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

“No.” Just that through the silver grille on Kelem’s withered neck, then silence.

I drew in a deep sigh and wiped the sweat from my brow. “Sixty-three thousand, fix Snorri, and he gets to open the door.” There’s an exquisite pain involved in the loss of a thousand in gold. Not one I’ll ever get used to.

“No.”

“Oh, come on.” I knuckled my brow. “You’re killing me here. Sixty-two, the cure, and the door.”

“No.”

I wondered how far I could push him. Kelem clearly feared Loki’s curse more than he feared losing sixty-four thousand in gold. But perhaps less than he feared opening the door into death.

I held up a hand and stepped to Kara’s side, leaning in close to whisper in her ear. Damn but I wanted her, even there, even then, even sweat-slick and with the suspicion in her eyes. “Kara . . . how dangerous is this curse?”

She stepped back, her fingers on my chest. “Why didn’t Skilfar take the key from Snorri?”

“Um . . .” I battled to remember. “The world is better shaped by freedom. Even if it means giving foolish men their head—that’s what you said?” I looked from her to Snorri. “She let him keep it because . . . she’s wise. Or something.”

Kara raised her eyebrows. “Doesn’t sound very likely, does it?”

“Skilfar was scared too?”

“It’s Loki’s key. God of trickery. Nothing as straight forward as strength is going to decide its ownership. Or it would have been Thor’s key an age ago!”

“It has to be given,” Snorri said. “Olaaf Rikeson took it by strength and Loki’s curse froze his army, ten thousand strong.”

“So . . . when you gave me the key back in the olive groves . . .”

“I trusted a friend, yes.”

“Hell.” Snorri had placed his future in my hands. That was far more trust than I could hold on to. It was like telling a dog to guard a steak. It was stupid. “You don’t know me at all, Snorri.” Somehow, even with sixty-four thousand in crown gold glittering in my immediate future I felt low. A fever perhaps, or poisoning from the sour salts of the lower mine.

Maybe it was the way Snorri didn’t even argue his case but just stood there like the huge over-loyal idiot he was, having the gall to expect the same foolishness from me.

“Thirty-two thousand, the cure, and the idiot gets his door open.”

“No.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake! How much to open that damned door?”

“That door shouldn’t ever be opened. Even if you took no gold, only offered me the key to show you death’s door, I would hesitate. There’s a reason the ghosts of my youth are scattered across Hell. It wasn’t just chance that one stepped out to oppose you when you approached Eridruin’s door. Opening that door is dangerous. Passing through still more so.” Kelem’s jaw moved as the voice issued from his neck. In his mouth something glittered, silver across the black thing that had been his tongue.

“Why? Why would a dead thing like you care?” I didn’t even want that door open—why I was arguing rather than wondering how to carry my gold back to Red March I didn’t know.

“I’m not dead.” Kelem tilted his head. “Merely . . . well preserved.”

I stood, the key tight in my hand, watched by the witch, the warrior, the boy, and the old bones in the chair. Something in the quality of the light from the crystals changed, as subtle as a slight shift in the wind, but I felt it.

“What would you do with this key, Master Kelem?” I asked him, starting to pace from one column to the next.

“I have a palace of doors. It’s only natural that I should want one key that could unlock any of them.” Kelem’s throne rotated to allow him to track me. “Without a key the opening and closing of such doors is a complex and tedious business, dangerous even, and one that can exhaust an old man like me. These thirteen before me. These are difficult, but over the years I’ve managed all but three. The doors to darkness and light still defy me. Those on the far side hear me trying though, oh yes.” A scratching sound that might be laughter. “They fear me, hate me, and hold the doors tight against my efforts. The dark knows that if I control the door, I own them. The light knows it too.

“Long ago I was told that one of these doors would never open for me, that my doom lay beyond it. Loki himself told me this, the father of lies. And I believed him because he is always honest. He takes pride in it—knowing that a partial truth cuts deeper than a lie.” Kelem waved a desiccated hand in my direction. “The key will unlock the doors, and the last one—that will be the one I will leave closed. That one I will lock again, and lock so well that it will never open, not in the lives of men.”