“So do all of our friends,” Adam pointed out, with a certain amount of annoyance. “That didn’t stop you from asking them.”
“She’s a child who has a child,” Sigrun snapped back, her temper rising.
“Sigrun, it may have escaped your notice, but she’s twenty-eight now. And if that doesn’t make me feel old, nothing will.” Adam ran a hand over his hair, and flicked the tail back over his shoulder again, in exasperation. “She’s got a right to make her own decisions.”
“She does, yes. But I will not ask her to do this. She has a right to a quiet life. That is, in fact, our job, is it not? To ensure that school-teachers and doctors and librarians and everyone else can have that quiet life. And it’s my fault—” Sigrun cut herself off, and looked away.
Adam put a hand on her arm. “What, now it’s your fault that Loki found her?”
Sigrun swallowed. Hard. “If I’d paid proper attention,” she said, quietly, “I would have pursued the fact that I did not know her tutor’s name. I should have paid more attention to her letters. I should have . . . I don’t know. Stayed more involved in her life.” Sigrun stared down at the carpet, and then bent to pick up one of Rig’s toys that hadn’t made it to the toy box. A little Roman soldier, in the old style, with centurion armor.
“Sig . . . she has parents.”
“The Qin hold that if you save someone’s life, they become your responsibility.” Sigrun tossed the soldier into the toy box. “I will not ask her, Adam. If it makes the task harder, so be it, but she wants nothing more than to be left alone. We owe her that much, do we not?”
Adam actually growled under his breath. “You are exceedingly annoying to argue against when all I have on my side is common sense and the fact that she could let us win this.”
Sigrun threw her hands in the air. “You want to drag her along on Loki’s word that she can see through his illusions? You wish to gamble her life on the word of a trickster god?”
Adam’s mouth opened. Shut. “She’s stronger than you think, Sigrun. Let her make the decision.”
“I think it inherently unfair to ask her, Adam. She will feel obligated to say yes, and for no better reason than that we saved her life when she was little older than her son is now. For no other reason than that we offer her and her son solace and succor. No. No price tags on our help.”
Adam slammed a fist down on the table, making the cups there jump. “Damn it, Sigrun, I didn’t say it to put a price on our aid. Don’t put words in my mouth!”
“Ah . . . excuse me.” Fritti’s voice was tentative, and Sigrun and Adam both swiveled in time to see two sets of wide eyes staring at them from the doorway into the bedroom. Sigrun controlled her face, instantly, and hoped Rig didn’t speak much Latin yet. He mostly looked confused, so that was a hopeful sign. “I would help. Truly. I would. But you’re sending us to an entirely different country. I can’t leave Rig alone there with people I don’t know.” Her lips thinned, and Sigrun felt a surge of relief at the clear good sense the young woman had. “And I’m not really . . . I mean, I can heal people with my abilities. I can call arrows that are actually tiny meteorites. He trained me very well. ” Fritti looked away. “But I’ve never been in real combat before.”
Adam put his hands down, flat, on the table, and exhaled. “I accept that, and I understand that. You’re god-touched, though. You’re . . . meant for battles like this.”
Sigrun put a hand over her face, but kept her voice rigidly controlled, as she replied, “You put Minori through weeks of training and scrutiny before letting her risk an undercover mission in Tawantinsuyu. You want to put Fritti in the field without an evaluation of her skills, simply because she’s god-born?” Sigrun’s voice rose in incredulity.
“I didn’t say without evaluation—”
“We don’t have time for evaluation and training.” Sigrun exhaled, and forced her voice to calm reason as she continued, “There is the other matter of Loki having said that he had created . . . contingency plans. She’s bound to him, Adam. That means he could make of her an avatar. Do you want to bring him his life-raft?”
Adam winced, visibly. Fritti shook her head, her long hair bouncing around her shoulders. “I . . . I don’t think he would do that,” she said, uncertainly.
Sigrun gave Fritti a direct stare, wondering, and would you wager your life on that? . . . and the younger woman was the first to lower her eyes. Adam leaned on the table, and stared down at the wood grain. “I leave the decision to you, Fritti. I do not ask, and I do not hinder,” Sigrun said, her voice harsh as she did her best not to look at either Fritti or at Adam, her stomach churning. “But I will say that Cocohuay was a god-born of Mamaquilla who had no combat experience, and came with us the last time we confronted a god. She died.”
Adam’s head snapped up. “She made a difference.”
“She sacrificed herself! At the age of two hundred and more! She’d lived her life! Her children were grown!” Sigrun was furious now. “And she did it for a much more important reason than the mere selfish fact that I can’t have children! Trennus and Kanmi and the others, they're different. They're professionals. They've been tried in the fire and tempered.” Sigrun looked away, and let the tears fall. Oddly enough, they felt cold, and she heard thunder outside.
Adam’s hand, very gentle on her arm. “Sig . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t want to argue. I just . . . Fritti seems meant to go with us. She’s a healer, she can see through at least Rig’s illusions, she’s got just as much right to call Loki to account as you do . . . more, even.” He pulled her into his arms, and Sigrun stood stiff and resistant for a long moment.
“What’s the matter?” Rig asked, plaintively.
“Shh, grownups are talking,” Fritti told him, and the boy sighed and climbed up in a chair to start building a tower, this time of cups and saucers. “Adam . . . Sigrun.” Her voice was tight. “You’re both right. Adam, you’re right that I’m an adult. I can make my own decisions.” She sent a slightly defiant glance at Sigrun.
“I did not say that you weren’t,” Sigrun said, and looked at the ceiling. “You are a mother. In our culture, in that of the Gauls . . . that’s enough to make a hand-fasting a true marriage. And in some cultures, that would make you the adult, and me the child.”
Fritti actually chuckled a little. “I . . . couldn’t help but overhear the argument before, Sigrun. I heard what you said. A child, who has a child.”
Sigrun exhaled. “Yes,” she said, grimly. “You are an adult by the measure of your years. I would not take away from that.” That didn’t change the fact that Fritti’s eyes were soft, gentle, and innocent. By the measure of experience? Fritti was a child. Her stomach twisted at the thought of taking Fritti into combat. Because then she would be responsible for keeping Fritti alive. This is not the mission on which to start your life as a soldier, Sigrun thought.
Fritti regarded her steadily, and Sigrun met her eyes. “That being said,” Fritti said, softly, “everything I said before stands, Adam. I can’t leave Rig alone with strangers. And I’m not trained for combat.”
“We could train you,” he offered, and then shook his head, denying his own words. “Not fast enough, though.” He shook his head. “And you’re right, Sigrun. I just . . . saw a resource, and the fact that Fritti should be able to demand answers, the same as you . . . .” He shook his head.
Sigrun looked down. Winning an argument, she had long ago learned, never left her feeling good. It always tasted like ashes, because the real trick was not needing to argue at all. “Go to Judea, Fritti,” she said, quietly. “We will . . . try to get you some answers.”
Much to her surprise, Fritti came over and hugged her. She wasn’t entirely sure why, and blinked down at the girl. “Be safe,” Fritti told them, both.
Explaining to Erikir that Fritti and her young son, having been found, were now immediately leaving Novo Gaul, turned out to be an argument as well, though a lower-key one. Erikir just wasn’t the argumentative type.
He settled for questioning Fritti closely about her tutor, but Fritti, who had been open with Sigrun, closed up at the bear-warrior’s queries. “I’m sorry,” Erikir told her, smiling gently. “I know that you don’t know me, but I have to ask the questions, otherwise my mentor will crack my head open.”
That actually got Fritti to smile, but she glanced over at Sigrun. “I am happy to answer the questions of a respected representative of the Odinhall,” Fritti managed, looking a little wan in spite of the smile. “But it does seem that we have already covered this ground.”
Sigrun intervened. “We have the salient information,” Sigrun told Erikir. “Somewhere that the other gods would not think to look for him, someplace insulated by ‘dark waters.’”
“That’s a little vague.” Erikir grimaced. “I was hoping the right question might jog her memory a little.”
“Somewhere that they wouldn’t look . . .” Sigrun considered it for a moment, “That might mean that he’s close to one of their existing bases of power, such as the Odinhall, in Burgundoi, or Valhalla, at Áhkká. Dark waters, well . . . the Odinhall is separated from the rest of the land of Caesaria Aquilonis on three sides by ocean water. He could be on Pellicane Island at the heart of the bay, and they might not be able to perceive him.” Sigrun flicked her braid back over her shoulders now, in agitation. “There are any number of islands that fit this description in the fjords of Gotaland, as well.”
Erikir nodded, peaceably, and Sigrun was suddenly infinitely grateful that he was here, and not Brandr. Brandr might have been angry at her for not insisting that Fritti go to the Odinhall. Brandr had taught two generations of god-born there. He wouldn’t perceive any threat to her or Rig there. But Sigrun could understand where Fritti was coming from on this topic. After all . . . it might very well have been Reginleif who had altered her petition.
Rig, with a bored expression on his face, slipped out of his chair and put his head in his mother’s lap. “Can we go yet?” he asked, his voice muffled.
I know how you feel, Sigrun thought, and the boy actually looked up. Met her eyes. And winked at her, which gave her a hellish start. Just for an instant, she thought that Loki was indeed in the boy, and that they had all been played like a harp. And then the boy conjured an illusion, directly behind Erikir, of a bear that replicated every gesture the man made, every expression.
Fritti flicked a finger at the back of her son’s neck. “Behave,” she told him.
Erikir looked over his shoulder and guffawed. “Nicely done, but I don’t think that bear’s nearly as furry as I am.” He ran his fingers down his hairy forearm in demonstration, and the illusion snapped under the force of the boy’s giggles.
On the other side of the world, Kanmi, Minori, Lassair, Trennus, and Brandr were going through Reginleif’s small house in Lipsk. “It always feels odd, going into someone else’s house for the first time,” Trennus muttered. “The smells are always wrong. All the subtle cues that this is not your place.” He rolled his shoulders, and checked, again, for signs of house-spirits who might have been set to act as guardians. There was a sign in the front window for a reputable home security summoning firm, licensed and bonded. Summoning had been gaining in repute over the past twenty years or so, but remained far more common on continental Europa than in Britannia. Trennus had chuckled at the sign for a moment, and checked for sigils etched in the poured stone underneath the welcome mat. Finding them, he read them, and realized that any who entered, who was not greeted by the owner at the door, or keyed to the entry wardings, would be set upon by black dogs—a very specific and oddly Gallic summoning.
Trennus had dismissed those bindings, first thing, as Kanmi had opened the lock with a set of metal picks. “I could do that faster,” Minori had pointed out.
“Yes, but how am I to stay in practice if I let you do it every time we need to get in a door?” Kanmi had returned, baring his teeth at his wife.
Inside, it wasn’t just the odor of other people’s skins and the ghostly aroma of alien cooking oils that made Trennus twitch. It was the sensation of walking into a different era. There were watercolors portraits and daguerreotypes, for example. The first watercolor depicted a blond, smiling mother with a baby in her lap, and a cluster of solemn-faced older children around her. The father stood near a wood-burning fire, and a shepherd dog of some sort curled at his feet. All old-fashioned clothing. The mother wore a dirndl-style dress, for instance. While the bodice itself wasn’t that much different from what Sigrun wore atop her usual linen shirts, Tren had never seen the valkyrie wear long, full skirts with the bodice. Floral ones, to boot. The father wore leather, overall-style pants, and that was a Gothic style that had died out a century ago.
That watercolor had a date in the left corner, beside the artist’s signature: 1769 AC. On the back, the words, in Gothic letters: Birth of Reginleif Lanvik. And as Trennus followed the hallway, the children from the first watercolor grew up. Had solemn-faced pictures taken with their own broods. The baby from the watercolor grew up, as well. And stood, fair-haired and smooth-skinned beside her siblings as they got married. Stood beside them at naming ceremonies for their children. Stood beside them as their children got married. Stood beside them as their grandchildren were named.
Stood beside their bodies, wrapped and atop unlit pyres, comforting the widows and widowers.
Stood beside their grandchildren’s pyres.
The family pictures stopped then, and Trennus had run out of hallway. Brandr, beside him, looked at all the images expressionlessly. “I assume she looks the same today?” Trennus asked, for lack of anything better with which to break the silence.
“She’s never changed,” Brandr acknowledged. “Other than when she uses illusion to disguise herself.”
Swallowing, Trennus stepped inside the master bedroom, once again looking for traps, signs of summoning magic, ley-powered wards. There was a mage’s lock on the jewelry box, so he left that alone for the moment, and just looked. Tried to get a feel for who this person was.
More pictures. Now, black and white photographs, a little blurry, but more modern. A wedding picture on the wall, with the woman who’d been the baby in the first watercolor wearing a white swan-cloak, her fair hair cropped short, but with a circlet of flowers atop it, looking with a fond smile at a young man with equally fair hair, and a neatly-trimmed goatee, that seemed to be tinted darker in the photograph. The back read Reginleif Lanvik and Joris Kaars, 1917. Joris, age 25. Trennus did a little mental math, and swore. One hundred and forty-eight, she was. And her husband was two years younger than Adam was, when he and Sig got married. Gods.
The comparison was inevitable. Both valkyries had married mortal men. There was a photo album on the nightstand that chronicled Reginleif’s life with her husband. No children. Many trips together, all over the world. Joris aging. Reginleif’s eyes . . . darkening. The most recent pictures were all, cruelly enough, full-color. Joris, 1965, age 73, hospital, was scrawled on the back of one of them, where the elderly Joris was in a hospital bed, propped up, and a young-appearing Reginleif was helping him eat soup. The camera had caught the valkyrie’s blue eyes just right; they were shockingly old in that young face. Tenderness. Sorrow. And rage. Rage enough to burn a world. He’d seen that exact same look in Sigrun’s eyes in the past week. Another picture, of Joris holding Reginleif’s smooth hand in his own wrinkled, age-spotted one, as she leaned down to kiss his cheek.
The last picture was of yet another cloth-wrapped body, atop another unlit pyre.
Trennus swallowed, and his mind flashed to Sigrun and Adam’s living room in Judea. Sigrun insisted on obtaining lithographs and good, professional pictures of all the cities to which they traveled, but she also insisted on getting pictures of all of them. Pictures from their wedding. Pictures of them on the beaches of the Caspian Sea. Pictures of them among the rubble of Tawantinsuyu. Is it because you know, Sigrun, that all too soon, all you’ll have left, are these fragments? Is Reginleif who you’ll be in thirt
y years, Sigrun?
“Did you go to the funeral?” Trennus asked Brandr, looking up from the album. The bear-warrior still stood in the hall, clearly uncomfortable entering the bedroom.
“What? Oh, Joris’ funeral. Yes, I did.”
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary there?”
Brandr frowned. “Hel’s frozen heart,” he muttered, and rubbed at his face. “I don’t know how much of my memory has been meddled with, Matrugena. I don’t know how much of it to trust.” He looked up at the ley-mage, his expression troubled. “If memories are what make you who you are, and someone’s altered yours, does it make you someone else?” Another head-shake, this one of impatience. “Nevermind. Doesn’t help us here. At Joris’ funeral, Regin was . . . angry.”
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