Seven Times A Charm

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then Thor reached for Mjölnir.

“Where?”

“At the mill,” Lexander said quickly.

Her eyes went toward the ceiling anyway.

“I understood that.”

“Your hammer didn’t.”

Thor looked down at the sparks crawling over her knuckles. They faded.

Across the table, Io held the slack thread between her fingers. The little knots remained, each one so tightly drawn that the strand looked beaded.

Alive.

Bound.

Below.

Surtr is upstairs.

Lexander read them again without understanding how he now knew their meaning.

Something remembered in him.

A woman sitting beside a hearth, laughing as she undid a message woven into the hem of a cloak. Io leaning over her shoulder. A golden band catching firelight.

Then the memory slipped away.

“Who would know that code?” he asked.

Io did not answer.

Loki did.

“Very few people.”

He had stopped moving entirely. That troubled Lexander more than any of his usual pacing.

Io rubbed her thumb over the first knot.

“Fulla.”

The name settled into the room.

Lisbeth drew a sharp breath.

Thor’s grip tightened.

Lexander looked at his wife. “You’re certain?”

“No.” Io’s voice shook, and she steadied it. “But she kept my household. She knew the messages better than anyone. Sometimes she wrote them for me.”

Another fragment stirred behind Lexander’s injured eye: golden hair, a bundle of keys, a woman telling him with perfect composure that being king did not excuse muddy boots.

He almost smiled.

Then he looked at the thread again.

“Can you answer?”

“I can try.”

Loki caught her wrist before she touched the first knot.

“Briefly.”

Io looked at him.

“If he’s in the building, we have to assume he may be watching whatever she’s doing.”

For a heartbeat, Lexander thought Io might pull away.

Instead, she nodded.

Loki released her.

Her fingers moved slowly, finding an old skill.

Three knots loosened. Two new ones formed.

Lexander watched them travel down the strand and disappear beyond its frayed end.

“What did you say?”

Io looked south.

“Heard. Coming.”

Atreyu found the mill before noon.

Not through prophecy.

Through an elderly clerk who had spent forty years becoming increasingly irritated with inaccurate property records.

“People keep calling it abandoned,” the clerk told him, spreading a survey across the desk. “It isn’t abandoned. The water rights were renewed last spring.”

Atreyu leaned over the map.

“By whom?”

“A shipping concern that doesn’t own a boat.”

Loki glanced at Lexander.

“I like him.”

The clerk pushed his spectacles higher.

“You wouldn’t if you were behind on your assessments.”

“I like him less.”

The mill stood on a tributary south of the old posting house, where the river narrowed between wooded banks. The nearest village lay several miles downstream.

Atreyu laid a finger on the road.

“Two days at a steady pace. We can shorten that with remounts, but there’s no safe way to get a force there before tomorrow.”

“I can get there before tomorrow,” Thor said.

“And announce yourself across half the countryside,” Loki replied.

“If Surtr is there—”

“If he sees you coming, the prisoner becomes either a shield or a corpse.”

Thor went quiet.

It was a hard silence.

Lexander felt it in his own chest.

There was a woman beneath that mill who had risked sending four short messages, and every discussion of roads felt intolerably slow.

He looked at Lisbeth’s cloak.

“Could you scout ahead?”

“Yes.”

“Observe only.”

She gave him an offended look.

“I know how scouting works.”

Thor opened her mouth.

Lisbeth pointed at her.

“You do not get to contribute to this conversation.”

Atreyu arranged remounts at two road stations. The Watch detachment would ride separately, dressed as travelers, and assemble north of the mill.

Mara would command the men outside.

Thor, Loki, and Baldr would enter.

No banners. No heralds. No attempt to surround Surtr with ordinary soldiers who could do little except die proving they were brave.

“If you can take him, take him,” Lexander said. “If you can’t, get Fulla and the distaff out.”

Thor’s expression hardened.

“He’s been hunting us since before we knew our own names.”

“I know.”

“He sent killers into the room where your children were being born.”

“I know.”

Lexander stood.

“And I will not repay that by sending you into a fight you cannot win because I want him hurt.”

For a moment, Thor stared at him.

Then something in her face eased.

Not agreement, exactly.

Recognition.

“Prisoner first,” she said.

“Everyone home.”

“That sounds like an order.”

“It is.”

She tucked Mjölnir against her belt.

“Getting quite kingly.”

“Don’t spread it around.”

Before leaving, Baldr went to the nursery.

Lexander found him standing beside the twins’ cradle, one finger firmly imprisoned in Ignatius’s fist.

Seraphina was asleep.

Ignatius was considering his older brother with solemn interest.

“He’s stronger than he looks,” Baldr said.

“He gets that from his mother.”

From the doorway, Io said, “And his stubbornness from his father.”

Lexander turned.

She had tucked the thread into a small cloth pouch tied at her wrist. Only the end protruded.

“Anything?”

She shook her head.

“No more messages.”

Baldr gently worked his finger free.

Io crossed the room and embraced him.

He went still for a fraction of a second before his arms closed around her.

Lexander looked away.

Some parts of this strange family came easily. Others arrived with grief attached, old losses pressing against new faces.

When Io stepped back, she kept hold of Baldr’s hands.

“You do not have to prove anything.”

His smile was faint.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“You get that expression when you’re about to do something terribly noble.”

Lexander nodded. “I’ve noticed.”

Baldr looked between them.

“It is deeply unfair that you can both do this now.”

“Parenting?” Lexander asked.

“Ambush me.”

Io kissed his cheek.

“Come home and complain about it.”

Baldr’s smile faltered, then returned more warmly.

“I will.”

The palace felt different after they left.

Quieter in the wrong places.

Thor’s absence left the terrace strangely empty. Loki’s absence made every shadow seem ordinary, which Lexander found he disliked. By supper, he had caught himself looking toward the door three times, expecting someone to arrive with a complaint disguised as a joke.

Bruni noticed.

“Thor comes back,” he said.

Lexander stood beside him at the garden wall.

“I know.”

The giant considered him.

“You know in head.”

“Yes.”

“Head should tell stomach.”

Lexander laughed despite himself.

“I’ll suggest it.”

Aurethar lay beyond the lawn, his eyes open.

He had not slept since sensing the attempted opening.

“Anything?” Lexander asked him.

“No.”

“Would you feel it if they tried again?”

The dragon lifted his head.

“If they open the same wound.”

Lexander turned.

“Wound?”

Aurethar’s gaze moved south.

“What your queen interrupted did not feel like a road being made. It felt like something healed badly being torn apart.”

Lexander thought of the graves. Of lives he remembered only in pieces. Of Surtr surviving the end of one world and reaching into another.

“Can it be closed?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I would need to see it.”

That was the trouble with so many of their answers.

They required getting closer to the thing trying to kill them.

Behind Lexander, a window opened.

Io leaned out.

“Your son has decided supper is an insult.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

Bruni nodded gravely.

“Hard age.”

Lexander looked up at him.

“You remember being that small?”

“No.”

The first reply came after midnight.

Lexander woke to Io sitting upright beside him.

The thread gleamed faintly across her lap.

He lit the lamp.

A knot formed.

Then another.

Io caught his hand before he could speak.

They waited.

The message took so long that Lexander began counting the spaces between her breaths.

At last she whispered, “Water stops. Door opens.”

He looked at the dark window.

“The mill wheel.”

“I think so.”

More knots.

This time Io bent closer.

“He makes me turn it.”

Her fingers tightened on his.

Lexander felt a cold anger spreading through him.

Surtr had found someone who remembered how to use Frigg’s tools.

And he was making her work.

“Can we send that to the others?”

“Atreyu has couriers following them.”

“I’ll wake him.”

Io caught his sleeve.

“Lex.”

He stopped.

For several seconds she watched the thread, as though more words might appear if she wanted them badly enough.

Then she said, “She was always there.”

He sat beside her.

“When I remembered the halls, the feasts, the winters… she was in so many of them. Carrying something. Telling someone where to go. Making certain I’d eaten.”

A tear slipped down her cheek.

“I should have wondered where she was.”

Lexander drew her against him.

“You have been trying to remember your own life while living this one.”

“I remembered other people.”

“When something brought them back to you.”

Io’s hand closed around the pouch.

“She remembered me.”

He had no answer that would make that hurt less.

So he stayed until she could breathe steadily again.

Then he went to find Atreyu.

Lisbeth reached the others at dusk the following day.

She dropped out of the trees in a rush of feathers and landed badly enough to have to catch herself against Baldr’s shoulder.

“Don’t say it.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You looked helpful.”

Thor rose from the fallen log where she had been sitting.

“The mill?”

“Occupied. Six men outside that I could see. More inside. The wheel is turning, but there’s no flour dust, no deliveries, and the grain store is empty.”

Mara spread the map over the log.

“Entrances?”

“Front doors. Loading doors over the water. A narrow opening near the wheel, barred.” Lisbeth hesitated. “And something upstairs.”

Loki looked at her.

“Surtr?”

“I didn’t get close enough to see his face.”

“What did you see?”

“Curtains moving away from him.”

There was no wind beneath the trees.

Thor looked toward the unseen mill.

Lisbeth went on.

“The room was shut. Nothing else moved. But the curtains lifted as though they couldn’t bear touching him.”

Nobody joked.

A Watch rider arrived while they were checking their weapons, his horse dark with sweat.

He handed Mara Atreyu’s message.

Loki read it over her shoulder.

“Water stops. Door opens.”

Thor frowned.

“So we keep the wheel turning.”

“Until Fulla is clear,” Baldr said.

Mara traced the millrace on the map.

“I’ll put men at the sluice. Nobody closes it.”

“Keep them back from the building,” Loki said. “If you hear me shout, you retreat.”

Thor glanced at him.

“What if you’re shouting something stupid?”

“Then you’ll have to make a rare exercise of judgment.”

She smiled without warmth.

“There he is.”

They entered through the water.

Thor considered this an insult.

She made her opinion known in a whisper that contained several words Baldr was glad the twins had not yet learned.

Loki went first beneath the loading platform. Baldr followed, keeping one hand on the stone wall.

The barred opening Lisbeth had found lay just above the millrace.

Beyond it was darkness.

Thor put both hands around the bars.

The iron bent with a low groan.

She paused.

Above them, footsteps crossed the floor.

A man coughed.

Something heavy scraped over wood.

They waited until the footsteps moved away.

Then Thor finished bending the bars apart.

Inside, the air smelled of wet stone and hot metal.

A narrow passage led beneath the mill floor. Water thundered through the wheel housing behind them.

Ahead, a thin line of light showed under a door.

Loki knelt beside it.

He listened.

Then he looked back.

One finger.

One person.

He eased the latch upward.

The woman inside was sitting in a chair fixed to the floor.

Her hair had been cut unevenly around her face. A dark iron band encircled one wrist, connected by a chain to the chair.

In her free hand she held a long, pale wooden distaff.

Threads ran from it across the room.

Dozens of them.

They disappeared into lines carved through the stone.

She looked up.

Her eyes settled on Loki.

For a moment, her expression was utterly blank.

Then she whispered, “You took your time.”

Loki’s face changed in a way Thor had not seen in years.

“Fulla.”

“Yes, you idiot. Shut the door.”

Baldr slipped inside.

Thor followed and closed it carefully.

Fulla looked at each of them.

Her mouth trembled when she saw Baldr.

She pressed it flat.

“Later,” she said, mostly to herself.

Thor knelt beside the chain.

Fulla caught her wrist.

“Not yet.”

From above came a soft scrape.

A chair moving.

Everyone froze.

Fulla’s voice dropped almost beyond hearing.

“He’s listening through the floor.”

Loki glanced upward.

Then he looked at the threads.

“How?”

Fulla lifted the distaff slightly.

One of the strands tightened.

The scraping stopped.

Understanding flickered across Loki’s face.

The carved lines were carrying more than power.

He crouched beside her.

“Can you keep him occupied?”

“I’ve been keeping him occupied for three days.”

“Another minute?”

She looked at Thor.

“If she can manage to be quiet.”

Thor’s offended expression would have been more convincing if she had not still been dripping river water onto the floor.

Fulla began moving her fingers.

Above them, footsteps resumed.

Slow.

Patient.

Loki examined the iron cuff.

Baldr followed the threads toward the far wall.

There, almost hidden behind them, a vertical seam cut through the stone.

It widened as he approached.

Something on the other side breathed.

Baldr stepped back.

“Loki.”

“I see it.”

Inside the seam, darkness moved against darkness.

The room grew warmer.

Fulla’s hand shook.

“Now would be good.”

Loki slid his dagger beneath the cuff’s locking pin.

The metal hissed.

Above them, the footsteps stopped.

A man’s voice spoke through the ceiling.

“Who have you brought me?”

Thor tore the chain out of the floor.

In Concordia, every knot in Io’s thread pulled tight at once.

She doubled over.

Lexander caught her before her head struck the table.

“Io!”

The pouch at her wrist split.

Thread poured across the wood, far more than it could have held.

Lisbeth had stayed with the rescue party.

There was nobody here who remembered these workings better than Io.

Lexander forced himself to lower his voice.

“Tell me what you need.”

Io gripped the edge of the table.

“He’s pulling it open.”

“Can you stop him?”

“Fulla’s let go.”

Aurethar roared outside.

Io stared at the thread.

Then she seized Lexander’s hand and pressed it onto the tangled strands.

“Hold this.”

He did.

Pain shot up his arm.

For an instant he saw wet stone, Thor turning with her hammer raised, and a woman with shorn hair falling into Baldr’s arms.

Then heat.

Immense and hungry.

Io gathered the loose thread in both hands.

“Fulla,” she whispered. “Give it back to me.”

The ceiling split.

Thor shoved Loki aside as a burning blade came down through the floorboards.

Mjölnir met it.

The impact threw dust and fragments of stone across the room.

For one terrible moment, Thor found herself on one knee.

The blade pressed lower.

Fire ran down its edge.

Above the shattered ceiling stood a tall figure in a dark coat, one hand wrapped around the sword’s hilt.

His face might have belonged to a man.

His eyes did not.

“Thunder,” Surtr said.

Thor bared her teeth.

“Miss me?”

She tightened her grip.

The strength of her belt surged through her.

Her iron gloves rang against Mjölnir’s haft.

She rose.

Surtr’s blade lifted.

“Go!” she shouted.

Baldr carried Fulla toward the passage.

Loki grabbed the distaff.

The threads snapped taut.

Every carved line in the room flared red.

At the far wall, the seam widened.

Fingers curled around its edge from the other side.

Far too many joints.

Loki pulled harder.

The distaff would not move.

Surtr smiled down at him.

“You always reach for the thing that condemns you.”

Loki looked from the distaff to the opening.

Then he saw a pale strand wound around the wood.

Three tiny knots formed along it.

His breath caught.

He let go.

Io pulled.

Something struck the study table hard enough to split it down the middle.

Lexander staggered backward, dragging her with him.

A long wooden distaff rolled through the wreckage.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.

Then Io snatched it up.

Her posture changed.

Her hands found their places.

At the mill, the burning lines went dark.

The fingers in the opening convulsed.

Io twisted the gathered fibers once.

The seam slammed shut.

Surtr’s head turned.

It was all Thor needed.

She drove Mjölnir upward.

The blow hurled him through the floor above.

Thor did not wait to see where he landed.

She caught Loki by the back of his coat and ran.

Behind them, the mill began to collapse.

They reached Concordia late the next afternoon.

By then, Fulla had slept on two horses, insulted Loki’s bandaging, and eaten enough bread to reassure Baldr that she intended to live.

Io was waiting in the courtyard.

She descended the steps before the horses stopped.

Baldr helped Fulla down.

For a moment, the two women simply looked at one another.

Then Io crossed the remaining distance and wrapped her arms around her.

Fulla made a small, broken sound.

“My lady.”

“Io,” she whispered. “Here, it’s Io.”

Fulla held her tighter.

Lexander stood beside the steps until Thor approached.

There was a burn along her jaw.

He reached toward it.

She waved him off.

“Looks worse than it is.”

“That has never once been reassuring.”

“It should be by now.”

His hand settled on her shoulder.

Behind her, Loki dismounted with considerably less grace than usual.

“Surtr?” Lexander asked.

“Alive,” Thor said.

Loki looked toward Io and Fulla.

“But he didn’t get what he wanted.”

Fulla heard him.

She drew back from Io’s embrace.

“No,” she said quietly. “He didn’t.”

Io brushed the hair away from her face.

“What was he trying to bring through?”

Fulla glanced at the palace windows.

At the guards.

At the city beyond the open gates.

“Somewhere private,” she said.

Lexander felt the relief in the courtyard begin to thin.

Fulla caught Io’s hand before they could move.

“First, please.”

Her voice shook.

“Let me see the children.”

Io’s expression softened.

“Of course.”

Fulla closed her eyes.

For the first time since they had found her beneath the mill, she looked close to tears.

“He told me they hadn’t survived.”

Thor stopped smiling.

Loki looked away.

Io held Fulla’s face between her hands.

“They’re here,” she said firmly. “They’re safe.”

From an upstairs window came Seraphina’s furious objection to being dressed.

Fulla startled.

Then she laughed.

It was a small laugh, ragged with exhaustion.

Io began to cry.

And Lexander, standing beneath the afternoon sun with everyone finally inside the gates, let the explanation wait.

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