With a final glare at the little iron wights calcified into stones at the bottom of the lock, I agree.
But even interviewing all the hikers and kayakers we can find nearer to the town, there’s no sign of him.
When the sun sets we drive out to the end of the locks, farther east toward Montreal than we walked. We eat takeout in the SUV, staring at the black river through the windshield. Stars pop out, brighter in the northeast than they are back toward the glow from Long Salt. Maybe she’ll show herself in the darkness.
I drift into sleep, waking as Soren shuffles around because a muffled pop song sounds behind the dash. He mumbles an apology as he reaches across me for the glove compartment. It unlatches and a cell phone falls out. He catches it and thumbs it on. “Hello? Ah, yes. No.”
The tinny voice on the other end sounds like Baldur. I think I hear Port Orleans and your Valkyrie.
“Yes, thanks. No, we haven’t had any luck. Yes …” Soren taps his head back against the driver’s seat, staring at the roof. “That might be related; we’ll talk about it.” Turning his head away from me, he whispers, “Baldur, stop.”
There’s laughter from the god of light. I’m torn between wanting and not wanting to know what he’s teasing Soren about.
Soren closes the phone and clears his throat. “Can you put this back?” He drops it in my hand. “Baldur says he’s taking Red Stripe to Port Orleans for a Disir Day charity ball he’s throwing with one of the southern preachers, to benefit Vinland relief. He wants you to come claim your troll there and be his special guest.”
Shoving the phone back into the glove compartment gives me a moment to calculate. “That’s the end of next week?”
“Nine days. Probably three days’ easy driving from here, two if we push it.”
I blow out a frustrated sigh. I want Red Stripe, but to take so much time away from the hunt sticks under my skin. Maybe we’ll find her before then. “I’ll think about it. Do you know the story of Freya creating the trolls?” I ask.
Soren grunts acknowledgment, and I tell him my theory that the mother we’re hunting might be the mother from that story.
“That’s … old.”
I keep my voice calm when I answer, as if it will rein in my enthusiasm. “And so are the gods, and the giants lived centuries, too, millennia even, before they were destroyed.”
“Maybe you should pick a different heart, then. The riddle says a stone heart, doesn’t it?”
Frustration makes me kick the glove compartment. “Never. I saw the answer in her eyes, and she owes me blood price now. Even without the riddle, without anything else, I’d be hunting her.”
Outside the SUV the wind flutters the leaves and turns the banks of the river into ruffles of grass. I open my door and jump out, taking a UV flashlight with me to the lock. In the dark it’s hard to find good footing, but I climb up to peer down into the low water. “Hey, bridge eaters,” I call. Something skitters against the concrete, and I hear gentle lapping below. I flip on the light and scan it straight down along the edge of the water. A tiny shriek starts my heart beating faster. There’s movement in the pit. Light reflects back at me from the tiny tossing waves.
I slide the spotlight back the other way, then around the whole perimeter. Five pairs of eyes flash at me; I see teeth and flailing limbs in the far corner.
It’s only a two-meter drop, and I crouch first, put my hand on the edge, and jump down.
I hit with a huge splash, boots on slick ground, and shove fast to the corner. Water up to my knees sloshes everywhere and the iron wights scream. Thrusting out my hand, I snatch one by the neck and push it into the wall, pointing the UV light toward the rest of them so they stay back. The wight weighs about as much as a house cat but is shaped like a monkey, tiny hands grasping at my wrist and man-shaped mouth gaping. Its front teeth are jagged like a shark’s, for tearing through metal—or soft human flesh—and the molars heavy and hard. It wears thin, ragged pants it probably stole off some stuffed animal. “Peas, peas!” it gasps.
“Where’s the troll mother?” I ask calmly. “I won’t hurt you if you tell me.”
“No—no!”
“There isn’t one? Or she’s gone?”
“Cat-man!”
Above me, Soren says, “What are you doing?”
Ignoring him, I lean nearer the iron wight. It snaps at my face. “Did you see a troll mother, a giant, mean mountain troll?”
“Mean troll yessss.” It nods and slobber drops onto my hand.
“Signy, it’s just answering because it’s terrified.” Disapproval coats Soren’s words.
Claws rake against my calf and I kick out, connecting with a small body. I hurl my wight into the water.
“Come on,” Soren calls, reaching his hand down. I throw the flashlight up. It arcs over him, flashing light at the sky like a strobe, and lands back on the grass with a thump. Then I leap up to grasp his forearm. He drags me up, none too gently, pulling on my arm and, when he can reach it, the scruff of my shirt. Below me the iron wights hiss and curse. Water splashes and a few hard chunks of metal hit my legs and back.
I roll over onto my back against the rough concrete of the lock and Soren sighs. “That was a waste of time.”
“She’s not here.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Bruises, nothing else.”
“You need sleep. We’ll get a hotel room in town, and then … head for Port Orleans?”
“There has to be sign of her somewhere. We’ll go up into Montreal, hunt in the ruins. I’m not giving up.”
“I don’t want you to, but let’s be smart about it. If you go to New Orleans for Disir Day, afterward Baldur might join us, and if there’s anybody you want at your side for troll hunting, it’s him.”
That’s not true. I want Ned Unferth.
That night the troll mother crouches on my chest. She suffocates me, scratching her claws down my arm, and when the blood spills out she uses it to paint runes on the walls and ceiling: Find me, Death Chooser; I will eat your heart.
Find me.
Find me.
I wake with Unferth’s name on my tongue.
Baldur calls first thing in the morning to tell us of greater mountain troll–sign in Ohiyo kingstate. I actually talk to him personally, and he tells me the man who called it in was hunting deer with his two sons and she rose out of the river fog “like the moon.” He described her in explicit detail, down to the green-blue of her eyes and the sickle-shaped scar on her left shoulder. It must be her, no matter how strange that she’s traveling that fast and out of her territory. Where could she be headed and why? What is southwest of here but the center of the country?
We drive straight to Ohiyo. But the results are the same: nobody will admit to being the source, and this time we’re in rolling forested hills, the proper habitat for hill trolls, not mountain trolls. Unlike Vinland, where they’re only rare, this far south greater mountain trolls are unheard-of. What they’ve plenty of, however, in Cleaveland and Louisville, are lesser trolls. There’s a news bulletin about a bridge on the Ohiyo River buckling under the weight of a semi, thanks to ruined support beams that were just replaced three years ago, and another about a riverboat in Cincinnatus infested by cat wights, who’re supposed to despise water.
Soren and I spend four days in the kingstate, using his Sun’s Berserk credentials to talk with city planners and local exterminators about the sightings and serious uptick in lesser-troll presence. They all agree it must have been the recent national crisis bringing the wights out of their normal shadows. They say that, like the Vinland herd, the wights were sensitive to the air of fear here in the heartland when Baldur vanished. Soren believes it, but that sounds like a bunch of fluffy nonsense to me. The iron wights I’ve known weren’t sensitive to anything but the presence of metal or shiny toys. Fortunately, Soren inserts himself between me and the city workers before I say anything unforgivable.