“Lies that say a Stained son will return and he will bring a man to guide us from this land. A morning star in the darkness. I have sought these heretics out to learn of their whispers, to see if the gods spoke through them. They did not. Evil spoke through them. And so I have hunted the heretics.
Broken their bones with my own hands. Peeled their flesh and set them upon the rock of the spires to be eaten as carrion by the fowl of the ice.” The seven bodies who dangled from the chains outside.
Ragnar ’s friends.
“This I do for my people. Because I love my people. Because the children of my loins are few, and
those of my heart many. For I knew the heresy to be a lie. Ragnar, blood of my blood, would never
return. To return would mean the breaking of oaths to me, to his people, to the gods who watch over us from Asgard on high.”
She looks down at her dead son.
“And then I woke into this nightmare.” She closes her eyes. Breathes deep and opens them again.
“Who are you to bring the corpse of my best born to my spire?”
“My name is Darrow of Lykos,” I say. “This is Virginia au Augustus and Holiday ti Nakamura.”
Alia’s eyes ignore Holiday and twitch over to Mustang. Even at nearly two meters, she seems a child in this huge room. “We came with Ragnar as a diplomatic mission on behalf of the Rising.”
“The Rising.” She dislikes the taste of the foreign word. “And who are you to my son?” She eyes
my hair with more disdain than a mortal should have for a god. Something deeper is at play here.
“Are you Ragnar ’s master?”
“I am his brother,” I correct.
“His brother?” She mocks the idea.
“Your son swore an oath of servitude to me when I took him from a Gold. He offered me Stains
and I offered him his freedom. Since then he has been my brother.”
“He…” Her voice catches. “Died free?”
The way she says it intones that deeper understanding. One Mustang notes. “He did. His men, the ones you have hanging on the walls outside, would have told you that I lead a rebellion against the Golds who rule over you, who took Ragnar from you as they took your other children. And they would have told you, as well as all your people, that Ragnar was the greatest of my generals. He was a good man. He was—”
“I know my son,” she interrupts. “I swam with him in the ice floes when he was a boy. Taught him
the names of the snow, of the storms, and took him upon my griffin to show him the spine of the world. His hands clutched my hair and sang for joy as we rose through the clouds above. My son was without fear.” She remembers that day very differently than Ragnar did. “I know my son. And I do not need a stranger to tell me of his spirit.”
“Then you should ask yourself, Queen, what would make him return here.” Mustang says. “What
would make him send his men here, if he would come here himself if he knew it meant breaking his
oath to you and your people?”
Alia does not speak as she examines Mustang with those hungry eyes.
“Brother.” She mocks the word again, looking back to me. “I wonder, would you use brothers as
you have used my son? Bringing him here. As if he is the key to unlocking the giants of the ice?” She looks around the hall so I see the deeds carved into the stone that stretches the height of fifteen men above us. I’ve never met an Obsidian artisan. They send us only their warriors. “As if you could use a mother ’s love against her. This is the way of men. I can smell your ambition. Your plans. I do not know the Abyss, oh, worldly warlord, but I know the ice. I know the serpents that slither in the hearts of men.
“I questioned the heretics myself. I know what you are. I know you descend from a lower creature
than us. A Red. I have seen Reds. They are like children. Little elves who live in the bones of the world. But you stole the body of an Aesir, of a Sunborn. You call yourself a breaker of chains, but you are a maker of them. You wish to bind us to you. Using our strength to make you great. Like every man.”
She leans over my dead friend to leer at me and I see what this woman respects, why Ragnar believed he would have to kill her and take her throne, and why Mustang wanted to flee. Strength. And where is mine, she wonders.
“You know many things of him,” Mustang says. “But you know nothing of me, yet you insult me.”
Alia frowns. It’s clear she has no idea who Mustang is, and no wish to anger a true Gold, if, indeed, Mustang is one. Her confidence wavers only a fraction. “I have laid no claims against you, Sunborn.”
“But you have. By suggesting he has evil wishes in store for your people, you too suggest that I collude with him. That I, his companion, am here with the same wicked intentions.”
“Then what are your intentions? Why do you accompany this creature?”
“To see if he was worth following,” Mustang says.
“And is he?”
“I don’t know yet. What I do know is that millions will follow him. Do you know that number? Can
you even comprehend it, Alia?”
“I know the number.”