The Strange Maid (29 page)

“It isn’t natural to dream your own death again and again,” Soren says. “But Baldur does. And Astrid’s were sometimes frightening, sometimes uplifting, sometimes about people she didn’t know and never would. They were always true though. Because she was a seethkona. And her goddess is the goddess of dreams. That same goddess Baldur sleeps with every winter, in death. The goddess who connects them.”

“Freya, the queen of witches,” I whisper. I shiver and close my eyes. The troll mother roars.

“Signy … the Alfather does many things, manipulates words and memory, and thought … but he has no power over our dreams.”

My eyes fly open. “You think Freya is behind them. My dreams.”

“She stole Baldur’s ashes.”

“What?” I roll over abruptly, clutch the foot of the bed, and stare down at him. My hair falls all around my face. “They told us it was one of Odin’s Lonely Warriors, and why would she do that?” A memory flashes through my head: demanding to know if Unferth was Einherjar, and his swift, amused denial.

Soren’s dark eyes are grim, his lips tight. “To manipulate Astrid exactly where Freya wanted her—for the destiny of the world, she said. Maybe she wants something from you, too.”

“But Odin Alfather cast my riddle into the Tree; the Valkyrie would know if it were otherwise. That’s what set me on this path!”

My calm companion doesn’t reply, his silence full of weight and meaning.

I throw myself back onto my back and stare at the popcorn ceiling as if I could force the swirls into answers. “What could she want from me?” I whisper.

“I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t. I only know that either your dreams are only dreams, or they mean something because the goddess of dreams wants you to know a thing.”

“Odd-eye and rag me,” I whisper.

Could Freya be sending me dreams, could she be pushing me toward the troll mother? The troll mother she herself created?

“Odin,” I start, tentatively, “Odin would have to be … aware. He sent the riddle.”

“It sounds like a prophecy, though, doesn’t it? And Freya is the only one of them who sees the future.”

I say, “And so maybe he asked her to read my future, and this was her answer.”

“Which might have been all her intent, merely doing her cousin a favor.”

His tone makes clear that he doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t trust Freya, because whatever it is that happened to his Astrid, whatever got her name torn out of the world, he blames the goddess of dreams.

“All right.” I lick my dry lips. “Let’s pretend that’s what happened. She gave him this prophecy that he turned into a riddle. Maybe he knew the answer, that the troll mother is the stone heart I need—but Freya must have. If she’s the one driving me toward the mother.”

“And how did you figure out the troll mother was the answer?”

Nausea ruins my insides. “Ned.”

“Are you certain he came from Odin?”

“I believed it,” I whisper. “I chose to. Everything pointed to it, it was the right answer to the—the riddle of his existence.”

This is called doubt, little raven,
he murmurs to me now.

“But no, I’m not
certain,
” I say through my teeth, barely willing to let the words out. I press the balls of my hands into my eyes. “Oh,
Hangatyr,
oh gods.”

May Signy Valborn never regret,
Unferth prayed, the last thing before he died.

I’ve known he left pieces out of his story, I’ve known there was more to tell—but it can’t be that that he used me. It can’t be. I kissed him. I loved him. I trusted him.

I want to take up his sword and crash it into the window, destroy something.

I have to know if Ned was a liar by his riddles, by all he omitted. I have to know if Freya sent him or if Odin did, because I am
his,
not hers: a Valkyrie and a wild, passionate, screaming one. If I am on a path Odin set me on, fine. But I won’t work against him. I have to know.

“Soren.”

“Signy.” He kneels, leaning his elbows onto the bed.

I sit cross-legged and reach for his hands. “Precia, the Valkyrie of the South, has her Death Hall in Port Orleans.”

He nods, turning his hands over so our palms connect.

“We’ll go for Disir Day and I’ll ask her about all of this. She told me she wanted to help.”

Soren agrees, and I cling to him. With my fingers dug into his wrists I beg him not to let go. We lie next to each other on the bed, only our hands connected. His hot, mine tingling with my pulse until I fall asleep.

But the troll mother waits.

Unferth is with her, and she puts her hand on his face gently, like a lover. It envelops his head and he leans into her, curls his fingers around her thumb. He smiles. He looks straight at me and says, “My only Signy.”

I wake up in darkness, unable to close my eyes again.

EIGHTEEN

BALDUR’S TOWN HOUSE
in Port Orleans is a narrow blue-shingled building with a porch on the second and third stories, bright yellow shutters, and plants dripping like hair from the rails and even the roof. Soren parallel parks impressively, and I hop out onto a broken cobbled sidewalk. Graybeard moss dangles from the low branches of an oak. I have to brush it out of my way as I swing Unferth’s sword onto my shoulder.

Baldur himself will be joining us here for the ball tonight. Soren tapped his finger against the wheel for the entire drive once we hit the Orleans kingstate, which I assume means a level of excitement that would’ve set a lesser man puking.

We start for the front porch, with its wide fans and line of white rocking chairs. A man stands up from one, lifting a hand in greeting. But it’s not the god of light.

It’s Rathi.

He looks amazing, with his golden hair curled about his face by the humidity, his jacket gone ,and those pale pink shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. I hope his slacks are cotton. I’m sweating already in my jeans and Mad Eagles T-shirt. “Rathi,” I say, letting surprise show in my tone. He puts his arms around me and hugs me.

“I’ve been worried about you,” he murmurs. “I’m glad you agreed to this.”

“The preacher cosponsoring the ball must be your Ardo Vassing?” I lean back to meet his eyes.

Rathi nods, then releases me to bow politely at Soren. “It’s good to see you again, Bearstar. And thank you for watching out for my sister.”

“She’s watched out for me,” Soren rumbles.

I lean my shoulder into Soren’s and catch Rathi’s swift glance of appraisal. “Well,” he says, his well-practiced smile flashing, “she’s good at that, too.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask, letting go of both boys and heading up to the tall front door.

“I got in last night with Ardo and managed to obtain this address to see if you had any free time for sightseeing.”

With a sardonic glance at Soren, I say, “He means he flirted his way here.”

Rathi holds still, one eyebrow tilted slightly as if to say
I’m above such things.
But Soren, knocking against the cut-glass window in the door, glances pointedly at me. “That skill must run in your family.”

Both Rathi and I laugh, but for different reasons, I’m sure.

An hour later, I’m walking through the Old Quarter between Rathi and Soren, with vague directions from the housekeeper to the hanging tree in Sanctus Louis Square. Soren was surprised we weren’t heading straight for the Port Orleans Death Hall, but that’s not where Precia will be today.

I recognize the energy of a tourist trap, though here we’re seduced not with hawkers and historical artifacts but with dark, almost filthy mystery. The Quarter sticks to the back of my throat; I could peel a film of it off my skin. The streets are narrow and cobbled in most places, the buildings redbrick though often painted over with dingy white or pale green. Upper stories are quiet, all tall dark windows and empty iron balconies. At street level, doors are flung open and painted signs beckon to us with the promise of magic charms and unique jewelry, seether readings, fancy shoes, and every sort of fried food.

The air smells of old beer and molasses, with an acrid undertone I choose not to dwell on. Littered in the gutters are beads and torn streamers making half-rune signs, and everything is slightly damp, though I don’t think it rained.

We find cold coffee to keep me awake and share a basket of airy doughnuts as we walk down the center of Prince Street amidst a throng of not only tourists but Disir Day celebrants.

Disir Day is a festival of the goddesses and all disir: women spirits and the ghosts of our mother-ancestors. Temporary shrines are stacked haphazardly on the sidewalks, glowing with elf-lights and crowded with seven-day candles, tiny goddess figures, bells and charms, and laughing patrons. Crepe flowers drip from the balconies, adding rainbows of color. I’ve heard Port Orleans does this for every holiday, and even some outside the Asgardian purview. The stories of Port Orleans at Hallowblot especially titillate, what with the Old Quarter transforming into a giant goblin playground, with masks and costumes and a three-kilometer-long parade.

I keep my eyes stripped for a very specific sort of vendor who’s likely to be nearer to the hanging tree, but in a place such as this they might have permanent shops. It’s not easy pushing through, and we’re forced to a leisurely pace. Street performers clog the corners, and people with plastic cups of icy alcohol stream like private parades between the pubs. If Soren and I had our weapons, we’d be able to cut a better path, but as it is we don’t stand out—Soren blends in better than in any place else I’ve seen. There are every sort of people here, speaking different languages, with every kind of god’s jewelry and tattoos and fashion. It seems to relax him, or at least balance out his aversion to crowds. I feel entirely on edge with questions, eyes burning from lack of sleep, while sweat prickles my scalp and the short skirt of this dress sticks to my thighs.

Rathi doesn’t help by droning on and on about the history of Port Orleans and how it became so religiously diverse. It was the largest port in New Asgard two hundred years ago, until the end of the Thralls’ War, when it divided into the formerly rich and the newly freed. Almost immediately Li Grand Zombi became the first non-Asgardian deity officially acknowledged by Congress, though only as an incarnation of the World Snake. The shock of it drew men from all churches, and Biblists in particular, hoping for similar success. But the voodoo queens had managed the politics by embracing the variety of our gods and finding mirrors in their own spirituality, “while compromise,” Rathi says disapprovingly, “was never a Biblist strength.”

Rich, coming from a Freyan,
Unferth whispers.

He won’t leave me alone, either.

It isn’t until Rathi, thanks to encouraging grunts from Soren, is speculating on why Port Orleans voodoo is so compatible with Freya the Witch’s magic, that I see what I’m looking for. Several piles of wire cages spill out of a storefront, holding rats and sparrows and squirrels.

When I stop, Rathi nearly runs into me but grips my shoulder tightly. “Oh, Signy, really?” He gazes past me at the martyr shop. “I thought you were only going to the hanging tree to speak with the Valkyrie.”

“I can’t approach the hanging tree on Disir Day without sacrifice.” I irritably shrug him off and head for the nearest stack of cages. The tiny white mice crawl on top of each other, whiskers twitching slowly. There’s a pair of albino pigeons cuddled together sleeping, and a long gray rat watches me. Soren comes up behind and softly says, “I haven’t done this since my dad died.”

“I’ll be out here,” Rathi says, waving his hand at the street itself.

Soren and I duck into the shop. “Weak stomach?” Soren asks.

“Delicate Freyan sensibilities.”

Soren’s eyes crinkle. “I thought everyone made sacrifice.”

“On Yule they hold their noses, but the branch of Freyan Rathi is—all the Summerlings and my family, too—say life is too valuable for such a thing.”

“That’s the point of sacrifice, though.”

“I know.”

The shop is livid with animal calls and stinks like bleach and wood shavings and urine. Cages hang from the low rafters, decorated with ribbons and rune flags. There are inkpots and rune brushes, feather fans, penknives and silver throat daggers. A family of four studies the rodent wall as their father points out the coloring on various mice to his two daughters and what the differences represent. A single woman with an iron collar studies a molting crow in a too-small cage. I head for the counter while Soren picks through a stand of prayer cards.