Work Text:
They have hardly left the treasure room before Thor, hanging on to their father’s hand, begins to chatter, making plans for the afternoon – half-baked suggestions, soon made and quickly discarded, about riding or archery practise or watching the Einherjar guards as they drill. It is obvious that he has already left the treasure room and Father’s story behind. Thor is forever leaving things behind, whether they are objects like his cloak or boots or wooden practise sword, or ideas, memories, and thoughts. His mind does not linger on the snow and ice of Midgard and the brutal cold of Jotunheim as their father had described it. Nor is he paying attention to anything other than himself, and so Loki is the first to see their mother standing just outside the treasure room doors.
His spirits brighten when he sees her and he would rush forwards to greet her, except that he catches the glint in her eye and feels a qualm. She is angry. About what he does not know, so he hangs back a little to watch and wait, just in case she is angry at him.
Her eyes are on his father. “Telling battle stories, my love?”
“Mother!” Thor shouts, and launches himself at her, embracing her about the waist. “Father has been telling us all about the war with Jotunheim, and how brave he was, and when I grow up, I’m going to fight the monsters, just like he did!” He turns and holds out his hand, beaming. “Loki will, too! Isn’t that right, brother?”
Loki, watching their mother as she watches Father, hesitates. There is an odd set to her smile as she says: “So you fought monsters on Jotunheim, my love?”
“It is only a story,” Father says. “For the children.”
“You ought to be more careful,” she tells him, still calm. “You’ll give them nightmares.”
“I don’t get nightmares!” Thor exclaims, excited and eager to claim his share of attention. “I’m not afraid of the Frost Giants! I shall strike them with my sword, like so! And so!” He grips an imaginary sword and goes through the first few motions of their sword drill. “Mother! Are you watching?”
“Very good, Thor,” Mother says, although she is really not watching at all. Thor, though, is making swooshing and slashing noises as he cuts at the air with his imaginary sword, and does not notice. “You must be more prudent in your choice of words, my love.”
Father laughs. “Always such a mother hen,” he teases, and chucks her under the chin. “My queen.”
Loki, shrinking back behind his father’s cloak, thinks he is very brave to speak like this to Mother when she is so angry. It is foolish of him, but he cannot quite keep from feeling frightened when she is in a temper: when her eyes narrow and she closes her lips very tight, and she holds her right hand by the wrist as though she is restraining herself from striking whoever has offended her. Of course she would never strike him. She is his mother, and she loves him. But it is alarming all the same.
Perhaps it is because she is angry so rarely, unlike Father. Father’s tempers fall like summer storms: drenching, torrential, overwhelming downpours that leave you deafened and gasping, but which pass quickly and leave the sky brighter and the grass more green by contrast. Mother’s tempers strike like lightning, which earths itself in the ground without a trace only to catch a coal seam and burst up into forest fires many miles distant and without any apparent connection.
Thor, tired of a conversation in which he has no part, grabs Loki by the sleeve. “Come on, brother! Let’s go to the practise yard! Or the kitchens, let’s go to the kitchens, first!”
Loki is willing enough to let himself be led away, but he is stopped when Mother calls out: “Loki, stay. I wish to speak with you.” Her eyes are still on their father, and they flash as she curtseys like a bride newly-presented at court. “That is, if my lord permits?”
Her voice is impish and insincere, and Father laughs as he catches up her hand and kisses it.
“You are the queen,” he says, matching her playful tone. “You know you may do whatever you like.”
Mother turns her head a little to one side, more serious now. “May I?” she says, thoughtfully.
Father kisses her hand again. “Perhaps not,” he admits, all playfulness gone. “But there is a reason behind everything I do. You must believe that.” It is uncomfortable for Loki to watch them fight without fighting, or whatever it is they are doing as they talk in circles that don’t seem to intersect. There is something there he wants to understand, but he lacks the means to unknit it – for now.
He tears his gaze away from them and finds Thor staring at him. “Well, so much for the kitchens,” his brother says. He sounds sheepish. “What does Mother want you for?”
“I don’t know,” Loki admits, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice.
Thor steps closer. “You aren’t in trouble, are you?” he asks, hushed. “What have you done?”
“Nothing!” Loki says, irritated. His voice is loud and it echoes around the chamber. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”
For all his words, though, he is reluctant to go with her: and as Thor and Father go into the Palace he lingers outside the treasure room door, scuffing the tiled floor with his feet as he turns over memories of his most recent misdeeds in his mind and frets over what his Mother has in mind for him.
But: “Loki!” she calls again, and he must go.
//
They go to the gardens.
There are many gardens in the palace grounds but the one Mother takes him to is Loki’s favourite. It is inside a small walled courtyard, partially covered by a trellis over which climbing vines grow in profusion, and its centerpiece is a large, ornate fountain.
Loki drags his feet as he follows his mother out of the palace but when he sees the fountain his spirits rise. The center of it rises in tiers, like a cake stand, and the water bubbles out of a pipe in the top and cascades down one, two, three levels before pooling in the bottommost basin. There is nothing he would like more than to run and throw himself over the ledge so he could reach out and stick his hands under the stream of water, but that would not be dignified. Loki is very careful of his dignity just now, and so he matches his mother’s sedate pace as she crosses the courtyard and takes a seat on the edge of the fountain’s basin.
Mother smiles as he sits down beside her. She puts her arms around him and Loki submits to her embrace with good grace and only a little exasperation. He doesn’t understand people and their determination to touch and be touched. It is unpleasant and uncomfortable, and difficult to endure for long. When Father’s hand lingers on his shoulder, or when Thor seizes him in a bear-hug after some petty victory on the hard dirt practise fields, it makes the sweat prick Loki’s skin and, in the worst cases, makes him feel dizzy and sick, the way he does when he stands too close to the fireplace in the nursery.
Being sick makes him irritable and sometimes, when Thor laughs off his demands to be left alone and ignores his struggles, Loki yells at him, striking with words when his fists can’t leave a mark: but then Thor sulks, and the nurse scolds him, and Loki is left to feel that there is something wrong about not wanting to be touched. It is better to anticipate and avoid such encounters altogether, whether from Thor or one of his friends, and he has become adept at ducking and dodging, and using the small illusions Mother has taught him to misdirect them.
He has been chided for such tricks in the past, by the nurse and by Father when he catches him at it, and Thor and the others sulk when he does it and claim they only wanted to be friends, but there is nothing friendly about the searing, sweating heat of another person’s body pressed up against yours. He doesn’t understand why they lie to themselves about it, why they pretend that such close contact is pleasant, even. But Loki has already begun to notice that people lie to themselves about many things.
Even Mother, normally so clear-sighted and brilliant, has succumbed the lie, but for her Loki would endure much worse than a little discomfort. He waits patiently and lets her hold him until he starts to feel uncomfortably warm. He only has to give a little wriggle before she drops her arms and lets him step away, and he loves her for it.
This close, the temptation is too much – and besides, it is only him and Mother. Loki props his arms up on the edge of the fountain and sticks his right hand into the water. It feels wonderful, the way the air in the enormous ice boxes under the kitchens does. He would spend all day here if he could, sitting in the shade of the trellis and playing on the polished stone of the courtyard, but Mother brings him here only sometimes. He isn’t allowed to visit the fountain on his own. Mother says it is because the water in the fountain is magical and dangerous, but Loki has begun to suspect this is a story. After all, both he and Thor were given water from the fountain to drink – how could it be dangerous?
In other circumstances, such a prohibition would only have had the effect of making him even more determined to find a way around the ban. He is good at being sneaky, and even with the guards around, he is sure he could manage to get into the garden by himself. But he had seen the way she held herself as she asked him to promise, starting anxiously at every sound, poised as though to flee, and he had realized that she was afraid, although he did not understand why – and so he had promised, and he had kept that promise.
He drags his fingers through the water, admires the patterns the ripples make on the surface. There are no fish in this fountain, no plants, unlike some others in the palace gardens. The water in this fountain is deep, dark, and cold.
He can feel his mother’s eyes on him. He hears a sigh and a rustle as she rearranges her skirts before she speaks.
“Did you like your father’s story, Loki?” Loki squirms a little at that. He suspects that Mother is angry with Father for telling them about Jotunheim. He knows it is wrong to tell stories – he has been told that often enough. But he did like Father’s story. He likes hearing about the other Realms. He thinks back to his father’s words in the treasure room and he thinks he can feel a cold wind on his face, the prick of ice on his skin.
“Yes,” he says, defiantly. “It was educational,” he adds, in case that will win him a respite. Mother sets great store by education.
She smiles. “And what did your father’s story teach you?”
Loki looks down into the fountain. The motion of the water distorts his reflection. “The Frost Giants used the Casket of Ancient Winters to attack Midgard. Father made war against them, and took the Casket away from them to make them stop.”
“And did your father tell you about the Jotnar themselves? What do you think they look like?”
“Oh, they are terrible monsters!” he exclaims, enthusiastically. Father’s description had fired his imagination, so much so that he had seemed to see a Frost Giant standing before him in the flesh. “They are eight feet tall and blue all over, and enormously strong, with glowing red eyes and pointed teeth!”
The red eyes in particular had fascinated him. Loki thinks he might like to have red eyes. Maybe he could try it one day, when he has learned enough magic. Changing one’s shape is supposed to be very difficult magic, some of the most difficult there is, but Loki does not think it would be that hard.
Mother sighs again, looking off into the middle distance. For some reason Loki’s answers appear to have depressed her. He does not understand why: he knows his description was correct.
Her next question sounds at first like a non-sequitur: “Do you know what this fountain is, Loki?”
Loki gives her a very disbelieving look. Of course he knows what the fountain is.
“This is Mimir’s Fountain,” he says, dutifully reciting the lesson their tutor had taught them. “One sip of its waters grants the drinker mastery of all tongues and all understanding.” He leans forwards over the edge of the fountain to let the stream of water fall over his fingers. “That’s why Thor and I got to drink some. Don’t you remember?”
They had each been given a new suit of clothes for the occasion, and there had been a ceremony, and a feast afterwards. Father had drawn the water from the fountain with his own hands, and Loki and Thor had both drunk it from a special goblet, and the people had cheered. Loki had liked that. Afterwards their tutor had taken them to the Vanir section of the city and for the first time he had been able to understand and answer back when the people there, immigrants from Vanaheim, had spoken to him – respectfully, of course, as benefited a prince. Even Thor had agreed that it was wonderful, and only Loki knew that Mother hadn’t wanted to let them drink from the fountain, because he had been hiding behind the throne room door as she argued about it with Father.
“They will never learn the language properly with the All-Speak!” she had protested. “It is part of their heritage – it behooves them to know how to speak it without resorting to tricks and spells!”
“They are princes of Asgard, not Vanaheim,” Father said. “Their time is too precious to waste on teaching them how to speak over again, as though they had entered a second infancy.”
Privately Loki had agreed with him. He and Thor are Aesir, not Vanir, and the All-Speak lets them understand things well enough. He doesn’t think Mother should have been angry.
Now, Mother’s voice is gentle as she asks: “Do you know where the water in the fountain comes from?”
Loki frowns at the fountain. This was not part of the lesson their tutor had taught them.
Mother takes his hand in hers, intertwining their fingers. Loki’s hand is damp. “The water in Mimir’s Fountain was drawn from the Well of Wisdom,” she says. “On Jotunheim.”
Loki stiffens. Is this what Mother meant, when she said that the fountain was dangerous? He tries to snatch back his hand, fearful of infecting her, but Mother does not let go.
“What did you think of Jotunheim, when your father described it to you?”
Loki squirms and sulks before he answers. He does not like her questions, he does not like this catechism: he is coming to realize that it is a trick, and that Mother is using it to show him that he is wrong and that there are things he does not know. Loki does not like being wrong, and he does not like not knowing things.
“It’s cold,” he says shortly. “And dark. There is nothing there.”
“Jotunheim is cold,” Mother admits. “And it is dark, for part of the year. But there are other times when their sun does not set for weeks and months at a time, and then the Jotnar move from their temples on the surface underneath the ice, where they carve out homes for themselves to live in.” Her hands, enveloping his, are hot. “And the sunlight refracts down through the ice and there is eternal day, and from below you can see the shadows of the Ice Beasts as they cross the surface in search of shade. And as the heat from the sun melts the ice it trickles down through cracks and crevasses to the center of their earth, and that, Loki, is the water that bubbles up from the Well of Wisdom: and it is that water which turns to ice again in the winter, from which the Jotnar build their temples.”
She takes his hands and dips them back under the surface of the water in the fountain. “It is that water which Asgard’s soldiers brought back from Jotunheim after the war, and used to fill this fountain.”
The breath catches in Loki’s throat. It sounds beautiful, when she describes it like that. A palace of ice: how often has he longed for something of the sort, when Asgard’s summers have dragged on and made his head ache from the inescapable heat? Asgard has its winters, but they are short and there is only rarely snow – barely enough to scrape up into a snowman, much less build a temple out of.
“Have you been?” he asks, eagerly. “Have you seen Jotunheim? Have you seen the temples, and the sunlight underneath the ice?”
Mother sits up very straight and draws back her hands. “No,” she says. “I was a young woman when I came from Vanaheim to Asgard, and I have not traveled since. I only know what has been told to me.”
Although she speaks lightly and with a smile on her lips, Loki thinks she sounds sad. He doesn’t want his mother to be sad: he thinks that she deserves to have everything she wants, for she is a queen, and isn’t that what it means to be queen?
“I’ll take you,” he says, in a burst of generosity. “When I’ve grown up, I’ll take you to Jotunheim.”
Mother’s smile grows, and although he is pleased to see her happy, the humour in it rankles. She doesn’t believe him, he realizes. Not really.
“But I am the queen of Asgard,” she points out. “It would not be right for me to leave my Realm.”
Loki spreads his fingers and looks at his hand under the water, frowning. There is something in her tone of voice that makes it sound as though she is making a joke: but all of what she has said is true. She is the All-Mother, the Queen of Asgard, and doesn’t she understand that Asgard is her Realm?
“It won’t matter,” he decides. “I’ll be a king then, and I can do whatever I want.” He half turns his head towards her, still looking at the water. “I will be a king, won’t I?”
“You were born to be a king,” she assures him and he nods, satisfied. Sometimes he has doubts, but Mother always soothes them away. She is looking away again, towards the far wall of the garden. Amid the tangle of climbing vines, a small brown-and-grey bird sits and sings.
“I should like to see Vanaheim again,” she says thoughtfully. “I should like to see my home.”
“You shall,” Loki says, and means it. “And Midgard, and all the other Realms. Everywhere you want to go.” The mention of Midgard catches at his thoughts, and worries him. “The Jotnar attacked Midgard, didn’t they? Was that wrong?”
“Midgard?” The question doesn’t really interest her, he realizes: her eyes are still on the garden wall, and her thoughts are on Vanaheim. She is sitting so still that a little brown-and-grey bird flutters out from the trellis and lands next to her on the edge of the fountain to peck at a crawling insect. “Midgard is the Middle Realm. Many of Yggdrasil’s branches, the secret paths and byways of the universe, pass through it. If Jotunheim’s invasion had been successful, the Jotnar would have had a means of traveling between the Realms without using the Bifrost. The All-Father could not allow that.”
“Because he has to protect the Realms,” Loki says promptly. There is another lesson that has been thoroughly drummed into him. “He has to keep them safe.”
Mother hesitates. “Yes,” she says, eventually. “That’s right.”
Loki turns his attention back to the fountain. Her words have enchanted him, just as she intended: he thinks he sees in his mind’s eye the high, vaulting arches and towering pillars of the temples on Jotunheim. The image is so vivid it might almost be a memory. They are only temporary structures, meant to decay, cleverly built so that their shape will change as the sun grows hot and the ice melts. He seems to hear someone speaking to him, whispering in his ear, explaining the culverts and arches by which the meltwater can be channeled and directed down into the ground and the well from which it came. Loki is delighted by such cunning designs and wonders how he can know about them.
Maybe it is from the water itself that the memory comes. He thinks he can feel it speaking to him. He thinks it wants to be ice. Trapped as it is in the fountain, its currents in constant motion, he realizes that it can never freeze: not even in the depths of winter.
That isn’t right. That isn’t how it is meant to be. He closes his eyes, rests the very tips of his fingers against the surface of the water, and concentrates.
There is a sound as though the fountain itself has held its breath. He feels the change immediately, not just under his fingertips but everywhere, all around him. The very air that touches his skin feels different: feels cold.
Loki opens his eyes.
Every drop of the water from the Well of Wisdom has been turned to ice. The gouts and sprays from the fountain are fixed, suspended in mid-air: a single ineffable moment that has been captured, preserved, rendered tangible and real. The crystals shine brilliantly in the sunlight, dazzling the eyes.
“Mother, look!” he cries, his eyes shining, thrilled by what he has done. It is ice and it is real, it is not an illusion, it is real, true ice that he can feel and even smell. “Isn’t it beautiful, Mother?”
It is beautiful, and, more than that – it is what the water wants to be. Perhaps that is why it was so easy for him to transform it, even though he has never done magic like that before. Or is it always so easy to make a thing into something it is not?
He turns to ask his mother, and is surprised by the fixity of her expression as she stares at the ice. Her eyes, though, are shining as she reaches out and brushes the tips of her fingers over the back of his hands, the ghost of a touch that pleases him more than kisses or caresses would.
“Oh, Loki,” she breathes: “oh, my son!”
She says it fiercely, defiantly, as though hurling that last word into the teeth of some opponent. Loki wonders a little at that, and looks around in case there is someone else in the courtyard he has not seen, but they are alone.
And then the gate into the courtyard creaks, and her hand tenses suddenly around his. With her other hand she makes a quick gesture and the ice in the fountain instantly bursts apart.
The breath catches in Loki’s throat. Her act of vandalism hits him like a betrayal, worse than a slap in the face. It is cruel in a way that he had not known she could be (although he had sometimes suspected it). He rounds on her in a flash, ready to shout, to kick her ankles, to demand why, why did she ruin it? Now Father and Thor will not see the magic he did, and even if he tells them they might not believe him (because Loki does tell stories, but only sometimes), and that was why he needed to show them -.
But then he looks up and catches the fixed look in her face, registers how her fingers are digging painfully into the flesh of his hand, and realizes that, like when she made him promise to never, ever come to the fountain alone - she is afraid.
The mechanism within the fountain gurgles and chokes its way back to life, and the water begins to flow once more as his mother turns her head, ready with a calm smile to greet whoever has entered the garden. But it is only Yonten, the Captain of the Queen’s Guard.
Loki scowls. He does not like Yonten. Not anymore.
He does not like, either, the way that his mother’s face relaxes into a more natural smile as the captain approaches. She always smiles when she sees Yonten. She likes to speak with him, too. Yonten has not drunk from Mimir’s Fountain: his queen forbade it, and as a result his speech is still hampered by a thick accent and he stammers his way through unfamiliar Aesir words, even after so many years of living in Asgard. But Mother says that giving him the All-Speak would spoil the wonderful way he speaks the Vanir-Tongue. She spends hours with Yonten sometimes, trading memories and stories from their home world in the language they share.
Loki wishes she wouldn’t.
He wishes he could tell her about the day when he and Thor were playing soldiers on one of the covered walkways, and two of the court ladies had stopped to fuss over them. Thor, adoring attention and revelling in flattery whatever the source, had been happy to let them pet and admire him, but Loki, loath to submit to such unwelcome embraces, had twisted out of their grip and, well out of arm’s reach, favoured them with a bow instead.
“Ooh,” one of the ladies said, opening her eyes very wide, “so formal! It’s easy to see you’re half-Vanir.”
“Or maybe more than half,” the other said archly, and they both laughed.
Loki had not understood: but their laughter had not been kind, and it had cut into him like a blade.
“What pretty hair you have, Prince Loki!” the first lady had exclaimed, leaning forwards as though she would have run her fingers through it; he shrunk back, appalled. “Such an unusual colour!”
“Even darker than Captain Yonten’s,” the other added, and in that moment all of Loki’s prior affection for Yonten turned to hate, as sharp as a silver knife.
Yonten is not Aesir. He is Vanir, one of the attendants who came with Mother from Vanaheim on her wedding day.
Loki does not want to be Vanir. He does not even want to be half Vanir, he does not want to be half anything. He wants to be Aesir, like Father and Thor. They do not say such things about Thor, though there is as much Vanir blood in him as there is in Loki: but Thor has ash-blonde hair and blue eyes, and Thor likes to be touched, and he does not have these thoughts to tear up the tranquillity of his mind. Thor is Aesir.
Loki is Aesir, too. He wants to be Aesir. He will be Aesir, whatever these court ladies say.
He said nothing to anyone, but much later, at dinner one evening, he used a little of his magic to turn their wine into snakes and had laughed to hear them shriek and see them run away.
There are not so many magic-users in the palace that it was very hard to discover who had done it, and Loki had soon found himself in front of the All-Father, being asked to explain himself. But he did not have the words to explain, and in casting about for something to say that would leaven the frowns the All-Father was heaping on him, he thought of Thor. Thor is the most Aesir of the Aesir Loki knows, and he thinks he could do worse than imitate him.
“It was just a bit of fun,” he says, because that is what Thor had said when he and Fandral got in trouble for falling through the stable roof while playing at roof-top duels, and not only had he not been scolded, Father had even laughed and chucked him under the chin and told him he had done just the same, when he was a boy.
But Father does not laugh, and Loki is scolded quite a lot. Perhaps Thor is not the best model for him to take. He will have to study his mother, and see how she does it: how she can smile, and smile, and strike so subtly that no one seems to see her influence.
If she will teach him that, he thinks, then in turn he will teach her: he will explain to her that it is wrong of her to spend so much time with her Vanir handmaidens and guards; that she should not be so quick to slip into the Vanir-tongue; that she should drink more mead and pretend to enjoy the platters of meat that are brought to table at feast-days, instead of requesting Vanir dishes of vegetables and fish (pretty and delicate though they are).
Because to be Aesir, he has learned, is to be beyond reproach. The Aesir, as he has heard almost every day of his life, train the bravest soldiers, breed the fastest horses, brew the strongest mead, roast the tastiest meats, and win the prettiest brides (although Mother always looks very unimpressed when Father says so). A single Aesir is worth an entire Vanir regiment they say, and it must be true, for the Aesir have won every war they have ever fought. When Loki and Thor and their friends play at soldiers it is always the Aesir, led by Thor, their golden prince, who triumph and Loki (coaxed, cajoled and bribed over the years into using his illusions to become, variously, Vanir soldiers, Dark Elves, Light Elves, Fire Demons, dwarves and the Cursed Legions of the Undead) who is ignominiously defeated.
Loki is tired of being defeated. The other Realms, Jotunheim included, would be pleasant places to visit, but he knows where he belongs. He wants to be one of the best, and he wants that for his mother, too.
And so as Yonten approaches he deliberately turns away and does not smile, though the captain is a kind, good-natured man, and fond of children. He has spent many hours over the years playing games and roughhousing with him and Thor. But if Loki wants to be Aesir he must put aside Vanir things.
Yonten stops, grieved by this show of disfavour. The captain of the Queen’s Guard is broad-shouldered and stocky, like Thor promises to be, but people do not remember that Thor is half-Vanir too.
“Well, my captain?” Mother says. She is speaking the Vanir-tongue – Loki longs to correct her. “What news?”
“The All-Father sent me to you, Princess,” Yonten says, and Loki scowls. All the Vanir call Mother ‘Princess’ rather than All-Mother or Queen, as is proper. It is a mark of disrespect, and it rankles that she should permit it. She is no longer their Princess, after all: has not been since her marriage. “He did not wish you to be unattended.”
“How thoughtful of him!” Mother says, and Loki is struck once again with the impression that what she says is very different from what she is thinking. “But it was unnecessary for him to worry – I have my son to look after me.” She rests her hand lightly on his shoulder, just for a moment. “I have been teaching him a little of our language, you know. Loki, show the Captain what you have learned.”
But Loki keeps his mouth tightly shut, as though his lips have been sewn up, and does not speak. Yonten pulls a face of comic dismay, his wide lips turning down at the corners like on a clown’s mask, but Loki is determined not to laugh.
“Did you know that Yonten has a son that is just your age, on Vanaheim?” Mother asks. “Perhaps he may come to Asgard someday and serve as your guard, as Yonten is mine.”
Yonten bows with his hands at his side, in the approved Vanir fashion. “It would be Hogun’s greatest wish to be of service to your Highness,” he says, beaming.
Loki looks away and kicks at a stone on the ground. He cannot escape the unpleasant suspicion that Mother makes such suggestions not from any desire to please him, but to please Yonten. Smarting, too, from the destruction of his masterpiece, he hunts for words that will sting her, as he has been stung; that will give her a little of the pain that he feels, every time people like the court ladies remind him that it is because of her that he cannot ever truly be what he wants to be.
He remembers a piece of a conversation he happened to overhear, a joke passed between two of the palace guards behind the stables, and thinks he has found his weapon.
“Thank you, no,” he says, smiling as winningly as he can. “I should rather have an Aesir horse than a Vanir guard: at least it could be trusted to run towards a battle.”
His mother stiffens. She springs to her feet but Loki has already darted away, past the startled Yonten and through the gates of the courtyard. He runs through the gardens, the twigs of the shrubbery catching at his clothes, and though Mother shouts his name behind him, he pretends not to hear. He runs and does not stop running until he rounds the corner of the palace and almost collides with Thor, coming up the steps from the kitchens.
“Brother!” Thor cries, pleased to see him but a little alarmed by his haste. “What’s happening? Are you in trouble?”
Loki laughs, giddy with relief at having gotten away so easily.
“Nothing! Not at all!” He catches Thor by the sleeve and tugs him along. “Come on, let’s go spar! I’ll bet you my best saddle I’ll land the first blow!”
Thor’s eyes brighten. Immediately he tosses aside the remains of the pastry he has been eating and runs to follow Loki to the training grounds, both of them laughing and whooping and shoving each other playfully in the bright afternoon sun.
Of course he will be in trouble, later. Of course Mother will be angry with him, and rightly so. But for now, side-by-side with Thor, Loki feels his spirits lift. He is going to spar (though the sunny training grounds will make him ill); he will honour his bet (though he dreads the thought of losing); he has upheld the superiority of Aesir soldiery (though already the sharp tooth of regret gnaws at his breast). He is the very model of an Aesir prince.
He will make, Loki thinks, a very good Aesir king, one day. He was born to be a king, after all.
His mother has told him so.
//
FIN