Chapter 5 — A Place to Talk

Gina

The landlady looked from René to the manuscript on the table.

“Can you stand?” she asked.

René pushed himself upright with the table. He had landed hard enough to leave one side of his face red, but he could stand. The landlady made him turn once so she could see that nothing was broken, then picked up the fallen chair and set it out of the way.

“If you damage the floor,” she told him, “you pay for the floor.”

“Understood.”

She left them with the door open and went downstairs. Her steps stayed audible until she reached the lower landing.

Gina closed the door.

“You were in the place you wrote?”

“I was somewhere that matched it.”

“And you came back here.”

René glanced down at the boards. “More or less here.”

He spoke carefully. He had finished the manuscript, touched an inner page, and found himself in the Library. A second book stood inside it. He had used that book and returned without the chair on which he had been sitting.

Gina listened, then looked at the manuscript again.

“Can you do it again?” Gina asked.

“I have only done it once.”

“Do you expect it to work?”

“Yes.”

He moved the chair back from the table and stood before the open manuscript. The pages showed dense lines in his hand. Nothing about them looked different from the pages Gina had watched him spoil, scrape, replace, and rewrite during the week.

“You touch the writing?” she asked.

“An inner page. I don’t know if the writing matters at that point.”

He placed two fingers on the sheet.

There was no light or sound. One moment René stood beside the table. The next, the space beside it was empty.

The manuscript remained open.

Gina walked around the table before she touched it. René had left his coin purse near the hearth and his coat on its hook. Nothing in the room suggested where he had gone. The page felt like paper beneath her fingertips.

Then the room was gone.

She stood in a wide hall under a pale ceiling. René waited several paces away, watching her feet.

“I didn’t fall,” she said.

“You were standing.”

“So were you.”

“This time.”

The hall looked newer than any working building Gina knew and less decorated than most rooms intended to impress. Long tables divided the floor. The chairs were shaped for use rather than ceremony. Shelves covered the walls and formed rows beyond the central space, every shelf crowded with books whose spines bore no names.

She pulled one out. Its cover was plain. Every page inside was empty.

“They are all like that,” René said.

“How many did you check?”

“Enough to stop checking.”

Gina returned the book and walked the nearest circuit of the hall. Doors led to smaller reading rooms, storage rooms, work rooms, and a room with counters, water, and food. René showed her a metal fitting above a basin. He turned its handle, and clear cold water ran from it. Gina tried the handle once herself, watching the stream stop and start. The ceiling fixtures cast an even daylight over the shelves, though there was no sun or sky visible above them.

In a work room she found paper, ink, thread, knives, boards, awls, and leather. The tools were laid out with the tidy completeness of René’s list-making, but several of the storage shelves were inconveniently high. She had to reach for the top one.

“Is there a door to the street?” she asked when they returned to the main hall.

“I haven’t found one. I didn’t describe a street.”

Gina tried two more doors anyway. Both opened into rooms. She could usually orient herself in a strange building after one walk through it. Here she could find every route René had supplied and none that led beyond them.

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know.”

“How far from Asgard?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can anyone use the manuscript?”

He looked at her. “You can.”

That was an answer, though only just.

A covered dish in the food room held eight small biscuits. Gina took one. It was crisp, lightly sweet, and ordinary enough that she finished it while they walked. René showed her the washrooms, the smaller work spaces, and the rows of blank books.

When they passed the food room again, Gina lifted the cover.

There were eight biscuits in the dish.

“Did you put another one there?”

“No.”

She counted again, then replaced the cover.

At the centre of the main hall stood a pedestal beneath thick glass. Four number wheels were built into its base. René set them to one, two, three, four. The enclosure opened with a click.

Inside lay a thin book bound in dark cloth.

“This brought you back?” Gina asked.

“Once.”

“And if it does not now?”

“Then you will know before you try it.”

“Useful.”

He touched an internal page and disappeared.

The book remained beneath Gina’s hand. She waited long enough to make sure he did not return at once, then touched the same sheet.

René’s rented room returned around her. He stood beside the table. The Library manuscript still lay open where they had left it.

Gina checked the room once, including the window and the closed door. Then she looked at René.

“Stay here.”

“I have nowhere else planned.”

She went to Frigg.

Frigg’s rooms were busier than they had been during Gina’s first report. Two servants were sorting household accounts at a side table. A petitioner waited near the wall with a wrapped bundle on his knees. Someone had left damp cloaks near a brazier, and the wool gave the room a wet, heavy smell.

Gina waited until Frigg finished dictating an answer to a dispute over stored grain. When the clerk moved away, Gina stepped forward.

“The Midgardian’s situation changed.”

Frigg set the next tablet aside. “How?”

“I went where he said he went.”

The people at the side table were still within hearing. Frigg glanced toward an inner room and rose. Gina followed her through; the door remained open, but the household noise covered their lower voices.

“Tell me exactly what you did,” Frigg said.

Gina did. René touched the manuscript and vanished. The manuscript stayed in his room. Gina touched the same page and entered the place he had described. Inside, another book returned them one at a time.

“You used it yourself?”

“Both books.”

“Was René beside you when you arrived?”

“Yes.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“No. He answered what he could. Mostly he said he didn’t know.”

Frigg asked whether the place held weapons, people, or an ordinary road out. Gina had seen none of those. She described the rooms, the blank books, the working water, and the return to René’s lodging. She left the replenished biscuit until last because it seemed less urgent than a room that could lose two people and return them.

“You believe his warning now?” Frigg asked.

“I believe he can go somewhere by touching a book. I still don’t know how much else he is right about.”

A man appeared in the outer doorway. He did not interrupt from there. He waited until Frigg saw him, then spoke her name.

The clerks at the side table stopped writing.

Frigg

The messenger asked to speak with her alone.

Frigg took him into the inner room and closed the door this time. He delivered the message in a few sentences. He had clearly practised them on the way and lost the practice before reaching the end.

“Say it again,” Frigg told him.

He did.

Baldr had been killed. His body was being brought in.

Frigg reached for the cover of the household order she had left on the table. The wet ink ended in the middle of a name. She picked up the sand shaker instead, held it for a moment, then put it down without using it.

“Who confirmed it?”

The messenger answered. Frigg asked him to repeat the name. This time she set the cover over the unfinished order.

“Find Hermod,” she said. “Tell him I ask him to go to Hel. If Baldr can be returned, he is to learn the price.”

The messenger bowed and left.

Frigg opened the inner door. Gina had moved the waiting petitioner and the clerks out of the immediate room without being told. She stood beside the cold brazier, hands empty.

Beyond the shutters, wind pressed at the building. Summer should have settled over Asgard by now. Instead, frost had formed twice that week in shaded courtyards, and the bronze latch was cold enough to hurt bare fingers in the morning. René could not have known what weather belonged here. He had called Ragnarök close anyway.

Gina had walked into a place René had written and returned. Now Baldr was dead, and the summer cold had lasted too long to dismiss. Frigg could no longer leave the Midgardian’s warning for another day.

She looked at Gina.

“Where is he?”

“In his room. I told him to stay there.”

“Go ahead of me. Tell him I am coming to ask about Baldr. Nothing more.”

Gina left at once.

Frigg finished the order she had abandoned, because the people waiting on it would still need grain tomorrow. Then she called for one attendant and went to hear what the Midgardian remembered.

René

By the time Frigg arrived, I had put the fallen chair back at the table and washed the dust from my hands. Neither action made the room suitable for a queen.

Gina entered first. Frigg followed, wearing a dark outer cloak fastened without ceremony. One attendant remained at the foot of the stairs. I could hear the landlady explaining, with growing satisfaction, that she had rented the room to me before anyone important had taken an interest.

Frigg looked at the completed manuscript on my table. She did not touch it.

“Gina says you knew Baldr would die.”

“I knew a story in which he died. I didn’t know whether this place would follow it.”

“How did he die in your story?”

I remembered mistletoe, Hodr, Loki, a hall full of gods testing an oath. I also remembered several versions that did not agree cleanly with one another.

“Before I answer that, we need somewhere else to speak.”

Frigg’s attention moved from me to the door. “Why?”

“Because the part after his death involves someone who can listen, lie, and wear another face. If I am right about any of it, saying his name here may be enough to ruin the only useful thing I remember.”

“You propose another room?”

I indicated the manuscript. “One he cannot overhear from Asgard unless he follows us.”

Frigg looked at Gina.

“I went there,” Gina said. “I came back.”

I asked both women to stand. I touched an internal page and entered the Library. Gina appeared several moments later near the end of the table. Frigg followed last.

She arrived standing and immediately stepped away from the manuscript page she could no longer see. Her gaze passed over the long tables, the pale ceiling, the blank books, and the nearest doors.

“Speak,” she said.

I chose a table near the central pedestal. None of us sat.

“You asked how he died,” I said. “In the story I remember, mistletoe was left out when everything else was made harmless to Baldr. Hodr used it against him. Loki arranged it, or guided him, depending on the version. I don’t know whether that is what happened here.”

“In the story I know, Hermod goes to Hel after Baldr dies.”

Frigg’s hand settled on the back of a chair. “I sent for Hermod before I came to you.”

I had never put Hermod’s ride in the manuscript. Frigg had sent him before I had even spoken his name.

“Then this may be moving faster than I thought.”

“What does Hermod find?”

“Hel may agree to release Baldr. There is a condition.” I tried to recall the wording without improving it. “Everything in the world has to mourn him. Living and dead. In some versions, everything has to weep for him.”

“And does it?” Gina asked.

“Almost. Someone called Thökk refuses. That refusal is enough. Baldr stays dead.”

Frigg moved the chair aside. “Who is Thökk?”

“Loki. At least, that is who the story says she was.”

Frigg walked to the end of the table and back.

“Does Loki know the condition?”

“I don’t know. In the story he learns enough to interfere. I don’t know when.”

“You spoke of Hermod after I had already sent him,” Frigg said. “How much of the rest should I expect?”

“I don’t know. I knew these stories on Earth, but I never wrote Baldr’s death or Hermod’s ride into my manuscript. You sent him before I said his name. I don’t know what the resemblance means. I only know I don’t want to wait for the next part.”

“What must happen before the refusal?”

“Hermod has to reach Hel. Hel has to offer the condition. The request has to go out. Loki has to learn enough to become Thökk, or to put Thökk where the refusal will matter.”

Gina leaned over the table, following the sequence. “Then he has not refused yet.”

“No.”

I heard my own wording again: everything in the world, living and dead.

“In the world,” I said.

Frigg waited.

“If Loki were somewhere else when the condition was tested, perhaps his refusal wouldn’t count.”

“Somewhere else in Asgard?” Gina asked.

“No. Outside this world. Here.”

I gestured at the Library, immediately aware of how little I knew about the place surrounding us.

“Perhaps,” Frigg repeated.

“That is all I have.”

Frigg looked toward the rows of shelves. “Then tell me how you propose to bring Loki here.”

“Can this place hold him?” Frigg asked.

“Only while he cannot find the return,” I said.

Gina left the table and walked once around the pedestal. “If he finds it, I cannot stop him.”

An open attempt to seize Loki would warn him. I could try to write another place, but the Library had taken most of a week. They might not have several more days, and another manuscript might fail.

“So we use this one,” I said.

“This place has a return,” Frigg said.

“Yes. If it didn’t, you and Gina would not have come.”

Gina walked to the central pedestal and looked through the glass at the dark book beneath it.

“Loki does not know that book exists,” she said.

“He doesn’t know the manuscript in my room can move him either.”

“He may know once it does,” Frigg said.

“He’ll know the manuscript mattered. He may decide the books here matter too. But there are a lot of them, and he won’t know which one returns him. He won’t even know that touching a page works both ways.”

Frigg looked along the shelves. “The one book under armoured glass will attract his attention.”

“Then it should not be there,” Gina said.

I looked from the pedestal to the thousands of blank spines.

“Put it on a shelf.”

“Among blank books?” Frigg asked.

“Not only blank ones,” Gina said. “I can bring others. Enough that one written book is not the answer to the whole room.”

“And the pedestal?”

“Another book,” Gina said. “One anyone in Asgard might know.”

“How do we make him open the manuscript?” Frigg asked.

“He will not come because I invite him,” I said.

“No,” Frigg said. “He may come if he thinks he learned something we meant to keep from him.”

“Something about Baldr would be too obvious,” Gina said.

I rested both hands on the table. “I can say I am reconstructing material I remember from Midgard. A text attributed to an ancient sorcerer, concerned with the dead or their return. The manuscript is new because the reconstruction is new.”

“Not a promise that it restores Baldr,” I said. “Only that it might contain something relevant.”

“And he must inspect the manuscript on your table,” Gina said, pointing toward where it remained in Asgard.

“He has to open it himself,” I said.

Frigg asked how the account would reach Loki. I had no useful answer. Gina offered two possibilities, then rejected both because too many people would hear them. Frigg said she would decide after they returned. The fewer people who carried the account, the less of it could change along the way.

“No one repeats what we said here,” Frigg told them. “Not in my rooms. Not in his. Not if the person asking has my face.”

Gina nodded. I did the same.

I looked toward the pedestal.

“Everyone who used that book came back to my room,” I said. “Me twice. Gina once.”

“And soon me,” Frigg said.

“It has happened that way every time,” I said. “I can’t promise it will happen for Loki.”

“Before he takes the bait, one guard at the stair,” Frigg said. “Only you, Gina, and I may enter the room. No one else.”

The guard would have three permitted faces and no way to test who wore them. Anything stronger before Loki crossed would announce that the room mattered. After I saw him disappear through the manuscript, Frigg could control the room and its ordinary exits. If someone appeared inside, the people there would try to keep that person from leaving.

“If he does not return before Hermod’s attempt is decided?” she asked.

“Gina knows where she puts the book,” I said. “She can lead others back in.”

“Others who can do more than I can,” Gina added.

“When we leave,” Frigg said, “what do you say if someone asks about the manuscript?”

“That I am reconstructing Midgardian material about returning the dead. I don’t claim it works.”

Frigg looked at Gina.

“I say no more than that,” Gina said.

“I will decide how Loki learns it. Hel, Thökk, and the condition stay here.”

“It is a chance,” she said. “We will use it.”

Gina

René opened the glass over the way back and set the wheels to 1234. He touched an inner page and vanished. The book stayed on the pedestal.

Frigg went next.

Gina returned last. René’s room appeared around her, with Frigg already beside the hearth and the Library manuscript still open on the table.

At the foot of the stair, Frigg gave a guard his order.

“Only René, Gina, and I may enter that room. No one else.”

Then she sent Gina to bring several books to René’s lodging.

Gina knew where to find books that would not be missed for an afternoon. She chose worn copies in common bindings, the sort passed through households, schools, and copyists’ shops. Some held stories. Some held prayers or records. She did not stop to read them. For the pedestal she selected a familiar collection of Asgardian tales whose cover was neither expensive nor damaged.

It took more than one trip. On the last, she carried a strapped bundle against her chest and climbed the lodging stair without assistance. The guard outside René’s door knew her as one of the three people named in his order and stepped aside.

René opened the door. Gina took the bundles to the table, stood beside the Library manuscript, and touched an internal page.

The main hall received her and the books she carried.

She brought the other bundles through the same way, returning each time by the book under glass. René remained in the rented room. By the final crossing, a small uneven stack stood on one of the Library tables: dark leather, pale leather, repaired cloth, scarred boards, and titles Gina had known for years.

She began with the pedestal.

The enclosure opened to 1234. Gina removed the way back and set the familiar story collection in its place. She closed the glass. The common book looked strangely formal beneath it, but it did not look like a secret.

Then she carried the remaining volumes into the shelves. She placed them one or two at a time among the blank books, changing rows and heights as she went. A prayer book sat beside a thick empty volume. A school text leaned against three plain bindings. A repaired household record disappeared between two books that had never held a word.

Blank books still filled most of the shelves. The imported volumes broke the easy pattern.

Gina took the way back into the middle rows. She passed the first shelf she considered because it could be seen from the pedestal. The second stood too close to a work-room door. On the third, halfway along an ordinary row, she slid the dark cloth binding between two volumes of nearly the same height.

She stepped back. Its unmarked spine matched the neighbouring volumes, and the row offered no obvious place to begin.

Gina walked once to the end of the row and returned. She could still place her hand on the correct volume without hesitation.

She left it on the shelf. Holding the neighbouring books apart with one hand, she opened the dark cover only enough to slip a finger between the pages. Her fingertip touched an inner sheet.

René’s room replaced the shelves.

He stood at the other side of the table. Frigg had returned and was waiting by the closed door. Gina set the empty carrying strap on the table. Frigg turned toward the door.

Frigg left to arrange the rest. Gina followed her out. Behind them, René closed the door on the fresh manuscript lying open on his table.