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

“Employer?”

“Kelem wishes you to free your companions from the custody of House Gold so that they may continue their journey and bring Loki’s key to him. I do not believe this will be possible however.”

“But Kelem owns the banking clans . . .” Though now I said it I did recall talk of strife between them.

“The House Gold has its own ambitions and has grown close to other interests in recent years.”

“The Dead King!” It made sense now. Or at least it was moving in that direction. “The clockwork soldiers and the corpse flesh . . .”

“Even so.” Sageous nodded.

“So the bank captured Snorri hoping to find Loki’s key? And when they get it they’ll give it to the Dead King.” That didn’t sound good.

“Perhaps, perhaps not. They have, as I said, their own ambitions. However, the key has yet to be found. Your Norsemen must know where it lies and so Kelem wished you to free them.”

“He could have asked!”

Sageous smiled as if we both knew the answer I would have given. He’d pointed me at Hennan, a gentle push that would normally be misconstrued as the nagging of a guilty conscience. It seemed important to Kelem that Snorri not feel pushed toward their encounter for fear of changing his mind. I took some small comfort in the fact that neither the dream-witch nor the door-mage seemed to understand either of us. Conscience would never compel me into harm’s way, and nothing would ever turn Snorri from his path, certainly not the fact that Kelem so badly wanted him to pursue it.

Sageous’s smile hung for a moment then fell away as if it had never been. “And to the purpose of my visit.” Sageous advanced on me, intimidating though he was the smaller man by more than a head. “Where is Loki’s key?” His eyes became drowning pools and terror washed over me. I fell into darkness screaming only the truth. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!

I woke sweat-soaked, screaming the words, Hennan shaking me and shouting for me to wake up.

•   •   •

After the dream-witch’s visit I resolved never to sleep again.

•   •   •

It took a day’s insistence and the privacy of another food riot to get Hennan to talk about the key. Once the food got into his system and he found a little energy the boy wanted to talk about everything under the sun, about Kara, about how Snorri got taken down, about what happened to Tuttugu. I wouldn’t listen. I had one question—where is the key? In the end the need to talk about something, even if it was the one thing he’d promised not to talk about, was what broke Hennan’s resolve.

“Kara hid it,” he said.

“Snorri wouldn’t trust her with the key.”

“He watched her do it.”

“Did they bury it somewhere?” I don’t know what I’d been anticipating, but the idea of the key in a box under four foot of soil, or jammed in some remote crevice on a cliff face, didn’t offer much hope. A thing like that wouldn’t stay hidden. The unborn felt its pull and it seemed as though the necromancers could track it too. If the only thing the Central Bank wanted wasn’t still there once I’d bargained our release for its exchange then we’d all leave the prison the same way and nobody would be happy but the pigs. And if I did find out where it was, Sageous would pick the fact from my mind the very next time I fell asleep. Kelem getting the key might be the lesser of two evils compared to the Dead King getting his claws on it, but it still seemed a pretty evil evil to me. The only hope would be to find out where it was and use that information to my advantage before I next fell asleep.

“Tell me they gave it to someone for safekeeping—someone we can trust.” I couldn’t think of anyone I could trust, but maybe Snorri had more friends and was less troubled by that particular problem.

“Snorri didn’t give it away,” Hennan said.

“Well where is it then?” I hissed, fending off an old man who’d stumbled past our guards after being elbowed in the face over the ownership of an apple core.

The boy scratched his head as if this were a difficult question.

“Hennan!” I tried to keep the exasperation from my voice.

He withdrew his hand and opened it. A small iron tablet lay in his palm, no bigger than the nail of my little finger, set with a single rune. Kara wore the same things in her hair, or had until she sewed the Hardassa’s ruin with them close to the Wheel of Osheim. Hennan must have had it hidden in the matted filth of his own hair.