“Yes. I swear it.”
Lassair said, quietly, twisting around on the couch to stare at Sophia, I have no objections, then. But know this, Watcher, cracked mirror that you are, that if you deceive us in any way, your sister will have to race me for your head. And I will not be gentle or quick with you, as she would be, for that she loves you.
Sigrun raised her head, and met Lassair’s ruby gaze. Remembered the blood dripping from the spirit’s lovely mouth in Tawantinsuyu. And I would not bar your steps, Sigrun told her, silently.
I know you would not, Stormborn.
“Thank you,” Sophia told them, as, with varying degrees of unease, the assorted parents agreed to introduce her to their children, and entrust them to her care. “Thank you for trusting me.”
The problem, Sigrun thought, staring at the back of her sister’s head, is that I don’t. I’m going to ask Trennus to set spirits to watching the children. Not that he won’t, already.
Minori stared at her, once Sophia had been introduced to the children, and allowed into the back room of the apartment where they were all playing. “She’s insane,” Minori hissed. “The end of the world? Dead bodies everywhere?”
“I know,” Sigrun replied, swallowing. “And yet, she’s been right about so many things over the years. That sometimes . . . I wonder.”
Minori looked up at her. “You wonder if it’s true?”
Sigrun found a patch of carpet to stare at. “I wonder if there’s any hope that she’s wrong,” she admitted, quietly, and got on with the work. The future wouldn’t get here any faster or slower for her not doing what needed to be done.
Aprilis 18, 1970 AC
Two bear-warriors had indeed arrived from the Odinhall, and the investigation was now in full swing. Adam had been relieved to realize that he recognized both, and both were old acquaintances of Sigrun. Introductions went around, and wrist-clasps were exchanged. Brandr Ilfetu had been one of Sigrun’s teachers in her years in Burgundoi. The bear warrior stood a full seven and a half feet in height, and was broad to match. Erikir Gifol, one of Sigrun’s former classmates, was only a few inches shorter. Brandr, Sigrun had explained, was god-born of Thor, while Erikir was god-born of Freyr. Adam wasn’t clear on what that meant, other than that one carried a hammer, and the other a sword, and both chuckled when he asked them if either had any firearms experience. “Not me, I’m afraid,” Brandr replied, with good humor, flicking his braid back over his shoulder. “If I need to hit something from a distance, I throw my hammer. But Erikir here can manage to shoot things from a greater distance, if there’s a need.”
“I wouldn’t call it shooting,” the younger, blonder man replied, and rubbed at his red-tinged beard. “It’s just the light of the sun. I can direct it from my sword.” He shrugged.
Adam winced, remembering the solar prominences that Inti had used to fight Supay. Remembered the new star burning so briefly in the heavens. “Like the lasers I’ve been reading about?” he asked, putting the images out of his head.
Erikir looked up and grinned. “The ones collected and refracted through corundum lenses?”
Adam blinked. That, he hadn’t expected, and suddenly, the prospect of two huge men who might not be able to control themselves in battle suddenly didn’t seem quite as daunting or unwelcome. “Precisely. They’re using them for surgical purposes currently in Judea, but there’s talk of trying to make them powerful enough to use as weapons.”
“I don’t see it happening,” Kanmi said, coming into the room, his eyebrows up. “You’d lose more energy than what you’re trying to focus and put out—”
“Can we wait on the discussion of engineering marvels a bit?” Brandr asked, patiently. “You all will have much to speak about, I’m sure. But for the moment . . . we have to decide what we’re doing first. I have the location of Reginleif’s home. And you, Sigrun . . .you said that you’d been in touch with Fritti in recent years?”
Sigrun, naturally enough, accepted the two men without hesitation, but Adam wasn’t entirely comfortable with them yet. He didn’t know how they’d fit, or if they’d respond well to orders from mere mortals. And while he thought Trennus would react well to them, Kanmi didn’t take orders well from people he didn’t know. They’d worked with hundreds of other Praetorians over the years, but the bear-warriors were . . . unknowns.
With these concerns marshalling in his head, they moved into the living room, which had been converted into a war room, of sorts. They’d tacked up a map of the world on a wall, covering several of Sigrun’s treasured prints of cities they’d visited, and Sigrun moved to that map now, as the others settled into the various chairs. She now tapped on Caesaria Aquilonis as she began. “Fritti’s first letters to me, were all from her home in Marcomanni,” she said, touching the map to the south of Lake Erielhonan, where the city-state wrapped around what was labeled, in Latin letters, as the Ohio Flumenis, or river. Even after all these years, Adam found the patchwork of languages on the map of Caesaria Aquilonis fascinating.
“Next,” Sigrun said, picking up a stack of old envelopes, “I have postmarks from Burgundoi,” a tap on the west coast, “Ponca, when she went to visit the people of the Morning Star again . . . .”
“Brave girl,” Erikir said, approvingly. “Doesn’t let her fears rule her.”
“She attributed that visit to the prompting of her mentor,” Sigrun said, her tone brittle, and Erikir’s heavy eyebrows rose for a moment.
“Now why would Loki—if it was Loki—want her to go meet with the people who previously took her captive?” Brandr muttered, and rubbed at his face.
Sigrun shrugged, and continued, putting letters and envelopes down on the table, “Novo Trier, and then a postmark from an Iroquois city nearby . . . another one from the Bláthach peninsula, down in Novo Gaul . . . “ she tapped on the panhandle in the southeast corner of Caesaria Aquilonis. “Back up to Cimbri, my hometown.” A solid tap, beside Lake Caestus. “After 1964, never the same place twice, but from that point on? Exclusively the small, native-population kingdoms, or Novo Gaul. One from Nahautl.” She tossed the stack down. “And the most recent one, from six months ago, Divodurum. Here, on the Gulf of Nahautl. Hot. Swampy. Gallic.”
Trennus grimaced. “It’s a good place to hide, if you want to hide,” he acknowledged. “It’s a port city. Many people, of many different nations. She speaks Gallic?”
“A little. Only the Aquilonian dialects, though.”
“They do tend to sound a little odd compared to Pictish, Lutetian, Iberian, and the rest,” Trennus acknowledged. “I would think we could call the local gardia and have them check to see if she’s still living at that address.”
“Gardia might scare her off,” Adam interposed. “She’s somehow concealed from the very gods she’s . . . bound to, and she’s avoiding her own people. For some reason, Fritti is hiding.” It bothered him. They’d saved her. He knew it was irrational, but people should . . . stay saved. No one ever promised you a happy ending, he told himself. The thought gave him a chill.
Brandr nodded, soberly. The chair the bear-warrior perched on so carefully came from their dining room set, and seemed ready to collapse under his weight, creaking alarmingly every time he moved. “I can call the Odinhall, and have someone go there to check. One of our people.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Kanmi said, nodding. “Your gods can’t see her. What makes you think that you can?” The words and the tone were a gibe, and Brandr looked calmly at Kanmi, without changing expression, and then lowered his head. Adam wondered if the sheer size of the bear-warriors irked Kanmi, on some subconscious level.
“What did she say in her last letter?” Adam asked Sigrun, trying to move them onwards.
“Not much,” Sigrun admitted. “I’d asked her why she moved so often, and she said that when she was younger, it was because she wanted to see how different cultures lived, and try to understand them properly. When she was twenty, she visited the Oraibi, a Hopi city, so that she could go back to Ponca and talk to
the people there about a subject kingdom that holds to traditional ways and new ways at the same time. She said if she wanted to talk, she might as well know what she’s talking about.” Sigrun shrugged. “She added that now, she keeps moving, because she doesn’t like the way the neighbors gossip, wherever she goes.” Sigrun frowned. “I told her that was just part of being god-born, and if she didn’t like it, she could move to Burgundoi. Everyone there is used to seeing god-born.” She shook her head. “Fritti also talked about the educational system in Divodurum. That wasn’t unusual for her. One of her abiding interests has been in how to educate without forcing assimilation to Roman culture. But she did note that she . . .” Sigrun frowned again, and pulled the letter out of the stack. “Here it is. No matter where you go, however, pedagogues are needed to train young god-born, and they’re always expensive.” She shrugged. “It was an odd comment.”
“It’s a starting point,” Brandr acknowledged. He looked around at the others. “I don’t want to stir up any feelings of territoriality. You’re all very used to working with each other. So, please take everything I say as a recommendation, or a suggestion, not an order or a directive, eh?” He waited for them all to nod, and went on, “My recommendation is that, if we can’t send in gardia or Odinhall people, that we split up, and half of us go to Fritti’s last known address . . . and the other half of us canvass Reginleif’s home in Germania. Lipsk, she lived in, most of the time, anyway. Right up against the border with Polania.”
Adam nodded. It made solid good sense. “Fritti would definitely recognize Sig,” he said, and flipped the tail of his hair back behind his shoulders again. “I’m a little older than the last time she saw me, but I don’t think I’ve changed that much.” And she probably won’t run on seeing either of us, he didn’t need to add out loud.
Brandr nodded. “Was going to recommend that myself. You two, me, and whoever else you want along . . . maybe Matrugena, since he speaks the language. And Erikir and the rest of you go to Germania, and see what you can find in Reginleif’s house?”
Erikir grimaced, four long, curving scars on his face pulling his cheek oddly as he did so. “You’ve known Reginleif a very long time, Brandr.”
“I met her in 1906, when I was sixteen and first went to the Odinhall.” Brandr shrugged, his face expressionless. “So yes, sixty-four years. She taught me. I’ve instructed students beside her.”
Adam stared at the man. Sigrun tended to avoid the subject of her age, but Brandr . . . Brandr was at least eighty years old, if Adam’s mental math was correct. And looked no more than twenty-four, at the most, though his age was difficult to gauge under the heavy beard and the scars.
“You should go with that team,” Erikir told him. “You know her better than anyone else.”
“That’s probably why I shouldn’t go with the team,” Brandr corrected him, before anyone else could speak. “I’m going to see that house with the eyes of a friend.”
“And I won’t? She was my teacher, too. I can’t imagine her doing anything to hurt one of her students.” Erikir looked at Sigrun, his expression sympathetic, even as Sigrun’s face tautened again. “Go, Brandr. You know her better. You can help fill in the gaps in any narratives. I’ll help search for Frittigil.”
Brandr grimaced. “That girl was supposed to be my responsibility. And I still have perfectly clear memories of teaching her, damn it. Even Thor and Tyr couldn’t recover from my mind what I was actually doing for those two years.” The bear-warrior’s massive shoulders shifted, and his expression turned uneasy. “I’m hoping I was just stashed under the roots of a damned tree instead of turned into a horse. Or put in some mental health ward, mumbling into my beard the whole time.”
Adam gave the man an uneasy look, but Kanmi beat him to the words. “So, you think that your gods can tell if you’re the real Brandr Ilfetu?” the Carthaginian asked, sharply, his eyes narrow. “Or are you some other illusion?”
“Esh!” Sigrun’s voice was sharp, but Brandr raised his hand, stopping her.
“To be perfectly honest,” Brandr told the technomancer, slowly, “There are days when I wonder if I am who I think I am. Or if I’ve been made to think that. Or if this is all a dream. Even you.” He grinned, a little lopsidedly. “Of course, that’s a line of thinking that’s like to drive me mad if I pursue it.”
Trennus studied him. “So how do you deal with it?”
Brandr’s jaw worked. “For the past weeks? By thinking about it as little as possible, and looking for clues that might tell me that it’s an illusion. Regin always said that a human’s illusions will be far less detailed than a god’s. Now, this could all be in my head, and the work of a god. If it is, it’s best to act as if everything is real. If I’ve gone completely mad, and I’m in an asylum somewhere, drooling on myself, again, there’s nothing to be done but act as if it’s real.” Brandr shrugged. “Either way, I’ll never know the difference, until I do.”
In spite of himself, Adam chuckled. “That’s perhaps the calmest reaction I can imagine to all this,” he admitted.
“I had Thor and Tyr peeling back layers of my mind for over an hour. Or at least, I think they did. I’m going to trust that that happened, and that they didn’t find anything amiss. Until proven otherwise.”
“But I take it there would be no way to tell if either you or Erikir were Loki in disguise?” Adam asked, carefully.
There was an uneasy silence, until Sigrun shook her head and replied, “His spells and illusions are well-enough crafted to fool Freya. No. There’s no way we’d know.” She glanced around. “And paranoia will cripple us, if we let it.”
“So we don’t let it,” Erikir told her, smiling. In spite of his reservations, Adam liked the two bear-warriors. Erikir had the same warmth of disposition as Lassair, without the spirit’s effusiveness. He was kind, and clearly harbored deep friendship for Sigrun. Brandr had amazing equanimity, in spite of what had to have been an enormous shock to his perception of the world, his own memories made suspect. “Brandr, I’m serious. Go with them. For all you know, you could wind up looking for the wrong face when you’re searching for Fritti. The memories you have are suspect, and you might inadvertently start behaving as if you had taught her for two years . . . only to have her take that amiss from a complete stranger.”
Brandr gave Erikir a level glance, and sighed. “I hate it when you young folks have such good points.” He turned back to the others, rubbing at his face. “Keep in mind,” he said, briskly, “Reginleif could be missing . . . legitimately. She could have been kidnapped. Taken. And then again, perhaps she, too, is in hiding, as Fritti seems to be. On top of all of which is the fact that Regin is a master illusionist. She’s the strongest god-born of Loki in centuries. She could well be in that house, and we might never even see her.
It will be interesting, Lassair said, stretching a little, to see if she can deceive both my spirit-eyes and my physical ones.
Erikir grimaced. “She did a good enough job on Sigrun’s petition that she fooled Dvalin. Dvalin is a master of runes and lore. He’s not easily fooled in his own domain, Mistress Asha.”
Kanmi shrugged. “Just glad you’re coming along, Asha.” He grimaced. “That translation thing you do will come in handy, if she’s left any documents in the house.”
Alas, no. I . . . do not read. Lassair sounded embarrassed.
Trennus’ head snapped up. “I thought you did!”
I read through your mind when you look at the words on the page. The symbols have little meaning for me, except when they are Names. And when I translate, I pull the meaning of the words from the ambient thoughts of the person speaking.
Kanmi swore, and Brandr grimaced. “Guess you’re stuck with my translations, Carthaginian,” he said. “Which of course, you might suspect, and rightly so.”
Trennus shook his head. “I speak and read Gothic,” he noted. “I can hack my way through journal articles in it, anyway. I’ll go with the rest of you. Best that Asha and I stay t
ogether, anyway. I don’t like being across an ocean from her.”
Adam knew he could rely on the others to be professional, even though Kanmi might continue to gibe for reactions. There was surprisingly little strain in integrating the two bear-warriors and the pair made it far easier than he’d feared it would be. He’d watched the youngest bear-warriors training in the Odinhall, some fifteen years ago, and when Sigrun had asked him to imagine a bear-warrior on the team, in her place, he’d shuddered a little. They’d seemed undisciplined, at best. But those had been warriors-in-training, he understood now.
But before they left for their various investigations, Brandr did insist on one thing. “I need to test you, child,” he told Sigrun. “Your friends may watch, but not participate.”
“Test me?” Sigrun asked, sounding a little confused. “Has not my soul already been weighed, over and over again in the Odinhall?”
“Not your soul,” Brandr told her, chuckling. “I don’t have a measure for such things. No. I need to know precisely how soft and slow you’ve become, working only with mortals.”
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