‘Do all the Old Gods have it?’
‘Just me.’ He tilted his head to one side and half turned it as if listening, but made no further comment.
Get down to it, Blue’s instinct told her. As casually as she could manage, she said, ‘Why don’t you have your creature put me down and we can talk about what it is you want of me?’
With no particular expression, Loki said, ‘He’s not my creature – he’s my son.’
Blue could have kicked herself. She’d known the beast was his son. The Purlisa had mentioned it in his exposition of the myth. The trouble was the myth was so incredible. Almost impossible to get your head around the reality when you met up with it. In an attempt to recover, she asked quickly, ‘What’s his name?’
At least it seemed Loki had failed to take offence, for he answered calmly enough. ‘His name is Jormungand.’ He swung his eyes slowly over the vast, incredible bulk of the Midgard Serpent and added, almost with a hint of awe, ‘And you tried to kill him.’
This is not going well, Blue thought. She coughed slightly. ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. Very sorry, really.’ Then something occurred to her and she said quickly, ‘Somebody told me only hammers could harm him.’
‘Yes, they do say that, don’t they?’ Loki nodded.
His expression was unreadable. When it became clear he was not going to say anything more, Blue forced a smile and said cheerily, ‘Well, my little knife doesn’t seem to have harmed him.’
‘Perhaps luckily,’ Loki remarked enigmatically.
It was like the underground passageways – some of them were dead ends. Loki hadn’t told his astonishing son to release her and the serpent hadn’t done it of its own accord. There was no chance, as she’d hoped, of her scuttling away like a mouse, hiding or escaping. But then she wasn’t sure she wanted to escape, not yet, is Henry here?’ she asked. It did not for an instant cross her mind that Loki might not know who Henry was.
‘Not yet,’ Loki said.
Not… yet?
For the first time it occurred to Blue she might be dreaming. This whole encounter had a dreamlike quality about it. Mythic figures… overwhelming dangers that somehow failed to harm her… the idea that Henry was not here but possibly soon would be… Was she actually asleep in her chamber in the Purple Palace?
If she was, the realisation didn’t help her waken. Besides, for all its strangeness, this didn’t feel like a dream.
Although she desperately wanted to ask more about Henry, some instinct told her she might be looking in the wrong direction. If she was to get out of this mess, she needed to know what she was dealing with. She took a deep breath and asked the critical question. ‘Why have you come to this reality?’
She knew, positively knew, she was on the right track. There was a change in the atmosphere of the cavern. Loki’s head swung round to stare at her intently. Even the great serpent shifted slightly, loosening its coils – although not enough for her to wriggle free.
Loki looked away from her again. ‘My little boy came because he was called,’ he said casually.
‘By Brimstone?’
‘Silas – yes. Such a dangerous thing to do, don’t you think? But Silas paid the price.’
Blue said cautiously, ‘So it wasn’t a cloud dancer?’
Loki smiled. ‘Oh, it was a cloud dancer, all right. Poetic justice, I imagine.’
She wanted to ask a lot more about that as well, but she had a feeling he was trying to divert her. ‘And why are you here?’ she asked.
‘I was called too,’ Loki said, but without the edge this time.
‘Brimstone called you both?’
‘Oh no, just Jormungand.’
Blue glared at him suspiciously. ‘Then who called you?’
Loki smiled smugly. ‘That peculiar little creature the Purlisa.’
The Purlisa? Why would the Purlisa call up one of the Old Gods – particularly this Old God – when he was so concerned about the Midgard Serpent? Surely one entity from that dimension was enough? Except, of course, she no longer knew what to believe about the Purlisa.
‘To make sure all goes well for you and Henry,’ Loki said as if he’d read her thoughts.
Eighty-Five
Lord Hairstreak was furious. And helpless, which made things worse. He glowered with impotent rage as the guards marched him from the ferry to the Purple Palace. He’d already suffered the indignity of a body search. Now he was escorted like a common criminal. On whose orders? he wondered. The guards had been more than a little vague about that. They were Palace Guards all right, which meant they were theoretically responsible to his niece, Queen Blue. But Blue was away from the Palace at the moment – he knew that for sure. Unless she’d just returned, of course. The possibility struck him as interesting, but why have him arrested? There was no way she could have got wind of his plans.
Not that he’d been formally arrested. He might have lost his political influence and most of his money, but he was still a Lord, still of the Blood Royal (albeit on the wrong side of the blanket), which meant he had been ‘invited’ to accompany the Guards. When he declined, they insisted, politely but firmly. Later, when he was searched, he knew even the veneer of courtesy had been abandoned.
The irony was that the Guard Captain was one of his own men – or rather what used to be one of his own men – a Faerie of the Night. Blue had instigated an ecumenical policy soon after her coronation: demons, Faeries of the Night… all were welcome to Palace service. It was supposed to help draw all sides together in a spirit of harmony and cooperation. Adolescent naivety, if ever he saw it, but the irritating thing was it seemed to have worked. There was a time when he could have counted on a Faerie of the Night to do his bidding absolutely. Now he couldn’t even get this one to give him a little information.
He made one more try. ‘Captain, what exactly is this all about?’
‘Couldn’t say, sir,’ said the Captain.
The dark bulk of the Purple Palace, long blackened by time, was looming over them now, and he noticed they were skirting the main entrance in favour of a lesser door, another indication that this was no formal invitation from his niece. But it was none of the usual business entrances either, not the way of the diplomats, not the way of the merchants, not the way of the petitioners. If his memory of Palace geography served him, they seemed to be taking him towards the cellars. Who had quarters in the cellars? No one, so far as he was aware.
In a moment they were inside and, sure enough, they were leading him downwards, through a series of descending corridors and stairways. The going grew gloomy as they entered the older quarter of the Palace, what had once been the original keep, and as they turned a brick-lined corner, Hairstreak suddenly realised he was not being taken to the cellars at all, but to the ancient dungeons.
The sheer insult almost took his breath away. Clearly someone had not only ordered his arrest, but his imprisonment. And not in State Quarters, but in some dank cell where he would rot for the remainder of his days while the world and its wiles revolved without him. It was so outrageous he could scarcely believe it. Nothing like this could have happened in the old days. The very suggestion would have sparked a rebellion throughout the Realm. But those days, it seemed, were gone. His old enemies could act with impunity now – or at least so they believed. The question was, which old enemy?
The Guard Captain opened a door and pushed him, none too gently, into a well-lit room. At once he had his answer. ‘Ah, Madame Cardui,’ Hairstreak murmured. ‘How kind of you to invite me.’
The old witch was reclining on a suspensor cloud. Someone had mentioned she seemed to be using suspensors a lot these days, a possible indication that her bones were growing brittle. But brittle or not, it never did to underestimate her. She was wearing something long and flowing, with woven hypno-spells suggesting grace and beauty. She seemed very much at ease, which was a bad sign. The chamber was unfurnished except for the bank of glowglobes that gave it light and a heavy maroon velvet curtain that cut off a portion of its area near the back.