“You merely need ask King Olidan for his protection—I will carry the message—and come morning this Norseman will occupy a pauper’s grave down by the river. You will wake a free man, ready to return to the life you were snatched from. Free to take up your old ways as if nothing had happened.”

I had to admit it had sounded very tempting. It still did. But my tongue kept refusing the words. Perhaps that too was part of this Stoccolm’s disease. “But he’s . . . well, a loyal retainer.” And of course, whilst I may be a liar and a cheat and a coward, I will never, ever, let down a loyal retainer. Unless, of course, it requires honesty, fair play, or bravery to avoid doing so—or an act that in some other manner mildly inconveniences me. “I see your point . . . still, there must be another way. Can’t you do something? A man with your skills?”

Again the shake of the head, so slow and slight that you could almost believe the sorrow. “Not without great risk, my prince, to myself and to you.” He turned those mild eyes on me and I felt the draw of them immediately, as if at any moment he could pull me in to drown. “There is a third way. The blood of the person who placed the curse on you.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—” The thought of that old witch unmanned me almost as much as the creature at the opera did. “The Silent Sister is too cunning and Grandmother dotes on her.”

Sageous nodded as if expecting this. “She has a twin. One whom fate may place in your path. The blood of the twin will accomplish the same goal. It will quench the spell’s fire.”

“A twin?” It was hard to imagine two such monsters. The blind-eye woman had always seemed so singular.

“She is named Skilfar.”

“God damn it all!” I’d heard of Skilfar. And anyone you’ve heard of is trouble. That’s bankable wisdom, that is. The Wicked Witch of the North—I’m sure I’d heard Grandmother call her that, smiling as if she’d said something clever. “Damn it all.” Killing Snorri would be hard. I’d been happy to spend his life in the blood pits against the possibility of coin. But now I knew him and it put a different shine on things. In fact, it soured the whole business of the pits. All the men there had lives, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to enjoy the sport again knowing that. Life has ways of getting under your skin, spoiling your fun with too much information. Youth is truly the happiest time where we roll in the bliss of ignorance.

“Your old life, my prince. Returned to you.”

My old life, the pleasures of the flesh, and of the gaming table, and sometimes the first on the second. It had been shallow and balanced on Maeres’s knife edge, but sometimes shallow is more than enough. You can drown in deep. “I’ll sleep on it,” I had said.