The Strange Maid

EIGHTEEN

BALDUR’S TOWN HOUSE in Port Orleans is a narrow blue-shingled building with a porch on the second and third stories, bright yellow shutters, and plants dripping like hair from the rails and even the roof. Soren parallel parks impressively, and I hop out onto a broken cobbled sidewalk. Graybeard moss dangles from the low branches of an oak. I have to brush it out of my way as I swing Unferth’s sword onto my shoulder.

Baldur himself will be joining us here for the ball tonight. Soren tapped his finger against the wheel for the entire drive once we hit the Orleans kingstate, which I assume means a level of excitement that would’ve set a lesser man puking.

We start for the front porch, with its wide fans and line of white rocking chairs. A man stands up from one, lifting a hand in greeting. But it’s not the god of light.

It’s Rathi.

He looks amazing, with his golden hair curled about his face by the humidity, his jacket gone, and those pale pink shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. I hope his slacks are cotton. I’m sweating already in my jeans and Mad Eagles T-shirt. “Rathi,” I say, letting surprise show in my tone. He puts his arms around me and hugs me.

“I’ve been worried about you,” he murmurs. “I’m glad you agreed to this.”

“The preacher cosponsoring the ball must be your Ardo Vassing?” I lean back to meet his eyes.

Rathi nods, then releases me to bow politely at Soren. “It’s good to see you again, Bearstar. And thank you for watching out for my sister.”

“She’s watched out for me,” Soren rumbles.

I lean my shoulder into Soren’s and catch Rathi’s swift glance of appraisal. “Well,” he says, his well-practiced smile flashing, “she’s good at that, too.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask, letting go of both boys and heading up to the tall front door.

“I got in last night with Ardo and managed to obtain this address to see if you had any free time for sightseeing.”

With a sardonic glance at Soren, I say, “He means he flirted his way here.”

Rathi holds still, one eyebrow tilted slightly as if to say I’m above such things. But Soren, knocking against the cut-glass window in the door, glances pointedly at me. “That skill must run in your family.”

Both Rathi and I laugh, but for different reasons, I’m sure.

An hour later, I’m walking through the Old Quarter between Rathi and Soren, with vague directions from the housekeeper to the hanging tree in Sanctus Louis Square. Soren was surprised we weren’t heading straight for the Port Orleans Death Hall, but that’s not where Precia will be today.

I recognize the energy of a tourist trap, though here we’re seduced not with hawkers and historical artifacts but with dark, almost filthy mystery. The Quarter sticks to the back of my throat; I could peel a film of it off my skin. The streets are narrow and cobbled in most places, the buildings redbrick though often painted over with dingy white or pale green. Upper stories are quiet, all tall dark windows and empty iron balconies. At street level, doors are flung open and painted signs beckon to us with the promise of magic charms and unique jewelry, seether readings, fancy shoes, and every sort of fried food.

The air smells of old beer and molasses, with an acrid undertone I choose not to dwell on. Littered in the gutters are beads and torn streamers making half-rune signs, and everything is slightly damp, though I don’t think it rained.

We find cold coffee to keep me awake and share a basket of airy doughnuts as we walk down the center of Prince Street amidst a throng of not only tourists but Disir Day celebrants.

Disir Day is a festival of the goddesses and all disir: women spirits and the ghosts of our mother-ancestors. Temporary shrines are stacked haphazardly on the sidewalks, glowing with elf-lights and crowded with seven-day candles, tiny goddess figures, bells and charms, and laughing patrons. Crepe flowers drip from the balconies, adding rainbows of color. I’ve heard Port Orleans does this for every holiday, and even some outside the Asgardian purview. The stories of Port Orleans at Hallowblot especially titillate, what with the Old Quarter transforming into a giant goblin playground, with masks and costumes and a three-kilometer-long parade.

I keep my eyes stripped for a very specific sort of vendor who’s likely to be nearer to the hanging tree, but in a place such as this they might have permanent shops. It’s not easy pushing through, and we’re forced to a leisurely pace. Street performers clog the corners, and people with plastic cups of icy alcohol stream like private parades between the pubs. If Soren and I had our weapons, we’d be able to cut a better path, but as it is we don’t stand out—Soren blends in better than in any place else I’ve seen. There are every sort of people here, speaking different languages, with every kind of god’s jewelry and tattoos and fashion. It seems to relax him, or at least balance out his aversion to crowds. I feel entirely on edge with questions, eyes burning from lack of sleep, while sweat prickles my scalp and the jeans stick to my thighs.

Rathi doesn’t help by droning on and on about the history of Port Orleans and how it became so religiously diverse. It was the largest port in New Asgard two hundred years ago, until the end of the Thralls’ War, when it divided into the formerly rich and the newly freed. Almost immediately Li Grand Zombi became the first non-Asgardian deity officially acknowledged by Congress, though only as an incarnation of the World Snake. The shock of it drew men from all churches, and Biblists in particular, hoping for similar success. But the voodoo queens had managed the politics by embracing the variety of our gods and finding mirrors in their own spirituality, “while compromise,” Rathi says disapprovingly, “was never a Biblist strength.”

Rich, coming from a Freyan, Unferth whispers.

He won’t leave me alone, either.

It isn’t until Rathi, thanks to encouraging grunts from Soren, is speculating on why Port Orleans voodoo is so compatible with Freya the Witch’s magic, that I see what I’m looking for. Several piles of wire cages spill out of a storefront, holding rats and sparrows and squirrels.

When I stop, Rathi nearly runs into me but grips my shoulder tightly. “Oh, Signy, really?” He gazes past me at the martyr shop. “I thought you were only going to the hanging tree to speak with the Valkyrie.”

“I can’t approach the hanging tree on Disir Day without sacrifice.” I irritably shrug him off and head for the nearest stack of cages. The tiny white mice crawl on top of each other, whiskers twitching slowly. There’s a pair of albino pigeons cuddled together sleeping, and a long gray rat watches me. Soren comes up behind and softly says, “I haven’t done this since my dad died.”

“I’ll be out here,” Rathi says, waving his hand at the street itself.

Soren and I duck into the shop. “Weak stomach?” Soren asks.

“Delicate Freyan sensibilities.”

Soren’s eyes crinkle. “I thought everyone made sacrifice.”

“On Yule they hold their noses, but the branch of Freyan Rathi is—all the Summerlings and my family, too—say life is too valuable for such a thing.”

“That’s the point of sacrifice, though.”

“I know.”

The shop is livid with animal calls and stinks like bleach and wood shavings and urine. Cages hang from the low rafters, decorated with ribbons and rune flags. There are inkpots and rune brushes, feather fans, penknives and silver throat daggers. A family of four studies the rodent wall as their father points out the coloring on various mice to his two daughters and what the differences represent. A single woman with an iron collar studies a molting crow in a too-small cage. I head for the counter while Soren picks through a stand of prayer cards.

A little man with skin like concrete nods at me from the register, milky eyes fluttering. His left eyelid is tattooed a solid though fading gray. “Lady?” he says in a small, rough voice.

“Do you have any kissing doves?”

“Oh surely, right in the back. How many do you want?”

I glance at Soren as he joins me with a small shake of his head. “Only one.”

“I’ll take one of the little black mice,” Soren says, pointing.

The keeper shuffles behind a violet curtain, and while we wait one of the little girls peeks around her father’s hips to stare at Soren. He doesn’t smile or even soften his expression. I poke him in the ribs and his eyes pop. It makes the girl giggle and hide. “A smile goes a long way,” I whisper at him as the old Odinist returns with a round wire cage holding a gray kissing dove with peach feathers at her breast. He hands Soren a mesh bag and tells him to go fish out his mouse.

As I open my calligraphy bag to pull out some notes, the man cuts his hand between us. “This is no charge,” he says quietly, “not for the Vinland Valkyrie and Bearstar. You honor my martyrs by choosing them.”

I pause in an attempt to hide my shock. Not at being recognized, but at being recognized and honored. I lift my eyes to his slowly, thinking of that Lokiskin pawnshop owner who refused to buy my seax, who barely admitted what I was. I hear Precia say, You could hold the country in the palm of your hand with your story now. “Thank you, sir,” I manage. “May the finest blessings run through your blood and the blood of your sacrifices.”

The keeper pats my hand with his gnarled fingers. “Keep it up, Valkyrie.”

I carry my dove before me as we go outside, still stunned. Soren seems unfazed, cupping his mesh bag gently against his chest with both hands. The mouse must be smaller than his thumb. Rathi finds us, glancing mournfully at my dove, but says nothing as we make our way to the square.

The Sanctus Louis temple shines white and tall, with dark stained-glass windows glittering in the thick sunlight. Spreading out from its huge double doors is the green square, with a crooked hanging tree in the center and a marble statue of Odin’s wife, Frigg Cloud-Spinner. She’s been draped with flowers and plastic beads, her hands holding them as if to weave them into one of her rainbows.

A line has formed, perhaps a dozen people long, before the sacrificial station, where three hooded death priests help people tie prayer cards to the martyrs they’ve brought, mark them with their rune wishes, and then direct them one at a time to the trunk of the tree, where the Valkyrie waits.

To my surprise, Rathi stays with Soren and me as we move up the line. He’s unable to stop himself from cooing at my dove. She cocks her head and blinks at him from one little brown eye. “Hasn’t there been enough death?” he murmurs into my ear.

At the long wooden table set up as the prep station, the first death priest smiles out from her green hood. A raven half-mask is tattooed across her face. “Welcome. What prayer will you tie to your martyr?”

Soren steps forward first and quietly speaks to the priest. She uses red ink to create a prayer card for him, tiny as my fingernail, to tie to the tail of his mouse. The rune on one side is lady and on the other youth. It’s a prayer to Idun the Young, keeper of the apples of immortality. Very appropriate for Disir Day. He scoots down to make room for me, turning toward the hanging tree.

There, in the crisscrossed shadows, the Valkyrie of the South finishes hanging a sparrow. She’s speaking to the teenage couple as they watch the little bird swing. A red love charm dangles from its claw.

As they back away, Precia unties the sparrow’s noose from the branch and hands it to her green-hooded assistant, who then takes it to a ladder and hangs it higher into the tree with the corpses of a few dozen other martyrs. They’ll hang for three nights and days before being burned in a fire at the Death Hall.

She stands straight and turns this way to welcome the next martyr to the tree.

And she sees me.

I lift my chin and hold my breath. Here I am in jeans, boots, and a T-shirt, my hair braided in messy loops, while Precia is in full summertime regalia: ankle-length dress the color of the sky, with a wide gold and copper belt and a chain made with silver and brilliant blue glass that cuts across her collar from shoulder to shoulder. From it hangs a diaphanous feather cape, every white feather fluttering individually. Silver cuffs hold the hem to her elbows and wrists, so when she lifts out her arms the cape spreads like wings. Her dark hair is puffed into curls, swept back with mixed-metal combs. True to form, she wears blue and copper earrings so large they swallow everything around them.

She smiles through gentle lipstick and beckons for me with manicured fingers. I bring Soren with me, like a shield.

“Signy,” Precia says, “and Soren Bearstar, you honor our hanging tree with your sacrifice,” calm and certain, as her assistant and a few lingering people listen. “This is not where I expected to see you,” she adds more softly, putting her hand on my shoulder, then sliding it around to half embrace me. She smells of lilac and sharp mint, oils dabbed beneath her ears and on her wrists to keep away the scent of death.

Precia turns her attention to Soren, clucking with approval at his prayer card. She releases me and I close my eyes as I feel the soft feathers brush down my bare arm. My dove bats her wings against the thin bars of her cage.

“Signy.”

I open my eyes to Precia’s, and for a flash I see glory in the rich brown irises.

Shock silences me for a moment. In ten years, I’ve never been able to read a rune in a Valkyrie’s eye before. It raises courage in me and I say, “Precia, I’ve come for your help. You told me to ask.”

Her gaze lingers on mine, cool but interested. She flicks her hand at her assistant, who begins clearing space for us. Soren waits beside his mouse, a tiny dead thing swinging at eye level.

“Paint a prayer card, Signy, and ask.” Precia ushers me to the long table, dismissing her death priests with a glance. She spreads rainbow-colored cards for me in an arc.

I choose one that is pale green with silver vines at the edges. “Tell me what you know about my riddle.”

She taps a peach-colored fingernail against my card. “We prayed that night, too. Elisa, Myra, and I. We prayed together for an answer, for help managing you because the three of us have always been … the ones most behind you.” She offers me a pot of dark green ink. I take it without touching her fingers.

“We came out to find you and there it was, emblazoned on the trunk of the New World Tree. It was for us as much as you, Elisa and I thought. That it meant you would always fight us, that your heart is a stubborn one, and one perhaps we should strive to understand instead of dismiss. But Myra said, That riddle is future tense. And then you woke up.”

“I woke up and ran away.”

“You didn’t ask us what we thought. You never asked. We’re supposed to be your sisters.”

I draw the rune for glory onto my card, and Precia’s hand goes still. I add sacrifice and death and transformation into a binding rune. Precia murmurs, “Sacrifice transforms death into its own glory.”

“That’s what Odin said to me when I was a little girl.” I lift my gaze to hers. “Do you still think the riddle’s answer is about my being stubborn? Or is it a prophecy?”

Precia’s coiffed hair and conservative wardrobe make it easy to forget she’s not even thirty years old yet. But the emotion in her eyes is young. “I think you proved yourself against the Vinland herd. I think you were there because of fate, and you were brave; you were a leader, Signy. That’s all we need you to be.”

“If I went home to the Philadelphia Death Hall right now, you would argue to include me now? Officially?”

“Yes. I already have. But the others—Gundrun and Siri and Aerin, in particular—will not agree until you ask to be one of us again. They argue that you can’t have proven yourself if even you don’t believe it.”

“I have to prove myself … to myself.”

She nods.

I smile sadly. Unferth said that to me the very day we met. “Do you believe Odin is the one who created the riddle?”

Precia flips over my card irritably. “Signy, really.”

“It’s not only a riddle but a prophecy. Like Myra said. Future tense. The Valkyrie of the Tree will prove herself with a stone heart.”

Her mouth curls into a frown. “If the heart is your heart, everything in that riddle was built from pieces of you, from pieces our Alfather could see and understand in that moment.”

“I think the answer is the troll mother’s heart. The one I’m hunting. Her heart is literally stone, Precia, and when I cut it out of her, I’ll have my vengeance. I saw runes in her eyes, too: stone and heart.”

“She has the worth of a Valkyrie,” she breathes.

I knew Precia would understand. “She’s my mirror.”

“I make myself a mirror to understand the beast.”

That my sister made the same leap to Valtheow as I did relieves me like the perfect couplet at the end of a poem. I take a long, deep breath. The air here is thick, heavy. It tastes of rain and wet leaves. “And so I’m faced with two options, Precia.”

“Two?”

“Either the riddle is all of Odin, and the answer is with me and me alone, pieces of my heart and the Valkyrie I wanted to be. I’ve always been the answer. Or the riddle is a prophecy, and the answer the troll mother’s heart. A thing to come that Odin could not have seen on his own and asked Freya to look forward into fate for me.”

The Valkyrie grasps my face, peers into my eyes. “And you’re convinced it’s the troll mother. A fated answer from the queen of Hel.”

“I dream of the troll mother every night, and she uses runes, Precia. She does what I do; she wears my poem on her stony skin. She recognized me, too, somehow. Her heart is the stone heart of the riddle, and Odin does not see the future.”

“But, Signy, the Alfather cast it. If his sister-god looked at Fate for him, he saw her answer and approved of where it would lead you. That riddle is from the god of the hanged.”

The certainty in her voice, the firm grip of her hands on my face, makes me wilt against her. “And so he did send Ned Unferth to help me, when it was time.”

“What?”

“Last year, at my birthday, I met a poet called Ned the Spiritless, who brought me to the trolls, who taught me about the riddle and, odd-eye, Precia, he …” I don’t know where to go from there, what detail to give her that will make her understand my connection to Ned Unferth.

“You love him.” Precia lets me go so suddenly I have to catch myself on the table.

I gape at her. It must be so obvious.

She says, “There is no room for other men, other loves, between a Valkyrie’s heart and the Alfather’s.”

“Elisa is married!”

“To a man who understands her devotion.”

“There are so many stories of Valkyrie and great, epic love,” I argue.

“How many of them ended happily? Especially for the Valkyrie in the sagas and ancient poems, the kind of Valkyrie you want to be? They have no happy endings, my love.”

It’s true, what she says, like a kick in the guts. “He’s dead anyway.”

Precia softens, touches my prayer card only to flip it over. “Finish your prayer, Signy.”

The front of the card reads: Sacrifice transforms death into its own glory. The first thing Unferth said to me was that pain wasn’t the worth of sacrifice. I think now the worth is in how it changes us. With a shaky hand, I paint the rune spirit and cross it out with a jagged line.

Precia blesses my card with a kiss. I open the cage while she gently pulls out my dove. We tie the card to her thin gray leg. I take her in both hands, her downy feathers shivering against my skin, to the hanging tree.

As I hold the dove, Precia ties one end of a green rope to her neck in a simple slipknot and the other end to the branch. I whisper, “I know, little bird, what this fear in your heart is like. Thank you for being my sacrifice.”

Birds are difficult to hang, and if you give them their freedom they’ll beat their wings and panic, flying against the rope for long minutes before they tire and slowly, achingly, choke themselves. I take a deep breath. Ignoring the chatter of the crowd, the rush of hot wind and sticky sweat clinging to my shoulders and thighs, I close my eyes and picture the runes of my prayer card. I don’t let go of the kissing dove, but with a swift, fast tug, pull her down against the rope.

Tears burn in my eyes. They spill out, warm on my cheeks. Beginning in my chest, I feel the relief of sacrifice, the loosening of my ribs and slowing of my heartbeat.

Releasing her with a caress, I allow my dove now to gently swing, like a pendulum marking the wind. The breeze flutters her feathers and teases at my hair.