Mist m-1

by Susan Krinard

  “As I told you before,” he said, “magic exacts a price. I . . . have not . . . had reason to make use of mine in many years. You may think ill of me for my reluctance to act, and for many other failings.

  But I had no choice but to preserve my strength until it was truly needed.”

  “So you had to have my help to find Loki,” she said. “Yes. And now . . .” He let his hand fall back to his side. “I cannot be certain how long it will take me to recover. I will continue to require your help.”

  Mist had a bad feeling she knew exactly what he was trying to say. “You mean you’ll be crawling around inside my head again, the way you did at the loft?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He turned to face her, his eyes still as black as the bottom of the sea. “Choose carefully, Lady. If you ask it, I will leave here now and trouble you no further.”

  “I’ve made my decision,” she said.

  All at once that strange, almost violent intensity was gone from his face, and he was as composed as if the most taxing thing he’d done all morning was brush his long black hair.

  Which, like the rest of him, badly needed a good washing. But that could wait a little longer. “The first thing we need to do,” she said, “is get Gungnir back.”

  “Not the first,” Dainn said. “We must dispose of this.” He gestured toward the pile of Jotunar, several of whom were beginning to stir.

  Mist couldn’t believe she’d been yammering on with a dozen Jotunar still in the room. “This is Vidarr’s problem,” she said harshly.

  “He needs to tell me what the Hel is going on around here. Unless he really did strike a bargain with Loki, he’ll be pissed and likely to want revenge.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  That nasty little word again. Had Vid feigned submitting to Loki?

  It wouldn’t be much like him to use subtlety and deception where more direct action would do— in that, he wasn’t unlike Thor, another of his half-brothers—but she didn’t see any other explanation for his behavior. Including the fact that he hadn’t tried to help her until it was safe for him to do it.

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “I trust him.”

  She glanced around the room. Vidarr and Vali were either still in the office, or they’d sneaked past her and Dainn without their noticing. They probably had enough functional magic left to do that, but it would look very, very bad.

  She was just starting for the shattered office door when the half- brothers emerged. Vali went straight to one of the tables near the wall, bearing a bottle of Scotch and a shot glass. Vidarr leaned against the doorjamb, his expression locked as tight as a frightened virgin’s thighs on her wedding night.

  Mist walked briskly across the room, skirting the Jotunar—none of whom had yet managed to lift themselves off the floor—and came to stand before Vidarr. He didn’t seem to be aware of Dainn at all.

  “What happened, Vid?” she asked.

  The muscles in his jaw worked as he glared at the opposite wall. “He . . . don’ wan’ to talk about it,” Vali said from the table, his words slurring as if he’d been drinking hard since he’d last spoken to Mist.

  Vidarr turned his hot stare on his half-brother. “Shut up, Val.”

  He met Mist’s gaze, head lowered and shoulders hunched like an angry bull, which he somewhat resembled even on his best days.

  “What do you think happened?” he asked. “I invited him in for tea?”

  “No,” she said, reminding herself that she had long ago stopped letting herself be intimidated by his bluster, Odin’s son or not. “He obviously breached your wards and caught you by surprise.”

  “Tha’s right,” Vali said.

  “Shut up,” Vidarr repeated, though he continued to stare at Mist.

  “If you’ve got something to say to me, spit it out.”

  “You started to tell me something just after Loki disappeared, something you wanted me to believe.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you believe.” Vidarr smiled unpleasantly.

  “You think I’m supposed to be impressed that you’re Freya’s daughter and spoke with her voice for a few seconds? Did you cry for Mommy to rescue you?”

  Mist ignored the jibe. “Did you know who I was before?”

  “No. And it wouldn’t have made any difference if I had.”

  “For the gods’ sake, we don’t have time for this. I just want to understand what happened.”

  “Then you’ll just have to live with your ignorance.”

  Mist realized that he wasn’t going to be reasonable at the moment, and there wasn’t much point in pushing him now. She gestured behind her at the Jotunar. “This is your place. What do you want to do with them?”

  “Kill them.”

  That was the obvious solution. It certainly had the advantage of removing a few of Loki’s servants from the field, and it could be done with only a minimal use of magic.

  But Mist knew why she was resisting the idea. She couldn’t forget she was half-Jotunn. Vidarr knew who his giantess mother was, and she had been an ally of the Aesir. Any of the giants here might be Mist’s kin. A cousin. A brother. Even a father.

  She wouldn’t believe that. A father wouldn’t try to kill his own daughter. No one had ever claimed that the worst Jotunar didn’t love their own. It was everyone else they hated.

  “There must be another way,” she said.

  “What other way?” Vidarr growled, pushing away from the wall.

  “Throw them out in the middle of Market Street and hope they all get hit by a bus?”

  “I don’t slaughter things that can’t fight back.”

  Vidarr snorted. “You were always so proud that you taught yourself to fight after all those centuries playing dress-up like a little girl wearing her Mommy’s pretty dress. You said you fought the Nazis, but—”

  “I prefer to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.”

  “Just like Freya. All peace and love, all the time.”

  “I’m not Freya.”

  “No? Then why don’t we wake the giants up and offer to challenge them one-on-one? I’m sure Hrimgrimir would like another shot at you.”

  Mist had had enough. “I can understand why you’re feeling so bloodthirsty, Vid,” she said. “Your ego has always been a little on the tender side.”

  Vidarr started toward her, fists clenched, his shoulders straining the seams of his shirt. Mist tensed. In spite of their contentious history, she’d never have believed that Vidarr would actively try to hurt her.

  She didn’t get a chance to find out if he’d reached his breaking point. Dainn stepped smoothly between them.

  “Are you both such fools?” he asked. “This is exactly what Loki desires.”

  Mist and Vidarr turned to stare at the elf. She had been so intent on Vid that she’d almost forgotten about him, and Vidarr was reacting as if a cockroach had gotten up on its hind legs and started reciting the kennings of the All-father.

  Vidarr lifted his hand to strike. Dainn made no move to avoid the blow.

  “Stop it!” Mist shouted. “Vid, he’s on our side!”

  Vidarr lowered his arm, but his body was trembling with rage.

  “Our side?” he repeated. “The cursed Alfr who betrayed the Aesir?”

  “What? Vid—”

  “You didn’t recognize him? The traitor who should have been dead by Thor’s hand?”

  Comprehension blinded Mist, leaving her groping for something to hang on to while the ground crumbled beneath her feet. “Oh, this is rich,” Vidarr said. “Freya didn’t tell her darling daughter the kind of scum she was dragging around?” He laughed viciously. “He didn’t even bother to change his name. Dainn Faithbreaker, the elf who started Ragnarok.”

  7

  Mist’s vision began to clear. Dainn’s face resolved from a blur to crystal clarity. There was no denial in his expression, no protest. Vidarr might as well have stated that the elf had black hair and deep blue eyes.

  She should have known, just as
she should have known that Eric was Loki. She had thought of the two most famous Dainns when she’d first found him but had never seriously considered that he might be one of them.

  Dainn Faith-breaker. The only one of his people who had not fought with the Aesir in the Last Battle, because Thor had supposedly killed him for his defection to the enemy. Mist knew few details but those she’d heard in the rumors that circulated in Asgard after the Aesir and Alfar had sat in judgment over Dainn and condemned him to death; some had whispered that it was his last- minute warning that had prevented Loki’s forces from taking the Aesir completely unaware. Some said it was weakness, not malice, which had led him to join Loki, that Laufeyson had deceived him with claims of a desire for peace.

  But neither good intentions nor weakness were excuses for the damage Dainn had done in giving, or allowing, Loki to obtain vital information that had weakened the allies. Though neither side had won the battle, what Dainn had done was unforgivable.

  Now Mist understood why Loki had reacted so strongly to learning that Dainn was the elf who had met with Mist. He, like she and Vid, must have believed his former ally was dead.

  How had Dainn evaded execution? Perhaps Freya had helped him. She should have despised him as much as anyone who had ever walked in Asgard, but now she had set him a task that would require absolute trust in his loyalty.

  “ You,” Mist said to Dainn, unable to find words scathing enough to express her horror and disgust.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have made many mistakes. I have been foolish beyond any expectation of atonement. But I did not start Ragnarok. I tried—”

  “Scum,” Vidarr snarled. “Filth. How do we know you aren’t serving Loki now? And you—” He turned on Mist, pinching his nostrils as if he’d smelled something even worse than Dainn’s rags. “You’re no better than him. Loki wouldn’t have Gungnir if you hadn’t let him fuck you for six months.”

  “Don’t go there, Vid,” Mist warned. “I didn’t—”

  “Do you really want to take Gungnir back, or are you just pissed at him for making you his whore?”

  Mist lunged at Vidarr. Dainn stepped between them again. Vidarr struck the elf in the temple with a bunched fist, and Dainn staggered. He righted himself quickly, showing no sign that he had been hurt at all.

  Vidarr was going after Dainn again when Mist got in his way, steeling herself for a blow. Vidarr stopped just as his fist was about to connect with her head.

  “I’m going to kill him,” he rasped. “Get out of my way.”

  “I can’t let you, Vid. He may deserve to die for what he did, but now Freya has intervened, and she wouldn’t have done that without the agreement of the other Aesir. It’s not our decision to make.”

  She could barely believe the words coming out of her own mouth, and Vidarr certainly didn’t.

  “You’re defending him?” he asked incredulously. “Has he been fucking you, too?”

  Clenching her jaw, Mist tried to let his sordid accusation pass through her. She turned back to Dainn. “How long did you think you could get away with this little charade?” she asked.

  “If I had told you,” Dainn said, “you would have left me in the park, or perhaps even killed me..”

  “You don’t claim to be innocent of the crimes you’re accused of?”

  “I am far from innocent.”

  “He admits it,” Vidarr said. “Move, Mist. Don’t make me hurt you.”

  “He helped save both of us,” she said. “Isn’t that worth something?”

  “He may have saved you, but I never needed his help.”

  “Dainn took care of Loki’s Jotunar so they couldn’t come charging in to attack us from the rear.”

  “He was responsible for the destruction of Asgard.” Vidarr drew a knife from a sheath at his back. “I will finish what my brother Thor failed to do.”

  Mist held her ground. “Why so much hatred, Vid? You may be the god of vengeance, but this isn’t just about his betraying the Aesir. It’s personal.”

  Vidarr’s stare was like Gungnir itself, piercing through Mist’s body and burying its point right between Dainn’s eyes. “I’m warning you one last time,” he said. “Don’t interfere.”

  “You know the old cliché. If you want to kill him, you’ll have to walk through me first.”

  For a breathless moment she believed that Vidarr was going to call her bluff. But he lowered his knife and strode to the door to the bar, walked through it, and slammed it shut.

  Mist glanced at Vali. He sank deeper into his chair. “Let him go,” Dainn said.

  She faced him, loosing the anger she’d been trying to keep in check. “He was right. Why shouldn’t I kill you?” She slipped Kettlingr from its sheath. “You’ve never stopped lying to me. For all I know, you led me right into a trap.” Her hand trembled on the sword’s hilt. “Why did you go over to Loki?”

  “He deceived me, as he did you,” Dainn said, holding her gaze as if he hadn’t noticed the sword at all. “I believed I could help broker a peace between his forces and the Aesir’s.”

  “Broker a peace? You mean attempt something not even Odin believed was possible?”

  “I had been away from my people a long time, even then. No one remembered me, and so I believed I had a chance not open to those directly involved.”

  “But you joined Loki in the end.”

  “When I recognized my mistake in trusting him, I attempted to warn the Aesir. I was too late.”

  Mist didn’t want to hear any more excuses. She raised Kettlingr and set the blade’s tip against Dainn’s chest. “Where were you, when you were ’away’ from your people?” she asked.

  “My memory of those times is incomplete.”

  “You like that excuse, don’t you?”

  “You said you could tell if I was lying. Am I lying now?”

  “Did Freya save you from Thor?”

  “The Lady believed I had tried to warn the Aesir. She spoke for me when I stood before the gods and elves.”

  “And she sent you here to protect me.”

  He sighed. “Yes. I deceived you on that point. But until a week ago, I had no idea what had happened to the Homeworlds just as the Last Battle began.”

  “So you never suffered any punishment at all.”

  “My own people repudiated me,” he said softly. “Perhaps you will understand how I felt when Freya contacted me, and I learned the Aesir and my people lived. I could no more have rejected the service the Lady asked of me than could you.”

  Too little, too late, Mist thought, her anger and disgust far from assuaged. She looked across the room at Vali, who was so lost in his drink that she doubted he’d heard or seen a single thing that had happened since Vidarr had stomped out.

  “I’m not buying that that’s all there is to it,” she said. “But I can’t believe Freya would to send an unregenerate traitor to find her daughter and locate the Treasures.” She lowered the sword. “Are you sticking with your story that it was my magical ability at work against Loki, not Freya’s?”

  “Look inside yourself, and you will see.”

  Mist didn’t want to. She was still afraid of what she would find. But she looked anyway. The Freya part of her was still present, light and gentle as a dusting of pollen on a honeybee’s back. It wasn’t obtrusive or threatening, as it had seemed when it had led her to attack Loki with the smothering power of seduction. It was just there, like a dormant memory waiting to be called up again.

  “I still can’t talk to Freya directly?” she asked.

  “When you are ready.”

  She sang Kettlingr small and sheathed her. “Let’s get a few things straight. I’m no one’s unquestioning servant. Unless I get orders from Odin himself, I’m going to use my own judgment. And you’re going to do what I tell you. No one is going to move me around like a defender on a hnefatafl board.”

  “And Vidarr?”

  Mist glanced at Vali again. “I’m not going to let him kill you, if that’s what
you mean. I’ve known Vid a long time, and he is one of the Aesir. Maybe he doesn’t care much about mortals, but he knows we can’t be fighting each other when Ragnarok is about to happen all over again. And for real this time.”

  One of the Jotunar groaned loudly behind Mist, and she realized how completely she’d forgotten about the frost giants. Again. There was a scuffling as one of the creatures began to sit up.

  “Odin’s hairy balls,” she said. “We still have to figure out what to do with them.”

  “If you do not wish to kill them—”

  She flashed him an irritated glance. “You were the one who dealt with them in the first place. What would you do?”

  “I would send them to a place where they will be of no further trouble for some time to come.”

  Dainn had made it clear before that he was going to need time to recover, but he looked ten times worse than he had before Vidarr had exposed him. “Are you up to it?” she asked.

  “With your help.”

  “I was afraid of that. I assume it’s the same as before? I think of the Runes, and you—”

  “No,” he said, very quietly. “You must let go of your will and let me guide you.”

  Her mouth filled with the acrid taste of fear. “You want to control me? I just told you—”

  “Not control you,” Dainn said. “Guide only.”

  Again and again, it all came down to how much she believed him, and she had even less reason to trust him than she had ten minutes ago. If she agreed, she would literally be putting her life— her being—in his hands. Her part in all this could end today if Dainn had some ulterior motive.

  She turned to him again and stood in front of him, toe to toe. “If I find out you’ve meddled with my mind again while you’re in it,” she said, “I’ll—”

  “Kill me.” He smiled, flashing perfect white teeth. “Fair enough, Freya’s daughter.”

  It was the first time he’d really smiled, and it was a revelation. She could count on one hand the times she’d seen an elf smile in Valhalla. Dainn’s expression turned the dim, dingy room into a candlelit palace. His rags became velvet, his hair as glossy as Sleipnir’s silken mane.