Loki was rather pleased to discover that the giants did, in fact, cook their food, and that it wasn't particularly inferior to Asgardian cooking. While the meat wasn't what would have graced the royal table, it wasn't anything worse than a bit gamey and tough, and the flat, greenish bread was strange, but edible. Once he'd finished (and he'd been rather ravenous, all told), Angrboda made him rest.

He protested, but mostly for form's sake. Exhaustion was a good way to make mistakes, and finding the Ironwood Maiden had already put him in a good way toward recapturing Thor. He didn't know what happened then, but one step at a time. He collapsed gratefully on the mat she showed him and... entirely failed to fall asleep.

Burying his fears and distress in activity had worked like a charm (at at least journeyman level), and Loki wasn't quite as wise as he thought himself. The crush of misery as it all came rushing back almost made him whimper aloud, but he knew there was only a curtain between him and the others, so he bit his lip and crushed the impulse before more escaped.

Thor was alone. It had always been Loki's place to stand beside him, defend him from what couldn't be thwarted by confident grins and being able to hit fairly hard. Loki was alone. It had always been Thor's place to stand beside him, defend him from what couldn't be thwarted by cleverness, magic, and ducking. They were two halves of a whole, and he'd never understood how vulnerable it made each of them.

He was sure something awful had happened by now. Thor was a hostage in the hands of an incompetently scheming lunatic. He'd still be a perfectly good hostage if he were damaged, as long as he was a bit more intact than not. Loki squeezed his eyes shut and ground his knuckles in to drive off the icy tears that threatened. If he could take his magic back, he'd make them all pay three times over for any mark they left on his brother.

When weariness finally overpowered him, it had none of the gentleness of falling asleep, just a curtain of blackness that flowed in all at once. His eyes opened to scuffling sounds some unknown while later, and he didn't feel as though he'd rested at all.

His section of room was being invaded. The two girls sneaking in around the hanging were still children and identical down to their curls, soft little features and gleaming red eyes making a fascinating contrast that he noticed even in his bleary state. They each carried a bundle and were giggling as girls on the cusp of adolescence did, deliberately to disconcert him (or so he'd always felt). "Hello?" he ventured.

They giggled again. Angrboda followed them after a moment. "Hyndla, Hyrrokkin, be nice. Up, little kit. And they don't speak anything but our own tongue, so don't bother." She bopped one of the girls lightly when she stuck out her tongue, but Angrboda's expression was fond. "The twins are here to help me make you halfway respectable."

Loki frowned a bit as he stood, rubbing at his temples. "What does that mean?"

"Good question. If you had enough hair I'd put you in a child's plait, and that might fool people at a distance. But you don't, so no use wishing."

"So I'm to be disguised actively, not just made less of a spectacle?" He nodded approvingly. "I suppose she must have said more than that she's looking for a runt in strange clothes."

Angrboda took the bundle from one of the girls and unrolled it to show him a dark length of very thin wool. Or something like wool. He doubted there were proper sheep to be found here. "Down to the silly looking ears, though that description wasn't in her own hand. She has more competent retainers."

Loki decided not to mind the comment about his ears. They did stick out a bit. It wasn't worth the disagreement. "I haven't seen anything like that worn."

"And you've made such a thorough survey?" She raised an eyebrow. He raised one back and she relented. "It's a fashion from further inland. You'll garner some attention, but hopefully the illusion should more than make up for it."

"And the illusion is?" Loki asked as he took the cloth from her. It didn't seem to quite constitute a garment any way he squinted at it.

"It's a woman's fashion," she said shortly. "The hair will still be odd, but I can dress it to make the length less notable."

She looked to be steeling herself for argument, but Loki just nodded. He saw the wisdom of it. They might be looking for a runt with his face, but they were looking for a boy. The lady's clothes would make their eyes slide off him. That left the question of why Angrboda thought anyone would buy it. "I think I may be lacking in certain endowments," he said evenly, glancing at the younger girls. They also wore nothing but jewelry from the waist up, though at their age there wasn't much to distinguish.

"That's why I'm not simply pinning up my clothes for you. This goes across the chest. Hyndla?" And she broke into a short speech in the Jotun tongue. One of the girls scurried over and raised her arms, and Angrboda set about demonstrating what seemed to him an unreasonable number of twists and loops that turned the irregular strip of cloth into something like an ordinary lady's gown for the summer. Loki didn't know very much about fashion, but his powers of observation hadn't abandoned him. The drapey shape would not only disguise his chest and hips but give him far more opportunities for concealment than the usual lady's garb he'd seen so far.

He suspected he'd make a very plain girl, but he did have fairly delicate features even by Asgardian standards, and the dress would probably do much of the work. "Now if I just keep my mouth shut?"

"Precisely. Now disrobe, and I'll show you how to get it on." She began to unwind her assistant, and Loki swallowed his objections. He wouldn't have been able to get it on alone. But even in the face of logic, he undressed as slowly as he could, setting his clothes in a neat pile. He'd never much cared about clothes, but each piece felt like a little bit of home. He folded his cloak and set his boots beside it, took as long as he could to unwind Thor's scarf, and did his best not to think about his all-female audience as he stripped to his smallclothes. At least Angrboda wasn't whispering. She did tell him to keep going, though, and he bit his lip. The embarrassment was mild and very silly, but he couldn't easily dismiss the sense of being so exposed. There was nothing between his hated new skin and the world, and even finding Angrboda and her companions fairly agreeable didn't lessen his hatred for his own nature.

"What's this?" He felt her approaching and turned just in time to see as she touched the chain around his neck and quickly pulled her hand back. "...Oh, you are in deep."

"Could you remove it?" he asked hopefully. She was trained in the more esoteric dwarven arts.

"Not me, or Durnir. It'd take a master to do without knowing the keys, and I was nowhere near when I had to leave the caverns before I was cooked." She smiled crookedly. "I can hide it, though. I don't rightly know what it is, to be sure, but I can keep it from glowing." She closed her eyes in concentration a moment and the chain faded to plain metal. "There."

"And you protest your own skill, lady?"

"If you want to know a secret, kit, we're all of us a bit of something extra, we broken and rejected. I suspect that's the real reason they get rid of us. You can reach into the cold already, I wager? And whatever got you collared like this was no little skill." She shook her head.

"Why kit?" Loki asked, a little unnerved by her moment of reflection. He didn't want his skill at magic to be attributable to his heritage, particularly that of his heritage that had made him worthless even to the monsters, and he already knew and hated his connection to the ice. Hopefully she was being more philosophical than exact.

"Because you put me in mind of a fox, and I'm sure you can see why." She frowned. "You're a mess. We'll need to put you in furs, too, I think."

She'd lost him again. He might have been more tired than he'd allowed for. "What do you mean?"

"You look like someone rolled you down a hill in a bag of rocks." She shrugged. "Not that bystanders would object much, but it's something for people to remember. That shoulder looks awful."

Loki looked down, feeling even more self-conscious over the injuries than the exposure. He hadn't thought of them much, but they marked every disaster since he and Thor had gone riding. He couldn't see much swelling or even discoloration, but Angrboda must have more experience sussing out the ordinary variations of blue and darker blue, contusions and ridges on stony skin. "Yes, well..."

"I'm not going to ask. Here, let's get you wrapped." She made short work of it, and Loki actually rather liked the result, almost as much as he liked her willingness not to pry. The cloth was soft and it was nice to be in something clean. "Stay still, now. Girls." Angrboda snapped her fingers and she and her assistants went to work.

Loki was young enough to get out of many state occasions, but ceremonies and special events still demanded his participation. Usually that meant silk and linen versions of his usual clothes with a bit of extra trim, then a helm and a few bits of armor that came out of the treasury, kept around for royal children too small to have had permanent pieces made. Preparing generally meant a bath first and having someone help him with the harder to reach buckles.

The three Jotun ladies, however, were completely content to use him as a doll, bedecking him in rosy gold and warm, bloody garnets, tying him into a pair of glittery sandals that laced to his knees, and dressing his hair with a net of silver studded with what turned out to be ice. It was, Loki supposed, merely another stone in a world where there was never anything warm.

Finally they were satisfied, and he felt ridiculous. He'd always worked hard not to be noticeable, and it was so very alien. Not even the queen wore so many baubles. "Why all of this? Surely you've better things to pour your resources into than expensive sparkles," he said a bit sourly as he plucked at a heavy band that covered most of his forearm, and quite uncomfortably. It limited his range of movement in a way he didn't like, but honestly he was just distressed by the unfamiliar sensation.

Angrboda raised an eyebrow at him. "I make it, remember? The cheaper pieces I haven't sold yet go to keep my charges looking presentable."

Apparently, "presentable" meant "overdressed for a high festival at the royal court" in this otherwise barren land. Loki decided not to argue. The jewels couldn't make his queasy discomfort very much worse, he reasoned, for all he was achingly aware of all the metal. "Well, you have me dressed. Where to now?"

"To give you a look at our lordholder's castle. There are ways in, some riskier than others, and I'd rather you have a sense of which way we're going while I decide what can be done with what we have."

"And what do we have?" He couldn't help sounding a bit hopeful. Maybe she had reserves, favors or magics or even just interesting weapons.

"Me, you, Durnir should we take certain routes, a possible bribe or two, and several pointed sticks."

"It's possible that I hate you."

"Dear kit, I'd have it no other way." She passed nodded to the little girls, who scampered away. "Follow me."

He was in disguise and they were undertaking reconnaissance. He wanted at least a little more information than he had. He wondered if she was absentminded, wanted the fun of having him ask, or possibly even trusted him to figure it out, and decided the second option was most likely. "What's the plan?"

"We're going peddling." When he followed her past one particular wall of draped cloth (he had no sense of direction underground, he was finding), she passed him a basket laden with rather crudely carved crystals in the shapes of animals and flowers. "The best view from the civilian side of the castle is through the market. It's daylight, and the precise way to attract attention is to behave like you don't want any." He saw the wisdom in that. He'd used similar tactics himself. "It's true that officially we're only allowed to work the brothel, but a couple of flimsy little urchins like us selling rubbish aren't worth the trouble, and in daylight even the guard won't usually harass us. It doesn't comport with the way people like to think of themselves, watching hulking brutes with spears harassing delicate little girls, even misbegotten and accursed girls." She wore a smile that Loki found a bit alarming as he continued to trail after. "Though they will assume we're whores without a madame."

"Splendid."

"Just try not to look as though you've been hit by a fish if it comes up. If you'd been here any length of time you'd be used to it." She opened the door out into a tunnel. Loki had no idea if it was the tunnel they'd come in by last night. "If you have someone less wretched than Harthgrepa looking out for you, it really is the safest thing to do. I can send you inland once this is over if you like. Gryla doesn't start anyone until they've rather more years on them than you, and it'd be no difference between being a servant there and any other place of business."

He swallowed. "Thank you for the thought."

"Well, what do you plan to do when this is over and you've recovered this prisoner of yours? You don't seem inclined to join my irregulars."

Loki stopped dead for a brief moment, then forced himself to catch up. She'd had to put the idea in his head. He could never stop thinking, a curse as much as a gift. After? "I'll have to work it out then. I haven't the least energy to spare from the task at hand."

"And you're really not going to tell me what's important about this hostage of yours? No? It's alright. I can still work with that." They reached a door that rattled in the cold wind from outside. "But you wouldn't be the first one I've had who thought they might have a home to go back to, and not one of them has been right yet."

Strangely enough, he didn't feel a thing at that. Maybe he finally had frozen for good. "That much, Milady, I do know."

"Good." She threw open the door and they stepped into the light.

It was cold in a shuddering, unreal way that Loki had nonetheless learned to ignore, but there was enough of a crowd that navigating was difficult. He was engrossed by keeping up with Angrboda's long strides in the press of people and the odd flow of traffic was a trial, and Loki noted with something like satisfaction that she wasn't a perfect actress. She might be a small, meandering creature a step up from a beggar in this role, but her walk was confident and strong, her bearing a little too straight and proud. He was far more satisfied with his own performance.

There were very clear requirements, and from those he took his cues. He had to stick close and look overwhelmed and frightened so that she could handle it if anyone spoke to them in a tongue he didn't know, and he had to keep his head down and his mouth shut so his voice and manner wouldn't give him away. It wasn't long before he understood the girl he was supposed to be. He was always rather a method actor. They'd only been out a matter of minutes by the time he'd chosen a name and composed a history, believed in the creature he wanted the world to see, and that meant everyone else would believe in her, too.

Loki had spent his life wearing masks, and it was a small thing to try to go deeper into an unknown role. He sold a little rock crystal creature to a woman in a red skirt and a hundred tiny rubies. He dodged a cart pulled by an immense, shaggy cow, snatching his dress away from the dirty snow tossed his way. He pretended to be very interested in a shop window when a pair of men across the street shouted things he didn't need to know the language to understand while his taller, braver companion grumbled.

He became part of the city, part of the ice. It was just like freezing on the inside. He had no choice about being a simpering, skittish orphan who belonged here until the rescue was complete, and so he poured himself into it entirely.

And if that meant he was too cold and too deeply buried to think of what would happen after he had Thor back, that was just as it should be.