The Strange Maid (34 page)

“Move back,” I order without looking. Red Stripe’s head turns to my voice and there is his massive jaw opening, there his blocks of yellow teeth. His bluish lips curve out and he moans. It’s like a rockslide, a long rumble, and the floor trembles. I sense movement behind me. “Red Stripe,” I croon.

His eyes open and he wrinkles his snout at me. And he roars.

It flutters the banners and grows to shake the crystal chandeliers. I don’t flinch, despite the sweet breath blowing past my ear, despite the flashing memory of the troll mother, of the herd crouched about their fire, glancing up one by one to see me charging toward them.

I’m standing in a circle of stone dust, and it tickles my nose and throat. My belly burns with adrenaline, and the eyes of the crowd abrade. “Down,” I say. Red Stripe hunkers onto his heels and the knuckles of his single ape-like arm. His beady eyes don’t leave my face. Bent this way, those eyes are only two meters off the ground, nearly my height, and I smile for him. “Help me up.”

He lifts one knee and holds out his arm. I grip it firmly in my free hand and step up onto his knee. His skin is smooth marble but hot under my toes. I put a hand on his shoulder and manage to turn gracefully toward the audience.

I stand on his knee, nearly encircled by his wide blue arm, and look back out over the audience. At the high table, Baldur the Beautiful gapes and Glory slides her finger across her plate, then licks the last of the sorbet off her skin, her eyes on me. There’s Soren, creeping around the side to arrive with Rathi at the edge of my performing circle.

But it’s Precia of the South whose eyes I meet. She’s come after me, standing in her pristine gown a few meters away. Her head tilts to look up at me. It’s anticipation and excitement I read in her face, if it’s anything.

“Here is Red Stripe,” I call out. “He never did hurt anyone on Vinland and owes the world no blood price. This is no martyr, but a survivor. Like me. He has sacrificed already, his arm, his family, his freedom. In his chest a fire burns. His heart beats as mine does, both of them formed into stone by our losses. Before I would cut out his heart and offer it to the Alfather, I would cut out my own.”

I touch the tip of Darius’s black knife to my skin, just above the collar of the red silk gown, between my breasts. It sinks through my skin and pain flashes across my chest, in time with my quick pulse. I think of Valtheow.

A hot streak of blood slides down toward my belly.

Precia spreads her arms like wings. “Signy Valborn, the Alfather knows the state of your heart.”

Glory the Fenris Wolf begins to clap slowly. It rings out, once, twice, and three times. I tap Red Stripe’s shoulder with my forefinger and he lowers his hand to act as a step so I may spring onto his shoulder. I sit and he holds me there against his round head. I raise the knife and unsheathe Unferth’s sword.

Red Stripe roars. I do not close my eyes.

TWENTY-ONE

THE TRICKLE OF
the old fountain beside me is enough to keep the city sounds at bay, and a humid breeze curls my hair as it ruffles the leaves of the silky dogwood trees enclosing this narrow garden. It smells of honey and perfume from the lilies and hibiscus, and the trellis covered in climbing fuchsia flowers, and under it all blooms the fetid bruise of fertilizer and mud. The neighbors have tall oaks that hang over my fence, dripping their beard moss, and I can barely see the blue sky through all the dense flora. I sit at a wrought-iron table with a sweating glass of iced coffee and the morning paper, which thankfully has stopped plastering the front page with images of me and Red Stripe.

Except now the headline reads, “Thunderer Offers Bounty for Trolls.”

Every day in the national, local, and online news we get more information about troll sightings, seemingly random except that they’re more frequent. The patterns Soren and I were seeing in Ohiyo are appearing across the country. Bridge eaters clustered on water towers they’ve never climbed before or calcified into gnarled little gargoyles on the ledges of high-rise buildings all day. Cat wights pour through the suburbs, eating puppies and skinning cats. Even prairie troll packs are migrating south. Theories abound for why so many lesser trolls are showing themselves now, ranging from an unknown mystical purpose to the presence of a high-pitched whistle none of us can hear.

I’ve been waiting two days since Baldur’s ball, ensconced in this cracking old house at the edge of the Garden District, with Red Stripe molding in the garage, three berserkers knocking into the walls like dogs in a cage, and a modest allowance from the Valkyrie of the South to keep us fed. “As long as no one asks,” she said, “in which case it’s your own savings, of course, or Baldur’s.”

The morning after the ball she offered to fly with me to Philadelphia and stand before the rest, to declare I’d solved the riddle.
You know the answer; you
have
the answer, Signy. Embrace it.

But I told her none of it matters until I find the troll mother.

You’re as impulsive as you always were! Take this offer, and then go after her with the full weight of your office, if it means so much.

It has to be first, Precia. It’s the thing I want. It’s the bold, bloody thing, and I’m still Signy Valborn who craves those things. I performed for you, for Baldur and everyone to see, but that’s not the end of it. There’s truth behind the performance.

Precia regarded me from the breakfast table, delicate silver fork in hand, dressing gown pleated and tied in a perfect bow. Abruptly she stood, swept out of the guest room I’d slept in. Thinking that was the end of the interview, I devoured the rest of my eggs and was halfway through the scalding coffee when she pushed the door open again and presented me with a thin old book. It was the kind with gilded pages and a leather tie to hold it shut.
Valtheow’s Lament,
the title read, though several letters were worn away.

Take it,
she said softly, pressing it to my hands.
When you are ready, call me.

We came to this house with its roomy garage and dripping old shingles so I’d have time to focus and find the troll mother.

Too ragging bad I don’t know what I’m doing.

Making plans has never been my strength, gathering intelligence and resources never a priority. I want to be the gun fired, the arrow cast, not the general. The information we have is scattered and doesn’t seem to fit any design. Why was the troll mother in Ohiyo at all? What was there, and why hasn’t she shown herself again after so clearly appearing to the tipster who called? The one thing nobody has reported in days is any greater mountain trolls, especially no troll mother. We don’t even know if the influx of lesser troll sightings has anything to do with her, though for my wager they must. It’s all connects by choices and consequences.

My best hope is that Baldur has been arranging to get Soren and me into the Mjolnir Institute, which tracks herd movement via satellite. Theoretically, a huge beast like her moving out of her territory should impact prey migration or leave some other widespread sign that their computers and tracking equipment can pick up on.

Rathi’s come for lunch both days, mostly to keep my spirits up while I wait. To keep me from running off half-cocked. I must admit it’s something I’m prone to do—I’ve already threatened to go immediately back to Montreal if Baldur doesn’t get me into the institute soon—and so I humor Rathi. Together we compared the vivid poetry of
Valtheow’s Lament
with
The Song of Beowulf.
The former was composed by a Valkyrie named Christina a hundred and fifty years ago, a version of
Beowulf
from Valtheow’s perspective. It’s so much fantasy, but we spend hours poring over the two poems, marking the differences, most of which can written off as the fifteen hundred years between compositions.

For Rathi, I mark all the changes I remember Unferth made when he recited it for me in Canadia. In particular I describe the language shifts and bridges between dialect and rhyme that I remember.

And I remember I cried when Unferth recited the verses about Beowulf battling Grendel’s mother, when she died. If I shut my eyes I can almost hear his voice, hear the rush of the engine so many months ago, when it all began.

Someday soon, I swear to myself, I’ll find her. She’ll show her tusks again, and I’ll be there. The nightmares will end, and I can put all of it to rest.

I close the newspaper and fold it, then drop it onto the damp ground. I draw my rune scar into the condensation on the side of my iced coffee. It haunts me every night, carved into the troll mother’s dream hand, too.

Captain Darius pushes open the screen door and walks softly down concrete stairs to me. He bows shallowly. “I’m going out,” he says. The announcement is unnecessary, as he’s out of uniform in jeans and a plain blue T-shirt. His tattoo, untarnished by the trimmed Frankish beard around his mouth, will give his identity away if it’s noticed, but his uniform would guarantee it and we’re supposed to be as discreet as possible. We found out yesterday, when I ventured out myself with Sharkman, that an interweave magazine is willing to pay a lot for my whereabouts. Sharkman
discouraged
the individual who shouted at us from collecting.

“What do we need?”

“Sharkman says he’ll break all the windows if we don’t have mead tonight.”

I sigh. “He should go be wild in the Old Quarter, get it out of his system.” I wish I could. Being pent up in this house makes my blood burn, too.

Darius almost smiles. “There’s not enough alcohol or sex or battle in the world to get it out of Sharkman’s system. But I’ll take the mead out of his pay.”

After he leaves, I gather up the paper and my empty glass and head inside. The walls shake and there’s an arrhythmic pounding from the heavy bag Thebes acquired and drilled up into one of the ceiling beams in the defunct dining room. To distract myself I change into exercise clothes and join them. Sharkman works the bag while Thebes goes over some of the hand-to-hand techniques they’ve been teaching me. The worn hardwood floor is smooth under my toes, and natural light streams in through the bay window. A fan creates false breeze against the heavy heat, but I’m sweating and thoroughly diverted in no time. It’s so hot, unlike the frozen practice ground on Vinland. I’m loose and alive, and I relish the blank blaze that comes over me. Their frenzy stretches out from them, tingling my skin, reminding me of that belonging I felt when we consumed madness together at the funeral.

If only when I stopped the feeling of completeness would stay. Instead, it drips off me like sweat.

Sharkman shoves my shoulder. “Why the frown?” He grins in my face.

“I’m jealous,” I say, baring my teeth back at him.

“Oh, you don’t have to be, pretty Valkyrie.” He presses nearer to me, backing me up until my heels touch the wall. Heat envelopes me. He’s bare-chested, skin flush from energy. “You can have everything I have.”

With a suddenly dry mouth, I lower my gaze to the row of eight horizontal spears tattooed down his sternum.

Sharkman tilts my chin up and puts his lips a breath from mine. The
torch
rune spins in his right eye. “I will let you make the first prick, ink your line across my chest,” he murmurs. I sway nearer, thinking,
Yes, this is real distraction,
and kiss him with an open mouth.

“I guess you’re not ready to go,” Soren says from the entryway.

I stop moving, and Sharkman growls from low in his chest as he pushes off the wall. He stalks away without greeting Soren, snapping his T-shirt up off the floor. We hear him take the stairs hard.

Thebes shrugs at me from the floor, where he’s clearly been going through a round of sit-ups.

And Soren says, “Sorry.”

I touch my hot mouth and blink slowly. My body feels like it’s melting and going rigid at the same time. “Ah, no, it’s all right, I’ll … shower.”

The pipes scream upstairs as Sharkman turns on the water. I roll my eyes at the ceiling and think,
Maybe I should wait.

“We’re supposed to be there at one and it’s an hour drive,” Soren adds.

“Odd-eye!” I crack to attention. “The Mjolnir Institute! He got us in finally.”