Daughter of Starlight

Chapter Twenty Eight: No Place for an Elf

Dwalin was beyond gruff when I woke him up mid snore, but as soon as he heard what I had to say, he went to find Thorin. Soon after that, Thorin had called us all to the front gate. The groggy dwarves were still rubbing their eyes when they arrived, but none of us were going to get any more sleep tonight, because Thorin took one look at Dale and ordered us to barricade the gate. I felt myself about to burst with protests when he told us, but a stern look from Balin made me hold my tongue. Instead of shouting at Thorin, I resorted to angrily jerking around the wheelbarrow I was pushing, almost knocking over Bilbo as he struggled to heft a large rock into it.

"Sorry," I said, taking the rock from him and putting it in the wheelbarrow. "Let's switch."

And so, however reluctanly, we set to helping the rest of the company build up the wall that would barricade us inside the mountain. But we shouldn't have. This wasn't what we were supposed to be doing. The people of Lake-town were here for one reason, to claim the reward that Thorin had promised them, but I knew that they would not receive any reward, just as I had not received what was promised to me. Thinking about how they were being denied their fair share of Thrór's treasure angered me almost as much as being denied my own. We soon found out, however, that I wasn't the only one who had a problem with what Thorin was making us do.

"I want this fortress made safe by sunup," he was saying as he watched us work. "This mountain was hard won. I will not see it taken again."

At those words, it was not I who finally spoke my mind, but Kili.

"The people of Lake-town have nothing," he said, dropping the side of the wheelbarrow he had lifted to help Bilbo. "They came to us in need. They have lost everything." He hid his irritation well, and his voice was earnest, trying to make Thorin see that what we were doing was unnecessary.

"Do not tell me what they have lost," Thorin told his nephew coldly, earning stares from me and many others. "I know well enough their hardship."

He turned away from us to look at Dale once more.

"Those who have lived through dragonfire should rejoice," he said. "They have much to be grateful for." His voice was patronizing, and it grated at my ears. I wanted nothing more than to throw a rock at his head and knock some sense into him.

Thorin quickly grew impatient with us and began helping us build up the wall.

"More stone," he said, lifting a large boulder and putting it in its place in the wall. "Bring more stone to the gate!"

"More stone," I muttered along with a stream of quiet elvish profanities as I left Bilbo with Kili to get more stones. What my ears picked up while I was getting more, though, made my stomach clench in embarrassment.

"Oin?" Kili asked the elder dwarf.

"Aye, lad?"

"Do you know where I found Laerornien just before this?"

"Where?"

"Up there." I guessed that he had pointed where I had gone. "She was about to throw herself from the ramparts."

"What?" That was Bilbo's shocked voice. If Kili kept this up, the entire company would know about it by the end of the night. "Why would she do that?"

"I don't know," Kili told him. "I think there's something wrong with her. Is she sick?" he asked Oin.

"The only sickness that burdens that girl is her conscience, and I'm afraid I don't have any remedy for an ailment of that sort," he told them, his tone grim. "She must come to terms with whatever haunts her so by herself."