He was just holding it, sitting on the floor beside a blanket-covered lump that I assumed was his brother. He looked at me. And then he held out the bowl, in both hands because it wasn’t actually a bowl. It was a kitchen sink one of the neighbors had thrown out, and that he’d found and bunged up and used for things like eating three boxes of cereal for breakfast.
Or a whole lotta rancid potatoes.
“He don’t eat,” Sven said, looking worried. Because that was not a normal thing among trolls.
“Just leave it there,” I told him, and he nodded and put the sink down.
Sven levered himself up and, despite his size, managed to negotiate the minefield on the stairs better than me. It reminded me of the big guy at the fights; so graceful despite his size. I stared after him for a moment, with something rattling around my brain, something that felt important. . . .
But then it went away, and I sat down by the lump.
It was a little ripe in here, smelling like a combo of swamp gas and troll ass, and making me curse dhampir noses. But there was no point trying to hurry this. Trolls did not hurry. They considered it undignified, unless it was children gamboling around or in battle. Otherwise, they had an odd sort of gravitas about them, a natural poise you wouldn’t expect—or at least I hadn’t, until Olga taught me that grace transcended species.
I waited.
It was peaceful down here if you ignored the smell, and dim even with a lantern. There were some narrow windows up near the ceiling, but they’d recently been covered with black paint. I dragged the lantern closer, and Ymsi turned over, the light glimmering in his tiny eyes.
“Did I disturb you?” I asked, wondering if I should put it back.
He shook his head.
We sat there some more.
Despite appearances, trolls could be very restful people to be around. Unlike the Light Fey, who reminded me of jagged bolts of lightning, or hyped-up teenagers, always ready for a fight or an adventure, trolls had a natural peacefulness about them. Like the mountains and trees and deep, quiet fjords they were named after, they didn’t seem to need to prove something to the world to justify their existence. They could just be.
I leaned back against the basement wall, and slowly felt the anger, confusion, and worry still knotting my gut start to ease away. Cool darkness wrapped around me, a gentle sort of fuzziness pervaded my body, and my feverish thoughts slowed down, down, down. I took a deep breath, and let it out, suddenly feeling calmer.
It was nice.
A large finger emerged from the blankets, and pushed the heavy vat of potatoes and slime my way.
“Thanks, but I just ate,” I said.
Ymsi frowned, probably not seeing what that had to do with anything.
“We humans have tiny little stomachs.” I pulled up my sweatshirt and showed him. He regarded it sadly. “And mine’s full. Otherwise, I’d be all over that,” I said, which seemed to mollify him somewhat.
“You should eat, though,” I told him.
He shook his head. I noticed that his eyes glimmered a little more than usual, although maybe that was a trick of the light. Sure, Dory, and the light is dribbling down his face, too.
Goddamn, I wished we’d caught whatever attacked him! I wanted to do evil things. But that required finding it first.
“I know this is a bad time,” I said. “But I have some questions. Can you answer some questions?”
Ymsi blinked at me, looking surprised. Like he’d expected the usual “it’s not your fault, you shouldn’t blame yourself” stuff he’d probably heard a dozen times by now. Which was true, but not helpful, because of course he blamed himself. He’d stabbed a kid. And the fact that he hadn’t wanted to, and that the kid might pull through anyway, wasn’t really the point, was it?
“I’m going to find whatever was here last night, and I’m going to kill it,” I told him. “But it would be easier if I had some more info to go on. If you remember anything?”
Ymsi regarded me silently for a moment. I looked placidly back. Troll brains took their time, but that didn’t mean they were stupid. Ymsi, for example, could tell you everything about every flower in the garden: which needed sun and which did better in shade, which made the prettiest flower and which smelled the best, which responded to what kind of fertilizer, or needed what kind of soil, acidic or sweet. The guy was a walking compendium of knowledge about his favorite subject, like a human kid knowing all the stats on his favorite sports team, even though he’d just failed algebra.
People are smart when they want to be, and I thought maybe Ymsi wanted to be right now.
“Woman,” he finally said, in a low rumble.
“It was a woman who attacked you?”
Again, I got a surprised look, although this time, I wasn’t sure why.