فصل 06

Love Me Some Weasel Soup

THURSDAY MEANT dragons. Which meant an even more painful death than usual.

I would’ve brought Jack, but 1) he thought practice battles were beneath him, and 2) he had a hot date with a polearm.

By the time T.J. and I arrived at the battlefield, the fighting had already started. Armies streamed into the hotel’s interior courtyard—a topographical killing zone big enough to be its own sovereign country, with woods, meadows, rivers, hills, and mock villages. On all four sides, soaring into the hazy white fluorescent sky, tiers of gold-rimmed balconies overlooked the field. From the upper levels, catapults hurled fiery projectiles toward the warriors below like deadly ticker tape.

The blare of horns echoed through the forests. Plumes of smoke rose from burning huts. Einherjar charged into the river, fighting on horseback, laughing as they cut each other down.

And, because it was Thursday, a dozen large dragons had also joined the slaughter.

The older einherjar called them lindworms. If you ask me, that made them sound like a mildly annoying skin rash. Instead, lindworms were the size and length of eighteen-wheelers. They had just two front legs, with leathery brown bat-type wings too small for effective flight. Mostly they dragged themselves across the ground, occasionally flapping, leaping, and swooping down on their prey.

From a distance, with their brown, green, and ocher hides, they looked like an angry flock of giant carnivorous turkey snakes. But trust me: up close, they were bad news.

Our goal for Thursday’s battle? Stay alive as long as possible while the dragons tried very hard not to let us. (Spoiler: The dragons always won.)

Mallory and Halfborn waited for us at the edge of the field. Halfborn was adjusting the straps on Mallory’s armor.

“You’re doing it wrong,” she growled. “That’s too tight across the shoulders.”

“Woman, I’ve been putting on armor for centuries.”

“When? You always go into battle bare-chested.”

“Are you complaining about that?” Halfborn asked.

Mallory blushed. “Shut up.”

“Ah, look, here’s Magnus and T.J.!” Halfborn clapped me on the shoulder, dislocating several of my joints. “Floor nineteen is accounted for!”

Technically, that wasn’t true. Floor nineteen had almost a hundred residents. But our particular corridor—our neighborhood within the neighborhood—consisted of us four. Plus, of course, the newest resident…

“Where’s the cheetah?” T.J. asked.

As if on cue, a raven dive-bombed us. It dropped a burlap bag at my feet then landed nearby, flapping its wings and croaking angrily. The burlap bag moved. A long skinny animal squirmed out of it—a brown-and-white weasel.

The weasel hissed. The raven cawed. I didn’t speak raven, but I was pretty sure it was telling the weasel, Behave yourself or I will peck your weaselly eyes out.

T.J. pointed his rifle at the animal. “You know, when the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts was marching toward Darien, Georgia, we used to shoot weasels and cook them in a soup. Tasty stuff. You guys think I should get out my old recipe?”

The weasel transformed. I’d heard so much about this new recruit being a monster that I half expected him to turn into a living corpse like the goddess Hel, or a miniature version of the sea serpent Jormungand. Instead, the animal grew into a regular human teen, long and lanky, with a swirl of dyed green hair, black at the roots, like a plug of weeds pulled out of a lawn.

The weasel’s brown-and-white fur changed into green and pink clothes: battered rose high-tops, skinny lime green corduroy pants, a pink-and-green argyle sweater-vest over a white tee, and another pink cashmere sweater wrapped around the waist like a kilt. The outfit reminded me of a jester’s motley, or the coloration of a venomous animal warning the whole world: Try me and you die.

The newcomer looked up, and I forgot how to breathe. It was Loki’s face, except younger—the same wry smile and sharp features, the same unearthly beauty, but without the scarred lips or the acid burns across the nose. And those eyes—one dark brown, the other pale amber. I’d forgotten the term for that, having different-colored irises. My mom would’ve called it David Bowie eyes. I called it completely unnerving.

The weirdest thing of all? I was pretty sure I had seen this kid before.

Yeah, I know. You’re thinking a kid like that would stand out. How could I not remember exactly where we’d crossed paths? But when you live on the streets, wild-looking people are normal. Only normal people stand out as strange.

The kid flashed a perfect white smile at T.J., though there was no warmth in those eyes. “Point that rifle somewhere else, or I will wrap it around your neck like a bow tie.”

Something told me this was not an idle threat. The kid might actually know how to tie a bow tie, which was kinda scary arcane knowledge.

T.J. laughed. He also lowered his rifle. “We didn’t get a chance to introduce ourselves earlier, when you were trying to kill us. I’m Thomas Jefferson, Jr. This is Mallory Keen, Halfborn Gunderson, and Magnus Chase.”

The newcomer just stared at us. Finally the raven made an irritated squawk.

“Yeah, yeah,” the kid told the bird. “Like I said, I’m calmer now. You didn’t mess me up, so it’s all cool.”

Screeeak!

The kid sighed. “Fine, I’ll introduce myself. I’m Alex Fierro. Pleased to meet you all, I guess. Mr. Raven, you can go now. I promise not to kill them unless I have to.”

The raven ruffled his feathers. He gave me the stink eye, like, It’s your problem now, buddy. Then he flew away.

Halfborn grinned. “Well, that’s settled! Now that you’ve promised not to kill us, let’s start killing other people!”

Mallory crossed her arms. “He doesn’t even have a weapon.”

“She,” Alex corrected.

“What?” Mallory asked.

“Call me she—unless and until I tell you otherwise.”

“But—”

“She it is!” T.J. interceded. “I mean, she she is.” He rubbed his neck as if still worrying about a rifle bow tie. “Let’s get to battle!”

Alex rose to her feet.

I’ll admit that I was staring. Suddenly my whole perspective had flipped inside out, like when you look at an inkblot picture and see just the black part. Then your brain inverts the image and you realize the white part makes an entirely different picture, even though nothing has changed. That was Alex Fierro, except in pink and green. A second ago, he had been very obviously a boy to me. Now she was very obviously a girl.

“What?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” I lied.

Above us, more ravens began to circle, cawing accusingly.

“We’d better get moving,” Halfborn said. “The ravens don’t like slackers on the battlefield.”

Mallory drew her knives and turned toward Alex. “Come on, then, sweetheart. Let’s see what you can do.”