The shieldmaiden had been coping mostly by closing herself off. When she wasn’t translating Indriði’s papers, she was on the terrace two floors below, staring out into the city. Astrid had left Satara without a clue, and she seemed to be floating, knowing what she needed to do but not how to start. Why Astrid had neglected to teach her, Edie could only speculate.
And though she mostly felt sad for Satara’s loss, she also found herself feeling angry. Angry that Astrid had been so careless, that she had left Edie and Cal and the Reach flat, too. Edie barely knew how to do her taxes—how was she supposed to run an entire faction and stop a war at the same time?
A strong breeze blew some mist from Sissel’s hose into Edie’s face, bringing her back to reality. She looked up in time to see Satara walking through the glass-paneled sunroom, holding a stack of notes. Her hair was still silk-wrapped, and she wore a T-shirt and leggings as pajamas. Either she hadn’t slept at all last night or she had been working on translating Indriði’s papers since first thing this morning. The bags under her eyes suggested the former.
Edie stood to go meet her at the glass door of the sunroom. The shieldmaiden silently motioned for her to follow.
Downstairs, Cal was already waiting for them in the living area, sitting uncomfortably on the couch and focusing a little too hard on his smartphone screen. When the two women approached, he stood. “Any good news?”
“I finished translating the papers,” Satara said with a sigh. She set the original copies and her typed notes down on the coffee table. “I’m afraid that’s the end of the good news.”
Cal picked up the stack and scanned the first page. “What was the hold up?”
Edie cut him a look, and he backpedaled hard.
“Uh … I mean, not that it was a problem, considering what’s been— I’m just curious.” He pulled a face and shrugged at Edie.
“I can speak Icelandic fine, but they aren’t Icelandic.” Satara sat heavily on the shorter part of the sectional, pulling one knee up to her chest. “It’s a similar language called Faroese. I could guess some of it, but a lot of it, I had to look up.”
“Okay.” He scanned the page again before setting it down anxiously. “Give me the short version?”
Satara sighed, squeezing her tired eyes shut for a moment. “It speaks of something happening in New York City, some sort of gathering of people, like a faction or an army. Indriði’s contact didn’t give specifics—they speak mostly in obscure references—but I know that Daschla is leading them, on behalf of the Gloaming.”
Cal grunted in recognition.
“Just like Zaedicus said she was,” Edie mumbled.
“Besides that, there were a couple of things they mentioned that I think we should look into, for the Reach’s sake.” Satara slid the papers closer to herself and flipped through them. “There is another hellerune in New York.”
“No shit?” Cal raised his brows.
“Their plan is to recruit him, but he’s been laying low for years, and they can’t seem to find him. They don’t even know his name or whose son he is.” Satara pointed. “Then, here, Indriði’s contact mentions there is a ‘Reach problem.’”
Edie snapped her head up to look at Satara. “I thought Astrid said she was all that was left of the Reach.”
“Maybe she thought she was. Or maybe she was keeping what she knew close to the vest.”
Edie sighed. Yeah. Apparently, Astrid really had a habit of that.
“But it would make sense that there are remnants of the Reach there. The hellerune would have to have a network of people to hide him away.”
“And it makes sense there’d be pockets,” Edie added, scanning the page. “I mean, if it was really as big as Astrid said it was, all those years ago, there’d have to be more people than just us.”
Cal took out a cigarette and gnawed on the filter. “That’s probably where Indriði fucked off to, then.”
“I think we should follow her.” Satara stood and went to the window. “She has Astrid’s shield and spear, she knows where the Wounded is, and she’s planning something awful in that city. We have to go stop it.”
“But what about here?” Edie gestured around. “We can’t abandon Anster. The New Gloaming is still fucking everything up.”
Cal snorted. “Nothing short of the National Guard is gonna be able to stop those cock-suckers from fucking everything up.”
“We’ll set up a network,” Satara said. “Matilda has already been talking about it. She knows who she can bring over to our side from the Gloaming. She has the money to start building the Reach here as soon as we give her the go-ahead. I think the hellerune situation is worth looking into.”
Edie huffed unsurely, scrubbing both hands across her face. When she looked back up, Satara had turned to her. Her eyes were intense.
“Edie, I won’t hold you to your promise, but I’m still going, with or without you.”
There was a long pause. Satara was right—she had promised. And after everything the shieldmaiden had done for her, it was only fair. “All right, I’ll come.”
“I’m always up for a road trip,” Cal added, standing. “Let’s not get Watchers in New York, of all places—that place is enough of a batshit garbage fire.”
Edie snorted. “It’s not your sweet Vegas, anyway.”
“Exactly.”
The doorbell rang, and Edie got up to answer it, if only to distract herself from the conversation. She tried to shake off her nerves. Things were changing so quickly. What had seemed like a wild ride at first had turned into her every waking moment. Magic, mythical beings, and avoiding grisly deaths at the hands of her enemies were now part of her life. It was a weird thing to have to get used to, but she found that she worried less and less about herself and more about the world she’d leave behind if she died.
When she opened the door, there he was.
Marius was in his armor as always, but he carried a huge leather bag under one arm; and, notably, his hair was out of its usual stiff style, curling around his ears and forehead like a cherub’s. When he looked up, his golden gaze was earnest. He looked vulnerable and unsure, like there was a chance she might slam the door in his face.
They stared at each other for a moment before he said softy, “Hi. Can I come in?”
Edie stepped aside, then remembered to say, “Uh, sure. Come in.”
When he entered, he glanced around the room, his anxious gaze landing on the others. “Can we speak privately for a moment?” he mumbled to Edie.
She didn’t even have to say anything. Cal and Satara were already starting to leave, though Satara lingered for a moment, eyeing the vivid warily before stepping onto the terrace and closing the door.
“Uh … sit down, I guess.” Edie gestured to one of the couches, and Marius eased onto it, setting his bag down on the floor beside him.
She hesitated before sitting beside him. Somehow—maybe it was all the radiant magic she’d been hit with recently—she had become more aware of the strange magical aura he possessed. All her hairs stood up on the arm closest to him. “Did you get my note?”
He bowed his head, looking at the floor. “I did.”
She gnawed on her bottom lip, squeezing her hands between her knees. “So, how are … things?”
“Not good.”
“Did you get in trouble?” she asked.
The vivid took a deep breath. “The Divine Assembly is going to vote on my fate. They’re a select number of Radiants from around the globe who come together to make decisions like this.”
“You don’t even get to go and plead your case?”
“No.” He sighed sharply. “They wouldn’t listen anyway. I already know what my sentence will be.”
Edie remained quiet. There was no doubt that whatever it was, it was bad.
“Now that I know about their lies and the necromancy in the crypt, they’ll all want me gone before I can ruin their image. Even the good, merciful Radiants will likely vote against me to ke
ep the Aurora’s unity.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, wanting to touch his arm but refraining.
A lull fell between them. Marius searched the floor between his feet like he might find a solution to his dilemma there. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft it was almost a whisper. “I don’t want to leave my people behind … but they’re not my people anymore. They aren’t who I thought they were, and I….” He looked up, meeting her eyes. “I’m not who I thought I was, either.”
Edie held his gaze. “And your dad?”
Marius simply shook his head and looked away again.
Gone, then. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to lose your dad—and to find out that he had been keeping secrets from you.” She shifted and sighed. “I guess my dad didn’t betray me, though.”
Marius shook his head like he was trying to scramble jumbled thoughts back into order. “I’ve been thinking about the mirror, and what he said. He kept saying he wasn’t a traitor, that he was doing it all for a good reason. I … I think I believe him.”
“But why? He confessed to working for the Gloaming.”
He shook his head again, harder. “No. In our culture, breaking a vow is comparable to murder. He would never break the oaths he made unless there was a good reason. Unless someone above him commanded him to.”
He looked ahead, out the window. He was pale, his expression haunted. Edie knew the look; she’d caught it on a lot of her friends’ faces recently. Marius was seeing something she could not see, in a place she could not go.
“What if the traitor the mirror warned of wasn’t my father?” He slowly turned his head to look at her. “What if it was me?”
Edie frowned. “I’m sure that’s not true. You were doing what was right. The Gloaming hurts people.” In truth, she didn’t know the answer, but she could see that this question would torture him.
“And now I’m leaving the Aurora,” he continued. “Running away from my punishment. I made a vow, too, Edie.”
Finally, she dislodged her hands from between her knees and laid one on his arm, turning her body toward him. “Marius, you said that they weren’t the people you thought they were. You aren’t obligated to stay and take shit from people you don’t believe in or trust anymore ’cause you were born into this … duty.”
Marius rubbed his forehead, loosing a puff of air. “Trust or duty or whatever, if I leave, I’ll be breaking an oath. People go to Náströnd for that.”
Ah, beautiful Náströnd. Murderous monsters, rivers of snake venom, and a dragon that gnaws on your bones. It didn’t sound like a nice place, but Edie wasn’t convinced it was real. And here, now, Marius was killing himself over a decision that should have been simple: leaving the Aurora and being happy, or execution.
She rolled the dilemma around in her head for a moment. “But you said that sometimes there are good reasons to break an oath. Tyr broke an oath, remember? You told me so once. He gave Fenrir his word that the gods wouldn’t bind him, and he lied.”
“He’s the god of law and justice,” Marius replied miserably. “He gets to decide where the law stands.”
“And he decided that sometimes rules have to be broken for the greater good.”
Marius was silent for a while, and Edie let him ruminate on her words. She couldn’t make him believe something he didn’t want to believe; all she could do was offer another perspective.
Eventually, though, curiosity got the best of her. She pointed to the bag at his feet. “What’s in there?”
“My belongings,” he mumbled, nudging it with his foot. “Just a few things I could use besides my armor.”
Edie’s heart sank. Good god, there wasn’t much, was there? It was a big bag, but not that big. Her own bedroom back at the apartment could probably fill a dozen boxes. He had so little to call his own.
That reminded her: “Hold on, I have something for you. Stay there.” She jumped up from the couch and ran up the stairs to the room she was sharing with Mercy. Pulling open the drawer of her bedside table, she grabbed a cloth-wrapped object, then headed back downstairs.
“What is this?” Marius asked as she approached and laid it in his hands.
“Open it.”
He eyed her warily for a moment before unwrapping the cloth. As the silver dagger was revealed, it hummed softly, as though it was greeting Marius. He blinked and looked up at Edie. “You … stole … Radiant Hærfríðr the Puretongue’s ancient silver dagger of truth.”
She spread her hands. “Surprise!”
He shook his head, looking between her and the knife. “You are full of surprises, Edie Holloway.”
“Good.” Edie smiled, then sat next to him again. “Oh. There’s this thing I keep wanting to ask about and then forgetting with all the crap going on. Since you owe me”—she smirked—“maybe you can help?”
“I suppose,” he said dubiously.
She took a deep breath and tugged up the left sleeve of her shirt. Tattooed on her left wrist in stark black was a new rune, one that looked a bit like the letter M. It seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and this had appeared. Do you know what it means?”
Marius set the dagger aside and seemed to hesitate before taking her wrist in one hand, investigating the rune. “This is ehwaz, the horse.”
She thought she remembered that from Indriði’s runecasting. “What does it mean?”
“Ah … it’s been a while since I needed to know that.” He managed a small smile. “But if I remember right, in some cases, I think it means betrayal.”
“And in others?” she pressed. “Give me some good news.”
Marius chuckled a little. “It also means moving forward, development. Teamwork, people you can believe in. Trust.”
“That’s not so bad.” She smiled. “And now we’re even.”
He nodded, releasing her wrist with a sigh. “Thanks for the dagger, but I’m not sure how much help it will be to me. I have nowhere to go. The Aurora doesn’t forgive and forget. I’ll spend the rest of my life running from them.”
Edie looked away, touching the papers Satara had left on the coffee table. “Well … there’s some stuff we need to take care of in New York, me and Satara and Cal. You could come, too.”
“You want me to work with the Reach?” he asked, blinking.
“Why not? We make a pretty good team.” She peered up at him. “Will you go with us?”
Marius tilted his head, regarding her thoughtfully for a moment. His eyes probed her face, and she kept her expression open, honest and unguarded. He might have been told she was an abomination, but she could tell he didn’t believe it, especially not now.
Earlier, she had wondered when he’d become so decent, but the truth was, he always had been. Even when they had been on opposite sides, he’d healed her friends, helped them through trials. Breaking laws to help vulnerable people—it didn’t get much more decent than that.
Finally, he answered her: “If you’ll have me, I’ll follow you.”
Chapter Forty-One
The church was dark as the priest stepped out of the sacristy and headed down the nave. As he walked, he adjusted the buttons on his clerical shirt—all in the right rows for once. His head was such a mess these days, it was a wonder he even remembered to dress himself, let alone how to lead mass. And things were only getting worse.
He stopped in the center of the nave and half-turned to look back. Behind the sanctuary’s altar, an enormous wooden crucifix cast its shadow over him.
If only that guy could help him now.
The narthex smelled of sunlight and stuffy incense, but it was a familiar smell, one he’d come to love to hate. A well-lit staircase to the immediate right of the double doors led him down to the basement—a community area, though no one was there now. Exactly how he needed it.
A small room with tiled floors had become his emergency ritual room. There was probably something deeply screwed up about that, but h
e didn’t have the time or energy to have a crisis with himself over it. It wasn’t like Christ was going to come down from that cross and stop him.
He locked the door behind him and drew the curtains. The specially-mixed bottle of ink he had hidden away was right where he had left it, the substance inside thicker than it looked like it could possibly be. It only took a few dips of his finger to draw an entire circle of runes around himself.
After, he took a step out of the circle and drew three interlocking triangles in its center—a symbol of his patron god, but one he didn’t particularly like drawing anymore. With what had been happening in the city lately, the sight of it left a bad taste in his mouth … though he supposed one could say the same thing about the crucifix.
“All right,” he mumbled to himself, screwing the cap back on the ink bottle. “Let’s get a move on.”
Slowly, the already-dark room became darker. The shadows deepened. Eventually, little points of light appeared, the darkness twinkling like the night sky. A cool breeze enveloped him as if he really were outside.
At length, one particular point of light shifted. The figure in front of him could only be distinguished from the darkness by the way that single light moved, and the fact that it occasionally passed in front of the other lights and blocked them out. The shuffle of pacing feet accompanied the figure’s appearance, and with it, clicking—a spear being used as a walking stick.
“Good of you to finally show up,” said the figure. “I was beginning to think you had forgotten me.”
The priest rolled his eyes. “How could I forget when you have a flock of crows practically attacking my church windows?” Then, in a more playful tone, “You know, for a guy called the Hawk, you need a lot of help keeping track of your stuff.”
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