When the shimmering haze of the portal that had sent him from Asgard to Earth cleared, Loki discovered that he had been dropped in the middle of nowhere. Midgard was already fairly middle-of-nowhere as far as the Nine Realms went, and in this particular spot, there was also no discernable speck of civilization. And it was raining. He hadn’t even taken his first real step on Midgard and he was already up to his ankles in mud.

The countryside around him was not altogether unpleasant, but it was just that—countryside. Rolling hills in riotous green where small white dots of sheep grazed, soggy and bleating in annoyance. Loki wished he could join them in their protestations. He took a step, prying his foot from the sucking mud. He nearly left a boot behind, and was shocked when his foot landed not in another puddle of squelching mud but on something hard. He looked down. He had been deposited on some sort of track, two parallel iron bars driven into the ground connected by perpendicular wooden boards.

An earsplitting whistle startled him so badly he nearly tipped over. He looked up. Something was barreling at him along the track, spitting black smoke into the sky. The rain spat and fizzed off its metal siding. It let out another shriek, clearly having no intention of slowing down, and Loki leaped out of the way, conjuring his knife on instinct.

It was a train—he only realized it as it chugged past him, pistons pushing the wheels along the track. From his perch in the engine, the driver shouted something that Loki was certain was an obscenity. He struggled to his feet, tucking his knife back into his sleeve. He had forgotten just how primitive Midgardians were, how fantastically behind their technology was compared to the Asgardians’. Steam trains were archaic. What backward hole had his father dropped him into?

Loki watched the train pass, the first few cars lined with windows behind which Loki could make out the dim, crouched shapes of humans. The back half of the train was black windowless cars. On the sides an emblem had been painted—a snake eating its own tail surrounding a skull with crossed bones beneath it. There were words as well, but the train was moving faster than the Allspeak could translate them.

He looked down at himself, mud now splattered up to his knees and his clothes sticking to him from the hot rain. He sighed, then conjured a small spell to shield himself from the rain. Frigga had warned him that Midgard would drain his strength faster than Asgard, and without magic thick and native like it was on his home realm, his power would be slower to replenish. Small spells would take more energy, and in excess, would eventually bleed him dry. Magic didn’t live in the air here like it did in Asgard—he would have to rely on the built-up reserves of strength his mother had taught him to carry like canteens of water on a desert expedition.

But surely his own comfort constituted some kind of emergency.

His father had given him the name of the meeting site where the SHARP Society would be waiting for him—the Norse Wing of the British Museum in London. Like that meant anything. Whatever it was, he was certain it wasn’t in the middle of this emerald landscape and driving rain. He followed the train tracks up the hill, and when he crested it, he could see where the sky darkened ahead, black smoke from stacks turning the sky smudged and thick. Even the rain seemed to flinch away from it.

London, he thought, and began to follow the tracks toward it.

After a lifetime on Asgard, he had known Midgard would disappoint him. But did it truly have to be so dramatic about it? The shift—from the crystalline skies over his father’s golden palace, streets so clean they sparkled, and white water dripping from the fountains in every square, to the streets of London, where the skies were gray in a way that made it hard to tell if it was twilight or hazy and towers spit hideous smoke into the sky—was disorienting. The air felt chewy, the streets swampy, and all the people seemed as gray as the sky. Figures passed along the street, hunched inside ratty clothes, shouting and screaming at each other over the clanking of great machinery out of sight. On the corners, tiny boys in ragged clothes thrust newspapers into the air, shouting headlines in chorus with the screams from brothels and taverns, though it couldn’t have been more than midday. People tossed greasy hair from their faces, their skin rugged and brown as old boot leather, while they led half-starved-looking horses, their flanks vibrating with flies, the contents of their stomachs emptied onto the street, then left to lie where it landed.

He hoped it was just mud on his boots.

But London was not entirely unpleasant, if one subtracted the filth. It felt like a battlefield, somewhere raucous and dizzying, where it took an overabundance of wits just to stay on your feet. Asgard was as quiet as a funeral procession in comparison. Perhaps this was how Thor felt when he stared down an enemy across a battlefield and primed for a fight. This chaotic energy, this heat emanating off the city, this was Loki’s kind of fight.

If Asgard failed him, perhaps this could be his kingdom. The city seemed in desperate need of some leadership. They may even build a statue of him.

It took a few moments of observation before he changed his clothes from the green-and-black tunic he always wore on Asgard to mimic what he saw the Midgardian men wearing: a dark suit and a high-winged collar cinched with a necktie. He held out a hand, conjured a tall, dark hat, and set it upon his head. A glamoured outfit wasn’t a sustainable spell, but it would do until he could find the SHARP Society and some actual clothes. Though he wasn’t planning on staying long enough to truly need to replace them.

He walked a block, decided the hat was far too tall, and pushed it down into a soft wool cap.

It only took questioning a newsboy to get the location of the British Museum—a newsboy who demanded a coin for his trouble. Loki gave him a rock he enchanted to appear as a shilling, and the boy was pleased enough by this that he offered to take him there.

The British Museum was puny compared to the libraries and galleries Loki had grown up visiting in the capital, but with the black city surrounding it, he guessed it was meant to be impressive. The stone front was lined with curl-topped columns and had a peaked roof, the stone still sparkling beneath the layer of grime from the factory smoke. Inside, more stone arches were stacked atop each other to form the entry hall, and voices echoed off the high ceiling, shouts of laughter and greeting occasionally breaking free from the tumult. Loki followed the map he had taken from the entrance, past two taxidermic animals with long necks at the top of the stairs, through the hallway with low glass cases where gold tombs were laid out in a row as neat as piano keys.

Loki didn’t know whom he was looking for, or how he was meant to find the SHARP Society, but he knew as soon as he reached the Norse Wing. It was strange, to be surrounded by so many things that looked like items from his home, but not quite. Perhaps if Asgard had rolled around in the mud, cracked off a few edges, and then decayed for several thousand years it would look something like these relics. The shapes were familiar. The engraved bronze, lines interweaving and twining like the roots of Yggdrasil, the round domes of dragon heads carved on ax pommels, ornate shields and goblets that, had they been shined up and decorated with a few jewels, he could imagine the lesser nobles of his father’s court drinking from over a feast table. The cases were crowded, and a second tier of galleries closed off to the public held ancient-looking books bound in heavy, creased leather. Tables topped with glass ran down the center of the hall, with pendants, cutlery, and small fragments of stone lined up on cushions inside each.

It was absolutely mad, Loki thought as he examined what looked like two shapeless lumps of rock that a small plaque identified as a pair of dice, the things the humans saved as vestiges of their ancestors and deemed worthy of putting on display. Who wanted to be remembered by their fork or their comb? That told you nothing about the way people were.

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it?”

Loki turned. A young man was standing behind him, his ruddy-brown hair curling out in unruly tendrils from under a flat cap, and his pale skin covered in so many freckles it looked like he had been splattered with mud. Perhaps he had been—Loki didn’t trust this filthy city. Loki was no expert in judging the age of Midgardians, but the man must have been young, though he was leaning on a cane, his weight carefully balanced on one leg.

Loki tucked his hands into his pockets, then turned back to the case, adopting what he thought was an unmistakable leave me alone posture. “It’s fine.”

“Fine?” The young man was either relentless or oblivious to social cues, for he limped up to the case beside Loki and prodded the glass, leaving behind a smudged fingerprint. “Do you even know what it is that you’re looking at?”

“Cutlery,” Loki replied.

The man frowned at the fingerprint, then pulled his sleeve up over his hand and tried to wipe it away, only succeeding in lengthening the smudge. “Cutlery from a civilization of people who lived thousands of years ago.”

“Are you some sort of docent?” Loki asked. “Because I’m not looking for a tour.”

“No, I’m just deeply offended when I see people not appreciating the artifacts. Look at those.” He turned to the case behind them. Inside the case, two skeletons were laid out and arranged like they were still lying in the earth. The bones looked brittle and shaggy, but someone had folded the fingers of each over the pommel of their swords, the blades gone black with age. One of the skulls was caved-in on one side, the other wearing a helmet with a protective stave carved upon the front.

The boy was watching Loki’s face, like he was waiting for a reaction. Loki purposely kept his features as blank as possible, just to annoy him. “They’re warriors,” the boy finally prompted.

“No, those are definitely skeletons.”

“In life they were warriors.”

“Does that matter?” Loki asked. “Death makes every man the same.”

“Well, they weren’t both men, for a start,” the man interrupted. “That one’s a woman. The swords were exchanged as marriage rites. Better than rings, I think. More practical.”

“If you’re a warrior.”

“Or if you don’t care for jewelry.” The man offered a hand. His nails had dirty crescents beneath them, and his skin was dry and chapped. “I’m Theo, by the way. Theo Bell.”

Loki gave his hand a disdainful pat, then turned away. “I’m not interested.”

“Aren’t you impressed by all this?” Theo asked.

“Am I supposed to be?” Loki replied.

“Well yes, since this is one of the most interesting wings in one of the most interesting places in London.”

Loki laughed. “They’re not very impressive for the finest treasures of your realm.”

“Realm?” Theo repeated.

“Your...world.”

“It’s your world too.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to be impressed by what someone dug up in their back garden and stuck a plaque to.” He nodded to the case, where a pair of objects sat that a sign said were called “pans,” though they looked more like lumps of fused metal, roughly hewn and chewed around the edges by rust.

“Do you know the stories?” Theo asked as Loki turned away. “The gods and the myths. And the ships and swords and things. Odin and Thor and Loki.”

Loki stopped and glanced backward over his shoulder. Theo must be trying to give him some sort of sign, and Loki was desperately trying to ignore it. If this was the representative for the SHARP Society, he was turning around and heading straight back to Asgard. He’d rather scrub the palace floors with his fingernails while his father and Thor searched for the Stones than deal with humans.

Theo smiled at him. His ears were too big for his face, and they stuck out like leaves. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

Loki sighed, resigning himself to the fact that this was indeed his contact. “Well, aren’t you sharp?”

Theo’s grin broadened. “Can I show you something else?”

“You might as well.”

“Try not to sound too resigned to the fact.”

Loki followed Theo across the gallery, toward a closed door that Theo unlatched using a key from his pocket with a quick glance around the room before ushering Loki through. He thought it would lead to the next exhibition, but instead it seemed to be a dark storage area with no windows and nothing but long wooden crates that looked eerily like caskets, their insides spilling over with soft white straw to protect whatever had been carried inside. They looked big enough to transport the married skeletons and their swords.

The door snapped shut behind him, and Loki turned to face Theo, arms crossed. “What am I supposed to see in this closet? More skeletons? Don’t you humans have a saying about that?” Theo didn’t reply. He had leaned his cane against the door and was fiddling with a small silver case. “What’s that?”

“Do you take snuff?” Theo asked, flipping the latch.

“No.”

“Probably good.” He shrugged. “I haven’t got any.”

Loki frowned. “What?”

Before Loki could react, Theo flipped the case open and blew a coarse black powder, like charcoal from a dying fire crushed underfoot, into Loki’s face. Loki inhaled before he could stop himself, and felt the burn as the powder coated his throat. He coughed, then coughed again harder, the dark haze hanging in the air from the powder somehow turning thicker. His vision flickered. “What was that?” he managed to choke out between coughs.

Theo had already tucked the silver case back into his pocket and was reaching for a hook beside the door, stripping off his own jacket to replace it with another that looked like part of a uniform. This couldn’t be the group that was meant to welcome him as an ambassador of a foreign land—this was a trap.

Loki fumbled for his knives, but his magic was becoming harder to reach. A blade slid into his hand with painful slowness. At the sound, Theo looked up from his buttons and frowned. “For God’s sake.” He put the tip of his cane to Loki’s chest and, before Loki could swipe it away with his blade, pushed. It was not a hard push. Certainly not hard enough to fell an Asgardian. But Loki’s legs gave out with very little persuading, and he tipped backward, landing hard in the open crate behind him. A cloud of straw fluttered up around him, settling on the fabric of his suit. The knife slipped from his hand and skittered across the floor.

Theo snatched it up and tucked it into his boot, the motion too smooth for it to have been his first time handling a weapon. He shoved his cane beneath the handle of the door, then limped to the box. Loki fought to sit up, though his limbs all felt gelatinous and like they were taking too long to understand what his brain was asking of them.

Theo watched him struggle for a moment, like he was debating what to do next, then fumbled in his pocket for the case again. He tossed the remaining contents into Loki’s face.

Loki’s muscles went slack, and he fell back into the box. He blinked slowly, and when he opened his eyes again, there was a slam overhead and everything went dark. Was he unconscious at last, whatever that powder had been finally consuming him? But then he heard a hammering, and the darkness was interrupted by a small line of light, a crack between panels as the lid was nailed into place above him.

He couldn’t get a spell gathered, nor could he make his knife appear again in his hand, though he would have loved dearly to stab it upward through the lid of this box and try to guess where it had landed by the sound Theo made. He was still not entirely conscious when he heard voices, and then the box was tipped—tipped the wrong direction, so that his head was pointing downward and he slid the length of it, landing hard. The strength of the blow was almost enough to knock him back to sense.

Outside the box, he heard Theo yelp. “Oh, no, that’s the wrong way up!”

“He’ll be fine.” The box thumped again and Loki felt his teeth rattle together. Wake up, he tried to command himself. Move! Think! Fight!

But all he could do was lie there, a knot at the bottom of what may be his own coffin, as he was carried forward to who knew where.