The merman tried to scream, but as soon as he opened his mouth, one of my tentacles plunged down his throat. I felt him go limp, and fought to let him go with all my strength. His heart kept beating even though he had lost consciousness. Loki had truly made me into a monster, but I could avoid becoming a killer.
I focused on the crevice. My tentacles released their victim and scuttled through the opening into the heart of the ice fortress. My limbs braced against both sides of the walls, and I climbed quickly up the long tunnel. As I climbed, the familiar hum of voices echoed through the walls. I wondered what Mama was doing. Was she still going to meals after my disgrace? Or was she huddling in our ice cave with her dinner, truly alone now that I was gone?
The hall was dark, but I’d grown up here and I knew the inside of the fortress like the back of my hand, by smell as well as sight. Scuttling down the hall, I made my way to the very center of the ice mountain—to the dungeons, where they’d secured Loki’s demon.
My scales quivered. The king might have stationed ten guards or more around the prisoner. My new legs were strong, but I didn’t know how many I could fight. And with ten guards all trying to grab me at once, how much control would I have? Would I kill one?
Using the sticky cups on the bottoms of the tentacles, I walked along the ceiling. It was so cold at the heart of the glacier that the ice burned my slippery new flesh. Deep cold ran through my body. I hadn’t been to the surface in days. I wondered how skinny I looked and longed for the warmth of my scales after soaking in the sun.
Positioned on either side of the cell entrance, two guards muttered to each other. One of them had silver scales and bronze muscles. The sight of him made my stomach hurt with something that was neither hate nor love. Faced with the opportunity to hurt him, I didn’t feel any desire for revenge. I bit my tongue to stifle a cry. Even after what Havamal had done, some part of me still wanted both of us to be happy. And he had suffered, too. I’d seen the band of missing scales around his waist at my trial. But when I peered at the guards and studied their faces, I realized the silver-finned merman wasn’t Havamal at all.
I scuttled into position above them, then dropped from the ceiling with my tentacles spread out into a fan like a manta ray. I focused on my goal: getting past these mermen to the prison cavern. My body took over. My legs whipped sideways, out of my control and yet beautiful in their deadly precision. One of the guards screamed, but a stray tentacle knocked him sideways and his voice quietened. He slumped against the ice wall, but his chest continued to rise and fall. The other guard’s eyes widened, and he swam past me, racing for the exit and the safety of the central hall. I cursed. I couldn’t catch up with him.
With most of the glacier on the verge of sleep, it would take the merman a few minutes to gather more guards. Still, I didn’t have much time.
The king’s men had secured the cell with a grate from the inside of a sunken ship; even King Calder realized the potential in human inventions when circumstances required improvisation. The grate was partially frozen into the glacier and would take at least four men to move. Our law didn’t have provisions for holding criminals below after their trials. Had the monster been one of the merfolk, his scales would have been stripped and he’d have been left to die on the ice shelf.
I swallowed hard, and clutched the new vial that hung around my neck. I would meet that fate if they caught me. But maybe I’d deserve it. After all, the only thing I could imagine the monster asking for was freedom, and if I provided that, any new crimes he committed would be my fault.
But it seemed a crueler fate than death to leave him imprisoned indefinitely. Did Loki’s creatures die? Would the shapeshifter remain here throughout the generations, never fading, never able to leave?
My tentacles wrapped around the heavy grate’s iron bars and lifted it as easily as a basket of kelp. The fallen guard moaned, but then stilled. I tossed the bars to the side. From deep inside the cavern, the sea-swine rose and peered over the edge of the crevice into the labyrinth of ice. His torso reminded me of the land creatures called boars that were depicted in some sculptures. At the center of each scale, he had an unblinking eye. His body tapered into a twisted, black tail with pointed fins.
When the animal saw me, he hesitated. All of his red-rimmed eyes burned into me. I gulped. The greatest danger might not be meeting my end atop the ice shelf, but being gored by the foot-long tusks that stuck out from the sea-swine’s snout.
I braced myself, spreading my tentacles wider to make my body look as large and dangerous as possible, the way some fish did when we hunted them. Looking into dozens of unblinking irises on the creature’s hide made me more aware of the vulnerability of my own single pair of eyes, and I turned my face to the side to protect them.
The creature folded its tail under its massive body and crouched on the ice. Then he said the last thing I expected. “I’m not supposed to leave.”
“What?” I brandished Loki’s vial at him. “I’m here to make a deal.”
His ears perked up, and his snout quivered. Then all his eyes focused on the glass bottle in my hand. “Loki actually sent you to me? At last? They’re ready to forgive me?”
Forgiveness? We only had minutes before the guard would return with reinforcements. Everything about his behavior confused me. But as Loki’s creature, the monster probably had some insight into how the god thought, and I needed all the information I could get. I folded my tentacles and sat beside him. “Loki didn’t send me, but they gave me this task. I need to find three voices. One of them has to come from a beast.”
He sighed. “Well, a beast I am, but they’ll never accept a voice from me.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “They never gave me any restrictions. They didn’t say I couldn’t use your voice.” I locked my smile behind my teeth. If Loki wouldn’t want the sea-swine’s voice, I had even more motivation to make this deal. “Loki is the god of wordplay, of precision. They’re going to have to accept the terms they offered.”
A gleeful feeling warmed my chest. I’d found a technicality Loki hadn’t thought of. If the sea-swine’s voice wasn’t what he wanted, that was too bad.
“There’s only one thing I want, and Loki won’t ever allow it.” All of the pig’s thousand eyes shut at once. I jumped; I had not realized the bulging eyes had lids. His long tongued flicked out as he spoke. It was almost impossible to imagine this creature as the dashing merman Vigdis’s mother had described. “They put me into this form a long time ago. It’s better for everyone that I stay imprisoned. I’m safe enough until there is a storm.”
I remembered the thunder that had rumbled through the glacier the night Vigdis’s wish came true.