16.
. . .
Thor watched Lady Adenium glower at the unlucky guard as he delivered his hushed message to her, his arms crossed against him where he leaned against the back wall of his cell. "An issue, mistress?"
She didn't turn around, but her translucent ruby wings fluttered in a particularly aggrieved sort of way. "I'm sure it's of no consequence."
Flutter. Flutter.
It was interesting how such dainty little wings got across so much emotion.
Thor pushed himself off of the wall and crossed to the very edge of the cell, close to her. He dropped onto his rump so he was closer to her eye height and sighed. "Well, in my experience, most politics are of no real consequence, but everyone acts like it is anyway, and that makes it an actual problem despite the fact that it's all structured nonsense we made up to stress ourselves further."
The small round face angled towards him, and he saw weary annoyance on it, and also a brief glimmer of speculation and something else.
"I prefer hitting things and talking plainly. Some people think me a brute for that, and I let them. But I pay attention, mistress, and I'm not actually a fool. You don't grow up with a brother like mine without picking up a few tricks. Acting dumber than I am's been great for centuries, I'm not changing now." Thor shrugged. "Someone's screwing around. More than I would say to my own defense."
Adenium turned to face him and her wings still shimmered in the air, stretched and active. She pursed her lips and continued to stare at him, his height now roughly equal to hers, and he could tell that affected her, despite herself. She looked aside, as if making sure the guard had gone. "That idiot, Leamhan, is running late to this very interview he demanded so strongly to have. That guard, who would be under his purview, is telling me it's a small delay. My people have been telling me I might as well go have a drink and place my lunch order."
Loki's done something. It wasn't a question. He did fast work when in a mood, and Thor could damn near watch the clouds gather when Loki had left the other day. It wouldn't help to say that aloud, not as plainly. "Leamhan's vanished, then? That's more than a little strange."
"And it's an action rather favorable to you, isn't it?" Adenium didn't say it with any hostility. "A rock solid case he brings before the Queen, so you'd think he'd be damn sure to keep his investigation moving smoothly. This is most irregular." She looked away again. "She's going to be right again, damn it. Her methods make me berserk, but here we bloody are once more."
Thor wasn't sure who she was, not for certain, but he liked the rest of that. "Has there been trouble with Leamhan before?"
"Not him." She snapped a look at him, seeing if he was trying to play her. But he kept his face open and honest, because he wasn't playing, not really. Loki had suggested her as a sort of guardian, and she was prickly, but she had also proved herself smart and, well, normal. He wanted her to talk to him as an equal, and it was working. The suspicion faded and now she looked tired. "There's always a lot of nonsense going on in this court, if I may speak plainly, Your Highness. It's exhausting. Being close to the queen, I'm exhausted rather a lot."
"It's common to every court, mistress. And it is. I don't know how Loki handles it, sometimes. Then again, sometimes he didn't." He frowned. "But anyway. If we're stuck waiting for the wheels of justice to get back on track, Lady Adenium, I've got enough rights as a royal prisoner to call out for a good lunch. May I offer my word and gold and find us both something decent?"
"Are you bribing me?" Adenium didn't sound serious, but still she kept an eye on him.
"No, ma'am. I just rather like eating when stressed." Thor grinned. "Have you ever tried something called pizza?"
She sniffed, not unkindly. "I have not. What is it?"
"A human meal. A delicious flatbread of meats and cheese and sauce. Oh, and some vegetables, if you prefer."
"Sounds awful." Adenium studied him and there was a bright glint in that ruby eye. "I need awful. It's been an awful year, Your Highness. If I say I might know an old merchant runner that can realm-shift within an hour, regardless of the legality of such action, do you know a good place that will take your coin?"
"Madame, I have been recently privileged with that very knowledge."
Adenium puffed a little, and he knew he'd got to the heart of her. "And how is human beer?"
"They try their hearts out on Earth and I credit them for it. It doesn't get me drunk, but it's pleasant stuff."
"We're going to order a lot."
Thor grinned, understanding that he'd made a very unlikely friend.
. . .
Queen Titania kept court on the liminal edge of the city, where a network of old crystal archways had been reclaimed by the onslaught of even more ancient vines and grasping tree limbs. The twining arches led upwards into a high court veiled not just with the green, but with all the flowers of the realms the queen had gathered to her. From there, the Queen of the Fae, Oberon's Royal Consort, could see as much of Alfheim as she liked… but whispered word knew she did it mostly through bought secrets and magic mirrors buried in those same arches.
Loki knew about Titania, a little. Frigga had corresponded with her in careful letters, usually using the love of those same flowers as diplomacy. Asgard's gardens had fae cuttings thriving among them, and not a few rare Asgardian species that normally only grew in that realm dug down newer roots here.
Asgard kept one sole cutting sent after Frigga's wake, Loki knew, a mourner's rose that bloomed darkly blue when the night was full dark with no moon. The bush grew well and strong, yet it only ever offered a single flower.
That courtesy between the realms, that respect and grief, got Loki in the door. The bauchan guards marched before and in front of him while a runner sped ahead. The hobgoblin-like men were squat and goatish looking. They had clear, lovely voices, though they barely spoke to him as they walked.
They guided him to the trellis gate that led to the inner court, waiting for some sign from within. It came in the form of a small, clear bell. A moment later, the trellis opened and one of the bauchan stomped the butt of his spear against a specially hollowed out bit of tree. It created a strange and sonorous noise, a drum's echo from an era long gone. The other framed himself in the opened door. "My Queen, my liege, present to thee we do. This prince of gold among our realm of green. We name him now, Loki has come to thee. He begs thy ear and time, my quee-"
"Enough, Friseal. Enough. I grant the prince audience. Step in, young Loki, and don't worry about trying to match my men's words. They are happier where they are, living old memories and wrapped in their older tongue."
Loki moved past the bauchan with his head bent down in reverence, looking at the grey top of his hair. Then he looked at the fae Queen, and wasn't sure what he saw at first. He hadn't known what to expect, but it was not this.
Titania moved, rising up in a moment of alien grace, and that made him see her outline a little better. She was humanoid after all, with a fey and angular grey-bark face crowned with two sharp yellow eyes, but tall and made of wooden curves that made her look like a living bundle of tree branches. Pouring out behind her were her wings - broad springtime petals of rosy pinks and pale greens, dusting the air around her with the smells of grass. Her hair was black and mossy, tumbling down around her like a cloak, and she smiled at him, pointed and inhuman, knowing that she had given even someone like Loki a moment's pause with a look at her true face.
Then she shifted a little, and now she was just as tall, and the fey and angular face became pink and merry and grinning, and all those mosses and greens became her veiling dress and spilling braids. But the eyes were still catlike yellow, and they never broke from him. She was beautiful in both shapes, an old-growth forest that had survived a dozen wildfires and grown something new and strange in those beds of black ash, and she was frightening in a way he hadn't expected. "Young Prince Loki. How odd it is that this is the first time we meet."
"Your Majesty," said Loki with a bow of his head. When his face came back up, he made sure the surprise and confusion was gone from it. She'd won an opening shot off of him. He would have to be careful with what he said. Coming in the front door was no guarantee of his future safety. "I must agree."
"Frigga was so careful about me. She was kind and polite and dangerously wise. She sent you to Aelsa, but not to my knee. You must know I take no offense to this, it was simply sensible of her." Titania dropped back to her seat, a stump that had been cultivated into a small, twisting stool. "The trees have a more… primal whisper to them. Pages tame their words; the magic of books is a kindly cage that helps your kind see. Men and women have come to me for wisdom before, to learn in my presence how to listen, and they've gone away, and many of them delight in what I've taught them… for a while." Her hand flicked in the air, giving hint to their fates. "It's beautiful to witness. And of course sometimes they do come back."
Loki's gaze flickered to the small soulflowers that dotted the overgrown canopy of Titania's private salon. Oh, yes. He knew what she meant. He bowed his head again, wondering if there was a threat in there, too.
"So what does bring you to my court, Prince Loki?" She gestured at another stool when he straightened up, a fat and cushy thing grown from a mushroom and topped with moss. "I hope it's nothing too troublesome."
Loki took the seat and he licked his lips. He watched as she put away some spellbound project of hers with a gesture of her fingers, a glinting orb of green wrapped in leaves. "I would hope not overmuch, but yes, I am afraid there has been a little trouble."
"Mm, oh dear." She sounded neutral. He was sure she knew perfectly well what this was about.
"It seems that an individual," here he chose to use words to allow tasteful distance between his accusations and his accused, "has chosen to use my brother's good reputation for ill, and made him seem like an accomplice to some new plot of King Oberon."
"How can you be sure it's not some jape of Oberon himself?" Titania didn't look at him, still fussing with her magics. None of what she passed her hands over were hostile enchantments, all were illusive pretty things and gems. Like Leamhan's chandelier. It would be rude to attack Loki outright at her court, although to his discomfort there were plenty of other ways to fatally wound an enemy. "Have you proof otherwise?"
"I'm very sorry, Your Majesty, but I do."
Titania sealed away her works and looked behind her for a dappled-brown fawn that had been sleeping in her shadows. She gently lifted it, keeping its gangly legs neatly bundled together, and placed it on her lap, stroking its wide brow with an unearthly hand. She glanced at him, and that yellow eye turned gold and serene. "So. You're Aelsa's weapon, sent to strike me."
Loki reared back and his face immediately went hot at the turn. "What?"
Titania flicked her hand towards the trellis door, and the bauchan pulled it shut. It was only the two of them now, the flowers, and the sleeping baby deer. "We're going to speak plainly, Prince, because once the blade's unsheathed it's better to be quick and clean about it." The fawn struggled suddenly. She patted it again until it soothed, one hoof now stretching across her knee. It suckled one of her fingers and looked newly content.
He was now totally off-balance, and he didn't like it one bit. "I don't… I'm acting on behalf of my brother."
"Of course you are." Matter of fact. "Do you act without Aelsa's approval?" She looked at him, saw the answer. "You do. Then whether you knew or not, you act with her goals in mind." Titania tilted her head, not quite pitying. It was the face of a mother with a learning toddler. "Prince Loki, your reputation is interesting, and I bore easily, so do take that in the spirit I intend. You have, should you continue to not get your corpse thrust into the eternal void, the potential to be even more interesting over the next few millennia. But you are still young, though I have no doubt all you Asgard royals feel you've been aged fast of late, and you're simply not more than a pawn on her playing field. Not yet."
Loki sat, stricken. This had left his hands and slipped his control, fast. He wondered if he'd even had a chance, and the old, meaner parts of him would find resentment in that. He swallowed it down, an overdose of dangerous pride. For Thor's sake - and his own.
"Boggart's din, I've been around ages and she still steals the march on me. I figured there would be an afternoon like this one soon enough, but I did not think it would be Frigga's protected little potential to carry the warning." Titania sighed. "Talk to me upfront, prince. I am past games if she's put you onto the board with her eye on what you do. Tell me what you see and what you found, and I'll tell you what Aelsa's smile behind you means."
He wasn't looking at her, but he carefully put his hand into one of his hidden pockets to touch her marque. "Then, simply put, your man Leamhan's not as clever as he hoped. He got lucky when he caught Thor alone and me distracted, and he got even luckier when a man who is loyal to your husband stopped to offer him a kind hand. At some point, of which I admit I am still unsure how it happened, a marque of Oberon was slipped into Thor's gear and Leamhan enacted a raid and an arrest on the village inn we were staying at. He's claiming Oberon has eyes on Aelsa's throne, and that my brother is party to this treason." He detailed a little more, until she looked satisfied.
"And you struck Leamhan's home last night. My frightened little moth. He's fled now. Sent his message and took his heels to the deep woods. He slept so nicely last night, and now this." Reluctantly, Loki looked back to her. Titania sighed when she met his gaze. "You found my gift to him, his message said. It's one of the very first I made, because he cared for me so in the old days. Please let me have my marque back."
"It's the proof I need, Your Majesty-"
"No, I'll give you the proof you need, but only after you understand why." Titania's voice turned bitter for a moment, then evened out. "Again, prince. The game is over. It was brief and amusing and I will pray that a lesson has been learned by one that needed it. You have nothing to fear from me today, so I ask as one of royal blood to another, return me the gift I gave my friend and my heart."
Reluctant, Loki took the little cabochon from its hiding place and handed it to her. Between her fingers, it began to gleam with inner light. "Leamhan has wronged my family, and me," he said, not trying to make it aggressive.
"He has." She put the gem away with a flourish, a shimmer in the air leaving no trace. "And that is between the two of you. I will ask, not demand, for I care for my moth and plea to you directly, that you in time grant him mercy. He is badly scared of you now, and what he did, he did for love. Though I did not order it, I will tell you that I did not speak against it when his plan became known to me. Aelsa will know I permitted this, then, and so it is my responsibility."
"Then what are we doing here?" It was hard to not sound frustrated.
"Saving face, prince." Titania resumed stroking the sleeping fawn. "Aelsa is giving me a chance to do that much before she takes direct action herself. So I will tell you why I allowed this, and I will give you what you need, and you will go back to her and tell her what we've said when she asks, and you will know from this day forever that she is not what you see and must never be underestimated. She plays amidst her courting fools, and she could destroy them all tonight if she wished to. She has chosen not to destroy me - and I think, kindly, that is because she understands."
He still felt shell-shocked. "What, Your Majesty, does she understand?"
"She knows what Oberon did to me." It came out in a low snarl and the fawn woke again, making a soft, strange noise like no Earthly deer. She bent over the creature, cooing at it in apology, and now she stayed veiled behind the tumble of her hair. "I'm sure you do, too, Prince, and I know those myths of yours, and so there's another point of hers made through fate's twist. I may hope for your sympathy here. The tales, true or no, can wound us."
Loki opened his mouth, not understanding at first. Then he did and he closed it, thinking of Daisy's well-meant teasing and a matter of a certain series of ribald Norse myths, and it struck him in a rush. Tales. Myths. Truths…
Athens.
Leamhan's painting, once a mystery, came to life in his mind. A Midsummer Night's Dream. He'd read the play but not recently and it was a human thing so he'd thought it was decent but didn't think on it much at the time. A tangling comedy about Theseus and Hippolyta, and Oberon and Titania, crossed lovers and confusion in the mix before a grand wedding. And the quarrel between the Fae over Oberon's jealousy… Oberon's joke landing on the worker named Bottom, and a love potion gone awry.
A queen made to lust for a man changed to a beast.
Titania was hugging the fawn, and Loki heard the impossible - an ancient queen weep softly, her face hidden to keep her secret. He said, only, "What Oberon did. In the story. It was worse for you than that little comedy likes to say."
"My loves stayed with me. My blossom, my seed, my web, my moth. My moth was stricken hardest, and it hurt us both so much when Leamhan decided to slip off then to Aelsa's court, all for a someday chance. It hurt, because he loved me enough to go away to protect me."
And for that, she'd asked for mercy as if Loki were an equal, not just the near-child she thought of him politically. His face felt cold now, frozen. There was a great deal here she no doubt would not say to him, and that told him the rest.
"Do you know what's so awful about this, prince? There's two things. One is that my king has never understood my anger and hurt. It was a game to him, you see. An accident, and for that he doesn't feel that he must be responsible. Even his stupid old charade that put him in Aelsa's prison, he doesn't understand all of that the way he needs. And the other - the other, damn me to hells…
"I do still love the old ox. I might forgive him someday, if he would just see - but he hasn't. So my loves act on my behalf and shame him before Aelsa with this dolled up crime." Her voice was calm again, too calm. This was a thing that hurt Titania deeply, and as much as she was willing to speak to him, he could hear resentment as well. Self-resentment. The shock fell away, without pity. Not only sympathy, but empathy. Yes, he'd learned enough in his years of being a fool to feel that. "A game, you see." She sniffled. "A jape, a ruse. Just like his own."
"To trip him with his own hubris."
She laughed, small and girlish and wounded. "Very good, Prince. Just like that."
"Your Majesty…" Loki trailed off, thinking. "This is not the endgame I came to expect."
"No?" There was an eye now in the hair, coppery glinted and dry. Titania would not cry where she could be seen, and he respected that while also knowing it was one of the darker curses of being born to courts.
He laughed, small and dour. "It would be a better universe if people simply talked instead of fought, but that's a rarity enough that it seems a fantasy. So I'm here in your parlor and we're talking, and I don't know what to do with my revenges now."
"You get to be my age, prince, you get vastly more particular about your fights. Besides, a good wordy brawl over truths can be just as satisfying." She straightened, the fawn still clasped in her arms. It was awake now, looking at Loki, and its eyes were bright and supernaturally blue. "Revenges? Not merely against my moth?"
He glanced up at the solar's roof and its veil of flowers. "Your moth, I think I might come to understand what he did. Your tale, that I understand. But the way Leamhan did it used certain flaws that have grown into the city here. Certain corruptions and-"
"Oh, all that. Yes, my Leamhan's gotten some fine use out of the greedy idiots at the Archive. They serve him and me, but not for loyalty. Money talks louder than my magic." Her face had fully re-emerged from her hair, and a bit of the sparkle was back in her face. Not all of it, but some. "So you think they've wronged you, too?"
"Ah-"
She whipped a hand in the air, dismissive. "Well, go to. If Aelsa put you on my trail, she knew what you'd uncover. Doubtless that's a benefit to her. I've suspected she's wanted to borrow an off-worlder's ship and shoot that old Milkmane into a white dwarf star for centuries. Can't prove that's what she feels, but I'd be there with a good barrel of wine to share with her if it happened. You set a fire under that library, metaphorically, of course, she'll probably keep you her kindest graces forever."
"Um."
"They call you the silvertongue, don't they?"
"When I've got my feet under me." It sounded like a grudging confession. It was.
Titania laughed suddenly, real and richly human. "I've still got it. Aelsa won't win everything off me today." The fawn bleated and she let it go free, tumbling to the sod and grass at their feet. It wobbled and danced off, still making that strange little noise. A key was in her hand now, small and steely. She gave it to him. "This opens Leamhan's office in the palace. In there, you'll find the evidence lockbox associated with your brother's case. If I were you, I'd take the box, sealed, directly to Aelsa, in private audience with her and that little red grump she likes. A stone will be inside that box. I'm surprised you missed the trick to it."
"To my regret, Leamhan succeeded so well because I hadn't fully committed to helping Thor yet. He showed me the stone Leamhan gave him, but a brief inspection seemed like it was-"
Inert.
"Oh shit."
Titania gave him a lopsided smile. "He's not a very good mage, my moth. He's got a bit of shift and one excellent illusive speciality, and wisely, he uses the latter as much as he can. He's so good at being unnoticed when he's not over-confident. And he was, this time. He might have gotten away with it a little longer, but Aelsa likely knew from the beginning what was in play, and you were in the right place to find the trail."
"I missed a passive godsdamned enchantment. Me. Leamhan's stone was Oberon's marque all along, and he easily got it through this court ages ago." Loki was dead white and furious with himself. Another simple mistake.
"Don't ruin yourself too deeply, dear prince. We all miss a trick now and again, and oftentimes because we care overmuch." Titania's hands were clasped together on her lap and she looked content. "When you can slip one past us old fae, then you'll know you're in the deeper ocean. And that you can survive it, to boot."
He turned the key over between his fingers, feeling the cold iron of it, realizing that had made Leamhan's office more secure than most. Traditions held power here, like Asgard. He decided to speak honestly, as best he could, without hostility. "I'm sorry your husband wronged you. I don't like that my family became tangled in your revenge, but you were right that I understand your wrath."
"And for what it's worth - this is between us, now, and not for Aelsa. She'll think I'm getting soft, and I can't have that - I am sorry we snared your brother. In short time, if you had not acted for him, or if we had somehow slipped Aelsa's eye, it would have still been resolved and Thor's honor neatly restored. A game and nothing more, as we fae do."
He arched an eyebrow, curious. "With the threat of treason in the balance?"
Titania shrugged. "It's Alfheim, young man. Treason passes for a casual game of Grecian handball here, it's simply not a crime as harshly regarded as elsewhere. Aelsa wins in the end, and the traitors go in the cells for a few decades until they get it out of their system or think up a better plan for next time. No one's scored a point off her yet, and we fae don't try as hard as those Elvish idiots in the city - we just make it look better. She's the top of the food chain here, and you learn to take her warnings when they come. Otherwise, the next day is typically your last. We game, Loki. She does not."
Loki leaned back on his mushroom stool, taking that in. "I'll go to Aelsa, and I'll tell her the truth as we spoke it. It seems… I have more than enough to resolve this. Is there any message you'd like me to pass?"
"Tell her I will attend her winter court after all. She'll know what that means." Titania rose, tall and slowly shifting back to her unearthly, true form. "Like as not, you'll wind up with an invitation as well after all this. It's worth accepting, but don't drink a single drop while you're there."
"Er…"
"I jest, we don't do that to guests." The smooth oval bark of her face split in a wide and worldly grin. "Often."
