15.
. . .
Loki sat, dangling his legs like a hyperactive child, on the edge of a nobleman's rooftop, a sloped and dazzlingly lovely sheaf of opalescent shingles with him its dark gargoyle, and all that light gave him something to do, magically, looping the easier veil of near-invisibility around himself and adapting it to the shifting color dancing around him. Below was the main visitor's entrance to the archive, and he didn't feel like wandering around the sidewalks in shadow when he could sit cozily, hate, and eat the snacks he bought from local carts while waiting for his target to arrive.
There were still dozens of questions he had, of course, and most of them could be answered by pinning the good watchman Leamhan to a wall via a half dozen knives and his own sheer vindictive will, and regardless of if he actually planned on doing that or not - he hadn't decided - Loki went over some of them while he lounged.
How did that Oberonese marque get into Thor's pouch?
Who gave the order to tangle an Asgardian prince up in an apparent scheme to destabilize the throne of Alfheim?
What passive enchantments were put on that watchman's stone and where is it now?
What was a city watchman doing in the village of Verdurois in the first place?
Was he watching us from earlier, perhaps starting from our very first visit to this library, seeing as we cross paths here? Why?
What's the Queen's angle in all this, why does she seem acutely aware of this particular scheme but intent on acting blind?
What's the most painful way to kill an Elf?
All right, that last one was just a particularly hostile daydream, and it wouldn't help him in the long run. Loki cut it from the list. He tossed the last of the roasted nuts he'd bought into his mouth and dusted his hands off in the air. Then he pulled a knee up and rested his chin on it, thinking vaguely to himself about the last time he'd been imprisoned, and how he'd asked a human to advocate for him then. Asking Phil Coulson to help him, not yet a full friend, knowing the man would do nothing but hunt the truth, no matter if it would become a hard one.
Coulson was an honest man. Loki knew his strengths, and honesty wasn't typically there. But now he had two witness cards in play, both where their truths would be far more valuable than a lie from him, and that was a damn good start. Good for a first day's work.
Evidence, well. He was on his way. If he had to cut it out of Leamhan's torso, so be it.
First, Loki needed to know who the bastard was really loyal to. And to that, he had a good feeling the path to the answer started in the city's great library.
A visit twice a week, no matter what. Twice a week, and sometimes Leamhan met an archivist for supper. How noble, how mundane, how educated.
And what a simple method to hide a spy's assignation.
It was, in a way, the first real fuckup on Leamhan's part. Probably the only one Loki was going to need. The city might be Leamhan's turf. But all libraries, even hostile ones, were Loki's territory, and his stalk was far more merciless.
He was still angry, of course. Dangerously angry.
Loki grinned, that old jackal's feral smile, and he watched the long shadow of Leamhan approach the entrance of the great old library.
. . .
Loki didn't need a lot of complicated magic to follow Leamhan around the guts of the library. Shadows and candlelight worked well for his outline, and the soft rustle of paper became the same as the shurring whisper of the fabric of his clothes, and his footsteps echoed behind Leamhan's in near silence. He stayed well back, knowing that men are at their most alert when they know they're doing wrong, and also suspecting that Leamhan had been at this game of his for so long that he may well have gotten lazier about it.
It all depended on how much he thought to be afraid of Loki, and since the bastard thought he'd pulled a gig over on him… the jackal's grin was still wide and bright on his face. No, Leamhan probably thought terribly highly of himself, despite not getting Loki's capture solidified before the Queen.
And also, as a bonus, he quite possibly didn't know that Loki was now back and loose in Alfheim. Ambassador Imda would have signed papers on the matter to keep things clear with Queen Aelsa, but Loki would have bet half Asgard's gold that clever, amused Imda wasn't in a hurry to finalize such boring paperwork.
He spotted Ayelah early on, lifting her head to watch the watchman go by, and her face was the perfect employee's mask. If she saw or suspected the shadow lurking his wake, she gave no sign of it. Better that way. Her part was set, Loki had no need to complicate her further. He moved on, staying on the trail.
Leamhan seemed to like a recent section, collections of recent political decrees, council moves, things that he would absolutely need special palace clearance for. These works had a tactical benefit many Elvish houses would kill for - easy access to them would be invaluable. But the archivist he approached in that wing obviously knew him and guided him through. Loki watched them chat with casual postures, even as they watched the rare other patron to be sure they weren't gaining too much obvious attention.
Loki studied the archivist from his hidden corner, marked his face well. A younger Elf, one who no doubt quickly got his place here through those very same politics. A collaborator, possibly, as much as a friend. The question still lingered. Collaborating on the behalf of whom?
He watched the young archivist grin and slap the back of Leamhan, who finished looking at his chosen tome after a half hour. Then one hand along another, an elegant handclasp between old friends.
Loki didn't miss the tiny slip of paper passing between fingertips. His eyes narrowed, and his lips pressed together into a razor's line. Not just a collaborator. Now he was equally likely to be a handler, a cut-out between Leamhan and his true loyalties.
He knew the city had that deep line of corruption in it. Every bureaucratic structure grew one in time, like old rot, but the public line had always been that the Archive and its great network of libraries all through the realm was untouched by such rot. Loki was a cynical sort and knew all along that too was probably a lie, and yet seeing proof with his own eyes hurt a bit.
Goading Ayelah with the truth had been easy, because there were certain things he believed in, utterly. And knowledge, the sharing and understanding of it, that was a sacred thing to him. To know, to watch this happen…
Loki burned the face of the young archivist in his mind as Leamhan prepared to leave, not just a mark but a target. Someday, when he was ready and he struck at the entire structure of this place, that man was going to be one of the first pillars to be pulled down. Someday, he thought, still in Leamhan's lengthening shadow.
He had a lot of ideas about how that attack was going to work.
. . .
Leamhan, like Ayelah, was also wise enough to not go straight home, but nor did he bother to stop anywhere that might have shaken his silent tail. He whisked by a stall for a bite, and he stopped to talk to a night's watchman, and that Elf, too, didn't see the figure in the shadows just a few meters up the street watching them both. But this other watchman was just that, some officer out on his job, and Leamhan continued on after a while. The route he took was moderately winding, but still, Loki sussed out quickly where home really was. A nicely sized apartment, midway up one of the finer crystal towers on a central ring of the city. Just the barest touch about Leamhan's paygrade, easily waved off with a good family name.
Loki watched Leamhan enter his home, magelights flickering on to welcome him and follow him around the apartment, and then Loki wandered off for a late-night snack of his own, as he might as well enjoy himself while waiting for those lights to go dark again.
He took his time. There was an angry old Dwarf running a late-night cart a few streets away, easily found by nose. Loki had no idea what sort of story brought the curmudgeon out of Nidavellir and into this daintier realm, but he sold good sandwiches to the few sorts willing to try non-local food. Mostly tourists and merchants tired of the aesthetic, it seemed, and Loki lounged against a candlelit pole, watching men attempt to scam each other and not trying very hard to succeed. This was the real Alfheim to him, like the villages. Lies and magic and secrets, all of it running underneath the glitzy facade.
He was still wiping breadcrumbs and garlicky grease off his hands when he returned to Leamhan's tower, and he was sure to not leave any trace of himself behind when he unlocked the door with a soft snap of his fingers and a push of his palm.
From the outside, Leamhan had chosen a moderately upscale home. From within, it became immediately apparent that either he was rich enough to run a merchant's gig when he wasn't a watchman, or that he had quite an affectionate patron. Loki peered through the darkness, looking at the hanging fountain and its danglingly intricate gemwork, and the nook stacked high with freshly delivered handbound books marked with rare leathers and metalwork ribbon, and he knew it was the latter.
He didn't turn on a light, of course. A soft murmured enchantment gave his eyes the illusion of light to work with, instead, and his footsteps stayed soft. From somewhere several rooms in and up a small staircase, Loki could hear the soft wheeze of a a man well asleep.
It was the wrong way to begin, and it was a sure sign of those flaws in Loki - vengeance, anger, stubbornness - but nonetheless, he went to the staircase first and padded his way upstairs and down the short hall to the bedchamber. More fool Leamhan, there were no traps or alarms in most of the apartment. Loki caught the scent of something active in what seemed to be a small office, and also the larger book room next to it, and he decided to go there next.
Meanwhile, Loki stood in the doorway of Leamhan's chamber and looked down at the sleeping figure, studying him. The man slept light and easy, and Loki's shadow didn't quite touch him. Almost innocent, that figure. Loki grinned as Leamhan snored, knowing he would come back before he left.
He went back towards the office, pausing outside the boundary of the faint but intricate magical ward. He reached out his magical senses, looking for flaws or the creator's rune-mark, and found the latter quickly. It had a snare in it as well, a good one that would bind an intruder as well as scream warning to the maker. It took Loki three seconds to suspend it and slip through.
For Loki, that fine little bit of magical netting might as well have been a glowing sign reading 'START RUMMAGING FOR CLUES HERE.'
Idiot, thought Loki with satisfaction. A good spy with things to hide would have layered trap-runes everywhere, leaving no hint as to which place actually hid the goods. Now he had a piece of Leamhan's mind to himself, and he kept the shadows close around him as he rummaged along the shelves, across the central desk, ran his hands under the chair, and even flipped rugs for good measure.
He had to give the man half a point. Anything Loki needed wasn't in that first and obvious sweep. He stayed hunkered in the center of the office, the rugs put back exactly how he'd found them, and then he looked up at a series of paintings along the wall. There had been nothing behind them - Loki had done the obvious and peeked during that first quick sweep - but now he studied the pictures themselves.
Landscape paintings. The glinting Elvish city, the deep forest beyond, and a third that took Loki a while to puzzle out. It was familiar yet alien - a mountain's pinnacle rising above a deep plain, draped with a soft cloud. Not a richly green landscape, but scrubby and ringed with tall bushes. There were figures in the painting, small people between those bushes. Gardeners of some kind. Then it clicked, sharp. He'd seen that place, on Earth, a region now full of highways and sprawling suburbs. It was one of the smallish mountains of Athens, a memory from long ago.
Greece? Why there? Loki stared at the painting, putting together what little he knew. Leamhan's family had made the crossing with all the rest as the changing landscapes and shifting beliefs of Europe drove the fae away. Only a handful of them stayed behind on Earth. Even Loki didn't know where most of them were.
But Leamhan had had some connection specifically to Athens. The fae peoples traveled in the ancient days, and the young world had been theirs to toy with, so that in itself wasn't remarkable. This half-elf kept this particular image, though. Athens meant something.
Loki filed that away with its tickling resonance, and let himself into the collection connected to the office with the same magical ease.
. . .
Books, of course. Some of it trash, some of it ledgers of political discourse that Leamhan had been taking notes on. That in itself was some proof of evil intent, it showed that the good and loyal watchman kept records on matters that weren't his purview, to give to someone that would likely benefit from an inside ear. Loki selected a small tome, one that recorded a brief but private interview from a few months ago with several inter-realm ambassadors that Leamhan should have been providing security for and nothing else, and slipped it into his tunic. It was not the proof he was looking for, but it would go to character and intent.
He kept looking, wrinkling his nose and running his hands along paper, looking for magical traces of something, anything he could use more directly.
It took twenty minutes, but finally he struck paydirt. His hands had been running along the side of a tall bookcase, one that he'd kept coming back to for its dimensions seemed not quite right somehow and Loki liked to trust his instincts. The switch had an illusion on it, a nigh invisible one due to its inertness, and Loki's teeth bared at the recurrence of such small, subtle magic. Leamhan had one innate magical talent, and he used it well.
The cache it hid was similarly illusioned, a final barricade. Loki's fingers tickled through it, plucking free a small pouch. With another sniff to be sure this item was not trapped, he tugged the pouch open and dumped its stone into his palm, wondering what he would find.
It was small and green, a perfect cabochon emerald set in gold filigree. Atop it hovered a marque, that noble signature that said whoever held it carried noble favor and noble protection.
Not Oberon's.
Loki studied the stylized, twining ivy for a long, blood-pounding minute, trying to make sense of the knots here. What Leamhan was doing, why he acted for this faction, why. Over and over the question. Now he knew for whom.
Queen Titania.
"Shit," breathed Loki. His hand clenched tight around the marque and its pouch, and he had one of his answers, loaded with all new questions.
He could wake up Leamhan, force him into talking. But he would have to contend with the possible fallout of that. Leamhan was favored by a dangerously powerful party he hadn't expected, Oberon's own equal and an unexpected enemy, and Loki was going to have to step carefully when he approached her court.
Not the shadows for that, no. That would be unwise. He would have to go directly, one royal house to another. There were rules to certain confrontations at that social level, rules even he didn't want to break until absolutely necessary.
Essentially a state visit, in the way he hadn't wanted for King Oberon. Now he had no choice.
But for the present, he could leave a message for Leamhan himself. A very specific one.
. . .
Leamhan woke in the morning, well rested but unsettled. He shoved himself upright amidst his spidersilk sheets, running his hands through his glinting hair, and the sunlight danced in.
He blinked a while, one arm laid atop a knee, and he tried to make sense of why he felt put off. His dreams had been deep. He reached out his senses as that morning light continued to shine in his eyes - he knew he wasn't a strong mage, so he specialized carefully in the few spells he knew the best, and his wards seemed untouched.
He winced. Some mornings, if he slept in a little, the sunlight bounced off one of the neighboring towers into his room. Usually he kept the curtains shut to avoid that, but he had been tired and full of joy. The note last night from his Queen had been a kind one, to boot. The plan was going quite well, despite Prince Loki jaunting off to old Midgard the way he had.
The sun lazed into his face again as he shifted on the bed, and Leamhan was just awake enough to find that strange. Suns and stars usually didn't move with someone. Then he woke up a little more and realized the light was striking the side of the eye not facing the window.
He looked down, squinting against the sharp gleam of something reflecting off his pillow, and then he screamed and jerked out of the bed, upright and naked and trembling.
A broken blade, the razor-sharp shards of it scattered across the pillow.
It was a warning, an unmistakeable one, laid bare to him with no proof as to who left it. Leamhan knew, instantly, but the other layer of the murderous joke was just as obvious - he would never prove it was Prince Loki.
Nausea roiled. Gods damn, he thought the man was still away.
He was not safe. If the infamous prince got his way, Leamhan was never going to be safe. Few survived the dark prince when he had cause to make a target. His entire plan relied on Loki seeming distant and uninvolved.
The knife told him differently.
The knife told him the prince had decided this was now personal.
Leamhan fled his bedchamber, but he had no idea what to do.
