Street Healers are easy to find in the Fringe, although they are illegal in the World Tree at large. The Fringe has no central government to provide a Healing Tower, so war refugees, the disenfranchised, the desperate, and those unlucky enough to be birthed in this place must seek out medical attention from derelict mages hocking their unverifiable abilities for extortionate prices.

The Healer's office I select is perched at the end of a relatively clean alley. There is a black snake engraved into the office's brass front door, which is why I chose this Healer over his or her countless rivals. Perhaps I'm being overly superstitious, or paranoid, but Loki the Snake can use all the extra luck she can get.

A mobile made from bones dangles from an iron hook just above the door. The bones are supposed to be a ward against evil spirits, but I disprove that when I pry up the retracting door and slip into the simple, bare-faced establishment.

The office is a poor but shining affair, all polished silver metal and glass. No privacy dividers shield any one patient from being seen by another, so all who use this establishment must do so publicly. The Healer's thrall looks up from a fraying green rug on her master's floor, where she sits poking at a luminescent display. She is about sixteen years old, Jotun somewhere in her murky ancestry, and despite that I am the only client in the entire room she spares me just the barest glance before calling out, "Good afternoon my lady, sir, or friend. Today is luck for you. No wait."

"What specialities does your master treat?" I say.

"Madam helps for all minor and major discomfitures." She flashes pointed Svartalfr teeth. "Please that you stand in the warded corner—it has the black tape—if that you are contagious. You will not be coming ill from anyone else in the warded corner, but I must ensure for that you comply."

She says this even though there is no one in the warded corner. Charming.

I say, "What about problems that are not, technically, physical ailments?"

"If you are contagious I must ensure—"

"I am not contagious."

The girl looks back at her screen. "If that my lady, sir, or friend needs a potion for to end the pregnancy, Madam has one in supply. Shall I tell her this or fetch?"

"I suffer from nightmares," I say. "And . . . other things. Of a similar nature."

"For would sir, my lady, or my friend like a good-dreams potion? Madam has one also." Tap, tap, tap go the girl's thick-boned blue fingers. "I am pleased that she has authorized me for to bring it to you."

"No, I tried that. I woke up the next morning hallucinating. No potions."

The thrall prods her display again. She enters data and waits for a command. I can see a cheap copper band on her left wrist, which marks her status, but from where I am I can't see how many years she has left in service. Text flashes. The girl looks up. "How must my friend, sir, or lady be addressed?"

"Aedoa. And my lady is fine."

The girl falls silent. A few minutes later I am waved into a cramped adjoining room where the Healer, an Alfr witch with delicate lacy tattoos on her forehead and eyes so pale to be almost white, asks for what becomes a heavily edited version of my story.

"You take other potion besides sleep aid?" the witch demands, after.

"No," I tell the ceiling, which is sagging into a giant bulging pustule in the center and riddled with peeling cracks.

"How about mind enhancement? You take?"

"No. No other potions, no recreational amusements."

"Lying?"

"Not currently."

She gives me a side-eye. Then the witch has me lie back and casts her spells to map my energy pathways. She picks apart my body strand by strand, remaking my image as a glowing celestial array above my head. "You know, other magic in your system will act badly with a potion."

"Yes, I was told as much. Say! By the way, you don't happen to have any news from the World Tree at large? A barkeep told me there's a war on. My husband was Alfr; if they're in trouble I'd like to join with their ranks. Any idea where I might find someone to transport me off this dungheap to Her Majesty's forces? I'll pay—"

"No, no. Don't care about politics. Only war I know was Jotunheim."

It was worth a shot.

The witch applies several filters to my spectral double, frowning as I am rendered again and again in the same unblemished white light. She says, "How much are you Aesir? I see new bone growth on your left forearm. Was this a fracture?"

"Earlier today."

"Heals good. You lucky one. Aesir blood not usually pass into mix offspring."

"Yes. How about that."

She switches filters, switches again.

I say, "There's a mark on my right arm. I know it's not magic. Do you know what might have caused that?"

"Let's see."

I hold my arm aloft. She grips my wrist, flexes my arm, peers at the bullseye scar. "No, not magic. Looks congenital."

"It's not congenital. Could poison have done this? Or some kind of acid? Could I have been implanted with anything?"

She huffs. "Poison, maybe. No implants, I don't see anything. It hurt?"

"No."

"That's good. It could be a bite."

"What kind of bite?"

She drops my arm to switch filters, and doesn't reply. She switches again. And again. The next time, her white array turns deep blood red. The witch sucks in a breath through her teeth.

Cold lances up my spine. "What is that?"

She looks down at me.

"Well?" I demand.

The witch pauses. Her colorless eyes are dark with guarded fascination. I'm beginning to hate that look among the healing community. "Did your parent fail at conceiving before they had you?"

"I have two older siblings."

"Brothers? Maybe they wanted a girl?"

I curl my lip. Jotnar, as I'm certain you've already guessed, do not come in male and female pairs. My real body, somewhere inside this much prettier outer skin, contains both sexual characteristics. In late puberty I learned to alternate which set is expressed, and Odin's glamor compensated by rendering me as either fully male or fully female. I say, "Not particularly."

The witch chews her tongue. She traces a bright point on my energy map.

"Well?"

She holds up a hand. "Every cell in your body, from your bones to your hair, is completely saturated in magic."

"I am a sorceress."

"Not what I mean. You learn magic, magic is used. Magic is not in the body. The body separate. All right? The body built of cells, protein. Your body . . . is built of magic. Your hair. Your fingers."

"What does that mean?" I snap.

"Someone wanted a child and ask a sage to make her pregnant. Happens."

My ears are ringing. "What do you mean, it happens?"

The witch waves her hands at me. "Don't panic. It mean nothing. Conceived with magic, it make you no different. You not die early, nothing. No difference. Only different in stay away from potion. Yes? That why the potion not work. Use not-magic medicine. Herbs treat headache, pregnancy sickness, good as new. Don't smoke widow's root. All right? Shouldn't smoke widow's root anyway. You see alchemist, ask for sleepy potion with herbs and no magic. You'll be fine."

Dark spots careen before my eyes. I clutch my head but that doesn't stop the silent implosion happening inside my mind. The room goes into a flat spin.

"You want water? Drink this. Nice slow breaths."

I accept the paper cup but flinch when she tries to put hands on me. Magic? How could I have been conceived by magic?

She's wrong.

The witch backs away. "Someone worked you over real bad, I can tell. Nightmares will last for a while. It get better. Alchemist will help. Keep you calm, help you sleep. Here, I give you name. She take good care of you." The witch retreats into the other room for a pad, giving me time to master my heart rate.

She's wrong. I was not conceived by magic. She's wrong. Why in Nine Godless Realms would Laufey and his monstrous wife go to such lengths for a third child? They had two grown whelps already. Byleistr and Helblindi both fought in the war. It was Helblindi who put out Odin Allfather's eye.

They did not go to lengths for a third child only to throw him away. That didn't happen. The idea is a crushing weight in my chest so big that there isn't room left over for my insides. When the witch returns I say, "What else?"

"You want?"

"What else could cause that . . . reading?"

"Nothing else cause that reading. Why you angry? Your parent love you. They want you." She holds out her note on filmy plastine paper, waving it until I snatch it from her grasp.

"What about . . . spells. Curses. Could someone have cast a tracking charm on me? Or a scrying spell?"

"No, no. That also not in the body. Don't worry! It not dangerous. It normal. Rare, but normal."

I say, "Then could—could conception by magic cause ill effects? Dwarfism. Small stature."

The witch shrugs. "If not done properly. Perhaps, yes, it could deform. Not make a baby small, perhaps make it simple-minded, or make it not develop a heart or lungs."

So. Laufey got someone to help him conceive and when the result turned out to be a—

White noise fills my head. I am physically incapable of completing that thought.

The witch says, "She take good care of you," which is code for give me my money and get out of my office.

I say, "Wait! No. Just a moment. My mother used to make me potions when I got sick. I became ill often as a child; I was always . . . weakly. I don't remember ever having trouble with potions."

"She make with herb, not magic."

I crack my head flat to the soulforge. There's the trial and sentence. Of course. Frigga and her garden. Frigga the herbologist. Stick me with a flaming Fates-be-damned-to-Helheim sword. Frigga must have figured out very fast that her sick little Jotun runt worsened if she tried to treat him with spells. She must have told Eir . . . And Eir . . . because Odin came to her, not Loki . . . Eir gave me a potion laced with magics.

Damn it all.

Why didn't anybody tell me? They let me poison myself, and before that they let me endure the agony of watching my dreams for War Academy evaporate because my weak Jotun flesh couldn't keep up with my peers as soon as they reached puberty. Fates forbid we tell Loki the truth about anything.

I thank the witch for her time and stuff her note into my pocket. I pay her thrall in false gold, then retreat back into the street's organized chaos. The alchemist is only a short walk away. Forty minutes later I've got enough sleep-aids, relaxers, mood regulators, and anti-psychotics to keep the universe from tipping sideways on me again.

Retracing my steps, I hurry back to Thor's warband before they decide I should spend the rest of our little field trip handcuffed to Mjolnir.

"Where have you been?" my not-brother demands when I turn up while he and his fellows are stationed around a black marble column in a very fine Dvergr-style eating house, watching their query inhale a multi-course lunch all by himself.

"We had a tail," I invent. "I convinced them that the mortal warbanded headed South."

"You lie," Thor growls.

"Please. Do you remember my oath?"

His fists clench. "I remember many things, your oath among them. You said you would set yourself no more against me, but from—"

"Stop." Romanova, of all people, slips from a shadow to put a hand on Thor's shoulder. "I followed her. She's telling the truth."

What.

Oh, well. Only a fool would challenge that cover. I make Good Loki nod at Romanova.

Romanova says, "There were five people in loose red and white robes with some kind of body-fitting armor underneath. I noticed them about two hundred meters back. I'm not sure if they were following our man in there, but I saw Sif break away to engage with them. They headed after her instead. I followed to make sure. She lost them on a street six levels about here."

Thor smiles at her. Of course he does. "Your skill at stealth is worthy of legend. I did not notice that you had gone."

Barton says, "What's with the deep mistrust? I thought you said your brother's a double-agent?"

Thor says, "She is," in a flat voice that tells me he's decided double-agent really does mean might betray us at the first opportune moment. "Above all things I trust that this is so." But then he holds an arm out for me to clasp in resumed truce, so I'm not certain. He doesn't mention my oath again.

In either case, I knock his hand aside. Even Good Loki is not in the mood for whiplash platitudes. I catch Romanova watching me. I keep note and press forward: "Did our query lead you to the Oracle?"

Rogers sets his shoulders. "Not yet."

"He sits and eats," Thor complains. "Before that he spoke to some young women and before that he argued with a cartmonger about the slushy ground."

"You forgot the part where he took a dump," Barton says.

Romanova meets my gaze. "That's just as well. Sif discovered where the Oracle is, didn't you?" Her tone is polite but frank. Her shark eyes say, I know you abandoned us.

Creeeeepy. What is her angle? I make Good Loki smile and nod. "This way."

They follow me from the eatery into the crowded Upper Marketplace.

Stark says, "When you say Oracle, is the Oracle a prophet?"

"Yes, she is," says Good Loki, and I start a new topic to distract them from whether I did or did not just tip my hand. "Nothing like Delphi which, believe me, was a disappointment."

Stark says, "So you guys have been to Earth a lot over the centuries?"

"A lot," I agree. "Earth is one of the few worlds not part of the political sphere. It's rather a charming vacation spot. Wouldn't you agree, brother?"

Thor makes an irritated noise behind his mask. "I had better things to do than cause trouble bedding married mortal women or attending Midgard's court."

"Your loss," I say.

"Which time period was your favorite?" Romanova asks me, I assume in hopes to probe me for answers that have nothing to do with the subject.

I respond to her question with two words.

Stark says, "Are you kidding me?"

"No, I told you the last time we spoke that I had a fondness for Scotland's peoples at that time."

His eyebrows raise halfway up his forehead. "The Enlightenment? I'd have pegged you for a fan of Versailles."

I smile. "You must remember: Asgard is an absolute monarchy. I am not the glorious luminary you are struggling to picture, I am a traitor among my own people."

Thor says, "You are a traitor to our people because you conspired with Frost Giants to break into the weapons vault."

A sickened weight slithers into my stomach. He knows. How?

I force a bemused smile onto my face. "Context is everything, brother."

"There is no context to defend you."

"I'm sorry, did you learn that I hadn't sworn myself to Thanos before or after you dragged me before the entire court in chains?"

Thor twists to look away from me. Silence comes between us, and it is not a pleasant silence but one filled with all the terrible things left unsaid. The mortals are quiet, too, and that is even worse.

I need to conjure another distraction.

A sapphire-blue stage wreathed with gauzy curtains looms ahead through the crowd, hosting five performers of varying hues.

I tap Stark's shoulder. "Look at that. To your left. Skógrkind. Magicians who transform themselves into animals. Natural shapeshifters. No illusions."

As we watch all five metamorphose color and shape. A white-painted man sprouts red antlers as his lower half lengthens into a scarlet quadruped. Beside him, a yellow-painted woman grows iridescent blue feathers across her face which spread down her body and ripple outward into massive bronze wings.

Rogers says, "How many people have magic?"

"Plenty. It's a common enough trait, like being a genius, but some have greater innate ability than others. A few are born beyond-geniuses. For most it takes years of study to do anything more complex than a schoolyard prank. Most don't bother; the penalties for criminal magic usage are steep and generally irreparable. Buying, publishing, selling, or even possessing certain magic texts are enough to warrant life in prison—even if the book's owner has no magic ability at all. The Black Tower Guard does not hesitate to kill renegade magic-users, and those who supply them." I allow a very thin smile. "As you can imagine, the Fringe is a breeding ground for the Dark Arts. I used to be a spy for the Black Tower, and saw more than my share of grisly punishments. Cast a Pale Spell and you lose a hand. Both hands for sanguine rites. A master sorcerer doesn't need hands to work magic, so the next to go is the tongue."

"That's why people in the Fringe want to kill you," Romanova says.

"Many people. Many people, and their apprentices."

The Skógrkinds' crowd applauds. We move along. The market-goers disperse, some catching sight of the five mortals and staring at them no less than at the shapeshifters.

I say, "The Fringe is a big place full of small circles. When we reach the Oracle's temple you are going to have to defy every biological urge you have and not look at the wonders all around you. The open streets are different—people peer through the masses for each other, goods, and services all the time—but the Temple is private ground. The people who keep track are going to realize that they haven't seen us before, and there can only be so many reasons why not. Are we newborn killers high on our first blood? Are we fifth-rate drones sent on our master's behalf? Or are we undercover?"

Romanova says, "What's our story?"

"Our story. You and the other mortals are keeping guard outside. Erik and I will be going in alone."

Thor grabs my arm.

I push him off. "The Oracle's temple is a gateway. She is not on this realm. To reach her you and I will have to travel there, and the process would kill them."

"Then you should have brought us to that realm," Thor says.

"Even I can't open a world-gate to a private realm." I want to leer at the concussed look on his face, but Good Loki turns it into a grim smile. I tell Thor, "If you didn't like that part, you're going to like this even less: to get in the door, you and I will have to pretend we work for something the Fringe won't mind serving. Byleistr Laufeyson, True King of Jotunheim."

"No."

I smile. "He sent us here to find out what happened to the Casket which is, of course, rightfully his. He thinks his brother Helblindi might have made a deal with the Elves and double crossed him. Younger brothers do so often double-cross their elders, don't they?"

"No," Thor repeats.

"How do you know that this king hasn't already come to the Fringe looking for answers?" Rogers says.

"Because the Jotnar cannot travel between realms without their Casket."

"They have the Casket," Thor says. There's a warning in his voice.

"No, Smirna has the Casket. Otherwise, don't you think the Jotnar would have happily invaded Asgard along with the Chitauri?"

He says, "You did not tell me that."

"I thought it obvious." I bite back a grin. "Anyway. You and I are thralls the Jotnar took during the last war. Our noble and much beloved Master Byleistr sent us to the Oracle because our loyalty is absolute."

Thor turns bright red behind his mask.

The Oracle's temple is a twisting black glass spire at the canyon's extreme end. Beyond the spire the snowfields extend as silent whitecaps unto the end of the world. The deep cold beyond the wall has been ultimate destiny for many a despairing Fringe-dweller, or losing gang, for millennia. Silhouetted by such bleakness, the Temple is almost friendly.

I have Thor drop his mask and cast an illusion over his face. Our story gets us through four checkpoints, even with my not-brother growling and seething the whole time. Finally, white-clad guards scan Thor's pretend face and mine into a registry and wave us through titanic greening bronze doors into an atrium that smells like a mausoleum. The Inner Guards let us keep our weapons but search us for spells or potions we might be attempting to smuggle through. Afterward, they escort us through a labyrinth as cramped and gloomy as Asgard's dungeon. On the other end is a small yellow-green marble room, lit from every surface. In the room is a medical table and a pedestal bearing a clay chalice and a large silver goblet.

Thor eyes the table with undisguised apprehension.

The door closes behind us.

Thor says, "What now?"

"I drink from the chalice and you guard my body while I'm gone." I hedge across the room and pick up the goblet.

Thor stumps after me. "Explain."

A murky reddish-black substance swirls darkly in the chalice, not quite liquid and not quite smoke. I dip the goblet and the liquid flows up into its cup before the goblet connects with the writhing surface. My stomach involuntarily contracts.

Thor says, "What is this?"

I cast him a sidelong smile. "Certainly not Midgardian fizzy drink."

"What does it do?"

"I'm going to drink it, and then I'll be unconscious for a while. To the world as dead." My throat starts doing that unhappy gaggy-sweaty thing where I've got to swallow and I don't want to swallow because that might make me sick. I've done this once before, and it's not the taste that troubles me so much as what I know the substance is. "You're going to watch over my body until I return."

"From the Oracle," Thor says.

"Yes."

He clamps a hand on my shoulder. "I am going with you."

"Now isn't the time for foolish bravado."

He grins. "If you think I will allow you to go alone, you are mad."

"It's poison, Thor."

His grin dissolves.

I grimace. "I lied when I said it was a private realm. The Oracle is in Helheim."

His face turns grey and cold. He takes a step away from me, and the goblet, and the medical table.

I say, "I'm going to drink this and it will separate my soul from my body. I'll have twenty minutes to speak with her and then I must return or I will die. An attendant will bring an antidote after I return."

He says, "You have done this before?"

"Not an experience I thought I'd have to repeat. You know. Before my final death."

Thor's lips seal into a hard line.

I say, "I'll say hi to Hel for you. I'm sure she's heard your name quite a lot over the centuries from the feasts going on upstairs."

Thor sets his shoulders. His arm shoots out. He snatches the silver goblet from my hand and downs the contents like it's mead.

"What did you do?" I yelp, as he smashes the goblet to the antiseptic floor.

"Let none say that I am afraid of Helheim."

"You great utter buffoon!"

Thor's blue eyes turn glassy. He grips my shoulder again, fingers digging into my coat. His knees buckle. A cold jolt squeezes my chest. I stare down into his handsome fading gaze, watch color drain from his already pale skin. His hand loosens. He slides down my legs and sinks into a puddle at my feet.

I ease my boots out from under his jaw.

The idiot!

I tell him, "If you think I'm going to stay here, you're the one who's mad." I pick up the dented goblet, dip it a second time, and follow him to Death.

But first I lay down on the medical table.