Inside the cell, I lean against the ragged edge of the stone wall and stare out across a hundred meters of flat grass toward the high, barbed wire fence and the dark Jotunwood behind. The stone is smooth beneath my fingers and cold. I stroke it. In some places, it doesn’t appear shattered or broken, but melted.
Did he lose himself to the frenzy? Could Soren have freed himself from this prison? Bashed his berserking body through the stone? I remember his scream in my own throat, ringing in my ears, alive against my skin.
“Astrid,” Amon says into my ear.
I snap to and shake my head vigorously. “It makes no sense. He would have to be completely consumed by the madness to break through this, and that would leave a trail. He’d have broken through that fence, too, and knocked over trees. Left a very obvious path. And…blood.”
“We agree,” Grid says, joining us. “This is like nothing I’ve seen. We’ve had dogs out to track him, and there’s a search the Army is helping us with. That—” She points sharply northeast. “—is their land. The base stretches this far south.”
“When did it happen?”
“Just after sunset last night. My swing shift discovered the hole. The electricity was out. They saw nothing and heard nothing.”
“Had he been berserk?”
“No. But we assume that’s how he broke out. One of the Army hunters will be here in an hour to do a full assessment.”
Amon winkles his face in displeasure. “You know which one?”
His mother shakes her head.
“I’m going to seeth,” I say, scraping debris out of my way.
Amon stays with me while his mother returns to her office to “make a few calls.” He scuffs his boot against the rubble that spills away from the hole. “I have something that might help.”
I pause from drawing out the tangle of red yarn from my coat pocket as Amon reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and offers me a tiny Ziploc bag. There are a dozen dried red corrberries inside. “Amon!”
“You mentioned them last night, and I had ’em with some of my other…ah, paraphernalia.”
Smiling, I take the baggie. The berries are so small, like the head of a nail.
Amon nods hesitantly. “You sure it’s a good thought, though? Here?”
“Be ready to tackle me,” is all I reply as I pour three corrberries into my hand.
He says, “I like pinning you down,” but it’s vague, like habitual flirtation more than truth.
I close my eyes and lick the berries off my palm.
They’re light on my tongue, but when I bite into their dry husks, the taste is bitter. Aching.
My skin warms. I feel the thread of magic twine up my spine, and spread out across my shoulder blades like wings, as the gentle poison does its work. Sweet swans, I missed it. I hum a discordant note, and the moment I begin to spin, the frenzy catches me so fast I fall. I feel the sharp pain of rock on my knees, on my hands, and my head cracks back. And then—
black
dizzy
tearing my skin off
bones bent
screaming
letmeouticantbreatheAstridAstridnonononononoplease!
ItisyouitisyouIseeyou.
He crouches in a freezing, damp cave, chest heaving. Blood smears his chest, there are shallow cuts slashed down both forearms, and his hands bleed at the knuckles. Uneven stubble grows across his jaw. His eyes are shadowed with bruises.
A scraping sound when he moves shows me the chains clanking from his wrists.
Soren grasps suddenly at his chest. He bends in two, back shaking as if his spine will tear itself out of his body.
He screams.
Then—
I gulp a breath and open my eyes directly into Amon’s. Fissures of lightning shift and crackle through the blue. His hands pin my wrists, his chest my chest, his leg spreads across mine. Our lips are so close my breath and his mingle in hot, ready bursts.
“Astrid,” he says, and I feel it throughout my body.
“Amon,” I whisper. He rolls off me.
My entire body throbs, especially my elbows and knees and the back of my head. I smell blood. “Amon,” I whisper again. “He’s…in a cave? And going berserk, like he can’t stop himself! What could do that to my…to my… I can’t.” I clasp my hands against my mouth as saliva coats my tongue; I’m going to vomit. My back arches, and I spit on the floor of the cell. I swallow bile.
“We’re going to find him,” Amon says, putting his hand on my back.
I let tears slide to the stone floor and open my eyes. “The cave was smooth, like it was man-made, and he was chained. He’s in some other prison. Or he will be in some other prison. I think soon, though. If he’s not already there, it will be very soon. It was so clear.”
“Do you know what kind of stone it was? If it was smooth, are you certain it was a cave?”
“No, I’m not, but that was my sense. And usually I am right about details in a seething—or I was.” I laugh once, a dull sound. “But this was better, you know. More like a real seething because I saw him instead of just feeling him. Maybe I’ll keep improving.”
Amon makes a disapproving noise. “Let’s clean you up.”
In the station bathroom, I wash my face and Amon brushes dust out of my hair. I grip the sink and lean near to the mirror. Soren told me my eyes are the color of old photographs or soda bottles. There’s a strain about them now, a gentle purple bruising beneath. My right cheek is scoured with red, the raw edges yellowish. There’s blood under my fingernails I have to dig away, and my wrists are bright pink where Amon held them. I can feel an ache in my knees and arms, and all my muscles are tight-wound. Grit stings my palms. There’s a tear in my tights over my knee, and the ruffles of my skirt are crinkled and ripped.
Amon says to my reflection, “My mom probably called Thor, by the way.”
Horrified, I ask, “Will he come here?”
He winces but nods.
“Skit.”
“He’ll know your face?”
“He’ll be unhappy I’m here. Might try to force me back to my orchard.” And rightly so, a part of me whispers. The apples of immortality rely on me. Does the tree flourish, or have leaves begun to drop because Idun left it?
Amon says, “He’s a dick.”
It startles me into laughing wearily as I sink down to sit on the floor. The tile is cold and probably filthy. Amon settles beside me.
“Why do you dislike him so much?” I ask.
Amon knocks his head lightly against the wall. “He’s huge and ragging amazing and does everything well and right. He expects me to be like him, and that is just so ragged annoying. And my mom. She… I want to hate him. His wife is the goddess of commits, for skit sake. I was ten when I realized it. I’m not so bright, they tell me. He came to stay with us all the time when I was a kid. Was so proud of how big I grew, of my sister’s singing. And then I figured out why he never stayed. Why he didn’t teach me to throw that hammer. I was loud about it. You’ve probably heard the story.”
I have—Amon challenged his father to ritual combat—but I remain quiet.
“I called him to holmgang when I was ten, at the summer solstice, in front of Bright Home. Because of my mom’s honor. He was so pissed, but he couldn’t do anything about it, so he accepted and broke my arm with just one swing.” Amon rubs the heel of his hand down the sleeve of his right forearm. “Ever since then, we’ve just danced around each other. I swore I’d never accept any status from him. Mom wanted me to join the militia at least, if not his Army. Instead, I tried to get arrested.”
“Selling bearbane and fake relics?”
“I had a great shtick about some branches off the New World Tree for a year, but not all my relics are fake.”
“Your name gets you out of it.”
“Nobody wants to tell Thor Thunderer they’ve arrested his son. For a while, I tried a different last name, but you know.” He waves his hand vaguely at his eyes. “Impossible to hide.”
I say, “You don’t have to stay to face him, not for me. Go before anybody notices, and I won’t say a word.” I hesitate. “You’ve done more than enough, and I won’t blackmail you any longer. Nobody will hear from me about the bearbane. Though please stop selling it to my Bears.”
After a brief pause, Amon says, “Skit, I’m worried now, too, about Soren. Besides, you might not be a god, but you’re ragging mad. I don’t trust you not to let yourself go full-out frenzy again.”
The strength of my relief almost makes me feel guilty.
Water drips from the faucet, and outside I hear the busy rumble of the militia station going about its business. It smells of antiseptic in here and sour urine. We can’t stay.
“Thank you,” I say.
Amon grumbles.
Together, we get up and head back to his mom’s office.
• • •
It’s impossible to miss the arrival of the god of thunder.
First there’s the rumble of heliplane blades echoing dully through the ceiling, then the cries of the crowd outside that don’t lessen as we hear him stomping up the stairs to this floor. The stairwell door flings open, and there he is, Thor Thunderer.
The god has a crooked nose and rosy cheeks, red-gold beard trimmed short against his jaw and long red braids. He wears his steel corselet over a plain shirt and wool leggings, thick boots spouting fur around his calves, and his bracers are fur-lined as well. There’s a heavy blue cloak chained to the pauldrons over either shoulder. The hammer, Crusher, hangs from a studded belt. It’s exactly how he’s looked every time I’ve seen him.
His presence looms before him like a bubble of pressurized air. “Grid!” he bellows. Any militiamen not already standing are on their feet in an instant. “Where is my son?”
Grid opens her office door and beckons to Thor. I stand, but Amon slouches into one of the armchairs.
The god strides longer than any man or giant, filling the room. The hair on my forearms raises, and along my spine, too, as he enters, turning sideways because his shoulders are too massive for the frame. Grid closes the office door and puts one hand on the god’s arm, while turning the window blinds tightly shut with the other.
Thor holds his gaze on the lieutenant, smile lines flashing around his eyes though most of his expression is hidden under the beard. “Ah, Grid,” he murmurs. Her fingers slide off his mail sleeve reluctantly.
Amon glowers.
I have an urge to climb onto the desk for all I’m being noticed.
But Thor, glancing toward Amon, sees me standing beside the electric kettle and garden of tea boxes on Grid’s side table. The god reacts like a surprised dog; something about his expression seems ears-back, hackles-raised.
“Idun!” He plants his hands on his waist, hooking thumbs into his belt. “What the hoary blizzard are you doing here?”
Lieutenant Grid must have the best card face in Alta California, for she only briefly flicks a glance at her son before waiting coolly for my answer.
I curtsy very slightly. “Good Thunderer, I’m here because of Soren Bearstar, and your son brought me, all to his honor.”
“But the—” His voice lowers comically. “The orchard, Idun.”
“Thunderer.” I say it sharply, refusing to quail. I hold Soren and the danger he’s in like an iron rod against my spine. “Hear me out.”
The god pauses and then nods assent.
The nodding makes me think of the bobbleheads, and I bite my inner lip hard before I continue. “I love Soren Bearstar, Thunderer. Just as Baldur does. And when Baldur sleeps for the winter, Soren is mine to protect.” My voice wavers as I come nearer and nearer to a lie, and I make my words firm, “It is my duty to discover what trouble Soren has got himself in and whether he needs my support or intervention. With your help, I can find him faster, so the orchard will remain perfectly fine.”
Thor steps nearer to me. He’s a solid oak tower, a head-and–a-half taller than me, and smells lightly of sweat and the crisp apple scent of Bright Home and the strange electric tinge of an approaching storm. He watches me. In the center of his pupils is silver and gold lightning.
“Freya knows you’re here?” he asks.
My ears fill with the pressure of his regard. I’m too aware of my bedraggled state. He’s seen me only at my finest, or calm and relaxed in the apple groves. “She knows I left the orchard,” I say, willing him to accept the half-truth so we can move on. I dislike this undermining of what tiny shred of authority I have here with the lieutenant.
“So be it,” the Thunderer says. “We all choose our own ways.” He shakes his head and swings around. “What has Amon to do with all this?”
Amon stands, scowling, shorter than his father by only a hands-span. They’re nothing else alike but for the breadth of their shoulders and cracking blue eyes. Amon says, “Dad.”
And Thor says, “Your mother called me because of you, because you told her you spoke as my son. You’ve never done so before.”
A soft note of longing is clear in his voice. I remember keenly how Baldur used to be so plain about the needs of his heart. If only men and women found it as easy as the gods do.
Amon’s jaw clenches and releases. Then he says, “I needed to if I’m going to help Idun the Young find Soren Bearstar.”
“Why?” Thor shakes his head slowly, and the ends of his braids brush against the rough blue cloak. It looks homespun.
I turn my face away, wishing I could remove myself. It’s not my business.
From beside the door, Lieutenant Grid catches my motion and smiles just a touch sadly.
Amon says, “It’s the right thing to do.”
Thor sighs—not a gesture of impatience or sorrow, but relief and release—and I wonder if Amon is telling the truth.
I interrupt, “Thor, you can help me by giving me access to all your Army and militia reports.”
Thor frowns, and Amon says, “Believe her, dad. Soren could be in danger.”
“The Bearstar is a murder suspect, not a victim,” Grid says firmly. The chevrons at her shoulders flash.
“He is no murderer,” I snap back.
Thor hesitates, looking between us.
I say, “Grant me this, Thunderer, for loyalty and family. It is the only thing I’ve asked of Asgard in all my tenure. It will be the only thing I ask. He is my family, and you would do as much for yours.”
He assents. “I’ll give you my best hunter to coordinate with the Army, with me. And I will bring the story back to Bright Home that Idun’s seethkona has struck out with my son on a quest to find Soren Bearstar before he injures anyone else. No one else must find out Idun is away from her garden.”
I hold his lightning eyes. “I know.”
“And,” Amon says, “tell the country he’s been transferred into the gods’ keeping until the matter is resolved. Not that he’s escaped. It’s even true,” he adds before his mom can protest.
Grid clenches her jaw, but nods. Amon slams out of the room, then, and Thor goes after. The lieutenant levels me with such a gaze I can read it clear: I’d better not rag this up for any of them.
• • •
Sun cuts a harsh shadow against the yellow winter grass a dozen paces from where I sit. This broken prison cell faces north, and so the sun will never quite hit me. Which is unfortunate as my hair is wet from the very fast, very necessary shower I took in the prison’s empty locker room. It was difficult putting my filthy clothes back on. Amon is with his parents still, but Grid sent her sergeant to bring me back here so that I could wait, could think, could maybe even dream. I promised Amon I would not seeth.
The sparse case file fans open before me. Pictures of Soren and of this man Evan Bell who he supposedly murdered. Notes from the scene of the crime. Pictures of the house and driveway.
Bell was a guest lecturer on etin physiology at a local community college, just arrived this term from a university out east. No wife or children, no local family, and so far no one had come forward to claim his belongings, though there’d been an outpouring of support from the college. His neighbors to the south had been having a Yule party, hence the plentiful witnesses who claimed Soren had walked up to Bell’s car and ripped the driver’s door free. The two men had fought until Soren flung Bell away, breaking his neck. Then, apparently Soren had just knelt to wait for the authorities. So many corroborated those facts, it’s difficult not to believe them basically accurate. It might have been an accident, but Soren didn’t deny that he killed Bell.
He was no man, is the only thing Soren had said when taken into custody except, I’m not supposed to be here tonight. He asked for a tyr, and one was promised after the Yule holiday, by which time he’d broken out. No mention of his going berserk except a few witness statements on the night of the murder itself. It hadn’t happened yet, then. But any time now, he might be flung into that frenzy.
I read his recorded words again and again.
I stare at the booking picture of him—his deep, warm eyes; his severe black hair, so stark against the militia backdrop. There’s a note in the file that Soren continued to cooperate. They said he meditated, practiced his sword forms, did hundreds of push-ups.
I clench my hands, then drag my fingers through my damp curls. I want to set out the moment the Thunderer’s hunter arrives. But set out where? I’ve no idea where to begin, despite the vision of the cave. Maybe I can identify the type of stone, but I also do not know exactly when the vision will take place. Right now or days from now. I have to seeth again, keep pushing myself to gather more information.
A boot scuffs purposefully at the rough edge of the cell. My head snaps up.
A slender young Asgardian man stands as straight as the gold-stitched rank insignia on his blue Army coat. His shaved head is covered in dark tattoos, his face sharp and eyes hooded. A gun holstered under his arm presses wrinkles into the uniform, and he also wears a baldric, with double-bladed battle-axes showing like wings over both shoulders. The bald head, hawkish face, and implied wings make me think of a vulture. The way he scans me with those light eyes, as if waiting for me to die or make some mistake, doesn’t help me like him.
To my surprise, he kneels. “Lady Idun,” he says in a low voice thick with southerly accent. “My lord said you would be waiting here.”
I scramble to my feet, brushing concrete dust from my skirt. “You must be the Thunderer’s hunter. Please stand, and you needn’t call me lady.”
He springs up, closer to me than I expected. He’s tall, and now studies me, gaze flicking from my disastrous hair, down my coat, to the rips and tears in my entire outfit. The scatter of official reports spread behind me like a rainbow. Light pours through the broken cell wall, illuminating the fierce tattoo covering his scalp: giant black ram horns that seem to grow from his temples and spiral inward behind his ears. Iron nails pierce both ears, and this near, I see the paleness of his eyes is the clear gray of winter clouds.
“Sune Rask,” he says, bowing sharply, smoothly avoiding bashing his forehead into mine.
“Sune.” I take a step back and see him note it, as he notes everything. He turns in a slow circle, taking in the cell, then faces me again.
“This was no breakout, the militia is correct. The destruction came from the outside.” He crouches. “See the pattern of detritus? It’s been jostled and ruined by the militia, but originally it blew inward, not outward into the yard.” The sharp double-blades of his axes catch the sun as he moves. I squint against the glare.
I hug myself. “Somebody broke him out.”
Sune slowly stretches to his feet, trailing gentle fingers along the edge of the hole in the wall. “Something did.” He steps outside into the training ground, sniffing, using the toe of his army boots to nudge aside a few chunks of cinderblock and twisted steel. He avoids the small stain of my bile, but glances briefly at me.
“There’re no obvious sign of explosives, but I’ll ask the lieutenant to have her dogs double-check. This edge is too smooth though, as if something melted it. I don’t know many explosives that hot that don’t leave traces.”
“You can tell that so quickly?”
“That is all fairly obvious. Not enough to impress you,” he says dryly.
“Maybe it was something other than explosives?”
“Like sheer berserker strength? I doubt it. Berserkers don’t melt stone. You’d need etin-folk for that.”
“Giants? Giants are extinct.”
“They say that about many things, don’t they?” he mutters.
Despite being a girl transformed into a piece of an intricate magic spell thousands of years old, it is rough for me to imagine giants or elves or goblins coming here to break Soren free. Even if they still existed outside of stories, what would they want with him?
Sune turns fast to me. He tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “Was it you?”
“Me?”
“You’re anxious and hardly a goddess.”
Shock drives me back another step. He was so fast to discover it and bolder to say it.
He presses. “Are you playing some game with my god, purporting to be the Lady of Apples? A game with this Soren Bearstar?” His low accent drips off Soren’s name, infuriating me.
“Not a goddess?” I smile a scornful smile I remember from my days at school. “If you say that again, I’ll call a holmgang down upon you that you cannot hope to win.”
That flick of speculation fills his face again as he eyes me up and down. “I think I could defeat you in three moves.”
“Not if I stand in her place,” Amon rumbles from the inside of the prison.
Surprise and uncertainty sprawl across Sune’s expressive eyes before he whirls around. “Amon.”
The godling hulks in the doorframe, a torpid smile strung on his mouth. “You know clear and well you can’t beat me, Sune Rask.”
“I can fight my own battles, Amon,” I snap.
“Oh, but Sune likes it when I beat his face into the ground.”
Sune’s face stretches with what I can only read as a flash of hurt. He recovers by sneering, “You’re so considerate of my needs, Thorson, as always.”
The two young men stare at each other. Amon’s eyes crack with lightning, and the muscles in Sune’s jaw work. I can trace them across his skull, making the lines of his tattoo wiggle. I’m desperate to know what it is that’s been between them.
Finally, Sune nods. “I will not say it again, lady.”
Guilt quickens in my stomach. “You were right,” I say. He jerks his head up, and I clarify. “I am anxious. I care about Soren Bearstar a great deal, and he is my priority. He did not murder Evan Bell, he did not plot an escape, and he never hurts people. Do you understand?”
Sune waits—not hesitating, but weighing my words. “Yes, Idun, I understand. I will find him, and that does not require me to believe in anything other than that he exists to be found. Do you understand?”
“I do. Let’s get started.” I hold out my hand to the Thunderer’s hunter, and he bows over it.