Star Dust (A Paladin Adventure)

Have fun stormin' the castle

Thor dragged both guards over. "Tell me what your orders are," he commanded.

The uninjured man spoke up. "We are to sweep this area for Lady Sif," he said, glancing over at her. Thor scowled.

"And what are you to do once your sweep is complete?

"Return to the citadel and report."

"Report to whom?"

"Loki, who has been given charge of the guard by Hela."

"My brother, in charge of the guard?" Thor said incredulously. The guard shrugged.

"It is the wish of Hela," he said.

"If we can get word to Loki, we can get the best information," I said in a low voice. Steve moved our group between the entrance and the captured guards.

"Ok, but how do we do that? How do we even know Loki is trustworthy? He could have had another change of heart since we were all sent to the Grandmaster," he said.

"We have to take a leap," I said. "Look, if we can get an unintercepted message to him, I can meet with him alone and see where his loyalty really lies," I offer. "I think that regardless of anything else, he's still my friend."

"If this guard reports directly to Loki, I can make him deliver a specific message," Wanda offered, and I smiled.

"Where would you meet him?" Steve asked, and Thor spoke up.

"I  can take her to the hunting lodge where Sif was staying. Loki also knows of it; we found it when we were hunting together as youths. It may be why he has sent guards to search." He turned to me. "What message would you send?"

"Wanda, can you make the guard sing instead of speak a message?" I said, smiling craftily. She nodded, looking interested.

"We watched a lot of musicals. He enjoys them," I said to the mystified group. Thor looked baffled.

"I cannot imagine my brother finding entertainment in that," he said and I shrugged a shoulder, trying to remember his favorite. We'd watched the ones in his DVD collection a couple times each. The Phantom of the Opera movie with Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum, On the Town, Singing in the Rain, High Society...Chicago. He'd very much enjoyed that movie'; we'd watched it together a few times and security had reported he'd seen it several times on his own. 

"A bit of a song from Chicago. He liked that one, and I think he'd connect it with me."  I leaned over. "Hey, kid--" I waved and got the attention of the two guards.

"Once you make your report and tell him that Sif is not here, will other patrols come or will they move on?"

The braver one spoke. "In that case, the search would shift to another area. But we have found her."

"You will forget you have seen her," Thor growled.

"We cannot," the guard defended himself. "Our loyalty is to the ruler of Asgard." Who is not you, he might have added.

"I can make them forget," Wanda murmured. And so the plot was hatched; the guards were taken outside, their memory altered out of view of any of us to include just the impression of habitation in the lodge, and the senior of the pair, if he found himself alone with Loki, would deliver our message. Three lines from  the toe-tapping number "I Can't Do It Alone"--

Now, you've seen me goin' through it
You may think there's nothin' to it
But I simply cannot do it alone!

Then, if Loki asked, he would give the coordinates to the hunting lodge. If Loki was not alone, the guard was to keep alert and deliver the message at the earliest opportunity.  Wanda cleverly included a command that would make the man forget what he had just said after he delivered the message, so no one would be able to make him repeat it. We had a timeline of when the report was to be made and estimated how long it might take Loki to respond. If he did. It was a risk; he could send a patrol instead of coming himself. It was as safe a plan as we could devise.