XXVIII
The following afternoon, Jane was fully absorbed in stellar data and her fledgling tunneling algorithm when Loki returned. It took her a few moments before she looked up, startled to see him standing there, staring at her in moody silence. He was so often such a peacock that he couldn't stand to make a quiet entrance; he always made a clatter at the door, or immediately tossed out some remark or quip to get her attention. Unease ran its chilly fingers down Jane's back. Unconscious of the action, she laid her good hand over her wounded arm.
Mindful of her questions as she was making a concerted effort to be, she said, "Something's wrong."
A sneer showed the sharp edges of his teeth, but he answered her. "Yes. We have been summoned," he spat. "And though it has been framed as a wish for the king and his court to honor the service you have done them, it is a summons I do not believe we can refuse."
"Um," Jane swallowed, "I'm not sure I'm ready for that. I've only just gotten some feeling back into this thing," now she patted her arm, wincing when a buzzing hum like stinging hornets met her touch, "I really don't want to set things back by freezing it again."
"And I share your concern. Indeed, I told none of the true pace of your recovery in order to forestall this eventuality. However, walls of every castle have ears. And our presence here has dragged on longer than the Jotuns had planned for, and they see no forward momentum to account for it. This is an excuse to provide Laufey with the chance to inspect our work; to see that we are up to no tricks. This is why I told you we cannot refuse it. Rather, we could, but to do so would be a foolish and ultimately pointless gesture."
"Okay," she said, slowly, saving her data and switching off the tablet, moving deliberately so she could give herself more time to think. "Tell me how this is going to go."
"The King knows you are not capable of lasting long outside this refuge, even with the assistance of my magic, which he has given me leave to work on your behalf," Loki said, pacing restlessly from one side of the room to the other. Every time he turned, his fur-edged cape brushed against Jane's legs; she tucked them up and away as the soft fabric tickled her bare shins.
"However, he has gathered his court from the far reaches of Jotunheim to honor you, and such an assembly requires a show. There will be a procession, some speeches, and a toast in your honor—which you will not drink as Jotun ale would kill you instantly—and then we will be allowed to withdraw. In the meantime," he grimaced again, fury harsh in each line of his face, "I am certain several of their sorcerers will be pawing through our data, trying to discern if we are up to something."
Jane was inured to seeing Loki angry. It was seeing him upset, anxious, or downright worried that raised the same emotions in her. Nevertheless, she tamped down on the fear and tried to think. "Then we should give them our data in advance. Prove that we're still doing exactly what we said we were. I've only been awake and capable of working for a few days; they have to understand that. Maybe there's someone here who could even help us interpret the data. We could use all the help we can get."
"Doubtful," he scoffed, "I am in no hurry to give the Jotuns ideas about how to move freely through Yggdrasil. Though it is doubtful they could make sense of it at all. Midgardian science is backwards enough; these people have never even aspired to your lowly heights of technological innovation."
"Hey," she shook her tablet at him, "Don't forget that 'lowly Midgardian science' has gotten you this far. If there's one flaw all you Odin-kids have, it's that you underestimate us."
"Ah, yes. What good did that do your world, exactly?"
She took a deep breath, held it for a five count, and let it out slowly. He was worried and lashing out; she wouldn't sink to his level. Especially when he was worried on her account. It was even a little sweet, if you could call anything Loki did as simple and straightforward as 'sweet'.
"Fine. So we don't consult with the Jotuns. They won't find any schemes in our files, so what's the harm in letting them look?"
"Perhaps there is none," he conceded, though his reluctance had, she assumed, less to do with her compulsion than his anger at being outmaneuvered by the Frost Giants, "Only I resent their methods. Putting your health in danger is hardly fit reward for all the services you have done them."
"It's fine," she said, though personally she doubted it really was. The mere thought of stepping out into Jotunheim's barren air made her skin prickle and her heart drop like a frozen stone to the bottom of an iced-over lake. "We'll do this thing, they'll get their proof, and then we'll be done with it all. Besides," she levered herself upright, wincing as her back twinged, "in a way, they are our allies, and we're probably going to need their help to overthrow Odin. It won't hurt to stay on good terms with them."
"What a strategist you have become," his tone was not admiring, "I hardly know whose influence to thank for that: Darcy's, mine, or my fathers'."
"Which father?" she asked, wry.
Equally so, he replied, "Both of them. I really must congratulate you for rising so far above your peers and higher than many an ambitious lady in this galaxy. Thus far, you have outmaneuvered two Kings of Yggdrasil."
And a Prince, she wanted to say. A Prince who would be King. That makes three, doesn't it?
But that would just be rubbing it in. So she sidestepped the compliment altogether. "So when does Laufey want us there?"
Loki cocked his head, perhaps checking some internal clock. "By your reckoning, just under an hour."
"Oh," she flinched where she stood, hissing when her back squealed a painful reproach. "I didn't know it would be so soon."
"What good would an inspection be if they gave us time to cover our tracks?" Loki stepped to her side and supported her as pain made her legs shake. Jane didn't want to feel it, but her whole body gave an unconscious sigh of relief as he took some of her weight off her spine.
"Come, I will help you. My father is unexpectedly gallant; the gift he has sent you to wear on this illustrious occasion is rather magnificent. Ever since the Casket was taken from Jotunheim, their hunters have found fewer and fewer argent foxes to skin for their furs. Laufey has ordered them reserved for the royal family, so granting some to you is quite a statement."
"Great, more fur." Jane had lost a lot of her qualms about eating meat and using animal products—a prisoner couldn't be choosy, and she usually considered herself more 'flexitarian' than pure vegetarian anyway—but the idea of wearing an endangered species was a bit much. An idea occurred to her then. "Has he given any to you to wear?"
"Oh, Jane," Loki shook his head, lips twisting in a bitter smile, "Your optimism is astounding. No. Why should he give a symbol of family ties to a bastard abandoned to die?"
She couldn't say anything to that. Why indeed?
They were halfway up the second flight of stairs when she called it quits.
"I can't," her weak hands scrabbled for purchase on the cold, rocky walls of the stairwell; they supported her just enough to keep her from tumbling headlong onto the stairs, but she still sat heavily regardless. "I'm too—I just can't."
Ancient slushy mud stained the hem of the magnificent—that was the only word for it, Loki was right—triple-tiered silver fur cloak that swallowed her whole. Not that she could have climbed much farther without it. Her muscles were weak as water and she hadn't moved vertically in weeks. The idea of climbing hundreds, if not thousands more stairs was impossible.
Without a word, Loki turned back down to her. "Put your hand around my neck," he said, bending to wrap his arms around her back and beneath her knees. When she did, looping her fingers into his elaborate leather epaulettes, he lifted her up and resumed the journey for both of them, long legs taking the stairs twice at a time.
"Stupid of me to try, I guess," Jane talked to cover her embarrassment, "You were right. Should've let you do this from the beginning."
"No, I do not believe I was," he replied, though he kept his eyes resolutely on the darkness in front of them, broken only intermittently by the frigid rime-lights that lit everything else on the planet. "A quality about you is your independence. You will never allow another to do something you feel you ought to be capable of."
"That's gotten me into a lot of trouble."
"Has it not also gotten you out of it again?"
Jane didn't answer. Before, she'd wondered what her life would have been like if she'd been content as a lab tech, working on a project designed and driven by others. If she'd been too small a cog for Loki to notice on Earth. Would she be alive, and happy, and safe? Doubtful. Would she rather be there, instead of here, planning a coup against a dictator who held the entire galaxy in his grip?
What a question! How could she ever answer something like that?
Their journey stretched on into darkness and silence, the only sound Loki's boots tapping a relentless rhythm from stone to stone. Even supported by him like this and unafraid of falling, Jane's spine still hurt. It was the position of her head, she knew. Her neck ached from the strain of holding it upright and away from Loki's shoulder; moreover, she was looking up the staircase to avoid having to study his profile.
Stubborn. Stupid. Hurting herself because she couldn't do what was easy.
With a sigh, she gave in and laid her head against his shoulder.
She heard his breathing change, and grumbled out, "Don't say it. Whatever it is you're thinking of saying—if it's not something that's gonna kill us in the next thirty seconds—don't say it."
His laugh gusted over her forehead. "I wouldn't dare."
They traveled on in silence, Jane rocked and lulled into sleepiness by Loki's smooth gait. Her weight troubled him no more, it seemed, than the burden of his own cloak. And his feet never faltered, no matter how slick the stairs grew as they ascended ever higher towards the surface. In fact, Jane might have fallen asleep were it not for the cold that also grew with each step they took upwards. She had forgotten, after weeks spent in a room heated by Jotunheim's geothermal vents—a room Loki told her had been repurposed from a prison cell, so torturous was its heat to a Frost Giant—she had forgotten how painful, how hostile, the planet's surface was to her. Loki constantly adjusted his magical influence on her, heating her blood by increments so she always shivered on the near side of discomfort, but his power wasn't enough to banish her chills entirely.
Especially when some of the cold emanated from him.
After another few turns of the staircase, Loki shifted her in his arms. "You will have to take these last steps yourself, if you can. Laufey has forbidden me from wearing my face before him, and without my glamour, my skin would burn yours. Do you think you are capable?"
"I guess I've gotta be," she said, sitting upright. Her body creaked alarmingly, but her ride had refreshed some of her strength.
"Very well. Go up ahead; should you falter, my magic will keep you from falling."
"Thank you," she said, and meant it. When Loki put her down, her legs trembled, but they held. With a deep breath, Jane slowly took the next step, then the one after it. One by one, her knees shaking and her breath rasping hard in her throat, she climbed the last twenty-seven steps—counting each one—until they arrived above ground.
Jotunheim before the Casket had been a place of near-total darkness and violent storms, an ancient kingdom languishing in ruined splendor in the aftermath of cataclysmic war. Jane expected to set foot on that same ruined ground, to the same dismal sights. Yet despite her low expectations, and the exhaustion that left her wanting nothing more than to turn right around and return to her warm den underground, she couldn't help gasping in amazement as she set foot for the first time on a restored Jotunheim.
It wasn't beautiful, it was too stark and bare and bright to be something as benign as beautiful. Perhaps the word she wanted was 'awful', in the original sense. Staring at the massive spikes atop towering glaciers, glinting in a brilliant whirlwind of snowfall sharp as needles, she was impressed, a bit frightened, and mostly struck with the massive magnificence of this alien world.
For a long moment, she reeled on her feet, eyes wide and wondering, studying each detail around her with an irrepressible smile. "There is a sun!" she crowed over her shoulder. And indeed, there was. The intensity of sunlight was nowhere near as great as her sun—this one looked not only like a red giant, but one positioned at a much greater distance than the sun was from Earth—but the way the bloody light lit the fluted walls of the glaciers around them seemed to turn the ice into prisms of endless rainbows. The clarity of the renewed ice glowed almost as clear as cut-crystal, so the planet seemed to be carved out of a massive diamond.
The planet itself wasn't only regenerated, it was making itself new right before her eyes. As her gaze moved from the natural wonders of the world, she began to discern the human—for lack of a better word—effect around them. Frost Giants were everywhere, artisans and ice-workers, and they were renewing the art and sculpture that had been destroyed by the dark age Jane had unwittingly brought to an end. They hung from the glacier walls, hammers and chisels of dark metal ringing busily in their hands, and under their fingers emerged carvings, engravings, and figures, each one—she assumed—telling stories of their culture and history.
Jane had read about the damage Odin had done to Jotunheim, but knowing of it intellectually was nothing when she was now seeing the world healing from it. Centuries of hopeless darkness had taken this world and its people; just as it was beginning to take Earth and all her friends. What would be left of Earth if it went on? Would they be able to renew themselves once Odin's threat was gone?
"Come," Loki's voice had deepened along with his transformation, and the harshness of it shivered her skin, "before your awe freezes you in your tracks."
"Right," she said, stepping forward, marveling again at how the snow seemed so fresh and clean under her feet. Her heavy boots left no footprints, and the road was so smooth it could have been crafted from porcelain, "I just...it's amazing! I thought this world was," her voice dropped, mindful of the Giants above them, "a wasteland. The Casket did all this?"
"The Casket is one of several great Powers of Yggdrasil. There are others, but they are rare. The Casket is one of very few which is endemic to one world. When Odin took it from the Jotuns, he may as well have torn out the essence of Jotunheim itself. The Casket's power allows Jotun sorcerers to regulate many natural functions of this world, including the storms that encircle it. Their magic is significantly weaker without the Casket's strength to bolster theirs."
"So with the Casket, do you think they could be a threat to Odin?"
"If they chose to be," he shrugged, "Whether they will choose to do so is the question."
They walked on, Jane unable to keep her eyes from wandering to the fantastic sights around her. She'd seen pictures of ice walks in Iceland and Norway, trails that took the wanderer into the blueish heart of a glacier's insides, but here on Jotunheim the stark beauty was never-ending. Rime-lights were no longer necessary to see, and though the natural red sunlight was almost as disconcerting as the cold blue fire she had known before, Jane couldn't help but smile at the sun's distant, gleaming eye blinking down on them from so far away in space. Its light did not warm the air in the slightest, but it still made her feel more cheerful.
Did it have the same effect on the Jotuns? She wondered how long it had been since they had walked under sunlight instead of storm clouds.
The greatest sight however, the one that stole her frigid breath, was Laufey's hall. Before, the cavernous chamber had been full of foreboding, frozen shadows; the chamber abandoned by all save its King, isolated, and lonely. Now, in the daylight, she could see how elaborate it really was, the ceiling as coffered with elaborate swirls of lacy frost as Barcelona's Sagrada Familia. And like that stunning cathedral, this hall too was abuzz with life. Giants milled in every corner of the room, their harsh voices blending into a cacophonous harmony. Every so often, a bark of rough laughter would break out, and the frequent ringing of silver goblets was heard as the crowd toasted each other again and again, their cups full of bright blue liquor that, when it fell to the snow, gleamed there in droplets rich as sapphires and dense as liquid mercury.
The noise faded the further she and Loki walked into the room, and Jane felt her breath catch again as she suddenly saw herself as they must; as a rat walking through the middle of a feast-hall. The chatter took on a darker, more sinister edge, and Jane saw more than one Giant reach for a knife, or even use their frozen bodies to form one at the end of their hands.
But at the end of the hall, towards which Loki was steering her by his lead, was Laufey. He too was transformed; the low, broken crown on his brow was now a towering bristle of pure white shards of ice, adding to his towering height by a further foot. Nothing changed the hellish red of his eyes, though, or the calculating way he gazed at her and his erstwhile son. On a pedestal beside his throne sat the Casket, glowing white and blue like a swirling, hypnotic eye.
He rose from his throne and all muttering in the room ceased. Only the Casket disturbed the silence, a weird metallic hum vibrating through the room like a plucked steel cord.
Loki stopped at a respectable and safe distance. Jane was glad of it, but being in a room with so many Giants made her so cold she worried her teeth would shatter in her head. The moment she stopped walking, her body shivered so hard she had to keep shifting in place so her blood wouldn't freeze her muscles solid. Her frozen arm ached until she thought it might drop off right there in the middle of the court; she used her free arm to support it, hugging them both to herself in a gesture of futile encouragement. But nothing made her feel any less terrified than she truly was.
Laufey raised his goblet, and a roar of indecipherable sounds burst from his mouth. The speech lasted long enough to make Jane's ears ring, and it was punctuated by Laufey and the rest of the court gesturing to them with their liquor and draining all their cups. It was hard to miss that Loki, despite his skin and eyes declaring him to be one of their own, was not offered anything to drink.
A burst of raucous applause made Jane jump, and scornful laughter at her cowardice chased the Giants' momentary praise. Jane didn't have enough warm blood left in her to blush, so her embarrassment turned inward instead, making her nauseous.
Was this what the universe was? A cold, hostile place where no action, however helpful or brave, was enough to stand up against brute strength? The Aesir had hated humans because they couldn't hope to resist their superior physical and technological might, and now the Jotuns humiliated her, and Loki, for the same reasons.
"We honor you, Jane Foster, for your service to our world," Laufey's English was rusty after his speech, "We honor you for fulfilling your bargain, Loki of Asgard, though you required the aid of a mortal woman to do so. Still, we do not argue with results."
Another nasty chuckle ran through the crowd, and those Jotuns that understood their language were whispering the translation to those that didn't. So the laughter built as Laufey allowed his pause to drag on.
At length, he raised his hand, and the laughter faded. "Our business is concluded."
"Is it?" Loki strode forward, green cloak billowing, "I would say it has only just begun."
"Another of your schemes?"
"And yours," he answered, pacing slowly before the throne. "Think you that Odin will allow you to retain the Casket for long?"
"Let him try to take it!" a voice cried from the crowd, echoed by many others until the room vibrated with anger.
Laufey raised his hand. "With the Casket returned to us, Odin will have a bloody battle on his hands if he tries to recover it. Tell him that."
"I will. But you and I both know it will make no difference to him. He may spill oceans of Aesir blood to do it, but to allow Jotunheim to retain its power would be the beginning of the end of his empire."
"You intended it to be so."
"I did. Which is why I ask Jotunheim to assist me still in my plans."
Laufey stepped forward, towering over Loki. Jane shuddered; the disparity between them was so vast she couldn't imagine Loki lasting more than a minute if Laufey decided to make an end of him. Still, either from cold or from fear, she didn't move an inch. This was Loki's war alone.
As his approach did not make Loki quail, Laufey paused and scoffed. "You do enjoy sending others to fight your battles, do you not? But my people are not fodder for your ambitions, Odinson. If you want your father dead, you must dirty your hands yourself."
"I stand as little chance of overthrowing Odin on my own as you do, oh great and wise King," the title was an insult spat from his lips, "Only together will we make Odin fear us."
"What power can you offer to match the one I already wield?"
"The Casket is not the only Power held captive in Odin's vault," Loki now turned slowly to the crowd, "Help me liberate them, help me raise other Realms to our cause, and we can overcome him. Odin's overthrow is the best and surest way to help your people. It is the only certain end to the danger that threatens them, and the only path to lasting security."
Laufey's eyes gleamed. "Your words promise paradise, Odinson. Be careful you deliver. What would you ask of me to secure this end?"
"Only a few slight favors, King," Loki bowed, "Continued refuge for myself and my retinue," his hand waved towards Jane, and she swallowed hard as Laufey's flaming gaze settled on her.
He blinked, and their connection was broken. "Granted."
"Further, your promise to assist our alliance in an assault on Asgard."
His response came slower this time. "I will not commit my warriors to a fight we cannot win. Setting foot on Asgard would be death to us."
"It would be at the moment, yes," Loki agreed smoothly, "nor would I ask such a sacrifice. I intend to do as I say; rally Powers and allies from all Realms to our side. I only ask that once our forces are arrayed, that you will play your part among the rest."
"Once I am satisfied of our victory, I will join you."
Loki bowed again, deep and ceremonial this time.
Laufey waited until he was at his lowest, and resumed speaking. "But know this, you would-be King. The instant Odin is overthrown, our alliance will end. Should you sit upon his throne, I will not kneel to you as you do to me now. We will be enemies as your kind and mine have always been. With these conditions, will you still bargain with me?"
"I will," Loki rose. "And though you will not admit to sharing my blood," a blade flashed across his palm, and he extended it, dripping, to the King, "I still insist we seal this pledge in the manner of your people. Let the first to withdraw from our agreement suffer for it."
Laufey's teeth flashed, hard and sharp as icicles, but in front of an assembly of all his people, he couldn't back away. With a blade of ice lengthening from his thumb, he slashed his own palm and slapped it into Loki's. A splash of blood, the deep navy-blue shades identical, splashed to the ice beneath them.
"It is done," Laufey growled. "Now begone from my sight. I do not wish to see you again until the day we destroy your thrice-damned father."
Note: I could apologize, but these past few months have been both really busy with stuff to be done, and really emotionally difficult to get through. Those of you who follow my Tumblr might know some of what's been going on, but suffice to say, I'm as glad to be back writing this as (I hope) you guys are to be reading it. And those who have followed my stories before know that while I might take awhile (read: a few years) to finish a story, I do finish my stories! And this one's in the home stretch, so stay tuned! Love y'all, thanks so much, and let me know what you think of this chapter.