There were thirteen of them seated around the circular table and a further thirty-five relegated to the chairs that lined the walls. Odin knew this exactly because, despite his best efforts to lend his attention to his chancellor’s thorough and sage remarks about the pearl and semi-precious gem trade between Asgard and Alfheim, his attention kept straying. He simply found it more diverting to try to pick which of his staff and which of the elven delegates looked the least enthused to be stuck in these negotiations for the next week.

He noticed at once, therefore, when someone hesitantly pushed open the side door. Findur, one of the senior palace guards, crept through the narrow gap he had afforded himself and skirted the edge of the room. There was no need for this act; no one had missed his entrance and no one was about to ignore it. His unscheduled intrusion was the most noteworthy event to have come out of nearly two full days of meetings.

Findur caught Odin’s eye and although his helmet concealed much of his face, there was something in Findur’s expression that left Odin uneasy. He motioned for Findur to hurry along and tilted his head up as Findur crouched down to whisper into Odin’s ear.

‘Sire,’ Findur whispered, ‘the Chief Healer has asked the queen to come down to the Medical Wing urgently. It concerns the princes, particularly Prince Loki. Since her majesty’s travelling, we thought you would want to know.’

Odin pushed his chair back a fraction until he could face the guard. ‘Do you know anything more?’

‘No, sire.’

Odin had just enough self-possession to remember that the physical health of the two heirs to the throne of Asgard was a matter of vital importance to the state — a fact Eir, the palace’s most senior healer, would be well aware of. She was no doubt attempting to avoid sending wild gossip flying through the palace and inevitably, out to the city beyond.

Her reticence with the facts didn’t help Odin of course. Likely, Loki had played with some spell he shouldn’t have tried and Eir wanted Frigga’s assistance in dealing with the aftereffects. Yet the ‘urgently’ in the message didn’t sit well with Odin. He’d had trouble enough concentrating on the proceedings before, now he had no hope of keeping his mind on track and they had at least another two hours of work here before they finished for the night.

‘Please continue without me,’ Odin said loudly enough for his words to cut across Agnar’s continued exposition on peculiarities of import duties and export tariffs on various categories of pearls. ‘I must briefly attend to a pressing matter.’

He didn’t give the light elves time to respond. They were a haughty people and Crown Prince Amhlaith, who led the visiting delegation, was proving to be a particularly prickly specimen of his kind. Odin and his cabinet would have to smooth over this moment; Amhlaith was sure to take Odin’s abrupt departure as a slight. Presently, Odin didn’t care, he hurried over to the Medical Wing.

On arrival, he found the admissions bay empty, but the treatment room just past it was bursting with uniformed healers and trainees, the bulk of them crowded around a single Med Cradle. Odin almost missed Thor, who had pressed himself against a side wall. In the few patches that weren’t streaked with mud, the boy’s face was decidedly white.

‘Father?’ he mumbled. It wasn’t just Thor’s face, Odin realised, his hair was a muddy mess and his clothes had dark, wet splotches across the front, the origin of which Odin didn’t want to contemplate. ‘I’m sorry, we —’

‘What’s happened? What’s wrong with Loki?’ Odin demanded.

‘Ah, your majesty, I was expecting the queen,’ Eir said briskly.

Odin left the perfunctory tone to the formal address pass without comment. Eir had been a near contemporary of Odin’s mother, a fact neither Eir nor Odin ever forgot. ‘The queen is visiting some extended family.’

‘Of course, yes. That slipped my mind.’ Eir replied. She stood at the terminal that controlled the Med Cradle and seemed to be viewing a projection. A semi-opaque barrier had been set up around the top of the terminal to allow a healer to assess a patient’s progress discretely and from where Odin stood he could see only a small fraction of the three-dimensional image. ‘From what I gathered from Prince Thor, the boys were out in the forest and encountered a bilgesnipe. Somehow Loki became pinned underneath the body of the creature.’

Odin winced. Stifling a string of curses, he approached the cradle while the gathered medical personnel fell back to give him room. Loki stared up at the ceiling, his teeth gritted and sweat beading on his forehead. His head, his torso and his arms were uninjured save for some oozing wound across his right palm, which a healer had already covered with a white bandage. But his legs. The healers had cut away his boots and most of his trousers exposing the damage in full: broken bones, flesh swollen throughout and profusely bleeding wounds where the bilgesnipe’s razor-sharp spurs had sunk inches deep. It wasn’t right, a child should never have to experience anything like this.

Odin reached into the cradle and cupped Loki’s shoulder. ‘I know it hurts,’ he said in as even a voice as he could manage, ‘but you’re a brave boy, aren’t you? You’ll be all right. Eir and her healers will look after you.’

‘Lunda,’ Eir said, motioning to a healer out of the assembled gaggle. ‘Please take Prince Thor to an examination bay and verify he hasn’t sustained any injuries himself.’

‘I want to stay with Loki,’ Thor replied.

He pulled himself away from the wall and rushed to his father. Odin caught him before he got close to the Med Cradle. Eir was right — Thor didn’t need to be present for what was about to follow; the boy looked unnerved enough. ‘He’s in good hands and you’re no use to anyone if you’re not well yourself.’

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Thor bristled. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Go with the healer and do not argue with me.’

Thor knew better than to argue further and, with his head slunk low, he allowed Lunda to lead him away. Odin could only hope her examination wouldn’t uncover any surprises. He wasn’t sure at all how to deal with Loki’s situation, let alone with two injured children.

He made a concerted effort to put that possibility out of his mind and refocused on Loki. However, his attempt to offer some words of comfort seemed to go unheard. Loki’s shoulders were drawn so tight they might as well have been carved of marble and his red-rimmed eyes stubbornly peered at the ceiling. ‘Eir, have you not given him any pain relief? He’s clearly in a pain.’

‘A great deal of it I expect,’ Eir responded. ‘We’ve tried pain relief and sedation. No effect. There won’t be any with the amount of venom those spurs released into his body.’

‘Allfathers have mercy.’ Odin had forgotten about the venom male bilgesnipes carried in their many spurs. The venom itself wasn’t deadly, but was sure to cause a number of unpleasant after-effects that could leave a grown man wishing he were dead. ‘What do we do then?’

Eir beckoned him over. ‘Let me show you on the projection.’

‘No,’ Loki cut in, ‘tell me what you're going to do.’

His words were somewhat slurred and he seemed short of breath, but he was coherent, which sent a wave of warmth through Odin’s chest. Eir gave Odin a questioning look and at Odin’s nod, she brought the projection over the top of the Med Cradle where Loki had a chance of seeing. It was a disheartening sight. The bones of his legs weren’t so much as broken as crushed, there were more pieces than Odin could count. Orange, which universally indicated trouble on medical charts, outlined Loki’s heart, liver and kidneys. Loki made a peculiar half-strangled sound and turned his face away from the projection.

‘Loki,’ Eir said in a gentle tone. ‘This is a scary situation, I realise, but listen to me, ok? We have a stock of anti-venom on hand here, but it’s slow-acting and will do very little with more venom leeching into your bloodstream. Four spurs broke off and are embedded in your thighs. The first thing we have to do is get them out. Does that makes sense?’

Loki nodded weakly and Eir offered him a warm smile in return.

‘I won’t lie,’ she went on. ‘It will hurt. We’ll be as quick as we can though.’

‘And after?’ Loki asked.

‘After, we should be able to give you something to make you sleep while we fix the rest of your injuries.’

Loki despised to be patronised and Eir’s tone verged on the line of Loki’s tolerance. Odin found himself sighing. As much as if infuriated him when Loki acted like a petulant child because he disliked the way someone had addressed him, Odin preferred to suffer through that tantrum than watch Loki stoically nod in agreement to Eir’s treatment plan.

Odin knelt by the side of the Med Cradle as Eir and her team rushed about pulling together the last of the equipment they would need. ‘Loki, don’t pay attention to what they are doing. Look at me and we’ll get through this together.’

‘What about the elves?’ Loki asked. Odin wanted to chastise himself for not anticipating the question. He had made it very clear to both boys how important these negotiations were and that they were absolutely not to disrupt the proceedings.

‘They will wait until tomorrow.’ Odin could see out of the corner of his eye that the frenetic activity of the medical staff had ceased. They seemed ready to begin. ‘Tell me, what do you know about the elves? Who rules them?’

‘King Erlendur,’ Loki replied.

‘And what’s his capital city?’

‘Ljo- Ljosalfgard.’

‘Good,’ Odin said. These were facts Loki had learned before he could read and write, but Odin needed to distract the boy with something. ‘And who’s the crown prince? You saw him at the feast the other night, do you remember that?’

‘That’s Amhlaith.’

Odin’s next question died on his lips as Loki jerked and quickly turned his head to face away from Odin. They had begun – EIr had two metal instruments sunk deep into Loki’s left thigh. Odin found Loki’s hands. Both the injured and the uninjured one were pressed tightly into fists. Odin massaged the back of Loki’s hands until Loki relaxed his fists just enough for to Odin push his thumb through the middle of Loki’s fist and twist his grip around so Loki grasped his hand properly. Or rather, crushed it.

‘How about Vanaheim?’ Odin asked. ‘Do you remember what the capital of Vanaheim is?’

Loki didn’t produce an answer. His jaw was so tight Odin feared they would have to repair half a dozen cracked teeth before the healers were done. In his time Odin had seen plenty of men mangled by a bilgesnipe in a similar fashion; bilgesnipe were territorial creatures, especially when they had a young litter to protect. Some men fainted from the venom’s side-effects and Odin half-wished Loki would too — an unconscious person didn’t feel pain.

The first spur took what seemed like half eternity. Loki breathed heavily, his face utterly devoid of colour and his eyes watering, but he didn’t produce a single sound. It was Odin who rejoiced when Eir drew out the first spur. Through the second and the third he merely muttered what he hoped were encouraging and comforting words; Loki didn’t seem to register them at all. At least those were swiftly extracted. The fourth, on the other hand, left Eir hissing in frustration.

‘What’s the matter?’ Odin snapped.

‘It’s splintered into three pieces in the wound,’ Eir replied. She sighed. ‘Loki, darling, bear with us. We’ll need to use a different approach to get everything out.’

Loki’s eyebrows drew together. ‘Sure,’ he said in a resigned tone. He sucked in a breath and pulled his lower lip between his teeth.

Odin closed his eyes as one of Eir’s assistants handed her a scalpel. He guessed when she began to make the incision by the way Loki’s hand clung tighter around his own, no doubt leaving crescent-shaped marks where his fingernails sunk deep into the skin on the back of Odin’s hand. There were no screams, however, or so much as a hiss of pain. Only the healers’ morose mutterings were audible.

‘Nearly there,’ Eir mumbled after a few minutes.

Odin tried to make sense of what they were doing, but didn’t get far. He turned back to Loki and his heart skipped a beat. Blood ran down the boy’s chin and dripped down onto his neck.

‘Where’s that blood coming from?’ Odin asked. He tried to pull one hand free, but Loki clung on too tightly. ‘Eir, hold on a moment.’

She either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore his words. Her focus was on a wound by Loki’s left knee, which her two assistant healers had pried open wider. Slowly, she extracted something solid from within and as her assistants drew out their instruments, she said, ‘I believe we’re done with this. You did really well, Loki.’

All tension fled from the boy’s body and his jaw slackened. He released his lip, which he had trapped between his teeth and Odin understood — Loki had bitten right through the flesh. The resulting wound bled profusely. Odin grabbed an unused roll of gauze from the tables the healers laid out their equipment on.

‘That’s not so good, child,’ Odin said, pressing the gauze against the wound.

Loki’s eyes widened; he mustn’t have realised what he’d done. But with that realisation, something within him snapped loose. Tears, which had welled up throughout the ordeal, suddenly burst out and the next thing Odin knew, Loki was sobbing. Gingerly, Odin lifted Loki’s upper body and brought the boy against his chest. He couldn’t remember the last time he had held Loki while he cried like this.

‘Oh, my boy,’ Odin muttered. ‘There’s no need for tears now. The worst is over.’