"I have known from the start that there were secrets you kept behind your eyes," she said, "even when we spoke together in the woods under the snow. I knew, but I did not ask. I would have let you keep them to yourself if you had let me keep mine. But I will ask you now. What interest do you have in any treasure, two royal dwarves with a King for an uncle? And are you even that? You kept secret your dealings with me over the box. Why do you sneak about your own mountain? Why did you agree to open the box at all when you so clearly scorn me and the coins I offered? Prove that my suspicions are not justified and tell me, why are you here?"
Fili looked at his brother, but Kili crossed his arms and waited, curious to see what Fili would do. He had no doubt that the whispers that Betta had heard were the many times that he had tried to convince his brother that it would be easier to come clean than to go on day after day hiding the name of Erebor.
"All that we have told you is the truth," Fili said, finally, "of our family, our tales and our history. What we have not told you, I say again, it does not concern you. You are no dwarf and would not understand it. You are not a part of this."
Betta stared at him. He did not know what to make of the expression on her face but it pained him to see it and he wished that he could take back the sharp words that he had said, and especially the last.
"Betta…"Kili began, but she stepped back from the brothers and shook her head.
"Here I stand, alone in the wild with two strong-armed dwarves and their weapons, and you say that it does not concern me what their motives are. It was not idle curiosity that caused Harandir to ask whether I am with you by choice or by force, and you, Fili, are not the only member of this company who has struggled for a reason to trust."
She took another step back from him and looked longingly into the south. "I wish now that I had not come," she said. "I should have left when he asked me…"
"Who asked you to leave?" Kili demanded.
"The Ranger," Fili said. "He was determined to rescue her from the terrible dwarves who held her captive." He had been growing anxious, but now that he saw the card that Betta chose to play, he was no longer worried. "I will call your bluff. You make a grand show, but you will not abandon your quest, not after coming so close to the end of it. You may not have the honor of a dwarf, but you would not disappoint your father's hope as easily as that."
"Fili!" Kili tried to warn him, but it was too late. Betta turned her back on them and walked away from the camp and out into the night.