by E. A. Copen
Loki folded his hands and leaned forward. “Do you know why I am here and my brother isn’t?”
“I heard he was too busy crying into an appletini.” I placed the cup on the table.
Loki grinned. “That is the story, isn’t it? He has a fondness for sweet things and human culture. A sort of ignorant curiosity that sometimes overcomes his more brutish nature. My brother is a force to be reckoned with when angry, however. He would’ve turned this arena and everyone in it to powder had he come. I stopped him. Do you know how?”
I shook my head.
“I stopped him with this.” Loki raised one hand and pointed at it.
“A manicure?”
He slammed his elbow into the table, keeping his giant forearm raised. “A contest of strength and will. Of course, Thor is stronger than me, but he was much easier to defeat once I pressed my dagger to his groin.” Loki grinned, pulled his arm back and stood. “Today, I make you the same offer, Horseman.”
I gave him a doubtful look. “You want me to arm wrestle you? No offense, but I don’t really want my arm ripped off. I’m still using it.”
The god roared with laughter and patted his stomach. “Oh, no. You are right. That wouldn’t be fair.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’re going to arm wrestle Sigrun.”
Shit. Panic thumped in my chest. I forced it down. “I’ll bite. What do I get if I win?”
“Let’s make it interesting,” said Sigrun, sliding into Loki’s seat. “You win, I’ll give you this.” She produced a tiny vial of thick, yellow liquid. “Sap gathered from the roots of Yggdrasil. With it, you may travel freely from this realm to any of the Nine Realms.”
That was quite a prize. The ability to physically move from one plane to another was no small thing. I could move to the After by dying, or straddle it with enough power to interact with ghosts, but those were my limits. According to Norse myth, there were other places home to giants, dwarves, light and dark elves and gods even older than Loki. Access to any one of those places would be worth risking an arm, but to be given a choice? There had to be an equally bad downside.
“And if I lose?”
Loki shrugged. “Then you will withdraw from the games.”
Withdrawing from the tournament would leave Morningstar with an incomplete team. He’d still be able to compete, but he’d lose his edge. I was his ace in the hole, and Loki knew it. Not only that, but if I had to step away from the games, I’d be breaking my deal with Morningstar for Emma’s soul. Winning that vial meant gambling with her soul.
I shook my head. “I decline.”
Sigrun narrowed her eyes at me as I stood. “You don’t want my gift?”
“I do. However, I can’t withdraw from the tournament. Doing so would put other lives at risk, lives I’m not willing to gamble with. I’m honored by the opportunity, but I must respectfully decline.”
“I’ll do it.”
My blood turned to ice water as Emma volunteered herself. I knew I’d lose that match, and if I didn’t stand a chance, she sure as hell didn’t. “Emma, no.”
Loki clapped his hands. “A new contender enters! Come, brave human. Test your mettle against my Valkyrie. We make you the same offer. Your withdrawal from the games for one vial of sap from the sacred tree.”
Emma marched up to the head of the table and stared at me. “Move out of the way, Lazarus.”
“Don’t do this, Emma.”
“Pipe down, idiot. You wanted to keep me from going into the arena, right? Well, if I lose, that’s what you get. If I win, you get the magic jar of tree goo. Either way, you win. What’s the problem?” She shouldered me out of the way and sat in the chair I’d just left.
The problem was the deal couldn’t be that simple. Loki was a trickster god. He didn’t make deals that didn’t advance his agenda somehow. I couldn’t see how getting Emma out of the games would help him, but I knew it wouldn’t bode well for the team. If we were down a fighter, we’d be at a disadvantage. Khaleda was already injured and Morningstar had vowed not to fight. That meant we could only really afford to lose one person and still have a useable roster.
Emma rolled up her sleeve and planted her elbow on the table. “Let’s go, blondie.”
Sigrun smirked. The whole table bounced when she put her elbow down.
Loki clapped his hands twice, and the band above stopped playing. “Attention! Here we have a contest of both strength and wit. Sigrun, Valkyrie, and slayer of a hundred men, versus… What was your name, dear?”
“Emma Knight. Queen of Thorns.”
He chuckled. “And Emma Knight, the human known as the Queen of Thorns. Our prize.” Loki lifted the vial high for all to see, drawing murmurs of surprise and excitement. “The rules are simple. You may not use any part of the body to pin your opponent, ladies, except for your arms. Your elbows must be in contact with the table at all times. A pin counts when any part of the wrist or back of the hand is pressed to the table. Are you ready?”
Emma and Sigrun gripped each other’s hands, assuming the standard arm-wrestling position.
“Ready,” Sigrun announced.
Emma nodded.
“Then let the contest begin!” Loki clapped his hands once.
Chapter Eighteen
Sigrun’s bicep bulged. Emma grimaced. The two fists gripped above the table trembled in a contest of strength while their eyes remained locked in a battle of wills. Hushed whispers exchanged in corners were the only sounds beyond their strained breathing. For a moment, the contest almost looked even.
The grimace on Emma’s face deepened as her arm twitched toward the table surface. A quarter inch became a half inch, the distance shrinking until a strong breath might pin her wrist to the table. She held though, braced against the table. Her fingernails chipped at the wood, bending under pressure. Emma’s jaw had to hurt with as hard as she was clenching it.
Sigrun’s jaw shook. Sweat trailed down the side of her face just in front of her ear. A tendon in her neck flexed with the effort of trying to look calm and in control when she had to be irritated. She’d expected the match to be over by now; it was written all over her face. Sigrun had pegged Emma for an easy target. Boy, was she in for a surprise.
Emma exhaled. Her arm slowly climbed away from the table, fighting for every inch until she and Sigrun were back exactly as they had started.
“Who’s that?” asked a voice behind me.
“That’s Sigrun,” whispered someone else. “I heard she once kicked a man so hard his chest caved in.”
“Who’s the other one?”
“Don’t know. Some human.”
Sigrun’s pale cheeks turned pink and puffed out as she tried to push Emma’s arm back down, but Emma didn’t budge. I don’t know how she managed to match the strength of a Valkyrie. I mean, I knew Emma was strong, but she didn’t have the build of someone who spent a lot of time at the gym getting ripped. How was she doing that?
Candlelight flickered in the depths of Loki’s eyes. A grin played on his face that his mouth didn’t betray. Something had amused him. Something no one else had seen yet.
Wrinkles appeared in the corners of Sigrun’s eyes that deepened as she squinted at Emma. Sigrun’s arm shuddered and slid toward the table at a slow but steady pace. Somehow, Emma had gained the advantage. It lasted only a moment before Sigrun pushed back with a burst of strength.
Emma’s eyes widened in a panic as her arm sailed back toward the tabletop. Her whole body jerked and she threw her other arm forward. Sigrun stopped pushing, leaving Emma’s arm suspended so close to the table only a sheet of paper could’ve passed between them.
“Go on,” Emma snarled. “Finish it. Claim your victory. Let’s see which one of us is faster.”
Sigrun’s eyes went down to her lap.
I strained to see. There, pressed against the inside of Sigrun’s thigh was one of Khaleda’s obsidian daggers. Where the hell had Emma gotten that?
Emma seized on
the momentary distraction and slammed Sigrun’s arm to the table.
Sigrun shouted something that somehow seemed more appropriate than an English curse and hung her head while Loki grabbed Emma’s arm and raised it for all to see. “We have a winner!”
“She cheated!” someone in the crowd shouted. Others murmured in agreement. The discontent seemed to match the general consensus from everyone in the room.
I moved closer to Emma. This was bad. Here we were trapped in a room with a bunch of drunken, violent men who’d probably just lost a lot of money under the table. The mob could turn against her in a fraction of a second, and she didn’t even see it.
Loki lowered Emma’s arm and held up a hand. “I saw no rules broken.”
Beside me, a man missing several teeth leered and pointed at the knife still in Emma’s off hand. “What d’ya mean she didn’t cheat? I saw her press that knife against Sigrun’s leg!”
Loki put his hands on his hips. “Sigrun, did I forbid weapons?”
“No, sir,” Sigrun ground out.
“There, you see? It’s not a cheat. It’s ingenuity. Cleverness.”
“It’s the exact same thing you did to Thor if your story is true,” Emma observed.
Loki smirked. “So it is. Your prize, Emma Knight, Queen of Thorns.” He held the vial out to her.
Emma took it gingerly from his outstretched hand.
The crowd was still seething all around me. Clearly, they didn’t like the turn of events. Leave it to a room full of jocks not to appreciate an intelligent move.
“Music!” Loki called. “Drink and dance, friends, for tomorrow, half of you will be injured or dead and heading home empty-handed.” He took up his mug and raised it high.
Behind him, the band struck up a much more traditional sounding number heavy on the drums and a stringed instrument I couldn’t identify.
Emma extended a hand to Sigrun. “No hard feelings?”
Sigrun glared at Emma’s outstretched hand. “You fight smart for a human. I hope it doesn’t get you killed. I’d like to see how you handle a spear.” She stood.
“I’m five foot five,” Emma said, raising an eyebrow. “I’d look ridiculous.”
“But you would be glorious. Too many believe the true strength of a spear is its reach. A good spearman knows the best weapon is deception. Remember that when you fight tomorrow.”
“I will.” Emma nodded, and the two parted on better terms than expected.
“That was stupid,” I told Emma as she came up to me, waving her prize. “This crowd was ready to murder you.”
“But they didn’t, and I got the Yggdrasil sap.” She took my hand and deposited the vial in my palm.
I gave her a questioning look.
“Trip to another realm sounds like your area, Lazarus, not mine. The only trip I want to be taking is to the spa when I get home. Besides, I think he wanted you to have it.”
I glanced past her to Loki who had taken his seat at the head of the table again. He drained his cup and put it on the table, leaning back on his chair, one arm thrown casually over the back of it. When he saw me looking, he grinned and nodded. He wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. There was no way anyone could’ve predicted that outcome. No one expected me to decline, or for Emma to step forward. Maybe he could’ve guessed she’d draw the knife after he told his story about arm wrestling Thor, but that was it.
I looked down at the vial in my hand. Could I have beaten Sigrun? I had been working a little with the staff recently, but I didn’t think I was any stronger. It made me wonder what Loki might’ve done if I hadn’t stepped aside. Could he have known? No. There wasn’t any real way to tell the future…was there?
My head hurt so I forced myself to stop thinking about it. “Cool. We have magic tree blood that’ll probably get us super high. Wanna go find a janitor’s closet and split it?”
Emma sighed. “Did you have any luck with the teams?”
“Mexican werewolves and another team signed on. Seemed like you were schmoozing with the Amazonians pretty well.”
“And the Maori,” she said nodding.
“There are Maori here?” God, I hoped we didn’t have to fight them.
Emma pointed out a group of men standing in a corner. One of them turned his face my way and I caught the telltale dark spirals of facial tattoos. They were big guys, thick and tall. Not anyone I wanted to go up against.
I winced. “There’s just one hitch. The two teams I talked to want War in on the ‘no killing’ deal and War isn’t keen on it.”
“If you count our team, and if you can get War on board, that’s six out of eight teams. The only ones left to talk to are the Celts and the Babylonians.”
I shrugged. “Morningstar said we were fighting the Celts tomorrow, so they probably won’t talk to us. Who’s in charge of the Babylonian team?”
Emma dug a paper out of her pocket and unfolded it, reading from it. “Tiamat.”
When it came to Babylonian mythology, I didn’t know much, but that was a name I recognized, mostly from all the fantasy books I’d read. Whenever a badass dragon appeared, they were usually compared to Tiamat. She was supposed to be the dragon goddess of primordial chaos, and mother of monsters.
I scanned the room, trying to guess at who she might be. As far as women at the feast went, there weren’t nearly half as many of them as there were men. Most of the females present were Loki’s Valkyries. There was Tony’s wife, and a few ladies hanging all over the Lobos in the other corner but no sign of a chaos dragon.
Until I looked up on the balcony near the band. Leaning on the stone railing with her head tipped back, arms outstretched and hips swaying was a black-haired woman. Streaks of electric blue and hot pink snaked through her hair. Sheer scarves the color of fire attached to her waist and arms waved with her fluid movements, creating the illusion that she was on fire. A crown of gold glittered on her head, the single point fashioned to look like the head of a great lizard. Rubies dripped from her ears and neck, flowing into a dress of turquoise and crimson.
I gestured to her. “I think we found Tiamat. Just have to figure out how to get up to that balcony. Any ideas?”
“What makes you so sure that’s Tiamat?”
“Trust me. It’s her. Now how do we get up there?”
Emma scanned the wall and pointed out a low stone archway guarded by two Valkyries. Stone stairs curved out of sight just inside the doorway. We’d have to make it past the Valkyries, but that was definitely our way up. Maybe they wouldn’t stop us.
I pointed the doorway out to Emma, and we slowly made our way over to it. At our approach the Valkyries crossed their spears, barring the door.
“Oh, come on! Can’t one thing go right for me today? Why can’t we go up?”
“Guests are permitted to the first floor only,” said the Valkyrie on the right. “The upper balcony is for the band and VIPs only.”
A commotion behind us made me turn around just in time to see one of the Lobos sock Tony right in the mouth. The wife screamed, and his buddy from across the table leaped into the fight in Tony’s place. With a curse, the Valkyrie we’d just spoken to stepped away from her post, leaving only the one guard for us to deal with.
“What’ll it take to change your mind?” I asked her. “You’re not really going to stab me over this, are you?”
The Valkyrie’s lips turned up in a smile. “I might. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to stab anyone.”
“Let him come.” Tiamat rounded the winding stone stairs and stopped in the doorway, one palm flat against the stone. Her accent was thick enough I had to concentrate to be sure she was speaking English. “The woman too.”
She turned without waiting and walked back up the stairs.
The Valkyrie nodded and lifted her spear. “Try anything, and you won’t leave the hall alive.”
“I’ll make sure he behaves,” Emma promised.
The stairs were too narrow for us to walk together, so I took the lead. H
aving Emma at my back made me feel just a little safer. At least I could be sure no one was coming up the stairs after us. The spiral of stairs spilled out onto a wide stone walkway with timber supports every few feet. A master stonemason had crafted the hall to have a flat ceiling everywhere except for the walkway where it curved, creating the illusion that we stood in a tunnel with one open side.
As we stepped from the stairs into the hall, the strings dropped out of the music, leaving nothing but different drums, some deep and angry and others sharp and metallic. A single deep and mournful horn probably made of bone instead of brass cut through the quick and angry beat and held a single long note.
Fire danced in two stone braziers, red stones casting an eerie glow over Tiamat who stood just beyond them, facing us. Her hands were folded, eyes fixed on the fire as if she were waiting for something to happen.
Below, the victory feast had erupted into a brawl that was quickly claiming the table. Loki barely seemed to notice. He was too busy chatting and laughing. One of the Lobos tossed someone across the table directly in front of him. Loki simply lifted his cup to keep it from spilling everywhere and went on with his conversation.
“True human nature,” said Tiamat.
I stopped just on the other side of the fire and watched her through it. “The fire or the fight?”
“Both. Do you know what the difference between human beings and fire is?”
“Fire’s not alive,” Emma answered.
I shrugged. “One destroys every part of the Earth it touches for generations to come and the other is the best way to cook a hamburger?”
Tiamat looked up from the fire. “And therein lies the conflict between you.” She gestured to Emma. “Your answer is true. Based on sound reasoning and all your collective knowledge of how the universe works. His is a sweeping global assessment combined with a personal desire. You know. He wants. That will forever be what keeps you apart.”
“Or I just watch too much PBS and really like hamburgers,” I said. “Not everything has to be a deep philosophical moment.”
Tiamat’s cat-like eyes glowed yellow through the fire. “Human life is here and gone in the blink of an eye. Every moment is precious, Horseman. For your kind, at least. Why is it you came to speak to me?”
