“You should not be so cavalier,” Old Man Winter said, somehow more serious than the way he said everything else. “Omega is a very serious threat, one which you have defeated through a combination of luck, skill, power and the assistance of others. Bjorn is not to be underestimated, though he is no great thinker. Whatever they are planning now seems to indicate a deeper consideration for long-term strategy rather than just throwing whatever they have on hand at you. Using Wolfe as their opening gambit should not be overlooked; he was the best they had to offer. They do not hesitate. Their means are brutal, and they will do whatever it takes to achieve their aims.” He looked at me, steadily. “What are you willing to do?”
“What am I willing to do…to what?”
“To find out the truth about Operation Stanchion and what it means for you.” Old Man Winter was unflinching. “To discover Omega’s aims. These are all questions which could be of great use to us if we were to find answers.”
“I’m willing to question Bjorn as long as necessary to get some answers,” I said.
Old Man Winter reached out to the door, finally looking away from me. He placed his hand in his pocket and withdrew a key card that looked no bigger than a scrap of paper in his massive palm, and ran it over the reader in front of the door. The glowing red light on the reader turned green with a subtle beep. “Follow,” he said and opened the door to the cell.
The room was small, ten by ten by ten, like the rest. The squares that made it up seemed to blur together for me, and I put aside my thoughts about all else to focus on Bjorn. He didn’t look quite as he had yesterday when I’d been fighting him. His short brown hair was still powdered with the dust of our battle. He had blood on his face and chest that had gone uncleaned, though his wounds were gone. His shirt was missing, along with boots and any other sort of clothing save for his pants, which were a dirty corduroy and speckled with all the evidence of our fight. He was shackled to a chair that was metal, bolted to the floor in the middle of the room, and he was still cuffed about the wrists and ankles.
“Bjorn,” Old Man Winter said in some form of greeting. “It has not been nearly long enough.”
“So it is you, Jotun,” Bjorn said, his brow arced in a forty-five degree slant on either eyebrow. “I had heard you were the head of the Directorate, giving shelter to this one. Do not expect me to remember the old times fondly and cooperate with you.”
“I do not expect you to remember anything fondly,” Old Man Winter replied, his breath still frosting the air. “But you will cooperate with me, or your memories will go from less-than-fond to a much darker place.”
Bjorn’s back straightened at this, his shoulders squared, even with his arms trapped behind his back. “You will get nothing out of me, Jotun. Do your worst.”
Old Man Winter stopped in the middle of the room, towering over the seated Bjorn, who was not exactly a small guy. “Do you remember that time in…what did they call it, the Huns who lived there? I find myself forgetting the names the Germanic tribes gave to the old places. I have heard that in old age, humans default to their childhood remembrances. I find the opposite is true for me, that I cannot remember the names of the places from my youth, though I can recall the sight of them in vivid detail. For example, I recall that maiden that you bedded, that local girl from a tribe, how you called her a virgin sacrifice, and how when her brothers came after you in the morning, you caved their heads in with your fists as the girl cried behind you and begged you to stop. Do you remember what happened after that?”
Bjorn showed little reaction, only the slightest of a smile. “I remember her voice, but not her name. Is that strange? I don’t remember any of their names.”
“That does not surprise me at all,” Old Man Winter said, surprisingly gregarious, even as I was trying to keep down my breakfast in the midst of these discussions. “I wanted to kill you for that, did you know?” He bent at the waist, as Bjorn’s head jerked in surprise. “My respect for your father kept me from it, though. You lived as a god, and all you wanted was there for the polite taking; there was never a need for the sort of violence and thuggery that you and your kind visited upon the humans. But for you it was never about receiving the gifts of those who worshipped us for our power; it was about taking that which they did not wish to give freely.” Old Man Winter rumbled with every word, and the temperature seemed to drop in the room. “Strength over kindness, as it were. Force over grace. Did you thrill to the thoughts of what you did there?” Old Man Winter leaned in closer to Bjorn’s ear. “Did it keep you warm on the cold nights when we returned to our homeland? Did the memory excite you long after you killed the girl, her father, her brothers and all the others who did not stand idly by while you murdered their kin and fellows?” Old Man Winter’s hand landed on his shoulder, resting there. “Is that the way you like it?”
I cleared my throat, and both of them looked up, seeing me as though for the first time since I entered the cell with Old Man Winter. “Perhaps we could…return to the main subject?” I asked, wondering if I was overstepping my bounds and figured I was about to get a warning to shut up from Old Man Winter. Or at least a gaze that would freeze me in place.
“Quite right, Sienna,” Old Man Winter said, returning to his full height. “Bjorn, you will tell us every detail of this Operation Stanchion—its purposes, its players, its timeline, and you will do so now.”
Bjorn did not laugh this time, nor smile, nor react almost at all. He kept his head facing forward, and I saw the slightest shudder from him. He opened his mouth as if to speak but faltered, taking a moment to recover before speaking again. “No. I will not.”
“Very well, then,” Old Man Winter said, now beginning to orbit Bjorn slowly, one small step at a time. “Then we seem to have reached an impasse.”
I blinked in surprise at Old Man Winter’s change in attitude. Was this as far as he was willing to go? I didn’t exactly want to be party to torture, but I assumed that perhaps there would at least be a face punch or two for Bjorn, who, as Old Man Winter had just established, richly deserved it and probably quite a bit more.
Old Man Winter remained quiet for only a moment. “You realize, of course, that Sienna is a succubus?” He took a step around to the front of Bjorn and waited there, indicating me with a long, extended finger pointed at my chest. “That she drained the very life and memory out of Wolfe? That she can take your memories and leave you as thoughtless as a legume, break you to her will and make you no more?”
Bjorn’s eyes flicked toward me, then went straight ahead again. “I had heard she was a succubus. I didn’t know you allowed meta-draining on your campus, Jotun. How low you’ve sunk, to allow a soul eater to go to work on your own kind.” He spat in Old Man Winter’s face and I flinched. “Let her do her worst. I won’t cooperate with scum, with her kind, or with you if you’re the sort who does that.”
“I have not yet begun to sink,” Old Man Winter said, using his sleeve to wipe slowly across his face but not bothering to stand up and remove himself from spitting distance, “but perhaps, very soon, you will see that I will do whatever it takes to defend those under my protection.” He stood and glowered down. “Sienna.” He looked back at me. “Find out what he knows.”
I froze for a moment, as surely as if he had just used his frigid breath to ice me into place. I felt my legs come back to me, and I took halting steps to get behind Bjorn, who watched me, his blank affect showing the first signs of strain. I began to take off my glove, wondering which would come first—Bjorn breaking or Old Man Winter telling me to stop. I walked a slow arc around Bjorn, trying to keep my calm, trying to portray winter’s cold, like the Director, to look like this was nothing, no big deal, something that happened all the time. I kept my lips a narrow line, ignored the stuffiness of the room, the lack of movement, the air currents that my body made as I swept along. It was as though all particle motion had stopped, neither Winter nor Bjorn were speaking, and I felt every step I took.