Baldur says, “The Valkyrie of the Tree will prove herself with a stone heart.”
Silence answers him, all eyes on me as I stride directly for Captain Darius. They titter and whisper, and a few cheer for the troll’s blood to cover the dance floor.
“Lady,” Darius says, looking serene despite the monster hulking in stone beside him. His dress uniform highlights the sharp lines of his goatee and leaves his shoulder bare to display his family crest tattoo.
I hold out my hand. “Do you have a knife or dagger?” I ask quietly. He pulls one from the small of his back and offers it hilt-first. I curl my fingers around the warm wooden grip and say, “Turn off the UV.”
He snaps around and points at Thebes, who rushes into the corridor. A moment later, the lights click off. Breathing and murmurs fill the space. A camera flashes from the left. Blood roars in my ears, like the ocean in a seashell.
I step before Red Stripe. My shoes are too delicate and heeled so I toe them off, standing instead in bare feet and all the layers of red silk dress.
Red Stripe’s stone body fractures; a web of hairline breaks scatter out from the center of his chest. I see fate marked clearly, as if he’s a man, and choice, and my old friend chaos again.
Someone screams behind me. I focus on Red Stripe’s eyes, waiting for the little yellow beads to open, to see me. Dust puffs off of him as the fine layer of stone sloughs away, hitting the marble like hail. The other berserkers shift on their feet, putting the tips of their spears against his throat.
“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.