High above the harbour, the golden doors of the war room slammed shut with a deafening boom.
The last lights of the funeral were fading beyond the windows. Around the great stone table, the commanders of Asgard took their places. Sif and the Warriors Three stood to one side. Heimdall stayed near the door.
Thor had already begun to pace.
Odin watched him from the head of the table, one hand resting on Gungnir. He had stood straight through the whole of the funeral. Now, with the city out of sight, he let himself lean against the back of his chair.
The master of the city's defenses finally finished his grim report.
The damaged anti-air batteries could be fully restored. The breaches could be guarded with patrols. The great shield, however, would take considerably longer.
"How much longer?" Thor asked.
"A full week, my prince. Perhaps more. The intruder destroyed the delicate workings beneath the generator as well as the generator itself."
"A week." Thor stopped pacing. "For an entire week, this city stands completely open."
Nobody at the table contradicted him. There was no way to.
Odin turned his head slowly. "Heimdall."
"I followed their retreat out past the outer rings, my king, and then… they were simply gone." The Gatekeeper had not moved from the door. "Not beyond my reach. Just gone. One moment there were nine ships, and the next there was nothing where they had been. Whatever they put over themselves, my sight does not touch it. They may be safely on their own world by now. Or they may be sitting quietly in the dark directly above this city while we speak. I do not know."
He had never, not once in millennia, needed to say those helpless words. And now he had been forced to say them twice in as many days. He had not seen the fleet come in, either. It had hung over Asgard for hours, close enough to count from the walls, and he had looked straight through it.
"I should have seen them," Heimdall said softly. "I have thought of little else since."
"Every single eye in this room was open, Heimdall," Odin said. "None of us saw."
It was not absolution, and Heimdall did not take it as any.
Odin was silent for a moment. Then he straightened enough to put his weight back on Gungnir.
"The fleet and the Einherjar will hold the approaches," he commanded. "The watches will be doubled. No vessel enters without inspection, and no force leaves without my command."
Around the table there was the small shifting sound of men receiving orders they could carry out.
"No," Thor said.
The shifting stopped instantly.
"We cannot just sit cowering behind a broken wall for a week, Father. Let me take the fleet to Svartalfheim. The dark elves may still be there, and if they are, we finish it now while they are bleeding. They spent their whole vanguard on us. Their king is wounded and their fleet is not what it was this morning. They will never be weaker than they are tonight. I cannot simply sit here and wait for them to recover and come back a second time."
"And leave Asgard completely open?" Odin challenged.
"Leave enough men to hold the city. Give me the rest to strike back."
"Against which enemy, Thor?"
Thor frowned, confused by the question. "Malekith."
"I am asking which enemy you intend those few remaining men to hold against." Odin leaned forward. "The Dark Elves? The marauders we drove out of Vanaheim not a month ago? Or any of the kings who have spent the last thousand years deciding that attacking Asgard would cost them too much?"
Thor said nothing.
"Word of this battle will spread rapidly across the Nine Realms, Thor. So will word that our shield has fallen. Malekith need not return here alone. He may easily find opportunistic others quite willing to join him."
"Then we kill him before he finds them."
"And if he draws your army away while another fleet comes here?"
"We can spend the whole night naming things that might happen, Father." Thor came down the length of the table. "Our warriors are at their best when we choose the ground. Why are we sitting here waiting for him to choose it for us?"
"Because every warrior you take from this city comes from somewhere vital. A ship. A wall. A gate. You cannot leave enough men to hold this city and still take the strike force you are asking me for."
Thor looked down angrily at the map between them. The damaged sections of the city had been marked in red. There was a great deal of red.
"Fighting him here will cost more lives," Thor argued softly. "You know that."
"Yes."
The blunt answer made Thor look up sharply.
"I also know what it would cost to be caught here without an army," Odin said. "We hold our strength until the Convergence passes. Once the realms separate there will be far fewer ways to reach us, and whatever Malekith meant to do with the Aether will no longer be possible. Then, and only then, we decide how to hunt him down."
"If we can still find him."
Odin did not answer.
"They hid for five thousand years," Thor pressed. "If he goes back down into the dark now, we may not find him again until he decides to be found. And when he finally does, it might not be me standing on that wall waiting for him. It might be whoever comes after me. This is the only window we are ever going to get."
"I have made my decision."
"It is a coward's decision."
The room stopped breathing.
Along the walls, generals who had commanded armies for a thousand years found somewhere else to look.
Odin raised his head slowly and looked at his son with one very tired eye.
"It is a king's decision," he said softly.
Thor said nothing.
"You are only thinking of what was done to your mother. You want them dead." Odin's hand tightened on the spear. "I want them dead a great deal more than you do, boy. But that does not release me from my duty to everyone else in this city. Not today."
Thor set his free hand on the table. Through the windows he could see the harbour where they had stood for the funeral, empty now, the water gone dark.
"I am thinking of them, too," Thor whispered.
"I know," Odin said.
That was what made the argument so hard. Thor was not wrong to fear another attack, and Odin was not wrong to keep the army close. Around the table stood men and women who had led enough campaigns to understand both positions perfectly well.
They also understood exactly why Thor's patience had run out tonight, and not one of them was going to say so.
Odin settled back in his chair.
"The legions remain in Asgard. So does the fleet. I will not leave this realm open to chase a single enemy."
Thor stared at the map for a long moment. Then he straightened up, pulling his shoulders back.
"Then I will go alone."
Sif turned sharply toward him. Volstagg opened his mouth to object. Odin spoke first.
"How?"
"Heimdall can send me."
"In a blinding column of light that will announce your arrival to absolutely everything within twenty miles," Odin scoffed. "You would have their entire army closing on your position before you had the very first idea where their king was."
"Soldiers I can deal with."
"While blindly searching for Malekith? While he decides at his leisure whether to face you, or simply let you fight his men until you tire? Even you cannot fight forever, Thor."
"Then I will make it short. I find him, I kill him, and I call for Heimdall to bring me home."
"You may call, and I may not hear you."
Heimdall's voice carried from beside the door. Thor turned abruptly.
"They hid ships from you," Thor said, his brow furrowing. "Not men. Once I am standing on their ground, you have only to watch me."
"That is what I told myself about the fleet, my prince."
Heimdall rested both hands on the pommel of his sword.
"I looked at Svartalfheim for thousands of years and saw a dead world with nothing left on it. Yesterday told me how much I had missed. I do not know what hides them, my prince. I do not know whether it sits in their hulls or in the air of that world. If it is the world itself, you will walk into it and I will lose you exactly as I lost them."
Thor glanced toward Odin, then back at the Gatekeeper.
"But you can send me there."
"Yes. The Bifrost still reaches Svartalfheim. That is not the same as being able to follow you once you have stepped off it."
"Could you bring me back from the same place?"
"If you can return to it. If it is still clear when you do." Heimdall did not look away from him. "Neither is a thing I would promise a man on an enemy's world. You may call, and I may not hear you, and there will be no way for me to know whether you are hunting Malekith or lying dead in the dark, waiting on a bridge that is never going to open."
Thor fell silent.
Odin looked at his stubborn son.
"The path is closed, Thor. Stay here. Defend your home."
Thor looked at his father for a long moment. At the grey in his face. At the hands on the spear. At the way he was sitting in that chair, and how much of his weight it was taking.
"I am going, Father," he said quietly. "I know someone who can put me there unseen. And bring me back the same way."
He turned and walked out, and did not wait to be dismissed, and did not look back.
The doors swung shut behind him with a resonant thud.
Nobody at the table spoke a single word. Sif's eyes went to Odin, waiting for the order to stop him. Heimdall's eyes went to the floor.
Odin sat with both hands on Gungnir and looked at the empty doorway for a long time.
He did not give the order.