"No, nothing." I lowered my eyes and tossed my towel on the dresser next to the small television.
"You used all the hot water," Konstantin grumbled absently as he picked his black T-shirt up off his bed. I peered over at him, watching as he pulled the shirt over his head, then quickly looked away once he'd gotten it on.
"Sorry. I guess I'm not used to sharing."
"I doubt this place had much hot water anyway." He looked over at me. "At least your hair's looking better now."
I tugged at a lock of my shoulder-length hair so I could get a better look at it. The faded gray had mostly washed out, and it was returning to its usual color again.
"So what's the plan now?" Konstantin asked.
"I don't know." I leaned back against the dresser. "What's your plan?"
"My plan was to find you, and I've found you." He motioned in the air, making a checkmark with his hand. "Mission accomplished."
"You didn't have any idea what would happen after that?"
"Not really." He sat on the bed across from me, leaning back so he propped himself up on his arms. "I didn't know what would happen when I found you. But you've been on the run for some days now. Haven't you had time to come up with your next move?"
"No." I sighed. "I mean, I know what I want to do. I want to get back to Doldastam and avenge Kasper. I want to make sure my family and friends are safe, and I want to get the Queen out of there before she hurts anybody else, which probably means that I'd need to take on Viktor Dalig and his army along with the Kanin army.
"And then once all that is done, I want to go to Storvatten and make sure Mikko is freed and that he and Linnea are safe, and then I need to make sure they get a good, honest guard in place."
Konstantin let out a long whistle. "That's an impressive list you got there, white rabbit."
"I know. I just have no idea where to get started." I ran my hand through my hair. "And I don't know how I can possibly take on all of that by myself."
"Hey, you're not by yourself." Konstantin stood up and stepped closer to me. "I'm with you now. Remember?"
I stared up into his eyes, desperate to believe him. Not just because I was faced with an insurmountable task and I needed his help. But because there was something about him, something that still made me slightly breathless. It was almost as if nothing had changed since I was a kid.
I had trusted and believed in him then, and now I wanted nothing more than to feel that way again.
"I'm glad that you're with me, I truly am," I admitted. "But there's still only two of us, and we're enemies of the state. No one will believe us, and we can't defeat an army by ourselves."
Konstantin took a step back, considering this for a moment. "Maybe we don't have to."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean ... Bent Stum."
"Bent Stum is dead," I reminded him.
He snapped his fingers. "Exactly! Bent was killed by Kennet Biaelse, who was working on orders from Mina."
I shrugged, since Konstantin hadn't told me anything I didn't already know. "So? How does that help us?"
"Bent Stum is Omte," he said, grinning.
"The Omte?" I shook my head. "They're unreasonable and grumpy and, quite frankly, they're kinda stupid."
"Trust me, I know. I spent months working with Bent." Konstantin frowned. "Bent was murdered, and that sucks, but he was awful to deal with. It was like working with the Hulk, if the Hulk was dumber and angrier."
"And you want to go to them for help?" I laughed darkly.
"Look, I get that it's not ideal. But the Omte already kinda hate the other tribes. They've always been jealous of them, because everyone else is richer, smarter, and more attractive. But the Omte are so much stronger. Their physical strength is unparalleled by any other tribe, even the Vittra."
"And you think they would help us over Bent? I thought the Omte Queen didn't care about him," I said, remembering what Ridley had said when he'd first been investigating Bent Stum after the Linus Berling incident.
"It doesn't matter." Konstantin shook his head. "The Omte are overly emotional and quick to anger. And now one of their people was killed in some kind of conspiracy between the Skojare and the Kanin? They'll be all over that."
"But I don't want the Omte to destroy the Kanin or the Skojare," I pointed out.
"I've heard the royals are smarter and more reasonable than the average Omte civilian. Maybe if we get a meeting with the Omte Queen, we can gauge how rational she seems, and we can go from there," Konstantin suggested.
I chewed the inside of my cheek, still not completely sold on Konstantin's idea. It wasn't an awful idea, but with a tribe as unpredictable as the Omte, I wasn't too keen on getting involved.
"Besides, their capital isn't even that far away," Konstantin added. "I think it's only a day's drive from here."
Unlike most of the troll tribes that preferred to make their homes in the colder temperatures of the north, the Omte had just kept moving south before eventually settling in the swamps of southern Louisiana. It was as if they'd done everything they could to distance themselves from the other tribes.
"All right." I relented finally. "What have we got to lose? Let's go see the Omte Queen."
SEVEN
commute
As the Mustang lurched along the gravel road, I leaned over into the backseat. Konstantin hit a bump, and I bounced up, hitting my head on the ceiling.
"Hey, what are you doing?" he asked.
I'd been reaching back to grab my duffel bag, but his bag was sitting beside mine, unzipped, and a flash of metal caught my eyes. Resting right on top of the clothes were two daggers, and I reached in and picked one up.
"What do you have these for?" I narrowed my eyes at him and held up the dagger for him to see. "These are the Kanin daggers you were given when you became the Queen's guard."
It had been a large ceremony in the palace. I'd been standing as near to the front as I could get, on my tiptoes to get a glimpse of it. They were beautiful daggers, with long sharp blades and ornately carved handles of silver and ivory.
"They're for protection," he replied gruffly. "And they're the only things I still have from being a Hogdragen, so I'd like it if you stopped playing with them and put them back."
"Yeah, sure. Sorry." I leaned back over the seat and put his dagger safely back in his bag, then grabbed my own duffel before sitting back down. "I was just getting my own bag anyway."
"What for?"
"I don't trust that you know where you're going, and I'm hoping there might be something in here that could help," I replied as I unzipped the bag.
"I already told you. I've been to Fulatrask before," Konstantin said, sounding indignant. "I went with Mina on a peace-keeping mission years ago, and I never forget how to get anywhere."
"As reassuring as that is, the sun is starting to set"--I gestured out the window at the amber skies showing through the branches of the willow trees that lined the road--"and I'd like to get where we're going by nightfall."
"That's a great idea, but if you packed a buncha maps to the troll capitals, you should've let me in on that sooner," he said with sarcasm dripping from his voice.
"I didn't." I dug through my bag, pushing through the clothes I'd picked up from thrift stores and garage sales over the last few days. "I didn't even pack this bag. Ridley got everything together."
As I moved a pair of jeans, the cell phone fell out of the pocket. I stared at it for moment, once again finding myself trapped under the tantalizing possibility of calling Ridley. It was a prepaid phone, so it was virtually untraceable, and I would do almost anything to be able to call Ridley and hear his voice and find out he was okay.
But I knew I couldn't risk it. It was still too soon, and if anyone in Doldastam found out I'd contacted him, he would be in serious trouble. Assuming that he wasn't already locked up for helping me escape in the first place.
"Who's Ridley?" Konstantin asked. "Wait. Wasn't he like the Rektor or something?"
>
"It doesn't matter." I brushed him off, since talking about Ridley still felt far too painful, and I buried the phone back in the bag. "But this looks like a standard bag for new trackers, which means that they pack it with a few emergency essentials, including a handbook..."
Finally, I unzipped a pocket hidden at the bottom of the bag and found the handbook. Since this bag was going out into the human world, we tried to keep the handbook as hidden as possible, in case the bag fell into the wrong hands. But it was a nice asset for trackers out on their first few jobs because it had tips and tricks, along with important information for them to remember.
It also had rundowns on all the other tribes in case you ran into them (which wasn't completely unheard-of, especially when tracking changelings in popular destinations like New York City or Chicago).
"Aha!" I held up the book to show Konstantin, but he seemed less than impressed.
"Does that have an address in it?" he asked with an arched eyebrow.
"Let me find out." I tossed my bag into the backseat, and then I got comfortable, sinking lower so I could prop my bare feet up on the dashboard with the handbook spread open on my legs.
The first few sections were all things to help trackers do their jobs better, and I flipped through them quickly until I got to the parts about the tribes. When I saw that there were only a couple pages on each tribe, my heart sank.
It didn't help that the top quarter of one of the pages on the Omte was a detailed sketch of their emblem--a brown-bearded vulture, staring at me with small black eyes. There were a few basic facts about the Omte, and finally, at the bottom, I found a sentence that seemed remotely helpful.
"The Omte capital of Fulatrask is located in the wetlands in the human state of Louisiana," I read aloud. "Fulatrask has an estimated population of six thousand, making it the second most populated capital of the five tribes. They live under the rule of their King and Queen, Thor and Bodil Elak, who reside in the palace there."
"That must be an older printing," Konstantin commented when I'd finished reading.
I turned back to the cover, and it looked new enough to me. "What makes you say that?"
"Because Thor died, like, three years ago," he said. "Bodil is still allowed to rule, though, because she and Thor have a little kid."
"How do you know this stuff?" I asked. "I don't even know this."
"I traveled with Bent for a while, remember? And he loved talking about all the stupid crap the Omte would get themselves into."
"What happened to the King?"
"There's a tavern in Fulatrask called the Ugly Vulture." He shook his head, like he thought it was a dumb name. "According to Bent, it's a real roughneck place, although, also according to him, all the bars in Fulatrask are really rowdy places. But the Ugly Vulture is apparently the worst."
The road had become narrow, so the swamp came right up to the edges of it, and Konstantin slowed down. As the sun continued to set, everything around us seemed to glow an eerie red.
"Thor really loved the Ugly Vulture," Konstantin went on. "That is one nice thing that Bent said about the Omte--their royals have no problem getting down and dirty with the commoners."
"How progressive of them," I said dryly.
"So anyway, I guess Thor got really drunk on eldvatten--"
"Eldvatten?" I interrupted him.
"It's this really, really strong alcohol that the Omte make. It's like a cross between wine and moonshine, but I have no idea what's in it," Konstantin explained.
"So the King is totally wasted at this point, and Bent didn't know the full details of it, but another patron starts getting mouthy with Thor," he continued. "So the King starts hitting this guy, and the guy gets pissed, so he rips out Thor's throat with his bare hands."
I gaped at him. "This is who we're going to for help? Their King died in a bar fight!"
"We don't have a lot of other options," he countered. "And besides, the King was drunk. He was probably less of a dick when he was sober."
I leaned my head back against the seat. "We are so screwed."
The car started to slow down, and I looked out the window, hoping to see a palace or some sign that we were getting closer. But it was only cypress trees and dark water.
"What's happening?" I asked.
"We've run out of road." Konstantin put the car in park and turned it off. "Now we get to finish the journey on foot."
EIGHT
everglades
The heat was oppressive. It's hard to explain exactly what it felt like to come from twenty-degree temperatures and snowstorms to more than eighty degrees and humid. The air seemed to condense on my skin, and bugs buzzed wildly around me.
As we waded through the bayou, with the murky water coming up to our knees, I hoped against hope that Konstantin knew where we were going.
"Watch for alligators," Konstantin warned.
I looked around the water, which was getting harder to see in the fading light, but even in bright afternoon it would be hard to tell a log from a large reptile. "There are alligators here?"
"I have no idea." He glanced back at me, smirking. "I don't know anything about what lives down here."
"I guess we'll find out, then, won't we?" I muttered.
A mosquito buzzed loudly around my ear, and I tried to swat it away to no avail. It finally landed on the back of my neck, and I slapped it hard to be sure I got it.
"You should be careful about making loud noises, though," Konstantin said as I followed a few steps behind him.
"Why? Will it attract alligators?" I asked sarcastically.
"No, but the Omte startle easily, and we definitely don't want them startled."
Beneath the water, the thick mud threatened to rip off my boots with every step I took, making it very slow going. I told Konstantin that there had to be an easier way to get to Fulatrask, but he reminded me that the Omte didn't want to be found. They made it as difficult as possible for anyone to stumble upon them.
It had gotten dark enough that we needed to pull out our cell phones and use them as flashlights to help guide our path. But there was still so much around us we couldn't see, and the wetlands were alive with noise--frogs, insects, and birds were loudly chirping their nighttime songs.
Somewhere high above us, I heard the flapping of wings, but I couldn't move my light fast enough to spot them. I'd also heard the high-pitched squeaks of bats, so I figured that they were zooming around to feast on the plethora of bugs.
Occasionally I felt something swim up against my leg, but since nothing had bitten me yet, I tried not to worry about it.
Lightning bugs flashed around us, their tiny bodies twinkling through the trees and reflecting on the water. In the twilight, surrounded by the music of the animals and the still waters underneath the thick canopy of branches, there was something beautiful about the marsh, something almost enchanting.
"Bryn," Konstantin hissed, pulling me from my thoughts.
I'd fallen a few steps behind him because I'd paused to look around, but now I hurried ahead. He held out his arm, blocking me, when I reached him.
"Shh!" he commanded, and then he pointed toward where his light had picked up two glowing dots on a log, just barely above the surface of the water. It was an alligator, not even a meter away from us, and it looked massive.
"What do we do?" I whispered.
"I don't know. Back away slowly, I guess."
He kept the light on the alligator, and we started to move away when I heard the sound of flapping wings again. It sounded much too large to be a bat, and it was followed by more flapping. Whatever it was, it was very close by, and there were more than one.
I turned my flashlight toward the sky, and it caught on a huge brown bird flying above us. The bird circled us for a moment before settling down on a long branch, and I finally got a good look at it.
With its large wingspan, pointed beak, and thick feathers down its long neck, it was unmistakably a bearded vulture. Bearded vultures weren't
native to this area--they were something that had been brought in with trolls from the old world, like Gotland rabbits and Tralla horses.
We were in Omte territory.
The cypress and willow trees around us towered several stories into the air, and from the corner of my eye I saw a flash near the top of one. I shone my light up toward it, and with the weak power of my TracFone, I could just make out the outline of a large tree house.
It wasn't exactly a luxury tree house, but it was much more than the average one you might find in a child's backyard. The wood seemed warped and worn, with moss growing over it, and a sagging porch was attached to the front. But it was easily large enough to house a family, and it even had a second story attached to the right side that climbed up along the trunk of the tree.
A large head poked out of the window, looking down at me. It was slightly lopsided, the way Bent Stum's head had been, with one eye appearing larger than the other.
"Konstantin," I said quietly. "I think we're here."
"What?" he asked.
No sooner had the words escaped his mouth than a massive ogre jumped out of a tree and came crashing down into the water in front of us, sending muddy water splashing over us. As soon as the water settled, the ogre let out a long, low growl, and I knew we were in trouble.
"I told you that we shouldn't startle them," Konstantin said.
NINE
monstrosity
I'd heard of ogres and seen pictures of them in textbooks, but I'd never actually met one in real life. I knew that the Omte occasionally gave birth to ogres and they had several of them living in their population. But it's one thing to read about massive, hulking trolls and it's another thing entirely to have one standing directly in front of you.
The ogre stood well over eight feet tall, and he had thick arms bulging with muscles like boulders. His whole body tilted to one side, with his right shoulder rising above his left shoulder, and his right hand was even bigger than his left. His head was massive, making room for a large mouth filled with uneven yellowed teeth. It all made his eyes seem disproportionately small, and he stared down at us with either rage or hunger--I couldn't tell which.