Eir’s face was impenetrable as she watched Loki walk back and forth across the breadth of his bedroom. ‘I don’t much like how you’re favouring your right leg.’

Loki glanced down. ‘I am?’

‘Afraid so, darling. There is a pronounced limp,’ she replied. ‘But don’t fret, it’s nothing we can’t work on. Could you please pop back up on the bed and lie down on your back for me. I want to get a better look at what’s going on.’

Sighing, Loki did as asked. Eir took off the splints and pressed her hands over the various points on his lower limbs. He stared up at the ceiling, trying not to react, but Eir remained unsatisfied. She lifted up his left leg and trailed her long fingers along the lines of the muscles under his skin.

‘Is there any pain?’ she asked as she nudged him to bend his knee and continued her examination. ‘You’re awfully tense.’

‘Sorry. Just nervous I suppose.’

‘There’s nothing to be nervous about, Loki.’

‘Really?’ He made a conscious effort to purge the tension from his shoulders and tilted his head. ‘So I can go back to lessons with the rest of my class then?’

Eir gently set his leg back down on the mattress, but she offered him no reply as her attention shifted to his other leg. Loki clambered up and propped himself up on his elbows. Perhaps he had been overly optimistic after all.

‘Please? It’s really boring to be stuck here all day,’ he tried again. Sometimes this sort of thing worked on his mother, so seemed worth a try.

‘How’s your appetite?’ Eir asked.

‘Don’t know? It’s fine? It’s the way it always was.’

That answer didn’t impress; Eir turned her attention to her data tablet. Caunas had one just like it, except one edge of his was mashed in as if the tablet was a survivor of some violent calamity. She flicked through the screens of what Loki could only assume were notes Caunas and other healers had made about Loki since he was injured.

‘Allfather give me strength.’ Eir pursed her lips. ‘There’s no record of a temperature reading for this morning.’

‘Caunas must’ve forgotten to note it down. He definitely took it.’

Loki’s persistent low-grade fever was proving to be the most difficult thing to get around. This morning Loki had to make himself trip and fall flat on his face in order to distract Caunas from taking a measure of his temperature. The previous day, Caunas did get around to taking it and tutted at the result — one degree above the baseline was still one degree more than was acceptable. Loki had to talk circles around Caunas to get him distracted enough to write down the wrong thing in his records.

He leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of the tablet’s screen. ‘Is there one for the day before? He took my temperature then too and he said it was fine.’

Eir flicked through the records. Loki used the moment to his advantage. He could see the temperature reader peeking out of Eir’s bag. It was the same recently updated, but peculiarly primitive-looking model Caunas had in his healer’s kit. A minute twitch of Loki’s hand and it was gone. It was only a precaution, of course. Loki certainly didn’t feel like he had a fever.

Eir lowered the tablet. ‘Are you sure Healer Caunas took a reading this morning?’ At Loki’s nod, she shook her head. ‘I swear, the man would lose his head were it not attached to his neck. Let’s have a look at what it is now.’

Loki was the epitome of patience while Eir dug through her bag for the reader that was no longer there. To his surprise, she even swore a little after lamenting that she was certain she had packed it.

‘It should be all right though, shouldn’t it?’ Loki said. ‘It was fine yesterday and this morning. There’s no reason for the fever to be back now.’

‘I would prefer to be certain.’ Eir shut her bag. ‘All right, darling, let’s do it this way. Healer Caunas will check up on you tomorrow morning as usual and he will verify that you aren’t running a fever then. Do make sure he writes down the reading, will you? If there is no fever and you still think you’re up to it, you can rejoin your brother in your classes the day after tomorrow.’

‘Thank you!’ Loki grinned

‘Only academic classwork though. No excursions, no sorcery and no strenuous physical activity.’

There was a knock. Before Eir or Loki could react, Asta strode in. ‘Pardon the interruption,’ she said without bothering to sound at all contrite. ‘Loki, there is a message from your father. He is very sorry, but he won’t be able to make it to dinner after all.’

‘Big surprise,’ Loki muttered. He put on a hurt look. ‘I’ll just eat in here then if he’s so busy.’

‘I can keep you and Thor company,’ Asta replied.

‘No, it’s fine. I don’t mind.’

‘As you like,’ Asta said. Having spent so long in each other’s proximity now, she seemed as tired of Loki as he was of her, so he was unsurprised at her decision not to press the issue. ‘Eir, are you going to be here a while longer? I need to —’

‘A few minutes more, I think. Shall we speak later?’ When Asta signalled her acquiescence and withdrew, Eir reached for the splints. Her movements were gentle, but brisk as she secured them back in place. ‘I’m sure your father is as sad about the dinner as you are.’

‘It doesn’t matter. He’s the king of Asgard — he’s a busy man.’ Loki chewed on the inside of his cheek. ‘Eir? From what you said earlier, does that mean I can’t go to combat classes?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But why? I can understand why no sorcery and stuff, but can’t I just do bladework at least? At this rate, I’m going to end up so far behind everyone else it’ll take me forever to catch up.’

Eir paused her work on the splints. ‘I know this is frustrating for you, but you are limping walking across this room. There are several flights of stairs between here and the courtyard where you have your lessons. Until you can get up and down those stairs without trouble, I’m not clearing you for anything more strenuous than moderately paced walking.’

Loki groaned. ‘That’s not —’

‘My word on this is final,’ Eir interjected curtly.

I hate adults. And I hate healers most of all.

Despite the late hour, Odin’s office was brightly lit. He had abandoned his desk some hours ago and sat at the long table at the front of the room, which had become the central hub for the night’s operation. Odin and his chief secretary sat on one side of the table, Agnar and his two aids took up the other. A team of legal experts had occupied the other seats for the past three hours, but thankfully, they had now withdrawn themselves to a different workroom so they could write up their commentaries on the elven counter-proposal.

‘Why don’t you take a break for half an hour? Go see the boys,’ Agnar said.

He bunched up the numerous papers in front of him into a single pile and grimaced at its height. But that didn’t do much for the chaos of overstuffed binders and loose papers building up around the three silver trays that had been brought up in lieu of a proper evening meal.

‘Not much point now. They’d be asleep by this hour,’ Odin replied. He leant back as far as his stiff chair would allow him to. Glancing at the clock mounted on the wall, he groaned. It was two hours past midnight — even later than he had thought it was. ‘If they are not asleep right now, I’d give them a right scolding. No man should be up at this hour.’

‘We could ask for an extension on this. The universe won’t shatter for it,’ Gunnvaldr, Odin’s secretary, replied in a dry tone.

Agnar snickered, while Odin indulged himself in a half-smile. Gunnvaldr didn’t acknowledge their reactions. He knew, of course, that an extension was an untenable option— it would suggest weakness within the Asgardian camp. But his temperament naturally leaned towards surliness and the long workday had done nothing for his mood.

‘Let’s take a few minutes. Clear up these platters if naught else,’ Odin replied, motioning towards the nearly untouched trays of food.

Agnar’s assistants picked out a few things that wouldn’t leave their fingers sticky, but then immediately lost themselves in a discussion about some tangent regarding the counter-proposal’s annexes. Agnar himself was in no hurry to follow the conversation between his subordinates. He snatched up an olive fork from a small jar lodged between cold meats and savoury pastries, leaned forward to examine the food on offer more carefully.

‘Another couple of weeks like this and I think my children are going to forget what my face looks like,’ he said.

‘Probably for the best,’ Gunnvaldr muttered. At Agnar’s quizzical look, he added. ‘I mean, have you ever looked in the mirror?’

‘Ah, my friend, I’d rather my face than yours.’ Agnar aimed his fork a stack of thinly sliced elk salami, then picked out a roll of rye bread. ‘Speaking of the little ones, and thankfully better looking than us, how’d it end with Thor?’

Odin shook his head. ‘Well enough I suppose.’ He glanced from one tray to another. Perhaps it was his mood or maybe he was just that tired, but nothing looked remotely appetising. ‘It did remind me — I have another matter left unsettled in regards to Loki. He is in need of a new combat-master.’

He was more than mildly displeased with himself to have let that incident with Loki in the courtyard remain unaddressed. True, Loki’s tears caught him by surprise and on the worst day possible. Three Einherjar soldiers had raped a woman down in the city the previous night. News had just come of the disaster in Adra Taeral. Meanwhile, Asgard’s recently increased tariffs on fresh produce had both the elves and the dwarves all but threatening revolt.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t ignore his child’s distress. It wasn't appropriate for a prince of Asgard to be crying in full view of half the palace, not at Loki's age — Loki knew as much. But it wasn't appropriate for any teacher to berate a child to the point of tears either.

‘I’ll send a message to Tyr’s aide-de-camp with a request for recommendations,’ Gunnvaldr replied.

‘It seems an over-reaction to me,’ Agnar said. ‘No one is talented at every thing there is and a bit of adversity can teach a young man a great deal. Speak to him, encourage him to try harder.’

‘I’ve spoken to him about it, more than once and from what I’ve seen, he’s been trying his best. I’ve asked the master to keep a closer eye on him also. Yet he still lags behind.’

Gunnvaldr rose from his seat and walked around the perimeter of the table gathering up the various binders. ‘It seems peculiar to me that he would struggle so in the first place. He’s not uncoordinated. Nor timid.’

‘There are some signs he would be dangerous with a spear one day, but not much else,’ Odin replied. Thinking on it, Gunnvaldr had a point — Loki was a fast runner and a good dancer. And Laufey was a formidable opponent on the battlefield. ‘It simply won’t do. I’ve let it go on for a while, hoping matters will improve, but Loki’s progress is unsatisfactory and when the time comes, Asgard needs him to be a capable a warrior.’

‘How do you plan to go about this?’ Agnar asked. He nudged the tray closest to him towards Odin. ‘Are you going to help us out here? All right, you choose a new combat-master, what next? You replace the man teaching the class? Or is it only a special teacher for Loki? You need to be careful there. My Runa didn’t much like it when we arranged for a few additional lessons with a mathematics tutor for her.’

Gunnvaldr looked up, momentarily pausing his futile efforts to bring order to the mass of binders he had gathered. ‘This all seems simple to me. Loki missed many days of training already and will be missing more yet. When he’s ready, bring in a man to work with him one on one so he can catch up. You don’t want him training in a full class anyway; more chance he’ll be inadequately supervised and he’ll re-injure himself. If the new combat-master doesn’t work out, get another one — we’ve no shortage of trained men on Asgard.’

‘When it comes to children, it’s never simple,’ Odin replied. ‘Even if Loki isn’t troubled to be segregated in private lessons, which I doubt in the first place, his brother and their friends are bound to make some comment on it.’

‘And then there’ll definitely be trouble. And broken noses… And a few snakes.’ Agnar snorted.

‘Actually, I believe the boy’s moved onto ferrets now,’ Odin said. He tapped his fingers against the tabletop. ‘We should get back to it, I suppose. I don’t want to still be sitting here at sunrise.’