The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

To add to my vexation, whilst Kara mysteriously began to look my way and offer me the kind of smiles that warm a man right through . . . she also seemed to see right past my normal patter, laughing off my lies concerning devotion and honour. Often she would ask me about Snorri and the key: the circumstances by which we acquired it, the ill-advised nature of his quest, and my thoughts on how he might be deflected from it. As much as it irked to be talking about Snorri with a woman yet again, I enjoyed the fact that she was seeking my opinions and advice on the matter of Loki’s key.

“A thing like that can’t be taken by force,” she said. “Not without great risk.”

“Well of course not—this is Snorri we’re talking about . . .”

“More than that.” She moved closer, lowering her voice to a delicious husk beside my ear. Memories of Aslaug stirred somewhere low down. “This is Loki’s work. The trickster. The liar. The thief. Such a one would not let his work fall to the strongest.”

“Well, to be fair, we weren’t exactly gentle when we took it!” I puffed out my chest and tried to look nonchalant.

“The unborn captain attacked you though, Jalan. Snorri merely took the key from his ruin. It wasn’t his purpose—he didn’t attack the unborn for the key.”

“Well . . . no.”

“Trickery or theft. Those are the only two safe options.” She held my gaze.

“If you think those are safe,” I said, “you don’t know Snorri.”

•   •   •

At the same time that I felt my connection with Kara strengthening, she seemed more charmed each passing day by the annoyingly handsome Lord Hakon. Every night the bastard would demonstrate some new virtue, with consummate skill, and make it seem a natural revelation rather than showing off. One evening it would be his deep tenor, perfect pitch, and command of all the great songs of the north. The next it would be defeating everyone but Snorri, and some ogre of a man called Hurn, in an arm-wrestling contest that he had to be coaxed into joining. Another night he treated us to a great show of concern for a man of his who fell prey to sudden head pains—debating herb-lore with Kara as if he were an old-wife called to treat the invalid. And tonight Hakon prepared a venison stew for us which I choked down and forced myself to call “passable” whilst only iron will prevented me demanding a third helping . . . the best damn venison I ever ate.

For the duration of our penultimate night of escort Kara walked at the head of the column with Lord Hakon who came off his high horse to stroll beside her. The night proved warm, the going easy, nightingales serenaded us, and before long the pair of them were arm in arm, laughing and joking. I did my best to break up their little head to head of course, but there’s a kind of cold shoulder that a couple can offer a fellow that’s hard to get around, particularly with twenty mounted Danes staring at the back of your head.

On our final day we rose in the late afternoon, our camp a meadow beside a stream, the day warm and sunny, new blossom on the trees. Less than ten miles lay before us to the Gelleth border where Lord Hakon and his Danes would take their leave, and I was going to be heartily glad to see the back of them. Snorri and Tuttugu no doubt would happily have walked to Florence with the heathens, having spent the whole journey so far swapping battle tales. The Danes had a great love of sea stories and the old sagas. Snorri provided the former from personal experience and Kara the latter from her vast store of such trivia. I half thought some of the duke’s men would volunteer to join the Undoreth and travel with the Vikings, such was the level of worship on display . . . Even Tuttugu got made out to be some kind of hero, beaching on the shores of the Drowned Isles one season, battling dead men on the Bitter Ice the next, making his last stand against the Hardassa by the Wheel of Osheim . . .

I yawned, stretched, yawned again. The Danes lay around the ashes of the morning’s fire, horses tethered to stakes a little higher up the gentle slope, the trolls mostly hidden, sprawled in the long grass closer to the water. The day had been almost hot compared to those before it—a first touch of summer, albeit a pallid northern excuse for one.

An evening “breakfast” was prepared at leisurely pace, with nobody seeming in a hurry to depart. Tuttugu brought me over a bowl of porridge from the communal cauldron and a fellow named Argurh led his horse across from the herd for me to look at. That was the one thing the men of Maladon conceded I might know something about—horseflesh.

“Favouring his left he is, Jalan.” The man manoeuvred his grey around me, bending to tap the suspect fetlock. I suppressed the urge to say “Prince Jalan.” The further south we got the more the tolerance for such failings fell away from me. In the Three Axes I’d suffered the Norsemen’s “Jal”s just as I’d suffered the winter, a natural phenomenon that nothing could be done about. But now . . . now we were closing on Red March and the summer had found us. Things would change.