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The captain of

The Songbird

woke to the sound of cannon fire, splintering wood, and panicked shouts.  No alarm had been sounded and it seemed her battle-hardened, wary crew had been caught off guard this night.

In pirate infested skies.

It was the Horn.  It had to be.

Only Captain Laufeyson and his band of cutthroat wags could have had a hope of coming on them unawares.

Aenor’s feet hit the floor with a heavy thump as she jumped from her narrow bed just as another broadside took them.  Like the first, it seemed to be a glancing shot rather than a straight blow to either their hull or mast. It made no sense.

Grabbing her glass and pistol belt, she ran from her quarters into the chaos of a ship under attack.  Everywhere were sailors attempting to follow hastily cried orders from the Officer of the Watch, grabbing arms, manning the cannon.  On the deck she could feel the

Songbird

listing slightly.  She tensed her bare toes against the wood as she shouted for her lieutenants, and a appraisal of the ship’s damage.

Hanging over the side despite the smoke and pistol shots nearly parting her hair, Aenor could see the rudder was shorn away.  Unless an errant gale should take pity on them and push the

Songbird

along the skies they were not going anywhere soon.  At least the sails were undamaged, so they were in no danger of falling.  Yet.

“Man the guns!” she bellowed out, praying the alchemical engine hidden deep in the shot locker was not damaged.

“Captain Breathnach!”  The deep, loud voice of the captain of

The Golden Horn

could be heard easily as the sounds of shots died away.  “A word, if you please.”

His tone was pleasant, conversational even.

Aenor seethed to hear him.  Turning, the sight of him made her even angrier, should such a state be possible without causing an attack of apoplexy felling her.

He stood on upon the rail of the quarterdeck of his ship, a hand lightly around a bit of rigging rope, though he clearly did not need it to keep his balance.  The great hunter’s moon illuminated him as clear and fondly as any candle lit.

Laufeyson was a notorious dandy and tonight, battle or no, he was resplendent.  From his black, swashtopped boots with gleaming gold buckles and matching gloves, to his green velvet greatcoat open to show off his black jacket and gilt brocade waistcoat, to the fall of his elaborate cravat, to the emerald rings that sparkled on his long fingers, he was more expensively, elegantly, and dramatically dressed than any Lord sitting in the Midgardian Parlament.  Or from any of the other Realms, for that matter.

Only the crowning glory of a fine hat was missing, though his long, heavy black hair gleamed as bright as any crown. His massive, embellished tricorn with emerald feathers from the tail of some exotic bird that no one in Aenor’s home realm had probably even heard of, was in his hand.  He had doffed it when she reached her own quarterdeck, and offered her a showy bow, using it to add an extra flourish. It would have been an amusing or even a perhaps charming gesture from one well-matched opponent to another, if not for the cool smirk on his thin lipped mouth.

By all of the gods of sky and land, but how she hated him!

“I seem to have caught you unprepared for company.  I can wait if you feel the need to … dress?” He crossed his arms and leaned on the rope as steadily as if it were a manor house wall, his smirk having grown to a full, mocking grin.

Aenor stood tall, her legs slightly spread to allow for the buck and weave of the deck as her ship fought its wounds and the aircurrents.  She hated to be seen by him wearing only her red uniform breeches and blue blouse, but what difference could it make? She had more immediate concerns, mainly the lives of her crew and the fate of the Songbird.

It was not as if she could match him for style or fashion even if she were fully dressed, and he already knew what she looked like when caught off guard.

As well as

entirely

out of uniform…

She waited, knowing he hated a silence and would find the need to fill irresistible.  Around her the crew, well-trained and properly directed by her officers, went about the business of keeping them in the air and their guns trained on the pirate ship.  Only her first mate, Lieutenant Merisa Galician who she had known from their earliest days as a midshipmen on the schooner

The Midgard Serpent,

stood at her elbow, the rage spilling seemingly hot enough to burn the

Golden Horn

to ash and a few bits of metal.

As the moments stretched she took the opportunity to observe the Horn.  She was a legendary ship, having taken prizes and attacked forts through the skies between the Nine Realms for nearly thirteen years.  Though her home berth had originally been on Asgardia, the Queen of all the Realms, she was not styled like one of her long ships. The Horn was pure, Black Elven frigate, gorgeous, with shining wood and a glossy coat of pine coloured paint, her black and gilded sails gently undulating in the sky current.  Just like her captain - beautiful, dangerous, and bit sinister, with elegant lines to spear through the wildest storms, carronades on both sides, and a unique pair of long nines on her stern that fired dark magic energy rather than mere shot.

Originally she had been taken in battle by the Asgardian crown prince, Thor, and she had served as his vanguard ship for decades until she had been ‘liberated’ by her current captain and crew - a vile assemblage from the worst ports of all Nine Realms, save Muspelheim obviously.

Even Loki wasn’t mad enough to have a creature of flame on his ship.

After slowly looking over the crew, the hull of the Horn, the sails, the guns, Aenor finally returned her gaze to her fellow captain.  His eyes had narrowed and he was now standing rather than leaning. Finally, after no longer being able to stand not hearing his own voice any longer, he called out over the small distance between them, clearly making efforts to keep his tone light and amused.

“It seems I have you by the hip, Captain Breathnach.  Normally that would mean only two things - my crew splitting their booty late into the night and one less ship of the line for the Midgardian Navy.  But I find myself in a generous mood on this fine, warm night, and seeing as we are acquaintances of a kind…” he leered the last word out and Aenor’s hands squeezed into tight fists.  “Well, it would be a shame for a beauty such as the

Songbird

to be consigned to wreckage in the down below.”

He waved his hat softly towards the open sky beneath them.  At the same moment, there was a rough humming sound from the ensorcelled long guns at the back of the Horn, and the great ship began to very, very slowly turn starboard to bring them in line.

Aenor could practically feel the deck of the Bird fall from beneath her feet as they plunged to the earth.  They were dead in the sky. It would be the work of scant minutes for Loki to have them dead to right with those hellish, magical guns, capable of scouring the deck of all of crew, leaving her beloved Bird to be raided, scuppered, and branded in the Navy annals as a failed craft.

Loki walked to the rail as the Horn turned, resting his hands on it, “We can come to an accord, Aenor.”

He whispered her name and she could hear it as if he were whispering in her ear, his warm breath tickling her skin and brushing her hair.

She looked a her crew, all waiting, ready to go down fighting, to die for her, each other, and their ship.  Holmand who had just left behind her new husband and their baby in Port Dearborn, holding a rope in one hand and curved knife in the other.  Shaheen, her newest mid, his young face not able to grow a beard yet, his taqiyah worn in place of his bicorn looking very white in the moonlight.  Her dear Merisa had been joined by her not-so-secret lover Andre, the sailing master, his dark hands resting on the rail beside the first mate’s, not quite touching.

Aenor closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  She would not, could not, let them all die for what was little more than a personal grudge between herself and Loki.

She turned to him again, “What do you want?”

He smiled, slow and viperish, “Oh, I thought you would

never

ask.”  He jumped from standing still onto the rail again, “I’m no different from any pirate, darling.  I’m after treasure.”

Aenor was flummoxed.  “We’re a ship of the line, not a treasure ship or even a pay or mail vessel!  We don’t ha-”

She stopped and looked at him.  No. How could he know?

He nodded at her.

“Goddamn it…” she whispered.

Loki laughed.
 
Lorelei seemed reluctant to relinquish the golden box.  “But Captain, maybe it should be put straight into the ships stores…?”  There was a tiny whine in her voice, but Loki couldn’t blame her for it.  No one on the Horn loved plunder more than the beautiful former thief, and the alchemical engine, if it was what it was claimed it was, was the most valuable piece of swag they had ever acquired.

He did not answer, but simply tapped the tabletop impatiently, raising a brow at her.

She pouted and carefully put down the box.  It was a lovely piece in itself, a perfect cube of gold marked with carefully carved symbols for the planets, circles, and other marks that he did not recognize.  The hasp that held it closed was simple, but had a small padlock attached to it.

Knowing something of alchemy, it would be impossible to open for anyone other than either the creator of the seal or the person to whom the item was consigned.

At least until Loki figured out a way to break in.  That might take some time, but he was in no hurry. The longer he had the engine without trying to sell it the more… vigorous the market for it would become.  He already knew of a few quite interested parties, and expected for there to be more by the day as word got out that the newest marvel from Midgard’s resident genius, Master Antony Stark, was now in his hands.

The rest of the crew that had crowded onto the deck to see were disappointed at what seemed like just a small box, even if it was made of gold.

“So we let the whole ship go for that?” Cormyr, a Vanir with a peg leg and no as yet identified good qualities jeered.  “We could have killed those Navy lubbers and taken the ‘Bird. She’s as good a boat as is in these skies and would fetch a pretty penny,” he gestured to where they had left the other ship in their wake.

“Or a command for a deserving officer,” Amora, Lorelei’s even more gorgeous and much more dangerous sister, purred into his ear as she slinked through the crowd to lean on his shoulder, her golden hair swirling, her brilliant blue eyes flashing with greed and ambition.  She had taken to wearing green lately, as if to signify a deeper connection between them.

Loki rolled his eyes and shrugged her off.  Not too gently. In the past he had warmed his bed with that particular minx on more than one, always very entertaining occasion, but he knew better than to trust her with anything he valued.

Then, he thought to himself with some self-amusement, he had trusted her with his cock and really, was there anything he valued more than that?  There was not.

“While I appreciate greed as much if not more than the next being, I can assure you that taking the Songbird at this time would be more trouble than she’s worth.  We destroyed her rudder, and by the time repairs were made to allow us to sail her, the Midgardian AND Asgardian Navies would be upon us. Unless you think we could make a good run and a proper fight towing her.” He looked around at his crew, his voice cold, “Perhaps I am the only one here not stupid enough to realize that.”

He picked up the box, which was heavy for its size and tucked it under his arm.  “Back to work, you dogs!” he roared in a voice loud enough to carry over a pitched battle.

They had scrambled back to their various duties before he had time to cross to the doors to his cabin beneath the quarterdeck.

All save Amora, who had not taken his rejection as seriously as she should have, “Captain, about the prisoner,” her voice was now crisp and official, “there was some misunderstanding on Mister Hogan’s part as to where she is to be held, but I had her moved to the brig as soon as-”

Looking at her he saw that her lower lip was slightly swollen, and there was a bruise on her temple.

Loki turned towards her, his glare flickering red as ice formed on her fingertips, the lobes of her ears, and the end of her perfect nose, “There was no misunderstanding.  Save the one where you think you have the right to belie my orders.” He reached down and gently stroked her cheek, “You are a valuable member of my crew, and a powerful witch, pretty Amora, but this is my ship.  Here I am king and you serve at my pleasure. So unless you have learned to fly, I suggest you keep this,” he flicked the tip of her nose hard enough to make the little icicle there pop off, “out of places it does not belong.  Have Hogan bring her to my quarters. Now.”

For a moment she hesitated, and Loki calculated exactly how long he would allow that moment to be before he would consider it insubordination and cast her over the side to see if the ground so far below had more mercy than he did.  Then, as he felt she had reached that limit, she touched her knuckle to her forehead in respect and moved to follow his orders.

Loki shook his head as he entered his quarters.  Really. This was what came from bedding one of his crew.  He should have known better. Even if she was also of Asgardia, one of the original of his little band of runaways, Amora was going to need a hard lesson in her place sooner rather than later.  Maybe some time using her pretty hands in the bilge would do her a world of good.

After locking away the engine in one of his private treasure chests, Loki took off his greatcoat, hanging it carefully in place.  Velvet was

so

unforgiving of wrinkles.  He left on his coat, as a sign of respect and poured two glasses of wine, combing his fingers through his hair.  Taking his own and leaving the other for his prisoner, he fell into the massive, throne-like chair that was his favorite, with one leg hooked over the arm and brooded.

She would be angry, he was certain, but that could certainly be fun.

He’d seen Aenor truly enraged once.  Not the mere ire that she had shown at having to leave her beloved

Songbird

, but incandescent with fury.  She had been magnificent, of course, her brilliant brown eyes full of hate, her heaving bosom in that delightful gown, the snarl on her lovely lips showing those sharp little teeth.

It had been directed at him, also of course.

How hard he had gone at the sight of her, lunging at him, heavy satin skirts rucked up, sword in hand, as he had jumped from the balcony of that ballroom onto the little skiff that waited to whisk him away.

From that moment he had vowed to himself that this was not the end between them but just the beginning.

His cock grew heavy and hard at just the thought of her here with him.

There was a discreet knock at his door.  He stood, taking a little shelter behind the chair as he called for Hogan to enter.  Wouldn’t do to startle his Sailing Master with an eyeful of Loki’s interest in the lovely Captain.

“Captains,” the quiet Vanir said, bowing slightly to both of them before dismissing himself.

Aenor was even more dishevelled than when he had first attacked her ship. Though Hogan had not insulted her by binding her hands, somewhere between crossing to the Horn her blue uniform blouse had been ripped along the side, and there was a bruise forming on her calf which would normally be hidden by her stockings.

Amora.

She might be flying tonight.

Loki offered a bow, “Captain.  Welcome to my quarters. Please consider them your own.  I am having hot water brought for you, as well as food. Please, sit,” he took up the other wine glass and offered it to her with a smile.

“And where will you be staying?”  Not moving, or taking the glass.

He shrugged.  What could he expect?  She was Midgardian and their sense of the gracious was not all it could be.

“Here as well,” he smiled at her.

“I’ll be returning to the brig then.”

“Oh, no… I don’t think so, Aenor.”

He took the few steps it took to bring him flush with her, stroking his fingers deep into her thick, coffee brown hair, closing his hand into a fist so her head was tilted back, offering him the leisurely choice of her long, tender neck, her sweet mouth, slightly open with a gasp, her ears which he knew were especially sensitive.

He took her mouth.

She was stiff with anger, her body like a statue.

His tongue slid between her lips and along her own, gently teasing it, stroking the delicate flesh within her, while his other hand circled her throat.  He tightened both hands a little, and he could feel her pulse quicken. He had only the space of breath or two to overwhelm her, to take her body to arousal so she wouldn’t have enough thought to use her fists, her teeth, and her sharp knees on him.

The kiss was lush, filled with promise and threat in equal measure.  He opened the fist in her hair as he felt her soften against him, even if against her will, and he now cradled her head in his hand, his fingers gently working on her scalp to make her even more pliant.  With a small motion of his hips, Loki placed his thigh in the place between hers and they both exhaled together, their breaths mingling as their tongues did.

The last of her inflexibility seemed to leave her in a rush as she fell into him, her arms sliding under his coat to wrap about his hips.

He laughed softly into her mouth, “That’s more like it, captain darling.”

“I hate you,” she murmured, biting his lip just firmly enough to make him shiver with need.

“Good.  Then you can ride me all the harder for it,” he approved, lifting her before she could object, carrying her to his massive bed.  “Though when you loved me, you could not have been any less untamed.”

Aenor now struggled, pushing at his shoulders so she could meet his eyes, her expression icy, “I never loved you.”

Loki threw back his head and laughed, ignoring that strange, tearing feeling in his chest where his heart might be if he still had one, “And I thought

I

was a liar!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Two years earlier…

Loki looked askance at the small bottle in his hand.  “Not that I don’t trust you, since we both know I

don’t

,” he nodded slightly in the direction of the witch sitting across the tavern table from him.

The dank, dangerous Midgardian grog-shop with an uneven paving stone floor and windows with loosely hanging shutters where Jadwiga Bone-leg liked to conduct her business was nearly empty that morning.  The blazing sun was the sworn enemy of the kind of miscreants who would favor such a nasty hole. Only one patron was slumped over the bar, a left-over from the evening before. If he were drunk or dead remained to be seen, and the grey-headed, tired barman who was slowly smearing the filth on one of the tables with a dirty rag seemed incurious about which it might be.

She lifted her leathern tankard filled, he knew, with that noxious mix of black rum, absinthe, and sweet red wine that she alone favored and could drink without spewing.  “I’d have no respect for you if you did, Princeling. But that’s what you asked for, exactly. None of my little extras that people don’t like. No one has any sense of humour these days…” she mused, then took a large drink, causing her to let forth with a belch that was foul enough to be visible and hang on the air like stink in a midden.

The hag was ancient, with a few strands of grey and white hair poking from under her red bandana, and a nose that seemed more wart than flesh.  But for all of that her skinny arms were wiry with muscle and there was a vicious twinkle in her eye that meant there was was nowhere she was not safe.

Delicately waving a handkerchief before his nose, Loki picked up the potion in question. The bottle was clear - and sticky - with a cork held in place by a bit of copper wire that gleamed softly against the swirling black and grey liquid within.  “And yet it

looks

like poison...”

The witch snorted, “Why would I poison you?  For fun… eh, maybe… but otherwise, we do good business together and you’ve been just clever enough not to betray me.  Or me you.”

They looked at each other, Loki’s brilliant green eyes meeting her cold, glittering black ones, their expressions bland.

“Yet.” they both said and then burst out laughing.  He lifted the silver goblet of port - he had brought his own glass and wine - and tapped it firmly on the edge of her tankard, both drinking. He pulled the duelling pistol that was thrust into the belt of his coat and placed it on the table, it was part of the matched set that had been involved in the death of the Marquis de Carabas and rather difficult to obtain.  From his boot he removed a stiletto, the hilt of which was shaped like a snake with a rabbit writhing in its fangs, laying it beside the gun. It had been made for the infamous Dark Elf assassin Kith the Smoke, but she had died before it had been finished. Finally, he dropped a purse of silver coins next to the weapons.

They were Vaniri Fractions, just money.  As far as he knew they had no connection to the death of any legendary figure, but with money you could never be sure what terrible things it had been responsible for.

Finishing his port and certain he would have to burn his clothing after he left, Loki stood, fitting his least favorite hat over his hair with a slight nod in the witch’s direction.  “Until next time, Jadwiga.”

“Just remember.  When the sun sets on the finally day of the celebration on Asgardia, the spell ends.  Don’t forget that, get yourself executed, and then blame me because you couldn’t bother to listen.”

“Trust me, if my boots are still on the floor of my father’s palace after even

one

day I deserve whatever fate has in store for me.”
 
Aenor fussed with the lace-trimmed cravat of her dress uniform.  Though the lace itself was soft, it still itched her throat and chin.  Not to mention the feeling of slow strangulation from what was too many feet of linen wrapped about her neck.

She longed for the simple, light wrap that accompanied her day to day uniform.  As well as her more comfortable if less shiny boots.

The powder in her hair was also making her nose itch, but at least she was only wearing her own hair.  She had balked at the elegant wig that Merisa had claimed she should wear. “It’s appropriate for court.”

Aenor had shaken her head, motioning the thing away.  “This is not our court. I am here as a guest and ally, not a… sycophant to seeking King Odin’s favor.”

“At least the uniform fits right.  You cut quite a dash, Ae,” Merisa said, using a few of the toiletries that had been supplied to Aenor, and adding a bit more powder to her own black curls.  The friends had always been day and night when it came to fussing over their appearances, as well as in their thoughts about fashion.

The Asgardian maid that had been assigned to Aenor had finished refreshing the plumes on her tricorn.

It had been a great honor for her to be given a maid and these fine rooms in the palace, she recognised, since she was only attending as one of the seven captains under Commodore Rogers.  But her reputation as a pirate hunter had clearly impressed the war-like Aesir so she had been given a suite nearly as fine as the Commodore himself.

Then, she thought, looking out of the window, it wasn’t as if they lacked for accomodations.  The Royal Palace of Asgardia was nearly as large as the city Aenor had grown up in.

It was essentially, a city unto itself, surrounded by yet another, larger city.  Most extraordinary.

Her room was larger than any she had slept in before.  Most of her childhood home could have fit within it, if one included the balcony.  It was regally grand as well, with a massive bed, a few pieces of large, very large, expensive furnishings, and a fireplace that a boar could be comfortably roasted in.  Yet even with that hearth it all seemed a bit… cold.

The entire palace seemed cold to her, and made her feel small, like a child stomping about in her father’s boots  After the close yet well-ordered conditions aboard

The Songbird

Aenor felt a little lost in here, even if she was aware of  what an honor was being bestowed upon her.

She was glad the first event of these days and days of fetes and festivities to honor the new accords between Midgard and Asgardia, and their new joint venture in cleaning the skies of the pirate scum that had made travel and trade so dangerous, was going to take place in Queen Frigga’s gardens.  It would be a welcome relief from the already oppressive grandeur.

Aenor took her hat from the maid, and tucked it under her arm.  “Thank you, Yngvild.”

The girl gave a bobbing curtsy, “Her Majesty’s secretary sends a reminder that there is a fitting for your gown.”

“Fitting?  Gown?” she parrotted nervously.

“Yes, ma’am, for the Masquerade Ball?  On the last night?”

Merisa looked at her, making a poor show of not laughing in Aenor’s face.  “Oh, this is too good!”
 
Loki caught a glimpse of his face in the silver tray that one of the servants offered him.  It was astonishing.

Not his face.  His face was astonishingly handsome of course.  But the potion! The potion that Jadwiga had given him had worked better than his wildest dreams.  The golden curls that halo’d his head were positively angelic and the exact opposite of his sleek, inky hair.  Rather than having flawlessly pale skin, he had the healthy, slightly weathered glow of a man who did not understand the importance of caring for his skin.

Most shocking was the blueness of his eyes.

It had not been able to do anything to alter his height or build, and indeed his features were only marginally changed - his chin a touch blunter, his cheekbones still defined but no longer quite so sharp, but the change in his eyes, the color and their look of sweet brainlessness would be as effective at hiding his identity as a bag over his head.

Even his own family would be fooled.

Not that he planned to give them the chance to be so.  He would do his best to keep Frigga, and Thor, as well as any of his companions, at a distance for the brief time he was in the palace.  Staying away from the King would be easy enough. Odin never mingled at these things, planting himself like the old tree he resembled and let the Realms come to him.

Which was good.  Somehow Loki felt that if anyone might see through his little disguise it would be Odin.  He saw too much with his one eye for his wayward, foundling son’s good.

He took a glass of the sparkling, violet mead that his mother liked to offer guests in the garden, so the scent of her flowers and herbs were complimented by the wine. The gardens were one of the few places in the palace he missed.  Other than the massive bathing chamber attached to his rooms.

With a quick sip, he finished the glass and signalled for another, and a bit of cheese.  He should be about his business, using the potion and the distraction of the fete and the presence of so many strangers as cover for a quick visit to the Armory.  He should. But there was a real pleasure to walking through the exotic plants and flowering trees that he had played under as a child, unrecognised, knowing that if the Einherjar had even the tiniest inkling the Pirate Laufeysson was in the palace the chaos would be delicious.

At any rate, he had plenty of time.  And he knew knew every in and out of the grand palace, many of them lost to time.

Besides, he wanted to get a look at these Midgardian “Pirate Hunters” that he would be consigning to the airy deeps soon.  Their commodore was a stolid, handsome type, young for his post, and most of the captains he had brought with him were of the same mold.  Loki had yet, however, to set his eye to the most famous, or amongst his kind, infamous, of the lot, Breathnach. Her name struck as much dread amongst the pirates of the Nine Realms skies as his did amongst the merchants and naval officers.

It was an especial plan to hunt that hunter, once the Cask of Ancient Winters was on the Golden Horn, and scupper her with frozen sails and ice covered decks.

So with a third glass of mead, he set his walking stick to the ground and swaggered towards where his father was speechifying to the enlightenment and joy of none.

Loki stayed at the far back edge of the elegantly dressed crowd.  Rather than affecting his normal, chill, aloof hauteur, he endeavored to smile and give the impression of being an amiable, gently dim nobleman of the Asgardian court.  Someone who would have played creag, or some other abominable sport for groups, with his brother and his friends.

Most of what passed for the Asgardian navy was made up of the wealthy sons of the aristocracy going out in their own ill-run long ships and bothering hard working pirates and the better run naval ships of the other nations.

Thor was standing with just such a group of unpleasant idiots near the punchbowl, all dressed in the crown prince’s red to show their allegiance.  Thor at least was pretending to listen to and understand what the Midgardian politician who was speaking was talking about. The rest of them were drinking too deeply of the punch that they had no doubt added an unspeakable amount of brandy to themselves.  They were all drunk and gently shoving each other, pointing at the Midgard captains, sniggering and mocking their utilitarian uniforms and how short they were.

How lovely.  A fight breaking up the new venture between the two Realms before it could begin was more than he could hope for.  Loki calculated if he could find his way into the crowd safely and egg the fools along without altering his brother to his presence.

Then he noticed one of the Midgardian captains calming the others.  She was tall for one of their females, although on the petite side by Asgardian standards.  Her short, neatly cut coffee-brown hair gleamed, and her large eyes were narrowed with irritation as she by force of will and annoyance brought her fellows back in line.

She then shot a look of venom and ice at the miscellaneous morons surrounding his brother.  The corner of her pretty red mouth curled up for just the slightest bit of a smug smile, her stubborn chin pointing at them as if daring them to try anything further.  Suddenly all of the twits seemed sober and deeply fascinated by the speech.

It was Breathnach.  Loki knew it in his bones.

She was not pretty, but she was the most alluring female he had seen in longer than he could remember.  Perhaps ever. His awareness of her went straight to his cock, and he found himself staring at her.

For a moment her gaze flicked to him, as if sensing his attention, but she was too disciplined to do more, though he could tell she remained aware of him for the rest of the speechifying.

Suddenly he had a much more satisfying idea than merely ending a treaty.
 
Commodore Rogers was just as uncomfortable with ceremony as Aenor was, but he’d had many years more learning to endure them with a gracious calm, so she had tried to pattern herself after him.  She stood at the same easy attention he did, her hat worn rather than held, as they were outdoors, nodding when he did from time to time during King Odin’s speech, exalting the advantages that would come to both Realms as they moved forward in their joint purpose.  During the following speech by Lady Hill, thanking His Majesty and about Midgard’s hopes for this historic alliance, there was much looking thoughtful, as if anyone other than a bureaucrat or an aristocrat could follow the rhetoric and politicking.

For a moment it looked like there might be trouble with a group of the Asgardian nobles, and much as that would have been a welcome diversion - several of those lubbers looked in need of a punch to their fancy snouts - Aenor had calmed her fellow captains and quelled the aristocrats.

After the speeches ended and the socializing began, Commodore Rogers gave her a nod of thanks from where he spoke to the Queen.

“You handled that quite… handily, Captain Aenor,” said a deep voice with a harebrained tone from behind her.

Turning on her heel, Aenor found herself looking up into the eyes of the nobleman who had been staring at her earlier.  He was remarkably handsome, with angelic golden curls and blues eyes to match and the look of a wealthy sportsman - lean, athletic, unimaginative, dumb as a post.

And yet, when she had noticed him earlier the look on his pretty face had been far from that of a vacuous gentleman.  Indeed, there had been a knowingness to his stare, and a cold intensity that had sent a thrill through her that she had not felt in who could say how long?

A year in the skies hunting pirates had given her little opportunity for romance, let alone the practicalities of assuaging one’s lust, since the service had rules against shipboard fraternization.  Not that it stopped anyone who was determined. In Aenor’s case she valued her career too highly.

Needed it too much.

And, no one on her crew appealed that way.

Up close, whatever she had seen in him from a distance had disappeared.  Now he was just handsome, fit, and genial.

Perfect for a few days diversion on land, even if he was not precisely the sort she preferred.  At least he was tall. “Thank you. You seem to have the advantage of me, Lord…?”

“Call me Magnus,” he said.  “I see you are drinking that revolting punch.  If you would come with me,” he offered her his arm, draped in a sky-blue velvet coat trimmed in fur and silver embroidery, “I can show you to where one might get a proper libation.”

His smile was airy and brainless.  Oh well, he was very pretty. She put her hand on his arm, only mildly surprised at how firm yet slender it was beneath the finery.  He took her fingers and tucked them more firmly under his elbow. When their skin touched she felt again that strange thrill, as his expression changed for a flashing moment to predatory and amused.

Then he smiled like he’d never had a thought that hadn’t wept for loneliness, and gestured towards a path leading deeper into the garden.
 
When he stole a kiss from the luscious Captain Aenor after strolling with her through his mother’s garden, plying her with Midgardian champagne and Asgardian mead, both of which she seemed to have a good head for, Loki forgot, for just a moment, why he was doing it.

He forgot that his plan was to seduce the woman that had been brought specifically to these skies to be his nemesis, to seduce and then embarrass her, putting her off of her game and making both her crew and her superiors doubt her judgement.

He forgot all of it as he enjoyed her wit, her stories, her smile as she woo’d him as much as he attempted to woo her.  Nay, woo’d him more, for it was plain that she found his own wit and stories to be witless and dull. Or rather, that she found Magnus witless and dull.  It was galling to have to pursue a clever woman without access to his wiles, like fighting a battle with wet powder and spiked guns.

Fortunately, she seemed to find his appearance good enough to make up for his deficiencies elsewhere.  Which is how he knew that when they seated on a secluded bench under a bending willow he could kiss her and she would not object.

Loki put his fingertips beneath her chin, tipping her face up.  She met his eyes with challenge.

When their lips touched, barely at first, decorously, courtly, they did not move for a few breaths.  Then he pressed, his mouth opening over hers, and she pushed, opening under him. Open and lush and suddenly they were not just kissing flirtatiously but with a will and a need and a hunger the likes of which Loki had not known with another lover.

He forgot, for the length of the kiss, that she was not going to be his lover.  She was going to be his dupe, no matter how delicious her mouth might be. How clever her tongue.  How much he wanted to make her shake and fall apart beneath him right there on a garden bench.

He’d certainly taken more than one lover in more awkward and even public places, he thought.  His father’s throne came to mind…

There was the sound of horns and she went still in his arms, “Damn,” he whispered against her cheek.  “I take it you are being summoned?”

“Yes.  There are meetings until the feast tonight,” she stood, hastily straightening her uniform, the cut of which he admired for showing her lovely legs to good effect in those white stockings.  Apart from her lips being a touch redder she showed no lasting effects for what had been in his knowledgeable opinion a very disturbing kiss. “Will you be attending?”

“The meetings?” he said, for a minute as stupid as he had been pretending to be all afternoon.

She laughed at him, “No, the feast.”

He would make her pay for that laugh.  Even if it was fairly earned. “No, I will be go-”

The horn sounded again.  Aenor looked away, “Afterwards, then.  Meet me in my quarters for a dram before bed?”  Without waiting for his response she started running, turning back briefly, “My first mate, Galician, she can tell you where.”

“You are very sure of yourself, Captain,” he called after her.

“Always!” she shouted back.

He would have to see what he could do about that…
 
Now, on the Golden Horn …

Aenor tried not to hate herself as she let Loki carry her to the massive, fur blanketed bed that was bolted to the floor of his cabin.  It was bigger as the one in the rooms she had been assigned on Asgardia and they had used every inch of that.

And most of the rest of the room.

He set her down and then took the collar of her shirt in his hands, “It’s ruined anyway,” he shrugged and tore the heavy canvas in two with no more effort than she might have ripped paper.  “As well as being ugly.”

In a trice he had shown the same disrespect to her uniform trousers, leaving her in a chemise top and smallclothes, and naught else.  “No corset?” he asked, hooking a finger beneath her neckline, gently tracing along it with a calloused fingertip. For all of his vanity otherwise Loki did not have the hands of a dandy.

He had the hard hands of a sailor and a swordsman.  Though graceful and long-fingered they were rough and that one scraping fingertip made her skin feel tight and achy.

“I was asleep when you attacked like a coward in the night,” she answered.

“Hmmmm...” he was looking at her breasts, seeing her tight nipples pointing through the thin lawn of her chemise.  With a quick jerk he loosened the tie and pushed her linen down so she was bare to the waist.

Taking her breasts in his hands, he idly circled her nipples with his thumbs.  The chafing from those calluses quickly had her writhing. Aenor closed her eyes, but she could feel him watching her, eyes moving slowly from where his hands were toying with her to her face so he could see each moan that she fought against letting free.

With a quick move, he spun her so she was now leaning against him, her back pressed to his brocade jacket, his hands quickly back to their busy, now slightly rougher, work.  Aenor felt each cold, hard button and bit of lace on her too sensitive skin.

Bending his head so he could whisper in her ear, his deep, velvety voice stroking her skin as surely as his hands, his silken black hair licking against her shoulder, “We know you are a better sailor than I am, even if I am better at everything else.  So it would be foolish for me to fight fair. And I

am

a pirate.  Now shimmy out of those pantaloons and lay on the bed with your legs nice and wide so I can see how wet you are.”

When she had given up herself, and more importantly the alchemical engine, in order to save her crew Aenor had known two things.  That on the off chance she would live long enough to be rescued - as a side benefit to what would be the Navy’s efforts to regain Stark’s invention - she would not only have lost her career, but would most certainly be brought up on charges as well.

A career she had only not lost after their last encounter because Commodore Rogers had spoken for her.

But that before that, Loki would do his worst to her before killing her, as revenge for her relentless pursuit of him for two years.  She had liberated, or burned, many of the illegal ports where he might have found rest or allies, captured any pirates that were known to do business with him, and done everything she could to make his life difficult as she hunted him.

He had always been one step ahead.

Laughing at her.

But his pride and reputation would require him to humiliate her before hanging her from the highest yardarm and giving her thigh-bones and skull to that witch he was friendly with.

There had been a moment when she was taken to the brig that she had thought he meant to hand her to his crew.  When he had said she would be sleeping in his bed she had hated the relief that had for a moment threatened to unwoman her.  Even more, the frisson of need that swept through her, making her just as wet as he apparently knew she was.

It had been a long two years, she told herself.  Lonely, with no time for a lover. It was nothing to do with the memory of him leaving her disinterested in any other bedmate.

He t’sked in her ear, “So slow.  Here, let me help.”

One of those long, callused hands slid down her stomach, softly stopping to circle there for a moment.  An almost tender gesture. Her belly went warm and she felt herself sag against him, hating the weakness.  Loving that he pulled her closer. Then his touch traveled lower, under the waist of her linen.

He cupped between her legs, the rough heel of his hand pressing against the top of her sex, circling there now, at the place of her greatest sensation.  Soon her hips were circling as well, “There, that feels so nice, doesn’t it? So nice…” he crooned in her ear. “Think of how much better it would feel if you were naked and I could touch you so much more easily?”

“I’m not some silly girl you need to seduce, Loki,” she made herself say.  “I know how good you are at this. Much to my shame.”

He stopped, saying and doing nothing for several breaths, his body suddenly unyielding.  Then he laughed, again in her ear, “Eheheheheheh… I suppose that’s true, my little captain.”

With another jerk he had torn the pantaloons away as well, and shoved her onto his bed.  “Spread your legs,” he ordered.

Aenor turned over, so she lay on her back and stared at the black and gold embroidered canopy over the bed, doing as he commanded.  Loki leaned over her, one hand on the mattress beside her head, the other playing with the curls between her legs. “You are almost as ready as I want you to be.  Because when I take you I don’t want you to have the slightest delusion that you are anything other than desperate for me.”

He was so beautiful.  It should not have made it worse but it did.  His aristocratic face, his moonlight skin and midnight hair, his green eyes and glorious voice were so distinct, so cruel, so unto him that it had made it that much more impossible to put her wanting of him out of her mind.  That she had already… cared for him before she knew that he was her physical ideal was bad enough.

His beauty was the insult to the injury he had already done her.

Then he kissed her again, rough and gasping.  “As desperate as I am, Aenor. And I am truly desperate.”

Then he knelt at her feet, pushing her thighs wider, and placed another kiss there.  Kissing as if it were a mouth, then licking, gently, tenderly, with the actions of a lover rather than someone taking.  Deeper with each stroke of his tongue, he explored her, running that agile touch over every surface of her, delving only slightly in, barely tickling her clitoris as he explored.

Teasing.

Amusing himself, she thought, writhing again under this strangely gentle assault.  Quickly she realized the secret cruelty that the tenderness he gave was not enough to serve her needs.  It only made her more sensitive. More anxious. More certain that the pleasure she was now starting to crave, to be addicted to, would stop before reaching its conclusion.

She grabbed his hair, wonderful in her hands, and tried to grind.  He laughed at her attempts. “Pull harder, love,” he encouraged.  She did, and she could feel him shudder beneath her grasp.

He rewarded her with a firm, direct lick to her clitoris, that made her arch up for more and more, trying to plant her feet against his long thighs, her toes brushing where his cock strained on the velvet of his trousers.

He threw an arm over her hips to keep her restrained.  “Stop that or I’ll tie you like this and keep you that way for days.  I’ll have to feed you and bathe you but it will be worth it to tame some of that fire.”

“You want my fire…” she said, sagging.

He rewarded her again, this time suckling on her clit, as his tongue circled it.  “I want all of you,” he murmured briefly, bending his head back to his work, as he traced her opening with a clever, seeking finger that than began to fuck her in great earnest as his mouth continued to attend to her need.

Now Aenor was mad with need.  Unable to move, afraid he would stop, she stayed as still as she could save for tremors that worked through her, tremors that he heaped praise upon, even as he withdrew his attentions until she cooled and then returned, so she was in a heightened state.

She could feel each strand of fur on his coverlet stroking her flesh.  The darkness of the cabin seemed to be licking her. Forgetting the crew, the ship, everything but Loki and the pleasure, her body began to judder and shake.

Then he did something within her, finding a place deep and hidden that he tapped with a kind firmness.

The climax ripped through her, as two years of anger, misery, and work rushed from her muscles as a gluttonous bliss overwhelmed her.  Her hips, now freed, ground into him, and she rode through the peak as he found that spot again, and still sucking, continued to tap, sending her into another finish.  And another. Each wrenching. Each overwhelming and almost painful.

“Please, please…” she sobbed.  But he required one more orgasm and did not stop until she gave it to him, flooding him in her pleasure, leaving her crying.

Then he was leaning over her again, stroking her hair back, kissing her with a mouth that tasted of both of them.  She tried to kiss him back, but the tears were too much. Loki lay beside her, pulling her against his body, so she wept against his fine clothing, until exhaustion began to take its toll.

Aenor barely felt it when he lifted her again, pulling back the coverings of his bed, tucking her in as he might a child who was trying and failing not to sleep.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The bay of windows along the stern of

The Golden Horn

were mullioned and many-colored, so when the morning sun struck them Loki’s bed was washed in reds and golds and greens and blues and all of the shades that came from their intemperate mingling.  The growing warmth thinned his sleep, so when he rolled over to escape the light and heat he found himself startled awake by the feeling of another body in his bed.

He rolled quickly away, slithering from beneath the blankets, pulling his cutlass from where it hung on the carved bedpost.

Then he remembered.

Aenor.

Though still sleeping she seemed to sense his absence and with a soft noise that had an effect on him that he had no name for, she rolled over to his vacated space, taking it with a wide-flung arm that left him with nowhere to return.

The girl was a born pirate.

He had never let another share his bed for a full night before.  Just the idea of it made his liver itch, yet with her had slept as well as he had in years.

He chuckled to himself, resheathing his blade and then moving it away from the bedside.  If Aenor were to crack an eyelid and see it in arm’s reach he would find himself with an even cleaner shave than he normally favored.  One that would start with his bollocks and work its way swiftly north.

As she slept on, Loki found himself moving as quietly as he could around his own quarters.  Carefully pouring the water for his rather elaborate morning ablutions, for fear of too loud a splash.  Gingerly opening the drawers that were built under the bed so that they would not squeak. Silently trying to gather all of the many, many, in fact perhaps too many, weapons that he had stored and secreted here and there, knowing that Aenor could be deadly with even the tiny, silver spoon he used for sugar.

In fact, she’d probably relish the challenge.

Loki was not worried that he could not disarm Aenor in most fights, but he recognized from her behavior the night before a level of desperation that would mean she cared little for her own well being at the moment.  It was a state he knew from within. He could defeat her, but he was not sure that in her present condition of mind that he could do so without causing her further harm.

Having finally filled two satchels with swords and pistols from all of the Realms, two Midgardian cold iron rifles, an Asgardian crossbow with diamond tipped bolts, a sling that threw flame, and enough daggers that he wondered if perhaps he had a bit of a problem, Loki was prepared to go on deck.

“You know, you needn’t bother.” said a dry, raspy voice coming softly from his bed. “I could just break one of those windows and use the glass to cut your throat.  Or mine.”

He turned slowly, with a fixed and well considered grin.  Aenor was sitting up, her hair a disheveled mess about her head, her elbow resting on a bent knee, covered like a wayward spirit in his finest bed linens.  The sheet had fallen about her waist and she made no disingenuously modest attempt to cover herself. Her breasts were bare, lovely and there was nothing he had not examined at his leisure in their previous association.

As well as nothing he would not desire to reperuse at his leisure.

“Alfheim crystal, Captain.  Nothing you could do would break it.  Nor even leave an unsightly crack.”

She turned and ran her fingers over one of the green panes.  “Pretty and practical.” Her tone was thoughtful and Loki thought that was a good sign.  Better she should be interested in the details of his ship and of her fate.

“Just like you.”  She snorted, but otherwise ignored the complement.  “Rest as long as you like. You’ve had a busy few years trying to catch me, so I know you must be tired.  I’ll return with breakfast for both of us shortly. There is a privie behind the screen,” he pointed to a black and gold lacquered folding divider decorated with undulating dragons in the fashion of the eastern part of Midgard.  “I require you to eat hearty. You’ll need your strength.”

“For this?” she snorted, gesturing at the bed.  “I could take three of you and be strong enough to dance a hornpipe.”

Good, she was getting her spirit back.

“We may get to that.  But no, you’ll want to be your sharpest when we reach our destination.”

“And where might that be?  I burned Port Royale. Clew Bay is back in the hands of the Vanir.  And no one in Barataria is your friend at the moment.”

“Titan.  Back with our meal in a tick, my pretty stake.”

There was silence as he closed the door behind him, and then even through the thick wood he could hear, “WHAT?!”

After stowing most of his weaponry, other than his cutlass, the pair of Niðavellir crafted pistols that he acquired after taking one of their arms shipments to Asgardia, and his five favorite daggers, Loki ordered the ship’s steward to bring dried fruit, bread, and hot wine to his quarters.  Before returning himself, he took to the quarterdeck.

The sky was clear and bonny blue.  Loki flew the Horn higher than most any other captain would dare.  He liked to be high enough to reach up and slap the vault of heaven.

Amora had the wheel.  For any other problems of her ambition, the woman had a steady hand.  “Captain,” she nodded.

“Are we on the proper heading?” he asked, motioning for her to give way to him. It felt good to put his hand to the wheel for a time.

He knew that they were headed in the right direction, though he asked anyway, wanted hear it aloud.  He could feel every turn and motion of the

Horn

in his bones.  They had turned to their new heading the night before as he had drifted to what had been a surprising sleep beside Aenor.

“Aye, sir.  Straight for the empty sky between Muspelheim and Hel…” Amora muttered, her tone implying that it was madness.

“Go eat.  Send Bonden up to take the wheel,” he ordered.

It was fine she and most of the crew thought him mad.  Loki even encouraged it from time to time. A little madness added some spice to the well-earned fear they already had of him.  He had made them rich with his madness, so they owe’d it some respect.

For a few moments of near quiet Loki was at peace, the warmth of the new day seeping through his brocade coat, the winds at the height he prefered to sail at were chilly.  The massive wheel smooth and easy under his touch, above the sails were full, billowing softly, the ropes creaking slightly as they flew against the sky’s current, using the enchanted and the force of his will to take them where he wished rather than where the wind would have sent them.  Below, a few swabs were cleaning the deck, talking little as their hangovers were being punished by the relentless sun above.

Then there was a loud shuffling, a half shout, a clatter that he knew was his finest plate and china being dropped, followed by the familiar slump of a body, more shouting, and thudding, and then the loud slap of Aenor’s feet as she ran up the stairs to the quarterdeck.  The soles of her feet were as hard as good boots, having spent her life running barefoot on shipboard when she served as little more than a child.

She was armed with a badly bent candlestick, being pursued by Hjalmir, whose handsome face was swollen, Antoinetta, with a badly split lip, and Grak, who had a large chip out of his stony head from where Aenor’s weapon had no doubt collided with it.

Without looking away from the horizon, Loki murmured, “The first of you to touch her goes flying this morning.  We’re above Jotunheim now, maybe her deep snows shall gentle your landing.”

They froze on the stairs.  Aenor turned on them, brandishing her candlestick, which was less threatening than it might be due to the acute angle it now possessed.  She was dressed in a pair of his breeches, which would have been knee length on him but were just above her ankles. They were too tight across her more generous hips and lovely behind, which Loki rather enjoyed from his position behind her, but she was also wearing one of his white silk shirts, whose translucent nature and open neck that was nearly falling from her shoulders was certainly giving his pirates a view that belong to him alone.

“Go,” he ordered calmly.  “Your posts won’t fill themselves, my sprites.”

“But, Captain-” Antoinetta started to object, but then, spitting out a tooth, reconsidered.  They turned and shuffled back to work.
 
When they were gone, Aenor spun towards Loki, trying to point at him with her candlestick, which was impossible as it had taken a sharp turn towards starboard when she’d cracked if over the Kronan’s face.  “Did you really think that a cabin boy and one guard would hold me?”

He was elegant and unruffled, of course.  While his dress was not quite as fastidious and fashionable as when he had taken her ship the day before he was still very fine in thin leather breeches, high boots, and a beautifully tailored coat.  Today he had gone without his extravagant hat, letting his jet hair blow in the winds of the high sky where they flew.

“Not especially, but you seemed tired and it isn’t as if you could run far, now is it?  Bonden, come up man,” Loki called to a helmsman who had wisely waited for the contremps to be ended before climbing to the quarterdeck.  He was on the short side, with light brown hair bleached by the sun, and the weathered look of someone whose face had been to the wind many times.  Like many of the pirates Bonden was clearly former Navy, in this case Midgardian, and he looked askance at Aenor, but made his respects to her as well as to Loki before taking the wheel.  Her eyes narrowed at the sight of one of her Realmsmen and a former Navy-man as a pirate, but nodded to him anyway.

“Sir, shall I send word when we reach Hel?”  He bowed slightly as he spoke, showing more discipline than one would expect from a mere pirate.

“No need, Bonden, I shall know.  Now,” Loki took Aenor’s wrist, disarming her with a clatter of metal before leading her towards the rail, “what did you think to achieve?  I know for a fact that you haven’t grown wings in the last two years. Wearing that shirt everyone knows it.” He pointed to her chest and she looked down.

Her breasts were practically falling out of a shirt that was of such fine silk it did almost nothing to hide them in the first place.

“What difference does it make?  You’re probably going to pass me to the crew when you get bored of me,” she said, but she crossed her arms over her chest anyway.

With a roll of his eyes and a sigh, Loki shrugged out of his bottle green suede coat, the cuffs and hem covered in antique gold braid.  It was warm from his body and Aenor shivered once at the smell of him, juniper trees, smoke, and cool air. “Yes, I shall. The

very

second I grow bored.  Without question.”

Aenor settled back, half sitting on the rail, running her feet over the deck, getting a feel for the ship and how she rode the air.  My, but she was a yare thing. Years of chasing the Horn had given her an appreciation for her speed and grace, for how fine of care her captain took of her, but to be on her...

The Songbird

was a lovely flyer, graceful as a feather when handled well, but the Horn was like something from a dream.

“But that does not answe-”

She cut him off, “Titan?  You think you are going to sail to Titan?  It’s a myth, a pipe-dream, a sailor’s story.  You’ll scuttle your ship and kill your crew for nothing.”

Loki cocked his head and for a flicker of a moment seemed to smile at her, but no, it was a smirk, “Now that’s a funny thing coming from a woman who keeps a map to Titan on her wall like a portrait of an old lover.”

Aenor slapped him hard enough to make her hand ache.

Two years before, on the Royal Navy docks of Asgardia…

The Songbird

was down to only a skeleton crew for the duration of the ceremonies on Asgardia.  Some of the rest of the crew had taken leave back to Midgard, the remaining were enjoying the highlife on the richest of the Realms.

“Careful, now,” she said to Magnus, as he climbed the narrow gangplank they used when not expecting to take on cargo.  He’d never been on shipboard before, he had told her, and they had been drinking in town, so she feared he could misstep and fall between the dock and the

Bird

.

Fortunately, even drunk he was a graceful fellow.  Probably the lack of thoughts in his noggin kept his step light and his balance good.

Though there

were

moments, strange, rare, even beautiful moments when they were alone together, where a brilliant turn of phrase or a knowing look in his eye would make her wonder if there were more to him.  Especially when they were entirely alone together there would be an intensity to him, and an expression on his face as he bent to the task of their mutual pleasure that made her think him a different man entirely than the pretty popinjay she’d taken him for.

Then afterwards he would smile vacantly at her and offer an empty complement as might suit any woman, mentioning her face or her hair or eyes, and that thought was lost.  Magnus was naught but unchallenging and pretty company for this ten day of frippery before she could return to the skies.

That his one area of exceptionalism was in bedsport was an excellent surprise.  As Aenor had assumed he was energetic and took readily to instruction, thought it was often times unnecessary.  He was a good lover, who offered bedrolling fun if no great intensity or imagination. A good lover who offered bedrolling fun as well as the largest, most gorgeous cock she had ever imagined.

It was a relief that he was so unadorned with wit, otherwise or she might find leaving him behind rather painful.

The Officer of the Watch offered his respect to Aenor and a polite bow to Magnus, “Captain.  Sir.”

“Carry on, Kasese,” she said with a nod, leading her guest to her quarters.

Because space was especially at a premium on hunting frigates Aenor’s private space was snug, with built in shelves and a narrow but quite comfortable bed.  “You live rather plain for a captain, do you not?” Magnus asked, taking the glass of Jotun ice wine she had brought him here to sample, sitting on the chair at her writing desk, one of the only two in her quarters.

Aenor shrugged, sipping from her own goblet and taking a seat at the tiny table she ate at, “I’ve not truly lived on land since my father found me work as a powder monkey when I was seven.  From there to a sailor, to a midshipman, and so on. First no money, then no time, to have things.”

He leaned forward, one of those rare looks of thought on his handsome face, “You came through the ranks?  I had heard that such things happen on Midgard. And from a powder monkey? That’s a rare thing. They tend to die young.”

There was a darkness to his voice that she did not recognize, as if he were troubled.

“Oh, I’m jumped up.  As jumped up as they come.  My first sailing master took a liking to me when I was a girl and taught me to read or I’d still be naught but an able seawoman.  Which has no shame to it,” she added with narrow eyes, trying to capture his gaze, trying to see within him. For a moment his eyes met hers and he seemed to be saying something, or trying not to.  As if he were hoping for her to say more, to force more from him.

The moment stretched and frayed and finally broke.

“No.  I should say not,” he sat back hastily, looking vacant and yet uncomfortable.

“It’s rare on Midgard as well,” she conceded.  “But at least possible.”

“Well, thank heaven for your first sailing master or we would not be here together enjoying this excellent vintage.”

There was an awkwardness as they both drank again.  To cover it, Aenor stood up and walked to the one bit of obvious decoration, an old, old map, hand-drawn and simply framed.  It was made by a master, and had once even had a touch of gilding to the decorative scrolls and furbelows along its edges, though most of had long since flaked away to just a touch of golden dust here and there.

“He gave me this, actually.  It used to hang in his quarters on

The Rose

.  Whenever I had to run a message to him he would see me staring at it.  The first words he taught me to read were these.”

She pointed to an empty place on the sky map, a great void between the Realm of the Fire Giants and the Icy lands of Hel where in flowery hand had been written

Where Fell The Realm of Titan

.  Aenor tapped the glass.  “He believed the myths and taught them to me.  About how the Titans were the greatest sorcerers and alchemists, pushing the boundaries of all flight and power and the world itself, until they went too far and their quest for conquest sent their entire Realm to the Downward place.  It was his dream to find a way to sail low, low enough to find it. To walk on its surface, to see the remains of its glory and maybe take some of it for himself.”

Draining her glass, she poured herself another, feeling the effects of it on top of the ale they’d had at the tavern.  Looking at Magnus’s pleasant, untroubled expression and feeling alone. “It was my dream too, for time. A long time… Once I even wrote a plan for an expedition.  When I was sixteen,” she snorted.

She thought of Mister Salim, with his kind, musical voice.  The way he had laid a dark hand on her shoulder as he pointed to the route he would take to reach the place where Titan had allegedly been, so to avoid the warring Realms about it.  Telling her legends and about navigation at the same time. Treating her not as a Powder Monkey, barely more than a ship’s slave, but as a student and then later a friend.

“But it’s not your dream now?” Magnus asked.

Finishing that glass as well, she gave him a sunny smile, “We all have to grow up.  Or die. Care to see the deck?”
 
Loki followed Aenor, who was not drunk but not entirely sober.  Part of his thoughts were on absorbing as much information on

The Songbird

, the other were on her.

The three days since he had met her in his mother’s garden, whilst avoiding his family, he had finagled and schemed and found as many ways as he could to be with her as much as he could.  For the first day it had been to learn what he could about the Midgardian plans, to use her. And for pleasure.

As he had predicted to himself, their first night of bedsport together hand been marvelous.  She was as free spirited in bed as she was bold out of it.

When she was not required by Commodore Rogers he showed her about the streets of Asgardia.  They would stop in shops, or see the sights, or sneak into secluded alleys or once took a room in one of the finest inns for a few hours.  Her coy smile, the way her legs came about him, the sound of her completion, all were things that would stay with him for years to come. Long after he had consigned her to the ground.

Even though she was circumspect about the navy he had still managed to find out some information here.  All went to his plan. Pleasure, scheming, and plans for revenge. All that he loved best. Trying to figure out how to fuck like a lighthearted moron was the hardest part.  An eager athleticism and a hard tamping down of his imagination seemed to have done the trick, although it left him oddly dissatisfied even after a resounding orgasm.

That Aenor clearly enjoyed dancing on Magnus’ cock, taking her easy bliss with no thought or heart involved should have made it better.

And yet it did not.

He found it harder and harder to maintain his performance as Magnus the Pretty Dunce.  Because he found it harder as it went on to think of Aenor as his enemy. She was witty and funny, practical and a gifted liar though her heart was clearly honest, and a fine captain.  She knew the air only as one raised on it could.

He liked her.  And it had been a damned long time since he had liked anyone.

For a moment in her cabin he had almost-

No.

Looking at her as she strode confidently across her ship’s deck, moonlight gleaming over her hair, Loki fought something in himself that he had no name for.

When they reached her quarterdeck and she dismissed the rest of the watch for a few hours of sleep he could see the clear respect and fondness between her and the crew.

Once they were alone, Loki grabbed her and pushed her against the great ship’s wheel, needing the distraction of her flesh.

She pushed off his tricorn, tangling her fingers in his hair, pulling his head back so she could place a biting kiss on his neck.  He took her hands and lifted them over her head, wrapping them about two of the spindles. “Keep them there,” he growled, “and remember not to move them or you’ll send us onto the dock or out to the sky.”

This was not the light, pleasure seeking way of Magnus, but Loki couldn’t care.

He found the silver buttons of her uniform pants, flicking them open easily with one hand so they fell to her ankles, whilst loosening himself with the other.  One booted foot stepped on her trousers to keep them in place while he lifted her from them, settling her to straddle one of his thighs.

Staring into her eyes, unable to look away from their brightness and confusion at his strange behavior, he stroked himself and rocked her on the ridge of his leg muscle until he could feel her wet seeping through his buckskins.

A pearly bead of his own arousal formed on the head of his prick, and Loki delicately took it onto his fingertip and fed it to Aenor who closed her eyes at the taste, moaning around his finger and sucking it with fervour as she continued to ride his thigh, holding her upper body ridged and trembling as she fought to not let go of the wheel or steer them into danger.

His cock stood upright, angry red and throbbing.  With a swift lift of her hips and a deep bend of his knees, Loki lifted her, pulling her all of the way onto his prick, “Open your eyes, my pretty captain,” he ordered, using the voice if not the volume he would on one of his pirates, leaning in so their faces were close.

Aenor’s eyes fluttered open, blown black, and he locked her gaze.  Bor could not tell him why, but suddenly

he

needed to fuck her, had to.  He needed to fuck her as Loki, to see her come for

him

, not for that simpering fool.  More than come, to break open, to be undone.  Working his hips in steady undulations, each punctuated by a hard thrust, he held her with one arm about her waist, bouncing her upon his prick, whilst using his free hand to tease and toy with that sweet pearl at the top of her lovely, palpating sex.

She twisted side to side, trying for more, needing to come.

“Mag-” she started to gasp out

that

name.

Taking his soaking hand from between them, he now thrust three of his fingers into her mouth, “Suck again, little captain.  Suck good and hard and later I’ll let you have my cock there as well.”

Moaning around his fingers, she complied, and it was all he could do to keep from spilling in her then and there.  Gods but she had a gifted mouth. He rewarded her by angling her hips higher, so he could rub that place within her that drove women mad.

She flooded about him and he pulled his hand free just in time to keep from being badly bitten as she cried out, “Come for me, my stake.  Come and let me see you raw,” he required, feeling her cunt beat as hard and steady and fast as his own racing heart, her body bowing.

But her hands ever steady on the helm.

The sight of those enduring hands and her exposed eyes were too much for him.  Loki felt a juddering, wild, wrenching orgasm tear into him as well.

Afterwards, they lay on the polished deck, Aenor’s head on his still heaving chest, his arm about her, he wondered if he had just made a dreadful tactical error and found he did not care.

On the Golden Horn

...

Loki put a hand to the red mark on his cheek and smiled at her.  A dangerous, mad smile. “That’s one, Aenor. I’ll give you three before I retaliate, because I owe you that much.  Now you have a choice. You can spend the rest of our little cruise as my guest, enjoying the luxury of my cabin and offering me your rather expert advice on Titan-”

She interrupted him, “The engine!  That’s why you took the engine. You want to use it to descend below the wind line safely.  And why you took me as well. You really a

re

planning on trying to find Titan.”

Now he frowned, “As I said.  You didn’t used to be this slow, A.  As I was saying, you can stay as my guest, or as a member of the crew, scrubbing, scraping, taking a share of the booty, and yes, offering me your information.  But you are staying. After all, even if you were to get off ship, your government is unlikely to take your word about what happened between us a second time. They

might

not hang you, but you won’t be seeing the right side of a jailhouse door for many years.

“Your choice, Aenor.”

There was a bleakness behind her anger that quickly burned away, “Who do I report to for my assignment, Sir?”

Loki sighed.  Unsurprised.

If Aenor were an easy prize he would not care about winning her.

“Find Lorelei.  She’s the gorgeous Asgardian woman who hasn’t tried to harm you.  Yet.”

Aenor gave him a crisp salute, shrugging out of his coat.  He put up a hand, “Keep it until she finds you something to wear.  I cannot have an uprising amongst the crew before we even reach Muspelheim.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said in a polite voice, walking through the confused ranks of his pirates, leaving him alone at the rail.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Two Years Before, On Asgardia

-

Aenor stretched with a pleasured sound and rolled over onto her stomach, arms around a pillow.  Anew she was amazed at the size of the bed in the rooms she had been given in the palace. It was nearly bigger than her entire cabin on the

Songbird

and much more comfortable.  In the brilliant moonlight, it was rather like being back on the little boat her family had used for night-birding.

“When I was a girl, before I was on shipboard, my father was always out of work so my brothers and I used to bird for extra money and to keep the cookpot full.  It was always on nights like this, when the moon was so large it was like another sun, when the wind was so steady and slow even in that old, terrible, rickety boat we would just move across the low skies like a raindrop sliding down glass.”

She did not know why she was talking about this to Magnus.  It was nothing that a spoiled aristocrat would understand. Early they had been in one of the largest and busiest coffee houses in the city, and he had told her before that when he was a boy he’d had his own yacht, speedy and fully crewed, to travel to the far side of the Realm with his brother so they could hunt.

Then he had laughed at the memory of it running up on the shoals when they were drinking and he had taken the wheel from the navigator, so it had been replaced with a larger ship, egged on by his brother who had just

known

what would happen.

They could only have less in common were he a Fire or Frost Giant, she thought at the time with a shake of her head, signaling for more coffee and the newest paper.

But when they were alone…  When they were intimate, he was different.  Since that night she had let him take her on the deck of her ship.

His pretty tenor would grow deeper and softer and darker, so it rumbled through her blood.  Ever whispering temptations and fantasies and sometimes elaborate erotics and other times the basest, plainest filth.  Even his motions were different, less bold and more sinuous, showing grace rather than strength, agile subtlety in place of firm aggressiveness.

Not that he was afraid to be aggressive.  A trait they shared. As was a willingness to capitulate under the correct type of strictness...

Afterward, for a time, there was a sense of secrecy between them, a confiding of intimacies beyond those of their bodies.

For a time.  A short time.  A too short time.  And then he would laugh, that booming, fool’s laugh, rather than the dry ratchet that he would purr against her skin, and the strange, enthralling man that she had come to covet and long for would be gone again and she was left with her increasingly annoying daylight companion.

Aenor’s mind, her heart, had never been so confused, even as her body had never been so pleasured.

Fingertips traced over her back, finding the raised scars, “What battle are these from?”  His voice was little more than a whisper, and then lips replaced fingers.

“Those are flog marks.  I was accused of theft by the first mate of The Echo when I was a midshipman there.  He didn’t care for officers being raised from the ranks.” She snorted, “The look on his face when I was given my Songbird by Commodore Rogers almost made them worthwhile.  Almost.”

Magnus stopped and pulled away from her.  When he spoke his voice was so chill that Aenor could have sworn the room grew colder.  “These are

whip marks

?”  The last two words dripped with distaste.

She snorted to herself ruefully.  Of course, a nobleman would be disgusted that he was in bed with a common thief and a flogged sailor.  She got out of bed and pulled on a shirt, looking for the trousers that had been hastily ripped from her hours before.  It no longer felt comfortable to be naked before him.

“Aye.  But no fear, they don’t spread like the pox from just bedding me.  The dishonor of them is all mine own to keep, as is the reputation of thievery, even if I didn’t do it.  Not even as a girl, when we could have used the money. I was fortunate that the other midshipmen spoke on my behalf with the captain or I would have been stripped of my berth as well as striped on my back.  And that we had an excellent ship’s doctor. I was back to service in a few days.”

Her hands were shaking as she found the brandy bottle and poured herself a tot.  Best to stick to bedding other navy men and sailors. They knew better than to ask such questions and be revulsed by the answer.

How she hated the memory.  To not be believed when she spoke the truth, to be cast as a villain and a thief simply because those of a certain class believed every creature born to poverty was but a good opportunity away from criminality.  Knowing that all of the work and struggle that it had taken to raise her up could be wiped away by the malice of someone who did not know her but thought he knew her kind.

Magnus had risen in perfect silence and followed her, and now took the glass from her hand and pulled her against his naked chest.

No.  She would take no pity.  Not from the likes of a fancy Asgardian who’d never known a moment in his life that was not eased by title or wealthy.

Aenor struggled, trying to push him away, but he had the strength of his Realmsmen and soon tears of frustration were in her eyes.  All of the while he was tenderly inexorable, and soon her head rested over his heart.

Gently, rocking her as she could not remember anyone having done since her earliest years, he rumbled, “What was his name?  This first mate.”

“Why?” she sniffled, hating the weakness and yet soaking in the feel of his arms about her, his skin comforting her.

“I want to be sure to kill the correct man.  He alone would deserve the death I have in mind.”

There was an edge to his voice - of madness and certainty - that made Aenor feel she was being embraced by a tiger.  “Take me back to bed, instead. We only have one more day, and I should hate to waste it on trivialities of my past when we could be enjoying each other.  Moreover, he is a captain of the Midrealm navy, and my brother then, so though I hate him I will not give his fate into your hands. And you assume that I have not ever had my own back upon him…”

She smiled against his warm skin at the memory of her small, but painful, revenge on Captain Pym.

Magnus stilled, “You make good points, my stake.  But I will find his name, and when I do there are no gods of any Realm that can save him.  Now to bed again.”
 
Loki woke before dawn and took his leave of Aenor’s bed whilst she still slept.

He carefully dressed and grabbed the pack that held the Casket of Ancient Winters.  He’d stolen it two days before, intending to hie himself back to the boat he’d had waiting for days to take him back to the Horn where she was floating calmly in a hidden cove on the Great Asgardian Sea.

Instead, he had recklessly attended the musical afternoon his mother had arranged for the alleged entertainment of their guests.  Taking the long stolen treasure of Jotunheim had been so boringly easy Loki needed to feel some sense of risk. So he put his aesthetic sense in mortal peril for the thrill of it.

Asgardia was the pinnacle of elegance and refined power, but its music left a few things be desired.  Recognizable melody for one, discernible rhythm for another…

When he took a seat to the back of the white and gold room with its ranks of colorfully attired guests in wigs and velvet, thankful it was near the end of the concert, Loki could see Aenor sitting in line with the rest of the captains and their commodore.  Each perfectly pressed and at attention, all in their neat dress uniforms, hats on their laps. All wincing as subtly as possible as they endured the cacophony with good manners.

At the end, their applause was quite vigorous with joy.

Queen Frigga rose, tilting her head gracefully to accept the accolades.

The space where Loki’s heart was now little more than a bit of cold stone stirred slowly at the sight of his mother’s lovely face and smile.  Even now there was a part of him that longed to sit with her and beg her to explain the lies that he had been told all of his life. Then he scoffed at himself.  She’d had

hundreds

of years to tell him the truth, what would make her do so now?

Still, when she spoke, there was a longing in him that no scorn could hide.  “Thank you. I have one last, special treat for you this afternoon. Commodore Rogers?”  She gestured for the Midgardian to stand before returning to her throne.

With a perfect bow, the golden idol of Midgard stood, looking serious and nervous.  Like Aenor, he was another of their up from the ranks comers and not very comfortable with the pomp and ceremony of their ancient Realm.  “Thank you, ma’am, er, Majesty. We thought, as a thank you, we might share with you some of the music from our home as well. Captain Breathnach?”

Loki sat up straighter.  Fortunately, confusion was a common expression on Magnus’s face.  He’d modeled the look on Thor and it had served him well over the last few days.

Aenor stood as well, also bowing neatly, looking surprisingly at ease.  “Majesty,” then she turned to several members of her crew who had come in a side door carrying musical instruments. She closed her eyes and nodded a few times, as they began to play.

Melodically.

Rhythmically.

Unembarassingly.

And then she sang.

“

A noblemen's fair daughter

Came down a narrow lane.

And met with Captain Wedderburn,

The keeper of the game

…”

Loki’s mouth hung open, not in an attempt to make Magnus look even more delightfully dim, but in purest shock.  His Aenor sang sweet and low and lovely as any bird taking wing in the morning sun. Instead, he leaned forward to watch her smile, her eyes bright as tea being poured into a pure white cup, entranced and flying on her voice as surely as his frigate did upon the winds.

At that moment all thought of leaving that day, even as the stolen Casket hummed away in his leather valise under his chair, fled.  After all, he had a good few days left before Jadwiga’s potion wore off.

But now, he thought, now he truly had to leave.  When the moon rose tonight he would be himself again, Asgardia fading from sight behind the

Horn

.

“Will I see you at the Masquerade tonight?”

Aenor’s voice was sleepy and warm, and it took more restraint than it should have to not climb back into bed and fuck her the rest of the way awake.

“I have not decided.  Not much of one for dress up and the like,” he said, making his voice jolly and vacuous.  “I may be away later. Family things and the like.” He waved his hand in the air. Like an ass.

“Ah,” she sat up, shaking her hair out and tempting him enormously, “and I know you care not for Prince Thor, and since he is the sponsor of the event...”

“How do you kno-”

“Any time he enters a room you find reason to leave it.  Are you in disfavor?” She lounged on her side, her breasts pulling delightfully from under the silken sheets.

“Not exactly.”  Other than he was a fugitive from the whole kingdom, and that he had stolen Thor’s magnificent ship.  The one Odin had gifted to the oaf after he had drunkenly destroyed his yacht trying to helm her himself during an especially ugly windstorm.

Granted, it had been due to Loki’s underhanded urging and an insinuation that Thor could not handle the yacht, but after all, that proved to be true.

“It’s too bad if you don’t attend.  I admit to some nervousness about the dancing and I thought having at least one sympathetic partner who knew the steps would be a comfort.  Her Majesty has arranged a few lessons for some of us this afternoon so we won’t look too foolish. Wish me luck at least.”

“You cannot dance?”

Now she sat up, the sheet an entirely lost cause, smiling at him with sleepy eyes that made his cock hard as Nidavellir steel.  “Oh, I can leg it to a hornpipe good as any sailor, and I know my way about a reel or even a quadrille, but your Asgardian dances?  Where you spin about two by two? No. Too outlandish and modern for me.”

“Not Asgardian.  Vanirii. Trust me, no one wants to experience traditional Asgardian dances.  Except on the battlefield. And fortunately for someone of your musical nature, the music will be Vanirii as well.”

She nodded, “And I am truly thankful for it.  Well, if you won’t attend tonight perhaps you can meet me here after.  It

is

my last night on Asgardia and would like to say it a proper farewell with you.  If you are not away on family business.” She waved her hand like he had, snorting a bit with laughter, then composing herself. “Will you, Magnus?  If you can?”

Aenor held out her hand for a shake, looking hopeful and maybe a bit shy.

Loki crossed the room and slid his hand into hers, turning it so he could press a kiss to the back of it but gave her no other answer.

Now on The Golden Horn

…

Amora had been riding Aenor like a shore leaved sailor on a twopenny doxy.

After leaving Loki she’d walked through the angry crowd of pirates on the deck, those working giving her evil looks, those idling following in her wake as she sought out the Asgardian called Lorelei to be assigned.  There were low words of menace and jeers that she took pride in. ‘Hunter,’ and ‘bitch’ being the two favorites.

They were not wrong, after all.

She found her quarry below decks supervising the cleaning of the Dark Elven long nines that needed special care to keep from exploding when they were fired.

Lorelei had turned in a cloud of red-gold hair and expensive perfume, looking surprised at the sight of Aenor and the ugly crowd of miscreants who gathered in too close for her liking, stinking of life on shipboard and looking ready for murder.  “I’ve been sent by Captain Laufeyson to be written into the crew.”

The beautiful woman and the rest of the pirates all stopped dead.  “What?”

“I’m part of the crew now.  Don’t I have to sign your articles or some other bit of nonsense that makes you all feel like you are proper sailors and not a bunch of mere thieves and murderers?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I have nowhere else to go.  Same as the rest of you.”

There was an unpleasant silence, then Lorelei shrugged, “Come with me then,” she gestured for her to follow, and they walked through the surprisingly orderly ship, still followed by now even more idlers.  In the great cabin, there was a massive table set up, along with cabinets holding the captain’s other plate and silver, and a great book set in green leather with an iron hasp holding it closed.

Lorelei easily hefted it to the table, though the way it slammed down it was clearly heavy, but then she was Asgardian, for all she was a pretty, delicate-looking miss with pearl earfobs.  She opened it in the middle and then paged through till she found what she was looking for. A list of the names of every cutthroat, cutpurse, rapscallion, traitor, rebel, blackguard, marauder, brigand, mercenary, rogue, skunk, and cur to sign on under Captain Loki.  From the roughest X to the most flowery and flourishing of calligraphy, every sort of signature was represented, as were the dregs of every Realms.

Save the Fire Giants.

Lorelei dipped a peacock quill - probably plucked from Loki’s own tail, Aenor thought sourly - in the blackest of ink, tapping it lightly.  “Here. If you’re woman enough.”

With a few deft, clear strokes, Aenor signed her soul away to the devil.  After all, she had nowhere to go now but Hell.

Probably Hel as well.  It was one of the only Realms that gave refuge to pirates, even as its Queen claimed otherwise.

There was a rough grumble from the foul assembly.  None of them seemed happy. Now that Aenor was officially one of them they could not act against her without bringing the wrath of the captain upon them, lest she was to act first.

Which Amora seemed determined to goad her into doing.  After Lorelei had signed her into the accords, she sent her to her sister’s quarters for work detail.  The ravishing mate had clearly heard that Aenor was one of them now. She smiled evilly at her, tossing a pile of old clothes - canvas trousers and an old cotton shirt, with a rag to cover her head - at her, “Change and then you’re over the side to scrape the hull.  Jumped up that you are, I figure you know how,” she sneered.

Aenor placed her knuckle to her forehead, offering her respect so intently it could not help but be understood as insolence and stripped out of Loki’s clothes then and there to change.  Afterwards, she grabbed the leather harness that would hold her as she hung over the open sky and cleaned the paint on the ship’s bottom.

It had been years since she had done such work, but as captain of the

Songbird

she had often climbed over the side in harness to examine the damage after battle or storm.  The winds were steady and low that morning, and the heaviness of the work, her hands and arms over her head as she scrubbed kept her mind from her predicament.  It felt good to have her legs free in the open air, and the breeze on her face, even as her shoulders burned.

Only when she all of the way beneath the ship, feeling the weight and size of it bearing down her, knowing that if the wind dropped the keel would split her in two did Aenor feel a bit of apprehension at her state.  Still, it hardly ever happened.

Afterward, she yanked the leather straps to be pulled up.  Nothing happened. She yanked again, harder. Still nothing.

For ten minutes by the moving of the sun, she was allowed to drag along the outside of the ship until two of the pirates, under the frowning eye of sailing master Hogun, brought her up.

Amora was there as well, “Just in time to help scrub the deck.  Or I should say, scrub the deck.”

The sun was at its height and it was normal for any ship to let the crew stay in the shade until the worst of the heat passed.  Which is what the rest did as Aenor got to her knees - no longer used to the work and quickly complaining - with a sponge in hand and a bucket at her hip and a covered tankard of manky water near to hand, half full and warm as spit.

At least the rest of the crew were happy to offer her polite suggestions as to how she might work better.

By the time it was done, even the soles of her feet were burned, but her hard hands were fine  She stood on them anyway, waiting at attention while Amora critiqued her work. “I would say I’m surprised, but the Midgardian navy standards are notoriously low.  Down to the kitchens. They need someone to deal with the slops.”

Aenor saluted very, very carefully before turning on a sore heel and taking herself to the galley.

By the time the crews’ slops were ready, even her hands were cut and raw, her calluses having had done her no good here, as she had never aided in the galley before.  The ship’s cook, a massive creature of no type she had seen before, covered in black scales, speaking in a voice that mostly hiss was happy to give her the rough edge of its tongue for the slightest error in cutting or the pouring of salt.  Yet when it was done the meal was shockingly good in smell and the bit of it she had been able to taste before filling the plates of the glaring pirates who filed through the mess in a sullen line.

Certainly, it was much better than anything had on a ship of the line for the common seamen.

The respect she gave to the Cooking Creature was genuine and polite.

She had just filled her own bowl when Amora’s voice rang out.  “Guard duty until the meal is done, Breathnach. And Bor help you if there is trouble and the signal bell isn’t rung sharpish.”

Her salute was so perfect that the watching pirates inhaled as one at the profundity of its insultingness.

At least the deck was quiet and growing dark and peaceful in the gloaming, and Aenor was too tired to think on her sorry fate.

When she was finally relieved by Helmsman Bonden who had thoughtfully brought her a plate and a mug of grog, her exhaustion made her too sick to eat it.  Taking the few bites of bread and sips of rum that she could manage, she stumbled to her berth.
 
Loki would normally have invited some of his officers to dine with him in the great cabin, but tonight he had wanted his peace.  It had caused him more wrenching deep within his gut to watch Amora put Aenor through her paces, and even more to watch Aenor do each duty with perfection and the unconscious arrogance of someone who had earned all they had through competence and a strong spine.

He fiddled with the excellent meal, doing it no justice.  Loki loved to eat lavishly, which was why he paid the exorbitant price demanded by the former head chef of the Silver Tower on Vanaheim.  That he had rescued it from being executed for poisoning a food critic mattered not at all to the ungrateful creature, but Loki paid anyway.  It was worth it.

Pushing the plate away, he went back to his own quarters to brood and drink and think of the next part of his plans.

Just within his door, he tripped over a pile of stinking, filthy rags.  The keg scented water he used a little magic to keep hot always in case he wanted to bathe had been poured into his very expensive, enameled cistern, as had Aenor.  She had lifted one of her feet from the water and was gently soaping between her sore looking toes, singing softly to herself -
 
“Birds maybe singing in my eyes today

Sweet flowers blossom when I smile

But my soul is stormy and my heart blows wild

My sweetheart rides a ship on the skies…”
 
He stopped, leaning hard on the door frame.  Gods of the gods, but even hoarse with tiredness her voice was honey-sweet and husky.

The words trailed away and she changed to her other foot.

“Good, just in time to get my back.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Aenor rinsed the sponge in a little bowl of fresh water that was balanced precariously on the chair next to the lovely slipper tub.  It was certainly not big enough for Loki himself to get a full soak. Not with those great, long Asgardian bones of his, yet for her, it was a perfect size.

It was probably booty from a Midgardian ship, she thought ruefully, feeling a bit guilty for how much she was enjoying her soak.

Truth to be told, she would have sat in an old horse trough and let someone dump water over her head tonight, was that her only choice, she was that dirty and tired.

“Well, come on then,” she shook the damp sponge in Loki’s direction, not looking at him. Doing so splashed some of his fine things.  Splashing them more than she already had struggling to fill the tub. The big barrel of magicked hot water was a bit of a challenge for her muscles, especially after a day scrubbing and stirring and serving.

“You’re making quite the mess,” she heard his boots stomp towards her, and then the sound of his shrugging out of his great coat, all green leather, and black braiding.  “Whilst I cannot claim to be an expert on the workings of the Midgardian navy I do not hesitate to assume that it is not considered the done thing for a common sailor to invite themselves into the captain’s cabin and avail themselves of his belongings?”

Aenor half turned, still holding out the sponge.  He had also taken off his jacket but left on his elaborately brocaded weskit.  With a few quick, tidy motions he had removed the complicated cravat that foamed beneath his chin, draping it near to hand.  “I’m a pirate now,” she smiled at him pleasantly. “I understood the custom was to take what we want and hang for it later. Am I wrong?”

After rolling up his sleeves to the elbow, certainly to both save the silk and show off the pale perfection of his arms, he roughly took the sponge from her, putting a broad hand between her shoulder blades, firmly pushing her forward.  Then he was scrubbing her back nearly as hard as she had the decks. The pressure and the scratch and the heat felt wonderful, softening her sore muscles. “There is such a thing as honor amongst thieves…” he muttered.

She laughed hard enough to snort, tried to stop, and then took to laughing again.  “Really? …” She tried to add something caustic but could not and simply burst out again.

Loki leaned close against her back, no doubt soaking himself, hissing in her ear, “As well as showing a wise fear of your captain.”

A hot thrill shuddered through her exhausted body, “Do you want me to fear you, then?” she asked softly.  Adding in a tarter tone, “If you’re done with my back my hair is filthy. Close as you are, I’m sure you know.”

Close as he was, she could feel his lips curl into a thin smile against the shell of her ear, and a soft huff of air as he held in a laugh.

Then his hands wrapped over the top of her shoulders, pushing down.  Her bottom slipping, Aenor found her head beneath the water, taking in a soapy mouthful.  After a moment he let go.

Arms and legs flailing, she grasped the side of the tub and pulled herself up, sputtering and spitting out water.  “What-”

Loki poured something cold, smelling of juniper and roses, onto the top of her head, “You said you wanted your hair cleaned.  It is ex

tremely

foul.”

His voice was as innocent as a babe.

Ha!  That one had probably been corrupt in leading strings, she thought bitterly.

Before she could round on him or retaliate, his long fingers started to work through her hair, the tips digging with firm gentleness into her scalp.  Within moments her whole body went soft and lax, so quickly that it made her muscles ache from their release. White foam eased down from her head, sliding fragrantly over her breasts and arms.

That she knew there was actual magic in his touch did not diminish her pleasure a wit, and a groan of relief was followed by a moan of bliss.  For a few seconds, Aenor did not think of where she was, or why, there was just the soft rocking of the Horn as she sailed on an easy wind, the crackle of the small grated fire, Loki’s fingers, and the warmth of the water.  She settled back with closed eyes.

After a time, he stopped and reached for the clean water.  She tensed, certain she was about to be doused, but instead, he carefully poured it over her hair, using his hand to shield her eyes.  “Sit up and lean forward.”

Moving slowly, not trusting him, she did and he rinsed her there as well and then offered his hand to help her rise.  She ignored it, standing in a sluice of water, climbing out all ungainly, “Hand me a cloth, then, lest I drip even more on your fine rug.”

“It’s seen worse than water,” he tossed a bath sheet at her.  Putting a foot on the edge of the tub to dry it, the pain of the pressure on it made her hiss.  Damn but that was not a good place to be burned, even though her thick skin.

Loki huffed and shook his head, his lips thin with exasperation, jerking the cloth back out of her hands, “Sit,” he pointed at the large chair near the fire.

No, it was not a chair.  It was a throne, grand and gilded and big enough for Loki to sit with his legs spread wide and even have company on his lap.  Both things she knew he liked.

“That’s an order, pirate,” he added when she did not move sharply enough for him.

Trying not to care that she was soaking the magnificent silk and velvet upholstery, Aenor sat on the very edge after carefully covering the whole throne-like seat with the drying cloth.  As she arranged it, from the corner of her eye she could see Loki pulling off his boots.

To her everlasting shock, when she had seated herself the arrogant pirate king knelt at her feet and began to dry them.  He moved with care, drying each toe, then the rest of the foot, and the ankle. Between each, he would stop and rub her sore arches.

Her calves were then treated to the same care.  Then her thighs. Aenor’s muscles softened and her breathing grew deeper as he moved higher, nudging her legs apart as he went.

Not that she was against the idea or his destination, but she had her own plans for how they would get there tonight.

“Loki….” Aenor reached to take the cloth from him, but he snatched it back with a small, dry laugh.

“Now, Your Highness, you know I am not but your humble servant.  If you desire me to stop, you need but say the word.”

Anger, acid hot chased by the deepest cold, surged through her veins and she lashed out to kick him over.

Loki caught her foot and pressed a kiss to the inside of her ankle, nipping slightly.  “Not as good a memory for you as ‘tis for me, I take it?”

Two years before on Asgardia

…

Loki had almost finished packing his belongings in the rooms he had taken at The Hunter’s Moon, one of the only inns that met his exacting standards.

As well as being easily accessible by the skip he had left to return him to the

Horn

, should a quick escape be needed.

Near the door Hogan waited, a hand on the mace that dangled from his belt.  Though he was also wanted on Asgardia his quiet ways and dress meant he could disappear into any crowd with little effort.  Although as sailing master he was high enough rank that he should not be expected to fetch and carry he was one of the only men that Loki trusted enough to have protect his back and handle his effects when he was away from the ship.

With a snap, he closed the lid on his trunk.  “Load this on the skip. I’ll be there presently.”

After Hogan climbed out of the window - why pay for the room if he did not have to, Loki reasoned - he found himself looking after him as the soft gloaming fell over the capitol.  Holding the curtain so the rising moon would not touch his skin and break Jagwiga’s spell he took in the view.

The golden peak of the palace could just be seen over the other rooftops.  It had been placed to catch the last possible gleam of the sun each day, sending gilded rays over the city.  It was just as beautiful now as when he had been one of its princes. Maybe more so, being it was lost to him forever.

The palace would be in a bustle, preparing for the fancy dress ball.  Every servant would be running to decorate, to clean, to cook, to pour, to dress hair, to lace gowns, to tie cravats, to wait.

Deep in the midst of it, Aenor would be getting ready as well.  He wondered how her dance lesson had gone that afternoon. As a high ranking member of the Midgardian navy, and the second highest ranking Midgardian female attending after the ambassador, she would be an eagerly sought after partner.

He wondered if his father would dance with her.  The idea amused him.

He wondered if Thor would.  That idea did not.

She would be standing in her undergarments, polite but bored as the maids Frigga would have sent to her were fussing with her gown, her hair, perhaps even jewels, depending on the nature of the costume.  He had not asked her what she would be wearing, nor had she told him. Perhaps she thought to surprise him with it if he met her for a rendezvous after the ball was over.

What would the Queen have picked for Aenor.  Something military? A legendary hero, perhaps, strong and bold to match her daring nature.  Or would she think differently and pick a more romantic costume, someone girlish, or seductive.  For though it was not obvious to a dull eye, within she was both of those things and ever so much more.

Grimacing, Loki hit the frame of the window with the side of his fist.  Damn all things, but why had he not asked how she would be dressed?

Would she dance with Thor?

Hogan appeared again, “Anything else to go, Captain?”

Loki picked up the leather satchel at his feet and tossed it to his sailing master, “Take the Casket.  Keep it with you at all times and don’t let anyone know what it is. Take my things back to the Horn and whilst you are there fetch my best back for me.  The newest suit I had made on Vanaheim that I haven’t worn yet. And bring my cutlass. I grow tired of this thing,” he said, unbuckling the rapier that he had worn as Magnus and tossing it as well.

He held up a finger, “And my good boots.  The ones with the gold buckles.”

Hogan, as ever, was silent, but his expression spoke eloquently so Loki answered, “I’m attending the fete at the palace and I must outshine them all.”

With a jerk he pulled open the curtains, holding his arms out to embrace the moonlight, which paled and smoothing his skin, the night sky which poured over his hair like ink from a well, and turned the pools of his eyes to emeralds.

He smiled at his reflection in the window.  It was good to be himself again.
 
Aenor stood on the edge of the ballroom, a cup of spiced wine in one hand and a fan working quickly in the other.

By Hermes but her costume was hot.  Needless to say, the wine was not helping.  Nor was the devilishly amused look on the face of her first mate Merisa, who was happily drinking from a tankard of ale and greatly enjoying herself.

Then again, she was dressed as the Midgardian hero Robin of the Hood, in comfortable trews, a short tunic of Lincoln green that looked perfect with her dark skin, and a jaunty hat with a long feather perched on her thick black curls.  Her dark brown eyes danced with glee at the sight of her captain and dear friend thus discomfited.

“I will pay you back for every laugh in duty and late shifts, Galician,” Aenor muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

“Worth it, sir,” Merisa muttered back, sputtering into her ale.

Aenor sighed, trying to keep her shoulders from slumping, “Do I really look so foolish?” she asked, despairing of the answer.

Merisa bumped shoulders with her, “You look corking, sir.  Suits you to the ground, save you’re so miserable in it. I’d have given a months back-pay for that costume.”

“Would I had known, we could have swapped,” Aenor said morosely, looking at the yards of fabric making up her skirts, while she straightened the velvet domino that covered her like a bandit’s mask.

The amount of fabric that had gone into the skirt alone was probably more cloth than all of the clothing she and her brothers and parents had had whilst she was growing up.

Merisa shook her head, “That would be an insult to the queen.  She picked that for you with her own graceful hand, she did.”

Her lips quirking with annoyance, Aenor put out a hand, “Give me that ale, at least.”

They switched drinks, and Aenor drained the tankard and motioned to one of the endless number of servants moving with silent perfection through the swirling, madly dressed crowd.

All of her displeasure with the gown aside, it fit her perfectly.  Indeed, the bodice was like a second skin, but made of silk so supple yet nearly strong as armor, so that she could move with no hindrance, and the… the… she was not sure of the term, so perhaps the undercarriage of the entire contraption was formed so the weight of those wide green skirts with their layers of ruffles and furbelows sat easy on her hips and moved effortlessly.

Especially good was that it was wide and long enough that she was able to wear her top boots beneath them, even though the maids had protested and had been scandalised.  By the long blade strapped to her thigh as well. They had stood holding a pair of tiny slippers that Aenor knew she could not more walk in than fly, let alone dance, but she had held fast and eventually won out.

It was not that she minded wearing beautiful dresses, Aenor like them fine, although certainly none as beautiful and extravagant as this one.  However, Asgardian style was more lavish by far than even the most decadent on Midgard, and she had not worn anything like this fashion before, so she rather feared that it would be too much dress for her when combined with her rudimentary dance instructions.

Not that she had done much dancing.  There had been a processional pavane to enter the ball, where Aenor had entered on the hand of Commodore Rogers just behind the Midgardian ambassador Lady Mariah being escorted by Prince Thor.  Once in the ballroom, it had turned into a rather stately reel. After that, there had been a solemn basse dance led by their Majesties, which she had danced with Captain Aubrey. After that, she had promised the galliard at midnight to Prince Thor only because it was such a great honor that he had asked her.

No doubt he had been urged by his mother.  The Queen had taken quite a shine to Aenor, though they had interacted little.  Certainly the choice of her costume - the full court regalia of an Asgardian princess, complete with coronet - was proof of that.

She could only hope that after that this triumph for Midgard she would be able to slip back to her rooms and out of this full sailed rigging in peace.  Hoping against hope for perhaps some company on this final night on Asgardia, hoping against hope that if he came to her she might finally unravel the mystery that was Magnus and learn at least a little of his truth as he had learned so much of hers.

For now, however, she must stand and wait and smile and be gracious.

Watching the fast, amusing dance, Aenor sighed.  It might be fun to dance just a little...

The servant had just returned with her ale when one of the officers from the Vanirii navy -  dressed in the uniform of a Fire Giant admiral, complete with satin and velvet flames coming from his head -

The Gazellette

offered a respectful bow to both Aenor and Merisa and then asked the first mate to dance.  She happily shoo’ed her mate along, knowing that she would enjoy a turn or two with a handsome stranger.

Aenor laughed at the startled sound from her friend as she was whipped into the fray of the fast bransle that had just begun.  “My, my, what has court etiquette come to when a princess is left unattended where any ruffian might accost her?”

A deep voice like whiskey and honey purred in her ear.

Startled, and not used to be snuck up upon, Aenor whirled, reaching for the cutlass that she was not wearing.  Then, remembering that she was attending a ball with most of the fanciest people imaginable, she smoothed her skirts with a gloved hand and set her tankard on the tray of a passing servant.

Before her was a pirate.

Not just any pirate.

The most infamous, daring, and hunted pirate in the skies of all of the Realms, who was to be her specific quarry.

The Pirate King himself, Captain Loki of the

Golden Horn

in all of his splendor.

His famous long, crow-black hair gleamed under the crystal chandeliers each lit with a hundred candles, as he bowed with a deep flourish of green velvet, brocade, and foaming lace, his raffish hat complete with feathers said to be from a griffin’s wing in his leather gloved hand.  The skin at his wrist and that she could see around the half-mask that covered his eyes was as pale and perfect as alabaster.

The costume was brave.  Inspired. Perfectly rendered, all the more because the man wearing it was startlingly beautiful.  Aenor narrowed her eyes, startlingly beautiful and oddly familiar.

Righting himself, he chuckled ruefully, “Forgive me, princess, I did not mean to startle you so. Or offend your regal sensibilities, but you looked so forlorn and so lovely I could not help myself, I had to approach.”  He turned, putting his hat back and then gesturing towards the dancers in one graceful motion. “If I may be even bolder, would you deign to lower yourself to take a turn with a mere pirate?”

His voice was familiar as well.  Teasing at the edge of her ear, making her blood run warm.

He cocked his head slightly, his eyes narrowing under the mask, his thin mouth quirking into an arrogant line of amusement.  She had seen that look before.

In bed.

Oh, how clever!  Too clever for the daytime Magnus, but just in line with her bewildering, intoxicating nighttime friend.  That he had dyed his hair and used some form of makeup to pale his skin was impressive enough, but something about the color of the mask he wore even made his blue eyes appear the deepest shade of emerald.

Aenor was ever so impressed and wished to praise him, which she knew he would take great pleasure in. “Mag-,” she started to say, overjoyed.

She stopped herself.  If he wished to play, she could play as well.

Offering him her arm, she nodded graciously, imitating the same motion she had seen the Queen make over the last few days.  Meaning nothing and everything at once. “Perhaps later. At the moment I require an escort to the gardens. Being a delicate, refined princess I find myself overwhelmed by the crowd as well as being incapable of doing anything without aid.  Will you offer me succor, my good rogue?”

The corner of his mouth raised with amusement, and he gently laid her hand upon his arm, leaning down so his lips were but inches from hers, speaking softly, “I am your servant in this and all things, Your Highness.”

For just a moment there was a breathtaking sincerity to him that made Aenor blink and wonder and wish.

On the Golden Horn

…

Loki knew that he had gone too far when he saw real, raw hurt in Aenor’s eyes.  Hurt he had only seen there once before. Hurt also caused by him.

She jerked her foot free from his hand and stood, stepping awkwardly around him, gathering her dirty clothing from the ground and shaking them out so she could step into the trousers.  There was a tremor of rage in her shoulders and he knew that to try and touch her now would be a serious and most likely painful mistake.

He stood slowly, holding out a placating hand but moving no closer.  “Wait. Please.” She ignored him. Loki straightened, “That’s an order,” he said in his captain’s voice.  Though it would make her yet angrier he would rather she stayed hating him more than left hating him only a little less.

Pulling her shirt on, she turned, snapping her heels together, making her respect and standing at attention, looking somewhere over his left shoulder.  Her eyes were shuttered to him, her expression sternly bland.

“Aenor, I-”

For perhaps the fourth time in his life Loki could think of nothing to say.

The ship’s alarm bell rang.  Three sharp, quick bongs, followed by three answering whistles from the Bos'n's call.

“Thank Bor…” he muttered.  Then he grabbed his boots to pull them on.  “Hear that?”

“Sir,” she nodded.

“Three bells answered by three whistles means prey’s been sighted.  Now we get to see what kind of pirate you’ll be, my stake. Get to your station.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It was only his dignity as captain that kept Loki’s hands from Aenor as they retreated to his cabin, leaving his crew to drink and carouse the dregs of the night away as they left the limping

Is Draugr

in their wake.

His dignity and the certainty that his woman, already exhausted before their battle with the Jotnar, would want to just fall into his bed and sleep.

The moment he stepped into the cabin behind her, Aenor whirled about and threw herself against him, slamming his back into the door that then slammed closed.  One of her hands snagged deep in his hair, knocking his hat off, and she closed her fist, using it to pull his mouth down onto hers. The other worked its way under his coat, his weskit, his shirt, desperately seeking his naked skin, her nails digging in.

“Thank fucking Bor!

” he thought, bending his knees a bit so he could gather an arm under her arse, pulling her up to wrap her long legs about his hips, spinning so she was against the door now and he could grind his stiff, leather-clad prick against that sweetest, neediest place at the peak of her cunt.

She moaned into his mouth and pulled his hair harder, making him moan back and reward her with more grinding….

They were both filthy, with soot and sweat from the fray, stinking of smoke and powder, and he was going to burst, in addition to her still wearing the disgusting clothing she had labored in all day.  Yet none of Loki’s legendary fastidiousness rebelled at the thought. Instead, with her still wrapped all about him, he carried her to the high, elaborately carved table where he would write and consult his maps, stretching her out like a feast that he could gorge on and on, and never find his fill…

Two hours earlier

…

Aenor followed in Loki’s wake. The chaotic mob of pirates moving this way and that in preparation for theft and murder unthinkingly parted for their master as he moved to the quarterdeck.  They were quiet, eerily so since sound could carry shockingly far on a clear night. Moving under the few lights that hung over the deck, they were a nightmare for any good Navyman, hardened, capable thieves of every nation and species bent under the will of their ruthless captain, with no limits to what they might do.

On the quarterdeck Amora and the sailing master Hogun stood passing a brass spyglass back and forth.

She quietly growled at the sight of it.  Midgardian made, doubtless booty from another poor ship that they had raided and sent to the Downdeep.

Loki put out a hand for the glass, “Ship?”

Amora grinned like a wolf baring its teeth.  “Jotunn. The

Is Draugr,

sir.”

Hogun nodded once, “Riding high on the breeze, sir.”

Aenor felt relief and squinted into the darkness, just able to make out the lights of another ship in the far distance.  Riding high meant it wasn’t carrying much cargo, and that it was Jotunn meant she could continue to play at being a pirate without guilt.  Midgard had been at war with Jotunheim for generations, since the Frost Giants had first appeared, taking slaves and attempting to colonize the northern lands of her home.

If it were not for the aid of Asgardia in those days they most like would have succeeded, but the centuries had been kind to innovative Midgard and less so to hidebound, traditional Jotunheim.

Still, if that ship was the

Is Draugr…

“She’s a Man-of-war!  You can’t think to take her!” she exclaimed.

Loki lowered the glass and put up a hand to stop Amora from striking Aenor for her insolence.  “Stake… please… I’m not new to the work I turn my hand to. Besides which that particular ship is not just a Man-of-war, she’s the very Man-of-war that delivers Jotunn iron to the forges of Nidavellir.”

He cocked his head at her, an eyebrow up.

Aenor felt her eyes grow wide.  If she was riding high she could not be carrying a hold full of iron pigs, which meant the delivery had been made and she was carrying the payment.

Gemstones.  Useless to the metal-hungry dwarves but priceless to the Jotunns who fought on too many wars on too many fronts and were forever in need of buying more food, more ships, and more slaves to power them.

Unlike all of the other Realms, the Jotnar insisted on a navy made of a few of the largest and heaviest ships rather than fast, midsized raiders and plenty of them.  Frost Giants lacked the finesse magic necessary to fill the massive sails that ships of that size needed to stay a-air, so rather they used slaves manning a system of powerful fans like oars to generate the wind they needed.

Cruelly, once a slave was seated and his or her hands set to the oar a curse took over and they could not stop rowing unless the ship’s slavemaster was to free them long enough to drink a little water or catch the least amount of sleep that could be survived on.  When the oars burnt them out, the still living but broken slaves were tossed overboard.

Loki smiled and nodded, “Yes.  Now you understand. Amora, since you have not assigned Aenor to a gun-crew yet she will be with us when we board, tell Kirik she will be commanding from the quarterdeck when we do so, and Bonden will stay at the helm.  Send Lorelei and Hjalmir below, we’ll be using the Elven long nines.”

The beautiful blonde narrowed her eyes but nodded, “Sir,” she made her obedience and moved to follow his commands when he stopped her.

“And Amora, bring Aenor a cutlass and a brace of pistols.  And some boots, while you’re at it.”

“Sir.”  This time the obedience was stiffer, but she still moved quickly.  The thought of casks full of rubies and the like no doubt dancing in her greedy head.

“You trust me with sword AND shot?” Aenor asked, surprised that he had so effortlessly decided to arm her.

Green eyes danced with a disturbing light.  He was eager for battle, mad for it even. “Against the crew of a slave-powered ship?  I remember your thoughts on slavery, my stake, your good right arm bearing a sword, and I see the anger burning in you like a bonfire.  Tyr help the Jotnar.” Not looking away from her, he spoke to Hogun over his shoulder, “Call for silence, douse the extra light. Time to call the wind.”

Despite her aching dislike of him, Aenor’s heart raced at Loki’s words.  Midgardians being magic weak needed the power of a hundred witches weaving to create the great sails that lifted their ships, and the work of alchemical generators to harness the winds when they were recalcitrant and mulishly refused to obey.  Most other Realms had a few sorcerers or witches on their crews to work the air when needed, after easily creating the sails themselves.

But part of Loki’s legend was that he could steal the very wind from his enemies masts and use it for his own.  Even when hunting him she had longed to see if it were true.

Silence fell on the

Horn

but for the creaking of wood, the slow flap of canvas, and the tightening and slacking of ropes.  Taking off his hat Loki moved to the prow and then climbed out to the very point of it, standing above the ship’s famed figurehead, a magnificent woman with raven hair, dressed in green and gilt armor, with gargantuan golden horns curving up from her head where they framed the captain.

Aenor rushed to the prow, standing on the deck behind him.  Loki stripped off his gloves and let them fall into darkness.  He placed one elegant, be-ringed hand upon one of those horns, and raised the other so it was held out like he was offering it to be taken.

In the moonlight, his pale hand gleamed, and she could see his fingers curve in and he made a coyly beckoning gesture with his trigger finger, whispering seductively, “Come to me, darling, my beauty, my love….”

Within her, Aenor’s heart twisted.

He stretched his arm out and made a languid, grasping gesture as if around a rope and pulled, turning to on his heel, fearless of the Downdeep yawning black below him, flinging the nothing in his hand towards the back of the

Horn

.

From the still air, a sudden buffet struck Aenor from hair to soles, nearly knocking her over as she wrapped her hands around the rail.  So fierce was it she could actually see it curve beneath the sails rather than push them the wrong way, skim over the ship sending lanterns and loose ropes rocking wildly, flying off of the stern, then turn back as if rushing to return to Loki’s hand but instead filling the sails, sending the whole boat careening wildly towards their prey.

The rattle of the ropes upon the canvas sounded like the growling or perhaps purring, of some great cat.

Standing as if on firm earth, his hair a cloud of black above his head, Loki laughed into the wind and with one finger steered the slavish air to move them where they would come along sides of the Man-of-war in range of the long nines that would fire dark magic that would kill the

Is Draugr’s

crew without harming the ship herself.

Jumping lightly down beside her, Loki smiled smugly at Aenor.  “You know how good I am with my hands…” he said. Reaching out his hat flew to his hand and he called for the waiting cabin boy who was carrying the weapons and footgear he had ordered for her.

Holding the high-topped boots, he took a knee, “Shall I…?”

With an aggravated sigh Aenor leaned on his broad shoulder and let him slide the boots onto her sore feet.

They were slightly too small.

Aenor was going to enjoy killing Amora sooner rather than later.  But not tonight.

She let the captain fix the cutlass at her hip and the bandoliers holding the pistols about her, the backs of his air cold fingers stroking her breast a bit longer than it should have, jolting Aenor with a surprise of pleasure as they came up upon the hip of the unprepared Jotunn ship.
 
The Man-of-war had, like her smaller sisters, gun banks on both port and starboard, and their crews could, if they were prepared, bring the guns quickly from one side to the other, allowing the guns to be cooled and reloaded as they took turns blasting.  By the rules of engagement, it was considered… ungentlemanly to fire upon the crews who were defenseless whilst moving their guns.

Loki had never understood exactly what kind of accuracy these imaginary gentlemen must be capable of to expect their cannon shot to not hit everything in its path on the gun deck.

Of course,

his

guns were capable of such accuracy.  But fuck their rules. Sharklike they came along sides the Jotunns.  Loki ran across the quarterdeck, sprang upon the rail overlooking the main deck, calling, “Lights and let fly!”

The order flew to Hogan who sent a powder monkey below whilst the lanterns were relit within and without the

Horn

, blinding the unsuspecting Jotnar sailors.  He could feel in his gut when the long nines, powered and unused for too long, let loose with their lashes of dark magic, aimed directly into the gun ports of the Man-of-War.

Cries of surprise and pain erupted from the

Is Draugr

as the surviving gunners tried to make some answer, whilst above deck the Jotunn marines assembled along the rail to sweep them with musket fire.

Drawing his cutlass Loki laughed and pointed towards the other ship, shouting to his pirates, all tense as racehorses ready to be given their heads, throbbing to run, “Board them, my pixies.  Do your worst!”

Then, turning to meet Aenor’s hot, eager eyes, he nodded, “After you, my bloodthirsty stake.”

Without a word she ran across the quarterdeck and reached the nearest boarding plank with alacrity, firing to clear the deck before them, then drawing her sword and throwing herself from the side of the board into a deep part of the already wild fray.

For a moment, though he was eager too, Loki held back to watch with admiration as she took on the larger foes.  The Jotunn were not so agile as his Midgardian but they were long reached and fearless. She danced between them, dodging and parrying those blades of ice they produced from nothingness.  Centuries of war with the Frost Giants had taught her people to not let themselves be touched, to use those long legs as targets, aiming for the back of the knee, the frail part of the heel.

With one quick slice, she opened the femoral artery of one giant who toppled into one of his fellows.  Using that moment of bad footing she tripped the second Jotunn up, stabbing down, and then the battle closed between her and Loki’s view and he too boarded the

Is Draugr,

blade drawn.

The battle was short, and only to be remembered in flashes of action when thought on later.  What could be seen amidst the smoke and tangle of bodies and the night’s darkness.

Grak, his Kronen raider, laughing at the look on a Jotunn’s face when he tried to freeze Grak’s rocky skin with his touch, then picking up the Jotunn opponent and tossing him to the Downdeep.  The Vanirii twins - Antoinetta and Anton - mirroring each other’s motions with their long knives as they carved straight through a line of marines. Amora casting her favorite spell, the one that blocked the barrels of her enemies guns, blowing their hands and faces off when they tried to fire.

Aenor, killing with a Navyman’s easy efficiency.

The Jotnar Captain spotting Loki and roaring a challenge from across the deck.

He wanted single combat.

Loki rolled his eyes, pulling his favorite dagger from his sleeve, he kissed the hilt and threw her with perfection into the left eye of the hilariously surprised officer.

That pretty much put paid to the rest of the fight.  The Frost Giants did not value ambition in their underlings, so the captains of their ships were the first and last master of all, killing anyone who might offer them any competition.  Once dead there was no one capable of taking his place and the fight slowed and stalled as the crew realized that their head had been chopped off.

Then it was just accepting the grudging surrender of the first mate, making the giants dump the bodies of their dead, and having a little fun.

The crew of the Man-of-war was lined up on their knees on the deck, some of the

Horn’

s crew guarding them, the rest moving the gemstones, as well as most of the ship’s supplies and water stores onto the

Horn.

Loki walked slowly back and forth before the kneeling giants, their heads now at level with his, but the effect was still lowering for them.  “Now, I could just scuttle you and let you fall to the Downdeep, but where is the joy in that, I ask you? Which of you handsome chaps is the slave master? I so hope he was not killed yet.”

Because they had no wit, the rest of the remaining giants looked to one of their number who scowled and rose.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Aenor’s hands tighten on her cutlass and pistol, her eyes filled with murder.

A little showing off was in order, thought Loki.  Though, when was it not?

“Excellent!”  Loki stepped to him, ripping the ensorcelled flail that controlled their slaves, shot the giant in the head, shoving his dying body overboard with a broad smile. “You fine, icy fellows will so enjoy rowing.  Most efficacious exercise, or so I understand.”

Quickly he tucked his hand into one of the capacious pockets he had added to all of his coats, whilst scanning the others on deck.  No one seemed to have noticed the azure cast his skin had taken on when it touched the bare skin of the slave master’s chest.

That was purest luck.

He had let himself be distracted by his delectable Pirate Queen-to-be.  And he rather feared it would not be the last time.
 
Now, in the captain’s cabin …

Loki put Aenor’s back to his table and then ripped the blood and ash stained shirt she wore from her, and took her right breast into his mouth, sucking hard enough to make her back arch off of the wood.  She wrapped both of her legs around one of his, sliding so she could rub the swollen and sodden part of her against the ridge of his thigh muscle.

It was a common enough thing for any soldier or sailor to be full of sap and vigour when the battle was done.  Many were the aftermath of a good hunt where Aenor would turn a blind eye to her crew offering each other some noisy and healthful comfort.  Indeed, in her earlier days on shipboard, she had not been above such herself.

Once she had made captain it had been naught but her own fingers, and fantasies about Loki that she could no more stop from coming than she could fly, that had offered her succor and surcease of tension.

Nipping hard at her nipple, Loki wrapped a hand about her hip, pushing her down.  Leaning close over her, he spoke with a smug smile, yet she could see his knuckles were pale with strain, “Now, now, girl….  Let’s not waste any of those vexing orgasms of yours on anything but my cock….”

His mouth covered hers again, his eager tongue stroking hers, her teeth scraping his lower lip.  Hungry for each other, they kissed throats and jaws and ears and then mouths again.

Loki loosed his long, beauteous cock, showing shades of red and blue and purple, was already leaking, the clear fluid wetting his fingers.  “He needs this,” Loki said, untying her breeches and reaching in to cup her possessively, “just as badly as she needs him. They are both weeping with want.”

Long fingers teased at her pearl, almost tickling, and her cunt spasmed, desperate for something to hold fast.  She kicked free of the cloth around her ankles, writhing on the cool wood. Its very smoothness was a provocation.  Not caring about anything but the terrible need growing where he stroked and touched, even as he fondled himself, Aenor shamelessly humped against his hand.

“Fuck me,” she ordered.

“Say please,” he gritted out, his face soaked with sweat and smutted with gunpowder ash.

Snarling, Aenor grabbed his cravat, wrapping it about her hand and pulling herself up by it so their mouths were inches apart, “Princesses don’t fucking beg their servants, do they?  They are served. So service me.”

So close were they, when he grinned madly she could feel his teeth on her lips, “Gladly.”

The force of his thrust sent her inches across the table, and only the firm grip of her strong legs on his hips kept them together.

His hand remained busily working between them.  As he fucked her roundly, stroking fast and long, he twisted his fingers about her jewel.  “I think you must come three times, stake. Once,” he pinched her there, almost hard enough to hurt, enough to take something sensitive and make it unbearable, at the same moment he scooped upwards with his long thighs so he touched a place inside that made her convulse about him, the pleasure hitting her like a poleax, her hips helplessly engaged against him as the gratification stretched on.

“That was for how handy you were with those pistols.”  His voice was ragged as he kept thrusting until she stopped.  Then he pulled out, making her whimper, making himself groan, and flipped her over so she was off-kilter on the table, holding to the edges for dear life as he entered her again.

More roughly.

His hands covered hers, threading their fingers together, and they held on together.

Now, from this angle, he was reaching more deeply.  His loins met her arse as he bottomed out in her. Over and over.  The slapping sound of their meeting flesh was strange music and she helplessly whimpered against the wood.

“Twice,” he, hoarse with strain, like velvet mixed with sanding paper, “for the way your hand look wrapped about the hilt of that cutlass.”

He bit the back of her neck.

Hard.

Aenor howled, the force of her peak breaking her voice.

Now he pulled her limp body up, those damn’d Asgardian muscles meaning he could fuck himself with her.  One hand covered her breast, the other went back to it’s continuing ministrations on her skittle. There was no art to his motions, only motion itself, ever faster, ever harder, as if he were punishing her, himself, the table, possibly even the floor beneath them.

Aenor wished to know what had earned them all such punishment, that she might forever more misbehave in that way.

“Third,” his rasp was barely to be heard above the depths of their breathing and the mindless moans they now both shared, “for two years of the cruelest teasing any man had to endure from his lover.”

At that he lifted her up until she barely held the tip of his manhood within her and then dropped her upon him, with only an arm about her waist, tilting her back and keeping her in place.

It was like a spear within her, finding a new secret, so fluid gushed from her, soaking them both, spattering on the ground, and she clasped him firm, her cunt fluttering as fast as her heart raced.

Oh, to die from such a thrust every day.

Now there was nothing but shouts as he came with her, holding her without as tight as she did within.

When the last of the surges of pleasure finished rocking them, Loki gently turned her head towards his, offering the chastest of kisses upon her lips.  On weak legs, he carried them both to his bed, where they were both asleep before they could consider the need for blankets.
 
In the morning Loki woke to an empty bed.

Aenor sat at his small writing desk, wrapped in his favorite banyan, the one embroidered with a great, jade and violet sky serpent.  The room smelled of juniper and roses, so she had bathed again. Her feet were tucked up and she was eating an apple and reading something with great concentration.

“Come back to bed.  Bring the rest of the apples,” he cajoled.

She looked up at him, frowning.  “What is this?” In her hand was a green leather ledger.  The one he used as his diary.

Damn.

Her eyes were narrow, “Why don’t you tell me again why you want to descend to Titan, Your Highness?  And perhaps you could try the truth this time. For novelties sake, if naught else.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Two Years Before On Asgardia …

Loki placed his hand near the small of Aenor’s back, not quite touching but close enough that she could feel the heat coming from him.

After all, that was how a lowly pirate escorted an Asgardian princess through a crowded ballroom, by not sullying her pristine loveliness with his coarse touch.

And what a lovely princess his bold captain made!  When he had first seen her from across the room, standing with her first mate, Loki had felt … something.  He could not say what. The gown was shades of green, starting with a bodice of near white and growing darker until the ends of her voluminous skirts were near black.  A pretty coronet of amber and emerald sat on her shining brown hair. When she turned her head the facets of the gems glistened under the candles, speckling her bare shoulders with glimmering lights.

The only objection he could make to the perfection of her dress was the choice of jewels.  Aenor’s long, proud neck was bedecked with long strands of gems that signified marriage in the royal family.  Were she truly a princess they would have been crafted for her by her prince, signifying his love, his fidelity, his pride in her, but these were made by the queen’s artificers and signified nothing.

Loki’s found his fingers itched to take those pretty lies from about her throat and toss them to the crowd.

“You said her Majesty chose your costume personally?” he murmured to her as they moved through the crush of fancily dressed bodies ensconced in velvets and satins.  The typical formal dress of the Asgardian court was of subdued colours and styles so elegant as to border on the dull. Tonight, freed from the ridiculous constraint of alleged good taste the courtiers had burst forth in an almost insane exuberance so the rainbow of extravagant costumes would have shamed the Bifrost itself.

There were, of course, many warriors of antiquity, but rather than wearing the dull, practical leather and link armor that would have been accurate they wore brilliantly shined plate of silver touched with gold and jewels and covered in brilliant if heraldically suspect surcoats.  Magnificent sorceresses dripped lace and menace, with conical hats that were in some cases so high they threatened to catch light from the golden chandeliers that illuminated the room. There were beggars in rags made of silk, and emperor’s of old in robes embroidered with gilt and satin.

Needless to say, there were pirates as well.  Famous ones as well as common sea dogs. The Duchess of Idavoll was dressed as the infamous Midgardian Captain Romanova, complete with leather breeks and her famous daggers.  Sir Magni, deciding to court scandal, had not merely chosen to dress as the legendary Jotunn pirate Aegir, he had decided to

undress

as him, naked but for a golden leather kilt and boots and painted blue, he had been the talk of the ball.

Until Loki had arrived.

No one else had thought to, dared to, dress as the capricious, delinquent second son of the House of Odin.

The looks Loki received for his boldness were equally split between salute and censure.  Neither of which was new to him.

“Yes, she did.  It’s a great honor that her majesty deigned to acknowledge me so, though I think her choice does not quite suit…” Aenor’s voice trailed off with an adorable bit of confusion as they reached the wall of glass doors that led unto the great veranda and then to the gardens.  A few were open and there were others, all paired off, - save for an intriguing threesome canoodling by a fountain - who had also sought the peaceful, cool of the night.

With the barest touch to her gloved elbow, Loki led her towards a secluded bit of the gardens through a hedge.  If you had not been raised in the palace the entrance to his mother’s most serene grove would be invisible.

“Oh,” Aenor breathed, her arms falling to her sides as she wandered into the enchanted space, turning slowly, her bright brown eyes wide.

A Midgardian girl who started her life as a powder monkey, no matter how far she had climbed by will and talent, would in the normal course of life never see such a place.

Even with only the bright moonlight and the gentle illumination from the luminescent plants, it was possible to enjoy both the beauty of the place and of her wondering expression.

Within the hedge was a circle of fragrant, flowering trees from Vanaheim, and in their center was a bench, sizable and ornate, that had been coaxed and cajoled from living wood by the queen’s own hand and magic.  The flowers of the trees bloomed different colors in different seasons, each time with a specific, mystic property. Yellow in the winter for healing. Pink in the summer for the soothing of nervous dispositions. Blazing orange in the deepest part of winter for cheering the heart.

At present, they glowed like blue glass.

For the encouragement of amorous pursuit.

It had been Loki’s original intent to only appear at the ball long enough to dance one set with Aenor, share a coupe of champagne with her, toss the glass over his shoulder, and kiss her goodbye, knowing the next time they saw each other would be through clouds of powder smoke, across the bows of their warring ships.

Ah, well,

he thought philosophically as he walked behind her to drape his arms about her waist and place a kiss upon her bare clavicle,

as a shockingly perceptive Midgardian had once more or less said, no plan, however clever its maker may be, could survive the sight of an extraordinary girl dressed in what could have been her bridal gown were he a better sort of man

.

Her skin tasted warm in the cool air.  That warmth sank into his bones. When she turned in his arms and wrapped herself about him, Loki felt the empty, cold place where his heart had once been ripped away, fill with fire.

Sweeping her into his arms, Loki took her to the great bench, snapping his fingers so the hidden, coloured glass lanterns fired.  Were this to be the last time he had Aenor he wanted to perceive every inch of skin, every flicker of bliss, to record and remember and torture himself with for hundreds of years to come.
 
On the Golden Horn …

After the long day's labor before, then the battle with the Jotnar, and then another sort of battle with Loki, Aenor had expected to sleep as one dead for the few hours remaining in the night until the morning bell woke her to again swab and scrub and be subjected to continued indignities by Amora.

Rather, she had woken abruptly, her chest tight and heaving.  In her sleep she had returned to the

Songbird

, dreaming of her lovely ship, her marled wood decks of teak and oak, and the familiar sway of her hull as she cleaved the night skies.  The discord of feeling she was on the

Bird

whilst hearing the alien sounds that the

Horn

made, the heavy flap of her larger sails, the echo from below as wind moved through her larger gun deck, woke Aenor in great distress and meant she could not sleep again.

Loki had no such troubles.  Indeed, he seemed far more heavily asleep than she had ever seen him before.  Always, whilst he had masqueraded as Magnus, he had slept light, her slightest movement or sound waking him fully.  Hindsight made clear that it had been his wariness in those circumstances that had kept his sleep light and his comfort now in his own bed, his own ship, allowed him a better rest.

Slipping from under the peculiarity of his arm thrown across her, as if he might at any moment pull her to his body, Aenor took her chance to quietly explore his belongings, certain that at any moment he would wake and take an amused, chiding tone with her as he might with a child.  Yet he slept on, the sound of her in his chambers seeming to disturb him not a whit.

Most of Loki’s weapons were still removed to wherever he had stowed them the day before, though his pistols and cutlass as well as those she had used in the fray with the Frost Giants, were still laid upon one of his chests.

There was no spare shot, but the blades were still sharp.

Aenor took up his cutlass, unsheathing it and holding it to the light.  It was much too long for her, and the heavier end for chopping was overbalanced for anyone not possessing the great strength of the Asgardians.  But for one good, downwards swing she could control it.

She looked upon him, sprawling well-pleasured and deeply dreaming on the vast bed that took up much of his quarters.  His long, black hair covered the pillows, swept back from his too beautiful face, save one strand that curled over his pale throat as if to show her where to strike.

Were she to kill him Aenor had no illusions about her fate.  The best of hopes would be his death would pull the wind from the Horn’s sails and the ship would plunge her and the pirates alike into the Downdeep.  The worst would be that the ship would sail on and she would be handed by Amora to the crew to use as they like until her remains were tossed overboard.

Moreover, were she to kill him Aenor had no illusions that she would want to live at any rood.  Though, again, she’d rather die than have him know it and she would certainly not choose either such death.

She sheathed the blade.

Being in love with one’s most dangerous and sworn of enemies was a thorny path to walk.

At any rate, twould offer much greater satisfaction to visit him clapped in irons in Asgardia’s dungeon.

Mayhap they would give him her old room there.  She could tell him the names of the vermin that lived there.

As was to be expected, Loki’s ship’s logs were in perfect order.  His aristocratic hand recorded in the blackest of inks the blackest of deeds.  Ships scuppered, crews killed, treasures stolen.

More than enough to hang and damn him.

Though no slaves taken, no women or men interfered with, no children harmed.

Which was more than enough to give her hope she did not want for his eventual… what?  What did she think would be the best outcome for this strange man?

She looked to him, and as if sensing her regard he turned in his sleep, throwing an arm to the side causing the blankets to slide from him.  In the dim, golden light of the cabin, the skin of his chest glowed and she could make out a faint, indecent smile on his thin lips when he turned his head to the side as if offering himself.

The man could even preen in his sleep.

Feeling warmth coiling through her stomach, Aenor shook her head and looked back to the bookshelves.  She had little time to snoop and there would be plenty of time for bedsport in her future if she knew Loki.

She knew Loki.  Better than he thought.

The next book looked exactly like the other logs but was not.  Rather than recording events that had occurred it was a record of his thoughts.  His plans.

Aenor’s Asgardian was mostly of a pragmatic nature.  She had learned much of it to ease working with their navy and her lessons had centered on the language of sail, so some of Loki’s musings were opaque to her.  He favored a more formal, older version of the language for his private thoughts and she struggled.

Her own name was there, signified in those spiky runes she only recognised from having seen it in the court records when Odin had had her arrested for consorting with an enemy of the state.   Page after page, not all but many, she was mentioned. Then again, she had been mentioned in the logs near as often, each time they had engaged, or she had given chase, or taken another pirate or pirate’s safe haven.

There was another word she recognised as a name, though one she could not translate, that was mentioned nearly as often her own.  Not Thor, which she knew, nor Odin, nor Frigga, nor any of the crew members.

ᛏᚺᚨᚾᛟᛋ
.

Over and over again.

Often followed by
ᛒᛚᚨᚲᚴ ᚠᛚᛖᛖᛏ
.

On the small writing desk, there was quill and ink.  Using a corner of one of the pages she painstakingly went through her memory of how the runes translated into proper Midgardian.

When she had it sussed, Aenor felt her mouth prickle and grow dry and her hands shake.

She wanted rum but knew a clear head was needed.  Instead, she bit loudly into one of the apples from a bowl near the desk.  Lifting her suddenly cold feet from the floor, she read further, the words she knew now making sense of the rest of it.

Of what he truly sought in the Downdeep.

When the bell sounded for morning watch, Loki stretched like a gorgeous, mighty cat and moved to lure her back into bed.

It would have been lovely to go, to set aside that curse’d book, strip off and climb into bed.  Let him make her forget not just what she’d read, but her entire self. Right. Wrong. Words and meanings and morals.

He’d ruined all of that for her, now that she knew.

Instead, Aenor stood, shaking out Loki’s banyan, her finger holding a page in what she had thought was one of his ship’s logs, raising a questioning eyebrow at the pirate king.

“Why don’t you tell me again why you want to descend to Titan,

Your Highness

?  And perhaps you could try the truth this time. For novelties sake, if naught else.”

He leaned up on his elbow, his cheek cupped in his hand, smiling widely.  “Why, Captain Stake, you are always surprising me. You read Ancient Asgardian?”

He was delighted with her.

The

ass

.

The arrogant, murderous, thieving, crackbrained ass!

Aenor threw the volume as hard as she could at his smug face.

He rolled under it, across to the other side of the bed and stood, no longer smiling.  “Careful girl, those logs are a matched set and its not easy to get good bindery work done when one is a fugitive.”

There was a stern narrowing of his eyes that did not quite distract from where his cock stood at anticipatory attention against his lean belly.

Aenor gritted her teeth, ignoring temptation with great effort.

“Do they know?”  She pointed to the doors of his quarters.  “Your crew? Do they know that you are madder than is even known?  That you are going to toss away their lives for a cursed and evil legend and the hopes of … of what?  What would you do with Thanos’ Black Fleet if it were anything other than a drunken sailor’s story?”

With an elegant shrug Loki pulled on another of his seeming endless supply of luxurious robes, smiling slyly at her over his shoulder, his eyes sleepily blinking with unfettered lustiness, “Now, for such a clever girl that

is

a dim-witted question.”

He crossed the room, taking an apple and standing too close to her, so she was forced to look upwards to meet his gaze.  After taking a bite that made her rather jealous of the fruit, he chewed deliberately, trying to make her be the one to break the tense silence between them.

Aenor knew better.  Loki never met a silence he did not wish to fill with his sonorous voice.

Finally, he shrugged, “Very well.  If you cannot guess.” He placed himself in his throne-like chair, legs slung over the arm as he continued to eat the rest of the apple, stopping now and then to slowly lick his fingers clean of it juices.

Aenor seated herself at the desk again, her thighs tight together, her sex throbbing, her fists painfully tight.

Finishing his snack, he tossed the core over the grate covering the small coal fire that warmed the room.  Turning in his seat so he was leaning forward over his spread legs, he looked into her eyes, “I have been called the Pirate King.  I killed a lot of men to earn that name. Yet I find it suits me ill. What is the point of being a king without a true kingdom?

“But if the Black Fleet were mine, six ships each more than the size of Asgardia’s palace and capable of traveling with no winds, yet faster than any hurricane…?  Well, such a fleet would be a Realms unto itself. A Realm to conquer all of the rest as they floated helpless and unmoving in the skies that I would rule.”

Aghast, Aenor found herself across the room, his shoulders in her hands, “Madness,” she shook him, or rather tried to.  His long hair coiled about her fingers, and she found herself pulled into his lap. “Madness and nightmares,” she muttered against his questing mouth.  “The Black Fleet is a fairy story.”

Loki was going to kill himself, her, and all of his crew for a dream of vengeance and power that could never come true.

“Oh, no, Princess Captain, The Black Fleet is as real as this.  I will prove it to you soon,” he said, pushing her legs apart and sliding a long finger into her wet and waiting cunt, rubbing the heel of his palm against her pearl in circles as he added another finger and fucked her with his hand.  Aenor clutched at him, her head falling to the side, trying not to hear as he hissed against her skin, “As real, as glorious, and it will also be mine.”

At those words, the desire in Aenor’s blood turned to bile and frost.  With a determined shove, she removed herself from his lap and gave a bitter laugh at the surprise on his face.  “I am not yours, Captain Sir,” she said with a polite salute. “Serving as an able skyman and all. One who I fear is late to duty.  If you will excuse me.”

Trying to hide a shudder she picked up the rough trousers and tunic, filthy from the day before, from the floor and dressed herself.

Loki leaned back, leaving his legs spread and his robe gaping open to give her an eyeful of what she was denying herself, laughing.  “I know you, Aenor. You’re not one to sleep cold and your nature is the lustiest I’ve ever enjoyed. Another battle like last night, and believe me I’ll find us a ship to take directly, will find you wanting something between those pretty thighs other than your own busy hands.”

Tying the neckerchief she’d liberated from one of the Jotunns around her dirty hair, she shrugged, “On a shipful of needy sailors I shan’t go wanting long.”

Now he was not laughing.  Cold rage, enough that she could swear she could feel it nipping her bare toes, coiled from him, “Choose carefully, stake.  Any crewman you bed for the night will be flying by breakfast.”

“Ah, Amora then.  She’s a pretty girl.”  Aenor gave another crisp salute, turned on her heel, and left the captain’s quarters hoping to find a mug of weak ale and a cold bucket of water before her duty began.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Two years earlier, in a garden on Asgardia

...

Aenor had never seen anywhere so beautiful as the little grove that Magnus had led her to from the masquerade.  The air was heady with the perfume of the flowering trees, the scent of which was as heady and intoxicating as dark red wine.  The quality of it was almost physical as if it were touching her skin with an insistence that made her languid. She reached up to touch one of the blue, glowing flowers that bent overhead and a bit of golden pollen fell onto her lips, sweet as honey, making her lick them clean.

Asgardia seemed to have no end of secrets and mysteries.

None more confounding and strange than the man she was with.

He stood, legs spread, one arm crossing his body whilst with the other hand he softly traced his lips as he watched her turn about the garden, smugly grinning at her gormless wonder.  Yet even under the mask, in the dim light, she could see his eyes were those of a starving man.

“Magnus, would Her Majesty be pleased to know her guests are making free with her pri-”

His chin lifted, eyes narrowing, “Loki.”

“What?”

He stepped towards her, sweeping his grand, plumed hat from his long, black hair, standing so her skirts brushed his long legs and high boots, then lifted her hand.  “If it please your highness,” he spoke in a dark hush, hooking a finger under the top of her glove, his nail rasping over the tender skin inside of her elbow, “I would be called by my proper name on this night.  Call me Loki, if you would speak to me.”

As he spoke, he dragged the glove off of her.  The removal of that one innocent garment left her feeling more naked before him than when she had been utterly bared and beneath him.  It was something in his gaze that made it so. As if by seeing her in this silly, lovely, rather massive dress he was seeing something of her that could not be revealed by nakedness, that could only been seen by it being hidden.

Just as she saw with him.  In this moonlit place, where his eyes were like emerald behind the mask he wore, for the first time she could clearly see the man who had lurked behind the dull pleasantry of Magnus’s pretty face.  So often he had glimpsed out at her and she had caught him from the corner of eye, but tonight he showed himself to her fully, boldly. Brazen as the pirate king himself would be.

He raised her hand to his lips but did not kiss it.  Rather, he blew a cool line of breath across her fingers, whispering, “Say my name, my princess, my stake, my darling captain....”  His voice was haughty and amused, but his eyes needed something from her.

A name, and to know that she was willing to play this game with him, even knowing she might lose.

Her breasts felt swollen, as did her sex, and her nipples were painful already.  Now a shiver ran from their tips down her arm and then through the rest of her body, so she trembled under the layers of fabric.

Like a princess might when she has fallen into the hands of a pirate.

“Loki…” she breathed the name.

He took her as a pirate took any prize.  With the speed and mercilessness of a raptor chasing a nightingale

With a jerk he pulled her into his arms, her feet leaving the earth in a hiss of silken skirts and deposited himself with her on his lap on the bench that grew from the roots of one of the great trees.  He kissed her as if she were treasure to be plundered, his tongue invading her mouth with little of the teasing or seduction that had been the hallmark of this part of her lover’s character. He was everywhere and she could not evade, nor did she wish to.  Rather, she opened herself more to him, letting her head fall against his arm so he had greater access to her wet mouth.

A small, uncharacteristic bleat of startlement escaped Aenor as the leather gloved hand that wrapped about her ribs slid up to push her breast from its corset and bodice, pinching her nipple hard, both hurting her and making her want more. She pushed against the touch.  Magnus, no, rather, Loki laughed cruelly against her mouth. “You like my rough ways, do you my delicate highness? So different from the courtesies you are used to, and the dully decorous lovers?”

Considering how elegantly dressed and coiffed he was, how fine his accent, Aenor had no doubt that this pirate was capable of the most exquisite and depraved of refinements, but for now… For now all she wanted was for him to show her the roughest possible of ways.

She pulled her head back, staring into his eyes -

How could they appear so green? Was it some magic on that mask?

- “I would show a pirate no mercy.  I would expect none in return, no matter what our battlefield.”

He sneered, “Bold words for a helpless, little princess.”  A greedy hand had somehow found its way beneath her skirts, and she squealed again as it found the convenience slit in the frilly pantaloons she had been forced to wear, spearing into her.  “For a princess who is so wet that I can

hear

her how much she needs to be riding my cock.”

The cock in question throbbed against her side, the heat and insistence of the organ apparent enough through his suede trousers and her layers of skirt.

Long, clever fingers that already knew her well sought out new secrets.  The pad on one rested on a place of great, harrowing sensitivity and he used the placement of her body, bottom cradled between his wide spread legs, the rest of her helpless across his lap, to anchor her where he wanted.  Now the teasing returned as he barely skimmed her pearl with his thumb, as he moved only slightly within her when she needed so much more from him. Yet he continued to roll her nipple hard, even as his kisses grew more elusive.

Desire and wet flooded her, and at some point she noticed his hand no longer moved, but that she was arching and dropping her hips to keep the insistent pleasure building.  Her hands had snarled into his dark hair so she could now fuck her tongue into his mouth, so she could use the leverage to work herself harder against that aggravatingly passive hand.

“Do you want something, highness?” his voice was coy and wondering.  “You seem rather in need…”

“I want to, I need,” her voice was little more than a gasp.  She was wildly trying to ease herself and the bastard started to pull his hand away.

“Perhaps you are too delicate for such a rude and impolite fellow such as myself.  You seem to have worked yourself in to a near paroxysm.” He pulled his hand away and gently patted her between the legs like one might pet the back of an upset child.

Rage and want warred within Aenor’s heart.  But she knew what he wanted. He wanted to play.  She pulled his hair so she could whisper in his ear, “Please, kind pirate king, alleviate these peculiar sensations you have engendered in my helpless form.  I find myself near to swooning in my need for some unknown response to your intimate plundering…. Loki.”

For the last word she lowered her voice, moaning the name.

“Oh, my princess, what wonders I have to show you,” he answered, lowering his head to her eager breast, nipping it’s point as he entered her with two long, unyielding digits that now used art and thrust to make her a wild, wordless thing, anxious in his arms, writhing and seeking her conclusion.

When the moment came to her he commanded against her skin, “Yes, princess, squeeze me so tight there.  I know you love me there, hugging like you will never let go.”

Aenor’s hips arched up and she sobbed as he rubbed her harder so now pleasure and discomfort were allies in bringing her to another, wild peak, looking now to stare at her face, taking in all of her pleasure with those ravenous eyes.

When she started to fall he kissed her, cradling the back of her head in his other, still gloved hand, as if knowing she needed something to return her to the world.  “Oh, my princess, my lovely, lovely prize,” he crooned, “what have you done to me?”

Now, On the Golden Horn

….

For the next sennight Aenor scrubbed decks, served beans and grog in the gallery under the increasingly satisfied eyes - many, many eyes - the creature that cooked there, trained with one of the gun crews, and felt into a dead sleep in one of the hammocks left by the death of one of the pirate in the attack on the Jotnar Man-of-War.

Due to her lack of complaint and navy-like efficiency at all work presented to her Amora took it as a challenge to find increasingly obscure and unpleasant missions to task Aenor’s patience and back, including emptying and cleaning the jakes used by those pirates too delicate to use the sky as a ready bidet.

With a cloth tied about her lower face, and a pair of stout leather gloves, Aenor bent to the task as she did all others.  With a strong arm and a heart that knew it would have revenge.

Because she had signed herself into the crew books she had received a share of the takings from that action.  On the evening after the battle, after discovering his moon-mad plan, Loki had called all to the deck for the division of the spoils.

His desk had been carried out, and in the cool air of twilight with the low and distant sun touching the gleaming wood, each member of the crew had bent over to sign or make their mark as to the amount that would be held in the common store for them against the time they would next make landfall.  Additionally, if any debt had accrued between sailors at that point the monies were changed on paper as well.

Each of the crew members received a one point share, save the officers who were given between 1.25 to 1.75 depending on position, and Loki himself who took 2 as well as the personal belongings of the enemy captain.  It was far less than the captain of a ship of the line would take.

Suddenly some of the crew’s loyalty to their mad leader made more sense to her.

Additionally, any who had been injured in the attack were given further coin.

When it was her turn to sign Loki held out the crow quill in turn, his bland expression no different than it had been for any of the rest.  “It is the custom that when a crewman signs for their first pay they signify the name of another sailor who is to take their share if they die during an action.  Either to keep or to see to it that it finds its way home.”

In the ledger near each pirate’s name and the amount being held for them was a column of other names.  He continued, “As you have no friends here, it is customary for the captain to see to the -”

Aenor looked at him.  He had taken off his fine coat and jacket and was bareheaded.  The breeze played with the fine lawn sleeves of his shirt and made the ends of his hair dance.

Taking the pen, she signed her name and added another with a few firm strokes, almost breaking the nib in her eagerness to be finished.

Frowning, Loki looked at the page, “Bonden?  I had not noticed you and my helmsman had become so intimate.”

“He is Midgardian and was a navyman.  I trust him better than any other here.”

If she did not know him Aenor would not have noted the flinch in Loki’s eye.  “Very well. Next!” He yelled out, his stentorian voice deafening her right ear for several hours.

Though the others of the crew liked her little better than before - her bravery against the Frost Giants having gifted her with some small regard and wariness from them - her now being in funds meant she was able to bargain for a few more articles of clothing and a leathern case to keep those few belongings in whilst she was at duty.

As she worked uncomplainingly and was as able handed with the cannon as any other on the gun crew she was assigned to, that small regard increased though never reached the level of any sort of fondness or manner of commonality until the day she went overboard.
 
Amongst the crew there was a dwarven fellow named Otr who was a general favorite.  Young, cheerful, and friendly he even had a kind word of two for Aenor now and then.  Like most of his Realm he had a mind for craft and nimble, if stubby, finger that could be turned to a number of practical tasks.  Because of that he was sent over the side to do small repairs and patch up the paint work when needed.

Loki watched as they lowered him, trussed like a bird for the spit, a board holding several small cans of bright paints and gilding.  “You make my beloved lady shine, Otr, or I shant let them pull you back aboard,” he called to the dwarf.

Otr offered his reverence as he picked on of the finest of the paintbrushes, dabbing its tip into the pale paint that was used for the skin on the masthead and set to repairing the chips she’d suffered during the taking of the Jotun ship.  “Aye, captain, but then if you do who will be doing the mending the next time you tear one of those pretty weskits of yourn?”

Snorting, and knowing no one else had as steady a hand with a needle as the dwarf, Loki left him to his work and went to engage in his own favorite pastime.

Watching Aenor.

He crossed the deck and took his place on the quarterdeck next to Bondon who was keeping the helm very steady to make the work going on easier.

At the moment Aenor was one of a group that had gone aloft to clean the sails.  The set up was similar to the one that Otr had for painting, save they were hanging on lines that ran from the mast rather than the ship itself, with long ropes and pulleys so they could attack with brush and water from the highest reach of the moonraker to the lowest of the bobsail.

Like most experienced sailors Aenor wore the harness slung lower than was recommended so it would not interfere with her reach as she scrubbed the canvas, and hooked on the side rather than the back so she could more easily control it if she should need to move or start to fall.

The still weather they had run aground in was perfect for such work, and that of the repairs to paint.  Loki harnessed the wind as securely as the cleaning crew were harnessed to hold the Horn aloft while they moved with a stately slowness through the sky.

She worked hard, of course.  His stake had never known a life without work, yet even from the quarterdeck he could see her smiling.  The high wind was teasing her hair from beneath the neckerchief she wore to cover it, and she called something that was lost to the air to another on the cleaning crew, who laughed.

His crew was starting to take to her.  Cautiously, but still. As he knew they would.  By the time he took the Black Fleet and gave her one of the ships - The Red Zephyr, he was thinking - they would be loyal to her as they were to him.

Their Pirate Queen.

He leaned on the rail, taking in the rest of his crew as they went about the work of the ship, considering it he should ask her to dine with him in the great cabin that night.  Along with his officers. Nothing intimate. Nothing to push her. Yet.

There was a cry, and the sound of something hitting the hull of the Horn.  There was another cry, this one for help.

Across the ship he could see the terrifying sight of the ropes that had secured Otr lashing upwards, flailing in the wind.

Before he could even cry and order there was the sound of metal rushing over rope and above he could see Aenor had loosed the pulley that held her harness and hooked it to another line, and was now skimming across the rope that ran along the sails heading heavily downwards toward the peak of the bobsail where it jutted over the prow of the Horn.

The rest of the crew, seeing her reckless but still controlled descent ran towards the front, understanding what she was attempting.

Loki, his heart hammering hard enough to make him sick, jumped down from the quarterdeck, shoving bodies out of his way as he ran.  Ahead he could see she had reached the back end of the bobsail, pushing the pulley’s trigger to stop herself there. There was a flash of clean steel, the blade of a knife in the sun, and then she had cut the line that held her to the pulley but not the one that held her to the mast, so she fell beneath the ship.

The cry that ripped from him could not be heard over the shouts of the crew.  Though he knew that she knew what she was about, the highly organized Midgardian navy having trained her well, his nervous system knew no such assurances.

The crew parted for him save for those who were working to grab Aenor’s life line.  Leaning over the side he could see Otr, line less and clinging to the Horn’s masthead, paint from where he had been touching her up smeared on his face and hands.  Aenor hung beside him, holding the rope and trying to coax him to jump the foot or so over to her.

“Come now, man, I can’t be waiting for you all day,” she said, her voice jovial, but her fingers tense and white on the rope.  “Unless you

want

to get to the Downdeep before the captain.  It’s not a race, you know.”

“Ma’am, I’m too heavy for you.”  The dwarf was practically sobbing.  “The rope.”

“This is a fine bit of rope.  Probably Dwarven make. Are you telling me you don’t trust your people to make a rope that can hold a mere Midgardian and one youngish male?”

The rope was not the issue, so much as the harness that held Aenor.  It was well made, but the speed of her descent and the pressure from her body dangling in it was causing the hemp to creak.  If they Otr did not move quickly so they could be pulled up it would give out either way.

He knew that Aenor would hang their until the crewman jumped to her or they both fell.

The air was thin and still.  If he had even a few more minutes he could call the wind to try and hold them up, yet if it were even a bit too pussiant it would do more harm than good.  As well, on such a still day his call might make the air fall out of the sails, sending the whole ship to its doom.

Loki leaned his forearms on the rail and made his voice light, “Come along, Otr.  I shall not get a lick of work out of these loafers until your performance here is done.  I am ordering you to jump,” he spoke casually even as he reached over and put a hand on Aenor’s rope, along with Grak and Ethandie, the only hulking dark elf he’d ever met.

He would give Otr to a silent count of three and then he was pulling Aenor up.  Much as he hated to lose a crew man, especially one so gifted, he could not lose her.

As if sensing his thoughts, she looked up at him, meeting his eyes.  She shook her head, and when he shook his back, her tea colored gaze narrowed and with a mighty kick on the air she swung out and then back toward the ship, arms out and locking about the startled dwarf.

“PULL!!!!!”  Loki screamed as he saw the harness start to give out.

His strength alone was enough but the three of them together sent Aenor and Otr flying upwards, so they fell in a heap of limbs and rope onto the head of the watching crew.

By the time he had unclenched his hands, the two of them had been lifted to their feet and were being cheered and patted on their backs.

He could see a bruise on Aenor’s cheek.

At that moment it took all of his control to keep from picking up Otr and tossing him to the Downdeep.

“Amora,” he said over his shoulder to his first mate, “get these idlers back to work.  Give Otr and Breathnach an extra ration of rum and the rest of the day at liberty.”

Loki could feel her tense with annoyance but she would not question his order.  It made sense.

He did not look at the crowd, or at Aenor, but walked back to his cabin where his legs gave out and he sat splay legged on the floor, trying not to shake.  His stake, his captain, his queen.

She would find a way to be the death of him, in one way or t’other.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

On the Golden Horn….

It had been a damned long time since Aenor had been drunk.

Too long, she thought, as she attempted - with a sort of intermediate manner of success - climbing up from the galley, followed by the complaining voices of Otr and his roistering friends who were trying to persuade her to stay.  “Another song, at least!” Bonden called, after too roughly swallowing a cup of the terrible wine he’d brought to their impromptu party. “You know the one we want!”

Even the solemn sailing master Hogan gave her a hinting smile and considered nod.

Aenor waved her head and her hand and almost fell from the ladder.  She thrust her arm between the rungs and grabbed it with her opposite hand so even if her feet got confused as to if they were going up or down she wouldn’t fall as she swayed back and forth upon it whilst talking.  “No, no! Mr. Bonden! I’ve sung it five times if once and that’s enough for us all. You sing it.”

“Begging your pardon, miss,” Otr’s special friend Kilicka - a dwarf of uncertain gender but a great capacity for drink - snorted delicately, “the captain would stripe the back of any he heard singing

that

song, saving your own sweet self, o’ course.  And so forth-”

They seemed to have forgotten where they had started that statement and were therefore uncertain as to how to bring it to an end.

“Even so, I’m for the deck,” Aenor turned back to face the ladder and then back again.  “It smells like too many bodies and other badness.” Turning again to the ladder, again she turned back, “Not to cause offense. I am one of the elements of the fug as well.”

At least she thought that was what she said.  Then, with as crisp of a salute as she could give without falling into an ignominious heap and shaming the navy before the pirate, she crawled up more than climbed.  Thankfully the others had returned to drinking and sharing stories of their most embarrassing and foul misadventures.

The night was cool and windy, with a dryness in the air.  They were headed to Hel and the weather was already showing their progress.  Loki had announced they would be putting into that infamous port on Niflheim for supplies and to allow the crew to spend some of their funds before heading towards the Downdeep.

Aenor had been shocked that no one of the crew seemed to have much in the way of trepidation or reasonable qualms over the matter of Titan. Not even those who seemed to have a passing touch of sanity, rare though that was amongst Loki’s pirates. They were philosophical if such a word could be applied to such fellows, that were they not to make their fortunes in the Downdeep they would make them afterward in the selling of the engine that would take them there and back.

In the days since she’d had a part in aiding Otr a goodly portion of those who called the Horn home had heel turned on her, forgiving and forgetting her time as a pirate hunter.

She was wise enough to not tell them that she had far from forgotten.

That night, when she had been invited to drink with a group of them she had questioned them further, not understanding.

“Captain always does right for himself, and that does right for us,” Ethandie, the burliest elf she’d ever met, had told her when she asked how they could all, seasoned sailors that they were, not recognise this was madness.

There had been nods all about.

That Loki had inspired so much loyalty had been one of the surprises that had come to her during her time on the Horn.  That the ship was so well run was another. That the crew was neither slovenly nor loafing by nature. That she felt rather at home, all of the while still longing for her

Songbird

and her own crew - Merisa’s tart, irritable wisdom, Andre’s steady calm running her gun deck, Arms Master
Kasese neatly drilling his marines and always having a new song learned on one of his mysterious leaves.

He had been the one that taught her the song that they had been singing below.  Where Loki could not hear.

Nights in the Realm of Niflheim were long and famed for inspiring mischief.  The moon was great and close, and she was drunk enough to think that climbing to the crow’s nest, and then shinnying up to the moonraker might be a good idea.  To see if she could slap her hand against the glowing orb.

Not a good idea at all, she lectured herself.

Nor was what she thought of next.  She should go seek out the captain.

Aenor rooted around in her wine-sodden wits to find a voice that would talk her from that foolishness.

None could be found.

It had been days since last he’d graced her with more than an order or a nod in return for her offering her deference when they passed on the deck.  Indeed, there was an indifference to his behavior that rankled. As if she were no more, though no less, than any other pirate under his command.

With a thump that would probably leave a bruise on the side of her hand, Aenor struck the rail.  By the gods and crows but who did that peacock of a prince think he was? He’d been the one to take her, not simply the engine he’d attacked her ship for, but her as well.  And was it in the end for no better reason than to make certain she could not pursue him in his mad quest? To remove her as a threat to his plans of conquest?

Well, she would see about that.

Twas past time to give him a good, hard word or two, so that he’d know that she was not a woman to be ignored.  Especially when she was already going about the business of ignoring

him

.  In as much as that could be possible, as he was her captain after all.

The

captain, she corrected herself fiercely,

the

captain, not her’s.

She thumped the rail again, on the same spot, and shaking out her sore fist she stalked across the deck, stepping nimbly over some ropes and less so over others.  With a hard pound to the door of Loki’s quarters, again on the bruised part of her hand that she kept forgetting she had harmed which was the reason she shouted, “Ow!” in Loki’s face when he opened the door.

Crossing his shirt-sleeved arms, he offered her a frown, “Yes, Breathnach?”

For the life of her, she could not recall a word she meant to say to him.

My but his hair gleamed like wet ink under the moon…

“My time is of value, and I can smell what you’ve been about this night, so say your piece and be off to your bunk or you’ll find yourself in default.”  His voice was frosted with the chill hauteur of the prince he had been and the king he had made himself.

Her hand still raised, Aenor found herself slightly, oddly, wrong-footed and unable to find the sway of the ship beneath her feet, tangling one before the other.  With a bit more grace than might be expected to come from clumsiness she fell slightly forward, her hand clapping on the captain’s firm shoulder.

That was not so bad, but her lips also fallen onto his was a problem.  Especially as she had to stand upon her booted toes to reach them, which meant it was a very peculiar sort of falling she had done.  Suspicious even to herself.

For rather longer than was a comfort, indeed long enough to be withering to Aenor’s pride, he stood unmoving as a statue and largely as warm.  That his shoulder would be hard made sense. Loki’s body was of a firmness that any stone could envy, but that thin, cruel mouth, full of clever words and dark kisses had always welcomed her before.  Now, though she tried to find some ingress, or to coax him towards her, his lips remained still and closed.

She let her heels touch the deck, her mouth falling away, “Sorry, sir,” she said, offering a salute, “my mistake.”

He gave her a brief nod, “You’re hardly the first drunken pirate to try and find their way to my bed.  We shall pretend it did not happen.” There was an indifference to his tone that made her cringe.

A turn of one of her heels took her away from him into the dark.

As she walked, for a moment she could swear that a touched brushed her coattails, but that could not be.
 
Hours after Aenor had come to his door, no longer able to distract himself with charts and notes, Loki poured himself a tot of brandy and then another to stop the shake in his hand.

Aenor’s body pressed hopefully to his, her mouth seeking a kiss, the taste of rum and the warmth of her sinking into his bones, and the ache of his splitting cock could not be banished with merest liquor.

Damn the woman.

Days.  It had taken him bloody

days

to calm himself enough to assuage the idea of dragging her to his quarters and locking her in for safekeeping. Avoiding the sight of her as much as he could had been the only way to keep himself from being a quivering mess. Tonight had been the first time he had been able to settle down to his work without the image of her on that broken harness…

As it was, the notes he had written and the lines on his charts, were quavering and messy, so-

That broken harness….

He cursed himself as roundly as he had her, for a dunce and a fool.  The Horn and everything upon her was perfect. Loki required it be so.  So why had that harness, one of the most important pieces of equipage, turned out to be frayed and damaged?

Knowing that he would not sleep until he had seen for himself, Loki pulled a coat over his shirt sleeves, too distracted to bother with his jacket, weskit, or even cravat.  Above decks the sky was turning faintly pink in with false dawn. The night crew was mostly aloft preparing the sails for when they would turn downwards towards the surface of the Realm later in the day, and he could hear them speaking in hushed tones in the quiet of the morning.

His boots sounded loud to even himself as he crossed the deck and then froze.

Something was wrong.

The sails undulated slowly above him, but he felt that the wind was coming in at the wrong angle to take them where they must go.

Loki had taken the route to Hel enough times that he could feel its winds and currents in his bones.  This was not that sky. They were certainly over Niflheim, yet the course was off. He ran to the quarterdeck, taking the stairs three at a time, and looking through the brass spyglass fixed there he saw that some time in the night, missed by all of the crew and himself, the winds had shifted just enough to send them deeper over the Realm than its port city.

Before him, through the breaking mists, Loki could see they were headed more generally towards the mountains, towards Hnirborg’s peak and the monstrous fate that waited all ships there.

Even at the great distance still between them, Loki fancied he could see the rotting remains of all of the vessels who had intentionally wrecked themselves on the cold peak, lured by the Skyrins and their fateful songs.

Looking upwards, he could see that now most of the night crew were hanging slackly from their lines, staring into the distance.  Two of them, Birch and Lorelei, were attempting to move the sails back into their proper positions on their own whilst haranguing their shipmates.

No one knew why there were those few who were able to resist the call of the Skyrins.  Some claimed that they only tempted men, yet based on the disposition of Katydid the Midgardian cutthroat he’d taken on after she’d been marooned by her last pirate crew for extreme viciousness and winning too often at cards, who was now spinning on her line above him, a moony smile on her face as she listened to a song only she could hear, that was clearly not the case.

Fortunately for his ship, Loki was incontestably immune to their call.

Raising a hand to call the wind, for little more an errant breeze would be enough to place them back on course, Loki found himself brushing his hair back from his ear where it irritated and tickled him like a warm breath teasing.

“Damn Aenor,” he snapped at the woman.  Had he not rejected her clearly enough early that she would follow him onto the quarterdeck and try to distract him at this moment, crooning to him.  “Can you not see I am-”

He was shocked that she had somehow dodged away from him, disappearing in the moment it had taken him to turn towards her.

The hatch from below decks opened and Loki was disinterestedly aware that much of the crew - from the wee-est of the powder monkeys to his galley creature - were shuffling in a dazed but pleased manner from their beds to mill about the rails and stare at the mountain range before them in a longing-ish fashion.

His damned cherubs and cutthroats were all enthralled like fools.

Aenor laughed like music, again tickling his ear.

Spinning, his loose coat tails flying, Loki still found himself alone.

Where the devil had the minx taken herself with such speed?  Damn her for thinking to be clever when he was busy about the business of his ship.  Again he raised his hand for the wind it would take to set them back to course.

Again, her voice came to him, sweet and lush and haunting and private between them and ever farther and farther off.

Searching about, Loki was astonished to find that somehow the woman had made her way from the ship.  Her teasing, cajoling tone daring him to find her as she eluded him again and again. Beneath his hands, he found the wheel.  With a flick of his fingers he loosed the rope that held them from heading towards Aenor where she had run from him to Hnirborg.

Then he would make certain she would be unable to ever escape him again.
 
Aenor was not certain what hurt more, her splitting head that made her regret many of the mugs she’d taken in the night before or her hip where it had struck the floor when the Horn took a hard starboard sending her and the other few sluggards that remained below decks flying from their beds.

“What in all of the skies?” she shouted, hurting her own head again.  “Grienr? Thule? Are we under fire?” she questioned the other pirates who seemed not to hear her.  Rather, they with blank grins climbed above.

Stopping only long enough to swish her mouth clean with some salty water, since it was foul enough to be upsetting even to herself, Aenor took to the deck with a knife in hand, ready for battle.

Rather than finding a fight, the sight she was greeted with was far more ominous.  Most of the crew, all but a stalwart few who were huddled together in conference near the base of the mainmast, stood in place staring into the distance.  Some of them swayed as if drunk, whilst others head’s bobbed, or feet shuffled. All gave the impression of … dancing. Dancing though not moving much.

Twas not only ominous, but it was also enough to give a woman with the morning after miseries a good fright.

None responded to her hails.  Moving slowly through the silent crowd, once or twice she would wave a hand before an unseeing face, or would whistle sharply in an ear, but to no effect.

It was a tad humorous as well as frightening, and Aenor was not above stopping for a moment beside Amora and with fumbling fingers giving her a pair of badly braided pigtails that stuck out from the sides of her head like jughandles.

Finally, reaching the small grouping that seemed unaffected by whatever was afflicting the rest, Aenor was pleased to see her drinking companions of the night before, along with Lorelei, and a Midgardian named Birch, who seemed a stout sailing man, his peculiar personal grooming notwithstanding.

“What is the ta-doo?” she asked, blinking against the rising sun.

Hogan lifted a hand, pointing at mountains they were heading towards at too great a speed.

Aenor sighed, “What cursed fool put us in line with the Skyrins, then?” she asked.

As one, they turned, pointing towards where Loki was steering the ship towards their doom.  Unlike the rest of the besotted crew, his look was fixed and maniacal, as if seeking retribution rather than love.

“Oh of all the…” Aenor was pleased to find that disgust was a great curer of hangovers.

As they stood some of the entranced crew started to move about them, turning to their hands slowly to their work, helping ensure the ship would collide with the mountain properly.

Lorelei shook her head, “I can only assume that he and my sister are hearing

themselves

sing…”

“Why aren’t you tempted?” Otr asked.  “I’m of the assumption that the willies are keeping the rest of us from thinking of romance, but you were on duty last night.”

The beautiful girl shrugged, as did Birch, “I’ve never been in love.”

The others nodded.

“I have,” Hogan said ponderously, “and so have Otr and Kilicka for certain.  And Captain Breathnach…” he looked at her knowingly, and Aenor burned with blushing.  “So if we are to act we need to do so before we are well enough to be seduced as well.  Are there any ideas?”

“We have to stop them,” Otr said.

“Clearly,” Lorelei’s tone was tart.

“No, I mean we have to stop the Skyrins.  Block them, like.”

“How?”

Aenor snapped her fingers, the sharpness of the sound making her wince, “Beat them at their own game!’

Lorelei crossed her arms, frowning prettily.  “I’m good, but even I would take too long enamouring this many…. You could help I suppose….”

With a wave, Aenor jumped up on the rail, “Not that game.  Singing. We need to be loud enough to break the spell. To block those bitches voices.”

A number of looks of skepticism met her words.

“Have you any better thoughts?”

They had not.  Better to die singing than standing wringing their hands.

“What should we sing then?” Kilicka asked.

Aenor grinned, “And what’s the one song all of this crew would know?”

Lorelei nodded, “Well, that’s it then.  Be killed by the Skyrins or hung by the captain.”

At that moment, as if sensing they meant to thwart his intent, Loki reached up to grasp the wind in his fist and threw it towards the sails, so now they screamed through the howling air.  Aenor nearly went over the side again, catching herself only at the last moment.

The choice was made for them.
 
The first of the crew to be swayed by the increasingly loud and only vaguely harmonious singing was a few of the main gun crew, whose hearing was not all it should be at any rate.

“

Well oh, Loki’s boat is painted green,

Ha, me boys!

Loki's boat is painted green,

The prettiest boat that you've ever seen,

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!”

Aenor’s voice, strong and clear and pretty even as she battled her head, rose above the rest as they were joined by those newly brought around.  She strode through the milling crowd, yelling the words in some ears to bring around the slow to respond. "Louder you dogs!" she cried out. "I want them to hear us on Midgard!"

“Well oh, Loki's boat's got a fine fore cuddy,

Ha, me boys!

Loki's  boat's got a fine fore cuddy,

And every seam is chinked with putty,

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!”

Now some of the pirates working the sails found themselves humming along.  Sheepish, they threw looks to Loki who was unnoticing of the crime of their singing

that

song.  With wide grins, they joined in lustily.

“Oh, Loki's rolling out his grub,

Ha, me boys!

Loki's rolling out his grub,

One split pea, and a ten pound tub,

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!”

The galley creature had a fine, clear tenor and, thankfully, a sense of humor.  Lorelei slung an arm about where its shoulders might be and they harmonized most perfectly.

“Well, Loki's boat's got high-topped sails,

Ha, me boys!

Loki's boat's got high-topped sails

The sheet was planted with copper nails,

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!”

By the time they had reached the last verse all hands were now fighting the wind in the sails and singing as if their lives hung on the notes.  As they did.

“Loki's boat is painted green,

Ha, me boys!

Loki's boat is painted green,

It's the prettiest boat that you've ever seen,

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!

A-ha, me boys a-riddle-i-day!”

All hands, save the captain, whose will, magic, and hand on the wheel were all strong enough to defy the joint efforts of the now panicking crew.

Aenor saw knives being drawn.  Loyal or no, she knew that they would kill Loki rather than let themselves be wrecked.  Everyone knew what the Skyrins did to those sailors unfortunate enough to survive when their ships were scuppered on
Hnirborg.

“Get me to him,” she ordered her little collection of allies.  “Get me to him and then get a crew to the long nines. We are going to live this day and kill those things once and for all!”

For a moment they all hesitated, but then Otr pulled a sap from his belt and started laying about with a will.

On the quarterdeck, Aenor had to fight the winds that sided with the captain in order to reach him.  They howled even louder around him, and with the rest of the crew still singing to keep from falling beneath the Skyrins influence again she knew she could not make herself heard to him.

Snagging his coat, she placed a stockinged toe into the top of his boot and climbed so she clung to his broad shoulder, putting her mouth to his ear.
 
“

Loki's boat is painted green,

Ha, me boys!

Loki's boat is painted green…”

Three verses sung in her loudest gun deck voice did nothing to move him.  Indeed, he seemed to not even notice her clinging to him to keep from being blown overboard.

With a gulp, she let her sore throat take a moment, and then closed her eyes and started again, soft and close and for him alone.
 
“

Let us go now, my one true love

We can set out, we can set out for the distant skies

Watch the sun, watch it rising in your eyes…

Let us go now, my darling companion

Set out for the distant skies

See the sun, see it rising

See it rising, rising in your eyes

They told us our gods would outlive us

They told us our dreams would outlive us

They told us our gods would outlive us

But they lied

Let us go now, my only companion

Set out for the distant skies

Soon all will be rising, will be rising

This is not for our eyes…

Let us go now…

”
 
“Aenor…” Loki’s voice was uncertain, as the roar of the wind died about them, “how did you get back on the ship?  You had gone from me.”

He reached around and pulled her from him, so she was leaned against the wheel.  Great, green eyes, vast with wanting and wonder, seemed intent on devouring her. “Don’t be daft.  Where would I go?”

With a quick shake of his head, Loki’s eyes narrowed and he looked past her shoulder, “You’ve got the guns ready, I’m thinking?”  He let her down and she slipped from between him and where he stared. For the first time, a thrill of fear went through her. What a face that was!  “Thank you for that, they'll be a help.”

Grasping the winds he sent them howling towards the mountain.  The crew held on for dear life to whatever might be found and Aenor again clung to Loki.

Before any had a chance to wonder or act, he threw his arms wide, stopping them hard enough to make the whole ship wail with complaint and creaking wood and beating canvas.

There, closer than had ever been seen by anyone who lived to tell the tale was the cave upon the peak of the mountain of the Skyrins.  Within its hollow stood their flock, surrounded by the bones left of the sailors they fed upon.

The bird women, beautiful and hideous in equal share, screeched in panicked horror, save their queen, her puffed breast bold and her raptor beaked head back as she sang strong and waited her fate.

Aenor heard Loki.  How had he gotten into that cave?  Scrambling to reach the stairs, she listened…

“Follow me, follow me, follow me back

Where it all began

Follow me, follow me, follow me back

I'd do it all again.”

Only a strong fist grasping the back of her jacket held her from running across the deck.  She was jerked back to Loki’s chest. A sharp nip to the top of her ear stopped her, and he hissed in her ear, “And now I wish I could kill them twice…”

Let her go for but a second, snarling, Loki held his hands out and squeezed them into fists, yanking back, pulling the air from the Skyrins very lungs.  Gasping, writhing, some of them even fell helplessly from their cave as the wind forsook even their wings at the call of its most beloved captain.

“Master Hogan!” he called out, now pushing them backward, the Horn again groaning as he took them at speed to a safer distance, “Take the top off!”

The dark elven Alchemy that powered the long nines whined loudly enough that all of the crew save Loki had to cover their ears.  Five long streaks of purple and green light twined almost lazily across the distance and then impacted with a fury pulled from the very energy of life around them, smashing the top of the great mountain like the gods of old.

It took all of Loki’s efforts to keep them from being cast aside by the rush of energy and air when the blast hit.  When the last rock fell and the last pebble rolled through the rubble there was a terrible silence.

Loki laughed, clasping his hands.  “Now, whose idea was it to sing

that

song?”

The crew was grateful to be saved, but not that grateful.  A hundred fingers pointed at Aenor.

“Of course it was,” he turned on his heel and gave her a dangerous grin, his eyebrow raised with great haughtier.

Though his hands, seen only by her, shook just a touch.

“Bloody pirates!”  She scowled.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

In a garden in Asgardia, two year previously ….

Loki held Aenor hard against him, his face pressed against her hair, his chest heaving and the pump that had once been his heart thudding to the point of pain, as were his scattered brains.

Twas not as if he had not pleasured his dear captain any number of times, or recieved a great deal of pleasure from her in return, yet he found himself confounded and dazzled by the splendor of her release.  Aenor lay in his arms now, gowned for a royal wedding, touching his face, smiling at him with sleepy bliss. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then smiled wider, and whispered, “Where are your thoughts, Loki?”

Ah, gods but his name in her mouth made him even harder, when he should have thought marble would already be soft compared to his cock.  That it seemed to have an effect to his still racing heart,

er,

racing engine rather, was a consideration to be put aside and considered later.

Rather, he lifted her so she sat on his lap, whispering against the bare, sweet skin of her neck as he caressed and nibbled it, trying not to take the great, devouring bites he wanted, “That my poor, cold prick is jealous of my fingers and needs to be warmed by your snug little cunt, captain princess.”

Rather than answer, that lazy smile of hers parted in a soft moan, and she reached between them to stroke him with just one, teasing fingertip through the heavy cloth of his breeches.  Loki let his head fall back, gritting his teeth to keep the sound of his need trapped.

Aenor would have none of it, firstly drawing her tongue in leisurely and fantastical patterns along the length of his taut neck, after she had made him shiver under her tender assault sufficiently her free hand dug deeply in his hair to pull his mouth to hers.  When her lips touched his, lush and opening beneath him, beckoning him to join her, licking into him, the groan he had suppressed kissed her and she laughed. “Loki… I thought you were a pirate? Does a helpless princess have to teach you taking ways?”

What was his enchanting captain doing to him?  He was ready to buck into her all hard and thoughtless and probably spilling like a green boy just for the sake of hearing her speak his name.  A name she thought was but a game.

For a moment it pained him desperately that she knew him not.  That if she did, his brave little captain would turn from warm and desirous to furious and murderous in a Muspelheim moment.  And, he rather feared, the look he knew she would bestow upon him once she knew would do something considerably dreadful to his internal person.

Stopping all kisses, he looked at Aenor.  Sensing a change on the air, she stopped her amorous attentions and met his eyes with a head slightly cocked and brows drawn together in question.  “Have a-” she started to question him, concerned.

Oh her bright brown eyes were a brilliant as a high wind carrying him ‘cross the skies.

Loki abruptly knew yet

another

thing about who he truly was that she did not.

Already she did not know that he was Prince Loki, scapegrace Prince of Asgardia, the secret, lost King of the Jotnar - be they frost, ice, or merely chilled, as well as Captain Loki, master of The Golden Horn and the scourge of the skies of the Nine Realms.

And now she also did not know that he was significantly infatuated with his most enthusiastic enemy.

It had ever been Loki’s rule that what’er took his eye was meant to be his in the first place.  Yet a spirited and murderous Naval officer would be a harder prize to take than a ship or a hold full of gold, or even a fine hat.  It was a confounding problem, made worse by this continual, strange twinging where his heart should be.

“You have dealt me a terrible blow, stake,” he told her, tapping her nose with a finger and laughing to the sky, at the gods who had decided to put this woman in his way.  “Yet I shall be revenged, never you mind.”

Standing with her in his arms, then sprawling so she lay beneath him on the thick, soft grasses, Loki pulled up the heavy layers of the endless, flounced skirts so they created a kind of bed for them and Aenor was bared to the waist with her legs spread to welcome him.  With a snake slither, he slid backwards and dipped his head to allow himself to wallow in her wet. Again, her hands found her hair, “Ah,” her hips rose to welcome him, “but I think you fine in this fashion, Magnus. I’d have to hide you in my cabin when we set sail, were you always thus.  Not just for your beauty, or your devil’s mouth, either. I like the wild and strange of you,” she sighed.

At the name Magnus, Loki’s blood froze.  He squeezed handfuls of grass in rage and blighted the ground beneath them with burning frost though he could not stop his tongue from its rhythmic exploration and gentle cosseting of her.  Thankfully, Aenor’s delicate skin was protected by the thick layers of skirts beneath her.

Then when she said the rest of her piece it seemed as if he was filled with the most wonderful sort of fire.  “Aenor,” he stopped his oral carasses, despite the sound of sadness she made, and crawled so he lay caging her with his bones, his great coat covering her legs.  “What a thing to say. You could like a pirate?”

“Is aught wrong?”  She reached up to touch his face, and he kissed the hand that cupped his cheek.  “You seem serious now.”

“I have it in me to be serious of one moment and then madcap the next.  Tender, then violent, then dancing the waltz, without putting a hair out of place.  I should have spun you around the ballroom whilst I had the chance, Aenor. Made every eye jealous that they were not one of us. Could you truly like such a

changeable

fellow?”

“I bore easily.  It's why I like the sky and have kept no lover past a night or two.  You seem just the one for me,” she spoke flirtingly, even as her eyes had a searing sincerity. No one knew better than Loki that the truth was the best lie.   “Now won’t you ravish me, my impetuous pirate king?”

Her hips again lifted to meet him.  Oh his cock wanted to be freed to do his business.  It was fair beating its way loose from his placket, but there was something he needed first.  Foolhardy, dangerous, but he must do it nonetheless.

“Aenor… I, you should know that,” still leaning on one hand so he kept her pressed to the earth, with the other he reached up and nimbly unknotted the mask that covered his eyes, “I think the masquerade is at an end.”

Frowning, his captain, his stake, leaned up upon her elbows, peering at his eyes.  “Is it an enchantment of some manner? We are so magick poor upon Midgard I’ve little experience of it.”

“No, tis-”

Before he could speak further, there was a rustle of shrubbery and voices.

“Just through here, my lady, mind that pretty wig of yours.”  The voice was deep and slightly the worse for the wine.

Loki groaned, his forehead dropping against Aenor’s.  He’d not been the only prince of the House of Odin to use Frigga’s secret grove for assignations when balls and receptions grew tedious.

“Aenor, kiss me quick.”

She stopped struggling to sit up and right her skirts, and did, caring more for the strange tone in his voice than her own shame.  “It’s Prince Thor, we’d best cede the field to him, since this is his palace after all. We can go to the

Songbird

for the rest of the night,” she whispered with a snorting laugh that made him want to weep for what he was about to lose.

Behind him there were the sounds of a lady and a gentleman, startled and embarrassed. The man spoke, “Your pardons, I had no idea that anyone else knew about - Brother?”
 
On the Golden Horn…

It was decided by the captain that Aenor’s default for singing the forbidden song and inciting other to do as much, was mitigated by her in point of fact having saved all of them for a fate worse than death.

“Well, isn’t that a kindness,” she snitted at him after the decision was made.

For a few moments, Loki had stared down at her, as if he meant to say more.   Offer his grateful thanks perhaps, she thought. But no, certainly not, rather, he’d tapped her once on the shoulder, “Drink something warm, Breathnach, you’re sounding a bit hoarse,” and then moved off to see to their change of direction.

The winds that had pushed them errantly towards the Skyrin’s mountain, and that Loki had gathered to destroy them, had set them off-course for Hel, meaning they would have to take a rather meandering course across Niflheim to make their way to that notorious port.  Five days of tedious journey over barren lands.

By day three the crew were impatient, bored, and fractious.  Every inch of hull had been polished to a glass-slick gleam, each bit of metal was bright as a diamond.  The sails would be blinding white was not the sun notoriously weak over Hela’s realm.

Additionally, the captain had taken it into his head to have every strand of rope, every stitch of every canvas harness, every winch and pulley, inspected, mended, replaced, or otherwise fussed with.

When asked why, by an impatient Amora who’d been put in charge of the tasks whilst Loki looked over each bit of work as it was done, he had given her a gaze of startling coldness, answering, “I should hate to see idleness when we have all of this free time.  I answer you only out of boredom. Were I not so bored that I am encouraging insolence for want of other entertainment I might ask you who you think you are to question your captain’s orders? I may anyway, and then think of some

diverting

way to make you reconsider your answer.”

His voice and face were quite gorgeously bland, and when he smiled Aenor saw a shiver go through Amora that was so violent it threatened to knock her off her long legs.

The beauty gulped and turned back in a swirl of blonde curls to the crew who were oiling the rigging mechanisms that were used for reaching the highest point of the mast, “If I see as much as a speck of rust on any bit of metal the fool who let it pass will be cleaning the galley til next year this time.”

There was much improved cleaning, and no questioning of the captain, from that point on.  Aenor begged a bit of beeswax from the ship’s stores and rubbed it into her rough and aching hands as she wondered what Loki would come up with next to keep them distracted as they slowly worked their way to Hel.

She’d learned from the crew that it was strange for Loki not to have used the wind, so spellbound by him, to push them faster towards their goal.  “Must have a reason, though,” Bonden had said, as they tarred rope together, even someone as important as the helmsman not being exempt from the captain’s desire for a fully perfect ship.  “He has a reason for everything he does.”

“Aye,” Aenor grumbled as she tried to scrape tar from her fingers, “madness.”

When it was all complete the Horn was in a state of perfection that may have surpassed that which she’d know the first day she lofted to the skies.

With two days journey left to go.

Which was why it was a mercy when another ship appeared in the distance.  The pirates were wet-mouthed at the sight of prey and distraction.

“Breathnach!”  Amora called out from the quarterdeck, as she prepared with a heavy heart to join her guncrew.  At least Midgard was not at peace with Niflheim, even if they were not in open war.

“Sir,” she went to the foot of the stairs leading to the quarterdeck, making her respect.

“The captain has … quite too graciously … offered to let you sit this engagement out, seeing as you might still have some fond feelings for your recent comrades in the Midgardian navy.  I suggest you man your gun. It’s not as if they wouldn’t send us to the Downdeep, you on board or not.”

“What?”  Aenor turned to look past the bustling crew to try and see the ship they were pursuing.  It was too far for even her sharp eye.

With two bounds she was up the stairs, past a shocked and huffing Amora, and was at the brass spyglass that was mounted on the quarterdeck.  Sure enough, the ship was Midgard built and had naval flags, though it was of an old design. A galleon.

Aenor took her eye from the glass and blinked a few times.  It couldn’t be. The navy hadn’t used galleons since she’d been a powder monkey on her first boat.  They were too heavy and slow most modern military actions. Looking again, she focused on the name painted in gilt and crimson across the galleon’s stern.

“Why, she’s

The Jenny

,” she said with wonder in her tone, smiling for a moment, forgetting where she was and why.

Then Loki’s voice came from behind her, an elegant hand draped with lace from his cuff wrapping itself about the glass, “When I offered you to not engage I do not remember including an invitation to my quarterdeck, Breathnach.”

She turned, even though he was close and crowding her, tipping her head back to look into his eyes, which were shaded and hidden by the broad brim of his hat, “You can’t take her.”

“And I certainly don’t recall asking for your thoughts on how I run the affairs of my ship.  Unless that is a reflection on my captaining, and the skills of my crew. I assure you, we

can

take her, and three more like.”

“I meant you

mustn't

take her. That’s

The Jenny,

” she said, pointing towards the distant sails.

Frowning, Loki shoo’d her away and looked for himself.  “So she is…” he said, squinting into the glass, a tone of if not wonder than pleasure in his tone.

The Jenny

had been a navy ship until she was decommissioned.  Rather than being sold for scrap or to a merchant, because she was so yare and famed for her sturdiness and sky-worth, she’d been gifted to the Midgardian Academy of the Sciences.  They spent three years refitting her with the latest equipment and training a special crew of sailors to travel with a group of scientist, aerographers, alchemists, experimentalists, geographers, geologists, nephologists, and other learned souls under the direction of Mistress Shuri of Wakanda.

It was their intent to travel the skies of the Realms to explore and record.  To find the secrets of the air and land, collecting samples and knowledge. All of the Realms, even warlike Jotunheim and alien Muspelheim had agreed to allow her the freedom of their skies in return for sharing their findings and there being no evidence of espionage.  For the time that she’d sailed

the Jenny

had circled the outer edge of the Realms, sending information home via pigeons enhanced by Asgardian magick and armoured with Midgardian alchemy.

The good, old girl had gone farther and seen more than any ship in history and the stories and images from her travels were like nothing before - some stirring, some hilarious, some terrifying, some beautiful.

For a moment the look on Loki’s face was delighted.  Transported. “Where she’s been….” he whisper with a happy shake of his head.  “Skies unsailed that have unfurled before her prow, opened for that first time.  Lands too far for any creature we know to have set foot upon, now touched and known and charted.  Yet still so much for her to see…” His voice was dreamy, reverent, amazed.

Aenor felt a lump rising in her throat, still sore from singing days before.  They stood together and looked at the other ship. The back of her hand brushed his and she did not move it away.

Loki started, looking at her.  Something in her face made him sneer and jerk away, speaking with contempt, “Imagine the wonders in her hold, inestimable and mundane alike.  Not to say, her equipment will be most helpful to us when we go to the Downdeep, as well as her stores. She’s holding water and supplies for a long haul, which will save us much expense fitting for that journey below.

“Yes, she’s a fine prize.  The gun crews will have to be exceptionally precise.  I should hate to see the slightest bit of her stores damaged,” he moved as he spoke, ready to give his next set of orders.

Horror choked Aenor.  “I won’t let you touch her,” she grabbed his arm, yanking hard enough to turn him.  “You cannot do this. You know it to be wrong and you are only doing this to … to impress me.  To prove to me that you are a heartless monster, yet I saw the look upon you just now. You know that her worth is more than the bits and pieces she carries, to say nothing of the lives of those aboard her.”

Crossing his arms with an amused grin, he looked down at her as she sputtered helplessly through her words, adding yet more.  “Loki, you cannot tell me that if you could you would do just as they do? Seeing all there is to see. Finding and seeking and learning and being the first?  How can you stop something of the like?”

“Very pretty, Aenor.  Tis all true enough, I suppose, but for one matter.  We are pirates here. We have no use for astonished fascinations.  We prefer gold and all that can be turned into it on the market.”

“Says the man who wants to risk everything to find a mythic, nay,

imaginary

fleet!  You’ve too good of an imagination for me to believe you.”

“You’ll believe me when we open fire on her.  Get to your crew or your bunk, Aenor, I care not which, but get out of my way,” he had lost all semblance of humor.

So had she.

“No.  I will not let you do this. This is not an act of piracy.  It’s murder.”

“I hate to be the one to disillusion you, pirate hunter, but murder is an act of piracy.  I’ve more than lost track of how many deaths we’ve caused.”

“Not that manner of murder.  You’ll be murdering something in yourself doing this thing.  Something in me as well.”

“What you mean has been dead in me for years, Captain darling, causing me no trouble to be without.  You’ll learn to live without it as well.”

Not waiting for her to follow his orders, Loki stepped to the front of the quarterdeck, raising a hand to gather the attentions of his crew as they prepared for action.  All went still and quiet as they were close to being within hearing range of the other ship. He spoke in a hush, which the wind did his bidding to carry to the ears of all the pirates, be they on deck or manning guns.

“Now my cherubs, the ship we are taking is a special prize.  The rarest in all of the skies of all the Realms, so we must act with care to take her with as little damage as we may.  There are … treasures within her unknown by the likes of you. By the likes of me, even, and I would not lose a one of them to careless cannonade or anyone making hasty choices with fire.”

“It

the Jenny

!”

Aenor stood next to Loki, would he like it or no, and shouted as loud as her fine lungs would allow.

“You all know what she is.  She’s been in the skies all of that time and no pirate has been so blackhearted as to take her.  Will you lot be known as the scum who sunk her?” Ah, but her throat hurt. Surely from the singing and not from choking on tears, Aenor thought, refusing to look at Loki.

There was not a mate, sailor, or scallywag amongst them who hadn’t heard of

The Jenny

.  Suddenly a hiss of voices arose amongst the throng, some all but rubbing their hands at the thought of their share of the booty, others troubled and looking about for those who were like-minding on the subject of taking such a ship.

“Ehr, captain,” the normally silent and placid sailing master, Hogan, spoke but Loki made a gesture of silence.

“Aye,

the Jenny,

out these years and full of goods and supplies.  Think of the time we’ll have in Hel’s port before heading Downdeep with that kind of boodle.”

Now the voices grew louder, as argument broke amongst the crew.  Twas a rare thing, but it was written into most pirate charters that if enough of the crew were against an action the captain would belay an order.  Never had such a thing happened on the Horn. Loki’s judgement and instincts had ne’er steered them wrong and they were loyal to him for it. Yet, this was a different kettle of fish entirely.

He raised both hands to silence them and opened his mouth.  Many of the crew looked like they would not be convinced by him.  Loki was too sure, too frightening, and far, far too silvertongued.  He could talk the sun into blinking, if he had enough time, Aenor knew.

She knew and could not risk.

With her fastest hands she reached for Loki and pulled the hermetically embellished pistols with their ability to fire extra shots, that were thrust thru this wide black belt and aimed them for his middle.

Shocked, he turned, now with his hands raised in supplication, his face furious, “Is it mutiny, then, girl?  I think you’ll find few joining you, and I promise you a dark reckoning for it.”

“You really do not understand me a whit, do you Your Highness?” she asked, and then raised one pistol, firing it high beyond him, in the direction of the Jenny, followed quickly by the second, and then over until they were empty.  With a last, defiant flourish she turned them to offer them back to their master.

“A warning that will do them no good, Aenor.  You think I can’t catch that lumbering old barque by the hip as readily as I did your speedy ‘

bird

?”

“Watch,” she pointed, knowing something about the Jenny that no one outside of the service was privy to.

Loki and the rest of his astonished crew watched, confounded, as a manner of signal bell was rung on the other ship.  Her outer sails quickly pulled inwards on some manner of pivot, causing her to drop, whilst a series of ratchets, like the turning of gears, echoed across the sky towards them.

The very boards of the Jenny’s hull seemed to open like doors, turning quickly, and as they did the ship seemed to disappear, section by section, until she was for all purposes gone and they were alone in the sky.

Aenor crossed her arms, grinning ear to ear.  “I won’t let you throw any of our souls away for profit Loki, not even your own,” now speaking only to him.

“I have no soul to throw away.”

“You forget, I’ve seen it.  I was there the last time you saw your mum, even if the rest of the night went rather poorly.”

“Your default for that is at first light, and gods help you if you interfere with the business of my ship again, Breathnach,” Loki hissed at her as he motioned for her to be clapped in irons.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

KISSING THE GUNNER’S DAUGHTER - Term used in the Age of Sail Navy: To be bent over the breach of a cannon and caned for an infraction of the law with as much respect and privacy that could be found on the gun deck in a man of war. This was reserved for midshipmen who would one day become officers and were above being flogged in public on the open deck. very much like the schoolboy who is caned by the schoolmaster in private.

Loki completed his grooming and observed himself in the oval, standing mirror that currently had pride of place in his crowded quarters.

He wore his best - the coat of black suede over the suit of emerald superfine, with velvet weskit embroidered with gilt and silk, and a shirt of the finest, whitest possible linen with deep and dripping cuffs of the finest hand-knit lace.  His boots had been buffed to a gleam, and he’d freshened the plumes in his most cunning hat. In recognition of what was to come, he had even added a touch of curl to his hair, not so much as for a royal court, but enough to add a sense of occasion.

After all, twas not every day that a man threw away all future hope of sexual congress with the creature he did not merely desire above all others, but with whom he was most perfectly paired in the advancing of the arts and sciences of amorous pursuit.

Loki was going to make Aenor kiss the gunner’s daughter before the officers of his ship.  It was the least punishment that could be offered for what was under most circumstances a hanging offense.

Though her will was strong, as was her back, and he knew she could withstand the cat with her pride kept high, as well as being an officer herself and therefore understanding the rules that govern life aboard, she’d never forgive him.  Not when she believed herself to have been in the right when she acted.

She was not alone in that belief, and she would not be alone in her dislike of him when the punishment was through.  His stake had made herself popular quickly with some of the crew. Indeed, there was no one more popular with the captain...

Putting on his hat with great care to have it angle perfectly, Loki took up his black leather gloves in his right hand, roughly slapping them over and over into his left as he stared unseeingly at himself in the mirror.  Calculating. Considering.

There was no way around it.  The blasted woman had left him no options that were not dangerous to his authority.

With a flourish of his coattails, he left his quarters, headed for the gun deck and Aenor’s execrating gaze.

Waiting on the gundeck with his assembled officers, not extending her punishment to being watched by the whole crew, Loki watched as Aenor descended the ladder-like stairway.  A cold, bileful shock hit the back of his throat. The look in his stake’s eyes was far worse than the racking hate he expected.

Those great brown eyes that he had always known to be steady, brave, and bold, would appear to the eye of one who had not made a study of Aenor to be calm and perhaps contemptuous in the face of what was to come.  He knew better.

She was afraid.

Based on the slight whitening about her lips, and the way her fingers were crabbed as she fought to keep from balling them tight, she was terribly, deeply afraid.

Loki had thought previously the betrayal and hate he had seen on her face once before would be the worst expression he might ever witness from Aenor.  How wrong about her he found himself, yet again.
 
Aenor did not resist her punishment.  It was beneath her dignity as a Captain of the Midgardian navy, a woman, and even, gods and angels help her, a pirate.

She walked at a steady, not laggardly, pace flanked by Hogan and Lorelei.  Amora had wanted to act as one of her guards, but her red-haired sister and the sailing master had insisted since they had been the two officers amongst those who had taken up the song with her the morning they saved the Horn.

Indeed, Hogan had even offered to take some of those buffets intended for Aenor’s back and buttocks, which she had refused to accept.  Lorelei had not made such an offer but had given her a look encompassing as much sympathy as the pretty egoist was capable of.

Aenor’d been flogged before.  Twas not a novelty, nor was she especially shy of the pain since the scars she wore would offer a kind of armor against the worst of the blows.  She dreaded the after effects, and the healing, which would most like prove the worst part. The last time she’d been flogged had left her with a fever that had taken days to break.  Who knew what would happen to her on the Horn.

Did they even have a surgeon, let alone a proper physician?  With more nerves that she showed, Aenor mentally ticked off the crewmen of the ship, trying with an increase of agitation if any had been presented to her as who to go to should there be injury or illness to be dealt with. No one.  There was no one.

Still, she cheered herself, they weren’t far from port.  A city the size of Hel would have to have any number of chirurgeons or apothecaries.

Having settled herself a bit on that score, Aenor tried to suggest to herself that worse than the pain, and even worse yet than the fear of illness, was the

idea

of the punishment.  That the idea of the punishment coming from Loki offered the promise of a humiliation worse than suffering from any illness, though as the captain he was in his rights, even if the action predicating the punishment was the stopping of him doing a great wrong.

As she came above decks to take the walk to the upper gun deck entrance she saw most of the crew, those not about ship’s work, assembled and quiet.  Under most circumstances taking a sailor below for a punishment meant that it was to be done quietly and with as little embarrassment as possible, but the Horn’s gossip had gotten around. No doubt they were wanting to jeer at the pirate hunter’s walk to the cannon and then listen to her cries as she was beaten.  Aenor straightened her shoulders.

The morning was very quiet, the air as still above Niflheim as it had been since they had started crossing that bloody Realm.  The tiniest breeze troubled the very edges of the masts, and before them was nothing but the dull, pewter skies and bleak grey and black of the land passing too slowly below them.

At least

, she thought in attempt at cheer,

I won’t be missing any pleasant scenery or balmy days whilst laid up on my stomach belowdecks

.

It helped not her mood to think that.

The crew parted before them, and to her everlasting shock each one them, even those few who had been most embittered by her presence amongst them, offered their respect by whichever salute was common in their Realm as she passed before them.

Those who had been formerly of the Midgardian navy, such as Bonden, all turned their eyes from her even as they saluted, as was the custom when crewmen felt a fellow sailor was being punished unjustly.  Refusing to witness her shame.

She gulped a bit.  Now, for certain, she would not scream.  It would dishonor and disgrace her crewmates to show such weakness.

The gun deck was not so quiet, as the assembled officers talked amongst themselves as they waited to witness her punishment.  Their expressions varied from glowering on the part of a few to positive glee on Amora’s face. She was of the sort who took pleasure in seeing anyone punished, so it being Aenor who would be bent over the gun was clearly more joy than she could bear with solemnity.

Loki waited beside the cannon, which had been pulled and had the wheels removed so there would be no fear of it shifting beneath her as he gave her nine strokes with the cat o’ nine tails that dangled with careless ease from his hand.  His legs were spread, and he’d dressed in high style for her, the peacock. Under other circumstances she might have complimented him looking so well so early in the day, however, she found her mouth was rather dry as if she had breathed in ashes.

His narrow, dark brows had drawn together and a frown was pulling his thin lips into an even finer line.

Aenor looked at Hogan and Lorelei, nodding to each, and they joined the rest of the officers.  Alone, she walked the rest of the way to Loki, staring into his eyes, as if each were daring the other to look away.

Neither did, and she almost walked into him, so busy was she trying to make those emerald eyes blink.

Amora stepped forward.  As first mate, she would be the one to read the charge and punishment whilst Aenor was strapped to the gun.  Loki raised a hand, and not breaking their stare, waved his mate off, then did the same to the officer who approached with a rope.  Rather, he took the bindings himself and led her to the cannon. To retie her he unwrapped the ropes.

Before Loki could pull up her shirt - or Amora who was fair chomping at the bit to rip it off of her - Aenor pulled it off herself and carefully lay in over the wood rack that held extra shot during battle.  She didn’t have much wardrobe these days and could ill afford to lose any part of it. Knowing that she would be stripped of her blouse for the flogging and that any extra fabric would increase both her discomfort and the possibility of infection after the fact she had worn the lightest shirt she owned with nothing under it.

Those officers behind her, Amora included, were not silent at the sight of her already striped back.  Someone hissed in shock and sympathy. Another made a startled gasp. Even the first mate who clearly hated her rather dearly muttered something crude in a dark, but not unkind, voice.

Loki, who was before her, was too busy pulling her to lay on her stomach across the iron, her booted toes touching the ground but no more than that, to notice the reaction of his officers.

The iron was cold beneath her naked belly and still covered hips, the chill sinking easily through the heavy canvas of her trousers.  With a quick and practiced hand, Loki had looped the rope about her wrists and between them so they held her firm but not so tight that it would harm her skin.  The other end was tied to the base of the cannon so she had no room to move. She was pleased she could not see him from that angle, save his burnished boots, and even more so that he could not see her face as she quietly gulped.

Still, she was not afraid, she told herself again, though her lungs seemed unable to take quite enough air.  Setting her strangely hot cheek against the cool, curved metal helped somewhat. That her guts were suddenly a bit troubled and weak was no doubt from the coldness pressing against the light breakfast of hardtack and water that she’d taken that morning.  This would be the third time she had taken the lash. Even if this were a lighter punishment for her was the same if it was to be done with a bullwhip and meant to open her flesh down to the bones.

The smell of the oil and blackening that were both fresh on the gun were heavy and sickening, made worse by her head hanging as it was.  Who would not feel unwell?

After he was certain she was secured, she could see Loki’s boots disappear as he stepped behind her, his feet between where her’s were spread.  There was perfect silence, other than those usual sounds of the gundeck. A creak of wheels moving ever so slightly under the line of guns, the thin hiss of air through the cracks in the closed gun-ports, the slight echo of the sailors walking on the deck above.

Then the click of a wooden handle being lifted as Loki took up the cat.

Before his first swing, to check the distance, she felt him slowly trail the eight knotted strips of leather across her skin.  Mostly her back was dead of sensation, but there were places that were not at all or only lightly scarred where it teased along her unhurt flesh.  Aenor fisted her hands until her knuckles were gleaming white and could not longer pretend to herself that she was not afraid.

Then… he did nothing.  “Fuck…” she heard him breathe out the word.

It was a rare thing for Loki to use profanity anywhere save when engaged in foreplay and copulation, so the shock of it gave her a welcome distraction from the growing amount of briny moisture in her mouth.

For the space of ten breaths, Loki did not move and Aenor waited.  Then she felt trembling fingers trying not to trace over the scars on her back.  She could not feel the texture of his touch, only the pressure from them.

“Where…?”  There was an astonishment in his voice that was quickly mastered.  “Some of these are new. Newer,” he corrected himself, his voice was low and furious.

“You missed them before?  I suppose your quarters are quite dark, and my back was not the area of your particular interest,” she quipped, trying to keep her tone light and conversational.

Loki seemed disinterested in lightness, though he was inclined to conversing.  “When?” One word, served completely frozen.

“When think you, captain?  What crime of mine that might have been discovered since last we met would be worthy of a scourging?  Fortunately for me, twas done whilst I was still on Asgardia and your mother insisted one of her healers see to me after I took a fever from the lash, or I’d not be here to having done again.  Pity the marks already there meant they could not stop the scarri -”

Before she could finish Loki reached over the cannon and took the rope in his fist, snapping it and quickly lifted her upright.  The abruptness left her lightheaded, and she had to grab the cannon to keep her head above her feet.

With a swirl of fabric, Loki’s long, gorgeous coat was off of him and being slid up her arms in a wave of silk lined suede that felt soft as butter.  As he spoke he deftly buttoned it to her chin. “The default is canceled. I offer mercy as thanks for Aenor’s service saving us from the Skyrins.”

She looked up at him, feeling both ridiculous and weak at the knee with relief.  Ashamed at herself for being so afraid, and feeling rather silly as she stood swamped by his massive coat with the sleeves covering all but her fingertips, while he buttoned her up, Aenor questioned, rather like an idiot, “I had thought I was spared the

last

punishment I had earned for the sake of that?”

Loki’s expression was bland, his tone nearly gentle, and his eyes glittering with rage, “Then I’ll owe you one.”  He took her shoulders and turned her before him, hustling her away from the cannon, the officers, and the gun-deck, before she could speak again.  It was the speed and momentum of his motions alone that kept her peculiarly unskyworthy legs from giving way.

At the top of the stairs, the light from the pale, ashen sky was too strong for Aenor’s eyes, for upon seeing it her lashes were suddenly heavy with water.  Her feet were able to move without the direction of her thoughts, which was all to the good as she was rather blank in the area of her mind. Those crew members who were on deck were a rather blurry assortment of confusion as they parted for the captain and herself, many nearly forgetting to make their obedience in the strangeness of the moment.

When they had finished crossing through the crowd to reach the door of Loki’s cabin - their destination apparently, for Aenor was uncertain of most of the world at that moment - he put out his hand to turn the handle, stopped, and let forth a gusting sigh.

Turning on his heel, he raised his hands, “Before gossip can start, I have chosen to offer clemency to Captain Breathnach.  Before questions can start, it is no one’s business save mine, and if anyone has issue with it we will be in Hel soon enough, where they can be cashiered out and good skies to them.”

Before response could be forthcoming, Loki turned back and continued his forward motion of directed Aenor before him into the dark, warm comfort of his luxurious quarters.

Dropping into one of the chairs at his escritoire, Aenor crossed her arms on the desktop and buried her face on them, trying to no longer shake.

Loki moved away from her with heavy steps, then poured an enormous amount of port into a crystal glass and put it before her, before going to sit in the massive, leather chair that had been crowded into the room near the firegrate.

Her hands steadier, Aenor took a generous sip of the sweet, thick wine, and settled back to think no thoughts for a time.  When she had finished, she looked at Loki. He was leaned a bit forward with his legs spread, his expression bland and unreadable.  “Tell me.”

He had the light, conversational tone of a man visiting a coffeehouse to read the daily broadsheets and collect political gossip.

She drained the port and rose to get herself more, gesturing towards him with the empty glass, “What is there to tell?  Our misalliance having been discovered, and your escape being made, there were questions. Many questions. Questions lead to investigations, which will oft then lead to trials.”  The ruby liquid poured, Aenor took another drink, and then set it down. It would not do to be drunk in the captain’s cabin so early in the morning.

Leaning back on the little cabinet the drink came from, she looked idly at her boots, remembering the look of disappointed worry on Captain Rogers face as he was forced to place her in irons.  “It needed to be decided, by the Midgardian navy and the Royal House of Asgardia, if I had acted in collusion with a known pirate and seditionist, willfully putting both of our navies and our alliance at grave danger in support of his actions?  Or was I merely his unwitting dupe, seduced into showing him things such as my ship, therefore exposing military secrets? Was I to be whipped? Or hung?”

Aenor poured again, her throat painfully dry.  Even though Loki’s cabin was snug and warm and full of beautiful things, himself included, the memory of the dungeon in the Asgardian naval barracks, built on a larger scale, with gray rock that seemed to forever be damp, and ever echoing with chains seemed rather more real than her surroundings.  Death had seemed so likely then, and she had only her hate to keep her from freezing most nights.

After another swallow, she shrugged, “I was fortunately found to have been a dolt whose romantic nature and physical urges had overwhelmed her.  Just the reputation every captain wants. And had been all of that.”

“I was-” he sounded as if he were about to give some explanation in the same, bland way one might explain choosing one fabric over another to cover a chair.

She turned, shouting, “I took you on my ship!  I let you see my cabin, the gundeck! They should have drummed me out of the corps and banned me from ever flying again!”  Stopping herself, she sat at the desk again. “It was actually your family and their… information about you and your… ways that saved me.  Your mother was quite impassioned, as was Thor. Even your father made grumbling noises about having to reconsider the alliance between our Realms if I was not to be part of the hunt for you.  I think he alone recognized how

inspiring

my dislike of you be to my work.

“So it was fifty lashes.”

“Fifty…” his voice was soft.

With a quirk of her lips and a raise of her eyebrow, Aenor had him seated again. “Aye.  Old navy style and all. I was clapped in irons on the deck of

the Songbird

and was made to knot my own cat for the punishment.  For every ten strokes, a different officer took over. At the time I thought that the worst part would be knowing that my own officers, Merisa, Andre, the others, would be forced to be the ones to punish me.  That was quite naive.

“The pain, and the infection, and then the fever.  Those were all much worse.” Raising her glass, Aenor intoned, “To Her Majesty Frigga, without whom neither of us would be here today.”

Loki rose, nodding, and pulled the cat from where it was tucked in his belt, throwing it so it landed with a soft sound on the seat he had vacated.  With a few deft motions, he had removed his jacket, weskit, and elaborately tied cravat, laying them with hasty care upon his bed, followed by his lace-trimmed shirt of linen.

In the soft, flittered light of the stained and mullioned window, and the low-set oil lamp that swayed above them, his pale skin glowed.  He was perfect, in both form and feature, his skin marked by not the least blemish. It had been a mark of how elaborate the illusion of being Magnus had been that there had been light freckles across his broad shoulders, a mole high on his neck, even a small scar on his inner arm.

The low waist of his breeches showed her the splendid line of his hip bones and the trail of black hair that led from navel to paradise.

Picking up the cat, he took the few steps needed to reach her and put it in her slack hand, again nodding.  “Fifty.”

Then he turned and went to kneel beside his bed, his back perfectly straight, his hands palm down on the coverlet.  Then, as if considering, he reached and pulled his long hair to the side so it flowed over his shoulder to his chest and would not impede his correction.

“Wha-, what?” Aenor asked, aghast.  “You expect me to-”

Without turning he interrupted, “If you cannot do fifty at once we will stop and you can rest your arm until you are prepared again.  Every blow needs be crisp and sure.”

For a space of breaths she stood above him, the smooth, wooden haft of the cat a not unfamiliar presence in her palm.  It was a well-made, well-used, well-looked after thing of supple leather and perfect, tight knots. Very unlike the crude, made to the event items that had wracked her back in the past.

It was the same black as his hair and the idle thought came to her that it might look just as well and right against his pale, elegant back as his inky locks did.  So easy would it be to raise her arm and add pink, then red, then a slow streaming of blood down its length.

He would heal.  Asgardians always did.

Then she came near to tossing up her accounts at the thought.

“I cannot!”  She flung the cat from her so it landed by his knee.

“Certainly as a captain in the navy you were forced to give discipline once or twice at least,” he said, scooping up the whip and turning his upper body only to offer it back to her.

She refused it and with a sigh of great forbearance he stood to press it again into her hand, but she shied away from him as if he meant to strike her.  “I will not. I stood my default because I had earned it. Even had you been Magnus I should never have done what I did. That you ended up being… you changes nothing of my crime.”

“If I had not been me you would never have committed it.”

Loki took her chin in his hand, so their eyes might meet.  Though his face was expressionless his eyes were wet, “I set out to humiliate you, my stake.  To undermine the great pirate hunter and leave her feeling foolish at least, to see the threat of her taken from the skies at best.  That you ended up being you is proof that every bad act has its own punishment built within it. I cannot live with this disparity between us.  Even now it is like vitriol in my sinews, like a snake chewing its poisonous way through my mind. I-... I-...”

For the first time in their acquaintance, Aenor saw words fail their master, followed by his legs as he landed again on his knees, this time with no grace and at her feet, his head hanging.

“I love you, Aenor.  I love you, and the endless suffering you have borne at my hands is the proof.  Ask my mother. It is those who I love who suffer from me the most.” His tone was of one scrubbed hollow of feeling.

Aenor with a shaking hand touched the top of his head.  His hair was a dark, soft river under her fingers, and she took a fistful of it to tip his head back, “I love you, you madman.  Which is why I will not scourge you. I have lived with the unhappiness of loving the one whose victim I have been, now you will bear living with knowing that you did me this harm.  This can be the only parity between us.”

His mouth opened slightly, as his eyes narrowed, “You cannot mean it, my captain.  How can you love one who you barely know, save as deceiver, kidnapper, pirate, egoist -”

“I will not let you use me to sop your damaged scruples,

my

captain.  Or talk me out of my love.  You

are

a deceiver, a kidnapper, a pirate, an egoist, and to know you as such is to know you well.  I also know you as lover, romantic, wit, and all that is fractured and magnificent.” Then, rudely pulling his head back further, she pressed her mouth to his before he could speak more blather.

For less than a moment, he resisted her.  Then he knew himself better and wrapped his arms about her waist, standing to take her to bed.

The normally careful prince was all haste and madness, her hands still ripped at his hair, his tongue despoiled her mouth.  With a flick he had opened his coat that she still wore and he stood long enough to sneer lustfully at her spread on the dark, plum silk that lined it.  She pushed off her trews without bothering to take off her boots, and Loki freed his avid, yearning cock, fisting it as he looked down upon her.

“You are never returning to the navy, stake.  Never leaving my side, my pirate queen.”

Hypnotized by the sight of him, it was hard to think of response, but she did.  “I will never stop fighting you when I think you wrong. Which I fear shall be often.”  With a shudder, Aenor slid two of her fingers along her opening, her hips arching to her own touch.

Loki batted her hand away and lay himself onto her, “Then I shall ne’er be bored.”  With a groan of near pain, he fucked as deeply into her as he could, and her legs wrapped about him, her boots against his back.

Filled and torn between great comfort as his weight and the way he stretched and invaded all of her and the remnants of anxiety in her blood, Aenor gasped out, “Good, for I fear that you are fearfully fractious, as well as the most trouble, when bored.”

Moving his hips slowly, Loki hushed her with a soft, “Shhh….  Just feel me, treasure.” His one of hands under the small of her back so her pelvis was tilted as he liked and his hard, steady cock found places within her making her flood over him and thrash with an eagerness to reach completion.

Loki would have none of it.  Yet. When she again twined her fingers into his hair, trying to use it to make him make haste, he slowed his motions until she was desperate and maddened and clenched about him, arms, legs, and cunt.  Soon she was undulating with him, letting the pleasure build until it seemed her body could not contain so much.

Her head fell to the side with her eyes fluttering closed as she murmured again that she loved him.

Loki’s left hand wrapped about her throat whilst his thumb stroked her madly pulse, “Say it again.”

Taking the little revenge possible for her, Aenor opened her eyes with a wide innocence, “I thought I was not to speak.”

“Eheheheheh… say it and I will make you come for ever word.”

She smiled up to him, “I love you, Loki, you and no other.  You are my- ahhhhh!”

A scoop of his hips and a press to her throat and a push upwards of his palm on her back sent her into an alarming, and very loud, finish.

“They probably think I’ve decided to flog you in private,” Loki whispered against her mouth as he kissed her back to her senses and then rolled her over to ride him.

Seven peaks later, Aenor was a sobbing mess, and Loki was little better when he finally let himself come as well in a frenzy of promises and near convulsive humps that left him too boneless to do more than move off of her, pulling her against his body as they as much fainted away as slept.

At moonrise, Aenor woke to Loki’s mouth reverentially brushing over every scar that adorned her back.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Aenor felt something tickling her ear.

She flicked it away and rolled over, seeking for further sleep despite the thin ray of reddish light coming from between the shutters of the great cabin.  With morning light came duties and Aenor should be up and working the sails, seeing they were dry and clean and in need of no repairs. Pushing back a silken sheet, she then recalled to mind that because she had been due for flogging the day before she had been struck from the duty roster for the next few days and, though the default had not occurred Aenor was not glutton enough for work to when work was not required of her.

At any rood, though she had not been punished with the lash the day before, a toll had still been taken by her body.

The moment her mind had begun to be enfolded again in the black velvet of sleep, that same something from before now tickled

within

her ear.

With a faint growl, she turned to look over her shoulder and there saw Loki leaning up behind her, a teasing fond smile on his face and a bit of his hair in his hand that he was using to play at the shell of her ear.  “Bastard…” she whispered, fighting to keep a matching smile from her own lips.

That lovely hair was slightly damp, and he smelt of musk, pine, and salt air.  Whilst she had slept on he’d clearly already bathed.

“Captain Bastard, if you please, Captain Treasure….”  he murmured back, leaning in to kiss her the rest of the way awake, his mouth open and soft, his tongue gentle and languorous, a hand loose about her neck.

Aenor lay quiet and let him dally, answering like with like in her kisses but otherwise offering no restraint to him moving as he would, running that hand now from throat to peaked breast to peaked breast, circling her nipples with slow thoroughness.  Then, his broad, calloused palm flat to her ribs, stroking her belly until she felt drowsy again, yet also a creature of ready warmth and melting sex.

An elegant fingertip dipping into the shallow of her navel, giving her a light shiver, as his hand passed lower, running through her maidenhair to find her wet and open and already slightly pulsing with readiness for his further attentions.

Though, Aenor mused, Loki being as he was meant he might give her but the barest of those attentions for longer than she might think bearable, wearing her body out with mischievous touches until she begged with broken words for merciful release that he would consider giving.

Consider.

But on this morning he was in an affectionate frame of mind, as he had been all the day and night before, expiating his guilt through acts of devoted adoration upon her body, as a priest might kneel at an idol that made a great deal of noise and returned his venerations with those of its own.

The weapon hardened pads of his fingers were slick from the barest touch of her, sliding and pleasuring.  Aenor’s thighs were tight and trembling as he kissed her deeper, plunging tongue in time with fingers, bringing her to a sighing completion.  The smile that had been mischievous was now naught but fond as he looked down at her. Weakly lifting her head, she gave him a peck on the nose that left his eyes large with shocked pleasure.

“Now may I go back to sleep,

captain

?  After I offer you a like kindness, of course,” she reached for him yet Loki sprang from the bed with the energy of a spring goat kid, ignoring his massively engorged cock.

“No time, sweetheart,” he said without looking as he opened several of his clothing chests, rooting about in them, “we have finally arrived on Niflheimr.  Ah,” with a very pleased with himself grin, he rose holding a bundle wrapped in fine white paper that he tossed towards her, followed by a buff leather bag, finally removing a hat box from Gelotte’s, the finest haberdasher on Midgard or perhaps in all of the Realms.

That item he placed with some degree of ceremony on his drinks table and the started to quickly making his own toilette with both speed and perfection.

“Now hurry up, there’s a tub waiting.  You don’t want to miss the landing. There’s tea as well, but we’ll break our fast in port.  Up now,” he said with a nod as Aenor sat on the edge of the bed trying to untie the string on the bundle with still shaky, sleep fumbled fingers.

Within was a beautifully cut suit of plain chocolate brown made of the finest velveteen, with white silk blouse and stockings.  The only decorations were the great buttons of pure gold struck with images of a warbling bird, and the waistcoat that was fancifully embroidered with images of larks and magpies swooping amongst brilliantly leaved, autumn trees.

To no surprise, the bag contained a pair of rather magnificent boots based on the style of those worn by Midgardian naval officers, but of better leather and craft.  Of equal excellence, and also to no surprise upon her part, was the hat within the famous pink and grey striped box from Gelotte’s. The suede matched the russet stitching of the leaves on the waistcoat, the band the velvet of the suit, and the plumes were one of golden brown and the other emerald green.

Even to her unstylish eye, Aenor could see that this was a very fine outfit and one made to her size.  Even the hat.

Knowing the waiting list at Gelotte’s, the time that such a suit would take to be tailored, and the boots cobbled, it was clear that Loki had planned her to be upon the

Horn

for some time.

With a smirk and a raised eyebrow, she watched as he finished adding a scanty drop of pomade to his curls, “What?  No Dwarvish made cutlass or pistols?”

Placing his own hat at an excellent angle and taking up an exotically carved walking stick capped with an outlandish diamond, he answered, “

That

manner of choice I trust you to make yourself.  Your taste in weaponry is exemplary. But in reference to fashionable attire?”  A refined shudder went through his shoulders, “No, that would be an error. We can shop for weapons after we eat.  Now bathe!” he ordered with a pointed finger as he left the cabin, his jade green greatcoat’s skirts swirling behind him.  Then he peeked back in, “There is perfume for you as well. The blue bottle.”

And then he was gone.
 
Loki’s crew knew their business and moved about it briskly, any ideas or fear relating to the change in Aenor’s status from prisoner to crew member to someone facing the lash to whatever she was to be now was less important to them than setting down neatly and getting off board to spend their shares.

As ever, the air of Niflheimr was filled with mist, the weak sun doing little to part the fogs.  Though they had moved lower in the night, little could be seen below them but white mists and darker shadows.

Niflheimr was the smallest of the Realms, with grey skies and weak soil that turned little in the way of food or profit for her citizens.  For generations, only the sale of its vile and terrifying army of Draugr as mercenaries brought any wealth.

When her current queen Hela took -

took

being a proper description - the throne she had ideas, something that had before been unknown on Niflheimr.  Not that ideas were found with frequency anywhere within the Realms, Loki considered, but Niflheimr by virtue of so many of its citizens being dead, had even fewer than was typical amongst the fools populating the rest of the sky.

In the hundreds of years since Hela’s coming to her throne Niflheimr’s once lonely, bleak capital of Hel had become the greatest pirate haven to ever exist, outdoing Tortuga and Barataria on Midgard, Lauss on Jotunheim, even Frelsgard on Vanaheim.

The cold, winding streets housed the lowest gin houses, the maddest beer and mead halls, dosses with vermin-filled mats for any pirate have a bad run to sleep off their rum, the Grand Zubrowka Hotel that truly was near as grand as the palace Loki had been raised in, coffeehouses wherein the political discourse was oft punctuated by violence and profanity, manky grog shops, prostitutes of many varieties and specialties found on the street or in houses refined, vulgar, and sometimes filled with restraints and toys of correction, restaurants both low and costly, gambling hells run by the dead where the price of cheating was only ever paid once, warrens of rooms where secret meetings could be held, dark alleys where the unspeakable or erotic could both occur, and shops.

Oh, so many sorts of shops wherein could be found all manner of straight nails, rope, pretty dresses, wine, newly made weapons or those who had lost their owners, fiddles, drums, dancing slippers, jewels set and loose, cards, peg legs, patches for missing eyes or ruined pantaloons, decorative scrollwork, paint, heavy arms, hats (if you could call them that), books even, should one be desperate, and every other thing a sailor too long in the skies might desperately need, or merely have, to have.

It was also just the place to take on more crew.  There would be more experienced hands needed if they were to have enough bodies to man the ships he planned to raise from fallen Titan.

“Course in order for the descent, Amora?” Loki asked.  She had been waiting outside of his cabin, not quite close enough to be listening in but not far enough away for it to be impossible.

“Aye, captain,” she answered, following him as he made his way through his bustling cherubs, each bent to their tasks with a will, knowing fresh food, exotic liquors, games of chance, and willing libertines awaiting their commerce.  Each only gave the barest attention to give him their salutes and then return to work.

“Captain!  Captain!” She tried to get his attention several times, showing a beautiful creature’s inability to recognize another’s intentional disregard.

Finally, having taken his place on the quarterdeck, he allowed her to be heard.  “Yes, Amora, what is it?”

“Several members of the crew have expressed some… er… apprehension at that navy woman being allowed to show such disrespect to our captain without -”

“Ahh, ah,” he interrupted, ticking a long finger back and forth before her cute little noise, “No.  I imagine that by ‘some’ you mean yourself? Because whilst I doubt not that a few others might feel likewise, I am correspondingly without doubt that they would never embrace confiding such

grave

apprehensions to you, darling.”

Before she could answer, across the busy deck he could see the doors to his cabin open and the top of Aenor’s glorious plumes bobbing through the crowd to make her way to his side.  By a combination of new respect engendered, he had no incertitude by her splendid change of raiment as well as a curiosity at possibly likewise change in her status, the crew easily made way for her, a few even offering their reverence as they would to any officer.

Loki smirked.  She was born to be a captain, even the bilge rats saw it.

The gobsmacked Amora made several noises.  “Darling,” he said with some kindness, as once they had been good friends when he had few enough of them to count on a hook, “when we take the Black Fleet I will need officers of more than mere competence, but of great knowledge to keep those ships in line.  No doubt they have gone a bit feral and wild sitting down there all of this time. Aenor is such a one and make no mistake, she’d been that close to taking me, I mean the

Horn

, for good reason.”

Outrage emboldened her, “Loki!  You cannot mean to give he-”

Again, a cool grin and a chastising wave of the finger stopped her, “Now, is that any way to speak of your sister-captain to be, Enchanting One?”

For a moment her words forged on even as her expression changed, taking in his meaning.  With a crisp salute, she clicked her heels, “Permission to see to the landing boats, sir.”

Already bored with her, he turned away with a wave of his lacy cuff, “Granted.”

When she and Aenor passed each other upon the stair, Amora did not even frown, but gave what could be seen as a jaunty nod.

She looked magnificent.  Her long legs were complemented by the fitted trousers, and the fit of the jacket gave a pretty frame to her plump little breasts where they were uplifted by the specially cut waistcoat.  The hat suited her short, dark, gleaming hair, and the one plume matched her eyes as the other did his.

All was perfect.

Save one thing.

Fussing with her poorly tied cravat, Nora came to his side, “Did you give her a pup to kick for breakfast?  She seems quite merry.”

Loki ignored her question and fussed her hands away from the already wrinkled and messy cloth, unearthing it from about her neck and then wrapping it about again in an elaborate pattern and a meticulous knot that made her chin sit high and proud.  “There. Isn’t that better?”

“It’s certainly less comfortable….”

“Mr. Bonden, take us down, in your good time,” he ordered, seeing that the sails were ready and the crew as well.

“Aye, captain.”  With a shift of one of the series of iron levers and cogs that controlled the magical devices that kept The Golden Horn aloft, followed by a subtle movement of the wheel, they began to descend in a smooth motion.

Unlike most of the Realms, the capital of Niflheimr did not sit on one of the edges of the floating land.  For contrary to them it, the oldest of the lands, had existed even before the fall of Titan. Hel sat at the mouth of the ancient River Gjoll.

“Whilst Bonden has more than a little experience doing this, you may still wish to brace yourself, my dear captain,” he said to Aenor.

On the deck below them the crew, having already gathered their coats, capes, and money, were likewise braced against ropes, lashed down crates, the stairs, anything that could keep them from flying free.

She leaned forward, her hands comfortably holding the rail, her legs spread.  He took his place beside her, nodding to Bonden who again, moved another lever.

The glide slowed but steepened.  Now the mists became wispier and thin, and before them an impressive, grey river, moving with gelid slowness and bedecked here and there with ice and snow.

It was with barest bobble on the water that Loki’s flawless ship alighted upon the bitter water, moving there like the swan she was - graceful yet mean of heart.

“Excellent work, as ever, Bonden.”

“Thank you, captain.”

By the time they had moved to the berth that was permanently saved for them in the port, the crew was showing a gleeful impatience.  None would stay on board save the kitchen monster, who had no interest in ever even coming above decks. It was Hela’s guarantee that no ship in her port would ever be boarded by any save her own crew.  Her Draugr ensured it, taking any thieves or stowaways to swell their own ranks.

Loki waited until all of the crew had departed before he offered Aenor his arm, “Shall we, Captain?”

Laying a gloved hand onto his forearm, Nora looked concerned.  “I’m sure I have enemies here.”

“And I am certain I have enemies everywhere.  It keeps life from being dull, do you not find?”

The busy dock of Hel was filled with every manner of creature and business, some of which Loki would have to take care of before taking Nora into town.  He needed to see the dock master to pay his fees and -

Aenor pointed ahead of them.  A cadre of Draugr were moving forward in that peculiarly cadent lurch that they called marching.  “Do they not appear to be heading towards us?”

“I am certain that it is naught but a coincidence.”

Yet, they did grow closer.  He saw at their head was a living soldier, shaven-headed and dressed in black rather than in the colourless leathers of the others.  “Prince Loki!” he called out.

Damn.

Loki pretended to not hear him, turning Aenor.

“Your Highness!” he called again, the cadre almost upon them, aided by Aenor stopping and looking askance at him.

Loki sighed and waited, his hand out.

The officer bowed, offering a black-edged envelope.  “I come at the behest of Queen Hela. Your daughter commands your presence at her castle, Highness.”

Now Aenor’s look was past askance into pure shock, “Daughter?”

“I can explain.  On the way.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The infamous and ancient Grand Fortress of the Queens of Hel,

Éljúðnir

, was hewn from osmium and red iron, and only magick and great will kept it from sinking under its own weight into the depths of the Realm it rested heavily upon.

It loomed over the city like a crouching, lean-shouldered wolf waiting for a slow-witted feast to blunder into its path.  The causeway that led to it through the cold slough that surrounded it was empty of any traffic, even deliveries. Aenor had heard of it, of course, seen sketches of it in the daily broadsheets even, but to be walking towards its open double doors escorted by a troop of the undead made her feel rather like breakfast.

Being breakfast, not eating it.  Indeed, the idea of food made her rather want to cast up her accounts.  She had known that coming here was a bad idea.

Members of any navy were unwelcome in Hel’s famed pirate haven, especially those of the Midgardian Navy, and especially, she was certain, the Midgardian Navy’s premiere pirate hunter, be she forcibly retired or not.  It was no exaggeration to say that Aenor might well be the most wanted woman in a city made up of criminals.

She perhaps made a sound of apprehension, embarrassingly.  Loki had been talking for a rather a long time to no surprise, whilst not saying much to any point.  He was going on about a very gifted tailor he planned to visit when they were done with Queen Hela, stopped both speaking and walking and looked down at her.

“What can the matter be, Captain?” he asked with a raised brow.

The draugr surrounding them had kept stepping and he raised a graceful arm to plant a gloved hand on the chest of one of the creatures to keep it from walking into them.  It kept trying to move forward, its feet lifting and dropping as it made no forward progress.

Soon another bumped into that one, and then another, creating a line of the dead, shuffling in place, all held by Loki’s casual gesture.  
“Oh, I cannot possibly imagine!” she answered, all incredulous with him.  “We are being escorted to the most notorious bastion in all of the Realms at the command of the most notorious enfant terrible in those Realms, yourself included, who I have just discovered is your enfant terrible, a fact you have yet to elucidate for me.  It unquestionably at no time ceases with you, does it?”
“At least you shall never lack entertainment, lucky girl,” he said, lifting her hand to brush a kiss over her knuckles.

“Somehow I feel the day I long for ennui shall arrive soon rather than later.  Now,” she tapped the center of his chest in the same place he restrained the deadman, “explain yourself, lover, before I meet this woman.  And possibly end up joining the ranks of her army. I desire to die satisfied as to how she came to be.”

Loki let the draugr go, spinning lightly on his heel so it passed harmlessly between them, “Goddess, Captain Treasure, goddess, not merely a woman.  It is my heartfelt suggestion that you not forget it. Though my own godhood is just an amusing addition to my other qualities Hela treats her own with a malign seriousness.  Keeping the whip hand over these cadaverous bastards is not enough to keep one in power in a place such as this. Here one must instill a level of fear commiserate with the danger of the seat one sits in.”

The shaven-headed, live soldier leading the draugr halted their progress.  “Highness…” he said in an aggrieved tone. “The Queen is waiting.”

“Yes, quite right.  My little girl was always dreadful impatient.  Come along, Aenor,” he said, his long legs now causing him to now outstrip the dead men, still explaining nothing.

Holding onto her hat so she could catch up, Aenor grumbled within.

The guards at the gate were draugr as well, though these in life had been Jotnar.  In death their frozen skin was so cold that the air smoked and misted about them, ice hung from their grey flesh like armor, and their horns were bedecked with it as well so they verily scraped the top of the great archway of the portal.

A shudder went through Loki’s shoulders as they passed between the giants.  Aenor felt the same, though she was surprised to see him show his discomfort.  In the entire time of their acquaintance, the only moments in which he allowed himself even a hint of sincerity was when they were alone.

At least she hoped, she believed, he was being sincere at those moments.  Recent events between them would be rather lowering, if she thought otherwise.  Yet, as she looked at him now, carefully doffing his glorious hat as they entered the quiet halls of Hel, with Loki lies and deception were not so much his second nature as his first.  His seeming care for her could be part of his scheming.

Lurid red light seemed to come from nowhere, as there were no lamps nor torches, yet those lights flickered against the high, stark walls within the fortress.  In most palaces or castles the walls of a great hall would be hung with banners and used to display images of past glories and the trophies - be they armaments or flags -  that had been wrested from the hands of defeated foes for generations.

Within

Éljúðnir

the only decor was the uneven floor that only the dead could walk upon easily, which gleamed ivory in that strange light, and was formed in a tight, cross-hatched pattern.

A pattern made of bones.  The bones of every manner of creature imaginable and many that were not.

“Quite on the nose, do you not think?  Made from those considered too vile or too dangerous to even be made draugr.” Loki said, gesturing downwards.  “Not Hela’s work, I might add. Her mother’s design. She had vast sketches of them in her bedchamber, so when even having a number of intense paroxysms supplied by me was not enough for her to find sleep, she would work on how the next section would be laid out.  Vulgar, is of course, how the whole thing appears. I should like to think Hela may have inherited a teardrops worth of restraint from me, as her mother had none.”

Unable to halt the sound, a snort came from Aenor’s nose at even the possibility of Loki and restraint having made each other’s acquaintance.  She could tell that he was trying to distract her from the agitated state of her nerves.

He kept walking and said then, in a thoughtful tone, “Though, her unbridled nature established, I

do

recall instructing Queen Angrboða upon a few matters pertaining

to

restraints…”  He smiled to himself.

Now her snort echoed unpleasantly down the hall.

Even the inexpressive draugr seemed mildly scandalized by the sound.

Loki put a gloved finger to her lips, “Shhhh, pet.  Try to behave a modicum more in keeping with the occasion.”

She bit him, and when he had worked his finger free he gently touched the tip of her nose with it, “Now, now, even I am unwilling to appear before my child wholly erect, so enough of that.”

Now the draugr just seemed uncomfortable, but not nearly as much so as their master who looked as if fate were kind he would be immediately joining the ranks of the undead himself rather than having to hear anything further.

Aenor rather empathized, though since that might soon be her actual fate, she found she could not sympathize as well.

Fortunately for all of them, the entrance to the throne room neared.

She still did not know how Loki had come to be the father of the Queen of Hel.  Well, rather, she knew intimately how it had come to be, but not why, and now was far too late to find out.
 
Loki entered the throne room of Éljúðnir

for the first time in more than a few decades.  Perhaps a century or more. He was genuinely uncertain.  His time as a hostage here in his youth was one of the many, many memories that he preferred not to dwell upon.  Much like his last, utterly absolute altercation with his father that had led to his theft of the

Horn

and his life of piracy.

Though, fair being fair, his time with the voluptuous Angrboða was not a bad memory, per se.  Not bad at all in some respects. Her massive, sturdy bed had been his favorite arena of sin until he had met pretty Aenor.  But he had been young in his powers then, and the heavy, so heavy rock that the fortress was constructed of was pulled from the deepest parts of thin-soiled Niflheimr, making it a natural damper to those powers belonging to anyone but the Realm’s current ruler, whoever she may be.

Even now he could feel it rather compressing him.  Another unwelcome memory.

Again, there had been compensations, but whilst the constant threat that he might end up an empty-eyed carcass fighting to fill Niflheimr’s already swollen coffers with yet more gold and gems, until he fell apart, should he not offer the Queen absolute enough pleasure had added a certain piquancy to their coupling, he had never favored the sensation of knowing his actions were not always freely his own. And that there had been fuck all he could have done about it back then.

The throne room was not large, at least not as compared to those on Asgard and Alfheimr, but then Niflheimr’s subjects did not all need breathing room.  The dais where the throne rested had been raised a bit higher, and there were drapes about it now, thick velvet hangings of black and silver.

The throne itself was the same, massive, carved from a single piece of basalt, frigid cold and damnably uncomfortable, with not a cushion to help a man.  Loki was certain he had gotten piles from sitting upon it naked with the former queen bouncing on his lap, the sharp stone cutting into the backs of his knees.  Only her hot little cunt around his cock had kept it from withering from the cold, he had thought at the time.

Now he knew better.  His cock and the rest of him liked the cold just fine.

He shook his head minutely.  Now was not the time for that memory, certainly.  Introducing his lover to his daughter and finding out what was going on in Hela’s labyrinthine and entertaining mind would take all of his own considerable brain.

Hela was as a handsome nightmare as her mother had been, yet she took after him as well.  The bonelessly elegant way she lounged upon her bloody uncomfortable throne, taking her ease, the long glory of her black hair, and the calculation in her eyes were all his.  The cruelty of her smile, the power that thrummed in the air around her, and the way she drummed her long fingers on her chin, looking for all of the Realms like a tiger meeting a vole, were the best of both her parents.

“Your Majesty.  My little princess,” he said, bowing elaborately, his plume

nearly

sweeping the floor as he used his hat to add to some flourish.

“Majesty of Niflheimr,” Aenor murmured, doffing her hat and offering a more restrained yet very neat little bow as well.

Her head turned slowly towards the living soldier that had escorted them, yet her eyes remained on Loki, “Fetch my father a chair.  And take that,” she gestured with the back of her hand at Aenor, “to the oubliette. She’ll make a lovely addition to the mosaic I have planned for the library.”  She turned back and smiled with many teeth at Aenor, “I understand you are a great reader. Consider it a professional courtesy, from one murderer to another.”

Aenor stood straight, frowning and speaking before Loki could stop her, “I hardly think that stopping piracy,

murder

, and rapine upon the high air makes me a murderer as well.  Oft times I took pirates rather than consigning them to the Down Deep, giving them a chance to work off their time in prison at considerable risk to-”

Hela’s other hand fisted closed, pulling on strands of Aenor’s life-force as easily as Loki would pull upon the wind.

Aenor, magickless mortal that she was, had not the smallest defense.  Her lovely, sky-pinked skin turned sallow and her eyes stared at nothing, the surface turning tacky and dull, and her mouth gaped open, moaning in dread.  Her hands scrambled on nothing, as if hoping to hold herself alive.

Loki felt his muscles turn to stone, harder than the walls about them, and his brain burned then froze and power crackled around him as fiercely as it did Hela.  She raised a delicate brow a touch but otherwise did not move, clearly deeply shaken by his being able to call magick in her fortress.

He grabbed Aenor, pulling her into his arms before she could fall.  Her body was rigid with rigor already, and the panic in her unblinking brown eyes was like a pike through his guts.  “Free her now, daughter,” he said, keeping his voice intentionally light. “Free her or I will walk from this place, take my ship, and when I return here next, I shall call the most all-mighty wind in the history of creation, and sweep everything from your Realm into the sky.”

“How-”

He cut her off, smiling, “Anyway it should take.  Any. Way.”

“Why?”

Telling anyone the entire truth was always a poor idea, and twice so with any of his blood, so he gave her only as much as he wanted.

“I need her for a venture that means… a great deal to me.  If I should lose her and the opportunity with her, then I would take it amiss.”  His voice lowered and grew louder with each work, ringing on stone walls and bone floors, “And you know what I can be like when I take things amiss, do you not, child?”

Hela sat back, her eyes narrow with consideration, “I do.  And I believe you.”

She opened her hand and Aenor sagged in his arms, gasping and clutching his velvet.  “Thank you,” she wheezed out.

It took a great deal of effort to not hold her to his racing heart until it calmed.  Not to rain kisses upon her and carry her from this redoubt of the dead.

He put her back on her feet, patting her back briskly.

Hela rolled her eyes and again signaled her living guard, “Very well.  Fetch my father a chair, and take… her to his rooms to rest and wait. Mother kept them for you, such a sentimental woman.  We have much to speak about, papa.”

“Quite.”

Aenor looked at him, but did not speak, he picked up her hat from where it fell, whisking it free of dust with the side of his hand.  Plopping it on her head, he whispered as he straightened it, “Do not worry. Hela very rarely kills a guest. Such bad luck.”

“How comforting,” she croaked at him.

He wrapped a hand around her throat, allowing himself to caress her pulse with his thumb.  It was much too fast, and he soothed it, “Fear not, my delicate little captain, I think this unwanted family reunion can be turned to our advantage.  Once I explain to my dear girl my plans for the Down Deep,

her

greedy heart will want a part of the spoils and will insist on giving us any supplies

our

greedy hearts might desire for the journey.”

“I am so happy for us,” she said with some irony and a frown before following the guard away with a trepidacious hitch to her step.

Taking the surprisingly comfortable chair brought for him, along with a glass of excellent, dark wine that had appeared as well, each brought by a more refined sort of undead creature - elves he should think.

“Now, father,” Hela’s deep, commanding voice was another gift from his side of her heritage, “what is between you and that mortal?  I thought business but…”

Hela’s voice was insinuating.

“But…”

“I saw that moment between you.  It seemed quite intimate.”

He drained the glass and held it out for more, “I would think your existence would explain it.  The best way to make an enemy into a compliant friend is to give them something that only you can.  In my case, you know what that its."

Hela nodded, drinking herself,  “And how do you know that is not her plan as well?”

Loki threw his head back, laughing loud enough to startle the dead.  “You are daddy’s girl, are you not, Majesty?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Aenor looked about the rooms that had been Loki’s when he had either lived with Hela’s mother or been her prisoner.

She handled the beautifully crafted leather restraints dangling from the silk and velvet upholstered settee and thought it had perhaps been a bit of both.

The bedroom looked like it was in a very, very expensive brothel where the guests whiled away their time engaged in intricate, extensive, even esoteric depravities whilst in the lap of all possible luxuries.

She sat back on the end of the very high bed, her legs dangling and kicking back and forth, and tried not to imagine Loki and the gorgeous queen - who had probably his height at least if their daughter was anything to go by.  It was in her mind that sitting on the bed where they had engaged with each other was probably not the best way to not think of them.

Looking around the room, at the specialized chairs and platforms and items of furniture that she could not put a name to, Aenor did not think that there was a better option.  Indeed, more like the bed was where they had spent the least time….

Sighing, she let herself fall backward.

It was a very fine mattress.

Aenor’s nature was not generally one to be intimidated.  Being a captain of a ship that flew through the skies by magic that she could not control or even affect, hunting other ships that were ofttimes crewed by creatures that had once been considered legendary monsters and gods by her people, to say nothing of the efforts it had taken her to both attain and keep that office, called for a nature that was bold, to say the least.

Yet here, deep within Hel’s famed stronghold where she was more prisoner than guest, surrounded by evidence of her lover’s baroque erotic past, especially when that lover was being rather cagey about that past and was the doting father of the woman who was considering making her part of an undead cohort, Aere found herself a tad daunted.

“Very well,” she said, jumping down from the bed and dusting off her hands, so she might look for manners of escape.

The elaborate, obscene tapestries that covered most of the walls concealed nothing more than iron threaded masonry.  The lock on the door was beyond her rudimentary picking skills, in addition to being two inches thick, and she was more than certain guarded by several draugr.

Because there was a fire laid and burning she could not examine the chimney thoroughly, but the glimpse she did manage - along with some singed hair - showed it mostly like too small for her shoulders, let alone her hips.

After finding a very large selection of personal grooming aids made of ebony and dotted with emerald to brush the stinking char out of her hair, Aenor was pleased when the door opened.  She was less so when she found it was not Loki coming to free her. Rather it was an undead, though not a warrior, carrying a tray of luncheon for her.

Aenor had just placed her napkin and lifted the cloche on a very lovely looking cutlet and creamed onions when it occurred to her that the entire kitchen staff was most likely undead as well.  Imagining the hands that might have produced her enticing repast rather ruined her appetite.

With a disappointed shrug, she poured herself a glass of wine, after assuring herself that it came from Alfheim.  
 
Though it took a tad longer than he expected, Loki was able to persuade Hela that it was in her interest to assist him in his endeavor to the Down Deep.  She had agreed to outfit The Horn with the supplies they needed in return for a share of the general take.

And one of the ships.

That had been the sticking point that had led to their long confab.  Daddy’s Little Queen of the Dead was a hard bargainer, another trait gotten in equal share from both parents.

Leaned back on her throne, she had cradled a goblet carved from a ruby in her hands, her long black nails clicking on it as she spoke, “When it comes down to it, father, I am already disgustingly well-heeled, and whilst I shall never turn down more riches, we both know that power is much more alluring than gold.  At least to us.”

They raised their glasses to each other in a knowing salute.

“I have a rather small navy for a sky power-” she started.

Loki put up a hand, “You have one yaght and an appropriated Jotnar slave ship for transporting your troops when they are hired, both manned by dwarves that you pay obscene amounts to.  But then draugr are hard to train to do complicated boat-y things, such as not falling overboard, aren’t they darling?”

She gave him an ironic look.  He continued to stare at her. Finally, she raised a brow, rolled her eyes skyward, and nodded, “Yes, very well.  I have a two-ship navy. I wish to have a three-ship navy, as I know one of those ships of Thanos’s, should they exist, will be powerful enough to blast most of Midgard’s pirate hunters out of the sky.  And, if the legends are true and let’s just pretend they are, they need very little in the way of active crew to keep them a-sky. So that is my bargain, and no other.”

Loki took a piece of cheese from the meal they had both picked at for the last few hours.

Five ships in his armada rather than six.

He put the cheese into his mouth and chewed slowly.

Uneven numbers were more aesthetically pleasing, at any rate.

“I choose which ship,” he said.

“Of course, papa, you always had the best taste,” she smiled like a viper.

He was so proud.  But there was still one more matter.  “And I will of course not only need Aenor back for the reasons we have discussed.  Her assistance will be invaluable. Moreover, to ensure that we won’t have any further troubles in your charming village, you are to declare her a friend of your crown and give her the freedom of Hel.  Not merely for this visit, for all time to come.”

Hela snorted, “Would you like me to open her a line of credit in the casinos and buy her a trousseau while I’m at it?”

“No need, precious.  Aenor doesn’t gamble and I’ll be picking her clothing from now on,” he shuddered.  “It’s the only way to be sure.”

“Father, as much as I want this venture to go as well as you do, I cannot absolve your lover of her crimes against the pirating community.  Yes, I know it is ridiculous to call it that, but some of your fellow buccaneers have joined together in some manner and they insist on being called a community.  Besides which, I am not convinced that you really need her with you. You are giving this little Midgardian too much credit, or it is just her cu-”

Loki raised a finger, “Do you really wish to say what you are about to say to your papa, princess?”

Hela sighed, “I suppose not.”

“I can assure you that however delightful I might find various… bits of Aenor, she knows more about the legends and history of the Down Deep than anyone else who can also fire a cannon or navigate blind in a thunderstorm.  As far as your piratical constituency, are you more afraid of them than they are of you?” He asked the last bit idly as he popped an olive off his thumb and caught it in his teeth.

“Calling on my vanity?  That seems like a cheap tactic even for you.”

“Yes,” he nodded, stretching, “but it would work on me, so I’m guessing…”

“... it will work on me as well.  Sadly, it makes sense. Very well, I will grant her the freedom of Hel…” she cocked her head and smiled, “Tomorrow.  Be my guest tonight. It is late. Sleep here and tomorrow you can have a day in the city whilst I fill your hold.”

Loki didn’t like the sound of that.  He knew that he and Aenor would be safe enough in the fortress that night.  Even Hela was not willing to break the taboo against harming a guest, but she was clearly up to something.

He met her black eyes.  She was not even trying to hide the calculation within them.

Her smile turned into a grin.  
 
Aenor had finished the wine, and found a dusty bottle with a little sherry remaining in it, stashed in a drawer full of leather goods, many of whose uses defied her imagination.

The room was rather too warm, so she pulled off her boots and coat at some point.  Then her jacket and stockings. After time, her waistcoat followed. When Loki finally came for her she was laying on that high bed on her stomach, perusing a large volume of pornography with excellent illustrations.

The look in his eye when he entered the room was less cautious than it should have been.  Nay, it twas not just incautious, it was amused, arrogant, and confident.

Each of these things appealed to Aenor in their own way, and if things were if not equal, at least understood between them, she might have smiled back and enjoyed the sight of his swagger.

Alas, he had been not merely withholding as they approached his daughter’s keep, he had been directly contrary and evasive.

Had things been different betwixt them previous to their arrival Aenor might have been understanding, or at least allowing, of all of it, but HE had been the one to alter the skies and change their sailing.  He had seemed to bare himself to her and if that showed itself to be nothing save another lie she knew not what she would do.

Other than scuppering the Horn and marooning its Captain, after sparing a few, select, crewmembers.

With some guilt.

So when Loki finally entered his former chambers she found herself perfectly justified as well as not a little chagrined at tossing her nearly dead soldier across the vast room to - as well nearly -  land at his feet in a show of defiance and anger.

The defiance was genuine, the anger…. More conflicted.

Whilst she was trying to not be so foolish as to be angry with him for events that took place ages before she’d even been born it turned out to be much harder to do so in the room in which those events had taken place.

“You seem out of sorts, my stake,” he said, wisely stopping in the deep, stone doorway where he leaned on an elbow and crossed his ankles so one booted toe was planted on the floor.  His neckcloth was loose, and his velvet coat was over his shoulder. Otherwise, he looked as fresh and elegant as if he had just had the attentions of an excellent valet and a hairdresser.  “I had no idea Hela would want our reunion to be so lengthy. Was no meal sent? She assu-”

He noticed the still full tray.  “I thought creamed onions were a favorite of yours?”

Aenor crawled to the end of the bed, which made Loki start to saunter towards her, smiling.  She lifted a hand and slowly shook a finger at him, making him frown and step back his lean. Seating herself, so again her feet dangled, she answered, “I still love them.  The thought of the cooks gave me some pause. My reading material also upset my stomach,” she added, holding up the volume for him to see.

“Be assured, the kitchens are scrupulous and their products quite edible.  In fa- HOLY BOR!” he shouted, finally taking in the cover of the book, then crossed the room in a few heavy stomps and took it from her hands.  “I can-”

“Explain?”  Aenor cocked her head.  “I may not have your years or experience but I need an explanation for that.”  She reconsidered and wrested the book back from him, quickly whipping through the pages until she found the image she sought.  “Actually, I may need an explanation for that, after,” she said, pointing.

The image, as with all of the other etchings in the rather lengthy tome, was of a convoluted act of sexual congress.  Also, as with all of the other etchings in the rather lengthy tome, the two subjects of the image were a boldly handsome giantess, with masses of flame-red hair, strong, thick arms, generous breasts over an attractively rounded stomach, and a younger, short-haired Loki.

For a scant moment, it seemed he might not answer as he refused to look at the page.  Finally, as she kept shaking it in his face, he sighed and responded.

“The explanation is more enthusiasm than common sense.  I had a limp for three weeks after and
Angrboda could not turn her head very far to the left for the rest of her life.”

Aenor nodded, and then turned a few more pages and pointed, “And that?”

Loki shook his head, “Grog and needing to break in those straps.  They were new and far to stiff.”

A few more pages turned, “That?”

“Er… youth?’

“That?”  She jabbed at another etching.

Loki snorted, “That?  Artistic license. That is physically impossible for even me.  Or Angrboda.”

Aenor tossed the book onto a chair and hauled herself back onto the bed, pushing her hands through her hair, “I presume that Hela was conceived during one of those athletic events?  Or are you going to put me off yet again?”

Loki moved the book back to the shelf it came from and sat in the luxurious, velvet-covered chair.  He had been restrained in it any number of times and knew it to be the most comfortable seat in the room.  “Most like. Though we did have more … conventional relations as well. It cannot always be jackboots and bridles, even with Angie.”

With a groan, he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.  “Very well, though this is not my favorite story. When I was first of age Asgardia went to war with the dark elves. Actually, Asgardia was always at war with the dark elves, there had just been an unexpected peace that had broken out for a century or so, that finally broke so everyone could get back to the business of murdering each other.   I had been placed in command of a cohort that was to take one of our ships and harrie the far coast of Svartalfheim.

“What no one knew was the elves had employed draugr as support and they were arriving at the same time, the Elven king having sent several fast ships to bring them rather than waiting for delivery.  The war had broken out after their contract had been set, so Angrboda had come herself with her undead to demand greater recompense for the increased danger. Their ships practically ran into ours, and we were swarmed with the undead.  I was captured, not yet having attained my full command of the winds.

“Angrboda was not one to let an opportunity for gain slip through her fingers, so she commandeered our ship and brought me back here to be held for ransom whilst the war continued, thus managing to be paid by both sides of a conflict that she was not directly involved in.  Due to the war, my ransoming had to wait, so I was held here for near a year. Even had I my fullest powers, seidr is less puissant against iron, so buried in this pile I was as near to helpless as could be. As I swore I’d not be again.” There was tension in every line of his, and his hands fisted and released over and again.  Then he smiled and relaxed.

“You know how I bore easily.  Angrboda was, as you can see, a very desirable woman, I was young and fearless.  We were both creative. So we spent nine months trying to destroy each other in the most pleasurable ways possible.  We both survived, though barely, and by the time I was paid for we were both sick of the sight of each other and she was with child.  My princess, my Hela, who has the worst of both of us. No doubt she’ll end off ruling the Realms entire one day.”

“So your heart was not involved?” Aenor asked.

“I can say with all certainty that our hearts were our only bodily parts not involved,” Loki answered, standing to unbutton his coat.  “Are you jealous of a long-dead woman, my stake?” he asked with a leering smile. “How delightful.”

“No,” she pondered.  “No, not in that way.  I am, however, peckish and a bit drunk and it bothers me more than a little that I lack the physical wherewithal to do more than a few of those acts.  As a Midgardian, I am rather too-”

He whipped the cloth from about his neck,  “T’sk t’sk, my darling Mortal. The worst fuck I have shared with you has been a perfection of bliss compared to any of the athletics I got up to in this room with Her Majesty of Nidavellir, enjoyable though many of those long afternoons were.”  He removed his jacket and boots, then wrapped the end of the cloth about one of his hands and stood between her swinging legs at the end of the bed. “Should there truly be a pirate’s afterlife for a villain such as I, they can have all of the rum and decadence there can be, but if my reward for bad behavior is not eternity buried cod’s deep in your cunt then I will have none of it.”

Looming over her, his face shadowed by his hair and the canopy of the bed, Aenor could only stare into the poison green of his eyes and lick her suddenly dry lips.  Her body prickled everywhere, her nerves pin-pricking her and her aforementioned cunt sopping from both the erotic etchings and even more his closeness and the smell of wind and salt on his skin.

Then, with a practiced motion, he flipped her over, a knee between her legs, and tied her hands.  “This is hardly to the level of difficulty that I engaged with, with Angie, admittedly. Yet I find that there actually is a truth to the insipid belief that caring for your lover, even loving your lover, improves the amount of pleasure that can be had.  Stop squirming,” he swatted her hard enough to sting.

It could not be helped, her instinct was to free her hands.

Stepping back, he grabbed the waistband of her trousers and ripped them off, her legs tangling in them briefly as she tried to aid him by kicking, which only earned her another swat on her now bare and rather tender behind.  “Enough. Or would you rather more smacks that than this?” he asked, cupping her from behind, his long middle finger slowing entering her whilst his thumb rubbed the pucker of her bum. Though he avoided the most conventional point of pleasure betwixt her legs the tension and heat were quickly unbearable and showed no signs of being satisfied.

For a moment Aenor contemplated asking why she should have to choose between those two actions, even as she writhed and tried to move closer to his touch even though he used his free hand spread across the small of her back to pin her down.  Then she decided that the memory of her near lashing was still too fresh for that consideration. “Indeed not,” she answered, sighing and humping discreetly against his flooded palm, even as she tried to reach the goodly knot he’d tied in the silk neckcloth, moaning all of the while.

Not being free to move, to do as she wanted, was both distraction, then provocation, as she found herself unable to best his strength or leverage and soon had to lay there and let him service her as he desired.

She buried her face against the opulent bedcover, taking a bit between her teeth to defy what she knew was his desire for her to cry out for mercy or for more.

Too much indulgence was bad for a pirate, after all.

Loki laughed, “Never less than bold, Captain Treasure.”  His voice was deep with need, and there was the sound of buckles being undone and cloth shifted, and then his wondrous hand was gone, his cock taking its place, first just sliding between her nether lips, wetting itself and teasing her further, before easily sliding into place.

His place.  The place he most clearly belonged.

“Oh, Aenor,” he sighed, the softness of his voice at odds with the fierceness of his strokes, the slapping sound of their wet flesh meeting over and over at an increasing velocity, “to have you here.  To be in you, to feel you, see you smell you, kiss you,” he bent forward, placing a particularly tender kiss against the sweat-drenched nape of her neck. “Here is something I have told no one. When I was a prisoner here, though thoroughly entertaint-ed, I never knew for certain, till the day it happened, if Odin would ransom me in time, or if my hostess would grow bored or impatient and I would end up one of her undead - fighting perhaps against my people.  Mayhap my own brother. It was a dread I pray you never know.”

He lay upon her, his great weight sinking her into the paradise of the bed and stealing much of her breath.  His hand worked between her belly and the mattress, and as she felt herself begin to fade in consciousness, as the burden of him compressed her, he pressed upwards on her pearl.

The edges of her vision started to turn a creeping black.

“Having you here is the best revenge,” he said, biting the spot he had kissed hard enough to make her jerk up and howl, releasing the last of her saved air at the same moment he fucked downwards into her hard and twisted her clit, then stood pulling her up so she remained impaled upon him.

The sweet air entering her made her cunt squeeze about him as the power of her completion seemed like to rip the cock straight from him.  Wave after wave of the most intense and harrowing climax imaginable left her limp, hanging from his arms. Loki’s knees buckled under the onslaught of her clutching sheath, barely letting him catch himself on the chair.

Her legs hung on either side of his as she helplessly came again as he spurted within her, holding her tight and burying his face in her shoulder as he moaned her name over and over.

After many long moments, they both came back to themselves.  Aenor disengaged briefly and then curled up on Loki’s lap, her face hidden in his neck, feeling strangely shy.   She waited for him to speak, but rather, he just held her close and careful.
 
The next morning, Loki persuaded Aenor to eat, whilst he perused the daily broadsheet.

He had just taken up his coffee when he read the main article on the first page.  He felt his eyes thin and cursed his benighted offspring. “Stake, a question. Are you especially speedy when it comes to running?”

Around a bite of toast, she asked, “Why?”

It was Loki’s turn to show her a page and point.

The article was succinct.  It informed the populace of Hel that their queen had offered her hand in friendship and a pardon to the notorious Captain Aenor Breathnach, Midgardian Pirate Hunter and one of the most wanted enemies of the state.   As a sign of good faith, she would be presenting Captain Breathnach with the freedom of the city that very day. At three of the clock, in the grand ballroom of the Grand Zubrowka Hotel. All of the people of Hel were invited to attend as well as to congratulate the good Captain should they see her beforehand.

Which meant that Aenor had to make it to the center of a city where nearly everyone had reason to hate or at least resent her

before

she was safe to be in that very city.

Aenor opened her mouth.  Loki raised a quelling hand, “Please, stake, she is my child so I should say it.  Hela is a complete and utter bitch.  That said, I am not unproud."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Once upon a time,” Loki started as he jumped up from the breakfast tray and started tossing bits of clothing towards Aenor, the greatest sign of his concerned and agitated state being not only the disrespect for the fine fabrics, but that some of the pieces were his, “the Grand Zubrowka was the most elegant, nay, the most

soigne

establishment upon Alfheim.  Get dressed, stake, with haste.”

He sat and began to tug his own top boots on, absently pulling his hair back into a queue with a black satin ribbon, and standing to tuck in his silk shirt, all with a rapid efficiency that stunned Aenor, so used had she become to endlessly dull primping and refinement on his part.

The urgency of his toilette put a fire under her, and Aenor threw off the black velvet dressing gown that had covered her like a shroud and started looking for her linen.

His story continued, “Though having been created upon Alfheim the original proprietor was a clever mortal from your own realm who knew that the Elfin populace was rich in both arrogance and more importantly actual riches, and adored obsequious fawning, lavish surroundings, and good service, but lacked in the skills to supply it to themselves.  Here, allow me,” he added, crossing the room to knot her neckerchief in a neat mathematical style that tucked the ends in so no one could take advantage of a flying end to strangle her in a dark alley as they ran for her life. Then he took the comb from her fingers, running it through her short hair with a bit of pomade scented with lily root, continuing.

“Gustav Lastnik was a genius in his own way.  I say that as one who the same might be said of.  The Grand Zubrowka catered to the most vain, idle, and demanding visitors from not merely Alfheim but all of the Realms.  The haughtiest elves would swan, sneer firmly affixed, past dwarves wearing so much wealth their excellent beards were hidden behind golden chains and diamonds the size of plums in high summer.  Aesir in velvets and leather would exchange cool nods with Vanir in flowing silks. Midgardians would sip wine in the gambling salons, pleased that one of their own had achieved a dream that was beyond the scope of those creatures whose lives were longer but whose imaginations were less advanced.  Even the few, superior sorts of dead from Niflheimr would visit from time to time - vampyr of course, a ghoul or two. Scuttlebutt even claimed a shadow personage had taken up permanent residence in one of the finest suites, though I doubt the veracity. Not enough footmen and scullery maids disappeared for it to be true.”  He paused for a moment, eyes narrow, “Though, recalling, I have no idea what happened to any card cheats or other vulgarians caught on the property.”

Aenor frowned at his censorious tone.  “I have seen

you

cheat at cards.  Does that make you vulgar?”

“It is only vulgar to cheat if one is caught.”

Leaning across the heavily embellished bed, Loki ran his fingers across an obscene scene carved in the headboard until he found what he was looking for.  “Sorry, darling, “ he muttered as he pressed hard on a bounteous breast of a naughty shepherdess, causing a panel to open in, revealing not more sexual accouterment but rather a two brace of pistols with extra shot and several knives.  “Angie was forever certain there would be a palace coup whilst she was distracted by my charms, so this was her insurance against being caught … unawares.”

Loki shrugged into his jacket,  his long, white fingers quick as spider’s legs as he buttoned it, adding an extra pistol belt bandolier style and shoving still more arms into the pockets of his greatcoat.  “I shall take the extra ordnance, as I am stronger and you shall have a greater need for dispatch.”

Finished, he grabbed Aenor’s own jacket, hustling her into it, taking the barest moment to brush his mouth over hers before buckling her sword belt so her own cutlass hung an easy draw away on her hip, along with an iron long knife from the stash with the bed.  “Sadly, for fashion, we should forgo the coat as the tails may hinder your limbs.” Grabbing his own weapons and the champagne they had not finished and throwing a sad gaze at the garment they were leaving behind, Loki leaned against the door, listening, whilst using a bit of a breeze to make his voice sound as it was still coming from farther within the room.

“From the gardens, full of formal lawns and secluded groves, to the rooftop ballroom, all was perfect.  Eventually he even had enough funds to expand his already splendid establishment of gilt and pink marble and alabaster so he might add two small wings especially outfitted to serve the needs of the Frost and Fire giants as well.  Sadly, previous to the opening of these two scienco-magickal wonders he and his magnificent establishment were … abducted. Hats, please.”

Aenor put her own hat on and then placed his with greater care upon his gleaming hair, then stepped back.

Yanking the door open with all speed, Loki pulled in a

revenant

, one of those unexpected and tragic draugr who still retained some forlorn echo of their former character and were thus put in charge of cohorts of the dead.  The creature spun to the ground where he stomped a booted foot onto its chest to pin it whilst nodding to Aenor who swiftly stabbed through its glassy left eye with the cold iron knife, thus severing the animating magicks that kept it preserved and moving.

They knew that Hela had not ordered her forces to kill Aenor, for that would be cheating.  Rather, they had been sent to ‘detain.’ Though it was certain if there was a tragic mistake made by the notoriously stupid draugr and she was to die his daughter would shed one liar’s tear and then acknowledge sadly that these things happen.

In the great corridor, those poor undead waiting for direction from their now truly dead leader shuffled about in uncertainty.  Now and then one would moan, a sound to haunt dreams and cause skin to crawl that would then be taken up by another and another.  Loki sighed, “Cannot have them drawing notice. Allow me?” He gave Aenor a small smile that turned into a fierce grin when she nodded.

Drawing his sabre, Loki saluted and then spun upon his heel, the blade licking out so it severed the head of the closest draugr.  The beings had been instilled with a command to defend themselves unless ordered otherwise - for though dead bodies were always being created even the Queen of the Dead believed in wasting not - so when that first of their rank fell they closed upon him.

It was in but a trice, with several quick blows of his blade, that Loki had not slain so much as put down most of the troop his daughter had sent after Aenor, who had followed at a distance as to not be covered in blood spray.  Here and there she dispatched a draugr who had been too far at the edge of the crowd for even Loki’s long reach. She noted, stepping over severed limbs and fallen foes, that he did not use his magick at any point.

Magic was near to entirely a mystery to her.  Though she had studied what she could of it when in her dogged pursuit of the Pirate King, Aenor had been confounded by nearly all she had read.  Once in a tavern on Midgard, she’d had opportunity to buy a nausea-inducing mix of black rum, absinthe, and sweet red wine for Jadwidga Bone-Leg so she might pick her brain, and even

that

notorious practitioner had been unable to pull back the curtain on the secrets of the art.

“Bah, hunter girl,” the hag had sneered whilst drinking deep from her leathern mug and scratching her arse, “you either can or cannot with magic.  Can do, can understand, cannot do, cannot understand. Just remember,” she had leaned forward, the foul stench of her breath all but curling Aenor’s hair, “use iron if you stab through the brain, kill the raised dead.  Stab through the kidney, kill the fae. Stab through the heart, kill most of the immortals. Cut off their head, that kills them all. No matter how much magic they have.”

Aenor could only assume after the contrempts between Loki and Hela over her life that there was some like, familial sensitivity betwixt their magics that meant he felt it unwise to use his power here.

Or, she thought watching the glee in his eye as he readily dispatched three draugr with blinding fast series of cuts, perhaps he was simply enjoying himself.

Her lover was a man of complexities and complications.  There may be relief in a simple bout of murder.

When the hall was finally clear Loki, rather than peering around the corner, motioned her to follow him into another room, this one with a small, plain wooden door rather than the secured one they had slept behind.

Within it was small as well, with a few shelves holding nothing more sinister than extra candles and lamp oil.  Before she could speak, he put a finger to his lips and then reached high on one of them and removed a glass orb like the ones that hung from the high ceilings everywhere in the redout.

No sooner had he have it in his hand, than there was a deep groan of stone grinding upon stone, and shifting of ground beneath their feet.  Aenor threw her arms out to brace herself on the walls, careful to touch nothing else as the pivot grew faster. It was different than the pitch and roll of the deck but they were both able to ride the motion easily enough.  Then, with still louder moan of rock-ish discomfort, it slowed and settled into place.

Loki returned the glass and pushed open the door they had entered.  Rather than a hallway full of dead draugr they were now facing a different hall, smaller, less impressive in every way, and clearly unused at any point in the recent past.  “As I mentioned, Angie was rather distrustful by nature.”

Aenor frowned at him, “Yet she chose to trust

you

?”

“Distrustful, not perspicacious,” he answered as he motioned for her to follow him from the room, cheerfully unoffended at her opinion of his character.

There were two doors, also unremarkable in the hall.  Loki stopped, standing with his legs spread and his arms crossed, tapping a thumbnail against his narrow upper lip.  “Now which one… Damme, tis been only three hundred years how have I forgotten?” With a sigh he gestured, “One of these is has a stairway, the other has a death trap that is triggered upon opening, shredding the body of the unfortunate triggerer.”

Aenor stood beside him.  The doors were identical. They stared at the doors together and time passed.

Much time.

Periodically Loki would reach out and press the pads of his fingertips to one or the other, running them down the grain of the wood, or would lay his palm lightly on one of the hinges, as if trying to stir a memory or read something from the materials, yet he never touched either knob.

Aenor found herself in that state of boredom blended with fear that was known to anyone who had been imprisoned for some time and it began to make her itch as sweat inched down her spine.  Whilst it was silent in the hall, save for their own motions and breath, there were moments when she was certain that she heard the scrape of stone on stone from the little chamber they had entered from, as if someone were using it as they had and would come upon them soon enough.

She would rather be shredded than undead, she decided.

“Which do you think it is, were you forced to choose?” she asked.  Loki shrugged and then did nothing.

“I am being forced to choose,” he answered.

“Forced at gunpoint,” she countered, pulling a pistol, cocking it, and pressing it against the underside of his chin, forcing his head up.

After a moment of consummate shock, where his body tensed and his eyes grew black with a mix of arousal and discomfort, “I do not believe you would shoot,” he responded, looking down at her with a raised brow and an amused sneer.

“Nor would I, yet perhaps being threatened with physical vandalism by your lover might jar a memory made in this place?” Aenor replied, reholstering the pistol, her gaze brushing lightly over where his hardened cock ruined the line of his trousers.

Loki laughed with rue, “If only it were tr-, by the gods of the gods, it worked!  That one,” he added, pointing to the door on the left.

Fortunately, he was correct.  Less fortunate was how far down the spiral of stairs seemed to go, and that the only illumination of them came from the open door.

Aenor gulped.  She had no especial fear of the darkness.  No one could sail the inky night skies between the Realms, far from any comforting moons or blazes of their multicoloured stars and not go mad if they dreaded dark.  That known, she did have something of a fear of tripping and rolling in an endless spiral downwards, ending with a broken neck.

Seeing her expression, Loki shook his head, “She of little faith,” he muttered, lifting a hand as if holding a lamp upon his palm.  Thereon a glow of pale green fire formed. “Still, best to walk with a hand on my shoulder,” he added, starting to descend.

The circle of the barely visible stairs seemed infinite.  After a time it seemed that she had done nothing in life but move painfully downwards, Loki’s broad, velvet-covered shoulder beneath one hand, the other cramped around her cutlass.  He spoke not, so neither did she. When they finally reached the end, after so many tight turns as to make her dizzy, Aenor felt like kissing the brass-bound door that was bedecked with cobwebs and dust.

“When we open this door we will be in a side courtyard that will then have another door - well secreted - that leads to the grand causeway.  I know Hela as well as any father might know his daughter, which is to say a smallish amount, yet I understand her nature. There will be no more than the normal guards that stand at the portcullis, for she will not wish to make her people feel her threatened by the consideration that we might leave her hospitality.  Or that she might have broken guest-right as she did by sending that troop after us. Are your legs steady for a run, stake?”

His voice was whispered and rushed.

Aenor loosened her hands at her sides, then shook out her legs and arms, and nodded.

He nodded in turn, his handsome face uncharacteristically solemn.  “Then we fly.”
 
The grand causeway between

Éljúðnir

and Hel was not the only way to reach the city in the… Loki stared upwards at the dull and clammy white sky, finding the slightly brighter point, and estimated.  It was not the only way to reach the city and so they could arrive at the Zubrowska in the time they had. Yet to run through the slough on either side of it was not an option.  Though he doubted not that he and Aenor could survive its cold mud, tangling weeds and roots, metal feathered shrikes, and massive, needle-toothed eels, he was uncertain if they could do it in the time allotted.

And he loathed those eels.

The Jotnar draugr at the gate, simple creatures that they were, had no difficulty in understanding the killing of those unwelcome to enter the fortress.  Those trying to leave were more confounding to them, and so they moaned and swayed in their distress.

Loki shivered as the flagstones flew beneath his stomping boots.  His time with Angrboda had done little to inure him to the uncontrollable nervous distress caused to all living creatures by the wails of the living dead.  At his side, not falling behind despite his advantage in leg, Aenor shivered likewise, holding her hat as she ran.

Ahead of them, the grim yet festive capitol of Niflheimr grew larger and more threatening.  Sadly the causeway allowed them only one egress that was certain to be swarming with revenge-minded pirates.  Loki sent a silent prayer to Erebus, first god of deeds done in darkness, to favor him above all of the other thieves currently praying to him, to aid them in reaching the hotel, to put wind under their heels, cleverness in their steps, and fog in the eyes of their enemies.

“Do it and I’ll find your chief temple in fallen Titan and will kneel before your image,” Loki prayed under his breath, truly prayed for the first time since he had discovered the secret kept from him for so long by his so-named father.

And mother.

“And you know I just

hate

that,” he added.

“What are you mumbling?” Aenor asked, already sounded a touch winded.

“Ah, I was just remembering that I had not finished my tale.  Pull your blade, darling, there are gentlemen and ladies coming our way,” he said, pointing a pistol towards the crowd that running towards them, not content to wait for them to enter the city.  He sent shot into the first attacker, blowing through his lungs, destroying them and a very ugly leather jerkin as well. “Where was I? Yes, the Zubrowka was the finest creation of its kind, bringing even more glory to the already arrogant and so pretty elves.

“Hela’s grandmother, the then queen Grogaldr, hated elves.  But who does not? And who not more than the most hideous embodiment of living death, a woman half moldering corpse leaving bits of herself everywhere, half skeleton?  She decided at first to destroy the hotel. Then she had the lemon cake and decided instead to steal it. Here they come.”

The sound of war-cries and the clash of their blades, and the firing of pistols made a terrible cacophony, greater than the actual battle warranted.  Loki was forced to fight with sabre alone, needing his other hand free to gather the wind and direct lead shot away from Aenor and into the bodies of their enemies.  Those aimed at himself he ignored.

A mere bullet would do no true harm to an Aesir prince, let alone a Jotunn one.  Though the condition of his favorite waistcoat did anger him mightily.

Aenor fought with cutlass in one hand and long knife in the other.  Too distracted to enjoy the pleasure of watching his woman work, Loki still now and then caught a glimpse of her coat-skirts swirling as she stepped to a dwarven woman, hacking down on her elbow, sending a handaxe, and the arm holding it flying.  Then, when two foes fell before his magic, he saw her side-kick the stomach of one charging pirate whilst leaning to the side to slice through the belly of another, flicking her blade at the end to blind yet a third opponent with a bit of intestine.

Her face was stoic and unsmiling.

No born killer was his love, yet she did it with sublimity.

Over the tumult he shouted more of the tale, “I have no notion how the theft was done, what act of shifty magick combined with an iron will it took.  I would wear a vulgar hat and badly tatted lace for a century to know how sh - huhhgh!” He huffed air as a pointy knee shoved into his thigh, narrowly missing his pride and joy.  Loki inhaled and stole the living breath from the pirate who had

dared

such a vile blow.

After that he used his power, willy nilly, ready for this first sally to be over, and knowing that he would be able to use it little enough once in the city.  He knew from past history that the iron laced buildings that lined every street, and hematite within those roads, would play merry hell with most of his magic.  A tiny puff of breeze could turn into a hurricane, a playful, pocket tornado could invert and chase them for blocks as a raging monster.

But for the nonce he could send pirates flying hither and yon, as long as he was careful to swing the air away from any Aenor was engaged with.  Into the slough went many, some back into the gleefully watching and betting crowd roaring at the city entrance, others slammed into the walls. He had just cleared the deck of rabble as Aenor dispatched her last opponent as well.

Those who had been spectators were clearly not possessed of stomach or mettle to take them on, and so backed away or outright ran as he and his grim-eye’d fellow captain turned their way.

The way free, they nodded to each other again, and again ran.
 
There were long, narrow alleys off of many of the sidestreets of Hel, perfectly situated to keep the roads free for vehicles, as well as excellent sites for murder, theft, and amore.  Loki knew each of them and had even inadvertently created one when drunk of a contemptible blend of grog, mead, and white whisky. Though none were safe, they would allow for them to fight fewer opponents at once so he took to them, Aenor in his wake.

As they snuck and skulked and sometimes fought and sometimes ran as the sun, such as it was here, grew higher in the pale sky.  Time was running out.

And they were cornered.  Trapped on either end of the throughway.

It was unspoken knowledge between them that if they should survive to arrive late it would be Hela’s right as absolute monarch to take it as the gravest insult to her largesse.  Whilst he would go to war with his daughter to save Aenor, Loki knew it was not a battle he could win as things stood.

Which is why he needed the Titan’s fleet.  He looked fondly at Aenor where she was pressed, disheveled and annoyed, against a wall as yet another horde of drunken, sword and pistol brandishing pirates passed the mouth of the alley, searching for them.  Once he had those ships no force in the Realms could harm them ever again.

But for now…

For now he had his doubts that they, more rightly, that she, would survive the next encounter.  Though they had fought with wit and skill there were just too many enemies. The only thing keeping him from throwing all caution and power to the winds and using his magic anyway was knowing that he could kill her as easily as any of those pirates, and that was something he could not live with.

Aenor moved past him, looking at the two entrances and assessing.  She was worn. Finally, she pointed her cutlass to the east, having chosen it as the more likely route.  He had no doubt she would be correct in matters of battle.

“Dare we?” she asked.

Knowing he could easily be about to lose her, and then would lose himself, Loki wrapped an arm about her waist, letting them each keep a weapon free, and rested his forehead against hers, hiding them from any unkind eyes with the brims of their hats.  “You and I? We’ll always dare,” he smiled, and kissed her.

Just a kiss, a soft, sweethearts’ brush of lips and share of air, so now his breath was within her and her’s within him, a sigh of a kiss, with closed eyes, like innocent’s did.

Then he spun her about and they ran towards the crowd at the end of the alley, battle-cries breaking the air.

For a few moments, there was nothing but the gasping madness of the fight.  They had moved quickly enough, shocking their foes, so there were only a few shots fired, all of them terrible.  Then there was the stink of bodies and gunpowder and bad teeth and blood.

The tide of bodies separated them in moments, and Loki’s only goal was to kill as many as he could, knowing his own death was unlikely.  There was no finesse to such a fight, none possible even for

him

, there was only stabbing and slashing, teeth bared and then biting, profanity scarring the air about them.

To his horror, he could not see Aenor anywhere, but there was a knot of pirates so deep that he knew if she were in it the crush alone would shatter her frail, mortal body.

The press about him was too great to move.

There was a flash of one of her hands, weaponless, grasping at nothing and then it was gone.

The wind about them went mad, obeying his instincts rather than his will, and bodies flew everywhere, taking Aenor with them.

Loki screamed and ran for her, willing the wind that refused to listen or be stopped, to lower her to him.  Rubble, trash, and pirates buffed him as he tried to reach where Aenor now was trying to cover her head as her body barrelled towards a wall.

He shoved helpless bodies out of the way so they flew into the sky, panic making it impossible to pull his magic back.  He would not reach her.

Then, from nowhere, a rope was tossed to her just as her shoulder scraped along the wall, leaving her coat shredded and her arm bleeding.  She grabbed it with the same skill she would have if she was falling from shipboard. “HOLD FAST!” A familiar, surprising voice cried out to her.

Loki turned.  The crew of

the Horn

, his crew, stood, bristling arms and ready to defend their captain and, it seemed, Aenor.

Most shockingly, Amora stood with them, directing the swabbies who were holding the rope to pull Aenor in.  She was dressed in her finest, with purple silk at her neck and a new hat with a matching plume.

“Captain,” she gave her reverence, and then turned back to directing the rescue.

Loki, for once, was dumb-founded.

He moved towards them, out of the range of the wind, and when Aenor was pulled close enough he grabbed her from the air before she could fall off of the gale that was still fighting to yank her back.

Her boot heels hit the ground and she offered a bow of thanks to the crew.

Bored and also resplendent for the occasion, Lorelei shot two of the remaining pirates behind them who still had heart for the fight and said, “Can we go to the Zubrowka now?  I have not tasted champagne yet today.”
 
The Grand Zubrowka was everything Loki had told her it would be and more, Aenor thought as she stumbled on near to strengthless legs, breathless and bleeding from a cut to the forehead, into its magnificent lobby.

A crowd, made up of those citizens and visitors to Hel who had not chased her through the streets for the past hours, were dressed in their various finery, surely most of it booty.  Full court gowns that were fitted to someone other than their wearers, turbans of cloth of gold that had started to tarnish, silken, striped robes worn over bare chests and dirty trousers, bits of naval uniforms with the insignia hastily ripped off and replaced by bits of jewels or fringe, here and there suits and dresses nearly perfect enough to suit Loki’s taste.

They were all drunk and celebrating what they were clearly certain was her demise.

Upon a dais at the end of the gold and pink confection of a room, ill matching the cherubs worked in ivory on the cornices or the mural painted on the ceiling of beautiful maidens with various pink and brown and green and white and black and grey and blue skins glowing with vigor, their long curls tentacles trailing about them as their only cover, transporting themselves as sylphs whilst bathing and picnicking in a flower-bedecked grove surrounding a pond, was Hela.

Her dark, lean form stood out from the background as she accepted a gigantic, gem-encrusted goblet from a uniformed servant of the hotel.

Panting with effort, Aenor stood in the doorway, grateful to not have been noticed yet.  Loki, having sprung up the stairs behind her, leaving the Horn’s crew to deal with the last of their pursuers, leaned on the wall behind her, waiting.

A sneer lifting the side of her mouth, Aenor raised a shaking hand and pointed to where the queen was about to drink.  She waited a spiteful moment until she knew Hela had taken a mouthful of wine and shouted in her best, battlecry, deck-clearing voice.

“Your Majesty!  I Believe You Have Something For Me!”

The queen of Hel choked, red wine spurting from between the fingers of the spidery hand she’d raised to cover her mouth, her eyes bugged and incredulous even from across the vast room, where the populace fell quiet and turned almost as one to stare at her bedraggled self.

Behind Aenor Loki’s laugh barked into the shocked silence of the room, and clapped a hand on her shoulder that nearly sent her to the floor, then closed about the worn cloth of her shirt to hold her up, “Well done, stake.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Word spread from the Zubrowka with all speed, like ice climbing on a window on the coldest day of the year - on running feet, on whispers, on curses, on the wings of fairy folk, on the lips of everyone.

The infamous and much feared Midgardian pirate hunter Captain Aenor Breathnach, long the most wanted of law abiders in Hela’s kingdom of criminals was from that very afternoon and ever afterwards to be considered a friend of the throne, bearing both the key to the city and honorary citizenship of Nidavellir until it should drop from the skies.

Hela even offered the captain her hand as they stood together before the still disbelieving crowd crammed into the lobby.

Granted, the hand was rather limp and stained with red wine, and the queen’s eyes were rolled upwards with a look of long suffering incredulity, yet the shake was witnessed by all, not the least of which Hela’s notorious father, the Pirate King Loki, who was lounging on the now empty throne, one leg hooked over a gilt arm as he reloaded his pistols whilst the little ceremony went on.

His smugness as he watched his child have to speak words of friendship to his lover was of such a magnitude it threatened to smother all and sundry of the assembled.

“Er, yes,” the queen said, her voice heavy with irony, “I do hereby name this,” she waved a limp hand towards Aenor, “er, morta... captain,

persona gratis

I suppose, within the bounds of my kingdom now and forever.  Welcome, enjoy, my friend…” she spoke the last words with haste as if they were sour and she wanted them out of her mouth as quickly as possible.

“Yes, thank you for that.  Always gracious, Your Majesty,” Aenor mumbled, bowing so little that it was questionable if her glance even dropped, though she looked ready to fall to the floor in exhaustion.

“Delightful, my darling girls, delightful,” Loki crowed, standing and clapping broadly, motioning with his hands for the rest of those assembled to do likewise.  The crew of the Horn, having shoved their way to the bar, taking the best seats as their due, applauded with great vigor, cheering and whistling as well and generally making a disgraceful din, all of the while encouraging the other pirates to join them on threat of death.

Their poniards and cutlasses, and the glint in Loki’s eye that bespoke fierce and unexpected derechos in the future of the ships of those who did not applaud led to enthusiastic clapping all around.

Beside which, the girl had won her way through the worst their confederates could throw at her, as well as the loyalty of the crew of the Golden Horn and the hand of the impossibly fussy Pirate King.  It was hard to begrudge her the victory.

Even Hela offered a few loose wristed claps.

“Champagne for all, on the queen, of course,”  Loki quietly ordered to Gustave, the famously unflappable manager of the Zubrowka as he swept Aenor off of her feet, having seen her start to sway rather dangerously on them.  “Daughter?”

“Of course, Sire,” Gustave said, snapping his fingers so the servers he had already prepared appeared bearing ice buckets filled with bottles, distributing foaming goblets for all.

Hela was drinking the rest of her wine straight from the small cask it had come in, “What?” she snarled, hating to be thwarted as much as he.

“I’ll expect the supplies we discussed will be loaded today.  We’ll be sailing at dawn.” Shifting Aenor to the side, he leaned over and kissed Hela’s cheek.  “I love you, my raven chick.”

“You best make good on our deal,” she hissed, then smiled ruefully, “I love you as well, my magpie sire.”

“I assume my usual suite is ready?” he asked the manager who assured him it was and that all of his usual requirements had been met.

Loki was not certain what Gustave was as he had been with the Zubrowka since it arrived - he looked somewhat Asgardian with his golden hair and blue eyes, though his slight and odd accent spoke of elsewhere - but he was near to certain that the manager was possessed of some manner of prescience.

“I can make my own way,” Aenor complained as they forded the sea of pirates, many of whom now declared her a buccaneer born and reached up to slap her back or try and shake her hand, though Loki moved his shoulder when they came to close to actually touching her.  Though all maybe seeming friendly he was unwilling to risk her or the goodwill of his pirate brethren and sistern.

“Certs you can, stake.  You only looked like to pass out in order to avoid more public speaking.  I blame you not for it. But let me have this little pleasure when I was so close to losing you,” he asked, nuzzling against her temple and the still sweat soaked hair on the top of her head, not caring that they were seen.

Let all see and then send the word far and wide, the Pirate King had taken a Queen.
 
Aenor was, all protestations aside, gratified to be both off of her feet as well as for the strong arms and firm back of her lover as she saw the sweeping, ivory and gilt staircase covered in pink carpet ascending in graceful spirals to the upper floors of the hotel.

Her own legs would simply not have carried her thus far and even now she thought it might be preferable to curl up on one of the seats at the bar and have the publican pour her tot after tot of rum until she fell into a comfortable insensibility.  Indeed, the various sore and miserable parts of her person cried out for the succor of strong drink.

At Loki’s elbow a handsome fellow with rather short hair and an accent that recalled home but was not quite Midgardians took orders from the Pirate King.  “Make certain that my crew are cast out by midnight so they all have time to dine and regret their choices before we leave on the dawn wind. Additional to what provisions you have already laid in for us in our suite, my stake will require a change of suit.  Have someone see to our armaments as well. These cutlasses are dull and chipped, and we’ve barely a volley shot left between us.”

“Needless to say,  Your Highness!” The answer was given with the relish of someone who enjoyed all manner of titles and other folderol.  “I have also been bold enough to acquire you a few garments that I have seen for sale in the city since your last visit with us.”

“Excellent.  Your taste alone is to my standard, Gustave.”

“I like not the idea of being unarmed,” Aenor muttered.

“Madame,”  Gustave placed a hand to his chest, “I can give you every assurance that in the storied history of the Grand Zubrowka not a single guest has ever come to the slightest harm.  Unless they are into that sort of thing.” He thought for a moment. “And there was that one time, of course. You are safer here, where you will sleep the sleep of Endymion after knowing the pleasures of Silenius and the Erotes as well.”

Aenor had no concept of what he spoke, but it sounded pleasant enough and Loki seemed to have no concern about handing their weapons over to the dapper fellow when they finally reached the highest floor where a grand door painted with gold and bedecked with carvings of beautiful creatures - male, female, both, and neither - consorted and revelled in great abandon.

Exhausted and lashed over with a hundred minor wounds and hurts, she still found that some of their romping gave her ideas.

Gustave pushed the door open before them and bowed to Loki, “I shall leave you to find your way, Sire.  As you know, all you should require is but a bell’s ring away.”

He turned very slightly and bowed to her as well, though she was occupying much the same space as Loki, “Madame.  May this be but the first of many pleasant nights you will spend with us,” he said in a softer tone as he took her dirty hand, bending over to offer it a soft kiss.

“Enough of that, Gustave.  Aenor is not old enough or vain enough for your tastes, even should she be unencumbered with my affections,” Loki said in a very princely tone, whirling her away from the manager and into the most gorgeous, most decadent room she had ever seen.  That which could be curved sensuously was, what could be bedecked was bedecked in carvings or painted with scenes of debauched merriment, all cloth was silken or velvety, embroidered with gilt and silver thread.

The bed was large enough for an orgy with ambitions.

Carpets were soft underfoot.

The air was softly lit by beeswax tapers and perfumed with enough flowers in silver vases to bedeck a vernal goddess’s bower.

Tables were laden with magnificent food.  Fresh food, not ships stores and certain not cooked by draugr.

In a small alcove separated off by flowing curtains of emerald silk, a massive tub of water smoked fragrant steam that wafted towards them in billows of sweet frangipani and healing herbs.

When Loki set her on her boots Aenor was torn between conflicting and urgent desires to gorge herself, strip and climb into the water, or simply fall upon the bed and sleep.  She did none, as her mind was too tired to decide for itself.

Fortunately, Loki had no such compunction and made straight for one of the buckets of champagne.  “A drink, first, I think, then a bath. We both smell like a bad night in a brothel or a good one in an abattoir.”  He frowned at the bottle, “An excellent vintage, from Jotunheimr. Their hot spring caves produce little in the way of wine, yet was does come out is most delicious and most rare.  But this not cold enough I fear. They are all meant to be drunk quite cold...” His voice trailed to nothingness, as if he had forgotten his words.

Which would make it an event without precedence.

“I don’t care, give it to me,” Aenor said, taking up a glass, her throat dry as dust.

Loki did not move, all of the while staring yet at the massive bottle that barely fit in his large, long-fingered hand.  Finally, still staring and lost in thought, he spoke, “Stake, have you ever wondered why it was that I fell out with my most royal family?”

It seemed a strange thing to speak of at the moment.

There were many rumors, of course.  Even before he had stolen the Horn and fled Asgardia, Loki had long been a maker of mischief and a pricker of presumption, notorious throughout the Realms for long ages for making trouble for its own sake, choosing one day to aid the side of order only to overturn his own acts or those of others for the sake of laughter or of a joy in chaos.

More than a few times he and his less mercurial but equally trouble-fond elder brother were banished or disowned for a time for some feckless stunt or violent whimsy, yet it never took and soon enough they would together or separate be back in the good graces of their parents, looking handsome and stern in court.

But this last time, near to fifty years gone now, some manner of his madness had been different, more serious and secret, for the royal family had not aired their soiled linen to the masses of the Realms.  They alone knew why their youngest was disowned, and Aenor knew Loki well enough to not speculate.

Anything she might hazard would be weak beer compared to what it would take to be exiled after centuries of tricks and games.

“I suppose one could say I banished myself… though there were things that I had done, acts committed like a symphony, a bad behavior ending the crescendo of stealing the Horn, that would have caused my father to send me to the dungeons should I have stayed, so there was little choice.  But no, I did banish myself… We are a family of lies, the family of the All-father, and I was the greatest lie of all.”

As he spoke, with the dreamy listlessness of someone who has woken from a disturbed dream, Aenor noticed that the bottle in his hand began to grow damp with dew that turned to a climbing frost extending from Loki’s touch.

“What?” she started towards him, setting down her glass.

He turned quickly towards her, his other hand raised and spread as if to ward her off.

Blue, the blue that snow turns at twilight, unfurled from his fingers, down his wrists, disappearing into his lacy cuff, it curled upwards from the open neck of his shirt, darkening his lips to cobalt, altering his eyes to the burning orange-red of embers in ash.

Scrolling with them, caste marks, Jotnar caste marks, for as sure as there were carts to horses, that was what Loki became before her dazzled eyes.  Small certainly, and far less crudely featured than those of that kind she had met in battle, but a Jotunn nonetheless.

In shocked amaze, and more than a small amount impressed, Aenor gaped at him.  “How? Is this the magic you used when becoming Magnus?” she asked, circling about him, observing from all angles the perfection of the transmogrification, all exhaustion and tiredness forgotten in the strangeness of the moment.

Loki snorted, “To what end?  This is, I promise you, no magic - a least not of the conjuring kind.  You see before you my true self, the dark secret in the center of Asgardia’s glittering court.  The king’s half-Jotunn bastard, brought up a full prince by the graciousness of the queen. A secret even to myself until-” he cut himself off with a head shake, then locked Aenor’s eyes with his own, burning ever redder.  “This is what you have taken to your bed, stake. This monstrous thing. After today, so close to losing your sweet life, I cannot keep it from you longer. If you will, you may have the room and I can go back to the ship and perdition.”

Having Loki share such a deep and plainly painful secret with her, Aenor felt a pang of guilt that she had not shared as openly with him.

Though she was torn with guilt at the thought of the secret that she kept, for it was not entirely hers to give away.

He looked downwards, the burn of his red eyes dulled by her lack of response and Aenor knew that he thought she considered him grotesque.  Her heart ached at the thought and she knew that though it would hurt her sense of honor to betray her former comrades it would kill her heart to be any less than forthcoming with her love, even if he should despise her for the truth.

She stepped closer and knelt, her head down, putting a hand on his booted foot.  The heavy leather was painfully cold, leaving her fingers red. “You may disbelieve my words, but know that I find you beautiful thus.  Your magnificence is in no way diminished, and I am unworthy of your trust.”

Loki made a distressed sound, “What are you doing?  Stand, stand,” he tried to step away from her touch, but she would not allow it, having at some point gained some of his sense of drama as well as feeling humbled by his honesty and the sense that she might be the only creature aside from his family who knew the truth of his birth.

“I do not deserve your honesty, my prince.  I have lied to you since the day I came aboard the Horn.  When you came upon

The Songbird

we-”

“Had been intentionally waiting for me to come upon you, so that I might take you prisoner and steal the Stark’s Alchemical engine?  Certs you had. Now stand, my stake. A queen should not kneel.” He sounded impatient and reached down and took her upper arm, gently pulling her up.  The cold of his blue flesh seeped through the velvet and silk of her tattered coat and jacket and the leather of his glove. Her mouth dropped open and she gaped at him, all astonished.

“How-” she asked again, finding herself very ineloquent in the face of so many so many revelations.

Even with the strange yet graceful marks upon his pretty face, the irony of his expression was purely that of the Loki she knew, “Stake… darling… “ he shook his head and stepped away to the champagne, chilling the bottle with his grasp, carefully pouring her a glass and leaving it for her to pick up herself so he would not freeze the wine, then drinking the slushy remnant from the bottle itself.  “You are the finest hunter the skies of the Nine Realms have known, and a captain to equal, well,

me

, a queen of the sky.  Would someone with such wit leave herself vulnerable in the night, in the firmament where I am known to sail?”

The champagne burned cold down to her belly as her head spun, “You knew it was a trap?”

“It seemed the only logical answer, lest you’d taken a crack to the skull that that robbed you of all sense.  The engine is rigged in some way, so it might be tracked by the Midgardian navy like a wounded doe is stalked by a band of wolves, I hazard.  And you were meant to distract me from discovering it. A clever plan, should I not have studied you so well and closely to know you would NEVER allow yourself to be caught by the hip as you were if you did not wish to be caught so.”

Aenor’s legs, tired already from too much running, gave out and she sat hard upon a pretty confection of a settee, covered in rose silk brocade.  “Why?” she finally asked, staring at his grinning, celestially shaded visage.

“Trap or no, I need the engine for my plan, and it is not a bad thing to have the might of the greatest navy in the skies nearby, should things go badly wrong.  And I fear not my ability to elude them otherwise,” he sat at her feet, carefully tapping the punt of his bottle to the rim of her glass. A soft tinging noise rang through the air and when it stilled, he added, “And I would have walked into Muspelheim naked with a barrel of gunpowder on my back to have you on my ship, Aenor.  I know you for an honest woman. If you came to love and trust me, then I knew you would give up your secret in time, and if no, then twas no more than I deserved for my original deception on Asgardia.”

Tossing her glass to the side, Aenor threw herself upon him, catching him unexpecting so they fell backwards onto the thick, wonderous soft carpets piled beneath.  He had barely a breath in which to turn back to his Aesir form lest his icy breath kill her when she kissed him with vigour and joy.

The heavy rugs were softer by far than many of the beds Aenor had known, even when Loki rolled them over so she was beneath him so he could kiss her with leisurely passion and thoroughness.  The laziness of his tongue exploring her, his lips teasing across hers, his teeth now and then tenderly nipping her, combined with her earlier near death, the comfort of the floor, and her alteration of understanding of things left her feeling slightly drugged and giddy.

One of his graceful hands worked its way beneath her shirt, cupping a breast and stroking her nipple with a slow thumb.  She shifted her hips so the weight of his velvet and brocade-hidden cock fell between her happily spread legs where he could bedevil them both with subtle undulations of his hips.

Within the scantest of moments the rage to live that had enlivened her earlier race roared back to life and turned to a rage to fuck, to mate, to have, even were he only to rest his cock within her and let her writhe beneath him in a search for satisfaction it would have been enough.  Forgotten were exhaustion, strange secrets told, or even both of their soiled condition. Even Loki, normally more fastidious than any cat, seemed to care not that they were filthy.

Sensing the change in the weather, Loki purred against the skin of her neck, her jaw, her chin, finally saying, “Shall I pleasure you here, or would you prefer the bed?”  His voice was dark treacle and poison in her ear.

“Must I choose?” she panted.

“Greedy…” he crooned approvingly.  “What shall I do first? This is your celebration, after all.”

“If I should have your strength that I might claw our clothing from these too enshrouded bodies, leaving us bedecked in shreds and fucking without another moments waste.”

Loki put a palm on the floor beside her and leaned up to look upon her fully, consideringly, “Only if I might lap at your unparalleled cunt for a time first.”

A pleasurable ache made that very part of her that he longed for tighten and pulse with boundless need, “If you must,” she drawled with a bored gesture of her hand, imitating him in an affectionate burlesque.

Now the corner of his lip raised and he gritted out, “I must.”

How her trousers came to be gone, Aenor could not say, yet gone they were.  Thankfully the soft pile of the rich carpets did not itch, for when Loki settled himself between her thighs, it was clear he meant no haste.  As he slid his hands up them he found bruises and small cuts and other signs of their recent adventures that he soothed with his touch and lips, thought at the moment Aenor could feel nothing but wanting.

Loki was normally all artfulness, especially when it came to any use of his mouth - be it for trickery, wordplay, kissing, or cunnilingus.  As ever he started with a masterful restraint, using the tip to delicately part her and then worry gently upwards until he mercilessly aggravated her nub of delight until she squirmed and grasped his hair in one hand and the floor with the other.

The tight, hard tug of her fingers in his hair made him grumble against her, and then begin to lick in earnest, one hand holding her hip, the other invading her with two long fingers that methodically fucked and tapped within her against the timing of his eager mouth.

As ever, the trickster could do nothing straightforward.

“You say,” she gasped out even as she tried to push upwards against his cruel touch, “this is my celebration, yet you are a mean fellow to me now.”

At those words he shifted his weight so he could push his touch further and further in then retreated, fucking her as hard with his hand as most would fuck with a desperate cock.  This even as he took her bud between pursed lips and sucked.

Someday, she vowed to herself as she howled out, bucking and spreading her legs wider, hoping for more contact, wanting to come again no matter how worn she was, someday I will make him as agonizingly wild as he can render me.

Rather than bringing her to another peak, as was his wont, Loki knelt above her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, shrugging out of the remnants of his once magnificent costume, “We shall need the bed now.  I must warm my cock in that cunny whilst its still dripping and hotter than a forge. After all, I have been very cold today.”

He climbed upon the massive bed and awaited her arrival with little patience.

Aenor gave a startled laugh and sat up as well, her rags shedding from her like a spent husk.

It took a little effort for her tired muscles to find the strength to stand and then crawl up the expansive bit of furniture.  The bed felt as good as it looked, and Loki more so as she then crawled up him as well so she could perch, swaying a bit on sore muscles, over his hips and then lower herself on to that perfect, thick, long prick that waited her, throbbing and red with annoyance.

“This is a great deal of work,” she snipped and then sighed as she took him in, “for one meant to be celebrated for her heroism.”

“If you would rather not,” he said, not able to take on the note of insouciance he failed in his striving for.  Indeed, his hands found her hips and grasped them for dear life, setting a pace faster than she wished but no less exciting for that.  Indeed, within scant moments Aenor was again drugged, hypnotized, overtaken with pleasure as he filled her entire, moved her at will as she had never dreamt to allow a lover, touched where they met so her bud was attended to, and in every way was content to ride Loki until the Realms all fell from the heavens.

When her peak came, the first of three that he insisted on, it was a slow rolling thing that left her laughing and being turned and dragged under him.  The second was sudden and startling when she felt the bulk of his exquisite self settle onto her, surprising them both. The third was required by him, so they might find that place together.

Afterwards, his softening length still in her, Loki rolled them back again so she used him as a bed and he could stay warm between her legs while they napped.

He kissed her temple as they fell into slumber, “Only a few hours, then I must see you fed and cleaned, stake, and a proper sleep.  We leave at dawn.”

“The Down Deep,” she mumbled.

“The Down Deep,” he avered.

“They have not moved yet, Commodore,” Midshipman Galician reported from where Antony Stark was at work with his strange dealings and dos in the hold of

The Songbird

.

The lovely frigate circled slowly to stay aloft in the empty skies far, far above Nidavellir, the high moon bathing the deck and whitening the sails.  At her starboard

The Midgard Serpent,

command ship of the fleet and pride of the navy, circled as well in wider turns.

Most of the crew were sleeping, but Merisa Galician wondered if Stark ever slept at all.  He’d given her the message that they were still waiting for the Horn to move from its berth above Hel and then waved her away as he bent his head above a massive scope again.
He and Commodore Rogers had come aboard the day after Captain Breathnach and the Alchemical engine had been absconded with.  Rogers had taken command, leaving his close aide, Lieutenant Barnes, to captain the Serpent.  Stark had commandeered the great cabin for all manner of dangerous tools and odds smelling flasks and experimentation that seemed more like to blast the ‘bird from the sky than the enemy did at the moment.  
Merisa had been wounded at first that Aenor had kept the plan to entrap the Pirate King and his band of cut-throats a secret, but knowing she was under orders had taken some of the sting away.

She knew also that there were still more secrets to this plan, perhaps even more than Aenor had been aware of, for otherwise they would have long since taken the

Horn

.  There had been many chances, good ones, such as when the pirates had been worn from taking the Jotnar slaver, to capture it and yet they merely followed, staying out of sight, letting Stark direct them hither and yon.

Then there were the

others

who had come aboard as well.  Not navy, Merisa knew that much, though the short fellow climbed the rigging like an old tar, perching high in the ropes most days and nights as well.  And the woman - beautiful and friendly and clearly a great one for the killing - she made the whole of the crew nervous though she did little of note and was polite to all.

Commodore Rogers nodded, “That is sensible.  Loki will want to leave with the dawning. The weather gage is set for still air at that time, perfect weather for a descent.”

“Descent?” Merisa asked, before remembering herself.  “Apologies, sir,” she touched the point of her hat.

“No need, Galician.  Descent is their plan, as well as ours.  We will let the Horn lead the way… Get some sleep, lieutenant, I fear that there will be little rest for any of us in the coming days,” he said, his handsome face solemn as he left the deck to take his own advice.

For a moment Merisa leaned on the rail, looking downwards to where Nidavellir rested on the winds out of their sight.  “Damn it all, Aenor, I hope you are enjoying playing pirate, because I feel that things are about to go badly south, and not just our ships.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Aenor felt warm breath upon her cheek, “Time to be going, stake,” Loki whispered, nuzzling her temple and pressing a kiss there as well, and then another for good measure.The bed-curtains hid all light, but Aenor could feel the hour.  The sun had not yet risen and she knew Loki would want them to cast-off well  before it would peek blearily over the edge of Nidavellir’s eastern steppe.  Aenor pulled the blankets over her head for but a moment, enjoying the quiet and the heaviness of them, as well as taking in a last moment of peace and laziness.  Typically, before she had taken to sharing Loki’s bed, she was ever ready to leave the land and seek the sky. On this morning, though, she longed only to stay in this warm little nest, sending Loki forth now and then for sustenance and champagne.  Much as they both loved to fly, normally a-mornings one of them might have effortlessly lured the other to a touch of bedsport or at least a bit of teasing before setting feet to floorboards, spatting gently and flirting heavily as they went about the business of their dress.  On this day they prepared their toilette and garments in relative quiet, both in contemplative thought of what was before them.  Loki opened an elaborate, gilded wardrobe and pulled out a box, handing it to her. Within it, another full suit fitted to her size, this one in black velvet with a weskit embroidered with copper astrological scenes.  From the top shelf he produced a fine, yet plain, hat for her as well, adorned only by a peacock feather.“Plucked from my own tail,” he said with a half-grin, attempting a brush of levity as he bedecked himself in what was for his style a most simple costume of pine suede adorned with dull gold buttons and little lace or brocade.  “When did you have time to acquire this?” She asked in a whisper  gesturing to her stylish and well fitting attire as they left their charming bower.  The hotel was dark and silent, the halls and stairs empty save one maid of all work polishing the banister of the great staircase.  The girl offered them a shy curtsey, smiling at Aenor as she did so.Loki flipped her a golden torc, a heavy, very valuable, Asgardian coin rarely seen elsewhere in the Realms.  “For the smile, my dear,” he told her as they walked downwards. The maid was still staring, mouth a-jar, at the small fortune when they reached the massive, cool lobby.  Then he answered Aenor.  “I have made certain to have a change of linen and a few odds of stuff put aside for you in every place I berth.  ‘Tis long been my greatest ambition to have you out of uniform,” he said lightly, whilst sliding his gloved hand into hers, stopping their progress to speak in a more serious fashion.  “An ambition that took none of your own ambitions into account. I am a selfish cad, damned if I am not.”He looked at where their hands were joined, gently squeezing, his fingers fiddling and a bit anxious, not yet being comfortable with honest expressions of remorse or regret.“True.”  Aenor answered, not willing to give him an inch not earned. “ Yet, for all of that,  I like you more than any other.” She stood high upon her booted toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek.  “And you have promised me a rather fine boat of mine own.”  Should we survive, she did not choose to add.Gustave himself waited at the grand doors of the grand hotel, holding a tray with two delicate cups of warmed port scented with cloves and black pepper to fortify them against the bitter winds that buffeted in the mornings,  before its weak sun rose. When he bowed over Aenor’s hand Loki deftly pulled her away before he could also brush a kiss over her knuckles.The streets were near as still and empty as the Zubrowka had been.  Here and there at a distance one could hear soft singing and an almost genteel sort of rowdiness from a tavern, or the sound of a pirate casting up their accounts.   It seemed that the wild hunt of the day before had left even the madly unstoppable citizens of Hel tranquil with exhaustion and drink for the nonce.It had rained whilst they were tucked away from the world so the dirty city smelled fresh and the roads gleamed in the fading dark.The little they had spoken fell away.  What noises there were, their steps, clapping on the uneven slate walkways,  the steady drips from the eaves of the crowded in buildings plashing into puddles, the rolling of a horse-cart in a distant square, the sullen breeze that sent lanterns dancing and teased the tips of their plumes, all seemed deafening as they kept their own council as they traversed the city towards the massive docks.Not having had time to appreciate the size of them when they had first arrived, Aenor now admired the work and effort it had taken to create such a thing as Hel’s dock.  The bulwark that faced the line of ships, armed with countless cannons - mystical, alchemical, and mechanical alike - was massive, made of the same balsat as Hela’s fortress so it would repel spells and shot alike.  The port itself was massive, larger even than the Midgardian Navy’s primary berth at Portsmouth. Though many of the boats within it were dissolute things, in need of more than mere polish, some being barely sky worthy with shabby sails and fraying ropes, or seemed to have barely limped their way to Hel, so shot up and chain cracked were they, the port herself was kept in perfect order, smelling of pine tar and fresh paint.  Even this bustling place was quiet on so early in the morning, with only the sound of creaking wood and hemp striking canvas to disturb them.The Horn was rigged for departure, and the Queen, accompanied by only two of her undead einherjar, stood before the lovely ship, hands on her hips, a massive, red plumed wheel hat haloing her bored face.  “About time, father.”Loki offered the sketch of a bow, “Tis not my fault you do not sleep, my little crow.  Some of us had a most tiring day and needed our rest.”Hela looked past his shoulder to Aenor, who tried to be as insolently insouciant as the Queen and the Prince, but she lacked the breeding and upbringing for it.  Her hands in fists, she bowed, “Majesty.”Hela made a bored, Loki-ish gesture with flicking fingers, “Hela, then, after all we are friends now,” she said, offering a small eyeroll to her father, and her hand to Aenor.Upon Midgard, Asgard, and all of  the other ‘gards and ‘heims, it was not done to call any ruler by their personal name, so even though she was loath to touch hands with the Queen of the Dead it was unavoidable.  With tentative slowness she put her own out which Hela took.With enormous strength that belied her slender form, the Queen jerked Aenor forward and off balance so she could whisper, “Should anything befall my fool of a sire I would not suggest surviving him, or I will happily break my own laws and turn you into one of my toys with great and painful slowness.”“You do realize this is his scheme and not mine?”  She whispered back as Loki reached out to right her.Hela shrugged.  She clearly cared not.  Aenor nodded her understanding, staring her into her depthless black eyes, “Should anything befall my fool of a lover I will do what I must to save his crew and his beloved Horn , and you can go hang yourself, friend ,” her voice soft and certain.Hela was taken aback, displeased, and understanding in quick succession.Loki looked between the two women, frowning and wanting to ask what they were saying yet knowing better than to do so.  Before he could speak Hela motioned to the ship, “The supplies are loaded - food, water, extra shot, extra powder, fresh rope and tar, new canvas though should you need to re-rig I fear that you will find no berth before the Down Deep.  Will you take a few einherjar as well? You may find yourself in need of extra hands when you arrive and they can just stack with the cordwood until that time comes.”Aenor shuddered at the thought.Loki shook his head.  “No need for dead weight.  I’ll have enough trouble with the extra supplies as is.”Hela shrugged, “As you will.”  Then her expression turned grim.  “Are you ready for the Drop?”In answer Loki raised a hand and called a wind, brisk and strong enough to send the lanterns that hung along the dock dancing, creating strange shadows.  “Father, over-confidence has ever been your besetting sin.”“No, princess.  Rapacious envy and gluttonous lust.  My confidence has ever been just what it should be.”Normally Aenor might have snorted or chimed in her thoughts on the matter, but she was too distracted by thinking of the Drop.Loki looked grim but resolute.  No one knew what had caused the Drop, only that it had not always been.  In the ancient days the massive ships that had traversed the sky between the Realms had been able to move everywhere.  Even, if was claimed, beneath the floating lands.  There were stories that Aenor was not certain she believed that the ships of Titan could even lower themselves to the lands beneath, using them for farming and to grow timber, further adding to the wealth and power they already had from the great magicks and alchemic machines they produced.  Most authorities who had investigated the Drop believed that it had been created when Thanos’s arrogant, dangerous beliefs led to that greatest of Realms falling from the sky.  Some posited that the energy he needed to create his infamous fleet ripped it apart. Others claimed that the flight of the fleet itself, sailing beneath their world, somehow “stole the air’ from Titan, making it unstable so it tipped and plummeted.  No one knew, for no one on her survived, and every ship within ten sky miles had been pulled in her wake to the Down Deep.All anyone knew for certain was at some time shortly after a  pair of ships whose names were lost to the ages had sailed lower over where Titan had once floated.  One of them went lower than the other, and the crew of that second ship watched helplessly as their sister dropped from the sky like a stone released from the hand of a child.At first it seemed the Drop existed in the air where Titan had been, a place where the sky was dead and no ship had the power there and all fell and fell and fell.  Soon the Drop spread and kept doing so, for who could restrain nothingness?Even the magic of Asgardia could not stop its relentless crawl until the entirety of the Realms floated in on a layer thin, uneven layer of living sky,, with the Drop ever waiting, and growing, beneath.No sailor, no pirate, no Navy, no birder of the high air, no one who traversed the skies and loved to fly, did not fear The Drop.  Aenor had seen Marines who would laugh at the sight of Fire Giants attempting to cross a breach, turn pale and sick at the thought of the doom that rested just that littlest bit below them.Over the centuries a few very powerful wind wizards, Loki amongst them, were able to skirt the very top of the Drop, using all of their strength to propel their ships forward, giving them an escape route that no other would dare to use.  Even those powerful wind lords sometimes failed….Anthony Stark’s Patented Alchemical Engines had been designed to try and use technology to outdo what little magic was able to achieve.  The man was as brilliant as he was arrogant and the Navy had high hopes for his success. The Songbird had been taking the model out to the edge of the Realms where the Drop was higher but thinner to give it its first tests, as well as to lure Loki into their trap.   Had it failed, would be its only test as it would consign itself and the small dingy they’d planned to employ to the Down Deep.Now that first test would happen on a larger scale.Aenor looked around the Horn , where her uncharacteristically quiet crew went about the business of getting underway.   Hogan, the sailing master, for once not the most mum. Lorelei, counting casks of water as they were stowed, her gorgeous hair pulled into a containing net.  Bonden looking at what appeared to be very old sky charts, probably from Loki’s private collection. Otr, burdened along with Greint and a she-troll named Goldie, with a massive roll of canvas, still stopped to make his reverence.  They had become her crew and even Amora, standing a midships, directing the lowering of the engine to a secured place that had been made for it just behind the prow, were therefore her concern and care.A much larger scale of test indeed.With a shout to the captains of the gun-crews to gather so she could explain how to best ship the guns for the Drop, Aenor too got about her business. The sun had sent one tentative bit of shine across Niflheimr’s bow when Loki finally signalled for the Horn to sail, Amora had his left elbow, turned away to survey the skies, Bonden at his left, hands steady on the wheel despite what must be terror on his part.While the last bits of business had been seen to for the departure he had stood at his Horn’s broad stern, coxing, flirting, and when needed, commanding the thin and wicked winds of Hel to gentle themselves to his will.  Finally satisfied that he had enough air tamed to do his bidding at a moments notice should the need arise, he nodded.“Take us down, Mr. Bonden, “ he said with the bored ease that he had had been schooled in as a prince of the most powerful of the Realms.Aenor, having finished ensuring that everything that might float or crash when they first touched the Drop, met his eyes across the ship.  Her duties done, she would be going to join the gun-crews below decks, as would all of those crew members without a current duty. She had told him all she knew of the Engine and had followed the instructions she had been given by Master Stark himself on how to set it in motion.  Which, as far as Loki could ascertain, meant flick a few switches, turn a copper dial toward the number ten, approach the Drop, and pray to any gods that might be listening that Stark was right and the very lack of life in the air itself would trigger the blasted thing to start working.  As they gently started to move downwards, the direction of all fear for every sailor, himself included, he realized he wanted, nay, needed her to stand with him here.  If they were to die on what could end up being a fool’s mission - he being the grandest of fools - it was Loki’s wish they would be hand in hand.“Captain Breathnach!”  He called out.She lifted her head from where she had started on the ladder downwards, “Captain Loki?”“Attend me.”She stopped to shake hands with Hogan, and exchange a laughing word with a few others before taking the steps up to the upper deck two at a time, offering her respects to him and Amora, who gave her a bit of haughty respect in return.  He raised a brow at his beautiful first.She rolled her eyes but said, “Good skies, Captain Breathnach.”Aenor smiled, though it was a thin smile formed around fear rather than one of satisfaction, “To you as well, Enchantress.”Loki moved over a touch, and Aenor took a place between him and Bonden, standing with her hands upon the rail so the side of her glove touched the side of his.  They watched in silence as they moved ever downwards, the layers and layers of Hela’s Realm going on seemingly endlessly - the rusty iron and bits of mica shining in the black and dismal stone.  And bones.  More bones held Niflheimr together than earth, it seemed.Not the fairest omen for their quest.On and on it went and even though Loki had passed below most of the Realms before or at least has skirted close to their bottoms, it seemed endless.  Like how it might feel being lowered into one’s grave, aware and unable to stop the relentlessness of the journey. So long it took that anxiety, a feeling rarely known to him, started to agitate and harass his nerve endings.   His fingers, wanting to pull air and lift them higher and higher, starting to tap madly on the polished rail of the ship, muted by the thick leather of his gloves.Aenor gently covered his hand with hers.  He looked to her. There was fear in her brown eyes, for his stake was no fool, but eagerness too, excitement.  “We shall see what no being has seen in over a thousand turns of the year, my love,” she said, her voice hushed with anticipation.  Then she laughed, “Perhaps for a mere few scanty moments, yet still...” she added with a humorous roll of her eye.“You are a magnificent madwoman, stake.”“No wonder we suit,” she responded.And at that moment the sun illuminated everything, for the sky had gone golden and blue around them.  Niflheimr was cleared.For a moment Bonden stopped them, and The Golden Horn hovered - small and brave - beneath the massive bulk of the Realm, with nothing beneath them but the Drop.  Loki freed his hand, joining it with the other to make a bowl before him, filling it with the weight of all of the winds he had stored, ready to toss them upwards to the sails should they need to try and fight free.Bonden, seeing him prepared, took them down yet further.Amora and Aenor afixed themselves to the rail. For a moment they sailed and then everything fell away beneath them.  The ship was no longer fully beneath their boots, as they grew light in the empty, dead air of the Drop, and there were shouts from below decks and there was the rattle and clatter and splintering and shattering of every bit of gear that had not been properly secured and wouldn’t Loki have words about that with the pirates responsible, should they survive, should he survive, and he felt around his ship with his will to find that little, magickless space where Stark’s bloody engine did nothing and did nothing and he could feel the fear coming from his crew and his poor beautiful ship and his beloved Aenor and he thought he had killed them all and was about to free the winds and hope they would catch the sails and then there was a low, dark hum beneath all of the other kerfuffle, including the dull sound of a lifeless sky screaming past them, and the engine did what it was meant to do and the sails swayed and then swelled and with a shocking soft lurch they slowed and steadied, no longer dropping but sailing.Not giving the slightest touch of a damn, Loki took Aenor in his arms, knocking the hat she was somehow still wearing away, and kissed her as Amora pounded his back and cheered, and whoops of joy could be heard from below decks and Bonden allowed himself a small, rather cheery, perhaps even cheeky, smile.The Down Deep and all it held would be would be theirs.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Edging forwards - This phrase describes inch-by-inch progress and was first used in the 17th century, typically in nautical contexts and referring to slow advance by means of repeated small tacking movements

.
 
A difficulty with going where none had gone previous - willingly - was, additional to the lack of proper charts and maps, that it could not be said how long such a journey would take.

Loki had planned for the eventuality of a long sail with supplies enough for a trip from the farthest known point in the Realms and halfway back again.  Yet, though well provisioned and as well behaved as a ship’s full of scallywags could hope to be, there was the matter of idle hands to be dealt with, their danger being the greater when no one could see an end to their travels.

Now there was always work on shipboard.   Though there was no wind wear to be seen to, there being nothing in the way of even the merest breeze in the Drop, the drag of that nothing on the hull still made the Horn's wood creak and moan, her ropes tense and then go limp, her sails run tight to their tops under the pressure.   So daily her needs were seen to by an ever more bored and therefore attentive crew.

Had there been any proper sunlight down so low The Golden Horn would have glowed.

Additional to being worked ragged, there were the usual distractions that sailors got to.  Fiddles, concertinas, pipes, and a lute that had been taken in a raid on a Vanir pleasure ship, and a number of hand-drums were produced, with Aenor often being called upon to start a song or even serenade his troop of unworthy scoundrels with her songbird gifts.  Hornpipes were danced as well, with one of the powder monkeys, a tiny Elf girl who could dance a jig upon the rail with a fearlessness that boded well for her pirating future, being the special favorite to watch.

The crew would strike their thighs and clap their hands and stomp their feet while Aenor sang and a drummer and a piper played whilst the little Elf jumped spinning, her body almost hanging on the unnatural still air of the Drop, then landing light as a dropping petal to hornpipe as fast and fierce as they could play, sweat drenching her for it was hot in that still air.

Cards were dealt often, with both current funds and markers for the wealth they were certain lay beneath them, waiting to be sifted and stirred by their eager fingers, then taken in greedy handfuls.  Dice were rolled as well, and wagers laid on occurrences natural such as who would be on the crew to blacken the guns, who on the one sent aloft to see to the canvas, or created, such as foot race from bow to stern, hurdling over coiled ropes and weaving amongst the other pirates, between the fleeter Otr and the more agile Lorelei.

The more agile, and like to cheat, Asgardian won by sliding between the legs of the massive Kronen, Grak, springing up to neatly use her boot-heel to send a bucket into Otr’s path before bounding forward, laughing.  When he finally limped to the finish line the lovely Asgardian kissed the Dwarven sailor’s nose in apology, though never said she was sorry for the cheating.

Twas believed, or so the gossip that Aenor shared with Loki, that she made it up to him with more than kisses in the dark night.  For when that little bit of watery light that fell through the Drop ended the nights were dark indeed.

There was something in the heavy, miasmic air, white and sultry and strange, that seemed to bring out perversity in all who breathed it.

Especially in- those so dark, close nights.  Inspiring...

“Frigging in the rigging, Captain, and more of it than I’ve ever seen on any journey.  Even the time my

Songbird

escorted the prince of Vanaheim’s yacht to their spring revels.  I swear all of the provisions they shared with us were made of wampole,” Aenor said.  They had come above deck after eating, to watch the last bit of light disappear, the sky going from the silver of an old, dirty coin to pewter to ash and would soon be the deepest black.

“Tis to be expected,” he sighed, leaning his elbows on the rail, looking down at the nothing beneath them.  “They’re dull with the drifting. We’ve been aloft longer than I think we’ve ever been, save in your fiercest hunting days when you were chivying us hard and we had to rush hither and yon and we could not find a berth.  Those days were never dreary, though. Moreover, we

both

know fear of annihilation makes a more powerful aphrodisiac than any tincture concocted by the witches of Vanaheim.”

He tilted his head and looked at her.  Behind them, one of the crew was lighting the few deck lanterns they bothered with during the long nights, giving just enough amber glassed light to keep anyone from falling overboard.

Aenor stared straight into the nothing, though Loki could just discern the lift of her right brow.  “I may recall such a sensation.” She looked at him, then back to the nothingness in the distance. “In my distant past, you understand.  For has been so long since I’ve had any manner of proper satisfaction I find myself hazy on the particulars of desire.” Her tone was bland as butter without salt.

Loki refrained from smiling.  She’d tip him over the side if he wasn’t careful with himself.  Aenor was finding his way of keeping them from suffering from too much falling into the insipidity of the travel irksome.

Still, she’d tacitly agreed to the sport. Bedamned, she may have even started this gamesmanship between them.  Though Loki’d admit he’d been certain that she’d have given in by now. Stubborn lass had his cock ready to split and his balls bluer than they ever were when he took to being a Frost Giant.  Tonight he was determined to put paid to their illicit trial of wills.

Turning at the waist, he snapped his fingers as he pointed at the closest lamp to them, blowing out the wick, seeing the corner of Aenor’s lip curl upwards in an unamused sneer just as it flickered out.

From aloft in the crow’s nest they could hear the sighs and the slaps of flesh on flesh.  The powder room was also a popular trysting place, as it was magicked to be cooler to keep the danger of ignition lower.  When only the watch was adeck, twas common for lovers in larger combinations than two finding their way into the shadows where they would have enough room to play.

Seemingly only two places were not being used for clandestine coitus, one being the galley - for the galley creature was asexual and unsympathetic.

The other being the Captain’s Quarters.

Earlier days….

The first night of the Drop, when the atmospherics were growing stiller and warmer already, no one, not even Loki, had amorous intent.  There was still too much tension, too much unknown. He spent those hours on deck, legs crossed, hands extended, trying to find any wind that would answer his call should it be needed.  When the weak, white light from above finally slithered its way through the heavy air, he was so exhausted he leaned on Aenor’s side and barely made it to his bed.

“What good it does to have banked such power and pass out I have no idea,” she had grumbled whilst tenderly tugging his boots off and undoing his neckcloth so he wouldn’t strangle as he slept.  His sprawled and snoring form at her mercy, Aenor perched beside him and plaited his long hair like he was a Northman of old, and then went to her duties.

She had been standing at the rail trying to spot anything in the milky, watery air when she heard his roar upon waking and finding his crowning glory meddled with.  Seeming moments later, meaning he had used magic to repair the damage and speed along his toilette, long, velvet coated arms bracketed Aenor, hands gripping the rail on either side of her so she was pressed between its wood and Loki’s large form.

“Tis hot for velvet, captain,” she said, her voice pleasant.

“One must keep standards.  Additional to which, we both know I am of a naturally cool disposition.  Indeed, should you make play with my hair again you will learn just how cool I can be.  As it is, tonight you will have a rough default in recompense for your sport.”

Though his growled words significated a punishment in the offing the proud prow of his nose mellowly soothed her neck and ear.  Smiling to herself, Aenor answered, “Alas, Captain, I am on first watch tonight, and then galley duty after. I’m for my berth now to be ready.”

“Aenor… You need not-”  he exasperation was plain, and though he was her captain she stopped him, turning so their faces were nearly touching.

“I have no title on this ship, save able seaperson.  Any respect I’ve been given by the crew has come from my own hands working and being too foolish to be cautious.  If you take that from me soon enough I’ll just be the Captain’s bit of stuff, for you know sailor’s gossip when in the doldrums.”

He took a step back.  She noted his hair was waved rather than curled from the effect of the braids.  For a moment or five he looked to argue, then he gave her a false smile, spreading his hands, “As you will, stake.  But your berth is my bed and no other place. Go rest.”

So the next night, they were not together.  Nor the night after, for Bonden with his excellent eyes had sworn he had seen … something moving far away through the white air, a shadow that swam like a massive serpent, pacing them for a time.  Again, Loki had stayed awake, an alchemically enhanced rifle leaning against his hip, his store of power at the ready, whilst Aenor rolled in the vast and empty bed, restless and punching pillows, sleep refusing to come.

Loki, upon seeing her the next morning, with dark circles beneath her eyes and her own hair rather a wreck, had laughed heartily, doing little to soothe her agitated nerves and weary ligaments, to speak nothing of her frayed temper.  Which meant that night, when both of them were able to take to his quarters together, Aenor had stripped to nothing, given him a peck upon the cheek, “Sleep well, Captain,” and slipped between his silk sheets to sleep.

“I had rather thought-”

She had given him her most amiable smile, “When one’s lover laughs at what damage has been wrecked upon their appearance by exhaustion, ‘tis time for renewing nights’ sleep.”

That night it had been Loki’s turn to grumble and be at pains to find rest, and when he’d rolled to gather her into his arms when the bell rang for first light, he was resoundingly irked to find Aenor already up, dressed for duty, and tipping her hat to him as she left the room.

When the captain came on deck that morning, she could see he had made specific pains in his dress, though not in his normal style of being above all resplendent.  There was an insouciant quality about him. Rather than fully jacketed and coated, he wore only his black suede weskit with silver buttons over the snowy linen of his shirt, with the sleeves tucked up out of harm, and his neckcloth in a loose and carefree style.

He had accepted his reverences, and then, turned to Amora and told her that he would be taking a turn at practicing with a gun crew and then working the rigging.  To keep himself sharp, should needs arise, he said, stretching back to pull his hair into a neat queue held by a pine satin ribbon. All duties perfectly timed to be where Aenor was at any given moment.

The excellence of his long thighs were visible under the leather trews he wore, uncovered by a coat, as he, with no assistance, used them pushing a cannon into place, set the wheels, and then turned to pull it back to reload in quick time.  Beneath the thin shirt, his shoulders could be seen to strain but little in his efforts.

The length and fitness of his forearms were in much evidence as he climbed hand over large, graceful hand from deck to the topmost sail to check the canvas on the rigging beside the one Aenor was cleaning.

The hollow of his lengthy neck pulsed as he leaned back to pour wine from an offered skin into his open mouth, sweat pooling there from where it beaded on his flushed neck after his exertions.  After, with a kindly smile, he offered it to Aenor in turn.

“You look to have a great thirst yourself, Captain Breathnach,” he said, pressing it into her hands, slapping her shoulder, and then bending himself to the task of winding rope, during which task he seemed to find it needful to stare at her with blank eyes and slight smile, as he wound that rope around and around and around…

It was sure by pure happenstance that when Aenor returned to his quarters later to fetch her pistols to inspect and clean on deck in hope of catching the little breeze that came from their downward path, that Loki was in his copper hip bath, washing languorously after his day of work.  “Ah, just about done, stake. If you wish to take a turn,” he added generously, “there is still hot water to be had.”

As he spoke he pulled his long legs that had hung over the sides of the small tub in, so he could stand in the water and sluice himself free of suds.  That simple act seemed to take a great deal of time, indeed, it seemed to Aenor that the soapy water seemed to travel very, very slowly down his height, as if by unnatural means, even.

Especially where it dripped from his turgid and ruddy length.

She had walked to the cabinet, removed her arms, and left, ceding him the field, stopping only to lean her back against the outside of his cabin door, fanning vigorously with her hat.

From that moment the undeclared war was on between them.  No quarter would be asked or given, and they both used all weapons at their disposal.

The loser would be he or she who asked first for that which they both wanted.  The battle had never been acknowledged aloud - though matters had come close the afternoon that she had decided to nap and Loki had spontaneously declared that a capital idea and that he would as well.  Whilst they had laid side by side, in sweat-soaked linen and naught else, pretending to sleep, Aenor had decided to take herself in hand.

When the sound of her wet fingers sliding between her legs and her panting huffs of breath had reached his ears, Loki had not moved, not opened his eyes.  His voice, dark and low and heavy with venom, had whispered, “If you should reach a logical conclusion inspired by my person, I will consider the act to be a capitulation…” then he leaned up on his elbow, hot eyes gleaming down at her, “and having capitulated, you will be amiable to all I require of you.”

With great sorrow, Aenor unhanded herself and tried to sleep.

So for weeks it went, until both of them had the crew stepping lightly, even Amora, so irritable were they both.  Any time they might pass, even were it in an open space, they would find reason to jostle and brush each other. Because of the heat they chose to sleep in the all together, blankets relegated to the floor, each restless and unsettled even whilst slumbering. Loki’s hair would seem to cross the space on its own to tickle and tease at Aenor’s nipples, and she had taken to talking in her sleep, her husky voice narrating a sentimental journey through their amorous past.

All meals were taken together, sitting across from each other, eating with a sensual dedication to their mouths whilst staring each other down like rivals about to duel.  Even when they chose to eat with the crew.

The sight of Loki biting into a plum that dripped down his chin as he watched Aenor’s mouth while she cleaned her fingers of butter from her bread, had driven several pirates straight to their bunks.

His knuckles were perpetually white with strain.

Her nails were bitten to the quick.

Not so much as a kiss passed between them.

Neither of them could have said why they were punishing themselves and each other.

Something in the air, perhaps.

But now, on the quarterdeck, with the lanterns cold, Aenor could tell that Loki had reached the end of his tether and was ready to lose.  His dark form sauntered towards her, as she backed away from the rail, until he had her caged against the wheel.

Thank the skies!

“We’ve been here before, my captain,” he said, his voice hushed and hot against her lips, though they did not touch.  With his legs spread wide, he took her hands and held them so her arms were stretched and their fingers were laced together against the wood.  “Though on my ship, this time.”

His body pressed to hers, his cock pressing where her own legs were open and waiting, rubbing lightly though leather, linen, and silk.  Aenor moaned, that little pressure too much for her overburdened senses.

“Loki…”

There was a light in his eyes that she knew.  He would stay like this, circling and teasing her until she was the one to capitulate.  To beg.

Unlacing her fingers from his, she gasped two of the handles on the wheel, so she might lift her legs about his waist, and then took two hard handfuls of his hair, using them to hold him still.  Damned if she would lose now.

Now he moaned, “Aenor, kiss m-”

“Captain!”  Bonden’s voice cracked across the still night.

“I’ll kill him,” Loki said, matter-of-factly as Aenor lowered herself and they both tried to breathe normally.

“Captain!”  Bonden sprang up onto the quarterdeck, unaware and innocent, a broad smile on his face, “I’ve taken the evening sounding!!”  He held up a length of twine from which dangled the scoop used to test out ground below a ship for safe landing.

There, within it, was a handful of dusty earth, tangled with dried leaves.

Aenor’s heart leapt as Loki grasped it, his face split with a rapacious grin, “How far,  Bonden?”

“Naught but a few fathoms.  We’d be scuttled if I’d waited,” he said in a proud tone.

Loki turned took her by the hip, pulling her into a speedy yet faultless kiss.

“Aenor, get to the engine and turn it off, slowly, I’m going to raise what wind I can.  We can’t know much of where we are landing, Bonden, alert the crew to be ready for a rough fall.  By Bor, we’re here! We’ve done it!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

If the air as they drifted downwards through had been stifling and strange, it was all the more impossibly still once they arrived.  The Horn’s great sails sagged. Not even a single strand of Amora’s fair hair stirred as she hung over the side to warn Loki when the keel was about to scrape bottom.“Safe for another foot, Captain, if that,” she called up.Even the harness his first hung from moved not a whit, so unmoving was the thick air.  “Best be careful down there,” Aenor called to Amora she leaned over the side, having completed her task of shutting down the engine and hurriedly after rushing up topside not wanting to miss a moment of their landing.  “Some of those harnesses are in a most shocking state of disrepair,” she added, exchanging a most pleasant glare with the dangling woman.Loki kept his snort to himself.  He knew his stake had theories as to who was responsible for her mishaps and dangers upon first unwillingly joining his sainted band of scoundrels and rogues.  Ideas he tended to think were correct.  Loki would normally have dispensed justice, yet as nothing could be proved, he needed a first mate, and he knew Aenor would prefer to deal with matters in her own time and own fashion, so he had let matters lie.  He also left them to it now, for much as he enjoyed the sinister gleam in Aenor’s bright brown eyes, Loki’s full attention was required in the creation of a downy pillow of wind in which to berth The Horn that she might not founder and break upon the stony ground of Titan when he led a share of the crew off ship to explore.  With a gentle touch of his will he scooped forth a portion his carefully hoarded store of breezes and gusts, guiding it downwards towards the grey dirt of Titan.  A-fixing it took some craft, and no little vitality.  By ironic fortune, the vigor he had not spent in passion upon his Aenor during the time in the Drop allowed him to do the work and not leave himself utterly spent by it. Looking at Aenor as she leant an elbow upon the rail and rained unnerving smiles upon his First Mate, her jacket off, the white sleeves of her blouse rolled up to show off her strong arms, he knew he’d rather be spent and struggling. Who knew when next they would have a chance to challenge each other?   He frowned at her, noting her cutlass and pistols were in place, and her hat at hand, but no jacket, no coat, not even a bit of neck linen or a weskit.  “Are you wearing that for the landing?  A tad informal, is it not?”  “Hot as it is, and airless?  Yes, captain,” Aenor snorted as she offered Amora a hand coming back aboard.  She then pulled her nearly kissing close, causing the taller woman to stumble and nearly fall.  She caught her roughly by the shoulder and stared up into Amora’s startled eyes, with her lip pulled back in a snarl that she slowly turned into a friendly smile.  “Careful there,” she gave her a hard slap to the shoulder and let her go. “Best be careful everywhere. ”Amora held her dignity,  but it was a close thing.“Hmph…” Loki grumbled, turning his back on their shenanigans to attend to straightening his cravat.  He had chosen his own garments with an eye to fashionable practicality, knowing that making history demanded more than a pair of plain trousers and a shirt that had seen better days. When this moment was commemorated in etchings and oil paint, Captain Loki would be elegant AND intrepid.  Yet, Aenor was dashing even so.  “Is all in readiness?”“Aye, captain, the crew know their duties and those accompanying us are armed and eager,” she said, putting on her hat and standing at attention, Navy-perfect still, despite his best efforts to relax that rigid spine.  “Amora, you have command for the nonce.  The windy brace holding the Horn in place will last three days, no more.  You must move her when it starts to give way….” he stopped and looked at his first, who was for a rare moment neither ironic nor scornful in her expression.  “Skim the world’s floor no more than a few hours looking for us. If there is no sign I think you can be certain that we have…”He looked at Aenor and the crew of ten he’d picked for this endeavour.  This may be their death, lost forever on the ruins of Titan, their fates never known.  None showed the slightest apprehension.  In the case of Grak, his gormless Kronan who was as dumb as a post though fortunately much more useful for their coming excursion, that was no surprise.  But Aenor, Lorelei, even Otk, were all clever enough to know to be concerned, yet they simply looked ready.  Loki snapped his attention back to Amora, “Just don’t scupper my beautiful boat, or I’ll rise from the dead and make you fly for it.  Now,” he clapped his hands together, rubbing them in greedy eagerness, “my sweet babes, shall we?”“ But, er, Captain,” Bonden called from where he stood at the helm, “for all you know the ground is quicksand or worse.”“Excellent point.”  Grasping Grak by the jacket and trousers, he quickly hefted the giant creature, tossing him over the side.  There was a stony scream, followed by a ‘fwump’ as he landed on the sandy earth.“All well down there, sailor,” he called down.The Kronen stood, looking up very hurt in expression but well otherwise, “You threw me!”“Congratulations!  You shall go down in history as the first living creature to touch the soil of Titan since it’s fall!”Grak gave a pleased smile and a sharp salute, “Thank you, captain!”Turning on his heel to Aenor, he gestured to the rope ladder leading downwards, “Stake?  If you would be so good as to take the lead.” Grak gently took Aenor’s hand to assist her in hopping down the last two feet above the surface of the word, where the Horn’s graceful bulk swayed ever so slightly on the winds that Loki had used to cushion her.  They were the only moving air and it was a blessed relief to feel the small breeze they created whilst the rest of the traveling party, their gear, and supplies were offloaded.Loki, ignoring the Kronen’s proffered aid, jumped and landed light as a cat at her side, “So what think we, direction-wise?” he asked.Together they turned about, looking at the still, bleak landscape.  The dusty ground was grey, and broken with black stone the like of which he had never seen before, and rocks that looked to be granite of some kind. From the ship, even Bonden with the help of Loki’s magic and the powerful spyglass mounted on the deck had not been able to see enough through the thick air to determine a direction, but it was a tad clearer on ground level.  Aenor reached to her side and removed the splendid brass spy-glass he had gifted her with, “Grak,” she muttered, causing the Kronen to lean down to allow her to climb on his hand, up his arm, to stand on his shoulder with a knee on his massive head and look about.  Finally, she pointed towards what Loki thought was perhaps the southwest, though even his usually preternaturally keen senses had been scrambled by the peculiarity of The Drop.  “I see what might be a building that way, and what is most certainly water as well, though what the state of its drinkability or possible inhabitants I cannot say,” she folded the glass and climbed back down.“The other directions?” he queried.She shook her head, frowning, “Each other direction is but more of the same as we have here, far as I can spy.”“Then we go.  Burdens up, my darlings,” he ordered the rest of their company.   Normally Loki would have exempt himself, and his Aenor needless to say, of carrying anything but their pistols and blades, but he knew that she would not permit it, and that his own Jotnar strength would be needed for the amount of supplies and armaments he’d deemed sufficient for the trek, so he hefted a trunk of weapons onto his shoulder, and a satchel of extra shot and powder as he frowned with concern at the size of the sack of food and water skins that she chose for herself.  However, his captain was sturdy as she was stubborn and had less trouble than some of the more spoiled members of his own crew.Lorelei for one, who had little trouble convincing two others of the crew, the equally besotted with her Antoinetta and Otk, to shift her load in addition to hers.  Delicate though she might appear, the gorgeous red-head was Asgardian and thus could easily lift a charging boar, she was merely lazy.“Excellent, Officer Lorelei, as you are unburdened you are free to take up the blunderbuss, and thus walk point!”He nudged the massive gun with a toe and gave her a significant look that caused her to cease mid-pout, give a salute, shoulder arms, and moved to the head of their line.  “All ready?  Off we pop, then, my cherubs, off we pop.” The oppressive, still heat of The Drop was less horrendous on the surface.  Whilst the air moved no more there than above it was not quite so hot nor thick, though that mercy was mitigated by the thick but sandy earth they had to walk through, grasping bootheels and calloused bare feet alike, leaving only the dark elf Althim skimming effortlessly across the surface, ensuring he was the most disliked amongst the company.They spoke little as they travelled, rather saving their energy for the heavy walking and observation of their surroundings.  All was grey and black, save for here and there on larger outcroppings of that weird black stone there might be a small tuft or two of a lichen in an unhealthy, unnaturally vivid yellowy green that seemed more like disease than plant.  “I thought that Titan was the most beautiful of all of the Realms…” Otk muttered.“You live down here for a few eons and see how pretty you are, boy,” Haddra, one of the few humans in their party sniffed at the dwarf.  Additional, that stillness meant every sound carried far and was unmuffled by even the sound of wind.  Each step they took echoed and each grunt or sniff was magnified. For an unnaturally long time all noises from the Golden Horn could be heard as well.  Amora’s ghostly voice issuing orders, the sound of canvas furled, ropes tightened, and hatched opening and closing were loud enough to make each of them start and turn at one point or another.  Even Aenor.Even Loki.When they were finally out of range of the sounds from his ship, they stopped long enough for his pretty captain to go aloft on Grak again and make certain they were still headed the right way, as well as to have a few sips of weak ale and a few bites of biscuit. Loki looked at his crew and frowned.  Each, from seasoned Aenor, to sturdy Antoinetta, and to even his blandly fearless sailing master Hogun were spooked, though only his knowing eye for each of their weaknesses would see it.  He’d chosen these seven of his crew for this duty with greatest care for both loyalty and guts, but alas each of them was too bright to not be frightened.Well, other than Grak, of course.“How far would you say we’ve travelled?” he asked Hogun.The quiet man looked upwards at where the sun so barely could be seen as a slightly brighter place in the miasma, “I’m not skilled in land miles, but by the sun, we’ve moved three hours on.”Loki nodded.  From Aenor’s report they would have to walk twice as far again before they could see what she was not certain was some kind of building with the naked eye.  Good enough.Back on their feet, they were quieter, if moving faster for the little rest, and having gotten their land-legs beneath them.  For what was about the next hour or so they moved quickly enough, sharing a few jests and a little chat, when there was a low, hissing sound that stopped them in their tracks.In the still air, even that quiet bit of noise was like a roar.  Heart pounding, Loki dropped the chest he carried and pulled a pistol, motioning for the rest to stay still.After a few seconds, as he circled around them, sidestepping to keep his crew at his back and his pistol aimed outwards, he found himself at the back of their line.  Where they had walked, their prints were disappearing as what seemed to be a wind so low to the ground they could not feel it scoured the evidence of them from the surface of Titan.  Crouching, Loki patiently coaxed the tiny breeze to his hand, eager for what it might tell him, and for a little extra ammunition in his pocket.  For a few minutes it seemed as if it were defying him, shimmying backward, which was impossible.  In centuries Loki had never met a scrap of moving air that didn’t jump to when he said jump. That didn’t seem to want him to tame its chaos and teach it lawful ways.  No wayward little current would ignore him long, and so it suddenly seemed eager to do as he willed.But then, rather than drift or gust, it seemed to slither into his palm.  Through the heavy leather of his glove for a moment he thought it was icy cold, then thought it burning hot, and finally, that it was like the charged air when lightning had struck and left every hair a body upright and the skin agitated.  But no.  It felt… unclean.Shaking it loose, for now it seemed to want to cling to him, even climbing a bit up his glove and for all of the world feeling like it was licking his wrist, a quake of abhorrence shuddered through his bones before he could be free of it. With a jolly laugh he felt not, he wiped his hands and stood, “At least we know there is some wind to be had down here, should need arise.  Stake,” he called out to where she stood at the front end of the line, second only to Lorelei, frowning at him, “a song, perhaps, should your lungs be up to it.”She frowned harder, no doubt wondering if it were safe to thus much further signal their presence, but not one to ignore a reasonable order form her captain, “Aye, sir.”A few steps into the next leg of their journey she hummed to reach her tune and then started, “Anyone who knows this one, sing too.“ 
“I know my love by his way of walking

And I know my love by his way of talking

And I know my love dressed in a suit of blue
And if my love leaves me what will I do… ” Rather than return to her side, Loki loitered at the back of the line like a lazy schoolboy, dawdling his way to class, turning around now and then in a soft circle, watching that nasty little breeze hide their steps the whole way.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Loki’s arm hurt….

It was of no matter, he thought, and would do morale no good to show weakness.
 
Chatter died as hours passed in their walking, as did the singing, though from time to time Aenor would take up a few verses of a song on her own.

Farewell and adieu unto you Elvish ladies

Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Ydalir

For we have received orders to fly to old Midgard

We hope in a short time to see you again

We'll rant and we'll roar like true Human sailors

We'll rant and we'll roar along the high skies…

Yet even her voice stopped after they took a break for weak ale and bread at what they roughly judged to be noon.
 
His arm was really quite painful.

It became worse as they walked across the sucking nothingness of Titan.  For a moment he considered stopping one of the crew. Perhaps … what was his name … Bonden…?  Bonden, who had tied up more than his share of wounds, to take a look at it.

Shaking his head, Loki thought, no.  Pride, or something, kept him from countenancing it.

Then he stopped and listened, but though he thought there was something to be heard under the silence of Titan, if there was he could not hear it.
 
The travel of the sailors from

The Golden Horn

across the surface of the fallen Realm grew no more pleasant as their day wore on.  Though there was no shirking in any of the chosen crew their footfall grew heavier and slower, all save the Kronen who plodded with an even, unwavering gait.  Even the dark elf whose name escaped their captain for the moment, skimmed with less easy vigour across the sandy surface.
 
At first the pain felt like it had been brushed by a bit of vitriol along his wrist, so it burned but not in the clean way of flame and spark.  Then it became a strange ache that worked its way down from skin to deep in the bone, moving upwards.

Casually flicking his lace back he looked at the thin bit of flesh between his glove and jacket.

He could see nothing.

Surely his mind was playing with him.  Worry for his ship and his crew. Those that were with him and those left behind.

He stopped for a second and looked at them walking ahead of him, shaking his head as he had the strangest fancy that for a brief moment he could not remember who they were as they wavered both before his eyes in the listless, stifling air and within in his mind as well.

When the riches of Titan and her dark fleet were his, the captain promised himself a visit … he would go to … there was a fine place he knew for relaxation and rum.  He was certain to recall it in good time.

He’d take that short-haired, Midgardian girl.

If he could just remember her name.

He knew she was a captain as well…  He’d take her if she would stop that terrible noise she was making, that was making his head ache as badly as his arm had been.  Plus, when she sang it was as if he could hear something else, something that would stop when she stopped and start when she started again, no matter how hard he tried to catch it.

The arm, at least, that felt much better as time passed.

Once they reached that damn’d building that taunted him all things would grow much easier.  He knew it in his bones.
 
By nightfall the party from The Golden Horn had not yet reached what could now plainly be seen through Aenor’s spyglass as a structure and not merely a strangely shaped rise in the landscape.  Low to the ground, and looking more like a powder magazine, or some manner of fortress than anything, and built from that same, peculiar black stone that pierced willy-nilly through the shifting grey sands, though as yet she saw no door nor window nor opening of any kind.

Taking Grak’s graciously proffered hand that she might step down from her perch upon his vast and rocky shoulder.  Hopping lightly from there to his bent knee and then on to stand beside Loki who waited most impatient for her report.  “Well, Captain? How many torches should be lit for our stroll?”

Above them, through the dull, thick air, the colorless sky grew darker and as the night slowly descended through the miasma it added layer of heaviness that pushed them lower in mood, for they could go no lower in location.

Carefully cleaning her spyglass, for the terrible, thin dust that covered Titan’s surface was pernicious and could find its way through the finest of openings, as they all learned to their discomfort.  Only Loki had resisted the unbearable urge to have a hearty scratch in an undignified place, for which Aenor found herself most annoyed with him. Indeed, all of the itching made her irritable with all things.

So she took her own good time in answering her captain.

“Between here and there the land is as foul as it’s been all day, yet no worse.  Unless my sense has gone wrong we should rest here. Tomorrow should take us no more than a few hours to reach ...

whatever

it is, provided there is no change.”

There was more than the unpleasant surroundings working upon her temper.  The bleakness was miserable, of course, yet she recognized herself as taking it harder than the rest.  Though when they had finally moved far enough away from The Horn that the faintly echoing voices of the crew left behind and the music of rope and canvas and creaking wood faded into nothingness there had been something close to a shudder than moved throughout their little band.

All were sweat-soaked, foot-sore, itchy and more scared than they would ever say even to their dearest friend.

All save Grak who was unchanged and quite probably unchangeable.

Additional to all of that, there was an aspect to Loki’s manner that was unsettling to her as the day passed.  His gaze seemed to slide from place to place, not seeking so much as it could nowhere to alight. Like a ship welcomed in no port, her crew growing desperate, lest they fall from the skies.  Moreover, when he spoke to any of the crew, herself included, he was more formal than was his wont.

They were no longer his cherubs or beloved cutthroats or darlings.  Now they were mate and sailor and the like, and she was not Aenor or even his stake, but captain.  When he spoke at all. Through the hours he’d grown quieter and quieter.

For he listened too.  He cocked his head, bird-like, and frowning, and then shook it, as if to clear something away, and said little or nothing at all.

A Loki who did not chatter and childe, entertain and dazzle himself and others with words could hardly be called Loki at all.

“Being we are that close, I see no reason to not continue,” he answered, his voice bland though his eyes glittered with red fire.

“And I see no reason we should endanger ourselves in a strange place.  If we camp now we shall we make to that … sepulcher, or what have you, in goodly time tomorrow.”

“Sepulcher…” now his voice was rather tense.  “Do you call this place a tomb, captain? Do you think I have dragged us all to our deaths and mean to see us buried here?”

Aenor was surprised to hear the groan of leather as he squeezed his gloved hands tight, as if he might strike her.  Taking a step back, she narrowed her own eyes and put a hand to her pistol, ready to strike him back with the butt of it, should the need arise.  He was too much bigger than she for any kind of fair fight, swords aside.

“I think nothing changes here,” Lorelei walked up, interrupting who knew what was about to happen?  Her musical voice uncommonly grim as she heaved the blunderbuss to the ground and shook out her shapely arms.

Loki raised a brow at the gun and then at his pretty mate, “Perhaps not dropping that into a pile of dust that might interfere with its fine workings, or burst into flames if we need fire it would be wise, miss.  Set it up on that rock, so as we take guard turns it can be manned. We’ll need the loan of your glass for that as well,” he told Aenor, who nodded with ill grace.

Watching as the captain ordered about the rest of the party in the setting up of a rough encampment, she knew that there was something off about him.  As subtle in its wrongness as Loki was in and of himself.

She’d not seen him take a sip of water all day, nor eat a bite of food, even when they’d taken their break or passed around a bottle of mead earlier.  There was no creature of such appetite as her lover, even when distressed he was a trencherman of rare capacity.

Frowning, and keeping her own council, Aenor helped build a small fire with the fuel they’d wisely brought from the ship.

Lorelei stared sadly at the mighty, deck-clearing gun.

Which led to Otk and Antoinetta fighting over who would pick it up and clean it for use as they tried to impress Lorelei.  Though even their pleasant tempered rivalry over the Aesir maid seemed weary.

When the camp was set, old rugs laid out as both seats and beds, the fire lit, and provisions passed around they all settled down whilst Loki set the watch schedule, pointing to each of them as he assigned their times.  Aenor was to be second to the final watch, and he himself would be dead last.

After he took his seat again, his back to one of those great black stones so he could watch them all, Aenor poured a tot of brandy from the flask she’d filled for herself and approached him.  The wet, hot air had grown cold, but the air moved so little the smoke from their pitiable fire did little more than hover in place above the flames. Yet sight of those flames was deeply welcome for they were the only color in what was now air as dark clay.

Though the light was dim, she could swear that Loki scowled at her when she reached him, holding out her cup.

“Drink?  It’s best brandy, straight from Midgard.”

“I am quite sufficiently seen for, Captain,” he said, lifting a leather jack of weak ale that he’d not yet taken a sip from.  Nor had he eaten as much as a mouthful of the admittedly terrible meal that Otk had scrounged together for them.

Nor did he move to offer her a place beside him on his rug or give her even so much as a smile.  Though it made a manner of sense that they would not sleep together when encamped with the others as it would make for awkward morale, it could surely do no harm for them to sit together?

All of the while that sliding gaze continued.  He looked at her not once past when she first walked up, but rather searched restlessly through the nothingness of the night.  Squinting in what almost be a glare when where he looked stumbled over any of the crew. Though, surely, she thought, that was a trick of the flickering firelight?

Yet the fire flickered little, there being no wind to tease it, only stayed settled close to its embers as if it, too, was cowed by the constraining atmosphere of Titan.

And again, his head turned this way, then that, as if to capture a sound that she certainly could not hear.

Finally, she asked, “May I join you?”

Loki looked up at her, his face now plainly glowering, “Why?” he all but spat at her.  “Though our rank may be of a technical sameness as captains, this is my crew, my venture, and even though I am no longer a prince in the sense practical I am still one in nature.”

Had he struck her a blow, Aenor could have been no more shocked.  Nor angered. Years of service before the mast in the navy had taught her to keep her temper and her head even when an enemy caught you surprised.

“You are not yourself.  Or if this is some manner of new game whose rules I do not know nor care to understand, know I will not play this one with you.  I’d have thought you had enough of such on board the

Horn

.”

Now seeming bored, he waved a weary hand to send her away, “You heard me, Midgardian.  If I wish your company I will seek it.”

Now her hand rose to her heart, which burned within her.  Midgardian? T’would it be ‘mortal’ next, or even something less kind.

Ahead of her answering him with like rudeness, Otk called out with an attempt to be merry, “Lead us in another song, Captain Aenor?”

“No!”  Loki’s voice scraped out of him.  “We made noise enough all day. You, there, Kronen, put out that fire and take your watch.  The rest of you take to your own bedding and sleep. Tomorrow we leave as soon as we can tell the sun has carved its way through this mucky air.  Good night!”

He lay himself out flat, eyes closed, ignoring where Aenor stood astonished.

The rest of the crew were silent with the painful quiet of an indrawn breath.  Shocked that their captain could be so curt to them and so unkind to his lover, there was not even the usual pirate’s gossip and boasting, or fantasies spun about treasures to that would be found and or stolen after that.

Grak waited for her to return to her bed before he stomped the fire out with his stony feet.  
 
When Haddra woke Aenor for her shift for a startled moment she thought herself back on Niflheim, now buried in its iron soil, her bones just another decoration on the floor of Hela’s redoubt, so weighty and grey was the air.  “All’s been quiet, Captain, save a few of the lads and one of the ladies snoring.”

She held out a small, bullseye lantern to light Aenor’s way to the guards’ perch they had created on one of the high rocks.  Settling in the natural seat created by a crevasse, her spyglass at hand, and her brandy flask, the blunderbuss ready to fire, she brooded for the deadly dull hours of her watch, which as warned was punctuated only by snuffling wheezes and roars from Grak, Hogan, and Lorelei.

Many a boring watch she’d kept herself awake brooding over Loki and now she did so again.  Though whereas when they were at odds in the skies it had been a furious, scorching sort of brood, now it was a creeping, dreadful kind of thing.  This was in no way typical of him, mercurial as those winds he worshipped though he may have been, nor did she believe that he had suddenly decided to turn all things topsy-turvy between them for sport.

Even should he have done such a perverse thing, for perverse he could assuredly be, Loki would not endanger his crew, his mission, his ship, and she knew, her, for the sake of some play.  All she knew for certain was she could not question nor challenge him about it until their trek was done and they were safely back aboard

The Golden Horn

.

Only a day gone and she already dearly missed that boat.  It had become her home, though her

Songbird

would always be her first love.  She wondered how her ‘

bird

fared flying the broad skies without her, and all of the crew as well?  If Merisa was now captain, and if they hunted her as she had once hunted Loki?

Loki.  What was wrong with her pretty, witty lover?

For hours she tried to work it out, with nothing to look at but the unmoving cloud of her breath on the still air and the flicker of the candle.

The sky was still like a grave when she went to wake Loki for his shift.

From the circles beneath his eyes and the weariness that Aenor could feel in her own sinews, he had slept little if at all.  Her anger and questions could wait. “Captain, go back to your bed, I can take these last hours, too,” she urged, as she resisted reaching out to touch the suede arm of his coat.

His deep voice was raspy and slow as he staggered to his feet, his long legs nearly tangling with tiredness.  “No, no. I will take my watch. One of us should be fresh on the walk tomorrow. And standing and walking a few steps will do me good.  That will be all.”

Giving her reverence, and feeling bereft that he would clearly welcome no comfort or kiss from her, Aenor stood and offered him the lantern.  But he waved it away. “I need it not,” he said, his voice growing guttural, whilst his eyes turned a burning red and his skin a darkling blue, and his breath no longer piped smoke into the air, for it was now colder than that air could hope to be.

“Captain, I-”

He turned and walked away before she could finish and later she was not able to remember what she planned to say.
 
“Captain!  Captain! Wake up!”  Aenor felt herself jostled and disturbed, though in that grateful to be wrestled bodily from the unpleasant, near fever dream she was having.

Bonden knelt at her side, shaking her.  Near behind Lorelei shifted from foot to foot, the blunderbuss she had complained of hefting the day before resting easily in her hands as a pistol, and Hogan stood with Aenor’s spyglass to his eye, searching all directions.  About them the rest of their little camp was in an uproar.

“What?”  There was grit everywhere about her, and some had even worked its way under the silk scarf she’d covered her face with before sleep so her eyes burned and she spat something like mud out of her dry mouth.

“It’s Captain Loki.  We've looked everywhere, and there ain't many places to look.  He's in none of them.  He’s gone, ma'am!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Loki heard the wind.

The call of it commenced when the sky started to grow light, for it could not be called dawn, since nothing like real sun fell upon Titan.

Her serenade was honey wine and opium, a crave within his belly after the days and days of the Drop and the walk across this breezeless Realm with this crew of near strangers.  Twas, he felt in his bones, the elder sister of that little breeze he’d toy’d with the morning before. The naughty one that had given him that nasty bite that had turned into pain, and yet now seemed a rather pleasant ache.

Indeed, it ached in time to that sweetly singing wind that seduced him.

Tossing off his coat to roll up his sleeves, laying aside pistol and cutlass, he lifted his hands and the wind found him, coiling and crossing over his bared arms with a little thrill that made him shudder, then it yanked.

Loki followed it, his steps easy now as that very bit of delighting air now shifted the sand beneath him, luring his willing legs in the direction of the black building, other companions forgotten.
 
Before him, as if someone had opened a curtain, or perhaps a door, a light came from the building, and Loki ran towards it, his new friend pushing at his heels.
 
Aenor and the crew searched, desperate for a sign of Loki and finding naught.  Though they were creatures of the sky and had no skill with tracking she was certain that there was nothing to find even if they had such skills.

In every direction there was the same, dreary nothing as far as a bare eye or one looking through a spyglass could see. All save the way were heading which ended in that dark edifice that now seemed like a charnel house, awaiting their pleasure.

Yet still they looked, though with a sense of both dread and defeat.  When Otk had brought her Loki’s pistols and blade atop his coat, which was wrinkled and dirty, Aere had swayed on her pins, certain she would fall to her knees whilst clutching them, so deeply afraid was she.  Damn her for every manner of fool, why had she not questioned him? Pushed? Cajoled? Begged, even? For begged she now wished she had.

Though she had seen he was not himself, not in any way, she had let her concern for hierarchy before the crew and her own stung heart sway her from it and now he was gone.

“Master Hogun,” she called to the Sailing Master after they had exhausted much of the early day in fruitless search, “what are your orders?”

A quiet fellow of the greatest dignity, Hogun leaned upon his musket and looked at the scattered crewfolk.  Some few, Grak and Haddra, searched for lack of other orders, whilst the rest took seats upon the rocks, dejected and uncertain.  He nodded as he observed, then pushed his braided hair back over his shoulder, stood straight, and made his reverence, “Your command, Captain Breathnach.”

“What?  No, no, sir.  You are the ranking officer.”

“I am no captain,” he said slowly and with a tone that brooked no disagreement.  “Nor are any of these.”

Lorelei looked to object, considered, and then stood to salute as well.  “Aye, captain. ‘Tis no secret Loki, er, Captain Laufeyson planned to make you a captain in his armada, and you ran a ship of the line and nearly caught the uncatchable

Golden Horn

, much as I am loathe to follow a mortal, I think you will see us safe.  Or,” she said with a tone of philosophy unusual to her breathy, sweet voice, “at least will see us dead in a proper way.  Neither as cowards, nor as fools.”

They all and sundry looked to her, expectant of orders.

The last thing she had wanted in her life was to be a pirate.  Yet here she was, not a pirate merely, but a pirate captain now not just in the planning but in actuality, for leading was needed at this moment, so lost and dejected were the sailors who looked to her now, with some forlorn hope.

Oh, by the Skies!  How had all of this happened to her?

Loki.

Turning from Hogan and Lorelei without a word and still holding his things, Aenor climbed again for what must have been the hundredth time if it were the first onto the guard’s perch where last she had seen him, heard him, and looked out again.  Had he been taken, who could have done so quietly enough to not rouse them? Had he been ill, in a daze? Did he strike out on his own for no good reason towards the waiting crypt? Or back to

The Horn

?

There was no more to be seen now than there had been all of the morning.  Grey dust, dark, broken stones, white, heavy air, and an unwelcoming sky.

She closed her eyes, squeezing his effects so the gold buttons dug into her hands.  Very little would be needed to have her sobbing for fear about what could have happened to him.  Tears had their place and time, Titan and now were not either.

Then she saw it…

Twas an easy enough thing to miss but there, from above she could see it...

With a few turns of the sleeve to make the arms of Loki’s elegant coat short enough for her, and buckling of the belt holding his weapons to cinch the waist and allowed her to blouse it a bit so it hung at her calves rather than her ankles, she turned to the waiting pirates.  Her course now clear.

“Bonden?”

“Aye, Captain?”

“Can you find your way back to the Horn?”

Her fellow Midgardian, with his good eyes and fast legs nodded.  “Yes, ma’am.”

“Then take Ijeki,” who was the dark elf, and the quickest amongst them, who saluted as well.  “Speed away. Tell Amora,” she almost stopped there, knowing that the loyalty that Loki instilled in the Aesir woman was not shared with her.

No matter. Hopping down from the rocks, she continued, while motioning for the others to rise, “Tell Amora what has happened.  That we have gone ahead to the building, following Captain Loki. Tell her that in the captain’s cabin there is a casket set with blue stones in which he keeps a small measure of breeze and that she is to use that to tack The Horn this way if she can be navigated thus.  We may need the long nines, or even the alchemical canons to blast open that tomb.”

As she spoke, Aenor hurried to gather her few things, silently pointing out orders to the other, hoping the haste of her words and actions would give them wings.

“How do you know that is where he is, captain?” Haddra asked, her raspy voice even rougher in the thick air.

Aenor held her spyglass to the old pirate woman’s eye, “Look towards it, yet at the ground.  Can you see it?”

The pirate looked for a moment or more and then shook her head.  “I see no more than I did when we searched before.”

With three long strides, Aenor cleared the remnants of their little encampment and gestured grandly towards the ground, “It’s swept.  Everywhere we have walked the dust has lain flat and still as if it were dropped from a well-shaken mop and never moved again. But this way, the way we were headed, now it has a pattern, like a brush has gone over it.  A fine brush, but a brush. There has been a breeze,

my

cherubs, there has been a breeze.  And where winds blow, so Loki goes, and we are going as well!”
 
Loki was not certain where he was when he awoke.

Indeed his only certainties were that it was dark.  A dark that even when he grudgingly shifted to show off his Jotnar heritage and take advantage of the excellence of their vision in the dark he still could see nothing.

Additional, he knew he was certain that he had been afflicted with some malignant seidr or corrupt science.  For only a curse of some kind could cause him to be so rude and strange to Aenor, who was sure most rightly vexed with him for it.  As well as for him wandering away from his crew into a strange desolation without even having the manners to leave a note behind. So impolite was it that he was embarrassed having been raised to do better.

That he was within doors.

That his clothing was gone, down to his linen.

And in the last, he knew he was hanging upside down. Gently swaying, even.

His thoughts were, for the nonce at least, his own again and thus raced hither and yon attempting to recall how he’d come to this place, for he recalled nothing after that first, proper wind had danced like a coquette before him and he’d stumbled in its wake like a half-stuporous suitor.  He had concerns that whatever bit of foul magic had stolen his wits may not have done with him so easily.

He considered calling out, yet it seemed that whosoever had placed him in that predicament would come to him in their own good time.

Since his hands were yet untied, he was able to gather a bit of seidr, though the environment was most magic poor.  With a gesture, as if lighting a match, he produced enough brightness to see that he was but a few feet above a ground made of the same black rock that dotted the blighted landscape of Titan.  Flicking his fingers, he sent the light down to sit on that floor, then another and another, until he had illuminated the rather small, empty space. The only irregularity in the perfectly uniform walls was what must be the door, for it was shaped as such, though lacked any hardware - handle, lock, or hasps - and appeared to be made out of metal rather than stone.

Though his head ached a bit, he bent upwards to grasp at his ankles, finding he was held in place by shackles that had been hoisted to the ceiling by way of a thick chain.  Lock-picking was the second use he had learned to put his powers to as a small boy, and even the rather intricate lock that held him in place was little work for him.

Gads, but twas nothing compared to the clasps and latches Angrboda had fixed him with once upon a time.

Holding fast to the shackles when his legs swung free and then dropped.  The stone was cold and almost too smooth.

Prowling the edges of his cell, Loki looked for any irregularity in the masonry he might exploit.  Rather than having been erected, the room looked to have been carved from a piece of solid darkness and then polished to a buff sheen.

With a last brush of seidr, not wishing to deplete the low stores of it available, he made a motion like a knife cutting and stepped back as the now loose chain fell to the floor in two pieces.  He wrapped the smaller, more wieldy length around his arm, leaving enough to swing against an enemy’s jaw, then sat within his circle of light to ponder and wait.

He was certain he would not be kept waiting for long.
 
There was no way of knowing how long it would take Bonden and Ijeki to get back to The Horn.  Aenor was certain it would take them less time than to retreat than it had taken their full party to progress, so she chivvied, threatened, and ordered the laggards of the remaining crew to move in double quick time and stow their complaints for she’d be listing none of them.

Indeed, there were few enough of them.  The uncanny disappearance of their fierce, peacock of a captain had left them spooked and compliant.

Aenor found herself impressed again.  Though criminals and oft times inefficient sailors, there was not a coward to be found amongst them.  Amongst this group of them, leastways. Not a one had suggested they turned back, showing a stronger loyalty to Loki than she would have expected from pirates.

In fact, she would not have been surprised had they all voted to turn back, for what chance might they have without him?  Yet they trekked on, silent, grim, and determined through the heavy, unpleasant air that greased their skin and the sucking dust that found its way into every open bit of clothing.

Aenor kept her chin up, walking to the front, spyglass squeezed in one fist and her cutlass held easy in the other.  Damned but Loki’s coat was a heavy, extra burden, but she would not allow it to drag her down. If she was leading them into a fate worse than Hel she’d do it with her head held high.

“A song, Captain?” Grak asked shyly.  He alone had no weariness, Kronen being tough as the stone that made them.

Her throat was dry as that bedamned dust….

Should they make it free of Titan, Aenor planned to skyjack Loki away to the coast of Erie, to ramble on the beaches and over the green hills, and fuck before the hearth in her aunt’s little cottage that was hers now, then sleep for a month.

“Aye, a song!”  After all, twas not as if their being here was a secret.  She sang one of the best she knew, quickly rewriting for circumstance:

‘Oh, the year was 10957

How I wish I was on Midgard now

Impressed I was, by the pirate king,

To the prettiest vessel I've ever seen

God damn them all! I was told

We'd cruise the skies for Titan gold

We'd fire no guns, shed no tears

But I'm a broken maid without a pier

The last of Loki's Privateers…!’

A rueful laugh rose from the crew and that was enough to make her spit out the dirty sand from her mouth, swig some nasty, warm small beer, and keep singing.
 
As Loki had surmised, those who had put him in his shackles knew quickly enough when he had freed himself.

The pocket door slid open and a personage of a kind he had never seen before stood within its arch.  Large, large even than his Kronen, though no wise as stony, though its thick purple flesh looked nearly as impervious to mere weaponry.

Loki kept his chain, anyway.

Massive shoulders, legs thick as Asgardian oaks, and fists to rival any blacksmith’s anvil created a picture of brute strength personified, yet the eyes within the brute’s crudely fashioned face showed not the mere cunning one might expect.  Rather, their piss-yellow depths showed something beyond intelligence.

Genius marred by fanaticism.

Wisdom tainted by madness.

Loki knew their appearance well.  On dark nights he’d addressed them in his own mirror and sometimes lost himself in the looking.

As off-putting as he found it’s obvious physical strength, it was what those calmly insane eyes boded that made greasy sweat crawl down his back.

“Captain.”  It barely bobbed its mighty chin in greetings.  “My apologies for your rough lodging,” it’s voice was male.  If the sound of two great rocks grinding together could be considered to be gendered.  “There are those amongst my followers who are overzealous in their service.”

Loki stood, letting the chain dangle long enough that it swayed and scraped on the smooth ground.  “You have the advantage of me, sir, in both clothing and title. I am a captain, as you have noted, Captain Loki Laufeyson of

The Golden Horn

.  And you are?”

His captor raised what might have been an eyebrow, had he had as much as a follicle of hair on his being, and gestured for an even more bizarre, or at least more unpleasant, creature to bring in Loki’s effects.  “You are going to be a talker, are you not, captain?”

Quickly stepping into his linen and breeches, and wondering at the state his hair must be in, Loki then jerked on his boots without bothering with stockings, and did not add his shirt, for to do so would mean setting aside his chain.  “I have been told I have the gift of a silvertongue.”

“I have become accustomed to the quiet in these centuries, yet your prattle may be entertaining for the nonce.  Come, captain, there is much to see.” Then he laughed, “Keep your weapon, if it offers you some comfort.”

“I shall then.  Thank you for humoring me, sir,” he bowed elegantly.

As he followed in the monster’s wake, he turned to the unsightly being who’d given him his things, “Your master forgot to name himself.”

It did not look at him, but spread open its overly long, many jointed fingers, and said in a cultured and servile voice, “My master forgets nothing.  But you are in the presence of he who will rescue the unfallen Realms from the tyranny of life.”

Loki gave the creature a small nod, “How thoughtful of him.”

The unfamiliar landscape, with no proper landmarks and no proper sky, had led them to believe they were closer to the building than their steps were proving to be true.

At the rate they were traveling it would be dark again before they reached the building, yet they could go not faster, and their rate of speed would start to diminish soon.

Raising a hand, Aenor halted them, her voice rasping out, “Take a rest.”

They all practically fell over in great puffs of grey.

For as long as she could allow it, Aenor let the pirates rest.  Lorelei pretended to be worse than she was, to have her sometimes love Otk fawn over her, whilst Haddra pretended to be better, though her old bones were clearly aching.  None save Grak were entirely well, for none were used to a longer stroll than across a deck and back on duty, or between grog shops when on leave.

Herself as well.

For a few breaths she leaned, her back against one of those damn’d rocks, her knees bent and her hands dangling loosely over them as she tried to shake some feeling back into them after gripping her glass and blade so long.  By the Skies but her feet hurt something terrible.

Finally, knowing the longer they sat the harder the rising would be, Aenor stood, stretching.  “On your feet al-”

She stopped, a choking sound thick in her dry throat, as she watched the sands around them begin to shift and move.  Not with the same wind that had brushed the ground, rather as if it were rising.

All of them now flew to their feet, climbing on the rocks which seemed stable, crying out, brandishing weapons as the motion grew more agitated and then, like an eager child throwing off her blankets, the dusty sand flew upwards from what had been their midst moments before as creatures - nearly skeletal, two-legged, and tall, with skin like sun-faded leather and features as delicate as any elf - jumped forth from the earth.

Each was dressed in armor the same, desolate grey as sand, holding black blades that gleamed along their edges and promised a sharpness that could cut steel.

One of them had neat stripes of the most brilliant red painted on the arms and chest piece of their armor.  The crimson fairly screamed in that dull place. It raised its sword to point at Aenor, “The one who the king took, can he call the wind?”  The voice was rich and elegant and more suited to an afternoon salon discussing philosophy and seduction than the barrens of the fallen Realm.  “We saw that the king had sent its nasty watchdog to poison and steal your leader.”

Aenor was all at skies and knew not what to answer.

Sounding frustrated, it now spoke louder, “Was the one the king took able to call the winds?”

“King, what king?  Who is this king and what has he done with our captain?”  Aenor signaled for the pirates to wait, to be calm. She would answer no questions ‘til she had a few answers of her own.  “Who are you?”

“The last king of Titan.  Thanos. Who has lain in wait for centuries until one who can make the wind tame fell into his hand.  So he might finally raise his evil fleet and do to all of the Realms what he has done here. And we? We are who will kill your captain to see he remains in the grave he has made of our home.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The Titans lived in warrens, sheltered like coneys from the foul, miasmic air and relentless dust that, though there was not a breath of wind, still found its way beneath clothing, stoppered nostrils, and made a misery of every step taken.  Leastwise, so it did for Aenor and the rest of the crew.  The Titan folk were either so inured to its insidious ways that they gave it no notice or perhaps being that they were native to that ugly soil it did not meddle with them and instead chose to give its new victims all of the more attention.

Aenor sneezed and the discharge came forth grey enough to make her shudder.

“I swear that when I find Loki I shall shake him till his teeth clack and his hair ends in a most profound disarray for bringing us to this foul place and then larking off without a look back.”

Anger towards her lover seemed less dangerous than fear for him, for the nonce at least.

She noted the one who seemed to be the leader amongst the Titans, a female who was either named or titled Core, of even greater height than the rest and a long tail of purple hair decorated with golden beads, looking askance at her for defaming her Realm.  “Apologies,” Aenor said to their hostess, tracing a bit of a bow, hat in hand.

Core raised an eyebrow and a silencing hand of faded mauve, its fingers extra jointed and ending in hard, claw-like nails that they used to burrow at such speeds that they could make themselves appear to disappear.  In the hour they had travelled together the pirate crew had had time to observe this most useful trick up close - closer than they might have wished as they were dragged down behind them into choking dust in order to hide from distant, swiftly moving things that seemed to swim through the air just above the surface of the Realm even faster than even the Horn might sail on the windiest skies.

After they had sputtered back to the surface, again dragged thusly, they had been informed these were servants of Thanos, strange levitations that he had created to try and breach the impenetrable skies above Titan.  They could not, the Drop being as cruel to their bodies as it was to any wooden vessel, crueler perhaps, for they fell and fell and then splattered.  Now they served as transport for those he called his children, and those Titans who had for generation upon generations served as their slaves.

“We are the last descendants of those who survived Titan’s Fall, and stayed away from Thanos’s grasping fists,” Core said, moving that quelling hand to gesture towards a vast, open space within that warren.  It seemed to have once been a palace, grand and golden, that had cracked open like an egg and been covered by earth.  Here and there a panel of mosaic, still jewel-bright after all of this time, could be seen beneath their feet.

The Titans had created their little caves about it, and used this broken space for common.  There were few children, and here they played, watched over by yet scanter elders.  From every warren spilled people, cautious and curious at the sight of strangers.  The pirates, save Grak, were warier and stood back to back, that they might have no weakened flank or exposed shoulder.

Grak crossed into that open space and crouched down, letting the braver children approach him. He was a father, back amongst his kind, though he had not seen his young in years.  Fortunately Kronen aged near as slow as the rock they seemed made of.

A little child, with bright violet skin that had not yet been scoured by the terrible miasma of the surface, touched his knee and ran away, giggling, and then back, over and over, each time with a longer train of others behind her so soon each one of them took a turn touching somewhere on his stony skin and laughing.

Aenor took Iraae’s implication that, perhaps a handful aside who might be about their business elsewhere, they were

all

that was left of the free people of Titan, this perhaps a hundred, perhaps a dozen more than that.

“And trust me, we know exactly how foul it is here.  The elders, they have made certain we know that grey winds, and dust, and closed skies are not our true home.  Thanos’ ideas of destiny, and his love of Death, are why we are here.  Should you wish to save your own Realms from him, you must help us free your sorcerer before he can set wind to that bastard’s sails.  Free or kill him.”

Hogan, quiet and of steady temper, stilled the others, as Aenor now was the one to look askance.  “I do not recommend that you speak thusly of our Pirate King.  He is much loved by all of his sailors.”

“By you, I think, particularly,” Core’s smooth voice was knowing.

“Aye, by me especially.”  Aenor’s hand gripped her cutlass, squeezing until the leather of her gloves creaked.

The Titan leaned forward, “Then you should be the one to kill him, should the need arise.  For there could be no more profound act of love than to spare anyone from Thanos’s service.  Or rather, to kill the shell that once your lover inhabited.  For a slavishly loyal creature, hollow but for adoration of him, is all that remains when King Thanos makes a new child.”

Aenor took a waterskin that was passed to her and drank unthinkingly, of brackish, warm water that was still better than no water at all in her dusty mouth.

No, that would not happen.  Far too long had she and he been apart and at odds.  “You may know your foul king, but you do not know my Pirate King.  And Thanos knows not me.  I will have his rancid guts for garters before I let him take Loki from me.”

Core motioned for all of them to enter that open plaza, and the children fell silent, their games stopping at the sight of the very first strangers, with flesh of every hue and texture saving purple.

The pirates were quiet too, in a wary rather than wondering fashion, and hands hovered and fluttered about pistol grips and cutlass hilts, though thus far the Titans had done nothing to earn suspicion.  Now they were all but buried and a maze, the perfect place for a most bloody ambush should their hosts turn treacherous.

Core approached the Elders and conferred with them, before motioning for Aenor and the other to come closer.  Even Lorelei did not mince or fuss.

The Elder Titans were not merely old but truly ancient.  Twas the legend that whereas the Asgardians, and Elvish folk, the Jotnar, and even the dwarves and Vanir lived ages beyond the humans so the Titans lived beyond them.  Close to the sight of these wizened yet sharp-eyed folk Aenor felt a crushing weight of their countless ages lived, one that she had not felt even when before King Odin and Queen Frigga.

“You are human, yes?  From Terra, or Midgard, rather?” one of them asked, a creature so old that any sense of male or female was long since lost, assuming that such an identity had been there in the beginning.

Aenor swept off her hat and offered a showy enough bow that even Loki would have been moved to admiration, “Captain Aenor Breathnacht, late of Terra and the navy of her Realm, more recently of the pirate ship The Golden Horn, at your service, my… er… most venerable … um… Titan.”

They laughed at her, quickly joined by the others, and then the children, who laughed because the raspy, juddering laugh of their Elders was rather amusing if one was not afraid of offending them.

“Before we fell your people were little more than savages, worshipping the Aesir and Vanir, and now you take to the skies and

we

are the savages.”  They motioned to a few seats that had been made of fallen masonry, “Sit.  All of you, sit.  Core tells us your wind mage has been taken by Thanos,” the tone of their voice when saying that name was like that of a creature trying not to be ill.  “If you wish any chance of saving him, saving us, saving everyone then there is history you must know.”

With another bow of thanks, deciding that as much silence as possible was a wise course of action, Aenor took a seat.  After a few moments of shuffling feet and indecision, the rest of the crew joined her.

They had barely settled their carcasses when another of the Elders, this one most like a female though it was far from certain, started speaking.  “The thing to know about Thanos, is that he was not always mad.  Had he been, how much less dangerous he would have turned out to be….”
 
The throne room of his enormous, purple host was of a commensurate size to its inhabitant and his regal siege.  Certs, Loki thought to himself, it was questionable if it could even be called a room.  Rather, it was a massive hole which in the entirety of Asgard’s throne room could fall through with little note.

About the chasm’s edge was a lip barely broad enough for the largest of the gargantuan guards who were little smaller than the one they guarded, to circle the space, only having room to pass each other at the doorway wherein Loki stood with Ebon Maw, who had prattled on with great vigor about how deeply honored he should be to have captured Thanos’s gentler attentions.

“Captured, being the key word,” he had answered.

The Maw had laughed then, waving hand with too many joints to its fingers, and no doubt too much blood upon it, as well.  That the creature was ugly to him did not concern Loki - for certainly there were beings that looked far less pleasant than a skeleton preserved in wax that had been twisted by a cruel hand that had turned out to be kind companions just as his own beauty had not kept him from playing the villain.  No, rather, it was the cloying, servile fanaticism of its voice when praising his master, combined with a knowing, coy tone that made it clear that if Loki did not choose likewise he would have the honor of persuading him.

An honor he most greatly desired.

“It seems to me, Master Maw, that you are no more of Titan than I.  How came you to your king’s service?”

Maw stopped speaking for a moment, his whole body impossibly still, then he smiled even broader than before.  Twas a most unnerving sight.  “My… people are from a place that even none from the Nine have never travelled as far as.  A tiny land that floated and offered little beyond hard work and did not even deserve the word ‘Realm.’  When Thanos was a prince he found our people and offered all to his beloved Death, save me.”

“Why were you thus spared?”

“He found me bound in durance vile.”

“For murder, I suspect?”

“Oh, goodness,” Maw tittered, a sharp taloned hand held like a blade before his mouth,

“murders

, my dear prince.  So many murders.”  Then with a graceful, even too smooth, gesture of that hand, he motioned Loki towards a narrow causeway that led to the middle of that vastness, where it ended in a little island that floated serenely.

Thanos, enthroned, waited there.

Loki inclined his head ever so slightly to his guide and walked, knowing better than to look down.

“I can force you to do my bidding, of course,” Thanos said, the echo of the lofty ceiling carrying his voice.  “Either through Master Maw’s good offices, or the use of my pet, who brought you to me.”

“That naughty breeze?” Loki called back, using the power of his own breath to match the Titan King’s volume, and to make his footsteps ring.  He may not have been a Titan, but they would know the King of the Pirates walked here.

Thanos gave a dry chuckle at that.  “So you might call it.  It was an… aftereffect of my attempts to create a wind that I might control, to launch my fleet from my fallen home.  Unfortunately, though I might try, and can make it do many interesting things, I cannot increase its size and power.  Nor, if I could, would I be able to harness it to my greater purposes.”

“Your man, Maw, gave me some idea of them….”

Continuing as if Loki had not spoken, Thanos said, “Which is why I hope to convince you to harness them for me-”

“I have some experience with harnesses….”

“-without recourse to any unnatural persuasion, since I would have your most unfettered talents at my disposal-”

“I have some experience of fetters, likewise-”

“-rather than risk torture or mystical indoctrination interfering with them.”

Loki considered and nodded, “I am flattered at your assessment of my gifts.  Yet even I cannot cajole winds that do not exist.”

He had timed his words so that he ended at the foot of Thanos’s throne, which was carved from the rock of the island.

“This is the last scrap of my Realm that still contains enough magic to float upon the air, to defy the Drop.”

“And you have used it to sit upon.  I most entirely and sincerely admire your vanity, majesty,” Loki said, bowing with no embellishments, one monarch to another.

Thanos ignored the courtesy, “I have picked and chipped away at it for centuries, tapping bits of its power to make my ‘naughty breeze,’ not willing to spend its puissance until I was certain of success.  With you, I am certain.  I can create the gale.  You can turn it to your hand.”

“In order to raise your fleet to offer the unfallen Realms to your sweetheart?  Pardon, Sire, but in the words of the lower orders, what is in it for me?”

“The return of your ship that I have taken, as well as a ship vastly better than the one you have floating above my lands, the lives of your crew, both those upon her and those who followed you on the surface who I’ll have soon enough.”

“You have The Horn?”  Loki growled, all playfulness gone at the thought of his beautiful ship and loyal cut-throats in the hands of this mad bastard.  He felt the snarl that raised his lip and gritted his teeth.

Aenor is free

, he thought,

thank the Norns.

Free yet still trapped on Titan’s ravaged surface if Thanos had his beautiful ship as well as her captain and crew.

“Having them will give you the power to raid Asgard, to burn her lofty towers and gleaming cities, to stuff the holds of both vessels.  Or if to not burn, then to rule there.  Either way you might live out the century I project it will take me to destroy every other creature living in the Realms in luxury and vice greater than even you have dreamt of.  Surely a longer life than even a pirate king might hope for.”

The contempt with which he spoke Loki’s title was lost upon his audience.

For Loki thought of Odin.

And his fists clenched.

He knew he should not think of his father.  He should think of Frigga.  Of the innocent people of the Asgard, who had always scorned him but were innocents nonetheless, of Thor, even, who loved him in his own fool’s way, but he thought of Odin.

Of the indifferent dismissal in Odin’s eye when he had confronted him about his true nature, his true, monstrous nature….

He was never meant to be king of the Realm Eternal, had never wanted to be, yet it was still like acid in his veins to know that he could

not

possibly be worthy, no matter how hard he had tried to attain that exalted state.

To be Jotnar was to be born unworthy in the eyes of the Aesir, especially his father, and to fall farther and farther with every passing year.

He turned to pace a bit at the base of that rocky seat, “Tempting.  Very tempting.”  Then a thought occurred and he turned back upon his heel, his coattails flaring, “How know you about my origins?  Of anything that happens above the Drop?”

Thanos, he realized, was still talking.

“...with your Midgardian lover at your side for every year of that one hundred.  If you take Asgard, the golden apples will be yours to bestow.”

Loki crossed his arms.  “Tell me more.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Above

-

“Nothing to report, Commodore,” Captain Barnes said, the temperamental officer more irked than abashed at having no quarry to engage.

His command

, The Hibernal,

sat in perfect stillness, not the slightest breeze rippling her sails, more like she was in dock and not upon the open skies.  The same was true with the other eleven ships of their many-Realmed flotilla, which all hung scattered over the near air.  From the tiny, swift Vanir crewed cutter

Guldsmed

to the massive Asgardian flagship,

Sleipnir

, helmed by the crown prince Thor himself, no motion save that of crews going about their daily work could be seen.

Commodore Stephen Rogers sighed.

He could see as much himself.  The bit of distant sky the battle-ready ships he commanded floated idly upon was all and utterly empty of other ships or flotsam.  Not even the barest speck of an isle where a bit of water or wood could be gathered was visible through the far-seeing spyglass that Stark had begrudgingly gifted him at the start of their journey.

Yet this was where the ever fainter, ever softer chime from the Alchemical engine stolen by Laufeyson had stopped its forward motion, even if it still rang.

Handing the ‘glass to Barton, one of the intelligencers that had been foisted upon his mission by Stark, who was having fits and mania about the loss of his innovation and made his mistrust of the Navy’s talents plain. “Your sight bests mine, even without aid,” he said.  “Spy out if you see as much as a speck of a boat.”

The falcon-eyed intelligencer looked to his partner, a bonny red-headed woman answering only to the Widow.  Stephen knew her well.  She had a fast knife and a sharp tongue, as well as Roger’s respect.  She nodded and Barton gave a shrug then raised the glass to take in the blue and enemy-less sky.

“Nothing, Commodore.  Even I cannot sight what is not there to be seen,” he said, collapsing the glass and returning it to Rogers.

They all fell to silent contemplation.

The signal from the engine, adding to the absence of the Golden Horn meant either Laufeyson had learned a spell rendering his ship to a state beyond the senses or, the more like thing that none of them could bring themselves to say.

“They’ve attempted the Drop,” Barnes finally said through grit teeth.

“Do we think them dead, then?” the Widow asked the skies.

“We do not,” Stark said, joining them at last, looking rough after a night of drinking with the foremost jacks.  “My Engine works as it is meant to, and Laufeyson and your pretty turncoat Captain Breathnach,” Stephen winced little enough that only the Widow saw it for what it was,  “are both more than skyworthy, they are down there.”

They all looked over the side into the ever-darkening blue of the Drop.

Below

-

Aenor had never slept well when not even the hint of sky looked at her through a porthole window.  Deep below the Drop and further still below the dust and rock of Titan’s surface, thoughts tangled up with fears for Loki and the dreadful wants of Thanos, sleep was a scornful lover and bad friend, offering her not even a short reprieve.

The rest of the scalliwags that were now her obligation had no such difficulty.  Each of them had spent a share of time in durance vile, where prison walls kept out the comforting sky, and all of them had turned over obligation for their actions to her, so no concern or conscience kept them awake.

After a time, she rose from the thin-cushion pallet within the alcove that the Titans had offered them for their slight privacy and, stretching, walked out into the quiet of the fallen palace.

Her deck-hardened bare feet felt the cool tiles of the massive mosaic that - so the Elder Cui the Storyteller had claimed - once showed all of the Realms they knew and places even beyond their knowing.  The middle of all, in purples and golds that still shone in the murk, floated Titan.

Great in size and beauty, there was detail of great cities and mighty forests, fields blessed with grain, and temples to gods alien and familiar.  The highest tower of all, black and violet, a church to the goddess Death.  Aenor sat and traced its limned edges, set with actual gold, jet, and amethyst.  Even after centuries one of the gemstones held a sharpened edge, and a number of drops of her blood fell and puddled on the top of the tower’s spire before she could press it with her last, clean handkerchief.

Thanos, who they called the Mad Titan, who had once been a just if stern ruler, the Elders claimed, the last in a line stretching back past even where their history began.  Wise and well-educated as a philosopher, statesman, and in the alchemical art, taught the ways of war he had always kept the peace, and had worked with tireless, perhaps dangerously tireless, vigor to ensure the lives and joy of his people.

Lady Death liked it not.  Or so he claimed.  For one day he came to where his council met dressed for war and said that through the night and for long nights before, she had whispered in his ear.  When one of his councilors, a kinsman, had asked what she had whispered Thanos drew his brutal sword and cleaved the man in twain, saying that her words were for him alone.

But that he had a word for them, and that word was war.  War with all and sundry of the other Realms, war until his Goddess bade stop.

Upon that spot Thanos built that new, towering temple to a lover who would ne’er requite him.  No matter how many offerings of creatures taken in battle with the other Realms, sacrifices he gave to her name, or the wasteland he made of his own, exquisite Realm to honor her, she remained greedy and unattainable.  He could not kill enough to win her to his bed.

Which had led to the Black Armada, the creation of which had stripped Titan of all she had, of lives and resources and healthful nutrients of the soil and water and fauna.  Thanos entombed the hearts of every wind master on Titan in their metallic hulls to ensure they would never be becalmed.

Yet it made no difference.  They were too large, too heavy, to take to the skies, so Thanos and his children found a way to plunder even Titan’s ability to float.  But what they stole from her would not make them rise, and all plunged down through sky and then the Drop, on what they called the Night of Screaming.

All was lost, save the few largest buildings and those who were housed within, those in the palace and Thanos and his most loyal within the Tower of Death.

Loki had been right about the Black Armada, it, like these few ragged folk, had survived the fall.  The ships still hung in dock upon the edge of the Fallen Realm, suckling from her like leeches, preserving themselves perfectly whilst keeping Titan from ever healing herself.

Thanos had lived as well, along with those who worshiped him and did his bidding as he did his goddess.  For these years they had tried dark magic, cruel science, and brute force to raise the Armada and ravage the skies for Death.  He had come close and close again, but he needed one who could grasp the wind and in the magic-parched Realm, none were left nor born that could do so.

Yet now Loki had most courteously delivered himself, the most powerful Wind Master in all of the Realms and perhaps in history as well, to the grasping fist of the Mad Titan.

Oh, Loki my love

, Aenor thought, a tear and then another diluting the stain of her blood upon the image of Lady Death’s tower,

why could the skies we had not been enough?

Loki sat up and turned to comfort Aenor, for he was certain she was crying and then recalled to himself where he was.

The new cell he had been granted was finer and had more comforts than the one he’d woken in before, yet the lock was still on the other side of the door so a cell it remained.  High above him a small window let in the murky light of the rush-lit hallway of the massive warren of caves and caverns the King of Titan called his home.

Though he did not trust Thanos, it was more in the perfunctory way he trusted no one.  The Titan had made no claims to mercy, decency, or any other thing that kings lied about with astonishing regularity.  As such Loki found him refreshing as well as terrifying.  There was no reason to suspect that he did not mean to give Loki all that he promised, even as there was no reason to believe he would.

No matter

, Loki thought.  He was in no position to disagree with Thanos, not should he wish to keep his own will.  Moreover, the portrait painted in his thoughts of Odin knowing that defeat came at the hands of his unfavored child, whilst Aenor sat enthroned at his side for decades and perhaps longer still, should he find a way to turn the tables on Thanos, was as enticing as any sweet sin.

Or so the little breeze that whispered in his ear told him.