The Apple Throne (22 page)

“It’s beautiful,” I say, smoothing my hands down the skirt, tugging gently at the velvet cuffs of the jacket. She gathers my rings in her cupped palms, and I put them on one at a time, except for a single silver knotwork ring, inlaid with three tiny blue topaz. A gift from Frigg. “Keep that one, please, Gunn-Elin.”

Her fingers curl around it, and she smiles. “If you’ll let me dry your hair?”

She does, as I sit on a padded stool with my eyes closed, trying not to fret over Soren. Impatience will win me nothing, and I must always be kind. I remember Uncle Richard saying it, when I was upset over the questions people asked of him, of us. Shallow, selfish things that didn’t matter to fate—about missed deadlines or homework or how to get ahead of colleagues, or what teams would win the National Series.
Be kind, Astrid
, Richard said.
Remember what your mama used to say about our place in fate: We are its conduit, the voice of the future, and we don’t control it, we don’t change it. We only communicate it
.

I’d always hated that, preferring to take matters into my own hands: calling that town in Tejas when I dreamed of the tornado, challenging those troll-warts to holmgang before they could attack Soren, going to Sanctus Sigurd in the first place. It’s what I loved about Soren before anything else—that he refused to stop fighting his destiny, even though I believed he needed to embrace it. I remember saying to my mom,
Soren will not bend. He will stand in the way of fate until fate bends around him
.

I’ve always had the seething as a tool, as a guide, but used it to fight toward a purpose. Not having dreams for these two years seems to have stripped me of all my action. And I let it.

Until fate bends around him
.

It doesn’t matter what Freya the Witch told me in my dream. It doesn’t matter if the hunter will find what he seeks or that Idun has left her orchard or what I thought my destiny was or even what my destiny is now. What matters is that I find a way to bend fate, to return me to Soren and then my orchard. Both. I will be both Idun and Astrid. The secret weapon.

I stand up. Gunn-Elin drops my hair in surprise. “I need the keys to Sune’s Jeep, your papers or maps about the elf gold trade, and a place to study.”

“I’ll take you,” she reassures me.

“Now, please.”

• • •

I settle with all Soren’s files in a dining area with five plain wooden tables. Simple flower arrangements decorate each, and ruffled curtains dress the windows that open onto the Rock Church’s volcanic garden. The setting sun casts weak orange light, but there are bright floor lamps in the corners. Gunn-Elin explains the color-coding on her maps to me and the patterns of elf gold traffic, then goes into the adjoining kitchen to make a pot of soup. I can see her through the open doorway, stirring and humming.

Her records show that nearly all the elf gold she’s received in the past twelve months has come from Eureka, and the rest seems to have originated here. There’s a list of names of people arrested or suspected of passing the gold, too many to easily question. Three are from the Cheyenne kingstate, and Amon mentioned that he used to meet Eirfinna at either an old rock church near Bright Home or near the Yellowstone super volcano in Cheyenne, so maybe those are the three to begin with? It seems like grasping at straws. How does one find elves in a modern city when they mean to remain hidden?

As the dining area fills with the scent of caramelizing onions, I pull out Soren’s statement again and the news-clippings in his file. The only thing that sticks out is the statement they recorded from Soren:
He was no man. I’m not supposed to be here tonight
.

I know where he was supposed to be.

But
he was no man
is very specific. It reminds me of the ritual holmgang words.
You are not a man’s equal and not a man at heart
is the challenging call. The reply:
I am as much a man as you
.

Did Soren mean that he had challenged Evan Bell to holmgang? That would make it possibly not murder, but a fair death. I put my head on my hands. Except there is no reason Soren wouldn’t have been explicit about that in custody. Soren is not coy.

I see him in the dark, shivering against the rough rock wall, naked and sweating as he trembles, eyes shut tight. He claws at his head, dragging rough fingers down his face, bearing his teeth like a wild dog.

“Lady.”

I snap awake, knocking my shins against the table leg.

Groggy, my eyes take a moment to clear up the blurry vision before me: Amon looming and Sune slouched in the chair across from mine.

“Sune!” I get up and go around to him, leaning on the table. I take his hand as Amon heads into the kitchen and his sister.

Sune makes a grim line with his mouth. He’s only in his uniform pants and the white undershirt, his nail-cross hanging outside, black over his heart. Shadows cup his eyes and strain stretches across his brow.

I pet his bare skull, smoothing my palm around to the back of his neck. “Are you feeling better?” I murmur.

“Amon explained what a terrible ass I was,” he replies hoarsely. “I am so sorry, lady.”

“It was an accident.”

“I should have recognized my…” He shifts uncomfortably. “My strange mood. I thought it was only…Amon.”

I slide my gaze to the kitchen, where Amon reaches over his smaller sister to get bowls out of a cabinet. They speak softly together. “He brings it out in you on purpose.”

“I should
know better
.”

The bitterness in his voice stings my eyes. I sink into the chair beside him. “I’ve been going over everything Gunn-Elin has, but something else is bothering me. Soren’s words when he was taken into custody. He said, ‘He was no man.’ I think that is important because Soren is nothing if not
deliberate
.” I wait, letting Sune chew on the problem.

The hunter says slowly, “You are not a man’s equal and not a man at heart. You think he might have been trying to tell the militia he’d called Bell to holmgang?”

“It occurred to me, but no. There’s no reason to hide that.”

“Has Soren called holmgang before?” Sune asks.

“Yes, at least once I know of. It was a matter of life and honor. He’d have to have had an incredible reason. But it doesn’t…feel right.”

Sune doesn’t respond except with an eloquent tightening of his hand on the arm of the chair. “What else could it mean? Maybe nothing official, but Soren’s way of defending himself? That it was a righteous death?”

“Soren would never call any death righteous.”

In the kitchen, Gunn-Elin dishes a thick orange soup into the bowls.

Sune reaches across the table to tap a long finger on the picture of Bell that came with the militia file, dragging the image nearer. “No man,” he murmurs to himself.

Amon and Gunn-Elin bring soup out to us. She sets one down before me and says, “Chicken and red lentil. I’ve water or soda or beer if you prefer.”

It smells earthy and delicious, and I accept the spoon, though my stomach is a tight knot. “Sune should stick to water,” Amon says, eyeing him, and the hunter rather meekly obeys.

We sit at two tables, spread out because of my scatter of maps and information. I stare idly at the map of the Rock Mountains, forcing myself to take small bites of the hot soup.
He was no man
. If Soren said it, he meant it literally. For all his imagination, for his attraction to the metaphors he loves that make his life smoother and force the chaos of the world into simple truths, my Soren doesn’t talk like a poet.

I set the spoon down. “He wasn’t a man at all,” I say quietly. I lean toward Amon. “What if Evan Bell was the elf we’ve been looking for all along?”

“What?” Gunn-Elin breathes. “Like…” She flicks a glance at her brother.

“They don’t have the mask anymore,” Sune says. “I recovered it.”

Amon says, hard and straight, “But she did have it, for nearly a week. She could have figured out how to replicate it. It was originally elf-made.”

Sune strikes through the air with his hand. “There’s no evidence for any of this.”

I push my soup entirely aside. “What if that’s how they put the gold back out? They wanted to directly trade, and how simple would that be? If Soren killed an elf, they’d want their blood price and take him! Hold him in a cave until he dies of bearbane poison!”

“You are jumping to fast conclusions.”

“Fast is all I have time for.” I get up. “We have to contact Eirfinna.”

Amon shrugs. “I can’t. We traded at Bright Home and the Caldera, but only every six weeks. I had no way to contact her.”

“There must be a way,” I insist.

Sune says, “I’ve never heard of one, and officially the elves are extinct. I have no channels to request access to them, and I doubt any of my superiors would grant it anyway. Lady Idun, I’m sorry, but without calling Bright Home and asking Thor directly, there is no faster way for us to find an elf than going through these lists and finding the source here in Salt City.”

I open my mouth. I close it. There
is
a way. I’ve had a secret weapon all along. I shove my chair back and go to where I folded my coat on the table nearest the door. Inside the front left pocket is Loki’s cell phone. I dig it out and turn it on, though it’s never been charged. It doesn’t need to be.

“There is a way,” I say. “It’s time. It’s time to do this because I know exactly,
exactly
, what I need.”

The small phone flickers to life. All that shows on the screen is a glowing green snake, eating its own tail.

“Who are you calling?” Sune asks.

All three of them watch me, Sune with his sharp jaw clenched, Amon with his hands caught in his hair, and Gunn-Elin concerned, her hands in her lap. I lift the phone and hit
Call
.

Silence reigns in the dining room as the other end rings once, twice, and then a smooth young voice says, “Well hallo, darling.”

“Hello, Loki,” I say and watch my friends’ faces go slack with shock. “I’m collecting on that debt.”

I
shudder and tuck my hands into the fur-lined pockets of my coat as wind drags thick cloud-fingers across the moon. Silver and black shadows play over the lava garden where I stand, the rear of the Rock Cathedral rising white at my back like a shield. Its twisted spires glow a gentle blue from lights hidden behind the limestone and crystal spirals. I stand in the center of a raked yard of red lava rocks, surrounded by black and red air-pocked boulders, waiting for the god of mischief.

For seven months, I haven’t seen him, though he used to come frequently to bargain or trick or threaten. Until the last time, and the most recent trick he played that earned me this single favor. I told him not to return except for the once-yearly apple I owed.

It surprised me at first how much I missed his lively visits. We’d played a game sometimes where he transformed into famous players of history or legend as I told their stories. I made my descriptions as outlandish as I could, just to challenge him, and Loki liked honing his gifts. I remember him transitioning from boy to old man as he spoke, every word the passing of a year, or growing his hair longer like slithering snakes, changing from strawberry blond to orange to red to deep, vibrant scarlet, or his features softening into a pretty pink smile until you notice his jawline shading with new stubble. Some say Loki doesn’t know what he truly looks like anymore. Others say he’s afraid of holding to one shape or that he’s too fickle to choose. But maybe he’s only lazy. I think it’s all a game, and none but he know the rules.

I wait in the frozen lava garden and glance left toward the guest house, where Amon, Sune, and Gunn-Elin remain inside. Golden light drops through the dining room windows into the garden, three streaks of warmth. Amon’s blocky shadow darkens the edge of one as he stares out at me. I can’t see his face, but he argued to be out here with me. I refused. If Amon is here, the Changer will find a way to win a boon of him, and Thor’s son won’t owe Loki because of me.

“Hallo, darling,” Loki murmurs into my ear.

I startle forward, swinging around. My boots skid in the lava gravel.

He laughs, mouth wide and teeth shining. Hands on his hips, shoulders back to shoot the laughter at the sky as if this is the most hilarious thing he’s seen in a decade. I fist my hands in my pockets, then finger the three apples of immortality jumbled together like marbles.

The jollity cuts off suddenly, and he smiles at me: a cool, silky smile on his androgynous face. It’s long and pale, high cheekbones and a sensuous mouth, with green eyes surrounded by too-long lashes. His trench coat is slim and long, collar popped and bobbing lightly under his chin.

“Idun, Idun, my lovely.” The god of orphans holds out a long, elegant hand. “How long has it been?”

I slide my frozen fingers against his. “Too long,” I say.

As I watch, Loki’s shoulders widen and his stance grows bulkier. His jaw goes square and his eyes dark; his nose is shorter and flatter, the same with his cheeks. His hand around mine transforms into a rough, strong warrior’s hand.

Soren stands before me.

“You know,” I whisper, tugging free.

“My daughter,” Loki-as-Soren says, “can be rather possessive of her toys.”

“Fenris told you he’s missing.”

The god snaps suddenly sharp teeth and dissolves into a girl a year or so older than me, dangerously gorgeous with layers of dark curls and emerald eyes. She lifts onto her toes, then sways back onto her heels. Eyebrows up, her finger tap against dark leather pants at her hips. Loki says, “She doesn’t know where he is. Like he vanished off the map.”

I let myself smile, only a little, in anticipation of disappointing her. “That isn’t what I’m going to ask.”

Her shoulders slump. “Ah, well, good. I couldn’t have told you where he is, and I hate not being able to pay my debts.”

Tiny white flakes of snow land on her hair and melt. I tilt my chin to look up at the sky. Those clouds blew in so quickly. A snowflake lands on my eyelash, and I blink it away, shivering.

“I flew through it,” Loki says. “Lake-effect snow. You might be trapped here by morning.”