The Ship of the Dead Read online

  surroundings like he hoped he was dreaming.

  Over by the Big Banana, Samirah finished her prayers. She rolled up her portable rug, had a brief, urgent conversation with Alex, then they both came over to join us. If Sam did have a brilliant plan, I was glad it didn’t involve her and Alex turning into dolphins, yelling, See you, suckers!, and escaping on their own.

  The dining table looked like it had been made from the world’s largest mast, cut in half lengthwise and folded out to make two leaves. Overhead, suspended from the rafters by an anchor chain, was a sea-glass chandelier. Instead of candles or electric lights, glowing souls of the dead swirled in oversize sconces. Just to set the mood, I guessed.

  I was about to sit down between Blitz and Hearth when I realized there were name tags at the place settings: DWARF. HRÖNN. ELF. HEFRING. GREEN HEADSCARF. I found mine on the other side of the table: BLOND GUY.

  Great. We had assigned seating.

  A daughter of Aegir sat down on either side of me. According to the name tags, the lady on my left was Kolga. The one on my right…oh, boy. Apparently her name was Blodughadda. I wondered if that was the sound her mom had made on anesthesia after giving birth to daughter number nine. Maybe I could just call her Blod.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Blod smiled. Her teeth were stained red. Her wavy hair was flecked with blood. “Hello. It was a pleasure dragging you under the sea.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Her sister Kolga leaned in. Frost started to form on my forearm. Kolga’s dress appeared to be woven from ice shards and slush. “I hope we get to keep them, sister,” she said. “They’d make fine tortured spirits.”

  Blod cackled. Her breath smelled like fresh ground beef just out of the fridge. “Yes, indeed! Perfect for our chandelier.”

  “Appreciate the offer,” I said. “But we actually have a pretty full calendar.”

  “Where are my manners?” Blod said. “In your language, I am called Blood-Red Hair. My sister here is Freezing Wave. And your name is…” She frowned at my card. “Blond Guy?”

  I didn’t see how that was any worse than Blood-Red Hair or Bigly.

  “You can call me Jimmy,” I offered. “In your language that’s…Jimmy.”

  Blod didn’t look satisfied with that. “There’s something about you.” She sniffed my face. “Have you sailed over my bloodred waters in a naval battle before?”

  “Pretty sure not.”

  “Perhaps my mother, Ran, described you to me. But why would she—?”

  “Guests!” Aegir boomed, and I had never been happier for an interruption. “Here is my first microbrew of the evening. This is a peach lambic mead that makes a lovely aperitif. I welcome your comments after you try it.”

  His nine daughters oohed and aahed as Aegir hefted the mead cask and carried it around the table, pouring everyone a serving.

  “I think you’ll find this has a fruity edge,” Aegir said. “With just a hint of—”

  “Magnus Chase!” Blod yelled, surging to her feet and pointing at me. “This is MAGNUS CHASE!”

  TYPICAL. SOMEBODY says fruity edge and immediately my name comes to mind.

  Come on, people. A little respect.

  The daughters of Aegir shot to their feet. Some picked up steak knives, forks, or napkins to stab, poke, or strangle us with.

  Aegir screamed, “Magnus Chase? What is this deception?”

  My friends and I didn’t move a muscle. We all knew how guest rights worked. We still might be able to talk our way out of a fight, but once we drew our weapons, we stopped being considered guests and started being the catch of the day. Against an entire family of jotun deities on their home turf, I didn’t like our odds.

  “Wait!” I said, as calmly as I could with a woman named Blood-Red Hair holding a knife over me. “We’re still guests at your table. We haven’t broken any rules.”

  Steam rolled beneath the brim of Aegir’s panama hat. His gold-rimmed glasses fogged up. Under his arm, the mead cask began to creak like a pecan in a nutcracker.

  “You lied to me,” Aegir snarled. “You said you weren’t Magnus Chase!”

  “You’re going to break your cask,” I warned.

  That got his attention. Aegir shifted the mead cask forward and held it in both arms like a baby. “Guest rights do not apply! I granted you a place at my table under false pretenses!”

  “I never actually said I wasn’t Magnus Chase,” I reminded him. “Besides, your daughters also brought us here because we mentioned mead.”

  Kolga snarled. “And because you have an ugly yellow ship.”

  I wondered if everyone could see my heart beating through my shirt. It definitely felt that strong. “Right, but also mead. We’re here to talk about mead!”

  “We are?” Halfborn asked.

  Mallory looked like she would have hit him, except there was a sea giantess in the way. “Of course we are, you oaf!”

  “So, you see,” I continued, “that wasn’t a false pretense. That pretense was completely true!”

  The daughters of Aegir muttered to themselves, unable to counter my flawless logic.

  Aegir cradled his cask. “What exactly do you have to say about mead?”

  “I’m glad you asked!” Then I realized I had no answer.

  Once again, Samirah to the rescue. “We will explain!” she promised. “But stories are better told over dinner, with good mead, are they not?”

  Aegir stroked his cask affectionately. “An aperitif, with a fruity edge.”

  “Exactly,” Sam agreed. “So, let’s break our fast together. If you are not completely satisfied with our explanations at the end of the dinner, then you can kill us.”

  “He can?” T.J. asked. “I mean…sure. He can.”

  On my right, Blod’s clawlike fingernails dripped with red salt water. On my left, a miniature hailstorm swirled around Kolga. Interspersed between my friends, the other seven daughters snarled like Tasmanian devil waterspouts.

  Blitzen put his hands on his chain mail vest. After getting stabbed by the Skofnung Sword a few months ago, he was a little sensitive about knife attacks. Hearthstone’s eyes flicked from face to face, trying to keep track of the conversation. Lip-reading a single person was hard enough. Trying to read an entire room was nearly impossible.

  Mallory Keen gripped her mead goblet, ready to imprint its decorative design on the nearest giantess’s face. Halfborn frowned sleepily, no doubt convinced now that this was all a dream. T.J. tried to look inconspicuous as he dug into his pack of firing caps, and Alex Fierro just sat back calmly, sipping his peach lambic mead. Alex needed no preparation for battle. I’d seen how fast he could draw his garrote.

  The sea god Aegir was the tipping point. All he had to say was kill them, and we were cooked like honey mead. We’d fight ferociously, no doubt. But we would die.

  “I don’t know…” Aegir mused. “My wife said to kill you if I ever saw you. I was to drown you slowly, revive you, then drown you again.”

  That sounded like Ran talking.

  “Great lord,” Blitzen chimed in. “Did you swear a formal oath to kill Magnus Chase?”

  “Well, no,” Aegir admitted. “But when my wife asks—”

  “You have to consider her wishes, of course!” Blitz agreed. “But you also have to weigh that against guest rights, eh? And how can you be sure what to do, before you’ve given us time to tell our whole story?”

  “Let me kill them, Father!” growled the daughter with exceptionally big hands. “I will grasp them until they scream!”

  “Silence, Grasping Wave,” Aegir commanded.

  “Let me do the honors!” said another daughter, throwing her plate to the floor. “I will pitch them into Jormungand’s mouth!”

  “Hold, Pitching Wave.” Aegir frowned. “The dwarf has a point. This is a quandary….”

  He stroked his keg. I waited for him to say: My mead cask is angry. And when my mead cask is angry, people DIE!

  Instead, finally,
he heaved a sigh. “It would be a shame to waste all this good mead. We will eat and drink together. You will tell me your story, paying special attention to how it relates to mead.”

  He gestured to his daughters to be seated again. “But I warn you, Magnus Chase, if I decide to kill you, my vengeance shall be terrible. I am a jotun deity, a primordial force! Like my brothers Fire and Air, I, the Sea, am a raging power that will not be contained!”

  The kitchen door burst open. In a cloud of smoke, Eldir appeared, his beard still smoldering and his chef’s hat now on fire. In his arms was a leaning tower of covered platters.

  “Who had the gluten-free meal?” he growled.

  “Gluten-free?” Aegir asked. “I don’t think we had gluten-free.”

  “That’s mine,” said Blod. She noticed my expression and scowled defensively. “What? I’m on an all-blood diet.”

  “That’s fine,” I squeaked.

  “Okay, then,” Aegir said, taking charge of the orders. “Halal meal—that is Samirah’s. The vegetarian is Magnus Kill-Him-Later Chase. The green-hair entrée—”

  “Right here,” said Alex, which was probably unnecessary. Even in a room filled with sea giantesses, he was still the only one present with green hair.

  Platters were distributed. Mead was poured.

  “Right,” Aegir said, lowering himself into his throne. “Everybody good?”

  “Got one left!” Eldir yelled. “The Buddhist meal?”

  “That’s me,” said Aegir.

  Don’t stare, I told myself, as the primordial deity uncovered his platter of tofu and bean sprouts. This is all completely normal.

  “Now, where was I?” Aegir said. “Oh, yes. A raging power that cannot be contained! I will rip you all limb from limb!”

  The threat would have been more frightening if he hadn’t been waving a steamed snow pea at us.

  Alex sipped from his goblet. “Can I just say that this mead is excellent? If I’m not mistaken, it has a fruity edge. How do you brew it?”

  Aegir’s eyes lit up. “You have a discerning palate! You see, the secret is in the temperature of the honey.”

  Aegir began to hold forth. Alex nodded politely and asked more questions.

  I realized he was buying us time, hoping to draw out the meal while we thought of amazing things to say about mead. But I was fresh out of mead-related ideas.

  I glanced at Blod’s plate. Big mistake. She was slurping away at a large red gelatin mold.

  I turned the other direction. Kolga’s meal was a plate of different colored snow cones, arranged in a fan like peacock feathers.

  Kolga noticed me looking and snarled, her teeth like chiseled ice cubes. The temperature dropped so fast, frost crystals crackled in my ear canals.

  “What are you staring at, Magnus Chase? You can’t have my snow cones!”

  “No, no! I was just wondering, uh…what side are you guys fighting on in Ragnarok?”

  She hissed. “The sea swallows everything.”

  I waited for more. That seemed to be her entire battle plan.

  “Okay,” I said. “So, you’re kind of neutral? That’s cool.”

  “Cool is good. Cold is better.”

  “Right. But your dad isn’t friends with Loki.”

  “Of course not! After that horrible flyting? Loki disgraced this hall, the gods, my father, even my father’s mead!”

  “Right. The flyting.”

  The word seemed familiar. I was pretty sure I’d seen it on the TV screen in Valhalla, but I had no idea what it meant.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve heard the name Bolverk?” I asked, pressing my luck. “Or what it might have to do with mead?”

  Kolga sneered at me as if I were a fool. “Bolverk was the alias of the mead thief, of course.”

  “The mead thief.” That sounded like the title of a really bad novel to me.

  “The one who stole Kvasir’s Mead!” Kolga said. “The only mead my father cannot brew! Bah, you’re clueless. I’ll look forward to stuffing your soul in our chandelier.” She went back to enjoying her snow cones.

  Kvasir. Great. I asked about one name I didn’t know, and I got another name I didn’t know. But I felt like I was getting close to something important—some combination of puzzle pieces that would explain Uncle Randolph’s journal, give me his plan for beating Loki, and maybe even provide a mead-based solution for getting us out of this hall alive.

  Aegir continued holding forth about mead-brewing, explaining to Alex the virtues of staggered yeast nutrients and hydrometers. Alex heroically managed to look interested.

  I caught Hearthstone’s eye across the table. I signed, What is a f-l-y-t-i-n-g?

  He frowned. Contest. He raised his index finger and twirled it around like he was sticking it up…Ah, yes. The ASL symbol for insults.

  And K-V-A-S-I-R? I asked.

  Hearthstone pulled back his hands like he’d touched a hot stove. Then you know?

  Sam rapped her knuckles on the table to get my attention. Her hands flew in small furious ASL gestures: Been trying to tell you! Loki was here. Long ago. Insult contest. Have to promise Aegir revenge. Alex and I think there is mead we can use—

  I got this, I signaled back.

  Amazingly, I felt like I had a plan. Not all the details. Not even most of the details. More like I’d been spun around blindfolded, then somebody had put a stick in my hand and faced me in the general direction of the piñata and said Start swinging.

  But it was better than nothing.

  “Great Aegir!” I jumped up in my seat and climbed onto the table before I could think about what I was doing. “I will now explain to you why you should not kill us, and what it has to do with mead!”

  Silence fell around the table. Nine storm giantesses glared at me as if considering all the different ways they could pitch, grasp, hurl, or freeze me to death.

  At the edge of my vision, Alex flashed me a message in ASL: Your fly is open.

  With superhuman willpower, I managed not to look down. I stayed focused on frowning Aegir and the single bean sprout dangling from his beard.

  The sea god grumbled, “I was just explaining how to sanitize a fermenter. This interruption had better be good.”

  “It is!” I promised, slyly checking my zipper, which was not in fact open. “Our crew is sailing forth to bring Loki to justice! He has escaped his bonds, but we mean to find his ship, Naglfar, before it can sail at Midsummer, recapture Loki, and put him back in chains. Help us, and you will have vengeance for that terrible flyting.”

  A puff of steam lifted Aegir’s panama hat like the lid of a popcorn popper. “You dare speak of that disgrace?” he demanded. “Here, at the very table where it happened?”

  “I know, he flyted you!” I yelled. “He flyted you bad! You and all your godly guests got a mean flyting. He even flyted your mead! But we can defeat Loki and pay him back. I—I will challenge Loki myself!”

  Sam put her head in her hands. Alex stared at the ceiling and mouthed, Wow. No.

  My other friends stared at me aghast, as if I’d just pulled the pin out of a grenade. (I did that once on the battlefield in Valhalla before I fully understood how grenades worked. It had not ended well for the grenade or for me.)

  Aegir became deadly calm. He leaned forward, the lenses flashing in his golden glasses. “You, Magnus Chase, would challenge Loki to a flyting?”

  “Yes.” Despite my friends’ reactions, I still felt certain this was the correct answer, even though I didn’t quite understand what it meant. “I will flyte the heck out of him.”

  Aegir stroked his beard, found the bean sprout, flicked it away. “How would you achieve this? Not even the gods could match Loki in a flyting! You would need some incredible secret weapon to give you an edge!”

  Perhaps even a fruity edge, I thought, because this was the other thing I was sure of, even if I didn’t totally understand it. I stood up straight and announced in my deepest quest-accepting voice: “I will use the mead of Kevi
n!”

  Alex joined Samirah in the bury-your-face-in-your-hands club.

  Aegir narrowed his eyes. “You mean the Mead of Kvasir?”

  “Yes!” I said. “That!”

  “Impossible!” Kolga protested, her mouth dyed six different colors from her snow cones. “Father, don’t believe them!”

  “And, great Aegir,” I persisted, “if you let us go, we’ll even…uh, bring you a sample of Kvasir’s Mead, since it is the only mead you can’t brew yourself.”

  My friends and the nine giantesses all turned to Aegir, waiting for his verdict.

  A thin smile played across the sea god’s mouth. He looked like he’d managed to jump into a newly opened express lane at Whole Foods and finally scored his matcha smoothie.

  “Well, this changes everything,” he said.

  “It does?” I asked.

  He rose from his throne. “I would love to see Loki brought to justice, and in a flyting, no less. I would also love to get a sample of Kvasir’s Mead. And I would prefer not to kill you all, since I did grant you guest rights.”

  “Great!” I said. “So, you’ll let us go?”

  “Unfortunately,” Aegir said, “you’re still Magnus Chase, and my wife wants you dead. If I let you go, she’ll be mad at me. But if you were to escape, say, while I wasn’t looking, and my daughters didn’t manage to kill you in the attempt…well, I think we’d just have to consider that the will of the Norns!”

  He straightened his vest. “I am going to the kitchen to get some more mead now! I sure hope nothing unpleasant happens while I’m gone. Come along, Eldir!”

  The cook gave me one last smoldering leer. “Flyte Loki once for Fimafeng, will you?” Then he followed his master into the kitchen.

  As soon as the door closed, all nine daughters of Aegir rose from their seats and attacked.

  BACK WHEN I was a regular mortal kid, I didn’t know much about combat.

  I had some murky ideas that armies would line up, blow trumpets, and then march forward to kill one another in an orderly fashion. If I thought about Viking combat at all, I would envision some dude yelling SHIELD WALL! and a bunch of hairy blond guys calmly forming ranks and merging their shields into some cool geometric pattern like a polyhedron or a Power Ranger Megazord.

  Actual battle was nothing like that. At least, not any version I’d ever been in. It was more like a cross between interpretive dance, lucha libre wrestling, and a daytime talk show fight.

  The nine sea giantesses fell upon us with a collective howl of glee. My friends were ready. Mallory Keen flipped onto Grasping Wave’s back and plunged her knives into the giantess’s shoulders. Halfborn Gunderson dual-wielded mead goblets, slamming Hefring in the face and Unn in the gut.

  T.J. lost valuable time trying to load his rifle. Before he could fire, the lovely Himminglaeva turned into a tidal wave and washed him across the hall.

  Hearthstone threw a runestone I hadn’t seen before:

  It hit Bigly—I mean Bylgya—with a bright flash, liquefying her into a large angry puddle.

  Sam’s spear of light shimmered in her hand. She flew upward, just beyond reach, and began blasting giantesses with arcs of pure Valkyrie radiance. Meanwhile Blitzen hopped around the chaos, distracting the nine sisters with blistering fashion critiques like “Your hem is too high! You’ve got a run in your