We must go. We must find Thor.
He couldn’t. This was just- too much. Things were happening so fast. How long had it been since the disastrous not-coronation and Thor’s plan to sneak into Jotunheim to confront Laufey? Two days? Three? He almost couldn’t keep track anymore. Now Thor was banished, Odin in his comalike Sleep, and Loki was on the throne and holding it in an iron grip. And his friends...
His friends were being idiots was what they were.
Listening to them, he could hardly believe it. Hogun and Sif were spinning each other up, insisting that Loki was behind the Jotuns’ attempt on the Vault, that it was Loki who had convinced Thor to go to Jotunheim. Except...
Loki had pointed out something Fandral had been observing with increasing alarm over the last several decades. Thor was restless, arrogant, aggressive, and self-centered. Thor... would be a horrible king. Oh, perhaps he’d be a fine war leader, but he was no administrator, no peacekeeper. He couldn’t even keep a leash on his temper long enough to walk out of the remains of the Jotun palace when Laufey had graciously- and wisely- permitted them to leave without coming to harm. Loki’s stunt of letting a pair of Jotun warriors into the Vault, while perhaps ill-considered, certainly illustrated the exact flaws Fandral had seen in the Heir.
Loki had also had a point that he could not make his first act as King be something that undid the Allfather’s final act, particularly when he was only standing in Odin’s stead on a temporary basis. There might be serious concerns over whether Odin would wake again, but until it was confirmed he wouldn’t, Loki was only temporarily Asgard’s King. Immediately rescinding the banishment on Thor, after less than two days, was a politically stupid move. It would certainly show favoritism on Loki’s part at least, and frankly, it would call his judgment into question.
Fandral privately thought that while banishment was perhaps a bit harsh of a punishment, Thor absolutely needed to face some consequences for his hotheadedness and complete lack of awareness. And he wasn’t just thinking that because Thor’s idiocy had nearly gotten him killed.
He shuddered and rubbed his shoulder. While the healers had done damn good work and gotten him back in fighting shape practically overnight, the wound still ached a little, and there would be a nasty scar on both the front and the back. He’d been lucky. He’d been damned lucky. An inch or two lower, and that icicle would have shredded his aorta and he would have bled out before his friends could pry him off the icy spear. And if they’d been any slower in getting home, he might have died anyway.
And who do I have to thank for that?
Loki. Loki, who’d done everything in his power to persuade them not to go. Loki, who’d plied that clever silver tongue of his to keep Thor in check and appease the angry Jotun king. Loki, who had not only slain the Jotun warrior who’d nearly killed Fandral, but had seen how badly he’d been wounded and insisted that they leave immediately.
His friends’ increasing restlessness, their outrage and resentment at finding Loki on the throne and unwilling to call back his brother, didn’t sit well with him. And then they’d been talking treason, for no good reason that Fandral could see.
He’d been unable to talk sense into them. They’d convinced Volstagg to go along with this absurd plan of theirs, to sneak their way onto Midgard and find Thor. Fandral had pretended to agree, then slipped away when they separated to make preparations. The moment he was alone, without even a servant in sight, he reached for the trickle of magic he called his own- magic Loki taught me to use- and wove hair-fine threads of it into a gossamer web of a spell. A delicate creation, it would help keep them from thinking about him, or noticing his absence- at least at fist. If they started thinking too hard about him, started really getting uneasy about why he hadn’t shown up yet, the delicate spell would break. All it would do would delay the moment when they noticed he wasn’t with them and start wondering why he wasn’t there. It would just buy him a little time.
That was all he was going to need.
His subtle dissuasion in place, he closed his eyes and focused on another aspect of his magic. This was a skill he was much better at using, a quirk of his power that let him know where someone he knew was. It wasn’t perfect- he had a lot of trouble sensing where someone was at a real distance, and if they were offworld, well, pretty much the only reliable sense he got from it was whether or not they were still alive, and it always took several minutes to adapt to being on a new realm- but he knew Loki was on Asgard and was most likely somewhere in Gladsheim, or the palace itself.
He followed the prodding of that inner sense down to the stables- the royal stables, not the ones used for mounts for the guard or nobles. There was Loki, actually in the huge box stall reserved for Odin’s warhorse, the eight-legged stallion named Sleipnir, apparently talking to the great creature. Sleipnir was giving every indication of actually listening to the young king.
There were no guards in sight, which he was grateful for. He approached, clearing his throat quietly before dropping to one knee, his fist over his heart.
“My king,” he said. Funny, the words didn’t stick in his throat the way he was worried they might. Loki was, by rights, the king. For the moment, at least. He deserved Fandral’s respect, and his loyalty, and had the right to be addressed as his liege. That was how things worked. Whoever was holding the throne while Odin Slept was the monarch, and all the oaths of loyalty and service that Odin’s subjects swore to him were automatically transferred to his substitute during that period. Of course, if Odin died during his Sleep, then said subjects would have to swear new oaths of fealty to his successor, but not until then. For now, Loki was King. “I beg a moment of your time for a private word.” He emphasized the word a little. He’d long suspected that Loki had some way of concealing himself from Heimdall’s all-seeing eye, and if he did, Fandral hoped he’d use it now. He really didn’t want the Gatekeeper seeing this conversation. “I- fear I have troubling news.”
