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  She sits, while Baldur walks out between his two guards, lifting a hand in farewell. He does not seem unduly concerned at the sentence, but she can see that he is still angry - and more than that. There is a deep grief mixed with his fury - at last, there is something that he cares about. She would have been glad - if it had been something more worthy of his awakening.

  Set glows darkly. They all think that Baldur’s exile is temporary, he thinks - but when the Game ends, and he sits in the High Seat, he will see to it that the interfering prig stays right where he is - and dies with all the rest of them.

  Chapter 5

  The train to Oslo wound through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, and Green didn’t notice any of it. She had no suitcase, but she’d booked a ticket to Sydney on her phone, leaving the day after tomorrow. She leaned back in her seat and shut her eyes, feeling sick. She was an idiot.

  She shouldn’t have left like that. Ok, so he had a wife - an immortal wife. That was bad. And she was seriously beautiful, and seriously psychotic - that was even worse. It wasn't so much the principle - Green knew herself better than that. There was something about Naina that struck to the very heart of her insecurities - that made her question everything that had grown between her and Baldur.

  Really, when you got right down to it, she was jealous. She couldn't stand the thought of another woman having a right to her dream lover, the man who was everything she ever wanted and thought she couldn't have. Maybe it was stupid, maybe not - but there it was.

  But right now, Baldur was in trouble - and she’d just walked out. He didn’t deserve that from her. He loved her. Maybe she should have heard him out before she stormed out with her knickers in a twist. She owed him that, at least.

  That was the trouble with having a temper - it made her do hasty things, and then she regretted it. She tried to imagine what punishment the Council might have handed out - and failed. What could you actually do to a being who couldn’t die, couldn’t be imprisoned, couldn’t feel pain? Nothing - probably. Still, the thought worried at her.

  She bought a salad sandwich off the trolley that rattled up the aisle, and wondered what she’d do now. Life looked awfully blank without Baldur - like a holiday in a cheap hotel room when it’s raining outside. Not just blank - desolate. In just three weeks, he had gone from being a beautiful dream to a warm, solid reality. Almost a part of her - she felt hollow and lost without him.

  She sniffed, and took a gulp of what passed for coffee, and watched the mountains parade by in all their meaningless glory.

  A tall figure slipped into the seat beside her, sliding the sandwich out from under her nose. Baldur eyed it warily and took an experimental bite. She could have laughed with incredulous relief. Instead, she grabbed the sandwich back and glowered.

  "What happened?"

  He looked down, his face in profile.

  "I was reprimanded - as expected."

  She studied him. He was strangely aloof, even for him. Perhaps he was angry. “So they didn’t cast you into a pit of fire or anything, I see."

  "No - I told you that they would not."

  He reached for her coffee, took a sip, and made a face, without meeting her eyes. "How can you even drink this?"

  "Get your own, if you don’t like it."

  Baldur reached across and brought her hand to his lips, holding it there as if for comfort. Green softened unwillingly. She had to admit, she was glad to see him. Only there was still Naina.

  "Did you agree to go back to your wife? To please your mum - and Zeus-Ra."

  He turned to her with a wry smile, that had something of despair in it, too.

  "No."

  She met his eyes, finally, and drew back, appalled.

  "Your eyes - what's wrong?" The turquoise eyes were the colour of water, shocking as a scar.

  "It is nothing. Just that I am mortal, as you are."

  "What do you mean?"

  He was as beautiful as ever. There was something missing, though - that shimmer he’d always had, that made you think there was something wrong with your vision. He was beautiful, but he didn’t shine any more. If that was all…

  "It means I cannot cross the worlds. I am shut out from Asgard, where my power lies - such as it is. And that means that I cannot protect you if Set comes for you - any more than any mortal man would be able to. I am as helpless as you are."

  "I’m not helpless!" Except that she was. "How can you be shut out, anyway? How can they just take that away from you? Surely if you're a god..."

  A flicker of remembered pain crossed his face. "Have you ever had stitches pulled out? It is like having a thread unwound from your body, the thread that binds your soul. It is...not pleasant. They send you out from Asgard and then they lock the gate - the connection from which I draw my power. Without that connection - I am mortal, as you are."

  Green leaned across the seat and hugged him - married man or not.

  "I’m so sorry. I didn’t think anything like that was possible. I thought it would just be a slap on the wrist. But you’re still Baldur - even if you’re not immortal."

  He kissed the top of her head and drew her in to his shoulder.

  "Do not be sorry. The pain is an instant only, and in any case, to be with you is a reward, not a punishment. Like a child being banished from school, I had rather be here than there."

  "But now you don’t have a choice."

  "I do not."

  "Are you afraid?"

  The rolling, clacking rhythm of the train beat steadily on while he considered his reply.

  "Of Set, no. He knows the penalty for direct intervention. I think he will not dare challenge the ruling of the Council, now that I have been punished for less. That at least is one good thing to come of this. But there is worse, and of that, I am afraid."

  "What could be worse than Set?" Were there more monsters hidden in the wings of Asgard, that she’d never heard of? He took both her hands in his, his grip too strong for comfort. "In a year the Game ends."

  "So? Isn't that a good thing?" Green asked, puzzled. Was it really that bad that this stupid Game of theirs was going to end? Baldur didn’t just look disappointed - he looked like he'd just found out that Hell existed, and he was going there tomorrow.

  "When the Game ends, the board must be cleared for a new Game. The winner will want to start with a clean slate - and that means that every soul on this earth will be collected...and disposed of."

  Green looked at him uncomprehendingly. Disposed of? Meaning - mass extermination? It wasn’t possible. She disengaged her hand, and looked blankly out at the suburbs of Oslo, with its neat apartment blocks and postcard houses, and cars parked in driveways.

  "How do you mean - collected and disposed of? Like some kind of...garbage collection?"

  Grief twisted his face. "In a year from now, you will all cease to exist."

  And there it was, the bald truth. For the first time, she saw Baldur’s serenity cracked like a broken mirror.

  She swallowed. It was impossible to take in. She didn’t believe it. How could you possibly get rid of seven billion people - just like that?

  "So the whole earth, everyone on it - will be wiped out. But not you - not the immortals. You just - do the sweeping, and start a new Game? With new people to play with. Right?"

  He lowered his head, ashamed of his race.

  She felt as if the air in the train carriage was slowly turning to poison. Beware the Game's end. So that's what the words meant.

  "When? When does this happen?"

  "When the Game began - when Zeus-Ra and the elder immortals set the rules - they decided on a thousand Cycles of our time. In your time, two hundred thousand years - more or less. So the Game has less than twelve months to run before the Council meets to decide the winner, and then the Board is swept," he said dully.

  She snatched her hands back.

  "They decided. Don't you mean you decided. You're one of them - oh, I know you're 'mortal' for now but it's only
temporary, they won't let you die here. You're an immortal - you're a fucking god. You don't have anything to worry about - it's us that are going to die. All because of your stupid, fucking, stupid, crappy...Game!"

  Her voice rose. The train carriage was half empty, but even so, people turned to stare. She eyed them stonily.

  "I know."

  Her face was hot and her eyes stung. She couldn't bear to look at him.

  "I have to get back to my family," she said blindly. "I have to tell them."

  "There is no point," Baldur said, sick to his soul. "They will not believe you. And if they did..."

  "I don't care," she flung, hating even the sound of his voice. He was right. There was no point - she'd just be sharing the misery. She wouldn't tell them. But how could she look her mother and father in the eye knowing - that. How could she even live with that knowledge, for a whole year - it seemed impossible.

  "I know that nothing I can say will erase this thing," he said at last in a low voice. "I am responsible, along with the rest of my kind, and no atonement is possible. But when the time comes, I will not return to my world. I will stay in yours, and perish with you, if need be. Without you, I have no life. This I swear."

  Chapter 6

  How could a person be so happy, and carefree - and then, in a moment, see it all collapse like an illusion?

  Last week, she was lying with Baldur in a luxury chalet on a pristine fjord so beautiful it defied a postcard - and now, everything had turned to a complete and utter fuckup.

  First - the man she loved had a beautiful, jealous wife. Second - any superhuman powers he’d ever had were wiped out, basically an invitation to Set or Dionysos or whatever he was called to come and help himself. And third - all living beings on this earth were going to be wiped out in less than a year.

  Mind you, compared to the end of the world, the first two were pretty trivial. Anyway, if Set wanted to kill her, he only needed to wait a year and she was gone. Along with everybody else. It made no sense.

  She’d always wondered what she’d do if she knew exactly when she was going to die. Usually it involved trips to Venice, and theme parks, and jumping out of a plane with no parachute when the time came. Now it was a reality, and Venice didn’t seem so enticing.

  She'd spent the rest of the train trip in a kind of dazed silence, trying to take it in. Now, they sat in a dismal railway cafe drinking mediocre tea and stale pastries, and she still had nothing to say. Baldur sat opposite, a still, watching presence.

  It was just too - big. A blur of people hurrying towards their trains - all dead. The waitress who brought her coffee with a tired smile - dead. The pale-eyed boy behind the till with a nasty case of adolescent acne - dead. Her mother, her father, all those aunts and uncles who sent Christmas cards that stood around collecting dust till June when her mother stashed them in a cardboard box for posterity, god knows why - dead. There would be no posterity.

  Suddenly, she knew exactly what she wanted to do. If this was their last year on earth.

  "I want you to come back to Sydney with me."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I'm sure."

  It was too late in the day to lay blame. Finding someone to hate didn't make anything any better. Baldur was a god - yes - but he didn't want this any more than she did. He'd promised to die with her. Well - if they were going to die together, they might as well live first.

  Introducing Baldur to her parents would be...awkward, at the very least. But she’d have at least a couple of days to think up some plausible lies, she was good at that. She smiled crookedly. If the world was going to end in twelve months, then that year would have to be a good year. It would have to be the best year she’d ever had - and not just for Green, but for Claudia and Peter as well.

  For the first time, she realised how much her mum and dad meant to her - not in the dependent way of a young girl, but as an adult. She felt an overwhelming love for the two people who'd created her. Really created her, that is - not the careless, effortless creation of gods exulting in their power over 'lesser' beings, but the careful, painstaking creation of fallible, frightened, loving human beings.

  "Of course." For the first time for hours, he smiled - not with his usual sunny radiance, but accepting that whatever he could do to help her deal with this unimaginable horror, he must do.

  Making the decision was one thing. Getting there was another. For a start, the plane from Oslo to Sydney was an eye opener. For the first time, Baldur was visible to anyone who cared to look - and just about everyone did. Green hung on to his arm, feeling like a famous movie star’s school sweetheart.

  They lined up in the interminable check-in queue, just like everybody else - and within five minutes, every single female head had turned their way, stared as if they couldn’t believe their eyes, and then turned again to have another look. Then, of course, every male in the line had a quick look as well, just to see what had caught their wife/daughter/girlfriend’s eye. She felt like George Clooney’s latest squeeze. Baldur showed no embarrassment whatsoever.

  "You have got a passport, right?"

  He patted his jeans pocket, amused. It was all very well for him to look smug - but she bet he’d never had to travel on an actual passport before. Maybe he’d never even been on a plane.

  "It will be an exciting experience for me." Baldur grinned. "I have flown many times without a metal contraption around me - this will be the first time I have moved through the air sitting down."

  "And then some." She flinched at the thought of sitting cramped in an economy seat with her knees forced up around her chin and someone trying to make their seat as horizontal as possible in front of her - for nine hours. "So let’s see it, then. What nationality are you?"

  He handed it to her solemnly and she spread the pages.

  "You look gorgeous," she said disgustedly. Trust Baldur to look great even in his passport photo. Nobody was supposed to look attractive in their passport photo. "It says here, country of citizenship, Iceland. How did you manage that? You weren’t born in Iceland, were you?"

  "Actually, I was."

  "Really? How come?"

  "My mother loves the northern lights and my brother’s father was an Icelander. I think she spent many happy years there. But the papers - those I had to fake. I paid a man."

  Green grimaced nervously.

  "I hope it’s Interpol-proof. I’d hate to be marched off by Border Force at Sydney airport."

  "I too," agreed Baldur. He didn’t seem too worried - but then, Green was beginning to know him well enough to realise that he very rarely worried about anything - even when he really should.

  They got through security without a beep - Green was on edge in case some residual non-human element in Baldur set off the machinery - and set off towards the gate lounge.

  It was a long, cramped flight, just as she’d expected. Baldur’s legs were much too long for the space, but he made no complaint - even when the woman in front leaned her seat right back in his face, the better to enjoy her nap. It must have been very strange for him - used to teleporting across space and time without the aid of technology - but he watched the little movie screen on the back of the seat in front as if utterly enthralled by Disney’s Madagascar.

  As Baldur focused on the little seat-back screen, Green ran through the coming scenario in her mind, over and over. To wit - how exactly do you introduce your parents to a god? Basically, she decided, you just do it.

  "This," she said, holding Baldur’s hand firmly as they stood in the porch of her parents’ harbour side unit, "is Baldur."

  Claudia blinked, taking in all six-foot four blonde nordicness of him. When Green had rung to say she was coming home, she’d been relieved beyond measure - and then surprised and excited to be meeting her daughter’s new man. But she’d never expected - this!

  Then her good manners reasserted themselves.

  "Lovely!" she enthused. "So lovely to finally meet you. Do come in - don’t mind the dog. Ethelred, down
! No!"

  Ethelred, an elderly white Maltese terrier, trotted out stiffly to greet the visitors. Baldur leant down to scratch his head and the dog rolled over instantly on its back with its paws in the air.

  "Oh, Ethelred, get up, will you. Sorry about that - come into the living room, please."

  Everything was so familiar - right down to the little hall stand with its vase of fake yellow roses, that Green used to think was so old fashioned. And the brown leather couch with its shiny arms, rested on by so many elbows. So familiar, and so endearing.

  "Where's Alexander?"

  "Sleeping up in your room."

  Green had left her cat with Claudia and Peter just before she went to Greece to get married. Her room, her cat - everything just waiting for her, just as if nothing had changed.

  "Peter, this is Baldur, Green’s friend, er... ," Claudia wittered nervously, "Do sit down, Baldur - what can I get you? Tea? A drink?"

  Baldur deposited his graceful length on the old sofa and beamed up at them. Ethelred immediately clambered into his lap.

  "Thank you, tea would be wonderful."

  Peter looked at him disapprovingly.

  "You don’t drink? Are you a tee-totaller, Baldur?"

  "Ah..."

  For once, Baldur seemed at a loss for words. Green rescued him.

  "Baldur’s not a tee-totaller - he’s just a bit jet-lagged right now." Sudden mortality was like an arm tied behind your back, Baldur had explained - it took time to get used to. Alcohol didn’t help. But to Green’s father, there was something suspicious about a man who didn’t opt for whisky over tea. "But he just loves model trains! I’ve been telling Baldur about how you’ve set up this whole railway system in the garage - he’d just love to see it, wouldn’t you honey?"

  Baldur gave her a startled look. She wasn’t sure if he was grateful for the lifeline, or pissed off at being thrown into the bear pit as soon as they arrived.

  "Really? You seem much too young to be into model trains, young man," said Peter dubiously, looking from one to the other. "You’re not trying to ‘get around’ me, are you?"