Loki

by Mackenzi Lee

  The wind was worse here, and the beams were slick underfoot. From this vantage point, he counted eight cars ahead of him, plus the engine billowing thick black smoke. The first three would be for passengers—one for Anglicans, one for nonconformists, and one for those who were too poor to be either. Then two for the Anglican first-class dead, three more for the nonconformists, then the rest for the poor behind him.

  Loki started forward, careful step by careful step, heel to toe as he tried to stay on the center beam of the roof, where it was the flattest and easiest to balance. He missed his Asgardian boots, with their thick treads that would have gripped this metal like the bottoms were coated with glue. He leaped to the next car, repeated his careful wire walk, then leaped again. His feet faltered when he landed, and he almost fell, but managed to fall forward instead of back, his knees connecting painfully with the boards. Ahead of him, there was a latched panel in the roof, and he crawled forward, groping for the handle. It was stiff with disuse, and his hands burned against the metal as he wrenched it open, then dropped down into the carriage, landing in a crouch.

  The car was empty—he had feared there would be policemen, but there was no one, just caskets in their slings bobbing gently with the movement of the train. They rattled against each other, their tops scraping grooves into their neighbors. The air smelled like new straw and fresh-cut cedar. Clearly these coffins were more expensive than the one he had ridden in.

  He dropped to his knees and slid his knife from his sleeve, glancing down at the faint reminder of the rune on his palm before he began to carve its likeness in the floor of the train. The wood was newly varnished, and it splintered in crystal chunks beneath the blade. He was only two strokes in when he heard the door slide open and felt the rush of wind. He raised his head.

  Amora was standing in the doorway, her skirt swirling around her knees like a cyclone until she shoved the door shut. Loki stood, tucking his knife back into his sleeve.

  “You made it,” she said, and she sounded relieved.

  “Did you doubt me?”

  “Never.” She held out a hand. “Give me the Stones. I’m going to faint without some sustenance. You have no idea how much self-control it took not to bleed the conductor dry.”

  Loki didn’t move. “You didn’t take Mrs. S.”

  Amora’s smile didn’t falter. “What?”

  “You killed Mrs. Sharp, but you left her soul,” he said. “That would have restored you.”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it? Let me have my Stones.”

  “Your Stones?” he repeated. “I thought this was a shared spell.”

  Her still-extended hand closed into a fist. “Give me the Stones, Loki,” she said.

  “Here’s the thing.” Loki stood, tucking both hands behind his back. “No.”

  Amora laughed, but it was a single, startled burst. In the dusty light, her face had gone pale. “What are you talking about?”

  “No, don’t waste your theatre on this,” Loki said, holding up a hand. He couldn’t resist shaking his head as well, the picture of a disappointed parent. Odin had given him so much material to draw from. “It won’t do you any good. I worked it out a while ago.”

  Amora had gone eerily still, like a rabbit at the sound of a twig snapping under a hunter’s boot. “Worked what out?”

  “That you were going to betray me.”

  She didn’t laugh this time. She hardly blinked. For a moment, he doubted himself, doubted the web he was certain he’d been unraveling. “You think I’d betray you?” she said, her tone flat.

  “Oh, I’m almost certain that’s what’s about to happen,” he replied. “Though it took me longer to catch on to it than I care to admit. Love truly does make you blind, but fortunately for me I’m not much for sentiment. It’s so very”—he flicked his fingers in disdain, like he was brushing a bug from the air—“human.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, and he had to admit, it was admirable how committed she was to this feigned ignorance. “Why would I betray you?”

  “I wondered that too, at first. But then I started to think, why does Amora need me for any of this? What purpose do I serve here? I’ll be helpful in raising an army of the dead, but the only real reason you would need me here was so that you could take the Stones for yourself and then kill me, leaving your own way to the throne clear. And you had that whole plan about invasion and raising an army ready so quickly. Too quickly, if I’m being honest.”

  “I would not inherit the throne,” she replied. “What about your father and your brother?”

  Loki waved a hand. “Odin and Thor are nothing to you. Warriors you can obliterate in your sleep once your power is restored. If you want the throne of Asgard, it will be yours. Except I’m the only one who would give you a fight you couldn’t win. You and I, we fight a different kind of battle than the rest of our people. I’m the only one who can match you. And you knew that. And you knew I would fight you for the throne.”

  She crossed her arms. “Who says I want the throne?”

  “Well, you certainly wouldn’t be content living out your days as my royal sorceress. You’ve never been the right-hand type. You saw Karnilla leashed for too long to want that position. You want to rule Asgard. And there’s truly only one person who would stand in your way of that.”

  Her tongue darted out between her teeth, wetting her dry lips. “This is insane.”

  He held up a finger. “Hold on, let me finish. It really gets good from here. So I suppose your first mistake would be that you bet on my love for you. Which, sorry, won’t hold up. There are so many things I love more than you—for example, those high-heeled boots you gave me when we were younger. I miss those boots, I shouldn’t have left them at home. Also, Asgard itself, and I’m afraid you’d run it into the ground. Also, I’ve got some excellent ideas for government-funded theatre in the capital, and I just can’t imagine you’d have a similar dedication to the expansion of the arts.”

  “So why are you here?” she demanded, her voice snapping like a whip. “If you worked all this out so long ago, why didn’t you reveal me to be the murderer of all these dead humans and return with a whole host of Asgardian soldiers to arrest me and take me back to your precious homeland in chains?”

  “Because I plan to do that myself,” he replied. “Odin wants the Norn Stones returned to Asgard and I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to see you in prison as well—you are their thief, after all; at least that’s what I’ll tell him. And you’re the murderer the SHARP Society was looking to eliminate. All wrapped up in one little treasonous package. Let’s see Thor do that in a single trip to Midgard.”

  She didn’t say anything. They surveyed each other through the darkness, the silence split suddenly by the low whistle of the train. “Well, then, are we going to play that out?” she asked at last. “Where you try to capture me and I overpower you?”

  He shrugged. “If you’d like. Or you can surrender now.”

  “I’d rather not,” she replied tersely.

  “Well, I’ve never been fond of being overpowered.” Loki shrugged. “So we find ourselves at a stalemate.”

  He raised his hand, ready to conjure chains, but Amora threw up her own hands and sent a blast of white-hot energy at him. Loki was caught off guard and it knocked him flat on his back, his head striking the corner of one of the hanging coffins with a thump. Before his head could clear, she was over top of him suddenly, conjuring another spell, but he kicked out, sweeping her legs. She fell hard, her hair flying from its knot and flipping into her face. He staggered to his feet, gathered a bolt of hot energy between his hands, and blasted the door off its hinges, then swung himself out onto the ladder and pulled himself hand over hand up to the roof of the car.

  The wind was vicious, and black smoke from the engine pricked his eyes. He started running along the top of the car toward the front of the train, as fast as he could on the slick metal bar that divided the center of the roof. He leaped to t
he next car, landing just as the roof splintered below his feet. He managed to roll out of the way as Amora burst through the hole she’d just created and landed in a crouch on the center beam of the roof.

  Amora straightened and faced him. The wind caught her hair, and it seemed to flash from gold to white, electric ribbons twirling through the air. She gathered a ball of blue energy between her hands and shot it toward him, the movement so fast and graceful he didn’t have time to process it. It struck Loki in the chest, knocked him flat on his back, and he felt himself starting to slide down the incline of the car roof. He flipped his knife from his sleeve and dug it hard into the beam, stopping himself from falling to the tracks, but now he was dangling, muscles shaking, struggling to find the strength to hold on, let alone pull himself up. His feet kicked at the air, searching for a foothold.

  Amora flicked her hand, and another shot of energy, hot as the bowl of a crucible, washed over him. He clung to his dagger, his boots slipping against the side of the car. “You think I’d bow to you?” she shouted over the wind. “You think any man will ever bow to you? You’ll never be a king. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter if you bring me back to Odin trussed up like a Yule goose with the Norn Stones on a chain around my neck. You are a second son, Loki. He will never see you as anything more than a second choice. A snake waiting to strike. You will always be too dangerous to trust. And too foolish to take what’s yours.”

  He managed to catch his foot on the edge of the roof and haul himself back up to the beam. He’d never fought another magician before. In battles, he had always fought against soldiers without powers, who didn’t expect the skinny Asgardian prince to manifest and disappear or to be nothing more than a figment their blades passed through while he stabbed them from behind.

  Amora laughed at his knife, laughed at the way his muscles shook, the way the wild wind threatened to throw him backward. “You want to fight?” She held out a hand, and some of the beams of the roof snapped away, the metal and wood re-forming themselves into a broadsword in her hand. “Let’s fight.”

  Loki leaped, but Amora vanished. He spun around, and she had appeared behind him. He ducked as she swung, the sword crashing into the beam of the roof and cracking it. He could feel the supports groaning beneath them. She swung for him again, and he was able to dodge the blow, this time swiping forward with his knife. But it shattered in his hand, breaking into dozens of sharp fragments that buried themselves in the beam.

  Amora hurled another blast of heat energy at him, and before he even hit the ground she was behind him again, her boot connecting with the side of his face. Loki felt a shudder down his spine. He landed flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him and his bones feeling cracked and sharp. A few of the dagger shards in the roof broke his skin, and he could feel blood starting to pool underneath him.

  Amora grasped her sword and re-formed it in her hands, changing it into long ribbons that clamped down upon Loki’s limbs, pinning him to the top of the car. She held out a hand and his own dagger re-formed, the slivers pulling through his skin to get to her hand. The pain was sharp and hot, and tore a scream from him, his neck arching.

  Amora advanced on him, spinning his dagger against her palm and catching it. He’d die at the end of his own blade. “How did you think...” she said, pressing a foot into his chest and grinding her heel in, driving all the breath from him. The bindings seemed to tighten with each press and he gasped. “...that you could ever be a king? How did you think that you”—she pressed harder, and he felt his bones protest—“pathetic, weak, cowardly you”—he felt her heel break his skin—“were ever a contender for the throne? How could you not see it every time you looked at your father? Every time you looked at your brother? I didn’t need to look into the future to know it. Asgard needs a sorcerer at its helm, but that sorcerer would never have been you. Not in any universe, in any realm.”

  “Don’t tire yourself,” he said, his voice coming out in more of a breathless rasp than he’d expected. “You haven’t much strength to spare.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Give me the Stones, Loki.”

  “I haven’t got them.”

  “Liar.” He felt her free hand combing his coat, searching his pockets and the inside of his waistcoat and tearing at the buttons of his shirt. He let her paw, using the moment to lie still and catch his breath. She screamed in frustration, pushing hard enough against his throat that he felt the roof beneath him moan. “Where are they?!”

  “How should I know?” he replied. “You’re the one who stole them.”

  She staggered to her feet, his knife still in her hand and pointed at him. “I don’t need the Stones,” she said. “I can do it myself.” She kicked in the door on the roof of the train and jumped through. Her spell broke, releasing him from his bonds, and he staggered to his feet. His skin felt bright and hot, and he could feel the blood soaking through his shirt, but he followed Amora, dropping into the car after her.

  She was on her knees between the rows of coffins in their slings, driving the tip of the dagger into the wooden floor and carving the same symbol they had used to mark the bodies, then pressed her fist to the middle. Something thick and black began to fill the crude lines, half smoke, half tar, lethargically inching forward and beginning to glow. The rune pulsed, the boards sucking it up and leaving a charred image behind.

  Nothing happened.

  Loki snorted, brushing off his sleeves for the theatre of it. “Well, that was a waste of—”

  The end of the coffin beside him burst. He felt a hand—an unnaturally warm dead hand—claw at his face, covering his mouth and nose as the corpse tried to pull him backward into the casket with it. Its nails dug into his face, ripping at his skin. He shot a blast of magic over his shoulder and the corpse recoiled. Loki scrambled away, but more of the coffins were bursting open, the living dead climbing out and standing at attention before Amora. “Hold him,” she snapped, and two of the corpses seized Loki, twisting his arms behind him and forcing him to the ground.

  “You’re not strong enough,” Loki said, laughing in spite of the fact that his head was being forced toward the ground by a literal death grip. She had more strength than he expected, but he didn’t show his surprise. “Not without the Stones. You could barely wake this car, let alone this whole train. And you can’t take on the Asgardian army with a handful of soldiers. Some sorceress you are.”

  He felt her step closer to him, saw the shadow of her hand still holding the knife. She wouldn’t kill him. Not so long as she didn’t know where the Stones were. She stood still for a moment, and he could feel her weighing her options. Then she kicked him hard in the face, knocking him backward into the two corpses holding him. He felt warm blood spray over his face. “Lock him in the last car,” she said to her soldiers. “Don’t let him escape.”

  Loki was dragged to his feet, and pulled toward the back of the train car as Amora went the other way. His heart stammered—she couldn’t know. She couldn’t be going to look for them.

  The corpse soldiers tossed him roughly onto the floor of the final train car. It was a caboose with no corpses, just stored equipment and a few benches and a stove for any railway workers that rode there. Loki heard the door to the car slam behind him. He let himself lie still for a moment, then wiped a stream of blood from his eyes. The bones of his face were aching and he sat up slowly. His vision spotted, but he stayed conscious.

  There was a shuffle behind him and he turned, wondering if one of the corpse soldiers had stayed and he hadn’t noticed. But then, from behind a set of stacked crates, someone said, “Loki?”

  His breath caught as Theo crawled out from his hiding place, dragging his bad leg. “What are you doing here?” Loki asked.

  “They wouldn’t let me on the train.” Theo scrubbed his hands over his face. He was breathing hard. “One of the officers recognized me and...I can’t leave the city because of my history. Gem snuck me on. For the funeral.” He looked up and started when h
e saw Loki’s face straight on. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I know. Is it a lot?”

  “It’s”—Theo wrinkled his nose—“not a little.” The train jolted suddenly, taking a hard corner and sending them both almost toppling over. Theo clapped a hand to his head, holding his hat in place. “What the hell is going on?”

  Loki had nothing to lose with honesty anymore, so he said, “Amora is raising the dead to make an army. She plans to take them to Asgard and use them to overthrow my father.”

  “How’s she going to get back to Asgard?” Theo asked. “The fairy ring?”

  Loki nodded. “With the Norn Stones, we can activate it from here without the help of Heimdall.”

  “The Norn Stones?” Theo repeated. “The things your father was looking for? They’re here?”

  “I stole them,” he said, looking down at his hands. Honesty was not his favorite. “Now Amora wants them so she can animate everyone she murdered.”

  “So she did knowingly kill all those people? You lied to us?” He laughed humorlessly. Loki hated the way Theo looked afraid. Afraid and angry. He liked the anger. That spark of defiance. But he found no strength in this fear. “Are we just cannon fodder in your wars?”

  “You know who I am,” Loki replied. “My story has existed for centuries. It’s written in every book you’ve ever read, every myth you adore. I am the villain of your stories. That’s all I ever will be.”

  “So write new stories,” Theo said, the belligerence rising in his voice to match Loki’s. “No one’s destiny is written in the stars.”

  “I don’t know if I have a choice,” Loki said.

  “There’s always a choice,” Theo replied. Loki heard Mrs. S. say it too. There’s always a choice.