The final day’s march was interminable, silent and strained and grim. They made Lain walk ahead, stumbling too fast over roots, with Magni riding the stallion on his heels. Þrúðr came behind on her mare, Móði’s arms held loose about her waist.
As they rode, they did not see the wolf, nor the girl, nor hear the cries of bird or flight of beasts.
Valdís, Lain had called the beast, and Þrúðr had seen the anguish in his eyes. Saw now the broken slump of his shoulders, even as he was forced to run on all fours to keep up with their pace.
Magni called cruel words as they ran, taunting Lain as he drove his horse to catch the edge of feathers beneath its hooves.
Þrúðr was starting to believe she did not know her brothers. Not truly, and maybe not either. Magni, full of hate and cruelty. And Móði, passive and vicious in his own cowardly way.
Yet maybe she was still worst of all. Perhaps, in her desire to be seen as strongest of the three, she had lost sight of her own weakness, and so doomed them all.
It was an awful ride, full of dark thoughts and darker shadows. And Þrúðr knew it was not over yet.
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Sól’s daughter was kissing the edges of the Tree when they broke free of the Myrkviðr’s awful grasp. First, it had been roots, giving way to flagstones, then branches, thinning to show shafts of golden light. Finally, through the gnarled gray trunks, Þrúðr began to catch sight of their destination. A huge and jagged cliffside, rearing into a mountain capped with white, cut from the sharp-edged bones of great Ymir, the first jötunn, whose death had made the Realms.
When Magni slowed within the mountain’s shadow, Þrúðr made her own breathing calm and forced white-knuckled fingers to uncurl from the cracked leather of her reins.
As they drew to a stop, Þrúðr heard the heavy thud as Lain fell against the ground. White-tattooed sides heaving as he cursed softly in the language of the mortals.
From behind, meanwhile, came a whistle. “Niðavellir,” said Móði, breath gusting across Þrúðr’s cheek and awe writ plain across his words. “I’ve never seen it.”
“Nor I,” Þrúðr admitted, squinting upward against the dying light.
“It’s a shithole.” Lain’s voice was a vicious wheeze. “Don’t let the snow-peaked bullshit fool you. Fucking dvergar.” He stumbled to his feet, leaving bloodied, hissing footprints in his wake.
“I would have thought you eager to show them the robustness of their handiwork.” Magni gestured to his lips.
Lain responded by extending a fist, middle finger raised.
They approached the mountain in silence, their horses’ hooves clopping slowly against stone, Lain’s own limp fading as the sun dipped and the mountain loomed. He said nothing more and, when Þrúðr glanced his way, seemed unfocused and lost in his expression. As if he were remembering something long ago and very far away. Something better than where they were, perhaps. Something with the warm skin of a loving wife, and the gentle laughter of his children.
As a child, Þrúðr had thought her uncle odd but nothing more. She’d giggled at his jokes and ridden on his back when he took the shape of beasts for her enjoyment, her own father laughing with riotous abandon.
As she’d grown older, she’d thought less of those moments and more of the whispers of her mother. Half-heard accusations of cruelty and spite. Loki had turned, then, from an amusing, ill-mannered houseguest into something dark, something sinister and mean. A thing to fear . . . and to pity, also. Deranged and monstrous.
Now Þrúðr was not sure what she thought of the thing that moved beside her, tattered feathers ruffling in the breeze and shimmering in the dying light. A monster, perhaps, with curving horns and jagged claws. But Father’s friend, also. Who had shorn the hair from Mother’s head, then had repaid this petty malice with boons and treasures that men coveted to this day.
Maybe, Þrúðr thought, this was Loki’s curse. To be such a fickle thing of indecision and of change. To destroy, and, in that destruction, to remake rubble into glory.
Niðavellir drew ever closer.
Around them, the trees thinned as they emerged from the Myrkviðr and stepped into the foothills of the mountain. Þrúðr felt relief wash over her like the cool flow of a stream and wondered, if she should turn, what pairs of strange eyes she would find watching them take their leave.
The path grew wider, more intricate. With rough-cut flagstones replaced by mosaics made from small, multicolored tiles laid out in flowing, abstracted patterns like rushing water. They began passing pillars, erected by the side of the road and topped with stone cages set aglow by some magics Þrúðr could not fathom.
These were dvergar lands. Not the wilderness of the forest nor the simple halls of æsir. The dvergar were craftsmen, masters of metal and stone and gems, and here, at the entrance to their kingdom, they showed their might. For ahead, where the path met the mountain, a huge entrance had been carved into the rock. The stern effigies of ancient dvergar kings, looking down on any who would think to walk into the dark.
“Halt, strangers. What business have you in the mountain?”
Þrúðr had seen dvergar before, once or twice when she was younger and they had sent caravans to Ásgarðr to ply crafts and trade their wares. The dvergar that stood before them now, stationed in squat turrets beside the road, were less like the ones she remembered. Still stout and broad, with wide frog mouths and bulging, too-big eyes. But these dvergar were dressed not in tunics but in gleaming metal armor, and beneath it their hides were rough and glittered with gemlike protrusions.
“Hail, friends,” Magni called. “I am Magni, son of Thor. This is my brother, Móði, and my sister, Þrúðr. We have come from Ásgarðr and have business with the smiths, Brokkr and Eitri.”
The dvergar shared glances, strange patterns of light rippling across their hides.
“What are they doing?” Þrúðr whispered.
It was Lain who answered, voice just as low. “Talking. The flashing lights are their language.”
“They’re so beautiful. I’ve never seen . . .” She let the words hang, too caught up by the dvergar’s shimmering skin.
“You’ve probably only seen them in the light,” Lain said. “The lífskin”—not quite the word he used, but the closest meaning Þrúðr could hear—“doesn’t function too well unless it’s dark.” He gestured around at the fast-fading day and the deep shadow that hung beneath the mountain.
The dvergar faded back to their stony gray, and the one on the left pointed to Lain and said, “You bring a risi with you.”
Magni shot a look to the beast in question, then scowled and turned forward once more. “The jötunn?” he said. “A captive and a slave. It will give you no trouble.”
The words prompted more lights from the dvergar, these ones bright yellows and reds that flashed with anger and alarm. Reacting to the word slave, judging by the timing.
“Niðavellir would make no quarrel with the jötnar,” the right-most dvergr said at last. “And know this, Magni, Son of Thor. The risi may be your captive, but the land beneath the mountains knows nobody as a slave.”
From her side, Þrúðr heard Lain make a startled little hiss. Perhaps a laugh, perhaps an intake of breath. He still wore his collar and a single rune-cut shackle—they’d found the other lying melted and twisted on the forest floor—but Þrúðr supposed they mattered little, given the pain Magni held within his palm.
“Fear not, friend.” Hearing Lain speak the true tongue was startling, his voice transformed from a rough grind into a subtle, flickering flame. “I owe these æsir debt for past transgression. In repatriation I am made Lady Þrúðr’s bondsman, and I will work as such until I am repaid.”
Þrúðr blinked at the phrasing. Perhaps Lain was too used to the human tongue, for surely he hadn’t meant—
“As you wish, risi,” came the reply from the turret. “In that case, Niðavellir bids you welcome.”
Magni called out thanks in response, spurring his horse forward. Þrúðr followed, pace slow as she craned her neck back and up to watch the enormous carved rock wall.
“Pretty epic, isn’t it?” Lain was back to speaking the human tongue, limping slowly along beside. When Þrúðr looked down, he had something in his hand. Like a small white stick with a smoldering end. He kept putting the unlit end in his mouth, wincing, sighing, and breathing out long gusts of smoke. “If you give the dvergar nothing else, you can give them a truly stunning comprehension of their own inadequacy. Conniving fucking maggots.”
Þrúðr thought that was perhaps unnecessary, given the gate guards’ concern over Lain’s freedom and his welfare. Still, she didn’t say as much. Let the jötunn hold whatever grudges he may.
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Þrúðr had never been anywhere quite like Niðavellir.
From the entryway, they passed into a tunnel. Not the cramped and narrow passage she had imagined would wind into the mountain’s heart, but rather an enormous carved archway. Set with more of the mosaics she’d seen outside, and lit by thousands of motes of blue-silver light that clung to the walls and drifted gently in the breeze.
More guards watched their passage, dark eyes peering out from alcoves and turrets, skin shimmering rainbows in the gloom.
“This is nothing like I had imagined,” she’d whispered, hand reaching up to try to catch a light upon her palm.
“Then perhaps you will not find sorrow here,” Móði said. “Perhaps you will not even miss the sun.”
His words were meant to comfort, Þrúðr knew. That didn’t mean they didn’t lash, nor take the sting from Lain’s own incredulous guffaw.
Yet when the tunnel ended, not too long later, Þrúðr wondered if Móði might not speak the truth.
They passed through a huge set of heavy stone doors and into a cavern so enormous they may as well have been outside. Þrúðr couldn’t see the walls of it, only a constellation of more glimmering lights, floating in the gloom like stars. The doors emerged at the top of a hill, a road winding down to where a small village sat nestled at the edge of a vast undersea lake. As with everything else, the waters of the lake rippled with light yet still it had no edge, seeming to extend on forever into the dark.
Þrúðr’s breath caught from the beauty. Beside her, she felt Magni and Móði do the same.
Lain, who had trod these roads before, appeared unmoved.
“Sindri,” he said. “Niðavellir’s border town.”
“It— I didn’t—” Þrúðr managed. Towering above Sindri’s buildings, she saw mushrooms the size of trees undulating in the strange underground breeze. The mushroom trees glowed, too. Everything glowed here, Þrúðr realized. Everything except them.
Lain, whose eyes and tattoos were also bright and whose feathers shimmered as if lit by fire, continued, “Sindri’s mostly craftsmen and merchants. Anyone who makes a living dealing with the outside. Niðavellir proper is beyond the Skærasær, that big lake thing. Supposedly, there’s another set of doors on the far side. If anyone tries to invade, they slam shut, and so does the mountain.”
“ ‘Supposedly’?” Magni asked.
Lain shrugged. “Never been across to check. Never fucking wanted to.”
Magni snorted, spurring his horse onward and down the path.
They saw no one as they approached, the strange light glimmering off slick, dark rocks and pulsing from the lichen and fungi that grew in place of grass and trees. Overhead, Þrúðr heard the sound of leathery wings flapping in the darkness, and she wondered what strange bats circled the void above.
The air around was damp and warmer than Þrúðr had expected, fresh and moving and scented of wet stone and clean earth. In the distance, she could hear the sound of the lake lapping against the shore and, farther beyond that, something not unlike the roar of oceans.
What a land this place was! Not the cramped, cold, dirty tunnels Þrúðr had expected—had hardened her heart against—but a waking dream of wonder. For the first time, Þrúðr saw herself, sailing on a ship across the endless glowing seas, climbing to the tops of the highest mushrooms, crawling through caverns and taming whatever unfathomable beasts lurked out there beneath the world.
Perhaps things were not so bad. Magni would have Mjölnir, and Þrúðr her adventures. It seemed a fair trade, and if she could return from time to time to Ásgarðr, then—
“Halt. Who goes there?”
Another guard. They’d reached the edge of Sindri, greeted by a low wall that marked the boundary of the town. A dvergr looked up at them from beside an archway, colors rippling across his stony skin.
“Magni, son of Thor,” Magni said. “My brother, Móði, and sister, Þrúðr.”
The dvergr fluttered shades of yellow and green, and Þrúðr did not miss the way it looked at Lain. “Æsir beneath the Mountain? What business have you in our town?”
“We seek audience with the smith, Brokkr. He has some things we wish to trade, and he will be satisfied with what we in turn have brought him.”
Þrúðr tried not to wince. Lain caught her eyes and rolled his, the gesture involving his whole head to make up for the blank orbs.
“Brokkr’s hall overlooks the water,” the guard said. “If he will see you, you will find him.” He gestured, bidding them entry through the arch.
Sindri’s streets were stretches of delicate mosaic, not used to the harsh clop of horses’ hooves. The dvergar had their own beasts of burden, things like enormous lizards that watched with glowing eyes from in front of carts and inside stables. Their owners watched, too, rippling light as parents caught the hands of their children and ushered them behind fences and inside houses.
Þrúðr had never thought of the dvergar having children before, but there they were. Soft-skinned and tailed, with webbed hands and strange feathery protrusions emerging from their cheeks. They looked, Þrúðr thought, somewhat like tadpoles. She wondered if they hatched from eggs.
Then that thought went to places she did not want to travel, and so she turned to stare firmly ahead and tried not to feel the squirming in her guts.
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The guard had spoken true about Brokkr’s hall. It loomed at the end of the village, broad and squat and towering, all at once. The harshness of its façade accented by gold inlays tracing complex, geometric designs, and a cascade of glowing fungus falling from the flat-top roof.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
They were met inside by more dvergar, including Brokkr and his brother, Eitri.
Brokkr greeted Magni warmly, near as Þrúðr could tell, rippling pleasant colors and speaking kind words about their father. His reception for Móði was similar.
For Þrúðr, he asked to run his fingers along her braid. When his hand brushed her skin, his hide was rough and cold and strange.
For Lain, Brokkr’s lights dimmed for a moment before exploding into a brief and violent riot. Then they dimmed once more and he said, “Vartari suits you, Meinkráka.”
Lain’s feathers flickered orange-red, pinion-cut wings raising slightly in what must have been unconscious ire. For Lain quelled the motion a half breath later, replacing it with a grin and bow. “How could any refuse such a treasure, given freely by the fly-bit smith.”
Brokkr had scowled at the name, and had proceeded to ignore Lain for the remainder of the evening.
A minor disruption, and one that had not interfered with their host’s hospitality. Despite the unannounced visit, Brokkr had arranged for the horses to be watered and stabled, then had called forth servants to lay out a feast. Þrúðr had been uncertain of what they might receive, then pleasantly surprised to find the fare mostly meat and mushrooms, spiced and flavorful. True to their father’s legacy, Þrúðr’s brothers devoured plate after plate, with Brokkr commanding more and more be brought forth from the kitchens until all bellies were sated.
Þrúðr ate her fair share, too.
Ate her fair share of food and drank her fair share of mead, truth be told. And not just because she found herself seated next to Brokkr’s eldest son.
The dvergar did not use chairs. The table was a low bench, and they sat around it on the floor, on cushions. Þrúðr had thought it would be awkward, but as the evening wore on and the mead flowed freely, she found herself sprawling out more and more, relaxing against soft fabrics as the chatter of men washed over her and—
“Is the food to your liking, my lady?”
Þrúðr blinked. Shook herself and tried to focus through the soft buzz of honey in her head and the faint burn of spices on her tongue.
“I imagine it’s not as you are used to, in Ásgarðr.”
Brokkr’s son, Uni.
“I—” Þrúðr looked at her bowl, then up at Uni. Then down again just as quickly, lest she catch too much of her reflection in his wide dark eyes. “It is different, yes,” she said. “But . . . it is not . . . unpleasant.”
“I’m glad, my lady.” A faint ripple of teal light glimmered across the table. Þrúðr wondered how long it would take her to learn the dvergar’s “language.” Even if she could never “speak” it, would she one day be able to look at Uni and know his thoughts with but a glance? The dvergar were an honest people. Perhaps lying did not come easy to those whose very skin betrayed their thoughts.
Þrúðr made herself eat another mouthful of food and not stare into the corner where Lain lurked, banished from the table with one small bowl of stew to stoke his endless flames.
“What is this meat?” Small questions seemed safer than the thought of Lain’s piercing poison gaze.
“Olm,” Uni said. At least, Þrúðr thought it was a word and not a sound. “From the sea. Our fishermen catch them in great abundance.”
The meat was pale and mild beneath the stew, something like fowl and something like fish.
“And this?” Þrúðr pointed with her spoon to the dish’s other main ingredient: a sort of strange black lace.
“Mushroom, my lady. Grown by our farmers.”
Þrúðr nodded, then, “Please. Call me Þrúðr.”
Another brief teal ripple. “I would be honored. Thank you.”
“Your home is beautiful.” From the corner of her eye, Þrúðr could see Uni’s hand resting on the table. Only four fingers, not five. Tipped with little claws and slightly flared ends. Like a frog, and as soon as Þrúðr thought the comparison she hated herself, just a little. Brokkr showed them hospitality and Uni offered kindness. Neither deserved Þrúðr’s cruel thoughts to be cast against them.
This time, the light that shimmers across Uni’s skin was a rich and vibrant purple. “A-as are you, my l— Þrúðr,” he said.
Þrúðr bit her lip and finished her stew.
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“Absolutely not. Find another way.”
Ásgarðr, five days earlier.
“Would that we had the time.” Forseti couldn’t quite manage to keep the exasperation from his voice, fingers twitching where they grasped Gungnir’s haft. “The beast knows Mjölnir’s location, and will take us there. But the hammer on its own is of little use. The gloves and belt are needed also.”
“Then have the beast steal them!”
Forseti’s lips had curled, a crease marring his otherwise flawless brow. “No. I refuse to make Grandfather’s mistakes.”
“And I refuse to shame my father’s triumphs. If Thor were still alive you would not be sugg—”
“But Thor is not alive!” Too long spent arguing, and Forseti’s patience was through. “He is not alive, not here, and even as we speak Hel masses its forces at our gates! We have not the strength to repel such a tide. We need Mjölnir’s might, quickly, and have been presented prime opportunity to regain it. To regain your family’s honor. And yet you stall over petty concerns of ‘virtue’ when all—”
“I will not whore my sister for your trinkets!” The scrape of Magni’s chair had been loud against the flagstones, his breath heavy as he loomed over Forseti. The shadows of the past, Þrúðr thought, hung over them all. Legacies to live up to, mistakes to learn from. They were all still children, in a way. Children playing war in a land where every adult lay dead and rotting.
Conscious of her littlest brother’s presence at her back, Þrúðr had stepped forward.
“Perhaps the object of your disagreement would have her own thoughts on the matter?”
Magni’s rage had dispersed like clouds beneath the sunlight, replaced by anguish as he moved toward the door, hands outstretched as if to usher Þrúðr away.
“Sister,” he’d said. “You need no thoughts, as there is no matter over which to disagree. Your cousin is merely a fool. Pay him no mind.”
Þrúðr had sidestepped Magni’s gestures, instead moving farther into the room. “So it’s true,” she’d said to Forseti. “You have Gungnir.” The Allfather’s spear, thought lost after Ragnarøkkr, but Þrúðr had seen it then, held in Forseti’s hand. Weathered wood carved with oath-runes, bone and raven feathers and a point made not from metal but a dreki’s sharpened tooth.
“I do,” Forseti had said. Þrúðr had not missed the way his fingers tightened on Gungnir’s wood.
“Brother tells me you retrieved it from—from . . .” Þrúðr could not bring herself to utter the foul beast’s name. Its oath to Odin would be etched into the spear with all the others. Þrúðr had wondered which of the runes it was, whether it unmarred or scratched through with betrayal.
“From Loki,” Forseti had said, grim and hard. He’d been handsome once. Warm and kind and wise beyond his years. Now all Þrúðr saw in him was frost and desolation.
She nodded, trying not to wring her hands, conscious of the eyes on her. Thor’s eldest, and though born a girl, she yet had obligation to live up to the name her father gave her. “And he is here,” she’d said. “In Ásgarðr. He did not perish with the others.” It was not a question.
“Evil and treachery are difficult to thwart,” Forseti had replied. “Perhaps we should merely be grateful our betrayer comes to us familiar in intent, if not in skin.”
Móði had mentioned that. Loki had not been the only one with jötunsblóð in Ásgarðr, but in Þrúðr’s memory he had always been bound by the lines of his oath, horns and feathers hidden behind the mien of a man. Loki was unpredictable, a viper in their midst, but loyal to the Allfather if not always to the realm. If those bonds were now broken . . .
Loki, who stole from the dead. Who desecrated the Ragnarøkkr with as much ease and as little conscience as he had once shorn the head of Þrúðr’s mother while she slept. Loki, who returned to blight their halls with his poison once again.
“You believe Loki knows how to retrieve Father’s hammer.” Þrúðr made herself say the beast’s name, though it felt like bile and grit on her tongue. Two ugly syllables, not a name so much as an epithet.
“More than just Mjölnir,” Forseti had said. “Megingjörð and Járngreipr, also. The hammer is hidden, and Loki says he can retrieve it, but the others we must trade for.”
“You mean to trade me.”
Magni had not taken kindly to this observation. “I forbid it!” he’d said again. “Loki is a thief and his is a liar, útlagi and níðingr. We do not listen to his poison.”
Þrúðr had looked at her brother, Thor’s true heir in look and word and deed. Big and broad, with a wild beard the color of flame and eyes that burned like coals. Magni was fierce, with a rage in him like a thousand storms, and he was a good man.
But to Þrúðr, he would always be her little brother, would always be dwarfed by the shadow of their father. Thor, big enough to stare into a þurs’s eyes, whose boots were soaked in blood and yet whose heart lived not upon the field of battle, but by the hearthstones with his kin.
Magni may have been his father’s heir, yet Þrúðr would not have him fight her battles.
“Brother,” she’d said, “enough. This is not your decision.” Then, before he could splutter his objection, “Father is dead, we must honor his memory, his legacy. You are his eldest son, Magni, and Mjölnir should be yours to wield. For all our sakes. But even when you do, I will still be the eldest daughter and I can bring peace another way, as women always do.”
“Þrúðr, no.” Magni’s expression had been anguish, pure and simple. “They are dvergar, Sister. You cannot do this.”
Þrúðr’s lips had thinned. “I can and I will. Don’t you see? Loki offers this not to aid us, but to tear us asunder with infighting and with greed. But we are better than he knows. He would think to test us? Fine. We will test him in return. And should he fail, it will not be exile that he faces.”
“You mean to trick a trickster?” Forseti’s voice had been cautious, as carefully blank as freshly fallen snow.
“Yes.” Þrúðr nodded. “I will go with my brothers to the dvergar and we will see what of Father’s can be retrieved, and at what cost. Do not tell Loki that I come of my own will.”
“You would have us drag you there in chains, then?” Magni spat the words, lip curled into a sneer. “I will not do it. I will not play villain for that monster.”
“You will.” Þrúðr had felt the storm rise behind the words, inevitable and certain. “I need not chains, a woman’s life is chain enough. Loki knows this, as all husbands do, and he will see what I would have him see.”
“Careful, Sister.” Móði, voice hushed from where he’d stood at Þrúðr’s back. “They say the jötnar can see into an æsir’s heart as clearly as we see into a mortal’s.”
Þrúðr couldn’t help the smile playing on her lips. “How fortunate, then,” she’d said, “that I am ásynjur. And as for you, dear brother, you say your runes should damp the monster’s power. Will they limit its Sight, also?”
From the corner of her eye, Þrúðr had seen Móði hesitate, then nod. Just once. “I . . . I believe so. But, even so. Sister, this scheme of yours—”
Þrúðr could not let him finish. “Will retrieve Mjölnir,” she’d said instead. “Return Magni to his rightful role, bring a new alliance with the dvergar, and rid Ásgarðr of a hated foe. Who would I be if I could not make sacrifices for such gains? How could I call myself my father’s daughter?”
Her brothers had shared a glance, and Þrúðr could see the anguish in it, the rage. But her words had been careful, edged to cut should they be refuted.
Forseti, of course, had no such hesitation. “Then it is settled,” he’d said. “You leave upon the morrow, for Ásgarðr and its glory. May the Wyrd weave itself in your favor.” And, like that, the scheme had been set.
That had been days ago, discussed within the cool familiar stones of Ásgarðr’s halls, bright sun and warm grass lying just beyond, window opened to the sounds of birds and laughter. The plan had seemed simpler then, if tricking a jötunn—tricking Loki—could ever be considered such a thing. Þrúðr had thought it so, and thus she’d traded her honor for her brothers’ future. For Ásgarðr’s future. She’d told herself, then, standing alone in her rooms for what would prove to be the final time, that she was strong, and brave, and she was her father’s daughter. Against her, a beast like Loki could never be a match.
She had not forseen many things on that night. Not the way her brothers would play their roles so perfectly. Magni’s bloodlust, Móði’s passive cruelty. Lain’s strange moments of quiet, between Loki’s vicious rage.
Most of all, however, Þrúðr had not forseen herself. In the bright light of Ásgarðr’s sun, she had not seen herself, hand in clammy paw, with the thing she was taking for a husband. Settled deep within the shining dark, buried beneath a mountain, queen of sacrifice and void. It had, perhaps, been an easy thing to forget. An easy thing to put aside, to refuse to see, hidden as it was behind her brothers’ quest. Behind Mjölnir. It had not been real to her, then. Her new life, trapped within the dark.
It was real now. Surrounded by dvergar, the taste of foreign meats upon her tongue and flashes of foreign speech flickering past her eyes.
Now it was real. Þrúðr had made her trade. And her life would never be the same.
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After feasting, the men discussed business. A polite fiction, Þrúðr supposed, to hide their true purpose: negotiating her trade in marriage for Járngreipr and Megingjörð. She would be given to Uni, most likely, hence his awkward attempts to be kind to her at the dinner. Asking Þrúðr of her life in Ásgarðr, listening to her speak of weaving and of hunting. He was a good man, she thought. Gracious and thoughtful, son of a powerful dvergr, and, by all accounts, a skilled craftsman of his own. A good ally for Ásgarðr, well made in one of the most ancient of traditions.
A month, perhaps less, and Mjölnir would be in Magni’s hand and the wealth of Niðavellir would be Ásgarðr’s for the sharing. This had been Þrúðr’s plan from the outset. Had she not, mere days ago, stood before Forseti and her brothers and pronounced it? Mocked Magni for his reluctance, even as she had taken her own heart and locked it away somewhere deeper and darker than the bottom of the Skærasær.
This was the truth of it. For Uni was a kind man, and he was a dvergar, and, were the decision Þrúðr and Þrúðr’s alone, she would choose to marry neither.
And it was only then, cloistered inside the rooms she had been given—between silken pillows and heavy, gold-wrought walls that pressed down upon her with all the weight of obligation—that Þrúðr allowed herself to weep.
The tears came in racking sobs that bent her double, left her shivering with thoughts of Uni’s cold and toadlike hands, with visions of an empty sunless dark. Of herself, grown pale from lack of sun and squat and bloated from the birthing of a whole pond of squirming tadpoles. Would her brothers remember her, in ten years or a hundred? Would they recall the sacrifice she made for Ásgarðr’s sake, and would they seek to return into the dark once more to see her?
What would they discover when they did? Would they still look upon her too-wide, too-dark eyes and call her Sister? Or would their lips curl back into a sneer even as Magni raised Mjölnir in his hand and—
“You know, back on Miðgarðr, I run a merchant empire.”
Þrúðr froze. Breath heaving and snot running down her chin. She hurried to wipe the latter with her sleeve, looking up through her shining hair to where Lain was perched on a table across the far side of the room. Watching.
“W-what are y-you doi—?”
“I make, uh”—Lain gestured with his claws, miming a square shape in the air—“it’s called a, uh . . .” And he said a word.
Þrúðr frowned, sniffing. “ ‘Number . . . oracle’?” Not quite, but close enough.
Lain shrugged. “I guess,” he said. “It’s sort of a, uh. A magic box? It does things, um . . .” He scowled, then laughed. “You know, this is really hard to describe to someone whose frame of reference includes fire steels. Look, these things are important, anyway. Pretty much every mortal’s got one. Most of them more than one. They use them to write sagas and speak to one another from the far corners of the world. To find the answers to every question they can think of asking.”
“I don’t . . . don’t understand.” Lain was in her room. Why was Lain in her room?
“I guess it doesn’t matter much.” Lain was grinning, sharp white teeth bright against the darkness of his mouth. It wasn’t the grin Þrúðr was used to, not from Lain. This one was . . . soft, almost. Fond. Kind.
Þrúðr bit her lip, tasting salt and snot. Her head pounded.
“The point,” Lain was saying, “is that this company? It’s pretty fucking important. Pretty much every fuckin’ mortal on the planet knows it. And it’s me. My company, my brand, burned into a hundred million homes. Except all that? It’s all a bit of a fuckin’ lie, isn’t it? Because me? I’m just the front man, the pretty face. I make nice speeches and look good for the cameras, and girls swoon over my picture and it’s all bread and fuckin’ circuses. Because you know who really runs the show?”
Lain paused, and Þrúðr obliged him by shaking her head.
“My varaforseti, Nicole Arin.” Then, when Þrúðr didn’t react. “A woman. The most powerful empire in the fucking mortal fucking world, and it’s a woman who calls the shots.”
“Is she your wife?” Þrúðr’s mind raced, trying to reach the end of the path Lain cut before her. Because he was cruel, and he was cunning, and he never took action without a reason. There would be a lesson in his tale, Þrúðr knew. Even if she could not see it.
Lain laughed again at the suggestion. “No,” he said. “Nic’s not . . . it’s not like that. We work together, that’s all. But, see. That’s what the mortal world is like now. Not perfect, but a woman can run an empire, no husbands or sons or brothers required.”
Þrúðr nodded, sniffing again and turning her head away. Such things were not unheard of, but, “This is not the mortal realm. Their ways are not ours.”
“True,” Lain said. “But things have changed down there. With our old people, too. Nowadays, this? What’s going on right here, with your brothers trading you away for some fucking fashion accessories?” Þrúðr tried not to wince. “They would find this abhorrent. You want to talk about níðingr and útlagi? What’s going on here is—”
“Stop it!” Þrúðr’s fists had curled into tight balls, resting against her thighs. “I care not for what the mortals do. They abandoned us! Sold us for gold and trinkets to the barbarians of the south. Our traditions are honorable. I am honorable. I am my father’s daughter, and I protect my home in the way that I have been given. Gladly will I do this!” It was a lie, and Þrúðr knew it.
So did Lain, judging from his scornful, “Ri-ii-ii-ii-ight. That’s why you’re holed up here, bawling your eyes out.”
“Get out.” Þrúðr did look at Lain then. Put every grain of pain and hate and shame into her gaze. Every piece of loathing against this beast, who would come into their lives. Who would play such games with them. Suggest this quest, this trade, then have the gall to shame them for it. “Get out of my rooms or I will scream for my brother. I will have him cut open his palm and you will know just how much power an ásynja can wield!”
“That’s my whole point!” Lain lurched to his feet, red-tipped claws outstretched. “You don’t need Magni, that’s bullshit. You’re Þrúðr Þórsdóttir, and you’re the eldest. You should be wielding Mjölnir, not that vicious, incompetent br—”
“Out!” Þrúðr was on her feet, too, rage burning through fear and sorrow. “Your lies have no meaning here, beast.”
Lain threw his hands up, feathers bristling even as he stepped backward. “They’re not lies. Jesus. This is the twenty-first century, you can be your own hero, you don’t need to hide behind the boys.”
Þrúðr stepped forward, eyes narrowing as a storm coalesced within her heart. “As your Nicole Arin does not hide behind you?”
Cruel words, maybe, and against a woman who had never done Þrúðr wrong. But she still couldn’t help but feel satisfaction to see Lain’s mouth drop open and blank eyes draw wide.
“Wh—? No. Wait. It’s not—”
But Þrúðr was done listening. “I said get out. Take your honeyed lies and go.” Manipulative, hypocritical beast.
For a moment, Lain did nothing. Just stared, muscles in his jaw flexing as if he sought to speak. Standing, he towered over Þrúðr, horns brushing against the vaulted ceiling, but she stood resolute before him. She was Þrúðr Þórsdóttir, and no mere jötunn would defeat her. Not in combat, and certainly not in this battle of honor and of words.
In the end, Lain stepped back, openmouthed shock receding behind his jagged grin. He gave a mock bow, but Þrúðr wasn’t fooled by the affectation. Not when she’d seen glimpses of the man beneath the monster.
She wondered if this was what Father had felt. Why he’d never feared Loki in the way some in Ásgarðr had. Not thanks to strength of body, but of character, of determination, and of heart. Lain feared those things, perhaps, and in a way he didn’t fear force and pain. Lain, who was Loki. And Loki, who was a villain and a liar, but who could not corrupt those who did not allow themselves to be corrupted.
Or perhaps that was hubris. Þrúðr couldn’t say.
She could say her rage had worked, however, as Lain backed carefully from her chambers. “I still think you deserve better than to be sold for something that should be yours to begin with,” he said as he receded. “But your dissent is noted. If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.”
Þrúðr merely turned her back and didn’t deign him with a reply.