Fic: An Inevitable Outcome
Jun. 8th, 2014 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityThis is why I try not to post WIPs. Because sometimes you get utterly taken over by Other Writing, and then...you know.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Were it not for the vomit, Sigrid feels she might be managing better. Dwarves almost never get sick, and their medical knowledge tends towards wound management as a result, but this latest batch of former refugees from the Blue Mountains had apparently picked something up on their trek, because they’d no sooner been settled into their temporary quarters than Thorin had been forced to quarantine them there. The stillroom dwarrowdams are more than ready for an onslaught of poisoned cuts and amputations, but in the face of an actual sickness, their qualifications run a bit short, and Sigrid finds herself much closer to the centre of things than she usually prefers to be.
“I’ve only just learned to find the place!” she says to Fili one evening during the short moments between the time when they both arrive home and the time when they both collapse, exhausted, into their bed. “I shouldn’t be taking charge.”
“There’s no one better suited than you, love,” Fili tells her. “We’re not used to this sort of thing.”
What he doesn’t say, either because he assumes she knows or because he’s too tired, is that as wife of the Crown Prince, she ought to be in charge anyway, newly married and comer to her station or no. Instead he wraps his arms around her, and they manage to get a few hours of sleep together before wading back into the crisis.
It takes several weeks, and almost two dozen deaths, before Sigrid manages to get all her new subjects on the road to recovery. She is not permitted to do the actual tending herself, because they’re not sure if Men can catch this illness, and in any case, she is too valuable to risk, but every dwarf who rises from a sickbed knows that it was their new Lady who had healed them. She had organized the kitchens and the healers and the guards, had made sure that families were kept together before and after they were sick, and brewed much of the healing teas and potions herself.
When they sing the twenty dead back to the stone, Sigrid stands beside her husband with tears in her eyes. The dwarves that died were mostly elderly, but their cost is felt: they had been some of those born in Erebor, who knew the Mountain before the dragon came, and who Thorin had meant to ask advice of when his own memory ran short. The dwarves mind their traditions as much as they can, but they stare at their lady as they do it. They had not known what to make of her, this Daughter of Men, come to the Mountain to marry their Prince, but they have already begun to love her.
When it is finished, Thorin clasps her shoulder and passes over a handkerchief with a sad smile.
“It was well done,” he says.
After, Fili assures her that it is as much praise as he has ever given anyone.
+++
Word of Sigrid’s pregnancy will spread quickly, Fili knows. His people appear stoic and reserved, to the easy view, but there is nothing that stirs them more quickly than news of a child. News of a child from the line of Durin will be even better.
Before it can get out of control, Fili asks his mother, brother and uncle to meet for breakfast. This happens frequently enough not to raise any suspicions, though Kili grumbles at the early rising, the Elves keep him up late, and Thorin bring Balin out of habit. Sigrid is pale as the dishes are laid, but by the time Dis has waved off the servers, she seems better. Apparently morning nausea is not uncommon for human women, though Fili had been a bit alarmed by how quickly Sigrid had fled their bed that morning.
“Kili, you look awful,” Thorin says, pouring himself tea and passing the pot to his sister.
“It’s that blasted elf-wine,” Kili replies. “You should be glad they don’t make you drink it before negotiations.”
“It can’t be that bad, laddie,” Balin says.
“It sneaks up on you,” Kili says, a bit defensively.
“Aye, an entire cask at a time!” Dis says. The older dwarves cackle, and Fili isn’t entirely sure how to break in and change the subject. Beside him, Sigrid coughs, and he turns, thinking she might be ill again, only to realize that she is clearing her throat.
“I’m with child,” she says, her light voice cutting through the dwarvish laughter. She had to practice, Fili knows, to make herself heard in the chaos of the kitchen and the sickrooms. She’s never used that voice with the family before.
Instantly, the table is silent. Balin’s spoon is half-way between the jam pot and his toast. Dis stops chewing mid-mouthful. Thorin is just frozen, his hands on either side of his plate, and Kili raises his head to stare at them. Sigrid grabs his hand under the table, and Fili squeezes tightly before any of them react.
“Sigrid, that is wonderful news!” Dis exclaims, getting up from her seat to come and hug them both.
Kili thumps his brother on the shoulder, and then leans across to kiss Sigrid on the cheek. Thorin waits, and then clasps both their hands when the way is clear. Balin grinning fit to burst, makes for the door, jamless toast clutched absently in one hand.
“I’ll get a raven,” he says. “One clever enough to speak to your father directly.”
“Lass, you don’t look entirely thrilled,” Dis says, once Balin is gone and they’ve all sat down again.
“I am,” Sigrid says. Fili can see the strain in her eyes, but isn’t sure anyone else would. “It’s only that...”
She trails off with a glance at Thorin, and Fili completely understands her hesitancy. Oin is one thing, a trained medical professional requires all the details. Thorin is so grave and so distant sometimes, King of the Mountain, that telling him everything would be rather uncomfortable.
“Kili, come with me,” Thorin says, snagging three more rashers of bacon and pulling Kili up by his shoulders.
“But – ” Kili protests, and then trips over his chair as his uncle manhandles him out of it.
As the door shuts behind them, Dis pours Sigrid a cup of tea, and takes her free hand. When Fili sees their hands together, one so broad and blunt, and one so fine – though both are equally callused – he feels another wave of the panic he had felt the night before. This is what Sigrid meant. It’s not just him she is narrower than. It is every dwarf.
“Oh, love,” Dis says. “Is this what took your mother?”
Sigrid can only nod.
“I assume Fili has told you that we will do whatever we can?” Dis asks. “Even if it puts us into debt with those wretched leaf eaters, Thorin will have it done.”
“Yes,” Sigrid says. “Though I do not think it will be so bad. My sister lived, after all.”
“But your mother did not,” Dis says, a little taken aback.
“No,” Sigrid confirms, “but so long as the heir is healthy, I understand that there might be certain difficult choices to make.”
Fili grips his mug hard enough to break it, except it is thick ceramic. Dis takes a deep breath, a distant look in her eyes, and Fili knows she is remembering the hard years before he was born, when the dwarves wandered and lost more of their kin than they gained. The dwarf princess takes Sigrid’s other hand.
“Our years of difficult choices are behind us, do you understand me?” she says. “Your people and mine both. We have suffered and known loss, but the dragon is dead and we will suffer no more. If our healers and the healers of Dale have not the art to help us, then we will find someone who can.”
Sigrid is clearly taken aback by her mother-in-law’s vehemence, and says nothing. Fili puts a hand on her shoulder, and kisses her cheek lightly. She leans into him.
“I told you, love,” he reminds her.
“I know,” she says. “I suppose sometimes I forget what we are.”
“I do too, lass,” Dis tells her. “I’ll wake up and wonder where I am because the bed is too comfortable, and because my room is almost as big as the house we lived in before the lads were born and Thorin had his halls in Ered Luin.”
She releases Sigrid’s hands, and leans forward to kiss the top of her head, something she can only do when Sigrid is sitting down. Then she takes her own seat again, and they eat while discussing the best way to tell everyone in the mountain.
“Not that they won’t all know it by lunch, even if we said nothing,” Dis points out. “But we should do something formal at some point.”
“There will be a party,” Fili tells her. “I have only the barest memories of the feast we had when Thorin announced that my brother would be born, but I do remember Gimli’s. It was something, and he was ninth in the line of succession.”
“That will be good for me, I think,” Sigrid says. “If everyone else is happy, it will help me to worry less.”
“Oh,” says Dis, “they will certainly be happy.”
This is, it turns out, something of an understatement.
+++
The morning of her wedding, Sigrid sweeps the doorstep of her father’s house in Dale. It is no grand tradition, this, only long habit. Despite all of the changes in the past five years, as her father moved into a grander house and hired staff to keep it for him, as those women tried in vain to keep her from such tasks, and as she learned to manage a city where before she had only managed her siblings, Sigrid has swept that door every day since her mother grew too heavy bearing Tilda to do it herself.
“You used to be shorter than the broom handle,” Bard says, coming to stand behind her. Usually he is already at his worktable by now, but the city council has declared a holiday and barred him from the premises to keep him at home.
“I know, Da,” she says. “I remember.”
“Your mother would be so proud of you,” he tells her.
“I miss her,” she says, turning to face him as she finishes her task.
“I know,” he says, folding her in his arms. “But I’m proud of you too.”
“I thought you didn’t like the marriage,” she says. “I mean, I know you like it politically, but I meant otherwise.”
“Oh, my darling,” he says, not letting her go. “It’s only that I never wanted your life to be ruled by politics.”
“I don’t mind,” she says. “Fili and I are well suited to one another.”
“I’d still rather you married for love,” he says.
“I might not be marrying for love, Da,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t find it.”
“Look at you,” he says, laughing. “All grown up and hopeful.”
“My father slayed a dragon, once,” she tells him, smiling back. “That makes it easy to hope.”
She doesn’t tell him any of her fears; that she doesn’t know how to be a wife, much less the wife of a dwarf who is also a prince. Fili has courted her so publicly that they never had the chance for intimate discussion. Now, she worries, it will be all intimacy with nothing discussed, though at the same time she knows her husband-to-be is a better man than that. She just wishes for her mother so desperately, in a way she hasn’t since Tilda was very small.
But she doesn’t tell him that either. She has not lived this long wishing for things she cannot have, and she won’t start on her wedding day. Instead, she hugs her father again, and follows him back into his house, for the last time it is also hers.
+++
The raven that is sent to Dale is a fine old bird that has mastered the tongues of Men and can deliver the message personally, rather than simply dropping a piece of parchment on the flagstones by the window. Sigrid is a bit sad that she will not see her father’s reaction to the news, but it is a mere matter of hours before Bard and Tilda arrive, the former smiling broadly and the latter hurling herself down from her pony and into her sister’s arms as soon as the party is through the gate.
“I am to stay until the baby comes, the raven said!” Tilda exclaims. Her voice has a natural ringing tone to it that Sigrid has yet to duplicate but has often wished for, and so everyone within a hundred yards hears her, even over the noise of the horses.
“Yes, Tilda,” she says. “I am aware.”
In accordance with the marriage contract, all of Sigrid’s ladies are dwarrowdams, but not even the most pedantic of the legal scholars would think to keep their queen-to-be’s sister from the Mountain while there is a babe on the way. Given the short notice, it’s not a terribly formal greeting party. Thorin, Kili and Balin are caught up with the Elves and unable to attend. It suits Tilda better, Sigrid thinks, though her sister still charms any dwarf who crosses her path. Her father is wise enough not to take insult; he too rules.
“Come on, then,” Sigrid tells her sister. “I’ll show you where you are to stay.”
The Man-sized quarters are currently full of elvish emissaries, but Tilda is not so tall that a regular suite would be uncomfortable. Sigrid is the taller of the two, and she manages well enough.
“Are you sure?” Dori had asked, quite put out that a visiting lady would be staying in ‘short quarters’.
“I am sure, Master Dori,” Sigrid had told him. “My sister will be fine, and I would rather have her closer to our rooms anyway.”
That logic had shut Dori up. The ambassadorial quarters were on the opposite side of the hall, mostly so that the ruling dwarves would never encounter their guests accidentally in the corridors. Dori had bowed, and bustled off to make the necessary arrangements.
While the sisters off ahead, Fili and Bard are left to make the long walk to the salon where Fili and Sigrid entertain their guests. It would have been awkward, once upon a time, but in all the years of the alliance between City and Mountain, Fili and Bard have taken each other’s measure, and their silence is almost companionable.
“Will you have to move to accommodate a nursery?” Bard asks when they are close. He doesn’t have to stoop in the corridors, but it is a near thing.
“No, my lord,” Fili says. “There are rooms next to ours that we can use. Balin is already working on the plans, and Gloin hopes to be cutting within the month, depending on how the negotiations with the elves go.”
“My lord?” Bard sounds amused, but when Fili looks up, he sees that the smile does not reach Bard’s eyes. “You’ve not called me that in years. You must be truly worried.”
Fili sighs, and opens the door to the salon so that Bard doesn’t have to bend to do it himself.
“I think dwarrowdams have an easier time of it,” he says. “Or at least they do now that we are back in the Mountain. I confess, I had not thought about the differences in how we are built.”
“I hadn’t either, to my shame,” Bard admits, sitting down by the fire. “What will you do?”
“Everything that I can,” Fili tells him. “Oin is very good, and has overseen the birth of nearly every dwarf badger born in Ered Luin since the fall of Erebor. If he cannot help us, then I will send ravens to the elves. Their healing craft is different from ours, and they may know things we do not. Beside, Thranduil’s people are already here, so we may not even need the birds.”
“If I may offer a suggestion,” Bard says, “it is said that Elrond of Rivendell is a great healer, perhaps the greatest of any Elf still in Middle Earth.”
“I have heard the same,” Fili says, “And he seemed more amused by us than put out when we stayed at Rivendell on our quest. I only worry that he might not come the distance.”
“We will ask him in any case,” Dis says from the doorway, Sigrid and Tilda behind her. “He is half-kin of Men too, and it is said that his children are also half-elven, even though their mother was born of Galadriel herself.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Sigrid says. “It is something a relief to know that I am not the first person to bear a child of mixed blood. If Lord Elrond would come, or even put his advice in a letter, that would a great help.”
“We will send to him, then,” Fili says, as Sigrid comes to sit beside him.
“Now if you don’t mind,” Tilda says. “I would like to know why the Elves are still here. Only, Kili said he would teach me to fletch arrows, and he’s been stuck in conferences with them for days.”
They talk until Thorin and Kili are able to join them, at which point it is too late for any lessons. The announcement feast has been somewhat hastily thrown together, but it is magnificent nonetheless, with enough dancing that Tilda falls asleep in her seat and Bard has to carry her back to her rooms. Sigrid takes that as her cue to leave too, and Fili makes his exit with them.
“I’m glad you came, Tilda,” Sigrid tells her sister as she tucks her into bed.
“You’ll be fine at mothering, Sig,” Tilda says, her voice mercifully quiet for once. Fili is just outside the door. “You took care of Bain and me for all those years, and you were only little then. Now you’re grown, and Da says you’re wise too.”
“You don’t think I’m wise?” Sigrid says, pinching the end of her sister’s nose.
Tilda giggles. “Of course not. You’re my sister.”
Sigrid kisses her sister good night, bids her father good-bye, and returns to her rooms with Fili. There is a package for her there, cloth wrapped cram in a basket. A note, written in common, says that it is from one of the kitchen dwarrowdams. A bite or two in the morning, before she even gets out bed, will help keep the nausea at bay.
“Provided the cram doesn’t nauseate you, of course,” Fili adds. He has no high opinion of the stuff, having been forced to eat it too many times.
Sigrid only smiles, and puts one of the hard cakes on the table beside her bed. By the time she has dressed for sleep and lies in her husband’s arms, she has nearly convinced herself that everything will be all right.
+++
Chapter 4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Were it not for the vomit, Sigrid feels she might be managing better. Dwarves almost never get sick, and their medical knowledge tends towards wound management as a result, but this latest batch of former refugees from the Blue Mountains had apparently picked something up on their trek, because they’d no sooner been settled into their temporary quarters than Thorin had been forced to quarantine them there. The stillroom dwarrowdams are more than ready for an onslaught of poisoned cuts and amputations, but in the face of an actual sickness, their qualifications run a bit short, and Sigrid finds herself much closer to the centre of things than she usually prefers to be.
“I’ve only just learned to find the place!” she says to Fili one evening during the short moments between the time when they both arrive home and the time when they both collapse, exhausted, into their bed. “I shouldn’t be taking charge.”
“There’s no one better suited than you, love,” Fili tells her. “We’re not used to this sort of thing.”
What he doesn’t say, either because he assumes she knows or because he’s too tired, is that as wife of the Crown Prince, she ought to be in charge anyway, newly married and comer to her station or no. Instead he wraps his arms around her, and they manage to get a few hours of sleep together before wading back into the crisis.
It takes several weeks, and almost two dozen deaths, before Sigrid manages to get all her new subjects on the road to recovery. She is not permitted to do the actual tending herself, because they’re not sure if Men can catch this illness, and in any case, she is too valuable to risk, but every dwarf who rises from a sickbed knows that it was their new Lady who had healed them. She had organized the kitchens and the healers and the guards, had made sure that families were kept together before and after they were sick, and brewed much of the healing teas and potions herself.
When they sing the twenty dead back to the stone, Sigrid stands beside her husband with tears in her eyes. The dwarves that died were mostly elderly, but their cost is felt: they had been some of those born in Erebor, who knew the Mountain before the dragon came, and who Thorin had meant to ask advice of when his own memory ran short. The dwarves mind their traditions as much as they can, but they stare at their lady as they do it. They had not known what to make of her, this Daughter of Men, come to the Mountain to marry their Prince, but they have already begun to love her.
When it is finished, Thorin clasps her shoulder and passes over a handkerchief with a sad smile.
“It was well done,” he says.
After, Fili assures her that it is as much praise as he has ever given anyone.
+++
Word of Sigrid’s pregnancy will spread quickly, Fili knows. His people appear stoic and reserved, to the easy view, but there is nothing that stirs them more quickly than news of a child. News of a child from the line of Durin will be even better.
Before it can get out of control, Fili asks his mother, brother and uncle to meet for breakfast. This happens frequently enough not to raise any suspicions, though Kili grumbles at the early rising, the Elves keep him up late, and Thorin bring Balin out of habit. Sigrid is pale as the dishes are laid, but by the time Dis has waved off the servers, she seems better. Apparently morning nausea is not uncommon for human women, though Fili had been a bit alarmed by how quickly Sigrid had fled their bed that morning.
“Kili, you look awful,” Thorin says, pouring himself tea and passing the pot to his sister.
“It’s that blasted elf-wine,” Kili replies. “You should be glad they don’t make you drink it before negotiations.”
“It can’t be that bad, laddie,” Balin says.
“It sneaks up on you,” Kili says, a bit defensively.
“Aye, an entire cask at a time!” Dis says. The older dwarves cackle, and Fili isn’t entirely sure how to break in and change the subject. Beside him, Sigrid coughs, and he turns, thinking she might be ill again, only to realize that she is clearing her throat.
“I’m with child,” she says, her light voice cutting through the dwarvish laughter. She had to practice, Fili knows, to make herself heard in the chaos of the kitchen and the sickrooms. She’s never used that voice with the family before.
Instantly, the table is silent. Balin’s spoon is half-way between the jam pot and his toast. Dis stops chewing mid-mouthful. Thorin is just frozen, his hands on either side of his plate, and Kili raises his head to stare at them. Sigrid grabs his hand under the table, and Fili squeezes tightly before any of them react.
“Sigrid, that is wonderful news!” Dis exclaims, getting up from her seat to come and hug them both.
Kili thumps his brother on the shoulder, and then leans across to kiss Sigrid on the cheek. Thorin waits, and then clasps both their hands when the way is clear. Balin grinning fit to burst, makes for the door, jamless toast clutched absently in one hand.
“I’ll get a raven,” he says. “One clever enough to speak to your father directly.”
“Lass, you don’t look entirely thrilled,” Dis says, once Balin is gone and they’ve all sat down again.
“I am,” Sigrid says. Fili can see the strain in her eyes, but isn’t sure anyone else would. “It’s only that...”
She trails off with a glance at Thorin, and Fili completely understands her hesitancy. Oin is one thing, a trained medical professional requires all the details. Thorin is so grave and so distant sometimes, King of the Mountain, that telling him everything would be rather uncomfortable.
“Kili, come with me,” Thorin says, snagging three more rashers of bacon and pulling Kili up by his shoulders.
“But – ” Kili protests, and then trips over his chair as his uncle manhandles him out of it.
As the door shuts behind them, Dis pours Sigrid a cup of tea, and takes her free hand. When Fili sees their hands together, one so broad and blunt, and one so fine – though both are equally callused – he feels another wave of the panic he had felt the night before. This is what Sigrid meant. It’s not just him she is narrower than. It is every dwarf.
“Oh, love,” Dis says. “Is this what took your mother?”
Sigrid can only nod.
“I assume Fili has told you that we will do whatever we can?” Dis asks. “Even if it puts us into debt with those wretched leaf eaters, Thorin will have it done.”
“Yes,” Sigrid says. “Though I do not think it will be so bad. My sister lived, after all.”
“But your mother did not,” Dis says, a little taken aback.
“No,” Sigrid confirms, “but so long as the heir is healthy, I understand that there might be certain difficult choices to make.”
Fili grips his mug hard enough to break it, except it is thick ceramic. Dis takes a deep breath, a distant look in her eyes, and Fili knows she is remembering the hard years before he was born, when the dwarves wandered and lost more of their kin than they gained. The dwarf princess takes Sigrid’s other hand.
“Our years of difficult choices are behind us, do you understand me?” she says. “Your people and mine both. We have suffered and known loss, but the dragon is dead and we will suffer no more. If our healers and the healers of Dale have not the art to help us, then we will find someone who can.”
Sigrid is clearly taken aback by her mother-in-law’s vehemence, and says nothing. Fili puts a hand on her shoulder, and kisses her cheek lightly. She leans into him.
“I told you, love,” he reminds her.
“I know,” she says. “I suppose sometimes I forget what we are.”
“I do too, lass,” Dis tells her. “I’ll wake up and wonder where I am because the bed is too comfortable, and because my room is almost as big as the house we lived in before the lads were born and Thorin had his halls in Ered Luin.”
She releases Sigrid’s hands, and leans forward to kiss the top of her head, something she can only do when Sigrid is sitting down. Then she takes her own seat again, and they eat while discussing the best way to tell everyone in the mountain.
“Not that they won’t all know it by lunch, even if we said nothing,” Dis points out. “But we should do something formal at some point.”
“There will be a party,” Fili tells her. “I have only the barest memories of the feast we had when Thorin announced that my brother would be born, but I do remember Gimli’s. It was something, and he was ninth in the line of succession.”
“That will be good for me, I think,” Sigrid says. “If everyone else is happy, it will help me to worry less.”
“Oh,” says Dis, “they will certainly be happy.”
This is, it turns out, something of an understatement.
+++
The morning of her wedding, Sigrid sweeps the doorstep of her father’s house in Dale. It is no grand tradition, this, only long habit. Despite all of the changes in the past five years, as her father moved into a grander house and hired staff to keep it for him, as those women tried in vain to keep her from such tasks, and as she learned to manage a city where before she had only managed her siblings, Sigrid has swept that door every day since her mother grew too heavy bearing Tilda to do it herself.
“You used to be shorter than the broom handle,” Bard says, coming to stand behind her. Usually he is already at his worktable by now, but the city council has declared a holiday and barred him from the premises to keep him at home.
“I know, Da,” she says. “I remember.”
“Your mother would be so proud of you,” he tells her.
“I miss her,” she says, turning to face him as she finishes her task.
“I know,” he says, folding her in his arms. “But I’m proud of you too.”
“I thought you didn’t like the marriage,” she says. “I mean, I know you like it politically, but I meant otherwise.”
“Oh, my darling,” he says, not letting her go. “It’s only that I never wanted your life to be ruled by politics.”
“I don’t mind,” she says. “Fili and I are well suited to one another.”
“I’d still rather you married for love,” he says.
“I might not be marrying for love, Da,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t find it.”
“Look at you,” he says, laughing. “All grown up and hopeful.”
“My father slayed a dragon, once,” she tells him, smiling back. “That makes it easy to hope.”
She doesn’t tell him any of her fears; that she doesn’t know how to be a wife, much less the wife of a dwarf who is also a prince. Fili has courted her so publicly that they never had the chance for intimate discussion. Now, she worries, it will be all intimacy with nothing discussed, though at the same time she knows her husband-to-be is a better man than that. She just wishes for her mother so desperately, in a way she hasn’t since Tilda was very small.
But she doesn’t tell him that either. She has not lived this long wishing for things she cannot have, and she won’t start on her wedding day. Instead, she hugs her father again, and follows him back into his house, for the last time it is also hers.
+++
The raven that is sent to Dale is a fine old bird that has mastered the tongues of Men and can deliver the message personally, rather than simply dropping a piece of parchment on the flagstones by the window. Sigrid is a bit sad that she will not see her father’s reaction to the news, but it is a mere matter of hours before Bard and Tilda arrive, the former smiling broadly and the latter hurling herself down from her pony and into her sister’s arms as soon as the party is through the gate.
“I am to stay until the baby comes, the raven said!” Tilda exclaims. Her voice has a natural ringing tone to it that Sigrid has yet to duplicate but has often wished for, and so everyone within a hundred yards hears her, even over the noise of the horses.
“Yes, Tilda,” she says. “I am aware.”
In accordance with the marriage contract, all of Sigrid’s ladies are dwarrowdams, but not even the most pedantic of the legal scholars would think to keep their queen-to-be’s sister from the Mountain while there is a babe on the way. Given the short notice, it’s not a terribly formal greeting party. Thorin, Kili and Balin are caught up with the Elves and unable to attend. It suits Tilda better, Sigrid thinks, though her sister still charms any dwarf who crosses her path. Her father is wise enough not to take insult; he too rules.
“Come on, then,” Sigrid tells her sister. “I’ll show you where you are to stay.”
The Man-sized quarters are currently full of elvish emissaries, but Tilda is not so tall that a regular suite would be uncomfortable. Sigrid is the taller of the two, and she manages well enough.
“Are you sure?” Dori had asked, quite put out that a visiting lady would be staying in ‘short quarters’.
“I am sure, Master Dori,” Sigrid had told him. “My sister will be fine, and I would rather have her closer to our rooms anyway.”
That logic had shut Dori up. The ambassadorial quarters were on the opposite side of the hall, mostly so that the ruling dwarves would never encounter their guests accidentally in the corridors. Dori had bowed, and bustled off to make the necessary arrangements.
While the sisters off ahead, Fili and Bard are left to make the long walk to the salon where Fili and Sigrid entertain their guests. It would have been awkward, once upon a time, but in all the years of the alliance between City and Mountain, Fili and Bard have taken each other’s measure, and their silence is almost companionable.
“Will you have to move to accommodate a nursery?” Bard asks when they are close. He doesn’t have to stoop in the corridors, but it is a near thing.
“No, my lord,” Fili says. “There are rooms next to ours that we can use. Balin is already working on the plans, and Gloin hopes to be cutting within the month, depending on how the negotiations with the elves go.”
“My lord?” Bard sounds amused, but when Fili looks up, he sees that the smile does not reach Bard’s eyes. “You’ve not called me that in years. You must be truly worried.”
Fili sighs, and opens the door to the salon so that Bard doesn’t have to bend to do it himself.
“I think dwarrowdams have an easier time of it,” he says. “Or at least they do now that we are back in the Mountain. I confess, I had not thought about the differences in how we are built.”
“I hadn’t either, to my shame,” Bard admits, sitting down by the fire. “What will you do?”
“Everything that I can,” Fili tells him. “Oin is very good, and has overseen the birth of nearly every dwarf badger born in Ered Luin since the fall of Erebor. If he cannot help us, then I will send ravens to the elves. Their healing craft is different from ours, and they may know things we do not. Beside, Thranduil’s people are already here, so we may not even need the birds.”
“If I may offer a suggestion,” Bard says, “it is said that Elrond of Rivendell is a great healer, perhaps the greatest of any Elf still in Middle Earth.”
“I have heard the same,” Fili says, “And he seemed more amused by us than put out when we stayed at Rivendell on our quest. I only worry that he might not come the distance.”
“We will ask him in any case,” Dis says from the doorway, Sigrid and Tilda behind her. “He is half-kin of Men too, and it is said that his children are also half-elven, even though their mother was born of Galadriel herself.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Sigrid says. “It is something a relief to know that I am not the first person to bear a child of mixed blood. If Lord Elrond would come, or even put his advice in a letter, that would a great help.”
“We will send to him, then,” Fili says, as Sigrid comes to sit beside him.
“Now if you don’t mind,” Tilda says. “I would like to know why the Elves are still here. Only, Kili said he would teach me to fletch arrows, and he’s been stuck in conferences with them for days.”
They talk until Thorin and Kili are able to join them, at which point it is too late for any lessons. The announcement feast has been somewhat hastily thrown together, but it is magnificent nonetheless, with enough dancing that Tilda falls asleep in her seat and Bard has to carry her back to her rooms. Sigrid takes that as her cue to leave too, and Fili makes his exit with them.
“I’m glad you came, Tilda,” Sigrid tells her sister as she tucks her into bed.
“You’ll be fine at mothering, Sig,” Tilda says, her voice mercifully quiet for once. Fili is just outside the door. “You took care of Bain and me for all those years, and you were only little then. Now you’re grown, and Da says you’re wise too.”
“You don’t think I’m wise?” Sigrid says, pinching the end of her sister’s nose.
Tilda giggles. “Of course not. You’re my sister.”
Sigrid kisses her sister good night, bids her father good-bye, and returns to her rooms with Fili. There is a package for her there, cloth wrapped cram in a basket. A note, written in common, says that it is from one of the kitchen dwarrowdams. A bite or two in the morning, before she even gets out bed, will help keep the nausea at bay.
“Provided the cram doesn’t nauseate you, of course,” Fili adds. He has no high opinion of the stuff, having been forced to eat it too many times.
Sigrid only smiles, and puts one of the hard cakes on the table beside her bed. By the time she has dressed for sleep and lies in her husband’s arms, she has nearly convinced herself that everything will be all right.
+++
Chapter 4
