The Strange Maid

TWENTY-ONE

THE TRICKLE OF the old fountain beside me is enough to keep the city sounds at bay, and a humid breeze curls my hair as it ruffles the leaves of the silky dogwood trees enclosing this narrow garden. It smells of honey and perfume from the lilies and hibiscus, and the trellis covered in climbing fuchsia flowers, and under it all blooms the fetid bruise of fertilizer and mud. The neighbors have tall oaks that hang over my fence, dripping their beard moss, and I can barely see the blue sky through all the dense flora. I sit at a wrought-iron table with a sweating glass of iced coffee and the morning paper, which thankfully has stopped plastering the front page with images of me and Red Stripe.

Except now the headline reads, “Thunderer Offers Bounty for Trolls.”

Every day in the national, local, and online news we get more information about troll sightings, seemingly random except that they’re more frequent. The patterns Soren and I were seeing in Ohiyo are appearing across the country. Bridge eaters clustered on water towers they’ve never climbed before or calcified into gnarled little gargoyles on the ledges of high-rise buildings all day. Cat wights pour through the suburbs, eating puppies and skinning cats. Even prairie troll packs are migrating south. Theories abound for why so many lesser trolls are showing themselves now, ranging from an unknown mystical purpose to the presence of a high-pitched whistle none of us can hear.

I’ve been waiting two days since Baldur’s ball, ensconced in this cracking old house at the edge of the Garden District, with Red Stripe molding in the garage, three berserkers knocking into the walls like dogs in a cage, and a modest allowance from the Valkyrie of the South to keep us fed. “As long as no one asks,” she said, “in which case it’s your own savings, of course, or Baldur’s.”

The morning after the ball she offered to fly with me to Philadelphia and stand before the rest, to declare I’d solved the riddle. You know the answer; you have the answer, Signy. Embrace it.

But I told her none of it matters until I find the troll mother.

You’re as impulsive as you always were! Take this offer, and then go after her with the full weight of your office, if it means so much.

It has to be first, Precia. It’s the thing I want. It’s the bold, bloody thing, and I’m still Signy Valborn who craves those things. I performed for you, for Baldur and everyone to see, but that’s not the end of it. There’s truth behind the performance.

Precia regarded me from the breakfast table, delicate silver fork in hand, dressing gown pleated and tied in a perfect bow. Abruptly she stood, swept out of the guest room I’d slept in. Thinking that was the end of the interview, I devoured the rest of my eggs and was halfway through the scalding coffee when she pushed the door open again and presented me with a thin old book. It was the kind with gilded pages and a leather tie to hold it shut. Valtheow’s Lament, the title read, though several letters were worn away.

Take it, she said softly, pressing it to my hands. When you are ready, call me.

We came to this house with its roomy garage and dripping old shingles so I’d have time to focus and find the troll mother.

Too ragging bad I don’t know what I’m doing.

Making plans has never been my strength, gathering intelligence and resources never a priority. I want to be the gun fired, the arrow cast, not the general. The information we have is scattered and doesn’t seem to fit any design. Why was the troll mother in Ohiyo at all? What was there, and why hasn’t she shown herself again after so clearly appearing to the tipster who called? The one thing nobody has reported in days is any greater mountain trolls. We don’t even know if the influx of lesser-troll sightings has anything to do with the troll mother, though for my wager it must. It’s all connected by choices and consequences.

My best hope is that Baldur has been arranging to get Soren and me into the Mjolnir Institute, which tracks herd movement via satellite. Theoretically, a huge beast like her moving out of her territory should impact prey migration or leave some other widespread sign that their computers and tracking equipment can pick up on.

Rathi’s come for lunch both days, mostly to keep my spirits up while I wait. To keep me from running off half-cocked. I must admit it’s something I’m prone to do—I’ve already threatened to go immediately back to Montreal if Baldur doesn’t get me into the institute soon—and so I humor Rathi. Together we compared the vivid poetry of Valtheow’s Lament with The Song of Beowulf. The former was composed by a Valkyrie named Christina a hundred and fifty years ago, a version of Beowulf from Valtheow’s perspective. It’s so much fantasy, but we spend hours poring over the two poems, marking the differences, most of which can be written off as the fifteen hundred years between compositions.

For Rathi, I mark all the changes I remember Unferth made when he recited The Song of Beowulf for me in Canadia. In particular I describe the language shifts and bridges between dialect and rhyme that I remember.

And I remember I cried when Unferth recited the verses about Beowulf battling Grendel’s mother, when she died. If I shut my eyes I can almost hear his voice, hear the rush of the engine so many months ago, when it all began.

Someday soon, I swear to myself, I’ll find her. She’ll show her tusks again, and I’ll be there. The nightmares will end, and I can put all of it to rest.

I close the newspaper and fold it, then drop it onto the damp ground. I draw my rune scar into the condensation on the side of my iced coffee. It haunts me every night, carved into the troll mother’s dream hand, too.

Captain Darius pushes open the screen door and walks softly down concrete stairs to me. He bows shallowly. “I’m going out,” he says. The announcement is unnecessary, as he’s not in uniform but jeans and a plain blue T-shirt. His tattoo, untarnished by the trimmed Frankish beard around his mouth, will give his identity away if it’s noticed, but his uniform would guarantee it and we’re supposed to be as discreet as possible. We discovered yesterday, when I ventured out myself with Sharkman, that an interweave magazine is willing to pay a lot for my whereabouts. Sharkman discouraged the individual who shouted at us from collecting.

“What do we need?”

“Sharkman says he’ll break all the windows if we don’t have mead tonight.”

I sigh. “He should go be wild in the Old Quarter, get it out of his system.” I wish I could. Being pent up in this house makes my blood burn, too.

Darius almost smiles. “There’s not enough alcohol or sex or battle in the world to get it out of Sharkman’s system. But I’ll take the mead out of his pay.”

After he leaves, I gather up the paper and my empty glass and head inside. The walls shake and there’s an arrhythmic pounding from the heavy bag Thebes acquired and drilled up into one of the ceiling beams in the defunct dining room. To distract myself I change into exercise clothes and join them. Sharkman works the bag while Thebes goes over some of the hand-to-hand techniques they’ve been teaching me. The worn hardwood floor is smooth under my toes, and natural light streams in through the bay window. A fan creates a false breeze against the heavy heat, but I’m sweating and thoroughly diverted in no time. It’s so hot, unlike the frozen practice ground on Vinland. I’m loose and alive, and I relish the blank blaze that comes over me. Their frenzy stretches out from them, tingling my skin, reminding me of that belonging I felt when we consumed madness together at the funeral.

If only when I stopped the feeling of completeness would stay. Instead, it drips off me like sweat.

Sharkman shoves my shoulder. “Why the frown?” He grins in my face.

“I’m jealous,” I say, baring my teeth back at him.

“Oh, you don’t have to be, pretty Valkyrie.” He presses nearer to me, backing me up until my heels touch the wall. Heat envelops me. He’s bare-chested, skin flush from energy. “You can have everything I have.”

With a suddenly dry mouth, I lower my gaze to the row of eight horizontal spears tattooed down his sternum.

Sharkman tilts my chin up and puts his lips a breath from mine. The torch rune spins in his right eye. “I will let you make the first prick, ink your line across my chest,” he murmurs. I sway nearer, thinking, Yes, this is real distraction, and kiss him with an open mouth.

“I guess you’re not ready to go,” Soren says from the entryway.

I stop moving, and Sharkman growls from low in his chest as he pushes off the wall. He stalks away without greeting Soren, snapping his T-shirt up off the floor. We hear him take the stairs hard.

Thebes shrugs at me from the floor, where he’s clearly been going through a round of sit-ups.

And Soren says, “Sorry.”

I touch my hot mouth and blink slowly. My body feels like it’s melting and going rigid at the same time. “Ah, no, it’s all right, I’ll … shower.”

The pipes scream upstairs as Sharkman turns on the water. I roll my eyes at the ceiling and think, Maybe I should wait.

“We’re supposed to be there at one and it’s an hour drive,” Soren adds.

“Odd-eye!” I crack to attention. “The Mjolnir Institute! He got us in finally.”

We go into the kitchen and I fill a water glass from the squeaky tap. Soren sits at the small round breakfast table, sunlight streaming through the fluffy curtains behind his head and casting his face in shadow. There’s a black cloth covering his right forearm, like a sock with the foot cut out. It must be protecting the new tattoo he said Baldur was taking him to get. I hop onto the counter and guzzle half the water. It tastes like rust and I’m still so hot. What am I doing with Sharkman?

Whatever you want, apparently, Unferth mutters.

Soren must be thinking the same thing. “Do you love him?” he says, eyes narrowing in confusion.

I laugh. “Love? Odd-eye, Soren, what has that got to do with it?”

He frowns. I suddenly remember the rumpled, pretty Lady of Youth I met, and the plain way he talks about her, the yearning when he stumbles over her forbidden name. I haven’t told him yet that I saw her. I want to, but we’ve barely been alone in this little house. This afternoon, though, we will be for a few hours as we drive to the Mjolnir Institute. Time for him to hear me, and deal with it however he needs to.

“He’s very … berserker,” Soren says by way of explaining his discomfort, but I know it’s more than that. Sharkman makes no bones about his dislike of Soren. Last night when I mentioned the institute, Sharkman said, If you can rely on the Sun’s rag-boy, and Darius sent him away from the table like a child.

“I think that’s why I like him,” I admit. “He turns my madness on.”

“He’s got no control.”

Thebes comes in. Fortunately, whatever resentment Sharkman has toward Soren, the quiet giant doesn’t share. He plods through, twisting his torso to keep his wide shoulders from knocking into either Soren or the cabinets. I pat his arm like I’d pat a big dog—or Red Stripe—as he gets his own water.

“We can feed Red Stripe if you’re not back before the sun’s at the wrong angle,” Thebes says quietly. He’s the only one of the three of them who calls the troll by his name.

“Thanks.” We feed Red Stripe during the day, as part of the requirements Baldur and I worked out before the god of light would vouch for us to his uncle the Thunderer. Not only must these three Mad Eagles remain here with us as keepers, but we’re not allowed to turn the UV lights off unless the sun is shining bright and there’s no hope of his escape. But we can’t put him in the garden, where he might be seen, which infuriates me: I suspect that old gash from the massacre isn’t healing because he’s been trapped under UV lights, which long term must have a less healthy effect on him than true sunlight.

The squeal of the water pipes shuts off and I slide off the counter. “Fifteen minutes, Soren,” I promise, and dash upstairs.

The hour drive from Port Orleans to the Mjolnir Institute’s southern research station is made more pleasant by the convertible Soren’s borrowed from Baldur’s fleet of sexy sports cars. With the top down, wind blows my hair back, ripping it out of the braids, but the blast against my face, the warm asphalt smell and thickness of it, is so wild I don’t mind. I lean my head back and try to relax as best I can as we speed over the massive bridge that spans the huge Wide Water Lake, arcing us down into piney woods.

Soren seems content in silence, though he switches the radio dials frequently, as if searching for something that doesn’t exist. I entertain myself commenting on the billboards crowding the highway. They run the gamut from anti-sacrifice rhetoric, with pictures of adorable, big-eyed martyrs being snuggled by children, to greasy fast-food chains and a surprising number of ads for holmgang advocates who specialize in accident lawsuits.

The only stations Soren avoids are news and any talk radio, until I insist we find out what they’re saying about the trolls locally.

It’s not much different from what’s in the paper, except the radio personalities don’t bother pretending to be impartial. The show we land on first offers a list of home stores with iron traps on sale and UV flashlights, and the second is a debate between a Freyan and a Thunderer over whether the lesser trolls deserve proper burning and burial or if they’re just animals. They bring in a Lokiskin who argues vehemently for the preservation of trollkin and only gets a word in about the Freekin Project’s game preserve before she’s cut off. The third is advertising their next hour’s segment, in which they’ll be interviewing Sammy Hanger from Chicagland, who knew me last year on the streets and promises insight into my mental stability in the wake of my performance at Baldur’s charity ball.

Soren gives me a clear I told you so look and switches back to Allegheny rock music. It’s a perfect opportunity to bring up Astrid, but my mood is ragged and I don’t trust myself to break the news gently. After the institute, I promise myself.

The Mjolnir Institute turnoff is presaged by huge electric blue signs with the logo of the hammer Crusher itself in the hand of a bespectacled, smiling scientist that appear every three kilometers for the twenty minutes leading up to the institute. Ours isn’t the only car to exit and drive along the orange two-lane highway, but we are the only ones who take the EMPLOYEES ONLY turn instead of following the visitor signs.

The institute is a sprawling complex with a museum wing and three research wings, only one of which is open to the public. Soren’s directions are impeccable, and we’re waved through the gate when he shows his citizen ID. The uniformed guard instructs him where to go and that he’ll call in to let our escort know we’ve arrived.

We park and climb out, heading through the lines of cars to the plain, imposing brick building. To the north and across a chain-link fence is the museum, much more welcoming with its arcing windows and modern steel design and blue banners declaring their current special exhibits.

We wait near the steel door that’s the only entrance to this research building. I redo my wind-blown braids just as the door swings open and a young woman in a lab coat hurries out. She’s got beautiful thick brown hair loose around her shoulders and narrow eyes and dusky skin. When she spies us she smiles, pushes her glasses up into her hair, and sticks her hand out enthusiastically. “You’re Soren, and you must be Signy. I’m so glad you could make it, that I could have this chance. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to find out you and Prince Baldur were taking an interest in getting to the bottom of what’s going on here.”

I shake her hand lightly while Soren thanks her, and she says her name is Talia Juanson. A gold-braid ring around her forefinger suggests she’s probably dedicated to Sif Longhair, Thor Thunderer’s wife, the goddess of marriage and peace. She leads us inside after passing us guest security badges to clip on. It’s chilly inside, and sterile white. She moves fast over the tiled floor, Soren and I clomping behind in our boots. Talia explains that she’s been told to take us to the map room and answer any questions we have, to explain what sort of troll-sign they look for and the wider patterns. “You’re looking for the troll mother who drew the herd from Montreal to Vinland, specifically?”

“Yes.” I brace for a hundred more questions, but Talia only nods and leads us farther into the building.

We pass other researchers, some in lab coats, some business casual, and a few in uniforms of Thor’s Army. Most ignore us, though the soldiers all flick a glance to confirm our badges. The hallway at first is windowless, only breaking for doors or a turn, but we do go straight alongside one row of glass through which we can see men and women at tables sifting dirt and cataloging chunks of rock and obvious bone shards. When I ask, Talia explains there are four research centers around the country, but this is the largest for working with actual specimens because it’s considered safer here due to the South’s low level of native troll species. They prefer mountains or ice or plains, not the relatively flat piney forests here, where there are few caves and even fewer of the kinds of boulders and rock where they can hide and shelter. The cities, of course, have cat wights and iron wights, but that’s due more to infestation than nature.

Talia has to punch in a seven-digit code to access the map room and holds the heavy door for us.

The room is dominated by a huge table displaying a topographical map of the United States and Canadia Territories with tiny LED lights in red, blue, and yellow. The walls hang with additional maps narrowed in on specific locations and computer displays. One wall is entirely made up of the largest monitor I’ve ever seen outside a movie theater. Talia explains that she can pull up a digital map to show real-time movement patterns up to six months. Mostly they use this to track the migration of prairie trolls, the tiger-like trolls with saber teeth and a taste for human flesh even stronger than the greater mountain trolls’. There aren’t many packs of them left, though, Talia says. I detect a hint of regret in her tone and start listening past her words.

It takes fifteen minutes for her to show me the known locations of all herds, even when I ask her to focus on the northeastern parts of the US. We know the troll mother was in Vinland six weeks ago. We know she was in Ohiyo and probably Vertmont, but that sighting was less specific.

Using data from satellite imagery that shows the destruction caused when entire troll herds move, and established deer and pygmy mammoth herd patterns, Talia points to the locations of the only two GMT herds off the ice sheets: one in the Rock Mountains, and one vying against hill trolls for territory in the Adirondacks.

“What about the Vinland herd? Were you tracking them before the massacre?” I ask as lightly as possible.

Talia grimaces and leans her hip against the display table. “We know they were from Montreal, but it’s hard to track trolls within the ruins.”

“Why?”

“There are so many of them. More concentrated there than any other place that we know of, but they don’t hunt near there. They travel far north or east along the coast for food. Usually bears and wolverines, and they even hunt the icebergs and ocean for whales and seals. We have a harder time tracking coastal herds without physically tagging them, since they disappear under water occasionally, and there have been requests for funding for that for absolutely ages. We only suspect that they keep their hunting away from the ruins because the mothers use it as a meeting grounds.”

“Wait.” I hold up my hand. “There are still multiple mothers in Montreal? Which one came to Vinland?”

“Oh.” Talia looks surprised. “She didn’t come from Montreal. We know from descriptions you gave and the Mad Eagles that she’s not one of the three mothers known to rule.”

Soren says, “We thought the herd was definitely from Montreal. The Mad Eagles’ report indicated that.”

Talia flips her hand. “Some of them were—all of them, we guess, other than the troll mother. She probably came from high north, where we have no tracking equipment, and drew off some of the sons from the other herds. It’s a normal way they cull family groups to keep the gene pool diverse.” She flashes a smile. “They’re really so very complicated as a species, more so than we give them credit for.”

“She … was alone before,” I say carefully, “but gathered a new herd to attack us?”

“As far as we can tell. But the information is scattered; it’s truly a bare guess, not even a hypothesis.”

I walk around the table to press my hands along the edge nearest Vinland. I point to the north peninsula. “This is Jellyfish Cove.”

Talia pipes up. “It’s likely if she left the island she either crossed back over Leif’s Channel, since it’s the narrowest point to head back up into Canadia, or went south directly to New Scotland.”

“I know they can go under the ocean. They walk across the bottom, not swim, because they’re so dense?”

“Or use icebergs. We’ve never tagged a greater mountain troll mother and don’t truly know everything they’re capable of. The Thunderer always cautions us not to underestimate them. Actually …” Talia adjusts her glasses. She says in one long breath, “Actually I was wondering if you think maybe I might be able to ask you some questions about your troll or even see him.”

“Oh.” I glance at Soren and back to her. “I can answer your questions, but I don’t know about access.”

“It’s just I’m writing my thesis about seasonal calcification and migration—really, about how calcification can be affected by temperature, and you’ve been with yours for a few months, haven’t you, and gone with him from cold to this hot? Have you noticed if he wakes more slowly in the heat? Or is there a difference to the texture of his shed skin? I’d like to—”

I hold up my hands. “Stop, Talia. Stop.”

She does. And waits. Her eyelashes flutter a little, but otherwise she regains her composure.

“I promise to answer all your questions that I can, but not today,” I say. Soren brushes his hand against my back, and I make my voice even. “I’m in the middle of something pretty important—”

“Revenge,” she interrupts, then presses her lips shut.

“Yes. Is there anything you can do to help us find her now?”

“I can do some in-depth analysis, call some of my peers at the Ohiyo center who were looking into bird habitats and troll migration. They might have noticed something. Unfortunately …” She pauses.

“Yes?”

“Well, there’s been so much movement out of pattern this week.”

My hopes fall. “All the excess sightings around the country. Are you sure there’s no pattern that might be … attributed to her?”

Talia chews on the side of her tongue as she thinks. “It will be hard to really mark what’s unusual, because it’s all unusual. We’ve been keeping records for fifty years, and with satellites for nearly twenty. This whole situation is unusual.” She crosses to one of the computers and types in a series of lightning-fast commands. The wall-sized monitor flares to life, with a detailed map of the Gulf Coast. She flings her arm to it as a string of orange dots appears along the Mizizibi River, clusters especially around the cities of Memphis and Port Orleans. “For example, in the past five days there have been more lesser-troll sightings per capita right here in Orleans and Watauga king-states than in the past ten years put together.”

“Could there be more sightings because people are looking harder?” Soren asks.

Talia shakes her head. “We’ve adjusted for that.”

I sink back against the table. “If she culled trolls from other troll mothers—she pulled them to her? Could she be doing that with the lesser trolls, too? Calling them?”

“I suppose so, though I’ve never heard of it; there’s no suggestion in any of the research that mothers cull across species.”

“Still. Can you …” I approach the monitor. “Can you expand out, still mapping these lesser-troll sightings?”

“Sure. It sticks with the Mizizibi River, roughly, for a while, and then I’m not sure. I’ll have to … hang on.” Talia types more commands into her computer, pulling up additional websites. She hums to herself while I clutch my hands together and try not to pace and grind my teeth.

“I had to access the Ohiyo institute database,” she says after a moment. “Here.”

Orange dots flare across the country, but they’re obviously concentrated in a thick strip spreading north and east along the Mizizibi River and following the Ohiyo River all the way north to the banks of Lake Erie. “Odd-eye,” I whisper. This is a highway of rivers and lakes from Port Orleans all the way northeast to Canadia and the Gulf of Lawrence, which connects to Leif’s Channel and Vinland. Through both Ohiyo and Vertmont. All along it, there have been even more lesser-troll sightings over the past two weeks than in the rest of the country.

The troll mother could have walked almost wherever she wanted to underwater, unseen, avoiding the sun from Vinland.

Unferth whispers a line from the old poem The Song of Beowulf.

From the mere slunk the troll mother, dripping and wet, black fury in her heart.

Soren touches my back. “Signy, look at the dates.” His eyes are on the monitor, not the map. I try to read the list quickly and see what he sees, and Talia says, “Here,” and types in more commands.

The LED lights blink out. “They’ll come on as I say the dates,” she says.

Talia begins a month ago, when the new pattern of excess sightings began. It starts in the northeast, near Montreal and New Scotland, with tiny pockets in major cities around the country. As time progresses, the troll sightings bloom toward the south and west, spilling across the map like a virus. The most intense groupings grow along the rivers from the Great Lakes down the Ohiyo to the Mizizibi, dragging inexorably closer to us here in Port Orleans.

“Did you see?” Soren asks. His palm is hot, burning through my T-shirt to my skin. “Play it again, please, and stop when I say.”

Talia starts the sequence again, and on the date of the Vertmont sighting he says to stop. Then he asks her to continue two days, until we got the tip from Ohiyo, the only positive identification of my troll mother.

“All right,” I say. “Then what?”

For three more days the lights flip on very slowly and make almost no progress south.

Then they explode on the fourth day, and Soren sighs harshly. “See? That’s the day you and I started down toward Port Orleans, Signy.” He turns me to face him, hands hard and hot on my shoulders. The spear tattoo is rigid on his dark cheek; he hardly moves his mouth as he says, “We followed the troll mother to Vertmont and Ohiyo, but after that this pattern pauses, and then started up again heading south. Just behind us. If this …” He waves a hand at the map. “If this is tracking the troll mother, it means she waited for us in Ohiyo, and then tracked us. She’s not just hunting you in your dreams. And she’s already here.”