Saraid escorted him back into the mortal realm. Adam felt the weight of years slam down on his shoulders again, and he grimaced as back, hips, and knees all renewed their usual litany of complaints. Within hours, he’d tracked down the Calix Café, and found that the assassin fit every particular that the Guardian had described. That one was for free, Adam thought. I bet he won’t disclose anything else, his words about paradox be damned. Though . . . when has a Veil spirit ever talked about paradox before? Most of them seem unconcerned with such things.
In November, Maccis returned to Jerusalem from Tyre, where he’d helped repel another Roman landing attempt. Zaya decided to throw a welcome-home party for him, and asked her mother for a larger space in the family mansion; their tiny apartment couldn’t accommodate her guests. With rationing in full swing, and shortages of almost everything, conspicuous consumption wasn’t possible, but there was beer and wine available, and bread, cheese, and beef sausage. Her classmates were all in the Thaumaturgy department, and her colleagues from the Archives were all researchers in their forties, not battle-sorcerers. Solinus and Masako were there, too, which meant that Maccis spent most of the evening with them, avoiding Zaya’s associates.
It wasn’t that any of them were disrespectful. There just was a huge gap in experiences and opinions, at the moment. One couldn’t be alive these days, and not have an opinion on the war. And because her friends were university students, they felt free to take extreme positions, and argue about them, heatedly. “We should never have rebelled against Rome—”
“Rome is a parasite at best, a tick, swollen with blood. We should attack Rome directly. Judea has plenty of jets and missiles. Take the fight to them!” The young man speaking gestured expansively. He’d clearly taken the position before, and would again.
Solinus, currently a member of Caesarion’s Praetorian Guard, turned and stared at the young man, which didn’t appear to make any impression. The wine had been good, after all.
“You’re not listening.” The other young mage in the discussion sniffed. “I’m saying that, unified, the Roman Empire was strong enough to keep Persia and the Mongols at bay for centuries. Now, what do we have to show for rebelling? Rome’s attacking us. Persia’s holding off for the moment, but I’m sure they’ll turn on us, sooner or later. Our best bet is to make peace with Rome.” He held up his hands at the rest of his audience, placatingly. There was a chorus of agreement and disagreement, people on both sides starting quiet-voiced quarrels.
“It’s about Caesarion wanting the throne. Our young people shouldn’t die for a man’s pride—”
“Excuse me,” Solinus intervened, quietly. “I don’t recognize you from the guest list at the governor’s mansion at the last few social events. How do you know the governor, that you’re such an expert on him?”
“Well, I read the newspaper. It’s perfectly obvious that he wants the throne for himself.” A frown. “How were you at any of the governor’s parties?”
“Masako and I work for him, directly. We spend more time with him than he gets to spend with his wife, unfortunately. Believe me when I tell you that for a patrician, he doesn’t have much pride. Mostly, he’s tired, he’s watched his father die and all the work of the generations before him come crashing down, and he’d like to see it stop.” Solinus’ smile was genial over his glass, as the young man’s face drained of expression in front of him.
In the background, other mutters, undeterred by Solinus’ quiet words. “No, it’s all about money, mark my words—”
“Harah! It has nothing to do with money. This is about gods, and the imposition of the goals of foreign gods on Judea. We’re dancing at the whim of the priests of the Valhallan gods, and the priests of the Roman ones. Every last one of them should be exiled.
“—Maccis, you must have an opinion on this! What do you think?” That, from one of Zaya’s classmates, evidently trying to include him in what was a favorite topic of discussion.
Maccis, though the titular guest of honor at this event, had been silently edging towards the glass doors that led out to a balcony. Caught by the direct question, and everyone in the room staring at him, Maccis stayed blank-faced. “I’m a landsknechten. Technically, I fight for the person who pays me. At the moment, Judea and the Eastern Alliance are paying.”
“Oh, come on! You’d fight for Rome, then, if they paid you?”
“Technically, Rome did pay Vidarr’s Lindworms, through the JDF, for years.” He looked for a place to set his wineglass down. He was twenty. Zaya’s friends were twenty. But they had no idea how lucky they were, to live in a place where the lamps turned on when a switch was flicked, where food was warm, and hadn’t come out of a box of Roman surplus dehydrated rations that was probably twenty years old. Or that they hadn’t had to kill, themselves, and eat, raw and bloody, gulped down in pure need, and with the fear of being caught by the enemy.
He couldn’t blame them for living where it was safe and comfortable. He couldn’t blame them for having opinions; there were shortages and rationing for everyone. And their homes were in danger of attack, if soldiers like him failed. But on the other hand . . . half their opinions seemed to be based on the need to impress the people around them. The body-language and the way their eyes cut towards different people as they spoke, told the tale. The loud opinions were a way of showing who belonged to which clique. Now, more objections rose into the air. Maccis shook his head in irritation. “It’s fascinating that you all seem to think that we live in a democracy.”
That got mouths to shut, fast. Maccis looked straight ahead, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “The Hellenes, Goths, and even we Gauls have this concept of the rights of man, but Judea’s a theocracy with a thin republican patina. The Empire has imprisoned people for sedition—last week, actually—and Julianus is having anyone convicted of sedition put to death.”
“If the news is to be believed,” someone muttered, uneasily.
“No reason not to believe it,” Maccis returned, tersely. “My point is, I’m a Pict. I believe in free speech. But part of being free to choose, involves being free to choose not to do something. And in this case? You’re asking me if watching people around me die while defending refugees from grendel attacks in Germania was about money.” He paused. “You’re asking me if protecting Gauls against sacrifice raids along the Nahautl border was about a man’s pride. You’re asking me if defending Tyre and Judea against Roman invasion was about foreign gods.” Maccis knew that in spite of his best efforts, he was staring down each of them in turn. After a pause in which he struggled not to voice the words, You are too stupid to live, he said, “I’m going to exercise my right not to talk now.” He opened the glass doors beside him, and stepped outside for a breath of chill air.
Solinus followed him, a few minutes later. “You came down a little hard on them.”
“Could have been worse. Could have told them that they’re the most self-righteous, self-important little pricks I’ve ever met in my life.” Maccis put his hands on the balcony railing, looking off into the darkness. “That would probably make Zee unhappy with me, though.”
Solinus snorted, and Maccis looked back at his older brother. “They’ll grow up when they get out into the real world,” Sol assured him. “Some of them will hang onto their opinions. Some of them will be quieter about it. Posturing is for people with something to prove, anyway.”
“I try to remind myself of that. I was probably just guilty of it, though.” Maccis shook his head in annoyance, mostly with himself. Partially with Zaya. “I wish Zee wouldn’t do this to me.”
“She wants to show you off to her friends. Otherwise, they’ll think you’re a myth.”
“I would prefer to remain that.” Maccis shook his head. Being dropped into a large gathering of complete strangers, when he was just two days back from being hip-deep in mud and blood was setting up a fearsome amount of cognitive dissonance. “Until any of them actually gets out on the line as a battle-mage, they don’t need to know
me, or that I specialize in killing mages.”
“Kind of young to be a cynic, aren’t you?” Sol’s words sounded idle, but he was probing.
Maccis shrugged. “It’s the truth,” he told Solinus. “There’s been war around us since I was a child. The only difference these days is the proximity and the pervasiveness.” And we’re losing.
Solinus nodded, slowly. “I keep thinking about getting back out on the line,” he admitted. “I keep feeling . . . like I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”
“We could use you.” Maccis paused. “Dreams, still?” He averaged one of the peculiarly vivid visions a week, still.
Solinus grimaced, putting his hands on the railing. “Yes. I take some comfort from the fact that the dreams never show me the future, really. It’s like I’m seeing current events, as they unfold, but from a skewed angle. Last night . . . well, I dreamed I was in the barracks with you and Rig. Helping groom the lindworms. And a news report came on, saying that Caesarion was in critical condition at the hospital after an assassination attempt.” Solinus’ lips thinned. “That’s letting me keep the whole feeling of being in the wrong place in perspective.” He paused, and his voice shifted. “Which reminds me. I want you to submit to an evaluation by the Praetorians. We need more lictors.”
Maccis blinked. “I’m too young,” he said, immediately. “I’m twenty. Even Da was what, twenty-six when he became a Praetorian?”
“Uncle Adam was twenty-two when he was recruited. Four years of special forces work behind him. You’ve got three already. You started younger than he did.” Solinus’ tone was unruffled. “And as he likes to point out, special forces people tend to burn out very fast.”
“Uncle Adam was talking about humans,” Maccis pointed out, looking up at the sky. “Reflexes and endurance just aren’t as good for human in their thirties. They compensate with experience, of course.” He glanced at his brother. “We don’t wear out like that, Sol. We just . . . keep going.” He paused. “Like Aunt Sig likes to say, god-born don’t retire.” We just die.
Eventually, he went back in and endured Erida’s lecture for his lack of sociability. And Zaya asked him before bed, with moderately justifiable ire, “Why do you always have to run down my friends?”
Maccis looked for an escape route. “How about in the future, you introduce me to them one at a time, so that they don’t have to posture to impress each other?” he suggested. Solutions were better than recriminations. “The archivists and researchers were all right. They at least had real stuff to talk about.” Maccis traced her fingers with the tips of his. “Your classmates, though . . . lots of growling and trying to look bigger than they are.” He shrugged.
Zaya’s expression faltered for a moment. “You mean they’re trying to establish territory?”
“Not territory. Dominance.” His lips curled down at the corners. “I could play dominance games all day long, if I felt like it. Which I don’t.” He couldn’t tell her about the Roman technomancers last week, who’d been trying to sneak down from a concealed landing area to the north of Tyre. He couldn’t tell her how he’d crept up on them with the other fenris. Couldn’t tell her that one of them had been trying to gasp out a spell as his teeth had crushed the man’s throat. Couldn’t tell her that he’d followed the body to the ground, shaking it a little to make sure the man was dead.
He couldn’t tell her any of this, but he knew it had to be in his eyes. I’ve killed people who are better than they are. More experienced than they are. And they sit in your mother’s house and chatter about what they think we should do.
Zaya spluttered. “Maccis, I don’t think they’re trying to express dominance over you—”
“No? Getting me to take a side between them? If I agree with any one of them, I reinforce their opinion. And then they’d count it as if I’d tucked my tail and fall in behind one of them. It’s social politics, Zaya. I could play, but I won’t. They’re not my pack.”
Zaya exhaled, clearly holding her temper in check. “Your pack is whoever you chose it to be. You’re deliberately distancing yourself from my friends.”
“Ah. So if I dislike your friends, I must be criticizing you.” Maccis regarded her steadily.
Zaya threw her hands in the air. “You’re impossible!”
“Zee, if that’s not it, then you’re going to have to tell me what you’re actually angry about.”
Zaya flung herself down onto one of the chairs by their tiny dining table, which doubled as her desk. “You . . . you’re acting defensive around them. Which I put down to the fact that you’re not in college, and you’re . . . maybe a little jealous of them.” She looked away.
Maccis’ eyes narrowed. The words hurt. “In an ideal world, I’d have been studying physics and engineering, yes. Your friends still think that this is an ideal world, Zee. They’re children. And unless someone actually is a child? I don’t have time to play games with them.”
Zaya stared at him. “So you think I’m a child, too, then?” And as Maccis shook his head silently, she glowered. “But you said my friends were. Doesn’t that make me—”
“No. It means you have no one better to talk to.” Maccis was doing his best not to shout. Shouting meant you’d already lost the fight. “And for that, I’m sorry. I’d introduce you to my coworkers, but . . .” His lips quirked without humor, “They’re mostly fenris, jotun, lindworms, and lindworm riders.”
“And you think I’d bore them?” Another defiant snap.
“No. I think you’d be bored by what we talk about.” He looked up at her outraged snort. “Recollections of one battle or another. Who got hurt. Who saved each other’s asses. Which jotun’s off for a month, having to grow a new foot because he couldn’t find his old one in a ditch full of muddy water, so a doctor could reattach it for him.” He heard her choke down a gag, but couldn’t stop the words now. “Shitty food. Short rations. The fenris and the lindworms are getting hit the worst . . . they need meat, and that’s in short supply. Who’s hoarding a stash of flea shampoo. Whose wife or husband sent a divorce decree this week. That’s what we talk about, Zee. It’s dull. It’s horrible. And I don’t want to have to talk about it here, or think about it, or have to justify to morons why it’s going on, when I have to fucking live it every day I’m not here.” His voice had gotten louder, and Maccis swore, turned away, and took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. Zee did not deserve that. And when he looked back at her, her anger had died, and there were tears in her dark eyes.
“It’s . . . it’s that bad?” she asked.
Maccis closed his eyes. It’s worse. I don’t want to talk about it. Can we talk about anything else? He sighed. “How about if we watch the news, and then go to bed like old married people?”
Of course, there was a late-breaking story when they turned on the far-viewer. Zaya burrowed into his side for warmth as they listened. “Satellite news coverage from Delhi and Bombay today abruptly terminated after an earthquake centered between the two cities. The quake measured nearly 9.5 on the Rihtære scale, and was not centered on a known fault. News coverage picked up again about two hours later, with a station broadcasting from Hyderabad. They were able to send helicopters to Delhi to get footage of the damage. Few buildings are currently standing.” The Judean anchorwoman shook her head, her expression grim. The footage showed an all-too-familiar scene, with a few survivors wandering around, their expressions dazed and lost, clinging to a tattered possession or two, as they scrambled over what had once been buildings. The camera focused, just for a moment, on a limp hand, protruding from a crevice where a wall had fallen. “When questioned, one of the survivors said, ‘It is the end of all things. Vishnu has fallen. It is the end.’” The anchorwoman rustled her notes. “Within hours, violent aftershocks rocked the subcontinent, and there are reports that the creatures known as ‘mad godlings’ are swarming the area—”
“Of course they are,” Maccis said, leaning his head back against his pillow. “All that ambient energ
y, just waiting to be eaten. All the remaining Indian gods, running there for a last stand.”
“Well, what else should they do?” Zaya asked. “Hide in the Veil and leave humanity to rot?”
“Of course not,” Maccis told her. “If we die, at least we’ll all die together.”
Zaya went still as he continued to rub her neck, gently. “You . . . don’t see any hope, do you?”
Maccis considered lying. But in the end, this was Zaya. She deserved the truth. “I’m sorry. I wish I did, Zee. But I don’t.”
Patching this set of ruined ley-lines involved a delicate balancing act between the danger of the mad gods in the area, the potential to affront the remaining local gods, and Trennus’ availability; his winter stint in the Veil was coming up soon. But with no choice in the matter, he and Hecate departed for India on December fourteenth, a week before the solstice, and Trennus shuddered at the devastation there. Delhi hadn’t been a wealthy city to begin with, and the collapsed buildings were now filled with the stench of death and the skittering movements of ghul, most of which were digging up corpses to eat.
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