Twenty minutes later, we’d successfully navigated our way across the dunes, appeased Garm—another distinctly not safe eldritch entity—and spiraled down the vast interior of Yggdrasil II’s trunk.
I knelt before Hel’s throne, feeling the weight of her displeasure. It wasn’t directed at me personally, but oh, I could still feel it. The air in the abandoned sawmill was almost humming with tension.
“Rise, my young liaison,” she said to me. I got to my feet and met her gaze with an effort. Both eyes were blazing; the left with malevolence, the right with stern disapproval. “It has come to my attention that this infernally begotten lawyer has shown his hand. Tell me what this lawsuit betokens.”
“Nothing good,” I said. “I can’t be sure, my lady, but I think that this lawyer Dufreyne means to bankrupt the city of Pemkowet and force us to sell a large, valuable piece of land.”
Hel’s voice dropped to a subterranean register that echoed in the marrow of my bones. “My territory.”
“Yes.”
“To whom? For what purpose?” Her ember eye flared. “Is it the Greek Hades? Does he declare war after all?”
I shook my head. “Dufreyne didn’t deny that he worked for Hades, but he said Hades isn’t declaring war on you and isn’t interested in Pemkowet.”
Hel’s gaze sharpened. “And you believed this to be true?”
“Yes,” I said. “Again, I can’t be sure. But to the best of my ability, I believe he spoke the truth. Not the whole truth, but a part of it. Beyond that . . .” I turned up my hands in a helpless gesture. “I’m sorry, my lady. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Hel did that immortal deity thing where she sat motionless on her throne and stared into the unknowable distance for a seemingly endless period of time, thinking unknowable thoughts. Mikill and the other frost giants attending her did the same, standing like ice sculptures.
I did that chilled-to-the-bone mortal thing where I shifted from foot to foot in the biting cold of Little Niflheim in an effort to keep my blood circulating, periodically removing my gloves to blow on my fingers.
Right about the time I was beginning to worry in earnest about frostbite, Hel’s gaze returned from the distance. “In the days of old, I would have heaped great wealth upon my champion without a thought,” she mused. “I would have sent the duegar forth to delve beneath the mountains for the precious stones and metals that all humans prize beyond reason, and bidden them wreak their craft to create treasures of such cunning and magic and beauty that mortals would fight and die to possess them. But now I preside over an empire of sand, and I have hoarded no treasure against this day. I have already bestowed the greatest gift in my possession upon you, Daisy Johanssen.” She paused, letting that sink in. “I trust dauda-dagr continues to serve you well?”
I pushed aside an unbidden memory of Janek Król’s face as he died. “Yes, my lady.”
“That is well.” Hel closed both eyes briefly, then opened them again. “I have no weapons to fight this battle of words and mortal laws,” she said grimly. “But if there is merit to your fears, I would have this unknown adversary know that I will defend my territory with every weapon at my disposal.”
There was a low rumble as the frost giants murmured in agreement. I inclined my head. “Duly noted, my lady.”
“Convey my warning to this hell-spawn who has claimed his birthright in service of the Greek Hades,” Hel said in distaste. “It is in my thoughts that he parses the truth to a fine edge in denying his master’s role.”
It took me a moment to translate that into twenty-first-century lingo. “You think Hades is involved?”
Hel’s stare shifted back onto the distance. Damn. At least this time it returned before I lost feeling in my fingertips. “You speak of one who is well acquainted with matters of judgment,” she said. “The Greek Hades appointed not one, but three former mortals to judge the dead and determine which were worthy of the Elysian Fields, and which were condemned to Tartarus.”
I shrugged. “So maybe Dufreyne lied.”
“Perhaps,” Hel said. “Or perhaps the Greek Hades acts in the interests of another.”
“Who?” I asked her.
Hel shook her head slowly and deliberately, giving me a disconcerting twofold glimpse of her fair, unspoiled profile and her blackened, ruined one. “To name a god in a place of power is to draw their attention, my young liaison. We have spoken enough of the Greek Hades. I will not speculate further.”
Well, okay then.
I rubbed my hands together, the padded nylon of my gloves rasping. “As you will, my lady. Do you have counsel for me?”
“Watch,” Hel said. “Listen. Convey my warning as I have bidden you. Perhaps the matter will come to naught.”
Yeah, I wasn’t buying it, either. “And if it doesn’t?”
The oppressive atmosphere in the old sawmill intensified, the air thickening until I had to fight to draw breath. Somehow it brought to mind my vision of the dome of heaven cracking open above me.
“For the sake of all involved, let us hope that it does,” Hel said in a low, ominous tone that made the rafters tremble, the blackened claw of her left hand curling on the arm of her throne. She raised two fingers of her fair right hand in dismissal. “Although your report is unwelcome, it is appreciated, my young liaison. You have my leave to depart.”