Stormbringer: Book 2 of the Wyrd

Twenty-One

He did what?"

From across the table, Þrúðr's eyes were cold, hard chips of stone.

Sigmund, meanwhile, was getting sore fingers from rubbing at his own.

"This mess is Loki's. It was he who wove this wicked plot."

Meaning Loki—meaning Lain—had been the one who'd suggested trading Þrúðr to the dvergar. For a belt and some fucking gloves.

"I'm going to kill him." Immortal god or not, Sigmund was going to do it. Again. A spear through the other heart, this time.

"He is a beast."

Þrúðr was not sympathetic to Sigmund's plight. Not that he could blame her.

The five of them were assembled around a table. Þrúðr and Uni on one side, Sigmund, Valdís, and Eisa on the other. Everyone else was somewhere outside, under orders of cease-fire.

"He's not . . . not that bad, really." It wasn't a lie, exactly, but Sigmund could see how Þrúðr may have had a different perspective.

What she knew—what she'd shared—was this:

Several days ago, Rígr had sighted a strange beast approaching Ásgarðr from the ruined Bifröst. On closer examination, said beast had turned out to be a jötunn. And not just any jötunn, but Loki, betrayer of the gods and harbinger of Rangarøkkr. Harbinger, and suspiciously not a victim of, prophecy or no prophecy.

He'd been carrying a spear Rígr had identified as Gungnir, last seen in the possession of Ásgarðr's missing ruler, Baldr. Somehow—Þrúðr had been a little unclear on the details—Loki had been captured and, rather than be executed for unspecified-but-not-exactly-trumped-up crimes against Ásgarðr, he'd agreed to lead Thor's sons, Magni and Móði, to the location of their father's missing hammer, Mjölnir. Except, in order to wield it, they'd need to bump up their iLvl with some rad epix.

Hence the trade; Þrúðr for the drops. By her story, she'd known the trick "Loki" was trying to pull, and had told her brothers to play along. Which they'd done beautifully, hence she was here and they weren't. And neither was Loki. Lain. Whoever.

"Jesus." Sigmund pushed his glasses up onto his forehead, scrubbing his eyes until the inside of his eyelids exploded into a mad swirl of black and red pixels. "We have to stop them."

"No." Sigmund couldn't see Þrúðr through his eyelids, but he didn't have to. Her voice was enough. "Mjölnir is Father's legacy. It will return to us."

Sigmund opened his eyes. Þrúðr looked just as stony as he'd been expecting. Stonier than her "husband," even, and he was at least partially made of literal rock.

"Don't you get it?" he said. "Why do you think the jötnar sent an army out this way? It wasn't for Lain; they don't even like him all that much. We came to stop you guys getting your hands on Mjölnir. Because if we don't succeed? There's going to be war. With Ásgarðr. The jötnar would rather burn that place to the ground than see Mjölnir brought back."

Þrúðr stared, silent and haughty. She was really just a kid, Sigmund thought. Barely older than Eisa.

Eventually, she said, "Ridiculous. If those beasts want pretense for war then—"

Valdís growled. Actually growled, standing and leaning forward over the table, teeth bared. "Watch your tongue, ásynja!"

"Um, maybe this isn't—"

But Valdís wasn't listening. "You call us beasts, yet we live where we live and do you no harm."

"Hah!" It wasn't so much a laugh as a piece of punctuation. "Son of a liar, your people have made trouble enough."