“Let’s go up,” said Zane.
Adam said, “I’m staying here.”
That wouldn’t work. I needed him to go with Liam and Zane. I needed to be alone because I was in no shape to hunt down my prey. If Adam stayed…that would leave too many things beyond my control. I thought that I might have this one chance only.
“Go,” I told Adam, brushing my hand over the carry gun he had in the small of his back. It didn’t feel like his usual HK. “You’ll be useful. None of them can scent a trail.”
I wasn’t wrong. But I didn’t know that for sure until after I’d said it and the thoughts of the others confirmed it. I needed them all out of the room.
I didn’t have much time, I thought with black humor.
Adam stiffened—he knew I was planning something. He hesitated.
“Go,” I told him. “Please.” Oh, dear God, I prayed, let this work. One chance.
“I can stay,” Adam said, and I knew he’d caught my fear and misread it. I wasn’t worried about me; I was worried about him. About what would happen to him if I failed.
“Go,” I said, willing him to continue to believe that what I was afraid of was being left alone. “You need to go.”
He heard the utter truth in my words, because he left, shutting the door and locking it behind him. As soon as they were all gone, I sat up. Then I pulled a pillow over my lap and curled over it, resting my forehead on the cool linen. I waited for the coolness to make my head stop hurting so much, but that didn’t happen.
The door opened again. Soft, hesitant footsteps approached the bed. A gentle hand touched my head. I didn’t open my eyes, but I knew who it was. I hadn’t met him—but Liam knew him, a gentle man who was good with flowers.
“Hello, Hugo,” I said, and speaking out loud helped. Not with the pain, but with the confusion that tried to take over my thoughts. Maybe talking it through would help everything make sense. “Can I tell you a story?”
He hesitated. I wasn’t doing what he thought I would do. But he hadn’t had his magic torn open and his soul exposed to the world, so he couldn’t understand me.
“I would like to tell you a story,” I said, almost sick with fear of failure—and sadness. “Please, have a seat and listen.” I tried to infuse that last sentence with a bit of force—Adam to his pack, giving a polite order.
I didn’t need to open my eyes to know that my visitor had moved to sit on the chair in front of the window where someone else had just been sitting. I couldn’t remember if it had been Liam or Zane. Then I remembered the reason I hadn’t known which one of them had been sitting there was because I hadn’t opened my eyes once since I’d woken up. The idea of adding light to my headache still had no appeal at all.
I couldn’t read Hugo like I had Liam and Zane. Those two were old, even Zane. Maybe especially Zane.
My visitor was, in all the ways that counted just now, not old at all. I felt him as I expected a child would have felt—a rich present, here and now, but not deep or complex.
“Simple,” Liam had called Hugo once—I couldn’t remember when. The green man hadn’t been wrong about the heart of this man, who, obedient for now, walked around the bed and sat down on the chair in front of the window. Though my eyes were shut still, the dimming light told me it was already getting dark. Tomorrow would be the shortest day of the year. Solstice.
Liam was worried because the marriage should take place as dawn replaced the darkness. Not much time at all now. And I was tired, so tired of fighting to find a path through all the information bombarding my head from connections that I hadn’t quite gotten rid of when they left the room.
“I am telling the story for me, too,” I told him. “So I don’t get any of it wrong, or miss something important.”
I hoped I got some of it wrong.
My visitor made a soft noise.
“Victoria and Able are thieves,” I said. “Were thieves. Very good thieves. They were hired to steal the lyre from Hrímnir.” I paused. “Hired by Ymir, I think—but it could have been—”
“Ymir.” Hugo’s voice was toneless—something had happened to it, Liam had told us. Cancer. Something like that.
Magic, I thought tiredly.
“I was almost sure it was Ymir,” I told him. “But when the goblins went to steal the artifact, it was already gone. The storm was building and they…”
I paused. “No. I need to start with the marriage—I keep forgetting about the marriage.”
“I remember,” said my visitor darkly. “Hrímnir could, too, but he chooses to forget.”
The sudden burning rage that seared in my head wasn’t mine. I couldn’t help making a sound.
“Are you all right?” Hugo somehow managed to convey concern in his toneless voice. I had no doubt it was real concern.
Ironic, that, considering everything.
But I reminded myself who I was talking to. None of this was his fault. Most of it wasn’t his fault. He’d been facing uphill on skis without realizing it, too.
“No. But there’s nothing to be done about that.” I felt like I was in a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, where there were no happily-ever-after endings.
Now, what had we been talking about?
“Hrímnir.” I thought about Hrímnir. “Very old powers are complicated,” I said. “They compartmentalize in order to function.”
Their minds might be like mine was now, all the time. I shuddered at the thought. Even if they only had their own memories, not those of everyone around them, that was thousands of years of memories. No wonder Zee played the part of a grumpy old mechanic so intently. If he existed like this—
I dragged my straying thoughts back. It was getting harder.
“The part that you see—” I thought of the various Hrímnirs I’d seen. The gryphon. The frost giant in the wolfskin cloak. The quiet man taking care of the draft horses because he’d taken away their caretaker. The one who had engineered Garmr’s attack so that I would become what I was right now. So I could assume my role in Hrímnir’s play.
“The part you see is real and true,” I said. “But it’s not the whole truth.”
Hrímnir had sacrificed for this spell, too. I had a visceral understanding of how Great Spells worked and I didn’t know where I’d picked that up. There had to be sacrifices—and Hrímnir paid that cost willingly. Instead of a Power who could change the world, make it a better place—because that was the kind of Power Hrímnir was—he lived alone except for his good dog and an artifact, the embodiment of his Great Spell.
“He has to forget to protect the spell,” I said, understanding why that was. It was the same reason I couldn’t pay too much attention to ghosts without making them more real. Hrímnir’s knowledge of the Great Spell might make everyone remember. He held that kind of power.
“Victoria and Able,” said Hugo deliberately. He didn’t want to talk about Hrímnir. Their relationship was complicated and painful. “You were going to explain what their role was.”
“You know what role they played,” I told him involuntarily. “But this story is mostly for me, anyway.”
“I am not sure of that,” he said. “I…I don’t always remember, either. ‘Compartmentalize,’ you said.” He laughed then; it sounded awfully close to a sob. “Compartmentalize. So talk. For both of us. Explain it to me.”
“Right,” I said. “As the shortest day of the year approaches, the stronger the call.” I’d gotten that from Liam, I thought, but I wasn’t sure anymore. “People who are needed for the marriage remember, then they come. Or they come and remember. But the Great Spell is not sentient. Not quite. It runs more like an if-then conditional on a computer program. If you know about the spell—and the artifact, the harp, is the embodiment of the spell—then you are called here. You are invited to the wedding.