“I have a toast,” I said, pulling out a tattered paperback from my pocket. “It’s from an old Viking poem, from a place like Nordland. I think it’s about the promise of justice.” I cleared my throat and read from the page words that had haunted me since I first saw them. I know a hall whose doors face North on the Strand of Corpses far from the sun. Poison drips from lights in the roof; that building is woven of backs of snakes. There heavy streams must be waded through by breakers of pledges and murderers.” I set down the book, the three Vikings with swords drawn still marching in the same
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