17.
. . .
Loki shoved the spellbooks he'd been poring over aside, glancing at the spine of one of them without really seeing it. Years of study made the ancient glyphs easily legible to him, though the work of translating the more arcane concepts of its theme was more difficult. A somewhat heretical work on meta-dimensional paths, a theory of layered universes where magicked travel was something like the secret paths between the Nine and the rest of the galaxy he knew and used, but vastly more strange and dangerous. A hobby project, a mental game he returned to now and then over centuries.
As tired as he was, he would make no progress now. Still, the old studies were its own kind of comfort. He had little enough of that any more.
With the rains keeping the streets of the city quiet and the councilors seeming content to leave him be for once, Loki spent most of the day unmasked but shadowed, remaining in the darkest corridors of the library and emerging once at the sound of a familiar voice echoing in a nearby hall.
He'd crept closer, overhearing exactly what he feared might begin behind his back - one of those old councilors sidling close to Thor, putting worried words in his ears. Feeding the first suspicions his brother already held about the wavering attentions of the king. And then, feeling like his physical body was draped heavy and cold over the fading wisp of his soul, he'd gone right back into the library. Numbness was all Loki had left in daylight. He read instead, and took what he would back to Odin's chambers, and now dusk was coming again.
He napped for an hour, forcing a trace of life back into himself, and when he woke the window was empty. In the skies beyond it was a wisp of fae-bright nebula, marked by blue and white stars. He thought of the secret gardens and the girl in the white dress who now perhaps hated him and possibly even Asgard itself, for things that he knew were his doing and not Odin's, and the melancholy and her anger was better than the numbness. He sat for a while, not once ever allowing himself the word 'loneliness.' Never that.
Loki looked at the books again, and then at the sky, and then he shoved himself out of the chair to go and make his way down into the depths of the old halls, to see if he could find that long ago girl for another piece of a story bargained for, and if he could make certain she hated him.
Safer that way, he thought again. For everyone.
. . .
The candles above the shrine were newer, a few inches taller each. He felt their warmth on his face as he loomed close over them. "You must change them often."
"There's the most pointless statement I'm going to hear this year. Did you come down to talk waxwork?" He looked over to see her irritated expression. It hadn't changed much since his arrival, finding the inner doors to the storage rooms unlocked and her poking her head out of the one she'd made private to glower at his unexpected appearance. "Knew I should have moved camp."
"Yes, you probably should have." He thought about asking why she didn't, then let it go. He'd earn another glare for the question, nothing more. "For all you know, a dozen guards might be behind me."
"For one thing I do know, you're a liar, and you're lying right now." She snapped a gesture at him, dismissive, and she wouldn't step any closer to where he stood. "There's a lump of incense waiting in its bin at the side, there. I burn that one when midnight comes, it's a vetiver and honey blend. Odd mix, but she liked it. Sometimes I'd smell the ashes when arriving for some duty."
Loki looked and found it, hand molded and rough. Not a common mixture any longer. It was possible she'd made it herself. He brought it and its lacquered stone bowl up to the shrine candles, set it to burning with a touch of his finger before he placed it down on a small dip in the shelf. "It's similar to her meditation blends. She liked the earthy notes alone for that, but the honey was for solace by herself. Sometimes when she was troubled."
"I didn't ask." Brittle. Defensive.
"Call it an answer for free."
"You never give anything for free. Not to anyone." Kara stayed by her doorway, arms folded against a slimmer tunic. No armor, not right now. He could tell her eyes stayed on him, alert. He could feel the weight of that stare.
That wasn't the entire truth, but he didn't bother to correct her. It was true enough to matter. Meanwhile, Loki knew she was the sort to always be armed. There would be blades all underneath the hem of her silk and cotton tunic. He wondered how many knives she kept under her pretty handmaiden's dress when serving the All-Father his nightly goblet of wine long ago, and realized grimly that the old man probably asked himself the same question more than once. "Then call it a reminder of the bargain. That's what I'm here for."
"Bedtime stories, Your Highness?" There it was again, the way she pried at him, needled, tried to peel a layer of skin up from the fat and tissue underneath. "No books left in all of Asgard to please you?"
"I've already been reading tonight. Sometimes I'd rather listen." He smiled, wry, at the sound of her scoff. "You don't believe any of this, despite your agreement yesterday."
"I believe you when you say you want your memories of the Queen. Only that. But I also believe you're not the type to do anything for one reason alone. I expect you want time to figure out some other way past giving me what I want. So I'm letting you buy that time, waiting for you to realize you're trapped within my terms. And that time is coming short despite your game, one way or another."
"Are you pushing the councilors into thoughts of sedition?" Now he looked at her, realizing it was possible. "Is that part of your threat?"
Kara looked back evenly, and she didn't answer. Why would she? Either she was pressing them somehow, old connections to the Queen, and he would eventually be trapped by their machinations, or she wasn't, and the result was the same. Why undermine her own position? Instead, she came back at him from a different angle. "There's newer flaws in the Vrellnexian cells you put Heimdall in. Cracks formed by the Dark Elf assault. They're in some of the security reports, if you bother to check back."
"Why tell me that?"
"Because you can't do anything about it. You already know he's going to escape. I'm telling you how it's going to happen. Time, Your Highness. Flowing and unstoppable."
"I could go back on my word and move him."
"You could do that, yes. Thoroughly damn yourself. Toss aside whatever scraps of honor you have left. Hell, you could just kill him." She arched an eyebrow. "Is it worth it?"
"You're asking someone who's survived death more than once."
"You won't escape Her forever. When you do fall into dust, what will you say to her bone face in your own defense? Will She be vengeful Hela for you, or the Walker, or by some miracle only the keeper of the last door? How many chances to not be a son of a bitch will you have thrown out by then to weigh your odds? Do you ever think about that?"
He studied her, then looked at where the tunic caught in a pinch at her hip, a trace hint belying a small dagger's pommel tucked away there. She was closer to a secret thing than either of them knew. "Do you?"
Kara's voice was cold. "I know what I do, and I know my purpose."
"And your purpose now is to try and be a kingkiller. How's that going to look in this ledger you cajole me about?"
"By my reasoning, pretty damned good."
He snorted. "Not to get into a moral argument, which let's be fair I'll lose, but might be you step back and consider your own position within overall context. It's not that great."
"I'm very close to saying the sort of intensely rude thing that gets one marched out of palaces and sent to Dwarven mines for a century or three. You're infuriating."
"I don't give a shit what you think you can say to me." He gestured at her, almost amused, then looked for the box he'd sat on yesterday, on the logic he'd already wiped off the dust courtesy of that day's cloak. "There, the dam's broken."
Kara was still eyeing him, a mixture of fury and bemusement digging furrows into her face. The candlelight made them into shadows, making her look thin and tired and it struck him to wonder how much of her own strength was only the fuel of her vengeance, and that he might simply wear her down before that clock of hers ran out. If he didn't collapse first. "Do you practice being this obnoxious, or is it raw natural talent?"
"Little of both, I think." Loki shrugged, acid filtering into his words. "Might even be genetic. I wouldn't know." He assumed she would be aware of that secret. He didn't know for how long she would have known. It didn't matter, and he thought he didn't care. He interlaced his fingers and looked at her, calm again.
"Come down here, pick a fight, accuse me of being just as immoral as you've become, and now you're going to sit on that box and switch gears back towards the bedtime story you think you're owed." She started to laugh. "Fuck me, you really might have gone mad."
"Probably." He gestured at her. "Tell me your tales. Please. Since we're on such borrowed time. We'll see what gets to me first after - your politicians or one good and pissed-off old warrior."
"Not even an apology first for being an arse?"
"Why? You've no grounds for accepting it. Sooner told, sooner done, look at it that way. Tell me more, if not the rest."
"How a Queen went to war with a Queen." Kara shook her head, her arms folding against herself, defensive. He saw the other bumps along her waist, a glint at her heel, and knew how right he'd been. Finally, she shrugged. A small and hostile gesture, but there was a scrap of defeat in it. At last he'd won one of their skirmishes - if for a minor trophy. "Hells, all right. I give in. If at least it'll get you out of here so I can sleep."
. . .
Ago ~
Frigga traced her fingers over the sketch she'd made from Lorelei's words, looking from it to the old maps of the Nornheim palace, in whose deep pools slept a true piece of the sacred and strange Norn seers themselves. Kara stood at attention at the other side of the table, an eyebrow arched. Frigga glanced up at her, a small smile. "Get your target to talking, and sooner or later they'll inevitably tell you far more than they realize. It's a subtle art. I'm not surprised the Thorned House doesn't teach it."
"Our mistresses favored plainer methods. Efficient. When we need to be on the move within seconds, we're not taught to act the archaeologist on a victim's brain." Kara shifted her weight, her lips curving in a wry moue. "Bit of a shame, really. Far more elegant your way, Your Majesty."
"At least I retained you at a young enough age that you can still learn to appreciate it. The elder blades they tried to offer me when I reached out were firmer women. Excellent at what they have been taught, but they will never learn much else. You know I wanted that better mental flexibility in addition to someone that could blend with the other girls. I'm afraid the house has always been a bit at odds with that."
"Traditions have a way of becoming stone walls, Your Majesty."
"Very wise, Kara." The queen quirked the corner of her lip. "Don't ever let anyone tell you your readings are a waste of time. Even the ones meant for pleasure alone."
"What, like my deaconess did for some sixty odd years while I was growing?" Kara shrugged. There were certain hours she was allowed to be a touch less formal in the Queen's presence. This was one of them. "On the bright side, I learned a great deal about steganography and additional types of concealment just to outfox her."
"And that again is why you are retained instead of the others." Frigga nodded, then tapped the illustration of a hallway. "Here. Lorelei let slip something about the doors of the halls they use for drills now. And how they work at nightfall. This is where the patrols will be lightest."
Kara unfolded her arms and leaned over to study the maps. "They won't have changed the doors themselves. Blueprints say that's old lockwork, Fourth Ilmenite Era as the Dwarves reckon. Be a bigger pain in the arse to replace them than it would be to barter replacement keys from a smith that still knows the art." She looked up at the Queen, the rest of the observation snapping itself together almost audibly.
Frigga was smiling, broad and light. "I already sent their emissary another missive. We'll get a response within the hour - and our own copies of those keys, as I think they did exactly that." She shuffled the papers aside, pulling together a different set of blueprints. The lower halls, where Karnilla made her lair. "Now, here's the bottleneck, if we make it that far. She's not stupid, and she's not going to sleep easy. Guards, there'll be a few. That's your field. But she's going to have multiple layers of sorcerous security I need to cut through meanwhile. All without alerting her until we have no other choice."
"On behalf of the palace, I am obligated to say again that I could lead a small squad of your handpicked instead, if this direct attack is truly the best plan." Kara winced at the look she got. "I know your response, Your Majesty, but for the sake of my conscience, it has to be said." Not only her conscience, but she had no doubt the King was going to have a few things to say himself - after he found out the the rest of the details about tonight's attack. If there were an after.
"No other sorceress I can pull into this hall on short notice is going to be armored enough to face Karnilla herself, and I will not send my own son. Not for this. She will cut him down without a thought, and I couldn't bear that. In the end this is my war, and I'll not send anyone else to finish it." Frigga's words were firm. "Odin and I didn't end it centuries ago. He has kept her soldiers busy for me on the promise that this time, we do now what we couldn't then." She glanced at her handmaiden with a laugh. "He'll forgive me for taking this more personally than he realized. Eventually."
Kara kept her silence, resuming her study of the maps. The guards would go in sets, two or more likely three in a patrol to ensure full coverage of all possible blindspots and dead corners. Neutralization of each patrol was going to have to be fast, and the bodies were going to be a problem. There weren't many places to hide them, according to the blueprints. The next patrol would find corpses. One or two could be hidden by the Queen's magic, giving them a little cushion before that happened. It was still going to be a fast strike by necessity. A two person operation, mobile, and hard-hitting. She bit her lip, running through opening scenarios and knowing they were all going to be waylaid by reality within moments.
"This is going to be a lot of improvisation and a Hel of a lot of running," said Frigga, answering her thoughts with a chuckle that now sounded almost delighted. "Haven't done anything like this since I was a girl."
"Bet there's a few stories there, Your Majesty."
"Always are. The stakes this time are much higher." Frigga straightened up. "There's the bones of a plan, and all we can rely on. I'll await the keys from my diplomat. You are dismissed for the hour, use it to center yourself and prepare your field gear. When I call you again, I'll have traced Amora's final path home. Then we gate to Nornheim to kill ourselves a would-be Queen."