The Apple Throne

by Tessa Gratton

  Thor holds his gaze on the lieutenant, smile lines flashing around his eyes though most of his expression is hidden under the beard. “Ah, Grid,” he murmurs. Her fingers slide off his mail sleeve reluctantly.

  Amon glowers.

  I have an urge to climb onto the desk for all I’m being noticed.

  But Thor, glancing toward Amon, sees me standing beside the electric kettle and garden of tea boxes on Grid’s side table. The god reacts like a surprised dog; something about his expression seems ears-back, hackles-raised.

  “Idun!” He plants his hands on his waist, hooking thumbs into his belt. “What the hoary blizzard are you doing here?”

  Lieutenant Grid must have the best card face in Alta California, for she only briefly flicks a glance at her son before waiting coolly for my answer.

  I curtsy very slightly. “Good Thunderer, I’m here because of Soren Bearstar, and your son brought me, all to his honor.”

  “But the—” His voice lowers comically. “The orchard, Idun.”

  “Thunderer.” I say it sharply, refusing to quail. I hold Soren and the danger he’s in like an iron rod against my spine. “Hear me out.”

  The god pauses and then nods assent.

  The nodding makes me think of the bobbleheads, and I bite my inner lip hard before I continue. “I love Soren Bearstar, Thunderer. Just as Baldur does. And when Baldur sleeps for the winter, Soren is mine to protect.” My voice wavers as I come nearer and nearer to a lie, and I make my words firm, “It is my duty to discover what trouble Soren has got himself in and whether he needs my support or intervention. With your help, I can find him faster, so the orchard will remain perfectly fine.”

  Thor steps nearer to me. He’s a solid oak tower, a head-and–a-half taller than me, and smells lightly of sweat and the crisp apple scent of Bright Home and the strange electric tinge of an approaching storm. He watches me. In the center of his pupils is silver and gold lightning.

  “Freya knows you’re here?” he asks.

  My ears fill with the pressure of his regard. I’m too aware of my bedraggled state. He’s seen me only at my finest, or calm and relaxed in the apple groves. “She knows I left the orchard,” I say, willing him to accept the half-truth so we can move on. I dislike this undermining of what tiny shred of authority I have here with the lieutenant.

  “So be it,” the Thunderer says. “We all choose our own ways.” He shakes his head and swings around. “What has Amon to do with all this?”

  Amon stands, scowling, shorter than his father by only a hands-span. They’re nothing else alike but for the breadth of their shoulders and cracking blue eyes. Amon says, “Dad.”

  And Thor says, “Your mother called me because of you, because you told her you spoke as my son. You’ve never done so before.”

  A soft note of longing is clear in his voice. I remember keenly how Baldur used to be so plain about the needs of his heart. If only men and women found it as easy as the gods do.

  Amon’s jaw clenches and releases. Then he says, “I needed to if I’m going to help Idun the Young find Soren Bearstar.”

  “Why?” Thor shakes his head slowly, and the ends of his braids brush against the rough blue cloak. It looks homespun.

  I turn my face away, wishing I could remove myself. It’s not my business.

  From beside the door, Lieutenant Grid catches my motion and smiles just a touch sadly.

  Amon says, “It’s the right thing to do.”

  Thor sighs—not a gesture of impatience or sorrow, but relief and release—and I wonder if Amon is telling the truth.

  I interrupt, “Thor, you can help me by giving me access to all your Army and militia reports.”

  Thor frowns, and Amon says, “Believe her, dad. Soren could be in danger.”

  “The Bearstar is a murder suspect, not a victim,” Grid says firmly. The chevrons at her shoulders flash.

  “He is no murderer,” I snap back.

  Thor hesitates, looking between us.

  I say, “Grant me this, Thunderer, for loyalty and family. It is the only thing I’ve asked of Asgard in all my tenure. It will be the only thing I ask. He is my family, and you would do as much for yours.”

  He assents. “I’ll give you my best hunter to coordinate with the Army, with me. And I will bring the story back to Bright Home that Idun’s seethkona has struck out with my son on a quest to find Soren Bearstar before he injures anyone else. No one else must find out Idun is away from her garden.”

  I hold his lightning eyes. “I know.”

  “And,” Amon says, “tell the country he’s been transferred into the gods’ keeping until the matter is resolved. Not that he’s escaped. It’s even true,” he adds before his mom can protest.

  Grid clenches her jaw, but nods. Amon slams out of the room, then, and Thor goes after. The lieutenant levels me with such a gaze I can read it clear: I’d better not rag this up for any of them.

  • • •

  Sun cuts a harsh shadow against the yellow winter grass a dozen paces from where I sit. This broken prison cell faces north, and so the sun will never quite hit me. Which is unfortunate as my hair is wet from the very fast, very necessary shower I took in the prison’s empty locker room. It was difficult putting my filthy clothes back on. Amon is with his parents still, but Grid sent her sergeant to bring me back here so that I could wait, could think, could maybe even dream. I promised Amon I would not seeth.

  The sparse case file fans open before me. Pictures of Soren and of this man Evan Bell who he supposedly murdered. Notes from the scene of the crime. Pictures of the house and driveway.

  Bell was a guest lecturer on etin physiology at a local community college, just arrived this term from a university out east. No wife or children, no local family, and so far no one had come forward to claim his belongings, though there’d been an outpouring of support from the college. His neighbors to the south had been having a Yule party, hence the plentiful witnesses who claimed Soren had walked up to Bell’s car and ripped the driver’s door free. The two men had fought until Soren flung Bell away, breaking his neck. Then, apparently Soren had just knelt to wait for the authorities. So many corroborated those facts, it’s difficult not to believe them basically accurate. It might have been an accident, but Soren didn’t deny that he killed Bell.

  He was no man, is the only thing Soren had said when taken into custody except, I’m not supposed to be here tonight. He asked for a tyr, and one was promised after the Yule holiday, by which time he’d broken out. No mention of his going berserk except a few witness statements on the night of the murder itself. It hadn’t happened yet, then. But any time now, he might be flung into that frenzy.

  I read his recorded words again and again.

  I stare at the booking picture of him—his deep, warm eyes; his severe black hair, so stark against the militia backdrop. There’s a note in the file that Soren continued to cooperate. They said he meditated, practiced his sword forms, did hundreds of push-ups.

  I clench my hands, then drag my fingers through my damp curls. I want to set out the moment the Thunderer’s hunter arrives. But set out where? I’ve no idea where to begin, despite the vision of the cave. Maybe I can identify the type of stone, but I also do not know exactly when the vision will take place. Right now or days from now. I have to seeth again, keep pushing myself to gather more information.

  A boot scuffs purposefully at the rough edge of the cell. My head snaps up.

  A slender young Asgardian man stands as straight as the gold-stitched rank insignia on his blue Army coat. His shaved head is covered in dark tattoos, his face sharp and eyes hooded. A gun holstered under his arm presses wrinkles into the uniform, and he also wears a baldric, with double-bladed battle-axes showing like wings over both shoulders. The bald head, hawkish face, and implied wings make me think of a vulture. The way he scans me with those light eyes, as if waiting for me to die or make some mistake, doesn’t help me like him.

  To my surprise, he kneels.
“Lady Idun,” he says in a low voice thick with southerly accent. “My lord said you would be waiting here.”

  I scramble to my feet, brushing concrete dust from my skirt. “You must be the Thunderer’s hunter. Please stand, and you needn’t call me lady.”

  He springs up, closer to me than I expected. He’s tall, and now studies me, gaze flicking from my disastrous hair, down my coat, to the rips and tears in my entire outfit. The scatter of official reports spread behind me like a rainbow. Light pours through the broken cell wall, illuminating the fierce tattoo covering his scalp: giant black ram horns that seem to grow from his temples and spiral inward behind his ears. Iron nails pierce both ears, and this near, I see the paleness of his eyes is the clear gray of winter clouds.

  “Sune Rask,” he says, bowing sharply, smoothly avoiding bashing his forehead into mine.

  “Sune.” I take a step back and see him note it, as he notes everything. He turns in a slow circle, taking in the cell, then faces me again.

  “This was no breakout, the militia is correct. The destruction came from the outside.” He crouches. “See the pattern of detritus? It’s been jostled and ruined by the militia, but originally it blew inward, not outward into the yard.” The sharp double-blades of his axes catch the sun as he moves. I squint against the glare.

  I hug myself. “Somebody broke him out.”

  Sune slowly stretches to his feet, trailing gentle fingers along the edge of the hole in the wall. “Something did.” He steps outside into the training ground, sniffing, using the toe of his army boots to nudge aside a few chunks of cinderblock and twisted steel. He avoids the small stain of my bile, but glances briefly at me.

  “There’re no obvious sign of explosives, but I’ll ask the lieutenant to have her dogs double-check. This edge is too smooth though, as if something melted it. I don’t know many explosives that hot that don’t leave traces.”

  “You can tell that so quickly?”

  “That is all fairly obvious. Not enough to impress you,” he says dryly.

  “Maybe it was something other than explosives?”

  “Like sheer berserker strength? I doubt it. Berserkers don’t melt stone. You’d need etin-folk for that.”

  “Giants? Giants are extinct.”

  “They say that about many things, don’t they?” he mutters.

  Despite being a girl transformed into a piece of an intricate magic spell thousands of years old, it is rough for me to imagine giants or elves or goblins coming here to break Soren free. Even if they still existed outside of stories, what would they want with him?

  Sune turns fast to me. He tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “Was it you?”

  “Me?”

  “You’re anxious and hardly a goddess.”

  Shock drives me back another step. He was so fast to discover it and bolder to say it.

  He presses. “Are you playing some game with my god, purporting to be the Lady of Apples? A game with this Soren Bearstar?” His low accent drips off Soren’s name, infuriating me.

  “Not a goddess?” I smile a scornful smile I remember from my days at school. “If you say that again, I’ll call a holmgang down upon you that you cannot hope to win.”

  That flick of speculation fills his face again as he eyes me up and down. “I think I could defeat you in three moves.”

  “Not if I stand in her place,” Amon rumbles from the inside of the prison.

  Surprise and uncertainty sprawl across Sune’s expressive eyes before he whirls around. “Amon.”

  The godling hulks in the doorframe, a torpid smile strung on his mouth. “You know clear and well you can’t beat me, Sune Rask.”

  “I can fight my own battles, Amon,” I snap.

  “Oh, but Sune likes it when I beat his face into the ground.”

  Sune’s face stretches with what I can only read as a flash of hurt. He recovers by sneering, “You’re so considerate of my needs, Thorson, as always.”

  The two young men stare at each other. Amon’s eyes crack with lightning, and the muscles in Sune’s jaw work. I can trace them across his skull, making the lines of his tattoo wiggle. I’m desperate to know what it is that’s been between them.

  Finally, Sune nods. “I will not say it again, lady.”

  Guilt quickens in my stomach. “You were right,” I say. He jerks his head up, and I clarify. “I am anxious. I care about Soren Bearstar a great deal, and he is my priority. He did not murder Evan Bell, he did not plot an escape, and he never hurts people. Do you understand?”

  Sune waits—not hesitating, but weighing my words. “Yes, Idun, I understand. I will find him, and that does not require me to believe in anything other than that he exists to be found. Do you understand?”

  “I do. Let’s get started.” I hold out my hand to the Thunderer’s hunter, and he bows over it.

  EIGHT

  After gathering Soren’s scant belongings from Grid, I follow Sune and Amon to the exit. In my hands, I hold his clothes, boots, wallet with only a few cash notes and his ID, and a key ring with the make of his truck. No phone. I wish I could sense something of him in these things, and though the worn old boots do make me smile a little sadly, there’s nothing of Soren himself here. What mattered to him was his father’s sword, his tattoos, and his friends. The fact that his sword is missing worries me, but the militia swear they do not have it.

  The reporters have remained along their line, guarded by the militia men, and the moment I break out into the sunlight, they’re calling questions at us: What’s your business with Soren Bearstar? Why send for the Thunderer? Is Soren Bearstar innocent? Why did he kill Evan Bell?

  I push through, ignoring it all, making a beeline for the van. The hunter, Sune Rask, has convinced me that we should follow him to Evan Bell’s house because the militia and Army are canvassing the woods and doing what they can to track Soren on foot and with dogs. We won’t add anything there. We’ll leave them to the how and where and try to understand the who and the why, he said. Perhaps we’ll find Soren’s motivation and some information to point us in the direction of whoever broke him out of prison. It’s likely that whoever did it was involved in the crime somehow.

  Though I’d like to stop and seeth, I accept his logic. Better to find more clues about what really happened and why Soren was there, and the more I know, the better I should be able to focus my seething.

  We drive to the southern edge of Eureka, along the coast, to Evan Bell’s former residence. Amon parks at the top of the paved driveway behind Sune’s blue Jeep. There are few homes here, all separated by wide yards and hanging onto the narrow coast between the highway and the ocean. Windswept trees shelter Bell’s house, and a rickety old staircase leads down the slope to the glassy beach. Despite the sunlight, it’s freezing outside the van. I rub my hands together and hurry after Sune. The house is built in the old Queen style, with bright purple gingerbread trim and tall, narrow windows. A turret at the northern corner is capped by a lovely peaked roof. It’s all too charming for the scrawl of glaring yellow crime scene tape slicing across the front door.

  I read about Evan Bell to Amon on the way, though none of it suggested an obvious connection to Soren. But here in the now-empty driveway, Soren supposedly broke his neck. I hope inside I’ll discover a reason why.

  The hunter stares at the house from the porch steps for a few minutes, holding me back with a gloved hand. “There’s the neighboring house where the witnesses were.” He points to the distant yellow ranch, then shades his eyes with that same hand. “They weren’t close enough to hear the altercation, but most reported that Bearstar did not seem berserk and stopped the car…” He swivels around to the drive. “…there, jerked open the door, and dragged Bell out.”

  “Some say he was berserk,” I say as Amon joins us. The godling sits on the steps at my feet, pulling a box of clove cigarettes out of his back pocket.

  Sune snaps his head down almost immediately. “That will ruin my sense of smell.”

 
; Dark cigarette hanging from his bottom lip as if in disbelief, Amon glances slowly up, in a way that might almost be called flirtatious. He fingers the cigarette before flicking it, unused, into the lava rock garden beside the porch.

  Sune gently removes the crime tape from the doorframe and opens the front door. To me, he says, “I prioritized the witness statements based on drunkenness and presence of prejudice, and I lean toward believing the ones who said Bearstar was not, in fact, berserk at the time. Especially as he sat down afterward and waited for the militia.”

  With that, the hunter heads through the door. I follow.

  Inside is gloomy, despite the rays of sunlight pressing in through the tall windows. It alights upon disused furniture and few personal touches, illuminating motes of dust that drift calmly in the air. Our feet creak against the hardwood floor. All the doorways are tall arches, the ceilings high, with large-bladed fans shifting in the breeze that follows us in. A bookshelf and coffee table are made of faded driftwood.

  “Look around,” Sune says, “but if you find anything suspicious, don’t touch it. Call for me. I want to see it unaltered.”

  I nod absently and wander toward the kitchen through a wide-open dining room. There’s a long island full of drawers, and all the cabinetry is sandblasted wood, rough but elegant-looking. Through the bay window over the stove, I see the undulating ocean, with cargo ships silhouetted against the horizon. Everything here is unused, though it’s been only three days. I swipe a finger through a thin layer of dust on the tea kettle balanced over the gas burner. Beside me the refrigerator shines with modernity. Only a handful of items are stuck to its face with uninteresting black magnets: an unused postcard of Old Faithful, two movie ticket stubs to what sound like horror films, and a news article from over a year ago about a thing called the Stone Plague. I lean in to catch a few lines. String of troll deaths in Alta California… characterized by perfect calcification… no cure. Frowning, I remember the odd look Amon gave me when I was concerned about trolls in the Jotunwood.