Authors: A.J. Aalto
“Isn’t that what I said?” I turned the print-out upside down, but that didn’t seem to make things clearer. “How about Axel-fo-sho? Lots of car dealerships there or something?”
“One presumes you refer to Askelshofoi,” Harry said.
“That word is unnecessarily complicated,” I informed them. “The coastline takes a hard hook around Nerd-loading-a Ford-with-dung, but then the map goes blank.”
“Nordlendingafjordungr,” Harry corrected.
I drummed a finger on my bottom lip. “I feel like I’m missing a lot today.”
Golden looked up from her notes again. “Only today?”
“Pumpkin-wizard…no! Gizzard.” I said. “Damn. It’s only Pumpkin-gizzard.”
“Pumpkin-wizard is more fun,” Golden agreed amiably, glancing at the map.
“I need this properly translated.”
“You don’t speak that language?”
I waggled the iPad at her. “Of course not. I don’t even know what language it is.”
“Figured you wouldn’t be trying if you didn’t.”
“Well, I guess I showed you, didn’t I?” I told her.
“The genius gene isn’t connected at all to your mouth, huh?” she asked.
“Only the swearing parts. Does this look like 'Poop-hamper-booger-biscuit' to you?”
Golden grinned and went back to her notes. “Yes.”
Harry closed his eyes, and exhaled loudly and unnecessarily. “Must you encourage her, Ms. Golden?”
“Sorry, Lord Dreppenstedt.” Golden had picked up on SSA Chapel’s knee-jerk habit of calling Harry by his title, and Harry was in no hurry to correct her.
We left the limo, waved goodbye to Viktor the ogre, and hopped aboard the PCU’s private jet. Once settled into a nice, wide seat, I turned my attention to my email; I had fourteen serious business messages for Bare Hand Services already. Post-holiday stress, maybe. I assumed some people would send me real mail along with the odd personal item to Grope, but so far, it was emails. I read one aloud. “Dear Ms. Baranuik, I have not been able to find my lucky socks since my husband moved out. Did that bastard take them and give them to his new whore? Should I kill her?” I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, the world was just as disappointing as it had been two seconds ago. “Yes, Susan from Tacoma. Yes he did. And I’m glad, Susan. I hope she wears a hole in the toe, you petty, vindictive, but understandably cold-footed--”
“You’re not typing that, are you?” Golden checked, leaning over while I jabbed an angry finger at my iPad.
“This lady is gonna kill someone over a goddamn pair of socks. What is wrong with people? I can’t work with the public. They’re deranged!”
“If Harry left you for another DaySitter and gave her your favorite froggy socks, you wouldn’t hit her with a two-by-four?” Golden asked. When I glared amphibian doom at her, she just grinned. Harry chuckled, acknowledging Golden’s point. I hated them both with the fury of a thousand crochet tadpoles.
“This is going to be a nightmare,” I muttered. “Why did you talk me into this, Harry?”
“I merely pointed out,” he said primly, “that you
could
run your own business, not that you
should
. Flames and ether, my fair bird, a person who cannot even keep her own Ritchings laced shouldn’t be running anything, let alone a business.”
“Harry, all running shoes are not ‘Ritchings.’ These are Keds,” I reminded him for the billionth time. “Also, when we talked about me leaving the FBI, you said, and I quote, ‘Marnie, you should totes run a business because froo-fritty-froo-froo yammerty-hammerty.’”
Harry cut his grey eyes at me over his
pince nez
. “Do try to calm your lunatic ravings.”
“Okay, I’m paraphrasing a little,” I allowed.
“Elian would remind you about positivity,” Golden said, “but I enjoy your little freak outs. Are you sure you’re not just freaking about the monster stuff and blaming the mundane shit?”
“Of course I’m worried about the monster stuff and blaming the mundane shit! I was trying to have a semi-normal life in a small town with a digital shingle and a picket fence and a hunky coworker, but here I am, the harbinger of a monster invasion
. Again
.”
Golden frowned. “You’ve done this before?”
“No,” I admitted, “but it sounds like something I’d do.”
I closed my eyes during take-off, wondering if I should grab a nap or if that would mess with my jet lag. I wished I had more time to prepare for this trip, but the Overlord hadn’t left much time for dilly-dallying. I’d scribbled a few notes for Golden to read on the flight: what little I’d picked up about the habits of the
Falskaar Vouras
over the years, tidbits I’d gleaned from listening to Harry’s ramblings, anything she might need a heads-up on before joining us in the land of ice and darkness to waltz among the immortals. Though Harry tried to hold his secrets close to the vest, it was inevitable that he’d slip up and flash one now and then, especially in those long, cold nights when I was warming his casket, or in his post-feeding haze when he was blissed out, on those occasions when he asked me to indulge him in a bit of pre-feed absinthe. Those tidbits I’d promptly stored in my memory, because he wasn’t likely to repeat them.
“Where exactly is this court?” Golden asked.
I wasn’t sharing any more than I felt she needed to know; surprised that Harry didn’t immediately tell her to mind her own beeswax, I watched him consider whether or not to answer.
“The Norsemen called it Svikheimslending,” he said at last, smiling tightly. “Referring to us: people of the treacherous place.”
I knew the Bitter Pass was somewhere along the Finnmark, where the extreme north of Norway brushes the Baltic Sea and bumps up against Russia. The island of Svikheimslending itself was probably somewhere north of the Svalbard archipelago, but there was a whole lot of icy nothing up there on the maps, even on the few I had that Harry said would be helpful. Google had, somehow, not even gotten around to doing street view of it yet. Of course, Harry was known for being less than forthright, so his honesty surprised me.
He continued, “It was officially gifted to the
Falskaar Vouras
by Magnus Haakonsson, Magnus the Law-mender, King of Norway, in 1264, though the immortals have had strongholds there for much longer than the Norsemen ever knew. In appreciation, the revenant king renamed his stronghold Skulesdottir, after the Law-mender’s mother, because she cautioned Magnus to keep peace with the
Falskaar Vouras
. He took his mother’s counsel to heart, and to this day, the more traditional of my kind shy away from accepting less-than-enthusiastic feeds from Norwegian veins.”
More traditional?
I smirked. How could anyone be more traditional than my ultra-traditional Harry? Well, except for the eyebrow piercings. And the fast cars. And the iPhone. Okay, maybe he was a bad example, and just seemed stodgy and old-fashioned to me; he was some kind of rebellious revenant whippersnapper to the old farts, much less the ancient ones.
He sensed my lips were mocking him and aimed a chiding eye at me. “Scandinavian seamen know the two words that will make an immortal pause in his step, should his ship need to pass too close to a dark area during polar night, and a flag raised with these two words will hold them safe: ‘Law-mender’s man.’”
I informed her, “You know we won’t see the sun, right?”
“Like, ever?” she asked.
“We’ll be sailing into the Arctic circle in late December. Polar twilight extends for almost a month. The sun doesn’t get all the way above the horizon between the eleventh of November and the thirtieth of January, at Svalbard, anyway. There probably won't be too many lights either; the immortals can see in the dark, because they're supernatural assholes and don't own Lego to step on when they get up at night. I’m sure some of the DaySitters have oil lamps or something in their private chambers. Eventually, DaySitters' eyes are supposed to adjust to require less and less light; with long enough exposure and proper Bonding to a significantly aged immortal companion, their eyes can see as well as cats in low light. Some also lose pigmentation, especially elderly humans, since we kind of go nocturnal, and long-enough v-telomerase exposure gives us some sympathetic revenant properties, which makes tanning kind of a bad idea. So, the DaySitters we meet are probably perfectly healthy, and not a whole pile of anemic albinos or something.” I remembered the first time I’d seen an old man who’d served for decades in darkness. It was like someone had bleached him from head to toe, though his step was youthful and lithe, and the strength of his Talent was breathtaking. And Ruby Valli, despite being over a hundred, had packed a nasty right jab and could bound up and down stairs like a meth-coked ferret.
“What about in summer?” Golden asked, her eyes cutting between me and Harry for the answer. “What happens to the DaySitters and revenants when it's light all the time?”
Harry nodded at Golden's perspicacity. “The Strongholds were built atop mountains, cliffs, rock faces, and spanning ravines. I think you should find that, much like an iceberg hides its bulk, most of the living space is hidden within the heart of the stone itself, with only the proud towers showing above.”
“A place to fly their banner,” I guessed, and judged by the look on Harry’s face that I was right. “The houses are not always… friendly with one another. Immortals are territorial. Power, position, and the ability to impress and manipulate is everything to them. If they cannot awe you or seduce you, you end up something they must dominate. My advice: if something makes your jaw drop open, don’t bother hiding it. There are plenty of egos to be fed where we’re going, and you couldn’t possibly feed them enough.”
Harry’s eyes slid sideways at me, and I felt a surge of hunger through the Bond that titillated me, hooking me like a barb in the chest. He was pleased and annoyed at once, irritated that I knew his kind well enough to peg them with less than flattering words, but proud as well. If we’d been alone, I had no doubt that he’d have been out of his seat in a flash to take his pet in his arms. And then what? That, I wasn’t sure about, but there would no doubt be fangs involved. I smirked and ran a finger along the collar of my shirt to tease him.
But we were not alone, and the silence had stretched long enough to make Golden squirm in her chair and politely drop her attention back to her papers. Harry caught my gaze with his and his pierced brow twitched playfully. “Perhaps you ought to try to sleep for a bit. ‘Tis a long trip, and I’d hate for you to wear out your tongue.”
I took the hint; I had claimed Harry’s old iPhone for the music feature, and put the earbuds in to fall asleep to the new Rusty Underboob album, R.U.B. It Out, featuring the hit “Bad Case of the Chid.” Like all hardcore Underboob fans, I was a Roobie. Their lead singer, Rob Bobby, also sang for the Harshmellows in the late nineties, and had co-written my favorite song ever: “When Babies Eat Babies.” I could never eat veal without humming it.
I drowsed a bit but it was broken and restless, though Harry’s closeness did settle me whenever I jolted awake. Twice, he pushed a dollop of reassurance through the Bond and lulled me back to sleep. Twice, I dreamt of gross old tongues and busted teeth, of gunshot ringing out in a fog-choked alley, of the knotted scar high on Batten’s inner thigh. When I stirred for good, I tried texting Batten again. When there was no reply, I felt Harry’s hand alight softly on the top of my head. I didn't bother hiding how glum I felt, nor the fact that Harry was partly to blame.
“He has not spoken to you yet, my love?”
“Nope.” I made sure Golden was sleeping before saying, “I still think Batten would have been a good choice for Second. I know you think so, too.”
“This shared faith in Our Mark may be a
folie a deux
, ducky.”
“We could have brought him along for some of it.”
“This was for the best. Many a pickle makes a mickle.”
I nodded as though I knew what the fuck he was talking about. “And what is a mickle but many a pickle?” I tossed back, feigning wisdom.
“I ask you,” Harry agreed, though what he was agreeing to, I didn’t know, as I was still blissfully lost in his nonsense.
“I once had an excellent pickle in a town called Micklewallop,” Golden added sleepily, coming to with a stretch of her arms overhead.
“Did you indeed?” Harry said, removing his
pince nez
. Golden grinned teasingly.
“Of course she didn’t, Harry,” I said. “Evening, sleepyhead. Just in time. We’re almost there.”
“What time is it? What day is it? Where are we?” Golden asked.
I checked my watch, because the sky was a grim blue-black and gave no clues. “Four in the afternoon, Sunday the twenty-eighth of December. Somewhere over Norway.”
The plane descended toward a silent, snow-covered cape, and we landed in Hammerfest, population ten thousand if you didn’t count the reindeer. I watched the runway lights rise to meet our wheels and was filled with a sad, insidious thread of trepidation. As Harry’s cool hand landed atop my gloved one, I realized I’d been clutching the armrests and fractionally loosened my grip, my misgivings doing likewise. Harry patted me then put his copy of Proust’s
Swann’s Way
in his bag.
We came down the plane’s steps to the runway to a frigid but mercifully windless night, a dusting of snow falling through the still air, and hurried into the warmth of the Hammerfest
lufthavn
. It was a reassuringly typical airport writ small, lots of chrome and flight info, and even a phone-booth-sized installation of a familiar coffee shop.
“Who, or what, is that?” I asked, jerking my chin at the giant holding a sign that said only “FV.” The guy was doing a fairly terrible job of pretending to be human. He parted the modest torrent of people on the concourse, and they flowed and eddied around him, bumping into one another and off of him as though he didn’t exist. Maybe they were incapable of noticing him. Never once did a mortal look up at him, though if he’d been a normal human, they would have, if only in awe of his height. He reminded me a bit of Viktor the ogre in shape and size, broad and tall and thick, but there was nothing of the ogre in his jaw. Pale blond hair hung long and poker-straight on either side of a weathered, bearded face.