4.
. . .
Prince Loki left the empty plates aside to be taken later, his arms crossed atop the smooth marble of his open window and the long black hair across his brow catching the gentle evening breeze. He knew if he waited and watched a little longer, he'd see Thor finally give in to all his urges and stride out from the palace gates down into the city streets. Loki hadn't decided yet if he'd stalk him. He could, some nights, not only to keep watch over his brother when he'd got his nose set just so, but to see if he would continue to go uncaught at it. Thor was a good tracker and field soldier in his own right already, and Loki had more than a few close scrapes playing his little games in Thor's taller shadow. It kept his own skills sharper yet.
But he also had his suspicions about what sort of comfort Thor might choose to seek in the city tonight, not only ale and the company of his warrior friends in the nearby taverns, but warmer company yet, and there were certain things his brother did that Loki didn't take much pleasure in overhearing.
Certainly Loki would pitch nine hells worth of a fit if he'd caught Thor doing the same to him, so he couldn't lay claim to much hypocrisy in that regard. He knuckled his hand, resting his chin atop it, and considered the growing threat of the enemy sorceress. Nornheim, her current and previous target, was already a 'realm,' inasmuch as it counted as one of the Nine. But unlike Alfheim and Vanaheim, it didn't hold its own leadership on Odin's council. And as a part of it touched upon Asgard itself, its visible boundary but miles away and across a line of rivers and fields, it was often regarded as more of a strong fiefdom than a semi-independent realm.
Karnilla wanted more than that. She wanted to give it a Queen, make of it not just the place where seers slept and prophecies gathered, but a true realm of magic, one that could devour what even the Elves were capable of. What Vanaheim's gentler healers and sorceresses could be - where Karnilla herself had been born, he'd been told.
Some of that seemed logical. Understandable, even. Magic in the Nine long held a shaky and untrustworthy place. Loki knew that deeply, personally. And that uneasiness drew allies to Karnilla almost effortlessly, people that wanted a place to simply exist without being hated.
That was where Frigga's empathy had helped stop the last war. It had been her effort to bring magic back into the daylight, make it not something to mindlessly fear. Married a prince destined to be king, and brought her healers to the palace to tend not only her own family, but anyone in the realm that needed it and could call for aid. Magic was more normal now, wed to the almost invisible technologies that grew stronger yet under the family's care. But it was also still easily feared, and in the crack of those doubts, Karnilla grew powerful again.
Karnilla liked to be feared, however. That was where her own flaws started. The first sign that what she considered a realm of magic, was also destined to be a realm of subtle darknesses.
Loki frowned, almost missing the shadow in the gardens far below. There he was. Thor slipped from the dark lee of one tree to another, making his way towards the gate where he'd be home free. Odin's personal word might keep him inside, but the guards at the front would do what the prince told them. He considered one more time. Follow, or let him be?
He leaned back in his little chaise that was formed around the inside of that stone ledge, then chose. A rustle at the door, almost on cue, and with a flick of his hand he allowed one of the palace staff to take the remnants of his dinner away. He remained still, watching the shadow disappear into the city and then from his view.
When Thor was gone, Loki wondered if he might not slip out for similar reasons of his own. Then he decided against it. There was a new treatise he'd found on layering visual illusions with the other senses. That struck him as more soothing to his mind, at least for now. He would try to not think too much on Odin's casual dismissal of him, another ordinary moment in an extraordinary family.
He slept there, leaned against the balcony, the book under his hand. And when he dreamed, he dreamed of kings.
. . .
Dressed and masked as the All-Father, Loki glowered at the crowd arranged in the greater hall of the palace, an expression that fit old Odin perfectly and was, for once, an honest expression of what he himself felt underneath. Eirund held forth at the far end of the banquet in a gaggle of his friends and allies, and Loki noted who he suspected was genuine and who was merely some sycophant looking for a come-up on whatever they sensed in the eager young man. Usually he could tell just by the laughter, that undertone of bell-like earnestness, that clank of a forced chuckle. The high chair he sat in kept him too far away to hear properly.
He chuckled through his false beard at the bitter joke hidden in that, a sound kept to himself by virtue of that same disconnect between him and the noble crowd.
Regardless, Eirund's nonsense wasn't the entire reason for why he found the gleaming elegance of the grand banquet so dull and unappealing that eve. He tracked the source of his worming gut around the far ring of the room, the visiting Prince Thor draped in a soft red cloak with Sif trailing not far behind, the prince making all feel welcome under the soft drape of the castle's banners.
Watching his brother kneel before him didn't grant pleasure any longer. Instead he found his fingers gnarling and plucking at the carved edges of his seat, an old man's fussiness and constant discomfort. That weakness sold the illusion better than he could have ever prayed, even as his paranoia grew that Thor would look up and somehow see his eyes behind Odin's tired one.
Loki watched Thor make his way towards that irritating little gaggle, the laughter growing louder as fresh goblets were passed around by the staff at a beckon and a command. The sight of Eirund, bright and full of life, and confident in his plans began to infuriate him. There was selfishness running all through the lord's petty play, and abruptly another crack of bitter laughter filtered through his beard at his thoughts. Loud enough that one of the men serving the table stole a glance at him, worried.
Irony, all of it. Irony that he sat there in judgement over a small and selfish man, irony that he had stolen what he thought he wanted, and now all they saw was an old man that once could have said he had everything. Before Loki had taken it all and turned it into nothing.
Weariness stole over him, the sound of the night's festivity rattling through the halls becoming a distant echo, like the whisper of pages in a decaying book. Loki wasn't sure if he was actually wearing an illusion anymore. He looked down at his old and gnarled hands, unconvinced either way at first.
Then he wondered if perhaps he was indeed as dead as he'd tried to become so many times, and he was the ghost here. The haunts he thought he saw when the hours trailed on too late, slipping through from a finer reality where they still danced and lived and laughed, and he was trapped in the dark just out of reach and haunting them instead.
Under the beard, he licked his lips and then grit his teeth, pulling himself back together into the now. Fighting to remember that he was Loki, victorious on his throne, not Odin, not dead. It would not do to go mad again. Particularly not in the middle of a feast, where lords waited for his decisions.
Motion caught his eye, that fine red cloak on the approach back towards him, and he let his hands wring together, fussy, but not quite like the way he once picked and plucked. Mother's habit, living on within him.
Thor dropped into a chair nearby, close enough that the two could speak casually, as family might. "Eirund's a bit of a twit, isn't he," he said, low enough to cut any of the staff out of hearing.
'Odin' rolled his one good eye over to the prince, grim and barely amused. "A twit with delusions of much more. Wearisome antics."
"Mm." Thor turned to look at the gaggle, grinning and lifting his goblet to Eirund as if he weren't just shit-talking him behind his back. "There's something odd about him. Never used to come 'round the palace so much, he was better with his horses. I know I'm not around as much, but I don't feel that's changed. Now he's, what, looking towards the builders and architects we have in the south of the city. What's he playing at, Father?"
The king looked away, annoyed and burying everything else he felt down deep. A morass of confusion left behind, a desire of some kind whose shape Loki didn't want to know. "He's attempting to unsnarl some little issue of his."
"Usually leads to a bigger snarl than what he started with, going round with a smirking face like that."
True enough. 'Odin' went on to grudgingly tell Thor what was going on, the broad strokes at least, and not hinting too closely at how he'd found some of his information. No surprise threat waiting for him there, a king was expected to know much and from many sources. Loki hated the talking, the comfort he found in it. His fingers itched and wanted to peel at each other.
Thor's brow furrowed in, his disappointment plain. "Small and petty. I'd expect better from one of our lords."
"Small and petty and effective. It's very simple to give him what he wants and wash my hands of it, but is that fair?" 'Odin' snorted. "Not to the young couple, I think, knowing what I know and what Eirund knows. But that is what the papers suggest ought to be done, and the advisors, and the books of old. The law, young prince, is on the bastard's side."
"Must law stand as the unbroken rule when the law is known to the judge to be unfair?" Thor frowned, watching the gaggle flow and consume more of the merriment at the far side of the room. "That's when kings must come in, I think. The books might say one thing, but a living mind should say another."
'Odin' snorted, irritated to his bones and unable to do anything but admit even to himself that what Thor said was true. "The little lordling won't like anything but the good law, however."
"To Hel with him. He knows what he's playing at, and he ought to damn well know the stakes. He built himself up on unstable ground. We do not do arranged marriages in Asgard any longer, and the girl was young when she accepted his cousin's hand. Things change. Life changes us." Thor shrugged it off. "The land is hers, and the warrior is hers, and the cousin is not, and Eirund can suck on the arse of a unhealthy bilgesnipe for all I care of him. The 'law,' such as it may be worded here, would be unfair to her most of all. She has not been given a chance to defend herself, nor even know she is under assault."
'Odin' leaned back, silent and contemplative at first. "And still, the boy lord would rage. At us, at his cousin's lost maid, at the failure of his ploy. Such things come to fester, in time. They make sane men into maddened enemy." Reality doubled in front of his face. He shook his head once, sharp.
"The responsibility for his actions will then lay on him and no one else." Thor arched an eyebrow. "I make a suggestion. Offer him a gift, Father, an assessment of the land so that there could be a different reparation made to him for the sake of the lady's future. And when he politely refuses, because he will be a coward who won't want his game brought to light, shrug and give him a scrap of some finery that might shut him up and send him on his way. As for the girl? Assess the land anyway to ward her against further exploitation, and grant her a fine hall for her marriage ceremony."
How simple was that? Crude, cutting through the heart of the legal issues Eirund hid himself behind, but fair, and plain enough to gleam transparent under the light. Loki's hands wrapped around the edges of his chair, the knuckles going cold and bone white. Hate suffused him, mindless fury, burning agony, the realization that the best solution here truly was that simple. No grand riddle and its solution was required from him. The answer he needed came easily from without, from a brother that he could once rely on to be a fool, if a well-meaning one.
Thor noted his silence, looking at him with the careful concern the young often gave the old. "Father?"
Air rattled into his throat. For a moment, the temptation was alive before his eyes like a physical thing. Let Eirund have his way, dash them all, let an old king's bitterness ruin yet more lives. Odin himself had done so more than once, when he forgot or was too angry to be fair.
But that was not the king he had wanted to be, once. The air stuck fast in Loki's throat, threatening to choke him. What was he instead?
Loki forced the air back out from behind his teeth, wrestling it into words, letting the ghosts speak them for him instead. "That… is interesting advice. It is a bit simple, young Thor, but there is brute wisdom behind it." Trying to not shake, he lifted himself out of the heavy chair, waving off Thor's offer of a helping hand while trying to not bray in wild laughter at the thought that he might need such support. Knowing and hating that he did. He stood, not quite quivering, the drape of heavy robes making the king look as stoic as ever. "I will give them my word on the morrow, and it may well be that my word will bear no small resemblance to yours."
"Of course, Father. Do you want company to your quarters?"
"No." He said it gruffly, hiding the bile. The single word was perfectly Odin's. "I am only weary. Let them enjoy their revels for now, Thor. I leave the hall to your care this night."
"Rest well, Father." Thor bowed low as he left, and Loki tried to not laugh and careen into the walls as he left at the sight of the act, the young prince centered regally in the golden hall. Right where he was supposed to be.