Victory made Asgard louder.
For three days after the campaign's return, the city seemed determined to prove that no sacrifice remained fully tragic if given enough banners, enough drink, and enough opportunities for men to tell the same battle wrong in increasingly flattering ways. The lower halls stayed open late. The training yards filled with young soldiers trying to imitate techniques they had not understood when they first saw them and had somehow understood less by the time they repeated them. Musicians appeared in courtyards where no musician had been invited and were tolerated because celebration, once institutionalized, became difficult to evict cleanly.
The palace wore it all well.
Gold under sunlight. Fire under evening stone. Courtiers moving through victory like it had been arranged for their convenience rather than earned on wet black ground by people with less decorative priorities.
Erikar let the noise pass around him and did what he always did after campaign return.
He read the casualty reconciliations himself.
Not because he distrusted Valdris's numbers. Valdris's numbers were cleaner than most men's moral philosophy. But because names changed shape when left too long inside columns. Men became losses. Losses became favorable rates. Favorable rates became speeches. Somewhere in that process, if no one intervened, the dead were absorbed by language and lost a second time.
So he sat in his quarters beneath the north light with the final campaign ledgers spread over the darkwood table and read each name in order.
Seventeen dead.
Eleven whose families had already received word.
Three from houses so minor the court would forget to mention them in the formal remembrance unless someone corrected the list before evening.
One who had survived the first day in the basin and died of fever from a wound everyone had initially called manageable.
He corrected that notation too.
The knock at his door came just past midday.
Not Brann. Too measured. Not Sif either. Too patient.
"Enter."
One of the palace attendants stepped inside and bowed. "Prince Thor asks whether you are still pretending paperwork is company."
Interesting.
Erikar looked up from the casualty list. "Did he phrase it exactly that way."
The attendant, to her credit, held the line between service and amusement with almost military precision. "Very nearly, my prince."
"Tell him yes."
She hesitated.
Also interesting.
"And," she added, "that he is in the western lower yard if your answer was going to be unnecessarily bleak."
Then she withdrew before Erikar could decide whether Thor's use of palace attendants for emotional reconnaissance counted as strategy or cowardice.
He looked back down at the ledger and read two more names before setting the reed pen aside.
Thor in the western lower yard meant one of two things. Sparring or avoidance. Often both. The western yard was smaller than the main training grounds and partially enclosed by older stone walls, which made it less public and therefore more dangerous for honest conversation.
Erikar folded the ledgers closed and stood.
The lower western yard still smelled faintly of rain from the previous night. The stone there held damp longer than the eastern grounds because the walls rose higher and let in less direct sun. Practice circles had been marked across the floor in pale chalk lines, most of them half-scuffed by use. Wooden weapons lined the rack under the covered eaves. Two shield-captains were drilling a set of younger warriors in paired form near the far wall with enough shouting to count as educational by Asgardian standards.
Thor stood alone in the nearest ring with a practice spear in one hand and another balanced across the crook of his arm. He was not sparring. Just moving through forms badly enough that it had to be deliberate.
Erikar stopped at the edge of the ring.
"You are doing that wrong."
Thor looked over his shoulder. "I know."
"Then stop."
"I considered it."
Thor twirled the spare spear once and tossed it across. Erikar caught it one-handed.
Good weight. Slightly warped. Overused. Acceptable.
Thor rolled one shoulder and reset his stance. "I thought if I came to your rooms, you would make me sit."
"That is a serious accusation."
"You own chairs, Erikar. You use them with intent. It is unsettling."
That was close enough to an invitation.
Erikar stepped into the ring.
The two shield-captains at the far wall noticed and altered their own drill pattern immediately, turning their recruits away by just enough degrees to pretend they were not watching what every muscle in their bodies had already decided to watch.
Good. Let them pretend.
Thor came in first, because of course he did.
The practice spear cut low then high, not a testing strike but not fully committed either. Erikar answered in the same register, redirecting the first line and taking the second on the shaft with a turn sharp enough to jar but not enough to bruise. The exchange continued. Wood on wood. Footwork over damp stone. Quick, controlled, almost quiet compared to the ringing spectacle of bladed sparring.
Thor fought differently after campaign return.
Not worse. More contained. The edges still there, the force still immediate when he chose it, but the movement between decisions had altered by fractions. Less exuberant waste. More economy. Campaigns did that to him. Every time, he came back slightly more himself and slightly less what people remembered from before it.
Erikar saw the difference and said nothing.
Thor thrust toward the shoulder, then dropped the line at the last instant and took a reverse grip sweep at the knee. Better. Erikar stepped out of range and clipped the base of Thor's spear hard enough to turn the next movement useless.
Thor grinned despite himself. "There you are."
"I was here when you started."
"Not physically." He came in again. "The rest of you."
That line would have been harder to answer if the next exchange had not demanded attention.
Thor drove forward now with more force than the first sequence allowed, pressing the center line, using momentum to compress space until the spar stopped being about form and started becoming an argument in movement. Erikar held the angle, gave ground where the geometry wanted it, then turned sharply and used Thor's own forward pressure to spin them both half a circle across the damp ring.
The practice spear struck Thor's side.
Not hard. Enough.
They reset.
Thor was breathing harder now. Not from effort. From something adjacent to it.
Around them the lower yard continued pretending not to watch.
After a moment Thor said, "You have been avoiding me."
Erikar shifted his grip on the spear. "That is not accurate."
"You are here now because I sent an attendant into your solitude like a siege engine."
"I was working."
"Yes." Thor's mouth twisted. "That is exactly what I mean."
He attacked again before the line could fully settle between them. This time more honestly. Erikar met him with equal force, the wooden shafts cracking together at shoulder height before sliding apart. Thor stepped inside, abandoned spear length altogether, and tried to use leverage and body weight to break the exchange into something closer and less answerable.
Erikar let him.
For one turn, two, they moved at almost grappling range with practice shafts more nuisance than weapon, both of them too experienced not to know exactly where the other's balance would fail if pushed hard enough.
Thor broke first, stepping back and lowering the spear point.
Not surrender. Reset. He looked annoyed with himself for needing the distinction.
"You do this thing," he said.
Erikar waited.
Thor gestured vaguely with the practice spear. "Where you become more present when something is wrong and somehow feel farther away while doing it."
The line landed harder than most accusations did because it was so close to a description.
Erikar lowered his own spear. "I came."
"Yes. Because I arranged an ambush by servant."
"You used resources available to you."
Thor stared. "That is exactly the sort of answer I am talking about."
At the far wall, one of the younger recruits made the mistake of glancing too openly at the ring. The nearest shield-captain corrected him with a bark sharp enough to return the man's soul to military service.
Thor heard it too. His expression shifted slightly, enough to say not here and not before half-trained boys with too much appetite for drama.
He turned the practice spear once in his hand and jerked his chin toward the side stairs leading to the west parapet above the yard.
Erikar followed.
The parapet was narrower than the eastern palace ramparts and looked not over the city but toward the western training terraces and the lower barracks quarter beyond. Less beautiful. More useful. Afternoon wind crossed there with enough force to keep the air honest and the conversations less likely to be overheard by anyone who did not deserve the work of earning them.
Thor set both practice spears aside against the stone wall and leaned his forearms on the parapet.
For a little while he said nothing.
The silence was not easy.
That was the point.
Erikar came to stand beside him and looked out over the lower terraces where off-duty soldiers crossed between barracks in twos and threes, victory still visible in the loosened rhythm of the place. Someone below was singing badly. Someone else threw something at him with enough accuracy to suggest affection.
Finally Thor said, "I know what the casualty ledgers look like."
Erikar turned his head slightly.
Thor kept his eyes on the yard below. "I know you read them. I know why. I am not objecting to that." He paused. "I am objecting to you disappearing into them because it means I am left trying to guess whether your silence is grief, anger, or punishment."
There it was.
Not the thing under all of it, perhaps, but close enough to deserve not being mishandled.
Erikar rested one hand on the cold parapet stone. "It is none of those."
Thor looked at him then. "That is somehow worse."
"Why."
"Because if it were grief, I could stand next to it. If it were anger, I could answer it. If it were punishment, at least I would know which sin had earned it." His mouth hardened. "But when you become quiet like this, it feels like you have already moved somewhere I cannot follow."
Wind moved between them.
Below, in the yard, the two shield-captains had ended their drill and were now pretending with almost artistic discipline not to look up at the parapet where the princes had gone to become less audible and therefore, to soldiers, far more interesting.
Erikar looked back over the terraces before answering.
"I have not moved anywhere."
Thor laughed once without humor. "You always say things like that as though the problem is measurement."
"Often it is."
Thor's shoulders straightened, not with anger yet, but with the first structure of it. "There. Again."
Erikar said nothing.
Thor pushed away from the parapet and turned to face him fully.
"When Father chose you in the council chamber," he said, "I was angry because of him."
True.
"When you came after me, I was angry because of the room."
Also true.
Now his jaw tightened. "But this. Since we came back. Since the hall, the reports, the silence, all of it. This is you."
The line hung there.
Erikar held his gaze.
He understood, distantly and with increasing dissatisfaction, that he was already answering incorrectly by trying to define the accusation before speaking to the wound beneath it. Thor did not need analysis. He needed location.
That was harder.
"I am not withdrawing from you," Erikar said at last.
Thor looked at him for a long moment.
Then he said, quietly, "That is not what it feels like."
The honesty of it landed like a clean strike. No theater. No raised voice. Just truth offered without ornament and therefore harder to defend against.
Erikar turned his attention briefly to the lower yard again, not to avoid the line, but to keep from answering it too fast and therefore badly.
Thor read the motion anyway.
"Do you see," he said, "how impossible you are when you care."
That almost drew the corner of his mouth upward. Almost. "That is not usually how people describe it."
"No," Thor said. "Most people do not have to be loved by you at close range."
This time the expression nearly happened and then didn't. Thor saw that too and looked both vindicated and offended by it.
Erikar let out the breath he had been holding. "The ledgers needed reading."
"I know."
"The reports needed correcting."
"I know."
"I was thinking."
Thor stared at him. "By every realm. You continue to say the least useful version first."
Erikar looked at him then, properly. "I was thinking," he repeated, "that you were right about the southern wall."
Thor's face changed.
Not enough for anyone below to see. Enough.
Erikar continued before the line could be interrupted by whatever Thor might do with it. "And that I am still deciding whether I am more annoyed by the fact itself or by how little time you required to become insufferable about it."
The silence that followed was not easy either. But it shifted shape.
Thor's mouth moved once, then settled into something that was not a smile and not far enough from one to matter.
"You have an extraordinary talent," he said slowly, "for burying actual care beneath language that should start knife fights."
"It preserves balance."
"It preserves your dignity."
"That too."
Thor looked back out over the terraces and exhaled, some of the tension finally leaving his shoulders by degree rather than break. Better. Breaks were easier to notice and harder to repair.
After a moment he said, "I know how your mind works."
Interesting.
Erikar said nothing.
Thor tapped one knuckle lightly against the parapet stone. "You come back from campaign and count the dead and review the ground and build the whole thing back inside yourself until it means something that can be carried." He looked over. "I know that. I am not asking you to stop."
Good.
"Then what are you asking."
Thor's answer came without hesitation. "When you do it, do not leave me outside the walls."
The line landed somewhere very close to the sentence Loki had left in the campaign and for one brief unwelcome instant the two touched in his mind.
He set the thought aside at once.
Thor waited.
Erikar could have answered with promise. Could have said yes in one of the direct simple ways that came naturally to Thor and far less naturally to him. It would even have been partly true.
Instead he found himself choosing the more accurate thing.
"I do not always know when I have done that."
Thor held his gaze another breath, measuring the answer for evasion and, apparently, not finding enough of it to discard.
"That," Thor said, "is at least a real difficulty and not one of your polished evasions."
"I have never polished anything in my life."
Thor looked offended on behalf of every servant forced to maintain his armor.
"That is insulting to multiple professions."
Erikar inclined his head by half a degree. "I can apologize to the metalworkers if required."
"You should apologize to me."
"For what."
Thor spread one hand. "For making me drag sincerity out of you like it owes me coin."
"That seems historically inaccurate."
"It feels historically accurate."
The wind picked up again, stronger now, carrying the scent of forge smoke from the lower quarter and the sharper cold edge of evening beginning to form above the western walls. Somewhere below, a horn sounded shift change for one of the barracks watches.
Thor leaned back against the parapet this time instead of over it, arms folded, expression less sharp now that the center of the thing had at least been placed between them where both could see it.
After a while he said, "Do you remember after the Jotun raid on the north farms."
Erikar did.
Not because the raid had mattered militarily. It had not. Too small. Too badly timed. More insult than threat. He remembered because he had been younger than was wise and Thor younger still and afterward, when the dead were counted, Thor had spent two days trying to cheer every wounded farmer personally as though force of personality could bully grief into becoming gratitude.
"You told me," Thor said, "that I kept trying to solve pain by standing too close to it."
That sounded like him.
Thor's mouth shifted. "I thought you meant I was doing it badly."
"Sometimes you were."
"Yes. I know that now." He looked at Erikar sidelong. "What I did not understand then is that your answer to the same thing was distance, and you believed that made yours more honest."
Erikar considered the lower yard. The stone. The wind. The years between that farm raid and this parapet. "It sometimes does."
Thor nodded once. "Yes. But not always."
No.
Not always.
That answer remained between them unspoken because it had already been spoken enough.
The lower terraces had begun to darken toward evening now, shadows stretching longer between the barracks roofs and training posts. The palace above them remained bright, as palaces always did, long after useful places had begun to prepare for night.
Thor uncrossed his arms and pushed away from the parapet. "Good. Then we have had a meaningful conversation and I hate it."
"That does sound exhausting for you."
"It is. I may need food as compensation."
"Always a difficult supply issue."
Thor glanced at him. "Come to dinner."
There it was. The actual request. Wrapped in casualness because he had already spent enough pride to drag the larger issue into language and was not interested in doing more work than necessary now that the path had been cleared.
Erikar understood that immediately and almost said no because the ledgers still waited and because there were still corrections to make and because routine, once interrupted by feeling, often retaliated by becoming more attractive.
Then he looked at Thor and remembered exactly what had just been asked of him.
"When."
"Now."
"That is not timing. That is impulse."
Thor grinned, relieved enough now to risk it. "I have always considered impulse a kind of timing."
"That explains many things badly."
"Will you come or do I need to deploy another servant."
Erikar let the pause exist a moment longer than was kind.
Then, "Yes."
Thor stared at him. "That was almost quick."
"I am full of surprises."
"No," Thor said, already turning toward the stair. "You are full of delays. But this is close enough."
He headed down the steps without waiting to see if Erikar followed.
Erikar did.
Because that was, perhaps, the point. Not speeches. Not perfect translation. Not two brothers suddenly becoming fluent in each other's worst habits after one difficult campaign and one useful argument on a damp parapet.
Just this.
Choosing the same direction before silence had time to grow teeth again.
*End of Chapter 11*
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