3.

. . .

Wearing Odin's mask, Loki left the golden throne early after morning supplications to make his way down into the deeper depths of the palace. Down to where the prisons were, and a little further yet. Not a simple task to mask the eye of the particular guest he intended to visit, but then, sometimes that sharp eye was something even he needed to consult.

Not that they were ever easy visitations. For either of them.

He passed by the last brace of guards and down into the empty stone tunnels that led to the nearly buried cell at the end. The guards were ordered to not remain close, and further ordered to never listen to the prisoner, no matter what he might try to tell them. Sometimes, especially when irritated with the prisoner, Loki went so far as to send Dwarves instead to tend this one. Old ones, gone deaf from long years in the sacred mines with their deep echoes. They didn't care about the politics here. They cared about the gold they were given in payment, gold that would be carried home to create beautiful, intricate things that defied comprehension.

The silence kept the prisoner just as sharp, however. Heimdall was already on his feet as Loki passed into the hall, those bright, undimmed eyes seeing him, seeing him full. Seeing everything.

Loki pushed back the king's golden hood, an acknowledgement of the rain still spilling outside, and let Heimdall see his face just like anyone else might, the pale, drawn lines of his cheeks, and his green-grey eyes that stared back hollowly.

Heimdall laughed by way of sardonic greeting. "The food has been particularly shit of late, Prince Loki."

"Has it?" Loki arched an eyebrow, ignoring the carefully deliberate choices the man always used to address him. Food problems were not by his command, if the complaints were true. "Do you angle for sympathy now?"

"I don't give a damn about your sympathy. I do give a damn about the weevils in the bread they give me. I can see them in the pots of flour they deign to use, growing, wriggling, laying their eggs. They're going to be particularly bad soon. I think I will try a bread-free diet for a while. They'll give me the greens instead, and that's fine. It will keep me just as strong, my prince." He grinned at the tired face on the other side of the cage, not at all pleasantly. "Are you even aware of that? They're taking shortcuts in the prison kitchens, because they think the king doesn't know and doesn't care. That's true, is it not?"

He felt the skin of his face pull tight, white hot.

"You know nothing of what's going on in your own stolen palace, while the kingdom entire slowly begins to slip out of the grasp of your fingers. Is all this what you wanted, Loki?"

He slapped at the cold iron bars, the first line of defense holding the watchman in. Beyond them gleamed the familiar gold lattice. Heimdall didn't flinch, nor blink when Loki spoke in an even, controlled voice. "Lord Eirund. Northwest of the city. Has a matter with a Vanaheim clan, out by Hogun's village."

"I'm aware of the place." Heimdall crossed his arms and settled himself comfortably on the stool near Loki. He watched, and said nothing more.

Loki licked his lips, hiding his growing fury. "What are they not telling me? What's Eirund's obsession with this land deal that he masks it all with his pious concerns over some little relationship that doesn't even involve him directly?"

Heimdall stared down at him, a thin smile playing at the corner of his lips.

"Fine, I can make my own judgement based on what's given to me and no more, and everyone will be miserable over it, and you can sit here and squat in noble protest and contribute your part to my 'disaster.'" Loki spat the words. "Would that content you? Is that what you would like?"

"I'd like fewer weevils in my bedamned food, if that wasn't rhetorical."

Loki snorted and looked away. Then he looked back, further annoyed. "They're given better supplies than that."

"So they are."

Theft, then. Ordinary greed, a thing he would have thought left to smaller mortals, not the staff of kings in a realm of plenty. But no, it was a universal flaw in men. Loki rolled his eyes. Heimdall was telling the truth. Of course he was. "There will be fewer weevils in the bedamned food in the days to come."

"I'd ask you to swear an oath, but I'm just as apt to tell you where to stick that oath, my prince."

Loki laughed, low and bitter. There was little else he could do to torment Heimdall, short of murder. He'd started to take the hateful banter as almost comforting, the closest thing he'd had to ordinary conversation in months, so instead he bargained with easing what he could for his enemy. "I've been a prisoner before, and let's leave aside as obvious just how much you'd love to see that come around again. If not worse fates for me. There will be fewer weevils, if for no other selfish reason than that I would not do such a thing to myself." And maybe send around a few bruised skulls, for betraying a given duty within the palace.

Heimdall studied him beneath his lengthening hair, woven taut in braids and dreads, his eyes gleaming and full of the deep light of the galaxy. "Lord Eirund stands to gain from that parcel of the lady's land more than most realize, though he thinks he knows its secret alone. It's verdant, lush, a pretty piece. But it's what's under it that's the real prize. There's a vein of ore buried there, something that would give him weight with merchanters and particularly Nidavellir smiths. He plays the game right, takes it under his wing, he's a much richer man. One that can buy his way into the higher nobility and all that entails, so he plays for the king's favor now, over this, to shore his claim over what he thinks he's found."

Loki snorted, knowing he hadn't actually won anything. In his own way, Heimdall was still serving the good of the kingdom - not him. He was not naive enough to think anything else. "But foolish enough to have left trails, spoken of it in too many conversations, that even kept here you've seen what he's about."

"As you say. My prince." Heimdall smirked.

He thought it over. Eirund didn't actually care about the lady's newborn love with some warrior. He cared that it tossed apart an arrangement his own cousin had with the lady, an arrangement that would eventually, played right, put the land she held under his own command, and he had been relying on that arrangement for several decades now. Betting all his business and credit on it.

With the king believing by the paperwork that he and his cousin were the wronged party in an otherwise minor fracas, the 'easiest' option the king would have then would be to simply free all parties from the previous obligation… and give the land to Eirund's family as a peace offering. Such was exactly what Eirund had been angling for in the throne room. The papers showed that as well. If the king felt any sympathy, the girl and her lover would still have quite a dowry and a pleasant, royal-blessed wedding - but not the land with its valuable secret, something that could sustain entire new generations. "How ridiculous this all is."

"I think those very words every day. My prince."

Loki rolled his eyes at Heimdall again. "Tonight you'll be fed from what's made for the king's own hall. And tomorrow, no damned weevils."

"Don't overdo yourself. My prince." Heimdall settled back, visibly amused at the tidbit he was being granted.

"If I were to overdo myself, I'd let you out to come and stab me in the back." He smiled back, fangy and for a moment full of the strength of all his own hot old annoyances. "But neither of us are foolish enough to expect that."

Heimdall's expression turned serious, assessing him in new and chilly silence. Loki didn't like the clarity there, never loved the way the man looked through him. He could not hide everything he wanted, not from those unnatural eyes. He turned away, pausing for a second at the sound of Asgard's watchman shifting his boots. "You do not see what I see," said Heimdall.

Loki glanced back in time to see an new and viciously unfriendly smile begin to fill Heimdall's brown face, turning the words into a threat, a weaponized and perfectly vague warning. He decided to leave the man with his own. He put a sneer in his voice, but kept his back to Heimdall as he left the buried prison in a rush of brown and gold robes, the mask returned to his face and voice. "From here, I suppose you can do nothing about any of it. You can sit there. And watch."

. . .

The 'king' dined alone that night. No courtiers, no supplicants, no advisors, no godsdamned lords attempting to curry favor on behalf of their own futures. Two guards at the outer entry to the small and private hall, no servants. Loki allowed them to set the table, commanded one to take a platter down to the prison as he'd promised, and then sent them out as well. It wasn't peace, but at least it was quiet.

It further allowed no one to see him not eating much of the finely prepared food that covered the table. He looked at the table runner, saw no other hands resting atop it like his, fumbling with silverware and telling each other stories. They were all gone. He saw the ghosts that replaced them, however. Frigga at the far end, facing the true Odin where he sat now, often with that little smile of hers. Down by her, on the left, that's where he would have sat as a little boy. Kicking just as young Thor under the table whenever he tried to belch as the men did. Frigga's own leg eventually putting a stop to the underground fray before Thor flung a piece of fruit at him in revenge. The fidgeting. The handmaidens and the staff trying to manage the sanity of the table by fluttering around and tending to what they could. Odin droning on about whatever political matter that currently needed his one wise eye.

Loki put his fork down, giving up and putting his still-masked face in his gnarled old hands. His belly was empty, but his mind filled itself thick and bloated with the past. All those family gatherings in this room. All the whispers and the fights and the laughter. There was nothing here now but silence.

Nothing here but him.

"What have I done?" The whisper that escaped him went unheard, even by himself.

When he took his hands away from his face, the past was still there to judge him.

. . .

Ago ~

Thor paced furiously back and forth through the small family hall, never taking his eyes off the grand dining table in the center of it. The air seemed to crackle around him as he moved. On the brocade runner that bore the heraldry of their house, lay a corpse still wrapped in a coarsely woven shroud. It was stained through where the magicked arrows had done their fatal work. Meat of a gruesome kind lay where fine birds and breads ought, but he was clearly not their evening's supper. Barely restrained fury rattled through Thor's voice, not yet regarded by all as a man grown but already a warrior in his own right. "A message requires an answer!"

"Silence is an answer," said Odin, seated at the head of the table. The head of the corpse lay in his direction, and he regarded its linen crown with an untroubled look. "Sometimes it is the most wise answer."

"Karnilla will fill that silence with more corpses, Father." Thor paused in his stride to stare at the king with blue-flame eyes. "These are only her first. This poor one, and the twenty in the grass waiting outside to be made sacred and sent to the stars for their rest!"

"There will be more, yes." Frigga sounded as calm as Odin from where she stood, her hands hung together and her fingers interlaced before the blue silk of her gown. "She's testing us, Thor. Plying us to see where we will set the boundaries, and then she knows what first she must overcome. She has the opening move, and it's best to respond with a defense forged from wisdom."

"I have in mind a defense! A fine and strong one, a way to repel anyone that thinks our people are her bait and her sacrifice!" Thor turned fast on her, his long blond braids snapping in the still air of the feast hall. She looked back at him, soft and disapproving, and he didn't seem to notice.

Loki shifted on the low step where he sat, but said nothing either way. Instead he watched a little line of cold blood seep from underneath the corpse, staining the brocade runner a new shade of darker red. Not the first corpse he'd seen, not by far. It still took his mind away from supper. He could understand Thor's fury, but Frigga was right. As well the king, by his reckoning. Too quick a response, and it would tell Karnilla all the things about them that she wanted to know. Revenge was a trap that most often caught the vengeful instead. It might snare Thor first, if he got his way.

It was not Loki's way, however, to get in the middle of a good family fight. He had more regard for his own skin than that.

Motion caught his eye, the handmaidens at Frigga's side dipping further into the room in place of the night's servants. They were usually more used to family strife, so Frigga often deployed them to be a cushion between the family and the rest of the staff. Brigida moved to tend to the king's goblet with a practiced hand, another girl went to offer Thor one as a way of making peace. Helena couldn't take her eyes off the corpse as she passed by it to approach the prince, her skin paler than usual. The youngest one, Kara, swept Loki's way, and with a curtsy at his nod she brought him a glass of wine. No ripples in the red liquid as he reached to take it, the hand that held the gold vessel was steady.

He glanced up at the girl, seeing something much like Frigga's pragmatic serenity masked there. Vaguely interesting, that. The staff were terrified in the wake of the occasional family rage, the handmaidens usually understandably tense, but not this one. Kara looked primly away before he could study her face any further and returned to her place at Frigga's side in silence.

Meanwhile, Thor took his goblet by virtue of being polite, then all but threw it back onto the table. Wine splashed, adding its own color to the already ruined brocade. Helena locked eyes with elder Brigida and then hurried back into place behind the queen, her own fingers trembling. Approaching Thor in the throes of his immature rages was like being under a black cloud whose lightning often struck too close.

"Enough," said Odin. One word, in it a warning of his own. He drank the wine given to him, then regarded his angry son with a cock of his head and a stare from that one good eye. "Sit down."

"At that table, carrying that bitch's bewitched warning?"

Frigga stiffened at his tone, and even Loki couldn't stop a displeased quirk at the corner of his mouth. Too much like his forefathers sometimes, those old warriors that legend said might have secretly been berserkers. When the two brothers once played together in the fields as young boys, the enemies Thor chose for them to conquer were all too often base demons and Helbeasts and witches. Now Thor had finally found a real one to hate, forgetting for a moment that the reflection of Karnilla's forbidden black magic was found twice in the very room he stormed through. "Thor."

The coldness in Frigga's tone stopped him, and Thor blanched, realizing what he'd done. It was Odin's turn to lean back, quiet, glancing at his wife and his other son. This fight was no longer entirely up to him to halt. "Mother."

"Do you forget your lessons so easily, my son? What that sort of simple hate can foster in you?"

Thor reddened, as if she slapped him. In a way, that was exactly what she'd done. His first response was to cover himself, distract from what he'd said. "Would you try to defend Karnilla of all peo-"

"No." A small sound, like a knife. "You would distill her into nothing more than a simple word - witch, or its worse, more slanderous cousin that you say so easily - and you will let yourself forget what she is. That's a weapon in her hand, too. Make of her a little thing, easy to hate, and you will miss all her blades until they strike you in the throat. She is a sorceress, Thor. Like me. A master of magic, like what your brother learns at my side. But that is not all that she is. She is your enemy. Focus on that, and not your hate."

"You make it sound like I ought to respect her!"

Odin stirred. "Respecting your enemy is far from a weakness, my son. A moment of understanding can become your greatest tool. Hating your enemy is easy and gains you little. A shred of empathy can disarm them. Understanding a foe - that can destroy them."

Frigga glanced at Odin, deliberately unreadable. Loki knew there was the scar of some old fight in that look, but there was a story to it he'd never been given outright. He knew better than to ask. She took her turn to speak. "The war that comes will not take the shape of what we've come to expect, my son. It will be masked in what you think war is - and that's the outline of the first trap she'll lay for you and our greatest warriors personally."

Odin nodded.

Thor shook his head, denying her wisdom. "So we cut through it, cut through all the illusions and the nonsense and go direct for her throat! Now, before she digs in!"

Loki couldn't help himself. The tactical error was too grossly obvious. "And you think she's just blithely going to leave that throat open for you? Lay there like a willing barmaid and let you have at her?"

Thor stared at him next. It was hard to not flinch under the heat in that gaze. Loki made himself not waver, not an inch.

Frigga stepped forward, stopping this new front of battle before it could catch fire. "She is already dug in, Thor. What we need to learn is how far her roots have grown. And I am afraid in the time she's had, they've gone deep indeed."

Thor opened his mouth, then closed it again. Defying Odin's order, he bowed to both his parents, turned on his heel, and left the room in the rush of his blood-red cloak.

"He's going to do something stupid," said Loki in the quiet after. "Can time the sunrises to come by it."

"Be silent," said Odin, shifting in his chair. The words came out more gruff than he possibly intended, though Loki still bristled sharp under his black silks. Frigga looked at her husband, her hands snapping once at him in exasperation. Odin waved himself off with a shake of his head, the most he would give by way of apology. "We are all now weary with this matter. Come, bring the Valkyries in for our dead soldier, and the servants. Let them tend us. We'll dine tonight without Thor - he can cool his head where he likes."

Loki stood, moving with calm and elegant grace and flowing into a clean bow. He let no trace of his anger with his father seep into his face. "I think I might take my supper privately tonight as well, Your Majesties. Let there be a little more peace for us all." He tilted his head politely towards Frigga and her maids and left, not waiting for permission, not acknowledging the taut expression on the Queen's face. His own personal revolt.

The silence followed him down the hall. Fine enough for him. He was indeed weary with the night's central matter - and all the other matters running just underneath it, that black little constant stream.