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Sigrid wakes up to yelling in the smallest, coldest hours of the night. She's reaching for Tilda and Bain before her eyes are all the way open; Bain shaking off her hand to pull away, to get between them and whatever's there. Someone is screaming, and something's falling, and it echoes against all these stone walls in a way things never did on the lake, and it takes too long to tell where things are coming from.
When they push outside, it isn't monsters. It's part of the old inn building, fallen in on itself. Something must have broken during the battle - It's crumbling now. Things are still shaky, smaller pieces of stone, or rotted wood, falling when people try to dig into where the wall fell.
Somebody's in there, maybe more than one, and Sigrid knows that dress that's sticking out, with just the end of a red shawl. Holding Tilda back from the danger means that Sigrid doesn't see the rest of Faleena's body when they pull the piece of wall away.
Too much of the city got knocked around by the trolls, Bain says. Da says yes, maybe they can ask the dwarves to look at it in the morning, at least tell them which of the buildings are safe.
The hearth fire in the inn-building caught some of the debris that fell, and there are embers glowing in between where people are digging. Tilda is shivering and heavy in Sigrid's arms. It's almost winter. If they can't sleep in any of the houses-
One of the elves is talking to Da, and some of the others are at the wall, and at least one of them is a healer, from the glow like Tauriel's hands.
Tilda pushes her face into Sigrid's front with a frustrated sniffling noise, like she used to make when she was younger, and part of Sigirid wants to cry too. In the dark, between all the milling people, Da is distracted, worried, trying to do too much. Sigrid won't add to that, and there's no more space around the inn to help out. She hefts Tilda higher on her hip, and goes with the elves.
In the elf camp people are shuffling apart to wherever they fit, wherever there's room. Some of the elves move to help. Some look at them strangely. Maybe they look strange. Maybe the elves just wanted a whole night's sleep too.
It's not a sleeping tent, where they end up. Da and the Elvenking and the wizard had meetings in it, and it mustn't have had bedrolls in it then. But it's warm, inside, warmer than their house was, and Sigrid doesn't know how that's possible. It makes Tilda happier, or at least sleepier, because the grizzling stops and she's just watching and holding onto Sigrid's blouse.
The Elvenking tucking them in sounds like a joke. Sigrid pinches herself, just a little, because up close he doesn't seem any more possible than a tent warmer than a house. He's perfect like something made up in a story, prettier than Lola or poor Faleena or any of the girls in Laketown, not even like the elves that came to the house. He was in armour, before, on his giant deer with Da riding next to him, and he seems good, but he doesn't seem safe. Sigrid doesn't let go of Tilda.
He gives them a robe, like his, not really a dress but more than a wrap. It's big enough to cover the two of them together, easily. There might be more fabric in it than in the quilt on their bed at home, and Sigrid doesn't know what fabric it is, or what it's made of. Are there threads of metal? She doesn't know what else would shine.
It's heavy, not dragging but grounding, and so warm, Tilda quivers all over and rubs her face on it and the Elvenking laughs.
"A fitting raiment for the princesses of Dale."
What?
It stops Sigrid in her tracks, but not Tilda. "Does that mean Da will be king?"
"I think it very likely, do you not? He has been a leader to your people. He is Girion's heir. And Dale will need a king."
"Da will hate it." Oh lord, he will, he really will.
The Elvenking's face went distant then, at his eyes. "Many kings do, especially at the first. But you and he will find there are benefits to the position as well."
"Like blankets." Tilda sounds utterly certain.
"Like blankets. And the ability to act. And to protect. To benefit your people."
He goes, then, leaving them in this tent with beautiful fabrics, impossible warmth, a tiny crystal lamp that shines without any oil. Sigrid holds onto Tilda's hand as they lie down together. Da being king- It sounds like a trick, but there's so much to do, and anything that would let them do it....
Sigrid sleeps through all three camps stirring, through the morning cookpots starting, through Dain's dwarves dispersing through the city, testing the integrity of the battered walls. It's her longest stretch of sleep since before the dwarves came to the lake. She wakes with the sun high overhead, Tilda curled up on the pallet beside her head, patting her hair. Sigrid reaches up, and feels an unfamiliar flower tucked inside her plait. When she hugs Tilda, her sister clutches back just as tight.
The day is half-done, the work as much and more than before, but Sigrid is ready to meet it. Whatever Da is going to be, they're going to be there with him.