The Apple Throne (21 page)

“Gunn-Elin,” Amon calls.

She startles so violently the notebook slides off her thigh, and she presses the hand with the pen against her heart. “Amon!” A smile spreads over her dark face, quite enveloping the rest of her features.

He goes to her and Gunn-Elin hugs him, arms around his shoulders but unable to meet in the back. Amon shifts to the side and turns her to face us. She’s barely taller than me, and her baggy overalls hide decadent curves. Her hair is under a handkerchief, and she wears no makeup or jewelry other than a small silver ring in her eyebrow exactly like Amon’s. She’s a shade paler than him, but no less beautiful, and the seriousness of her dark gaze reminds me immediately of their mother.

She strips the gloves off her hands, discarding them, and reaches out to us. “Hello,” she says in a loving way, palms up with welcome. Her warm gaze takes me in and goes to Sune. She immediately lifts her winged eyebrows. “Is that you, Sune?”

“Miss Gunn-Elin,” he says, bowing stiffly at the waist.

Amon keeps a hand protectively against his sister’s back. “And here, sister, is the Lady of Apples, Idun.”

Her lips part in surprise, and I make an effort to hold her gaze, to smile as sweetly as her as I take her cool, dry hand in my own. “Gunn-Elin, hello,” I say.

“I can’t…” she begins, squeezes my hand, then takes hers back. “I have nothing to offer you down here for welcome, for hospitality. I…” She looks sharp at her brother. “Amon, how could you? Bring a goddess of life and immortality down here?” He gapes, and Gunn-Elin wipes her hands on her overalls, then nods once. “Lady, come with me, if you would. Amon, turn off the lamps when you follow.”

Sune doesn’t move out of our path. “Miss Gunn-Elin, we are not here for pleasure or hospitality, but officially on behalf of the Thunderer.”

“Oh.” She puts her hands on her round hips.

“Amon seems to think you kept up his contacts with the elf-gold,” the hunter continues disapprovingly.

Gunn-Elin bites her bottom lip and glances at me with apology. “I’m afraid I couldn’t help myself.”

Amon slides his hand across her shoulders protectively. “You should have immunity to the trouble, as much as I do.”

“Oh no, that’s not it!” She turns to me, as if I’m the one she must prove herself to. “I don’t want the gold, I want to help people. They came looking for Amon after he dropped it—people who knew he could get it, people looking to get rid of it. Elf gold isn’t just dangerous to keep; it’s dangerous to dispose of because you can’t predict how it will…change a person or how it will even
choose
a person. And so I made sure people knew my name was a safe one and they could come to me for any aid I might provide, and eventually…” She shrugs. “I ended up with a small hoard.”

“Here?” Sune demands. “I don’t feel it.”

She smiles proudly. “It’s very well hidden, major.”

Amon says, “We’re investigating the death of a man near Eureka who had a stash in his basement, as well as a museum of calcified trolls. He was here last week in the city, and—”

Sune’s shoulders heave strangely as he interrupts. “If you can tell us who’s supplying the gold or point us in the right direction, I might
consider
overlooking your hoard.”

Gunn-Elin’s smile falters at his tone. It thickens his Southern accent, too.

I quickly add, “His name was Evan Bell.”

“I’ve heard the name, but never had any contact.” She shakes her head. “I can tell you that Eureka is where a lot of the recent gold is coming
from
.”

My stomach sinks. We were in Eureka, but came here looking for the source.

Amon covers his eyes with a hand. “You’re tracking the patterns.”

The pride flares on her face again, and she gestures behind her at the spread of bones on the tarp. “It’s what I’m good at.”

“Miss Gunn-Elin, it’s
dangerous
!” Sune explodes.

“Back off, Sune,” Amon says.

I study Sune’s flashing eyes, the hot cheeks, his breath as it goes shallow and faster. Something’s wrong with him.

As soothingly as I can, I say to Gunn-Elin, “Could Evan Bell have been receiving his gold here, though? Is there a way people here in Salt City are contacting the elves?”

“Yes, possibly.” Gunn-Elin’s gaze tracks Sune, unsurprised by my mention of living elves. “I can show you my charts, and we can talk to a few…” She trails off as Sune presses the butts of his hands into his eyes.

“What’s wrong, Sune?” I murmur. The hunter shakes his head, backing away until his shoulder knocks into the shelves. Bones rattle, several toppling to the cave floor. Gunn-Elin cries out.

“Sune,” I say, but Amon butts in front of me and grabs Sune’s arm. Sune throws his fist at Amon.

Startled, Amon stumbles back, and the two of them crash across the narrow bonehall into one of the seated skeletons. Gunn-Elin gasps, and I fling myself at the men, grabbing at Sune. I try to drag him back as Amon catches himself, but Sune pulls away, drawing off with his head in his hands. He’s panting and gasping. Blood drips from his lip.

The three of us watch as he turns in a half-circle, eyes open and wild, searching blindly for something we can’t see. His teeth are clenched, and his breath sucks in and out, hissing hard. Blood and sweat dot his face. “I…can’t…” he says.

He looks like a berserker fighting the frenzy. My guts go cold. “The bearbane. Last night in your trunk, Amon. It spilled.”

Sune shakes his head, gasping, “Too—long—ago!” But his entire body shudders.

“Skit,” Amon whispers and launches himself at Sune.

The hunter flails, but Amon has him caught, huge arms wrapped around him, binding him tight. Amon shakes him, and Sune cries out, struggling—but not fighting him,
clinging
to Amon, digging his fingers in, knees bent and face screwed as if he’s being dragged apart and only Amon’s arms hold him here in the Middle World.

Amon’s expression is a mask of blank fear, but he does not let go as Sune thrashes and cleaves to him. I reach for Gunn-Elin, and she holds my hand. Her mouth moves in a soft prayer: a song of strength from the mountain and Thor, the god of the mountains.

S
une burns out quickly, and Amon takes his limp body in strong arms. We follow Gunn-Elin out the back entrance of the ossuary and into the boarding house of the Sisters of Sif. She leads us down a simple hallway to a guest room that is whitewashed, bright and plain. Three beds in a line, made with blue and cream blankets and layered with quilted pillows. There’s a single window over each bed and hammer-crosses hanging at the headboards. Afternoon light shines through blue curtains.

Amon puts Sune down on one of the beds and removes his shoulder holster. I sink into a wooden chair beside a washbasin with mirror and toiletries. Gunn-Elin says she’ll be back with water and cloths, hurrying out. Amon unbuttons his own gray silk shirt down to the edge of the vest, then says, “Help me get his coat off, too. He sweat through everything.”

We work in silence. Sune’s sprawled limbs are heavy with unconsciousness. It’s easier for Amon to prop his weight and let me work off the coat and shirt. I bite my bottom lip when we move to the boots and pants, but Amon’s right: it all needs to come off. The hunter does not twitch at all; he is not dreaming, but deeply asleep. His breathing, thank the gods, is smooth and deep; his skin warm, but not burning.

Gunn-Elin returns with a bowl of water and a washcloth just as we’ve got him undressed and the quilt pulled up to his stomach. She kneels and gently washes Sune’s face, neck, and chest.

Weary, I study this girl godling. Her hair is a puff of black halo around her face since she removed the handkerchief at some point. She’s only slightly taller than me, a relief after two days with Amon and Sune and the Valkyrie. Her brown cheeks are broad and round, like her mother’s, eyebrows thin and elegant as spread wings, her lashes short and curled so they seem only like thick liner deepening the rich brown of her eyes. That gleaming silver ring at her left brow adds a spark of humor. She must be a year or two younger than me, but exudes a sense of comfort.

Amon stares blankly at her progress from the foot of the bed. His hands are limp on his thighs. From the little wooden chair, I ask him, “Why do you think the bearbane took so long to affect him? Does he have berserking in his family history? Would that matter?”

Amon slowly shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’ve seen it take days to work through a man, though. It’s meant to be burned up by the frenzy, not to languish and swim around in the blood of regular men. I wish I’d had some of my smelling salts on hand to knock him out of it. But he must not have had too much.”

I frown. I know a berserker can use it to make the frenzy last longer or be more under their control, but I’ve only ever personally seen it kill the frenzy. I saw that happen to Soren, a long time ago, when the Bears murdered Baldur and they’d wanted to control Soren’s reaction. They’d forced it on him, and he’d dropped like a stone.

My head swims as a thought occurs, and I touch my temples. “What happens if a berserker takes too much? Does it kill them, too?”

Amon’s mouth stretches into displeasure. “The frenzy itself does that. A berserker ODing on bearbane will be caught in a loop of frenzy. Unable to break free, just trapped.”

I say, “In my dream last night, in all my dreams, Soren is so enraged he bashes himself into the granite walls. Freya said it’s one of the ways he could die.”

“Rag me,” Amon says. “You think whomever chained him up is poisoning him with bearbane?”

Gunn-Elin shoots a shocked look between us. She dips her cloth again, then smoothes it down Sune’s arm, taking up his hand and washing his fingers gently.

I push to my feet. “Gods, we have to find Soren. He has less than three days.”

Amon shakes his head. “He’s strong, surely.”

“We have to
go
, Amon.”

“But go
where
?”

“Sune needs to sleep this off,” Gunn-Elin says, turning sorry eyes to me.

I put my hands on my head, tugging at my hair. “I just… I need…” My hands flutter as if they’ll find an answer in the air. “To think.”

“A bath and food,” Gunn-Elin corrects me, standing as well.

I hesitate, and she smiles encouragingly under my gaze. A lazy zigzag of lightning crawls around the edge of her dark iris

“Come on, lady of apples,” she says quietly. “My brother will watch the major.”

I allow her to lead me down the hall to a bathroom.

I soak and scrub in a porcelain dragonfoot tub, wracking my mind for some idea. A way I can change the path we’re on to leap us closer to Soren in one bold move. Sune’s plan was to find the local supplier and through him or her find whatever elf is turning out the gold. He and Amon agreed yesterday that there must be an elf at the center. We could find this elf and make them take us to Soren.

But it will take hours at least, and without Sune, Amon and I will be less efficient.

I need a faster way.

The hunter will follow the gold to your heart’s desire.

I told Signy I would find a thousand ways to make certain Sune succeeds. Her eyes flash before me now: sharp ocean-green, narrow and piercing as she sings her poem about me and chaos.
Ace up the sleeve. Secret weapon.

I have to be the secret weapon. But how?

When Gunn-Elin returns with a pile of clean clothes, I try to appear calm, to seem a goddess for her. She doesn’t need to see my terror or desperation. For distraction as I lather soap in my hair, I ask what she was doing with the bones in the ossuary.

From the other side of a privacy screen hand-painted with a mountain-scape, she says, “Most of the skeletons in our catacombs are disarticulated jumbles, brought from old family homesteads in the east over a century ago or from southern graveyards after the Thrall’s War. I’m looking for any identifying features that my friend in the Salt City History and Legends Society can match up to local records.”

“Why?” The shampoo smells like orange blossoms as the foam slides down my forehead and the back of my neck.

“So we know their names when we pray, to give them proper acknowledgement.”

“You don’t think your father can call them when the time comes if their bones aren’t intact?” I’ve heard it before, but children of Freya know the body and spirit are separate. What fate attends to the flesh, the soul can defeat when it passes out of the Middle World. If someone remembers your name, your bones don’t matter. It’s why seethkonas can call the dead.

I wish I trusted myself to be able to summon Evan Bell’s spirit, but even at my full strength, when I was with Soren and Baldur, it nearly killed me. Now, I have no idea what would happen. I don’t have my own thread of fate to follow back from Hel. And dead, I’m no good to Soren at all.

Frustrated, I duck under the water to rinse. When I finish, water sloshing everywhere as I stand, Gunn-Elin steps around the screen with a fluffy towel. I wrap it around myself, drying my face, and she finally answers my question, “Our bones are the connection to our family here in the Middle World, not the gods. The dead may do what they will in the Other Worlds, but here we the living need physical objects to hold, to remind us of our losses.”

I think of Sleipnir’s Tooth that I clutched so tightly, of the yellow glass apple Soren kept hanging in his truck. “I see,” I say. And I do: I relinquished everything solid when I agreed to be Idun. There was no piece of my life to cling to but the useless seething kit. I had Soren four days a year, but when he was gone, there was nothing physical to link us until he gave me this horn necklace. I’m going to change that, too, the moment I can. A ring. A commit. We used to talk like we were a true commit when we traveled with Baldur, but since then, we’ve never spoken it out loud. I was afraid to tie him to me, but I need it.

Gunn-Elin helps me into borrowed clothes: stockings and wool socks, a soft undershirt, and a dress that has a heavy layered skirt falling just past my knees and a bodice embroidered with tiny blue and yellow flowers that buttons up the center. Very sweet, very old-fashioned. It comes with a half-jacket of dark blue velvet and a high collar. There are laces in the back of the bodice to tighten it, and Gunn-Elin says, “I chose this because it can be tied to fit you without alterations. Most of my clothes wouldn’t work so well.”