33. Throne
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She rushed toward a set of giant double doors, nipping ahead of Frigga as the guards stationed on either side leapt to pull them open when they saw the Queen approaching. A rush of warm air washed over her as the intricately carved doors swung out of the way, and it felt bizarrely like walking into a vacuum chamber.
There was a depth of silence in the room which made her own heartbeat sound like an echo and she slowed instinctively to a cautious tip-toe as she crossed the threshold, quickly enfolded by sudden darkness when she left the bright, golden glow of the corridor. The only light came from a massive hearth to the right of the doorway, the fire smouldering low in its bed, and the huge, oblong pillars in the centre of the floor seemed to disappear into a thick blanket of shadow pressing down with oppressive heaviness from the high ceiling.
Subduing and ominous, the dark gave Jane a phantom impression of ringing with fraught tension. Like a distant klaxon, sensed more than heard.
It was another geometrically terraced room, the floor in different levels with a trapezoidal sitting area in its middle and steps at one corner up to a high dais set diagonal to the main body of the space. On the dais, there was a vast table with thick, scrolled legs, and a heavy chair draped in furs addressing the surface of the desk. Sitting there was a man, hardly more than a dark shape in the gloom to her unadjusted eyes, but his presence commanded instant attention. He seemed to draw all the energy in the room towards himself, dominating and pervasive, yet he slumped slightly against the broad armrest at his side, as if he was too weary to straighten his back.
Finally, she caught sight of Loki. Dressed in a relatively simple high-collared black tunic and with his damp black hair combed back over his shoulders, he seemed a part of the velvety shadows, only the deathly pale skin of his face and hands standing out. He was kneeling on the steps, his head bent very low and his expression completely concealed from her.
The silence went on interminably, even the crackling of the fire muffled, and Jane felt suffocated by the weight of it. Something had already been said, something so ponderous and terrible that it had frozen this disquieting tableau in place.
The figure on the dais stirred and she saw glints of gold embroidery in his robe and the flash of shine on an ornament on his chest which suggested the shape of a breastplate, she saw that his long hair and beard were almost pure white; she couldn't doubt his identity for a moment. Lifting his hands to the arms of his chair, Odin pushed himself slowly to his feet and the dense atmosphere seemed to gather around him, the darkness thickening in the far reaches of the room and the air seeming to thin where Jane was standing.
The ruddy, flickering light gathered in the crags of his aged face, deep shadow weighing heavily beneath his one, tired eye, the glow on his skin like a sheen of sickness.
Stepping forward, hesitantly, as if it pained him, Odin made his way to the edge of the dais, looming hugely over the supplicant who knelt before him. Close enough to touch. He thrust his hand out over Loki's bowed head, fingers spread to the width of his skull, and it hovered there. Trembling.
Jane looked down at herself, then behind her around the room, ready to grab anything she could use as a shield and charge the hell in. Could it really be this was a magical execution? She couldn't believe that was happening, she just couldn't- the very thought was ridiculous- but the look of struggle on the old man's face made her heart clench and her guts churn. You don't know what they're capable of, Jane.
Frigga appeared from nowhere like a striking snake, her hand latching around Jane's wrist in a bruising grip. "Wait," she whispered.
Odin exhaled in a sudden rush and his hand dropped heavily onto the crown of Loki's head, fingertips twisting in his hair.
"Loki," Odin gasped, his voice thick and halting, "how often would you have me mourn you, boy? How many funeral ships will satisfy your vanity?"
Jane made a tiny choking noise in the back of her throat, relief and anger colliding. No one heard.
"Always the faithful scholar. You have learnt so perfectly all that I most did not wish to teach you, and so imperfectly all that which I did. Stubborn and precocious to a fault. Entirely too clever."
He leaned down into his hold, making it just a bit less distant and awkward. Loki's head bent even lower, his shoulders hunching, as if the weight of that touch were more than he could bear.
"You are your father's son."
"My...?" Loki's voice was very small, drifting away uncertainly.
"A wise king never seeks out war," Odin said deliberately, a ponderous silence between adverb and verb. "A patient warrior hardly need fight. A brave man has no call to lie. Justice is delivered without anger. Why did neither of you listen? Why does my most favoured audience heed me least?"
"Laufey's son," Loki said slowly, as if he were only just catching up to Odin's earlier words, protesting them as they sank in.
Odin withdrew and fell abruptly into his chair again, leaning against its high back as if to gather strength. He shut his eye in a grimace, pain and frustration cut deeply into the lines of his face. "I had such confidence in your level head, your pragmatism. So much faith that you, at least, took some of your lessons to heart. Once again, I am not the judge of mettle which I thought."
Jane ignored the restraining hands on her and stumbled forward a step even as Frigga tried to haul her arm back. "Okay, hi, I have a question!"
Loki froze, not even breathing. "Jane?"
"Sorry to butt in and everything, Your Majesty, but-"
Odin stared at her, absolutely shocked, holding the arms of his chair in a death grip as if that were the only thing keeping him in place. He turned to his wife, "What is this? How comes a-"
"Hey!" Jane objected, stung in a deep and primal way she hadn't felt for years, "I'm a who, not a what. I know I'm pretty out of order and barging in and everything, but I'm not a what. My name is Jane Foster, and I'm..."
"The woman? Thor's mortal?" The singular gaze drifted over her, assessing her like a soldier at parade.
"Okay, that's a whole other- back up, that's a whole thing there."
"Yes, she is the one," Frigga answered calmly, ignoring her. "It seems she has sheltered Loki also while he exiled himself on Midgard."
"Jane, what are you doing here?" It was Loki who managed to finish the question. He sounded strained.
And she couldn't handle it any more, she couldn't deal with the fact that he had given up, that he'd made sure to account for her on his way to his personal gallows, to press her into Thor's arms thinking that might be what she wanted, that it had to be what she deserved. To walk in the sun. And she understood his secret codes very clearly, that he still thought of himself as the shadow over not just his family's life, but hers as well. He'd come to this room, to his weary father the king, and he'd offered himself up to death fully expecting no better mercy than swiftness. Expecting to find himself alone in the dock.
"I'm here because you obviously need me," she blurted out, skipping over the other reasons she could not even consider leaving and hanging on to her temper by a thread. She turned back to Odin, searching his weathered face for the truth, trying to look between the legends she'd gathered from his awe-struck sons. "I'm here to learn about Asgard, that's why we came, isn't it? I want to know my benevolent overlords."
He bristled, but his eye glinted with cunning and she didn't know if she was provoking rage or amusement or just cold interest. "Your race has been content to forget us for a generation, mortal woman, to forget gratitude and fealty. And you claim a right to speak before the Throne Eternal?"
She held up her arms to make her robes flare out around her. "I got this fancy outfit here and I'm told that makes me a subject. I mean, unless..." she let it trail off, everyone knowing what she was driving at. Unless that particular patronage doesn't matter because he's right about you and always has been.
Odin gave her that exact same incredulous little not-smile that Loki did when she called him an idiot or took too many liberties or otherwise really offended him. He sighed. "Ancestors preserve me from the rashness of children."
Suddenly Loki was dragging himself half upright, his feet still staggered on different steps and one hand on the edge of the dais, his fingers bone white against the dull gold. "How is it," he demanded, the words harsh and rasping, "how is it that you sneer down at us, at Jane- that I have failed so completely, that Thor and I have both failed so completely, if your teaching was wise and good? How can you stand there, lofty and untouched, and call down judgement and call me… I am your creature and you made me!"
Frigga tugged her back before Jane even knew she was heading forward.
"What was your real plan for me? Not what you told Mother, not whatever you have since told Thor: the true guile of Odin. I know your mind and its turnings, I had great cause to know. It was a business of survival, wasn't it?"
Odin slumped in his chair, warding this outburst off with a gesture. "I see she wakes you from your fatal convictions. Is that why you have brought her here?"
"That I have brought her and clothed her in royal colours should be an end, either cut me down a traitor or acknowledge her a citizen! And then leave her out of this." The last sentence was vicious, punctuated by his fist striking the floor. "You had a truce with Laufey, you spoke to him as to a rational man- with respect- but that truce was purchased in slaughter and pillage and you stole a helpless pawn to, to… explain to me, Father, please!"
His one cloudy blue eye clenched shut as if he'd been wounded and Odin leaned forward over a defensive arm across his chest. "There were dreams once, plots: there was a time I sought to write your fate. But I did not carry home a tool to lock in my vaults, it was not the king who plucked you up from the tundra; it was only the king who needed to justify an act of pity. At first there was intrigue, and then there was treasure- not only the casket, but of another kind. I've tried to tell you, Loki, that you are my son. When your mother held you in her arms surrounded by green growing things, to us you were re-born into the light of that Asgardian sun and so became our second child."
"But what about the Frost Giants and the stories?" Jane said, not daring to look away from Odin's face as she butted in again. She couldn't look at Loki.
The stare he gave her was withering, he clearly deeply resented her for opening her mouth, and she saw it was a little war in him whether he would deign to answer. But he looked down and maybe guilt won out. "He would never have known. It seemed… it seemed prudent that he not be treated differently."
Loki's mouth worked helplessly for a moment, his wide eyes lolling from father to mother in disbelief. He bent his head again. "All of my life I knew it wasn't true, I knew you were not- every tender touch and every patient word was not for me, it was always for Thor. All my life I thought it was something I had the power to change, that I had birthright and could work to deserve your regard if only I strove hard enough. It was always different and I thought that I could change it, you let me think so even though there was nothing I could do."
"I tried, my son, I tried to reach you. Was it only your brother who didn't heed? Or don't you hear only what you fear most being said? Don't you shut up your mind, attributing to malice what is only…" his voice faltered and it seemed to cost him a great deal to finish his thought, "...blunder."
"You understood me!" Loki accused heatedly. "It has been the greatest part of my shame after the failure itself to know that you always understood me perfectly. Every fear, every thought, every little manipulation, every bit of magic and schoolroom intrigue: everything I ever did to make a place for myself, to win your favour, you always knew."
Odin's expression softened further, the hint of a rueful smile lurking around his mouth. "And why would I know so well? Perhaps it is one's own frailties which one recognises most readily in others. Upon which it is most difficult to be lenient. Whose remedy is most elusive."
"One's..." Loki trailed off, shocked.
"I have said you are your father's son, child. Perhaps to your cost."
Loki scrubbed both hands over his face and dragged his fingers through his hair. "It did not offend you when Thor was your reflection, it didn't trouble you to see yourself looking back in the eyes of your own true blood."
Odin sighed, his white brows lifting in plaintive regret. "I wanted to protect you from the truth. That lie has always been between us. To nurture your gifts was to shine a light upon them- can you not see how carefully a king must walk, how uncertain is his footing? To hold in your palm the good of Asgard, the peace of the Nine..."
"I held it also, in this most profane hand." Loki lifted his right hand up, his lovely slender fingers casting long, spindly shadows across the opposite wall; he looked down at it as if it were some monstrous appendage and Jane struggled to imagine what he saw when he looked at himself. "For the good of Asgard, I was a traitor. First to her and then to myself. Pragmatism- the low for the great. The few for the many. That was the web I spun."
The unblinking eye sharpened in its gaze and Odin lowered his chin to his chest.
"Vanity and covetousness, cloaked in honour. Thor coveted glory when he overreached. Glory was not the object of my avarice."
Standing again and crossing the dais, Odin reached out, painfully hesitant, to rest his hand on Loki's shoulder. "I know."
Raising his head to look up at Odin, Loki's eyes glittered with tears, deep shadows of fatigue and stress hollowing out his face. "Father..."
The hand squeezed. "I too have seen as I wished… blind to what was. And that wrong has been returned to me tenfold. Three peoples have paid for it, some in blood. I have paid."
Jane was busy wondering if that was the closest thing to an admission of guilt and an apology that was ever going to come when Loki covered the hand on his shoulder with his own. "And I must pay for mine."
"Yes," the king agreed quietly.
"What?" she demanded, incensed. "Thor gets banished for what ends up being a couple days after breaking the law and starting a war and that's one hundred percent fair and he's clearly all cool with his hammer and his cape and everything, but he banishes himself for over a year and tries to accept a fucking death penalty three times and that's not good enough? You won't even tell him you were wrong, but that's not good enough?"
All eyes in the room were on her.
"Loki," she pleaded, "you don't… you can't just..."
"Lives were lost because of my actions, the Nine were endangered. I am responsible." He was looking at her with an unreadable expression, the dip under his cheekbone flickering with muscle tension.
"So was I," said a voice from the doorway. Thor's voice. God, how long had he been standing there? "Or have you forgotten the Jotuns I struck down unprovoked? Those were lives, brother, wound as tightly through the branches of the world's tree as our own. What justice would your throne pronounce on me?"
The whites showed all the way around Loki's irises as he stared at his brother. "I? My throne?"
"You were a prudent king and a temperate earthling. I trust your judgement."
"I would hear your answer," Odin said, folding his hands in front of him expectantly.
Loki looked around like a trapped animal, his glance finally falling on Jane. She didn't know what her face was doing but she tried to radiate some kind of reassurance. She hoped this was going somewhere good, that Thor's interference was a good thing. If not, she was going to crack heads. She was going to rain hell.
"I would..." he stumbled, worrying his thumb in an achingly familiar gesture, "I would..."
The brothers were locked on each other, all the weight of their years side by side straining between them. He couldn't lie. Thor wouldn't stand for it.
"If it were you, brother, and if it were me… I would detain you in secluded study of the Jotun until you were fit to be called the ambassador of that people in Asgard. I would bury you in learning and punish you with tedium and familiarity, then you would offer Laufey restitution in personal service to his throne. But that is not… that is not suitable in my case."
Frigga smiled warmly at him. "Its harshness does lack sting when visited upon a boy who was once said to haunt the palace library like a restless shade."
Loki's head dropped. "You make light… and I..." He wrung his hands, as if to clean them.
"If you will accept then the judgement of your king? Rather than what you would chose for yourself or what you would chose for your brother." Odin was sardonic. As if anyone had a choice but to take his judgement, really. "I will sentence you."
"Father," Thor tried to interrupt. Odin raised hand to silence him.
"Not for treason to Asgard. I sentence you for your treason to yourself. I do not take your power, nor do I take your life. I take from you your duty, I lift the weight of this kingdom from the palm of your hand, and I prohibit you from its service until you understand what it is which the crown serves. How do you bear my justice, Loki, Odin's son?"
Loki blinked at his father, baffled. "The crown serves Asgard."
"Does it?" Odin's one eye twinkled. "You are quick, my son, but are you wise?"
"Are you, Your Majesty?" Jane interjected, not dazzled by a little conditional acceptance.
Odin came down the steps towards her and she straightened her back as he approached, trying to match his regal posture and air of total certainty. But there was more regret in his face than she had thought, there was more strain than she had seen looking up at him from afar. Maybe he had tried. He'd failed, but maybe he'd tried.
"Perhaps not so much as I once thought, Jane Foster of Midgard." He studied her, distant and above her still, but maybe willing to be impressed. "What does mortal judgement call for?"
Well, that was complicated. "I think it would depend on how much of the story they heard." It was as close as she was prepared to come to throwing it in his face. She didn't want to start an intergalactic war or something. Even her sense of righteousness only extended so far.
But he seemed to take her meaning perfectly, and there was that vertigo feeling of looking into his eye, that deep and fathomless well of knowing. Like looking into the heart of a star, like still water with no bottom. He'd been a king long before the dawn of her civilisation.
"Yes," he murmured, a delicate spark of warmth in his tone, "humans and their stories."
"What does it mean- that he can't serve the kingdom?" she ventured.
Odin's attention turned back to Loki, who was swallowing compulsively and staring at the floor. "The court is forbidden to him, he is to know nothing of the workings of state, to speak politics to none of the high nobility, to fight no enemy on its behalf with word or weapon, and to have no authority to answer. Prove to me that you know what worthiness is with none of those trappings. Prove to me you know in what honour consists living as a man with no master.
"And I..." He stopped, his eye passing over Frigga and then Jane. "I will labour to prove to you that I know… also."
Thor and Loki exchanged a glance which seemed to contain novels.
"Come, Loki, speak to me further." Odin swept a hand towards the benches near the hearth and everyone else seemed to know it was a dismissal.
Jane jerked away as Thor tried to take her arm, "No, I… I don't want to..."
"You must rest, Jane." His voice was low and even, soothing her as if she were a spooked horse.
"I'm not leaving," she whispered insistently, dodging his hand, "no 'uncertainty'."
Thor shook his head slowly, his gaze intense with silent communication. "I will show you to your chambers. Tomorrow you can see the library."
Pausing in surprise, she tilted her head, trying to read his face for signs he was being genuine. "No little walk 'outside'?" She made subtle finger quotes and wiggled her eyebrows.
"No, Jane." He hooked his elbow out for her. "Sustenance and rest. Here."
She took his arm, clutching way tighter than necessary. "Okay. Okay, good. Thank you, Thor. Thanks."
She stretched her neck to look back the whole way out the door, craning to keep Loki in sight where he sat in front of the fire in a mute daze, a thick lock of hair falling across his forehead again even as his nervous fingers tried to smooth it back in place.