Whatever it was, it made me tempted to send her with the kids. They seemed to like her.

 

But I knew she wanted to be in this at the end.
There was something akin to an explosion in the valley below and I turned back towards it, frowning.

 

“Sabotage,” Thruor murmured. “Good.”

 

Good, because as Jorun had said, anything that slowed them down was good.

 

Anyone working against the regime was our ally. And I looked back at the kids. “You know. I think maybe we can use you.”

 

He smiled.

 

“Can we trust them?” Thruor asked.

 

I glanced at Kanesha. “I think we can. We’re planning on taking Surtur out.”

 

He nodded again, nervous. “I…”

 

“You don’t have to be involved.”

 

“Like the dwarf said, you want more of that, don’t you.” He indicated the explosion.

 

“More of that wouldn’t be bad, but mostly? Mostly we need people to be ready to resist. And we need to know who is only following orders and who is enthusiastically singing along.”

 

He laughed at that. “You’re right, Lady. You do.”

 

He sounded as if he was not sure what title to use for me. I decided Lady did well enough. I wasn’t quite a princess or anything like that.

 

“We need as much information as you and your friends can give us.”

 

“Do we have time?” Kanesha asked.

 

“No, but we still need it. It’s a shame we don’t have a spell for rapid transfer of information.”

 

But we didn’t, we were going to have to sit and talk. And then move quickly. And the urgent sense of the world starting to fall apart, the image of the dead tree becoming the image of a dead ash tree in my mind.

 

No, we didn’t have time, but we couldn’t afford not to.

 

Sacrifice.

 

The longer we waited. The more it seemed we might have to pull Muspelheim…and I understood.

 

It was a possibility. But it still required…I began to see the picture of the thing.

 

I began to see what we could do, even as the kid started to go through names. I had to force myself to focus.

 

Who could we trust?