13.
. . .
With such an on-the-nose name like Parchment Row, the hope that follows is an obvious one - that the tight alleys and wending crystal-paned walks of the the district evoke the idea of a fantastical place that humans, fed on a well-rounded diet of stories like Harry Potter, and maybe even familiar with the libraries of Ankh-Morpork, could be imagined with delight.
The dead-eyed look on Loki's face would be the first clue that this is not a hope that is going to be paid off.
In a city strapped together with shine and glitz and the chains of bureaucracy, he would say to a human unlucky enough to be visiting the Row with him, it is unfortunate that the sole bastion of legal sanity is also basically its purgatory. Oh yes, those walkways are crystal-paned, and yes, there is plenty of good, ancient, knotty woodwork making up the walls between clerical offices and private collections. But the Row is otherwise a stolid place, where the aged Archivists of the city don't go because the civilian clerks like to bring up insultingly sensible ideas, like using a good centralized database program to update the very process that nearly drove Thor into a frenzy of murder back when no one was currently under arrest for crimes against the realm.
In revenge, the Archivists, who are, of course, supposed to be politically neutral, allegedly made certain deals to keep the Row at the bottom of the city works lists.
Of course, Loki knew, they actually did it.
This had the intended result of making the local clerks and students clean up their own mess most times, and anyone that has lived with a graduate student during the crunch of exams week knows that this is not a thing that is going to happen.
In Parchment Row, every week is exams week for somebody.
The Row was forty percent ancient woods and glass. The other sixty was made up of stacks of paper and, well, the parchment bundles that gave the Row its name. They had stayed in place so long the locals simply built up around them. They floated sometimes, yes. But mostly because someone had chucked one around with magic in a fit of exhausted pique.
Loki was studying one of those fossilized stacks, one that now doubled as a street sign, looking for an address that was really more like an educated guess, trying to figure out with his logic where an aquatic fae - a glashtyn, said Thor, and Thor didn't know what they were but he did. Shapeshifters and water guardians, an old people - was going to hold a job. He knew there was a small subculture of clerks that worked with the ice-bound Elven sorcerers, who by virtue of overlap often worked on geological matters for the undine out in one of the major tourist regions of the realm. It was a good place to start. If nothing else, maybe metaphorically rattling some cages would draw the fellow out.
If Thor were with him now, he would already be dead from boredom. The thought wasn't as comforting as it could have been. At least Thor wouldn't have been in a cell.
. . .
"We don't have anyone here by that name." The clerk, some eternally grumpy fae in a silky robe with an avian face like a roadkilled ibis, looked down at Loki from its perch. Its voice clacked and clashed, a telepathic voice to match the inhuman mouth. At least it had glanced at their work roster. For all of five seconds, but it had. "A glashtyn? Ye gods. They ooze everywhere."
The look in its eyes suggested Loki wasn't much better in its estimation.
The look in Loki's eyes suggested the clerk could eat shit and die screaming. This was only the sixth office he'd checked on, in a geosurvey dedicated part of the Row, and his nerves were back to old-time raw. Only one of them had even tried to be polite, a front desk receptionist who had clearly been hired straight out of one of the tiny village academies and who was probably still getting his lunch money stolen daily. Loki grinned in a mockery of courtesy. "Thank you for your time."
"Which I'll never have back."
Well, he was done. "My good clerk, at least we'll always have our intact necks."
The ibis-fae reared back in offense at his gravelly tone of easy threat, air sucking in through its curved beak as Loki turned his back on it. "Sir!"
Loki sailed through the door and back into the tight streets, thinking vaguely to himself that if Asgard ever needed a geosurvey team to assess the remaining damage from the time Amora tried to throw Asgard bodily at the Earth, he would, by gods, pay out of his own pocket to contract literally anyone else in the galaxy than these guys.
And then he stopped, there on a narrow walk between two tall structures that contained no less than sixteen businesses each inside them. There was a shadow furtively moving down the alley.
A wet looking one.
Loki liked it when an idea paid off. Cages had been duly, and efficiently, rattled enough to matter.
To its credit, a hand came up, waving him back. "Don't get any closer, Your Highness. Word got around you were looking for me. We need to talk, but you'll want to be safe and public for it."
Loki narrowed his eyes, not in mistrust but calculation. It was the exact right thing to say. Privacy would only endanger them both in this situation. He'd been watching for followers, but this was not well-known territory and that made it complicated. It was that Leamhan's turf, and Loki intended to be as careful as possible within it. It was possible his return to Alfheim was unknown. He'd like to keep it that way. "There's a park on the edge of the Row. Open space. Has a nice cheese cart, or did when I was here last." Which was ages ago, but things didn't change that quickly around here.
"I know it." Eyes peeked out from that shadowy place between parchment towers, grey and watery. Mooar was in a fluctuating state, using the puddles to move. When Thor had seen him, he was in a purely humanoid shape. Now Loki smelled seaweed and salt carrying through the air. "He married a century ago. Now they sell roasted leaves, too."
Gods, every realm was going through a health kick. If Earth didn't stop with its kale obsession, Loki was going to lose his mind. "A half hour, as marked by candle. I'll be there."
The shadow dipped and vanished, the sound of rain sprinkling through the alley.
. . .
To be fair, the roasted leaves actually looked rather good. Loki stayed with the ever reliable hunk of cheese on a stick, because for some damn reason every realm he'd ever walked in the thousand years of his lifetime put food on sticks and sold it for cheap out of iffy-looking carts, and this stick of melty baked cheese was not only tasty but would have taken a year off a mortal's life.
Fortunately for his digestive system, he was not all that mortal.
Loki waited for Mooar, watching people go by. He sat next to a fountain, silently moved benches when an undine popped up to tell him the seat was being held for a friend of hers, and after a while leaned his elbow back enough behind him for it to finally catch the damp. On purpose, of course.
"You're jamming into my side," said Mooar, ignoring the undine meeting her partner nearby. The water of the fountain burped behind him. Loki could smell that salty green again. And horse. An awful lot of horse.
"I know," said Loki. On the whole, he didn't like glashtyns that much, no less their cousin the kelpie, but it wasn't their fault. Loki was generally testy about horse-related topics. Daisy's voice crept into the edge of his mind, cheerfully teasing him. Damn good thing he liked the girl, because there was a time in his life he would have chucked her into a sun for the horse jokes she kept coming up with. "Call it a parallel for my own kin being in a jam."
"It's not my fault."
"I have reason to at least consider that, Mooar, but I need a lot more information. It will help if you're truthful."
"All right, Your Highness. That's a fair request. The hard truth first, then. I am loyal to Oberon."
Loki didn't turn around. Mooar wouldn't have liked to see his face right then.
"But I have nothing to do with any of this, I swear on the water of my blood. King Oberon vouched for my family on the Fae Crossing, ensured we had a place here in Alfheim. We have a promise between us. We do his paperwork, my kin, and we tend his legal matters when he's arrested and away, but we have never been asked to serve in his games and even the high clerks of the Queen will sign off on our work without complaints. We're front-facing, Prince Loki. We have legitimacy, we're a small house, and we stay quiet. We don't play in the dirt - until we're dragged through it." Mooar sounded bedraggled enough to underline it. And truthful. Painfully truthful.
All right, then. "Verdurois."
"I was in town grabbing a set of documents on a river deal between three different undine clans. It's not important, it's just more legalese. You know how it is."
Loki did. He shifted his elbow out of the water-horse's way.
"I saw Prince Thor outside the library when I was done for the day. I stopped early, because I'm not paid well enough to deal with undine nonsense longer than I need to. I didn't see him inside, he was in the storage rooms. I found that out when I spoke to him. He was, um, the afternoon librarians had him going through trash, essentially, and I didn't want His Highness to feel maligned by that, so I thought I might help. He didn't want any. He knew it wasn't coming to much, just scraps of schedule, and he seemed quite down, and he wanted his peace. I spoke to him for a while and then I left him to it, because as a rule you should never meddle in noble matters unless you're prepared for the shit to follow. Your Highness." The tone turned peevish on the last words, understandingly.
Wet limbs came up a moment later, long horse legs at first melding with the flow of the water into not quite as long human arms. Mooar folded them atop the ledge of the fountain, dropped his long chin down, and stared across the park. His ears were still equine, poking out of the wet hair.
Loki watched him do it, studied the tired expression. He believed the fae. But. "Unfortunately, this isn't enough to help."
Mooar shook his head, dripping water along the marble. "No, it isn't. Words alone never solve anything in Alfheim, and certainly not debated words from but one witness. Proof might, and money definitely, but this is about honor, too, I'm sure."
"To an extent. I'm pragmatic on that topic."
"An oddity among Asgard's noblemen."
"Tell me." Loki's voice turned sourly amused. "What about the stone?"
The wet eyes turned to Loki, horse's eyes gone big and black and surprised. "What stone?"
Loki stared into Mooar's face, narrowing his own in a peculiar way. He didn't specialize in truthsayer magic, and nor was he a telepath, but enough pointed aggression and a good fake-out did him fine in a pinch. The aura of threat build around him. "The stone."
"I don't know what you're talking about!" The man's torso, still mostly equine, reared back in new panic.
Also a real reaction. Loki broke his stare. "No, you don't." He frowned. "I'm sorry for the implied threat. Someone put one of Oberon's marques on Thor."
"How the hell did they even get one?" Mooar didn't approach again. He seemed suspended in the water of the fountain, well away from Loki. Fair enough. It didn't matter, he wasn't here to make friends. "Those stones are supposed to be given only to Oberonese hands, to mark his favor. There's a limited number in circulation."
Loki rubbed his palms together. Finally, a small detail to follow. "Well. That leaves me with two possibilities. One, it's a real marque and someone in your king's faction is playing silly fuckers, or two, it's not a real marque and someone else is playing silly fuckers. Who's currently feuding with Oberon?"
"I don't know, Highness."
"Give me something. A list."
The water splashed. Mooar desperately wanted to leave and was showing it. "Everyone, eventually, somehow. The city Houses are all vying for rank, so they've never liked this outlander king being absorbed into the upper hierarchy so comfortably by Queen Aelsa. Queen Titania hasn't spoken to her king in ages, but I don't know anything about that. They go through things. It's a unique relationship. The oldland fae don't like him because his ancestors fucked off to Midgard to build a kingdom, then came crawling back when the humans began to erode their taken land. I don't know, Prince Loki. There's always a lot of people looking to cut the King off at the knees, and it doesn't help that he's always been a shifty, boisterous sort himself." The water turned black, dripping around Mooar's face. "You could seek audience with him, see if he will take time to speak, or even vouch for your kin's freedom."
Not a chance in hell, not yet. Loki wasn't about to go to a fae king with his hand open, not without a good backup and maybe some blackmail for safety. Not in Alfheim, not anywhere, and certainly not with infamous King Oberon. The look on his face got that across.
Mooar sagged, the water level of the fountain changing and greening. The undine on the other side of the water whipped on him, saw Loki still sitting there, turned crystalline clear at the look on his face by way of elemental paling, and resumed talking to her friend as if nothing in the world was going on behind her. "I can at least give you a writ with my name for his audience, if you do choose to seek him."
"I'll accept that. Send it to the palace, under the Queen's seal. I'll get it there if I need it. No hurry." Loki allowed himself to relax. The interrogation, since that's what it really was, had gotten him the barest amount of information he could have hoped for. It was a start, in any case. "I need to know Leamhan's angle into this. I need to know how your king is tied in. I need to know how one of his marks got into Thor's things. And I need to know how to shove it all into a queen's court with a bow so she can clap her hands and declare this whole mess a loss and let my brother go."
"You need the stone, then. And you need a witnessed alibi." Mooar was drifting further away. "The stone is probably still with your brother's captors, as evidence. But if I were you, I wouldn't go back to the palace until you have to."
"Well ahead of you on that."
Mooar was now almost fully submerged. "If you need my testimony… I'll show up. I will. For my name, not my king's. You need something more if you want it to stand, but it's still the right thing to do, so I'll do it."
"Thank you, Mooar."
"I'm sorry about all this. I just wanted to help the prince on a bad day."
Loki sighed and got up from the bench, drying out the back of his tunic with a flick of his fingers. "It wasn't your fault, Mooar. You'll know when I find out whose it really is."
"Gods help the bastard, eh?"
Loki grinned, bitter and toothy. "Gods help them, indeed."
