by C. Gockel
“They’re cute, aren’t they?” Steve says. “They’re also proof that genies out of the bottle—she’s a social media diva who has been helping coordinate the human resistance, and he’s a powerful enchanter—magic and human technology have met.” His eyebrow rises. “And they get along. Odin couldn’t stop it, I can’t stop it. Whichever realm can channel it and become the leader of technomagical innovation will be dominant.”
Bohdi taps his fingers on the armrest. Wasn’t that basically what he was telling Odin earlier? Still, he says nothing, suspicion tugging at the back of his mind.
But beside him, Amy says, in a slow, cautious voice, “What are your plans?”
Steve steeples his fingers. “First, get Gennie Santos—also known as Freyja—out of Chicago.”
“Then why are we here?” Bohdi asks, suspicion burning brightly in his mind now, “and why are the leaders of the human resistance here instead of on Earth resisting?”
Coolly meeting his gaze, Steve says, “Because Freyja was planning on arresting the leaders of the resistance movement en masse this evening.”
“Oh,” says Amy, putting a hand to her mouth. Bohdi sinks back in his chair.
Looking toward the flames, Steve says, “The Incarnation of Love and War has always been a thorn in the side of Order. She has Valkyries and Einherjar who are loyal to her ...” He shakes his head. “But as to why we don’t go down there right now and oust her, it’s because if I suddenly revealed who Gennie Santos is—”
“It would look like a magic show,” says Amy. She winces. “Like smoke and mirrors, not like real magic.”
“Exactly,” says Steve. “But I know where Gennie Santos’s body is, and it is rather well preserved. There’s a 5K tomorrow in Grant Park with tens of thousands of people participating. They’re going to see two ravens plucking at the corpse body of the real Gennie Santos.”
Bohdi grimaces at the grisliness of that image. He’d met Gennie Santos—he’d liked her.
Steve’s jaw tightens, and his gaze drifts toward the fire. “As soon as it’s revealed that Illinois’ now far-too-powerful terrorism tsar is a fraud, I’ll go home and run for mayor.”
“Not the presidency?” Amy says, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
“Chicago has the greatest density of World Gates in the Nine Realms,” Steve says smoothly. He inclines his head toward the door and the Einherjar guards just outside. “I have an army. Just being mayor will suit me fine.”
Tilting his head, Bohdi whispers, “That isn’t ambitious enough. You want to rule the Nine Realms, don’t you?” He’s not sure if he believes it, or if he is just testing Steve.
Instead of denying it, Steve looks thoughtfully toward the ceiling. “Rule is too strong a word. I’d like to have my thumb on things to … balance them … when they get out of hand,” he says.
Bohdi’s hand tightens on Laevithin’s handle. He’s not sure if he’s relieved Steve is telling the truth, or intimidated by the implications.
“I will get out of hand,” Steve says. “Hopefully not soon. It took nearly a thousand years for Odin to begin to fear change, to forget his power came from it, and that Hoenir and Loki were his equals. At some point, it will happen to me. I will become afraid of change too, and then I will try to seize too much control, and you will have to stop me. The two of you are the only ones who can.” He looks at Amy. “You’ll break down my foundations.” He turns to Bohdi. “And you’ll aim the proverbial bullet.”
Bohdi almost says no, no matter how suspicious of Steve he is, killing him seems unthinkable. But then he sags in his chair. What Steve is describing is exactly what happened. Hoenir began providing humans with Promethean wire to give them some protection from magic. His eyes slide to Amy. She made humans magical, further destroying the magical edge that Asgard had on Earth. And finally, it was Bohdi who killed Odin; Steve was only the weapon.
Steve rests his hands on the armrest of the chair and doesn’t meet their eyes. “Odin knew it. That is why he made a bargain with Hoenir: in exchange for Hoenir’s silence on the matter of Loki’s place in the trinity, Odin agreed to keep Earth free from magical creatures—”
Amy interrupts him. “Is that why Odin made Hoenir the gardener—so no one would suspect how powerful he was?”
Steve’s single eye widens, and then he shakes his head. “No, Hoenir wanted to be perceived as just a gardener. It was safer that way for him.”
Amy sinks back into her chair. Touching his stitches, Bohdi remembers Beatrice’s words to Amy after she raised the dead and offered to make her younger—“keep that ability a secret, child.” If people discover what Amy can do ... His eyes slide to her. She’s biting her lip. She fought Odin, head to head, but she is, and will always be, as vulnerable as she is dangerous.
Steve continues. “Hoenir probably made the bargain knowing he was ensuring the rise of humanity, and ultimately Odin’s ruin. Cera showed up on Earth, and Odin, too busy trying to forestall the collapse of peace at home, stopped fulfilling his end of that bargain. Hoenir didn’t break his oath of silence, but that’s when he started giving humans Promethean wire to protect themselves.”
Amy’s brow furrows. “How do you know that?”
Steve’s eyebrows rise. Looking at his fingers, he says, “Putting the timeline of events on Earth together with Odin’s memories, I remember everything Odin knew, and the incarnation of Order before that.” He waves a hand. “It goes back a long time. I suppose it makes sense that the incarnation of Order and Preservation would remember.” His brow furrows. “It’s not all there at the forefront—”
Scuffing her feet on the floor, Amy says, “It comes to you as you need it. I know, it’s very weird, you have to be careful when you’re driving because flashbacks at the wrong time—lots of trouble at traffic lights.”
“Maybe I’ll get a chauffeur,” Steve says with a smile.
It might be bitterness at not even having his own memories, but Bohdi growls, “What do you want from us?”
Steve straightens in his chair, and his single eye widens. “Your help. Order without Creation and Destruction is fragile and short lived.”
Bohdi wonders if he should break out the Darth Vader impression. “You want our help controlling the galaxy?” he asks. He barely manages to say it in a normal voice.
Steve winces. “Again, control is too strong a word.” His jaw gets hard. “And you’ll like what I do with the place.” He inclines his head to Amy. “The Dark Elf Underground Railroad will continue, and I will extend its scope to aiding other persecuted peoples of the Nine Realms. I cannot end the wars in Alfheim or Svartálfaheim overnight. I will also make Chicago a safe haven for magical humans until magic is the norm among our kind.” His voice gets soft. “I know you worry about them, Dr. Lewis.”
Amy’s shoulders go soft. “I do.”
“And to you, Bohdi,” Steve says, “I can offer—”
Bohdi can guess. “You’ll find my family?” His voice is bitter, but his neurons are firing with hopefulness—even though that would be terribly manipulative on Steve’s part, and Bohdi would probably never forgive him for it.
Steve’s shoulders sag, and he frowns. “I can give you your identity, of course.” There is something cautious in his tone, maybe even sad. “That would come without any obligation.”
For a moment Bohdi’s mind is a blank, tripping over the word can. “Out with it, then,” Bohdi says, lowering his chin, believing it is a trick.
Steve’s eyebrows rise, and he looks at his knees. “Laura told me … Agent Hernandez kept up his quest to find them after we left.” The fire crackles. Steve lets out a long breath. “Your family name is Bhat.”
Bohdi shakes his head. It’s a common name in India among both Hindus and Muslims. “It doesn’t mean anything to me.” His jaw gets tight.
“Do you know his first name?” Amy asks.
“Ahh … well …”
Steve doesn’t stammer. Bohdi’s eyes snap to Steve and find his single
eye on him. “I’m probably going to mispronounce it,” Steve says.
“Don’t stall, Steve,” Bohdi whispers.
Steve takes a deep breath. “It’s Triloki … Hernandez was positive, Triloki Bhat.”
Bohdi swallows. He wishes he couldn’t sense lies, because then he could say Steve was just messing with him. As it is, he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. All this time he’s been saying he wasn’t Loki, but they’ve only been off by a syllable.
“Does it mean anything to you?” Steve asks. His voice is soft, compassionate.
“Not really,” Bohdi says. “It’s Hindu. It means Ruler of the Three Realms.”
“Oh,” says Amy.
“Just a coincidence in its similarity,” Steve says.
Bohdi bows his head and runs a hand over the stitches in his neck. “It’s one of Shiva’s names.” Shiva the Destroyer of the Hindu trinity—a bitter taste comes to his mouth.
In the fireplace, flames leap and crackle. The clock chimes again.
“What would you like to be called?” Amy asks. She holds out her hand, and he remembers her saying, “I don’t want any other Chaos,” her stories of the other Loki, and his own “Loki memories” rattling around in his brain. He isn’t Loki to her, he is himself. Meeting her eyes, he says, “I think I’d rather be Bohdi.” It means enlightenment; and maybe that’s what he is … Chaos that can begin to know itself. Also, it’s the name he stole, fair and square.
Amy smiles. “Okay, Bohdi.”
“Bohdi it is,” says Steve.
Bohdi almost smiles, but then he whispers, “My parents?”
Steve frowns, and Bohdi’s eyes drop to Laevithin’s glow. He remembers the mirror in Gullveig’s cavern. He’d seen Steve, Amy, some of the SEAL guys—and Nari too, even though he wasn’t in the room. Because they are his family, but maybe also … He looks up at Steve. “They’re dead, aren’t they? My parents.”
Steve’s frown deepens. “I am sorry.”
Bohdi stares at him mutely, his heart rate increasing. A bit of the carpet catches on fire, and Amy quickly smothers it with a cushion.
Releasing a long breath, Steve says, “Your mother was of Hindi heritage, your father was of Muslim heritage, and they were both atheists. You were born in the province of Kashmir, where your parents were from. But they followed the tech boom and your family relocated to Bangalore when you were a little boy. They worked processing data for an international bank. Your parents realized that money was being siphoned off pensioners’ accounts, pennies at a time. They reported it. They were murdered.”
The words roll through the air, but no pictures form in Bohdi’s mind. His throat constricts. The fire in the hearth spits sparks. The bright glow of the sword on his lap blurs. “They were good people,” he says. He swallows; they were brave, and willing to break with tradition.
“They must have been,” Amy says, her voice soft.
Steve clears his throat. “A few days later, you hopped on a slow boat to the States. Your application for a visa was still in process … you probably chose Chicago because you’d been accepted to the University of Chicago’s statistics program as a doctoral student. You had some familiarity with the city; but you had to change your name because you were still in danger.”
Bohdi hears the fire in the fireplace crackle as though far away. “But I don’t know more about statistics than the average person,” Bohdi says, eyes getting hot. “Logistic regression, Poisson regression, and survival analysis …” He can’t go on.
“Um,” says Amy.
“Ah,” says Steve.
Turning away, Bohdi looks at the flames in the hearth. They dance and wave with mocking cheer. He doesn’t remember the name Triloki Bhat. The memory of the smiling people in the photo of his baby self and his parents—it’s still just a memory of a photo.
Pulling his hand away from Amy’s, he puts his head in his hands. He sucks in a long breath, and realizes that until this point, he had hoped that if he just had a hint of his past life—his name, the names of his parents—that everything else would fall together. He’d have a history, he’d have memories. But there is nothing … his life before waking up on LaSalle Street next to Steve is just a vast gray blur.
“Bohdi,” Amy says softly, “you may have extended family. If we go back to Earth, we could find them.”
He lifts his chin and turns his gaze to her, his mind catching on the word “we.”
Shrugging, she gives him a small smile. “I’d go to India with you.”
She’d sit in a field of plasma fire for him, of course she would. For some reason, he thinks this almost touches him more. He reaches for her hand, but can’t quite bring himself to say a word. His eyes are burning, and he’d probably begin to sob if he tried to speak. He really wants to excuse himself and her, and claim some alone time … his eyes flick to Amy’s … she’s looking at their entwined fingers. He looks quickly away, but wraps her hand more tightly in his.
“I do hope you’ll consider my family your own,” Steve says, shaking Bohdi from his thoughts. There is a surprising note of worry in the offer. It makes the hairs on the back of Bohdi’s neck prickle.
Sighing, Steve rubs his temple. “The only thing I can offer you, Bohdi, is friendship.” Steve’s eyes flick to the sword and back to Bohdi. “You’re capable of finding fortune and fame for yourself.”
Bohdi’s brow furrows. He’s walked the In Between, Amy can create World Gates; no ordinary prison could hold either of them. Amy also has Loki’s memories and can probably lead them to lost treasure. He doesn’t need to work for Steve anymore—he doesn’t need to work for anyone.
Steve looks to Amy and adds, “I offer my friendship, and protection, to both of you.”
Bohdi’s jaw tightens, remembering the glimpse he’s seen inside Steve’s mind. This offer of friendship isn’t just out of the goodness of his heart. Steve wants them because he expects them to sway the fate of the galaxy for him.
“How can we trust you, Steve?” Bohdi says, his voice almost a whisper. “You want to be king—how do we know you won’t try to make yourself one?”
Steve drops his hands to his lap. For the first time, Bohdi notices how much Steve has aged in the past few months. “You can’t trust me,” Steve says.
Amy sucks in an audible breath, and Bohdi pulls her hand closer to his stomach. There is no lie in Steve’s words.
Rubbing his jaw, Steve looks at the floor. “At least not forever—I like to be in control. But I like power even more; and the real power lies with technology and innovation, and those things are not facilitated by authoritarianism. There is a reason that the West won the Cold War. And if you think on it, it’s how we prevailed against Odin.” Steve turns his gaze to the fire. “It is the way to the longest, most stable peace, for everyone … But someday I’ll forget that.”
The fire crackles, and Bohdi feels like a huge weight has fallen on his shoulders. How can Steve be so honest about his eventual betrayal? He swallows—because Steve needs their help, and he’s laying it all on the line because he knows Bohdi can’t be deceived by lies.
He looks down at the glowing blade on his knees—Steve hasn’t asked for it, and he doesn’t fear Bohdi even though he holds it. Maybe Steve is cunning; but he is also loyal, determined, and brave. The offer of friendship and family was real, and maybe it is self-interest on Steve’s part … a little … but the real question is if it is what Bohdi wants.
He thinks of waking up without a shred of memory to his name; of the people who wanted him thrown into Guantanamo; of Beatrice not wanting him near Amy … and also of the vast gray blur that is all the time before he was Chaos ... Steve is a good friend to have.
He looks over to Amy. He knows she’d rather be on Earth, helping magical humans. He looks down at Laevithin, and runs a finger along the glowing blade. And a place where magic and technology meet is bound to be the most exciting place in the galaxy—isn’t that what Bohdi wanted from Odin? Is there any place he’d rather
be?
Bohdi takes a deep breath. “You do need someone to keep you in line.”
“Exactly,” says Steve.
Bohdi’s nose doesn’t even tickle. He shrugs. “Sure. It will be fun.” He says it without a smile.
Steve does smile and exhales with such force he seems to deflate. Shaking his head, Steve says, “After the day I had, I really need a drink.” He gets slowly to his feet, looking more exhausted than Bohdi’s ever seen him. He remembers Steve worrying about the team and Claire, his wistfulness when he described being king and the peace and happiness that he could bring to everyone, and it strikes Bohdi that the real weight of everything is on his friend.
Over by the bookshelf, Steve asks, almost tentatively, “Will you drink with me?”
Bohdi raises an eyebrow. He almost asks if it will be poisoned, just to be, well, an antagonist. But instead he says, “Hey, I thought if you were drinking, I was drinking, too?” Which isn’t quite as antagonistic.
Amy sits up straighter in her seat, eyes going wide. “Odin said that to Loki, at least in the myths.”
“Steve’s always saying that to me,” says Bohdi, and Amy’s eyebrows rise.
“Because you always say you’re broke so I’ll buy,” Steve says, taking a few scrolls off of a shelf.
Bohdi smirks. That’s true. It’s cheaper that way. He tilts his head … the jibes they’re trading … Steve is just trying to bring the conversation back to normal, whatever that is now. Maybe Bohdi needs some normal.
Steve pulls on an ancient looking tome and a door opens to a tiny safe where the scrolls were a moment before. “Odin was always hiding the good stuff in here,” Steve says.
He returns to the table with a fat dusty bottle and three little earthenware cups that look ancient. “Oh,” says Amy, “Alfheim fire whiskey.” Steve hands her the bottle, and he puts down the cups. A few moments later they all have a full shot in their hands.
Bohdi tilts his head, inhaling the earthy fragrance of the whiskey. His hands tremble, the impact of everything settling in: the revelation of his name and his parents’ death—and the awful discovery that he might never really remember either. He sets the cup on the table for a moment and just stares at it mutely. And Amy is Creation, and she loves him enough to endure a fate worse than death … And his friend Steve is now the new Order. Bohdi shakes his head—really, that one wasn’t much of a stretch.