The Apple Throne

  “You can get us inside?” I’ve thought of what to say to the militia lieutenant in order to get to see Soren, but I don’t know how to pass this first obstacle.

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind being on camera. They must be here because of him.” Amon shakes his head as he climbs out. I flip down the visor to check my face in the narrow mirror. Strained eyes, a spread of pink scabbing across my cheek, dull but clean-looking curls. There’s no sign of a goddess here, even if anyone were likely to recognize me.

  I smooth my hands down my ruffled skirt and follow Amon. We walk shoulder to shoulder, though I fall a step behind as he reaches the reporters. I keep my eyes on the double doors that are our goal. In my experience, looking at somebody draws their attention. Amon calls out to the nearest militiaman, a young man with ruddy skin who almost smiles when he sees Amon, but fast reapplies his severe expression as he strides toward us.

  That attracts notice, and a man with a camera settled over his shoulder says Amon’s full name.

  I tuck against Amon’s back, looping one finger around his belt. The militiaman leans in, and Amon talks in his ear. I can’t hear Amon or his friend’s response over the questions hitting us like confetti. Who’s your friend? Are you here for Bearstar? Do you know him? Did your mother call you in? Did you know the Bell family? Amon!

  Confusion makes me listen harder: What has Amon’s mother to do with anything? Why do they think he knows the family of the dead man? I twist my neck to study the reporters, and their collective frenetic energy hits me full in the face.

  Astrid Glyn would’ve had this crowd eating from her palm.

  Amon takes my elbow and leads me around the barricade. We push through the doors into a warm entryway buzzing with ringing phones and conversation. There’s a counter and bulletproof glass separating us from the rest of the room, but we turn hard right and go through a door that’s guarded by another militiaman holding a rifle. Amon leads me up a flight of stairs and onto a quieter level, with wooden desks and several men and woman in suits instead of uniforms bustling around. A few glance at us; most ignore us as we make our way straight up the aisle to an office with wide windows that takes up an entire corner.

  Through the windows, I see a woman as iron-dark as Amon half-standing behind a massive desk, talking on the phone. She wears a brown uniform with double chevrons embroidered on the sleeve and a golden stripe down the side of her pants. As we approach, she lifts her eyes and pins Amon, but he doesn’t falter. The intensity of the glare might’ve stopped me in my tracks.

  Amon’s friend darts forward to pull open the door for us, and we’re shut in with the officer. She straightens, slams down the phone, and puts her hands behind her back as she regards us.

  Amon says, “Heya, Mom,” and I’m not as surprised as I would have been five minutes ago.

  His mother is beautiful. I remember thinking how she’d have to be, to attract one of our gods. Her black hair is braided in seven lightning rows, then falls in thick beaded snakes down her back. Her form is graceful, neck long and shoulders elegantly squared. Her round eyes are dark as her hair.

  “I should slap that smile off your face, but I know it’d do no good,” she says to him calmly before sliding her appraisal my way. “You are?”

  “This is Astrid,” Amon says. “Astrid, Lieutenant Grid Davuson.”

  I say, “I’m a seether from Idun the Young’s orchard, where Soren Bearstar was a regular visitor, where your own son Amon comes to drink and trade and be honored. I am here on Idun’s behalf. Amon was good enough to escort me.”

  That last reignites suspicion in Lieutenant Grid’s face. “I can’t find much welcome for you, prophetess. There’s been no official request through the Rock Church, nor Alta temple, nor even the Army chaplain for a seether from Bright Home to have access to my prisoner.”

  I touch my fingertips to the edge of her desk. She’s nearly a foot taller than me, but I’m used to tipping my head back and maintaining confidence. Soren is someplace below, and this is the final barrier between us. “There was no time for official channels, and Idun believed her word alone should suffice for me to see him.”

  Some subtle shift in her mouth sends a sharp chill across my scalp.

  I lean urgently in. “What happened?”

  The lieutenant slowly sits. “The situation is fraught, maidling, and I cannot just grant access to him on your word. You can’t know everything that’s transpired, besides which it’s a bad precedent to let seethers into my prisoners without a god’s seal.”

  “There’s no precedent for this,” I insist. “Soren has no precedent—he’s Baldur’s berserk, and Baldur is dead. In the winter, let Idun claim him as any god has the right to do.” I struggle to come up with examples of gods interfering in the militia so directly, without an invitation.

  The lieutenant says, “Do you have identification? Your citizen card or a letter from Idun?”

  Oh goddess tits.

  “This is the gods’ business, Mom.” Amon flings himself down into one of the short armchairs against the wall. “You don’t want a part of it.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she drawls, her mouth exactly like his.

  “Why aren’t you making a statement or letting in some reporters?” he asks. “Why the secrecy if you’ve had no word from Bright Home? If the king isn’t trying to interfere, or the Army?”

  Lieutenant Grid taps her fingers against the knife sheath strapped to her thigh. “The Bearstar killed someone in cold blood, and I’m restricting his visitors.”

  “Soren is not a murderer,” I insist. “If he killed that man, there was a reason.”

  She looks sharply up at me. “There’s no ‘if’ here, maidling. Soren himself admitted to the deed.”

  My heartbeat is wild. “I must see him.”

  Amon shoves to his feet again. “If you won’t do it on her word, do it on mine. For me.

  I’m speaking for her, Mom. You know who I am, who my father is, and I speak for Astrid.”

  Regarding her son fiercely, Grid stands, too. Their eyes are level. “You’re claiming your father for this,” she says evenly. It’s not a question. There’s some deep, old thing hanging between them.

  “Yep.” By contrast, Amon sounds flippant, as if wanting to make it sound less serious than it is.

  “It’s the gods’ business,” Grid murmurs. “I’ll send to him. You know I will.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve waited for this, and yet it might be for nothing, Amon.” She glances again to me. “I’m sorry you’re going to be disappointed, Astrid… What did you say your family name is?”

  My mouth goes dry. “I…I didn’t. What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Instead of answering, Lieutenant Grid ushers us out of her office. She leads us at a swift pace through the back of the militia station to the yard, across the stamped-grass training ground with all its weight machines and oval track, to the prison. This is a squat, stone and concrete building with barred windows and a lock she needs her ID card to open. I keep at her heels like an eager puppy, wanting to run. Amon puts a heavy hand on my shoulder, and my stomach sinks lower and lower as we go through the dim corridor, past a checkpoint, and into the cellblock. There are only seven cells with orange-painted bars, and we pass them all. They’re empty, and I can’t help assuming that’s unusual, though I’ve no practical idea.

  Through a final checkpoint—this one with a double lock, keycode, and two men with rifles—and we reach a prison made from massive stone posts and lintels that must’ve been dragged here by giants or tanks. The door to the cell waits open, and I can see a pulley system they must need three men to operate. A berserker’s prison or a holding cell for trolls out of the Jotunwood.

  Every speculation evaporates when I realize the reason the cell is so bright with sun: there’s a gaping hole in the opposite wall.

  Soren is not here.

  SEVEN

  Inside the cell, I lean against the ragged edge of the stone wa
ll and stare out across a hundred meters of flat grass toward the high, barbed wire fence and the dark Jotunwood behind. The stone is smooth beneath my fingers and cold. I stroke it. In some places, it doesn’t appear shattered or broken, but melted.

  Did he lose himself to the frenzy? Could Soren have freed himself from this prison? Bashed his berserking body through the stone? I remember his scream in my own throat, ringing in my ears, alive against my skin.

  “Astrid,” Amon says into my ear.

  I snap to and shake my head vigorously. “It makes no sense. He would have to be completely consumed by the madness to break through this, and that would leave a trail. He’d have broken through that fence, too, and knocked over trees. Left a very obvious path. And…blood.”

  “We agree,” Grid says, joining us. “This is like nothing I’ve seen. We’ve had dogs out to track him, and there’s a search the Army is helping us with. That—” She points sharply northeast. “—is their land. The base stretches this far south.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Just after sunset last night. My swing shift discovered the hole. The electricity was out. They saw nothing and heard nothing.”

  “Had he been berserk?”

  “No. But we assume that’s how he broke out. One of the Army hunters will be here in an hour to do a full assessment.”

  Amon winkles his face in displeasure. “You know which one?”

  His mother shakes her head.

  “I’m going to seeth,” I say, scraping debris out of my way.

  Amon stays with me while his mother returns to her office to “make a few calls.” He scuffs his boot against the rubble that spills away from the hole. “I have something that might help.”

  I pause from drawing out the tangle of red yarn from my coat pocket as Amon reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and offers me a tiny Ziploc bag. There are a dozen dried red corrberries inside. “Amon!”

  “You mentioned them last night, and I had ’em with some of my other…ah, paraphernalia.”

  Smiling, I take the baggie. The berries are so small, like the head of a nail.

  Amon nods hesitantly. “You sure it’s a good thought, though? Here?”

  “Be ready to tackle me,” is all I reply as I pour three corrberries into my hand.

  He says, “I like pinning you down,” but it’s vague, like habitual flirtation more than truth.

  I close my eyes and lick the berries off my palm.

  They’re light on my tongue, but when I bite into their dry husks, the taste is bitter. Aching.

  My skin warms. I feel the thread of magic twine up my spine, and spread out across my shoulder blades like wings, as the gentle poison does its work. Sweet swans, I missed it. I hum a discordant note, and the moment I begin to spin, the frenzy catches me so fast I fall. I feel the sharp pain of rock on my knees, on my hands, and my head cracks back. And then—

  black

  dizzy

  tearing my skin off

  bones bent

  screaming

  letmeouticantbreatheAstridAstridnonononononoplease!

  ItisyouitisyouIseeyou.

  He crouches in a freezing, damp cave, chest heaving. Blood smears his chest, there are shallow cuts slashed down both forearms, and his hands bleed at the knuckles. Uneven stubble grows across his jaw. His eyes are shadowed with bruises.

  A scraping sound when he moves shows me the chains clanking from his wrists.

  Soren grasps suddenly at his chest. He bends in two, back shaking as if his spine will tear itself out of his body.

  He screams.

  Then—

  I gulp a breath and open my eyes directly into Amon’s. Fissures of lightning shift and crackle through the blue. His hands pin my wrists, his chest my chest, his leg spreads across mine. Our lips are so close my breath and his mingle in hot, ready bursts.

  “Astrid,” he says, and I feel it throughout my body.

  “Amon,” I whisper. He rolls off me.

  My entire body throbs, especially my elbows and knees and the back of my head. I smell blood. “Amon,” I whisper again. “He’s…in a cave? And going berserk, like he can’t stop himself! What could do that to my…to my… I can’t.” I clasp my hands against my mouth as saliva coats my tongue; I’m going to vomit. My back arches, and I spit on the floor of the cell. I swallow bile.

  “We’re going to find him,” Amon says, putting his hand on my back.

  I let tears slide to the stone floor and open my eyes. “The cave was smooth, like it was man-made, and he was chained. He’s in some other prison. Or he will be in some other prison. I think soon, though. If he’s not already there, it will be very soon. It was so clear.”

  “Do you know what kind of stone it was? If it was smooth, are you certain it was a cave?”

  “No, I’m not, but that was my sense. And usually I am right about details in a seething—or I was.” I laugh once, a dull sound. “But this was better, you know. More like a real seething because I saw him instead of just feeling him. Maybe I’ll keep improving.”

  Amon makes a disapproving noise. “Let’s clean you up.”

  In the station bathroom, I wash my face and Amon brushes dust out of my hair. I grip the sink and lean near to the mirror. Soren told me my eyes are the color of old photographs or soda bottles. There’s a strain about them now, a gentle purple bruising beneath. My right cheek is scoured with red, the raw edges yellowish. There’s blood under my fingernails I have to dig away, and my wrists are bright pink where Amon held them. I can feel an ache in my knees and arms, and all my muscles are tight-wound. Grit stings my palms. There’s a tear in my tights over my knee, and the ruffles of my skirt are crinkled and ripped.

  Amon says to my reflection, “My mom probably called Thor, by the way.”

  Horrified, I ask, “Will he come here?”

  He winces but nods.

  “Skit.”

  “He’ll know your face?”

  “He’ll be unhappy I’m here. Might try to force me back to my orchard.” And rightly so, a part of me whispers. The apples of immortality rely on me. Does the tree flourish, or have leaves begun to drop because Idun left it?

  Amon says, “He’s a dick.”

  It startles me into laughing wearily as I sink down to sit on the floor. The tile is cold and probably filthy. Amon settles beside me.

  “Why do you dislike him so much?” I ask.

  Amon knocks his head lightly against the wall. “He’s huge and ragging amazing and does everything well and right. He expects me to be like him, and that is just so ragged annoying. And my mom. She… I want to hate him. His wife is the goddess of commits, for skit sake. I was ten when I realized it. I’m not so bright, they tell me. He came to stay with us all the time when I was a kid. Was so proud of how big I grew, of my sister’s singing. And then I figured out why he never stayed. Why he didn’t teach me to throw that hammer. I was loud about it. You’ve probably heard the story.”

  I have—Amon challenged his father to ritual combat—but I remain quiet.

  “I called him to holmgang when I was ten, at the summer solstice, in front of Bright Home. Because of my mom’s honor. He was so pissed, but he couldn’t do anything about it, so he accepted and broke my arm with just one swing.” Amon rubs the heel of his hand down the sleeve of his right forearm. “Ever since then, we’ve just danced around each other. I swore I’d never accept any status from him. Mom wanted me to join the militia at least, if not his Army. Instead, I tried to get arrested.”

  “Selling bearbane and fake relics?”

  “I had a great shtick about some branches off the New World Tree for a year, but not all my relics are fake.”

  “Your name gets you out of it.”

  “Nobody wants to tell Thor Thunderer they’ve arrested his son. For a while, I tried a different last name, but you know.” He waves his hand vaguely at his eyes. “Impossible to hide.”

  I say, “You don’t have to stay to face him, not for m
e. Go before anybody notices, and I won’t say a word.” I hesitate. “You’ve done more than enough, and I won’t blackmail you any longer. Nobody will hear from me about the bearbane. Though please stop selling it to my Bears.”

  After a brief pause, Amon says, “Skit, I’m worried now, too, about Soren. Besides, you might not be a god, but you’re ragging mad. I don’t trust you not to let yourself go full-out frenzy again.”

  The strength of my relief almost makes me feel guilty.

  Water drips from the faucet, and outside I hear the busy rumble of the militia station going about its business. It smells of antiseptic in here and sour urine. We can’t stay.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Amon grumbles.

  Together, we get up and head back to his mom’s office.

  • • •

  It’s impossible to miss the arrival of the god of thunder.

  First there’s the rumble of heliplane blades echoing dully through the ceiling, then the cries of the crowd outside that don’t lessen as we hear him stomping up the stairs to this floor. The stairwell door flings open, and there he is, Thor Thunderer.

  The god has a crooked nose and rosy cheeks, red-gold beard trimmed short against his jaw and long red braids. He wears his steel corselet over a plain shirt and wool leggings, thick boots spouting fur around his calves, and his bracers are fur-lined as well. There’s a heavy blue cloak chained to the pauldrons over either shoulder. The hammer, Crusher, hangs from a studded belt. It’s exactly how he’s looked every time I’ve seen him.

  His presence looms before him like a bubble of pressurized air. “Grid!” he bellows. Any militiamen not already standing are on their feet in an instant. “Where is my son?”

  Grid opens her office door and beckons to Thor. I stand, but Amon slouches into one of the armchairs.

  The god strides longer than any man or giant, filling the room. The hair on my forearms raises, and along my spine, too, as he enters, turning sideways because his shoulders are too massive for the frame. Grid closes the office door and puts one hand on the god’s arm, while turning the window blinds tightly shut with the other.