Arrival
The competition for honor guards had been fierce, lasting almost twenty years. Although I had been given high marks as a warrior and better than average in skaldic performance, I shone most brightly in the arenas of diplomacy, history, and dissembling. It helped that I had been fascinated by the history between Asgard and my home realm since I was a youth, and I’d always excelled at games of intrigue and deception. I was too young and inexperienced to be given a speaking role in the expedition, but I was one of only four guards chosen for the diplomatic delegation to the home of our ancient enemies.
When we arrived at the end of Bifrost, the famous “rainbow bridge,” Heimdall stood to greet us alone, a motionless figure in golden armor gleaming under the light of Asgard’s miniature sun. In a ritual exchange, he demanded our weapons, until our diplomats’ stylized protests were overcome and we turned over several items—some for safekeeping, some as gifts—while being allowed to carry our own personal “peacebonded” arms. He knew as well as we did that all of these weapons were entirely ceremonial. My people make good use of technology, but we prefer to fight naked and unarmed. I was very curious about how Heimdall perceived us, as I knew that his magically enhanced vision could not be fooled by our current forms, but I didn’t have the opportunity to ask before he directed us to a waiting skybarge piloted by several royal guards, with plenty of room for our small party of four guards and two ambassadors.
Asgard is the name of both the artificial planetoid that is the home of the Aesir and the capital city of that small realm. Our brief trip from the landing point at the end of Bifrost to the looming structure of the Palace was prolonged into a sweeping arc over and across the city. I’m sure that we were meant to be impressed, maybe even awed, by the casual display of engineering and technology on display for the journey. We took our cues from our cultural advisers as best we could, making expressions and gestures indicating approval and admiration. At the same time, we couldn’t help being distracted by the hidden world that few of the Aesir themselves could see, yet that exists right alongside their own. We noticed the scars, where damage to structures had been repaired; we glanced over the careful restorations where time had eroded delicate details away from the looming statuary; and we saw the complex web of energy and carefully hidden understructure of the past, the aetheric tapestry that is the foundation of every ancient civilization. Asgard’s history of creation in warfare, its defense and fortification, was as plain for us to see as all the grand and shining decorations that had since encrusted every surface of the city. It is a saying among our people that every utopia is built upon a mountain of bones. There may be an exception to that rule, but we haven’t found it yet.
One of the most important traits that been considered in the selection of our guards was patience. Of course, our ambassadors had ages more experience in dealing with such things, but it was difficult not to grow increasingly restless with every stop along the route to our formal announcement and presentation. When we disembarked from the skybarge, there was a ceremony, along with what I’m sure they thought was a discreet attempt to screen us for hidden weapons. Then we went up a flight of steps into a reception hall, where there was another ceremony. After that was a longer hallway, and we stopped before a huge, closed portal for yet another ceremony. Each ritual was longer than the one before it. The diplomats had plenty to do, giving carefully worded affirmations of peaceful intent and nonaggression to every thinly veiled challenge. As a guard, my role consisted entirely of walking from one position to another, then standing there as still as possible, looking calm and alert.
My job wasn’t entirely ceremonial, though. At every step and stop, we kept constant vigil for unexpected movements or the possibility of threat, while our elders were occupied with the delicate business of diplomacy. We had been at peace for centuries with Asgard, but there were plenty of Aesir still alive who remembered the ages of conflict that had come before. It didn’t help that my people had a reputation for treachery—or that the reputation was pretty well deserved. We’d all been warned that some of our hosts would most likely see our mission as a hostile invasion, no matter how polite and well-mannered we were, and take the defense of the realm into their own hands. We’re even harder to kill than an Aesir, but they’d had centuries of practice to figure out some nasty tricks. A lone fanatic wasn’t out of the question, or even an assassin armed and silently sanctioned by their government.
We’d had plenty of training, but no amount of practice can prepare a person for the experience of hours of grinding tedium, while simultaneously having to maintain a razor-sharp edge of alert wariness under a shell of stolid immobility. If I’d been in my natural form, I doubt I would have been able to stop my tailtip from twitching.
At long, long last, the portal to the grand public throne room spun open, and we ascended a flight of steps to emerge into an immense hall, as large as the Caldera in our homeland. Nearly three-quarters of the chamber was open to the sky above, and I had a moment of irritation when I realized we could have simply docked our skybarge on the ledge I could see on the open side of the platform and saved several hours of pointless rituals. A vast length of stone floor decorated with intricate designs led from the doorway to the foot of the central throne, lined on both sides by guards in gleaming armor and bristling with weapons that weren’t entirely decorative. Behind the guards were swirls and clusters of diplomats, courtiers, minor nobility, and hopeful social climbers. Some stared at us with open hostility, but most seemed just curious, and some even managed to look bored. Though the room, and the tiers of balconies above, could have held thousands of spectators, there were not more than a couple of hundred Aesir present.
A huge gilded throne sat on a stepped dais in an oval of pillars, occupied by an imposing, elderly Aesir who I assumed must be Odin Allfather, the ruler of Asgard. A pair of black avians were perched, one on either side of the throne’s back, watching attentively. I remembered from my history that Aesir preferred hereditary rule though male descendants—so the Aesir individual standing on the steps immediately to his right must be Thor, Odin’s son and heir. The person standing on his left appeared to be about his own age, so it seemed a safe guess to be Frigga, Odin’s mate. There were a few others standing on either side before the throne, in what seemed to be a descending order of importance, but my attention stopped dead at the sight of the person placed at Thor’s right hand, one step below him.
I think our entire delegation noticed zir simultaneously. At least, all of us stumbled or hesitated just a tiny bit. It didn’t last more than a second before the diplomats had their inscrutable expressions repaired and we fell back into practiced lockstep. In that second, an assassin could probably have taken out several of us, or perhaps even all. None of us had expected to see a Jotun shape-shifter holding an obvious high position at this court.
If any of the Aesir noticed our surprise, they gave no sign. However, the Jotun obviously had. None of the Asgardians were watching the dais, and so none but our party caught zir very slight smirk. We ignored it, of course, but inside my impassive shell I was burning with curiosity.
Finally arriving at the foot of the platform, we knelt, heads bowed and fists pressed to our chests in the traditional Aesir salute gesture, until Odin gave us permission to rise. After standing, we four guards took positions at four corners of a box around the envoys, each facing outward diagonally from each other. Aesir guards would have probably all continued to face the throne, or perhaps stayed behind entirely, but this was our own traditional formation. As it happened, this positioned me almost directly facing the Jotun.
Despite my interest in the history and culture of Asgard and its people, I’d never gotten the hang of correctly identifying mammalian genders at first sight. I knew that facial hair was a strong indicator of maleness, while long manes were more often associated with females, but I also knew that these things varied hugely within most cultures by fashion and personal inclination. Their clothing was also diverse, according to personal and societal styles—no help to be had there. The determining characteristics of their mammalian anatomy were often covered by their clothing, in layers that seemed designed to deliberately obscure the matter. I’d never understood the ridiculous amount of importance that most mammalian species seemed to place on gender determination, especially given the fact that they usually only had two recognized genders anyway, and the extraordinary lengths they often went to hide what that gender actually was.
As I stared at the Jotun, I remembered some oddly vague mention in our agents’ reports of Odin having another child, besides his heir. Given zir position on the steps before Odin’s throne, it seemed that this Jotun was considered some kind of relative. Nothing I’d heard had specified zir species, gender, or even name, and we’d of course assumed zie was an Aesir, possibly underage, and of no particular importance. Now that I saw zir, I thought I could better understand the lack of information. Although zie appeared to fit well within standard species deviations for an Aesir, zir aetheric pattern proclaimed zir true species for anyone with the ability or skill to look. I knew that the current trend of Asgardian society was strongly averse to technomancy, which explained why zir background wasn’t common knowledge—there were probably very few others, if any, capable of seeing through zir Aesir form in the assembled crowd.
I was surprised to the point of being shocked when I realized the most likely reason for Odin to have “adopted” a Jotun: a child given by the Frost Giants as a hostage to ensure their good behavior in the aftermath of the most recent war, almost certainly from Jotun royalty. The practice had been fairly common in Asgardian history, but to me it seemed repellent and barbaric.
I found my thoughts turning to speculation of zir gender, quite indecently. Zie had no facial hair, indicating femininity. Zie was also quite slender, with delicate facial features, also usually female traits in Aesir. Zie wore trousers, though, often a masculine affectation in this culture, as well as a gold helmet with a pair of long, swept-back horns. I thought they looked rather attractive on zir, much more so than the wings on Thor’s helmet or the flat crest on Odin’s. I was caught a little by surprise when the Jotun bowed, and it took me a minute to realize that the gesture was in response to something Odin was saying, not aimed at me directly.
“And I present to you Loki Odinson, the Clever One, who will one day defend this realm with his mastery of technomancy and the aetheric arts.”
The one named as Loki straightened up, smiling. Zie—he, evidently—plucked at the nearby aetheric threads with a subtle twitch of his fingers, and through them pulled an illusion of himself up directly in front of me. I could sense similar illusions had sprung up to face the other guards as well. The images bowed in unison, mimicking the bow that Loki had just made to our party, then straightened up and gave a quick wink of one eye before vanishing. I glanced back at Loki and raised an eyebrow by just a fraction. He responded by widening his smile just a fraction.
My attention to threats suffered badly through what remained of the ceremony. I reassured myself that it was unlikely that an attack would be made here, so publicly, right in front of the ruling powers. This audience was just a formality, of course. There would be many meetings to come between our diplomats and theirs as a pace treaty, one that would ideally last ten thousand years, was hammered out. I could expect to stay in Asgard for at least several months, if not years—or longer.
As I tried not to stare at the intriguing Jotun, I found myself quite pleased with the prospect of staying for a while.