The Apple Throne (35 page)

Signy listens stone-faced, and Ned Unferth’s eyes are drawn again and again to the elf-gold ring on my hand. Captain Darius does not seem bothered by the gold’s temptation.

When I am finished, there is a long silence.

Sune, who has drunk all of his liquor but eaten little cheese or meat, says, “Eirfinna is capable of great disguise and cannot be far behind us.”

The berserker captain leans his elbows onto his knees. “I will post my men in doubles and alert the wolf guard.”

“She’ll not wish to make a scene if she can help it,” Amon adds. “She does not
enjoy
conflict, though will fight for what she wants.”

“Can she be killed?” asks the poet. His gaze is on my right hand, on the gold. He, too, has finished his drink.

Sune says, “She could be, but should not.”

The Valkyrie slowly stands and walks to the small table where the liquor bottle sits. Pressing her hands against the edge, she leans in. Her head bows. “What do you want me to do, Astrid?” she asks, her back to all of us. “You tell a long tale, with details I did not need in order to understand the danger and Soren’s death.”

I stand, too, folding my hands before me, left fingers covering the ring upon my right. “I want you to give the troll heart to Eirfinna so that she can wake the trolls.”

She spins to me. “
Never
. It is mine.”

“Then I want you to swallow it.”

“No!” Ned launches to his feet, then hisses as he clutches his hip and bends in pain. Darius Strong puts a hand on the poet’s shoulder and meets my eyes. His are dark brown, with a thin flare of crow-feet. Heat radiates off of him, as familiar as Soren to me.

“The heart is too dangerous,” the berserker captain says. “It turns Valkyrie into monsters.”

“The troll mothers are dying, all of them, with the heart in that iron cage,” I say.

“Maybe that’s their fate,” Amon says. “They were created by magic. It is fitting for magic to be their undoing.”

“Who are we to make that decision?” Sune demands.

“And who are you to sacrifice Signy?” says Ned. His lips have gone pale with strain. “Is that so easy for you? The heart could destroy her.”

The Valkyrie cuts him an ungrateful glance.

Sune says, “It’s already destroying her.”

His pronouncement is met with more silence. We all six stand in a circle.

“It must be swallowed,” I say. “If you won’t give it to Eirfinna, Signy, you have to be brave enough to risk it yourself.”

She looks at me, something like longing in her face.

I unbutton the top of my cardigan and reach under the collar of my dress to pull the final apple of immortality from my bra. I hold it out in the palm of my gold-encrusted hand. “This is a seed of life. It gives life, to balance what the heart consumes. Maybe it can save you.”

Signy latches onto it with her eyes, her own hand clenched around the heart pendant. She stares and stares, growing a sheen of sweat across her lip. Harsh breath rushes suddenly out of her, and she says, “We’ll burn Soren tomorrow night,” then flees the room.

T
hough I’m offered a room in the residence, I sleep in the dark Death Hall near Soren. My dreams are full of monsters: troll mothers and stone babies birthed by human mothers, diamond teeth growing out of my gums, and my skin turning to solid gold when I walk out under the sun. The scar in my shoulder crawls over my skin, spreading strength like a hard golden shell. I cannot move my arm, but the gold overcomes my breasts and stomach, transforming me into a statue.

My mouth is frozen open, my vision fading as even my eyes turn into gold.

Urgency throws me awake.

But I’m alone. My panting breath scours the empty hall. I’m stiff and uncomfortable, on my side against the first pew, head on my tingling arm. Why do I have this dream? This nightmare? It cannot be a true dream, for I surely cannot seeth my own future any more than Freya herself can.

What is this dream? Is there some answer to it? Freya said
gold
under that giant metal hammer and
follow the gold to your heart’s desire.
Was there some riddle in that prophecy?
We choose the monsters we become.

How can I convince Signy to make this attempt or give the heart to Eirfinna?

Slowly, I get up from the pew.

There is Soren, upon the altar. From this small distance, in the dim candlelight, I could believe he only sleeps if his chest weren’t so still.

I go to him, rubbing my eyes. He’s laid out properly now, no sleeping bag but a fine green altar cloth below him, Sleipnir’s Tooth on his chest. Below the fresh oil of sharp camphor and mint, I can smell it easily now. The decay. I do not kiss him.

An hour later I’ve washed and found a kitchen with a kindly enough cook who gave me the tea I asked for and returned with it warming my palms. I sit on the floor of the Death Hall, my back against the altarstone, waiting.

I expect Signy to come. I expect her to seek me out to talk about Eirfinna and the heart and my plan. I sip my bitter tea, head leaned back, eyes staring down the long aisle to the front of the hall, which is barred from the public today. Two wolf guards stand ready, spears in hand, long knives sheathed at their hips. In the old times, Valkyrie commanded packs of wolves: the actual beasts, larger than what we know now, who roamed the battlefields with the Death Choosers, feasting on the unworthy slain. Those are some of my least favorite stories. Now the wolves are human fighters, trained in one of the only paths to war for women.

The rear door opens, and I hear two pairs of footsteps. They pause on the opposite side of the altar, where I am not visible.

The newcomers are silent for a moment, then one sniffs loudly—like a child.

“I am sorry,” Darius Strong says. “I will contact your father if you like, and you can be returned to his band.”

“I’d rather,” says a high voice, a boy’s voice, “stay with you, captain.”

Pilot. Soren’s apprentice, who traveled with him these past nine months. I slowly stand up and turn to look at the boy from across Soren’s body. He’s twelve and slight, with tanned skin and the sort of brown hair that changes with the light. It’s long and braided simply, and the boy looks strange in the official winter uniform of berserkers: black pants and boots and a thick black vest over a shirt that is also black. It isn’t the uniform itself that is strange, but his obvious youth. I’ve never seen a berserker so young already taken by the frenzy and joined in a warband. The spear tattoo is too long for his face.

When he sees me, his eyes widen.

I say, “Pilot, I am Idun. Soren told me much about you.”

“Lady Idun.” The boy puts two fingers to his chest in salute and bows. “Soren told me I could trust you,” he says bluntly.

“Yes.”

Pilot’s gaze sinks to Soren’s face, and his mouth seizes for a moment. Tears redden his eyes, but he clenches his jaw so tight it’s impossible to miss the muscles shifting in his small neck and at his temples. He makes a fist over his heart—just like Soren—and Darius leans nearer, touching Pilot’s back.

“Carry it,” Darius murmurs. “Carry it, do not tamp it down, but let it hurt, boy. The madness is meant to hurt, and you are a channel for it, not a dam. And remember he will return to us.”

Pilot nods hard, his eyes tightly shut. “Soren said,” he whispers, “forcing it down or away is only dangerous. He said it’s not my enemy, but my partner, and we should dance together.”

Tears prick my eyes, and I feel them in my throat, though I know—
I know
—Soren is coming back. The moment is too wretched. It might have been real, Soren might have truly died, and we would have lost the best of us. I walk around the altar and place my hand on the boy’s shoulder.

He tilts to see my hand better. His small mouth opens, and he touches my fingers in awe.

Not my fingers—the elf gold ring. He lets out a shaky breath. “What is that? Can I have one?”

“Pilot,” Darius chides. “That is another fire to channel. You must learn not to be tempted by fire or power.”

“It feels like the Valkyrie’s necklace.”

Darius and I share a look; him concerned, me impressed. The easy connection he makes between the heart and this ring that is fused to my finger reminds me of my dream this morning: of turning to gold in the sunlight as trolls turn to stone. It lights a thought in me.

“Pilot.” The boy looks at me, barely having to raise his face for already he’s nearly as tall as me. “Will you guard Soren’s body for me until I return?”

“Yes, Lady Idun.”

I go to find Amon.

• • •

First I come across Sune with the off-duty berserkers, where one named Brick spars with him using two seax, the long knives Signy’s wolf guards have strapped to their thighs. I watch as Brick touches Sune teasingly during a break, showing him how to better position his hips and smiling wide. Sune seems to relax into it and flirt back until he sees me and snaps to, but I shake my head and wave him to continue.

I find Amon hiding in his van out on the tourist-busy street. He’s cataloguing a few thin brown leaves into a book of pressed herbs. I ask if he has anything I can use to poison the Valkyrie and steal her heart, and the expression he makes is so shocked I have to immediately swear I was joking.

Amon gives me an off-hand glare that slips into a smile. “I’ll have you selling shine and relics yet.”

I drag the sliding door closed behind me and settle into the relative warmth of the van to watch him work. The nails tied to the ceiling sway and click together from my movements. As I watch him slide the leaves between thin pages and mark a date under each, it slowly dawns on me what he’s doing.

“Amon,” I gasp, then lower my voice as if anyone can hear. “Did you
pluck those leaves off the New World Tree
?”

“You sound totally ragging scandalized,” he says with a laugh.

Horror tightens my throat. “Maybe I’ll just tell the Valkyrie and she’ll be enraged enough she’ll
have
to let the heart consume her.”

He shrugs.

“Do you have the rest of that elf gold still?” I ask.

“In the trunk.”

I get up and climb out of the van, heading to the rear where I jerk open one of the doors and then input the code he mutters into the keypad lock of his trunk. I swing it up, and there atop everything is the silk bag of elf gold. Though the ring on my finger and the gold in my shoulder both hum, I do not hear the siren song of this gold any longer
.
I overturn the bag, letting all the chunks and jewelry tumble onto the silk-covered troll organs. I put on all the rings, covering my right hand completely, with two remaining for my left. I twist the gold torc around my neck. I settle one of the wide cuff bracelets around my right wrist, where it grows warm to match my skin instantly.

My right side is armored in elf gold. It is heavy and smooth and feels as though it sinks into me, uniting the ring and scar at my collar in one long gauntlet. I breathe deeply and feel the weight on my shoulder, the weight on my chest. I shudder, but am strong. Eirfinna said, when she healed my injuries,
They won’t ever break again
. That is the sort of monster I would choose: unbreakable, golden, alive.

“Idun?”

It’s Sune behind me, out of breath and flushed, as if he ran from the berserkers’ practice lot. “I—ah, what are you doing?”

Amon comes around from the side of the van. “Done showing off for the Odinists?” he snaps.

But Sune doesn’t rise to it, still staring at me, at the gold on my arm. He takes my hand and raises it, then his eyes drift closed as he kisses my fingers. Not like a friend or captain, but intimately. His tongue finds the pad of my middle finger, and he cups his mouth with my palm. I pull my hand back, but Sune does not let it go. He draws a long breath through his nose, and I feel him tremble.

“Ragging mother of…” Amon drags Sune back and glares at me. “That gold is a disaster waiting to happen, Astrid. Somebody will hurt you to get it.”

“Sune can handle himself.” I level my gaze at the hunter, whose shoulders heave and he looks back hungrily. He nods once, then again, then steps back. His body cracks with a long shiver, and then he meets my gaze again, more clear-eyed than before.

Amon sighs with disgust. “Why?”

“I think it might help the Valkyrie,” I say. “Like armor, like stone-skin.” I leave them both there.

• • •

Signy is avoiding me. I scour the Death Hall and her residence, opening doors thoughtlessly and calling her name. Most I come across shrink away—not from me, but from the gold armor. A few berserkers attempt to block my way, and I use my title against them, forcing a struggle between loyalty to their Valkyrie and loyalty to Idun the Young. Every time but once, she wins.

It’s better that way I suppose.

Finally, in the garden of the New World Tree itself, I locate Ned Unferth, sitting on a wrought-iron bench beneath a large shock of winter lavender. An old sword lays across his thighs, and there’s a bottle tipping against his side. “You,” he mutters.

“Where is she?” I kneel in the cool yellow grass. Wind blows the lattice of Tree branches overhead, clicking and clacking them like a loom. There is a tall brick wall, capped with a concrete lintel, and beyond it common street traffic: horns and rushing wheels. It’s the center of a modern city outside, though here the garden runs wild and strange.

“
She
is
out
,” he says, sneering at me. “Doesn’t want to see anybody until the funeral.”

I reach a hand for the bottle, and he jerks back, snapping a few words at me in a tongue of Scandan I do not know, but clearly recognize as cursing.

My elf gold glints in the thin rays of sunlight.

Ned pulls a long drink from the bottle, then snarls, “That skit’s making me hard.”

“I thought—I thought you were a poet,” I manage, leaning back onto my heels.

“
Oh
. You thought I was a
poet
. Well. Then. Allow me to express the rip of desire coursing under my skin, threading a song from my tongue to my heart to my balls.” He grimaces. “Balls isn’t a very pretty word.”