Solinus leaned in, and kissed her, quickly, and then, with a sidelong glance to make sure no motorcars were coming, kissed her much more thoroughly. Masako, between kisses, got enough of her brain in order to incant, rapidly, and set up a redirection spell, which would deflect the thermal reaction on his skin away from her. “We . . . had to figure this out . . . a month before I go to boot camp?” Solinus asked, in disbelief, a couple of minutes later. “Saki . . . slow down. I don’t want to . . . damn it. I don’t want to mess this up. You’re upset about your dad . . . .”
“I’m not going anywhere, anytime soon,” Masako told him.
“Your mom’s probably going to move you back to your dad’s house, so you’ll be closer to the university,” he muttered. “You’ll be three bus connections away again.” None of the Matrugena younglings besides Latirian—in her second year of pre-med—had their own motorcar. All of them either walked or rode the local buses, if they needed to go somewhere. “And I’m probably going to be stuck on the Wall or in Chaldea or Media or . . . some damned place.”
“You’ll have leave, right?” Masako’s voice was hopeful. She wanted to . . . figure this out. See where it led.
“Yes.”
“And you were planning on two years in, and then college, right?”
“I don’t know,” Solinus admitted, glumly. “Latirian got in on a scholarship. Inghean probably will, too. Me . . . looking at my citizenship record alone, the university isn’t going to want to take me. And . . . I can’t help but wonder if I’m just going to see more of the same shit as I got in secondary and tertiary school.”
Masako shook her head. “Probably not.”
He shrugged, and pulled her closer on the bench. “I’ll get college funding from the military. But whether I’ll go or not . . . I guess that depends on if I’m any good at being a soldier. Or if I like it enough to stick with it.” He pulled her closer on the bench, eyes intent, and then stiffened. Winced. And then flushed bright red, the kind of blush only a redhead could really manage.
“What’s wrong?” Masako asked, alarmed.
Solinus coughed. “Um . . . my mother just told me that I need to take you indoors if we’re going to continue doing this.”
Masako went rigid. “She’s mad?”
“Have you met my mother?” Solinus’ voice was strangled. “No, she’s happy! She says she wondered how long this would take us, and that I should . . . we should . . .” he put his head down on Masako’s shoulder, and started to laugh.
“What?”
“Make sure we use protection, so your da doesn’t kill me when he gets home.” The words were muffled. “Well, that just . . . kind of ruined everything, didn’t it?”
Masako could feel her face burning. “Do I want to know what else she’s saying?”
“No!”
Caesarius 18, 1981 AC
Adam stared at Avitus Duilus, keeping his expression blank as the younger agent paced back and forth in his office. “I specifically requested access to Eshmunazar’s family. Every last one of them needs to be questioned, commander. They may not even know that they know something, but I’m sure that Eshmunazar confided some detail of his plans to them.”
“You don’t need to question his family any more than you already have,” Adam said, quietly. He was in a black and bitter mood, and the hungry young agent before him wasn’t helping matters.
“With all due respect, commander, you blocked my initial investigation into Eshmunazar, and look where that led! He’s gotten involved with extremist groups, blatantly, and has vanished in the middle of my investigation of his background, his finances, and his affiliations.” Duilus paced some more. “You’ve let your personal feelings get in the way of an investigation, commander. The only ethical thing to do would be to recuse yourself from the situation.”
Adam stared the younger man down, his hands clenching under the surface of his desk. I have a good man, a friend, missing at the moment. Vanished without a trace on a mission I asked him to undertake. Kanmi was retired. Had a family, a life outside of the Praetorians, and I asked him to do this. And now he’s been missing for three weeks. The Carthaginian Liberation Party could be torturing him right now. He could be dead. And I have this puppy trying to stake out territory, urinating in the corners, and savaging Kanmi’s good name, and I have to let him, because if Kanmi is alive, allowing this travesty to continue might be the only thing that keeps him that way. Because it furthers the façade. But no. Not his family. “I assure you, Duilus, that you have absolutely no idea what my personal feelings in the matter are,” Adam said, tightly and evenly. “Your job is to find Kanmi Eshmunazar—alive—and bring him back to the Empire. I don’t see your continued interest in his non-CLP associates as being even remotely relevant to that task. Lady Erida, for example? Not your concern, and I will not authorize you to travel to Chaldea to question her. Dr. Minori Eshmunazar has answered every question put to her, several times over. Bodi Eshmunazar has received decorations from the kingdom of Gotaland for his service in the north on numerous occasions. Other than that, he’s primarily a calculus programmer and technomancer, with about as much interest in politics as he has in planarians.” Adam paused. “Dr. Himilico Eshmunazar is still recovering from a bullet wound to the spine. And Masako Eshmunazar is eighteen years old. Hardly a major threat to the Empire.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, commander,” Duilus pointed out, stopping and putting his hands on the back of a chair. “Extremists are trained from their earliest years. And four out of the five people you just named are more dangerous than you realize. Every one of them is a sorcerer or a summoner of some type.”
Adam’s eyebrows went up. “Your point being?”
“Magicians and their ilk have come to have far too much power in our society, commander. Not just personal power, though that’s troubling enough, but political clout, as well. Bringing the Magi into the Empire? Just another straw added to the load already straining the camel’s back.” Duilus spoke with the passion of conviction. “They’re a law unto themselves. And Roman law is meant to pertain to every person in the Empire, from true citizens down to the subjects of petty kingdoms like this one.” Using the term petty kingdom for Judea was . . . fairly offensive, and Adam’s eyes narrowed. Duilus waved a hand in agitation. “Eshmunazar himself practically dared me to arrest him when I went to his office. Sorcerers stick together. He admitted that to my face. They protect themselves from normals like us. And see what our lack of oversight on them has led to? The disaster in Tawantinsuyu has been attributed linked to ley-magic—”
“Ley-magic wasn’t at fault—” The reaction was instant, and Adam regretted it before he even finished the sentence.
“Your very own Dr. Minori Eshmunazar has attributed the Nahautl earthquakes to ley-magic.”
“Previous to new evidence coming in, during the 1960 Tawantinsuyu seismic events, yes. After that, she re-evaluated.” Adam didn’t want Duilus to go down the fairly simple trail of logic that any number of highly senior professors had missed over the years . . . that if the destruction in Tawantinsuyu had been the result of the death of a god, and the destruction in Europa had been the result of the death of a god, then wouldn’t it follow that the earthquakes in Nahautl had been the result of the death of a god, too? Except that the priests in Nahautl were not disclosing that Tlaloc was dead.
Duilus glared into the mid-distance. “Every last one of their organizations needs to be broken down. They need to be reminded that everyone is subject to the law.”
Adam stood up, and put his fists on the desk. “Listen to me, agent,” he said, “and hear me very well. You will adhere strictly to the actual purview of your investigation—finding Kanmi Eshmunazar, alive and intact. Under no circumstances are you to use this to begin some kind of a damned witch-hunt to satisfy whatever political or personal animus you hold for sorcerers and other magic-users. If you do so, you are going to find the hand of an angry god rammed down your throat, wrapped around your spleen, and
clenched. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
The younger agent looked at him, and then down. “Yes, sir.” The words were leaden.
“Since you appear to be somewhat unaware of the actual facts of the matter,” Adam went on, his voice cold, “I should point out that while sorcerers and other mages have adjudicating bodies of their own, every last one of them is as subject to the same laws of the Empire as everyone else. They have most of the rights of their fellow men and women. Such as the right to due process. They may request a jury of their peers—which is what those adjudicating bodies serve as, I might add. Sometimes, yes, the highest-ranked sorcerers are empowered in a fashion similar to the ælagols of Germania—judge and executioner under one robe. That is both a matter of practicality, as well as centuries of tradition. If you don’t like it? Go run for the position of tribune of the plebes back in Rome, and see if you can rewrite the laws. Other than that? Stop running your damned mouth in my office, and go do your job.”
Adam sat down and opened a file folder on his desk, now ignoring the younger man, and stared at the pages, unable to read them, until the door closed behind Duilus. Then he put his head down in his hands for a moment. He’d lost men before. He’d lost friends before, at someone else’s orders. He had, so far in his career, been singularly fortunate. He had yet to get a friend killed. That . . . may have changed. And I may never actually know. Damn it. And there’s nothing I can do to help, besides continuously and . . . carefully . . . pressuring the PG offices in Carthage and Mauretania and everywhere else in northern Africa to . . . keep looking. If he’s even still alive. If he’s there, and hasn’t been . . . flown to Quecha or Australia or some damned place across a lot of salt water from here.
The phone on his desk rang, and Adam gave it a dark look, before picking it up. “Ave?”
“Adam.” Sigrun’s voice on the other end of the line made his spirits lift for a moment, but her tone was grim. “You need to get building maintenance to move a far-viewer into your office.”
Adam closed his eyes. “What happened?” he asked.
“Short version? East Assyria has lagged West Assyria economically since they were re-integrated back in the early sixties. Their ruling satrap died two months ago, if you’ll remember, and his heir just declared his intention of taking his section of Assyria back into the Persian Empire.”
His stomach twisted. “I take it that they’re already moving troops into position on the border?”
“It looks like about fifty thousand troops moving close to Ecbatana. Livorus would be so pleased to know that all his work has outlived him by all of a year before starting to unravel.”
Adam hung up, thinking back. The attacks on Rhagae by the Persians. Watching the ornithopters lock their wings into glide position, and begin their bombing runs on the ‘rebellious’ civilians of Media. The chemical reactions and flames only serving to feed the elementals summoned by Persian magic-users. The way the elementals had gone tearing through schools and marketplaces, in a campaign clearly intended to strike terror into the heart of the populace. That had been . . . 1956. Twenty-five years. It didn’t seem that long ago. Here we go again.
Over the next few weeks, war-hawks began to make their voices heard in debates in the Senate. They argued that once a province had come to join the Empire, it could never truly leave. That the right of self-determination could only be exercised once. Which was pretty much horseshit, in Adam’s opinion, but . . . then they’d admit to the real rationale: “Permitting Assyria to leave only establishes a precedent for all of northern Africa to depart the Empire, as well.”
But it was the grandstanding on the topic of keeping Assyria in the Empire by force of arms, and daring Persia to step one foot over the line in the sand drawn outside of Ecbatana, that really drove him crazy. “Shouldn’t we be in negotiations with East Assyria’s new satrap? Shouldn’t . . . someone be at least talking to Emperor Antiochus XII? No one’s actually started shooting yet. It doesn’t have to happen.”
Sigrun rested a hand on his shoulder. “Kanmi said something, before he vanished,” she said, quietly. “He said that he grew up poor. He and his brothers rarely had a square meal. He understood what it meant to be hungry. But in the past decade or so, he said he had seen a shift in the people around him. In his students, in the government. He’d never seen so many people, so well-fed, who were still hungry for more.”
Adam shifted his shoulders under her light touch. Even mentioning Kanmi’s name right now, made him twitch as if his skin had been flayed from him. But the Carthaginian had a clear-eyed, if cynical view of the world. And what he’d said rang true, somehow. “Sig?”
“Yes?”
“After Bodi’s wedding? Take Minori and go see your sister. Please.”
“Sophia hasn’t answered the phone since Esh went off the map. What makes you believe that she will answer me in person?”
Adam turned and wrapped an arm around her waist as they stood in their living room, staring at the far-viewer. “Because you’re her sister.”
Bodi and Jykke got married in a ceremony officiated by a priestess of Astarte and a priestess of Freya. Adam had yet to understand why Sigrun’s expression went taut every time the name Freya came up in conversation, but she shook the priestesses’ hands cordially enough when they were introduced. “Ah . . . Uncle Adam?” Bodi asked, a little shyly, before the ceremony. “My father isn’t here.” The younger man looked crest-fallen. “I suggested pushing back the ceremony till, well . . . till he’s found. Comes home. Whatever’s going on with him.”
Minori, behind her much-taller stepson, shook her head. “And I said no,” she said, firmly. “Go on with your life, Bodi. Your father won’t mind.” She turned her face away, and Adam could see her lips compress, as she somehow found the strength not to weep in public.
Bodi swallowed, and nodded. “So I thought perhaps you and Uncle Tren could stand in my father’s place, and sign the papers as he might have done? You’d make . . . perfectly good witnesses.”
Adam stood in the required place, beside Trennus. Signed where he needed to sign. Smiled for the cameras, when appropriate. God damn it, Kanmi, where are you? And watched as Himi managed to lever himself to his feet, using the two canes that the young doctor currently required to walk, and left the wedding early, a black scowl on his face.
October 8-10, 1981 AC
Sigrun was in the middle of packing for her trip to Hellas when Latirian arrived on her doorstep. Lassair and Saraid had both had sets of twin boys this year, bringing the entire brood next door up to a total of seventeen children. Sigrun had seen the joy in Trennus’ face at holding his newest children from Saraid . . . and a week later, tightness around his lips, and worry in her old friends’ eyes, as Lassair had presented him with another pair. She’d actually strongly considered taking Lassair aside and saying, Look, if you’re competing with Saraid, it’s ridiculous, because you already won the race to have more children before she ever got started. Sigrun wasn’t sure that that was a fair judgment, however. There could be more complicated things at work. Lassair genuinely never seemed to be happier than when around new life. But Saraid . . . the quiet forest-spirit’s name was known to every sane fenris in the world. She’d always been known to her people in the Caledonian Forest. Now, thousands more knew her and loved her. Sigrun half-suspected that Lassair was afraid she wouldn’t be noticed, without more children. Again, part of her wanted to tell Lassair that it was Saraid’s turn to be noticed, after being tactfully silent for twenty years.
But it wasn’t her business, so Sigrun kept her mouth firmly shut. But she did hope that Trennus would open his own, at some point.
Between the Matrugena brood, Masako, Rig, Athim, and the seven children Adam’s sisters had had, between them, it occasionally made Sigrun feel empty, and she tried to be aware of that tendency in her own emotional reactions to Lassair. Particularly when Lassair would, with a fleeting look of concern, hand her a new baby to hold. I am grandmother to the e
ntire damned world, Sigrun occasionally reflected. If Fritti is the maiden and spring, Saraid is gentle summer and new life, Lassair is the mother and the harvest, then I am the crone. I am death and winter. But then again, that’s hardly anything new.
And yet, every child in this very-extended family tended to call her Aunt Sigrun.
Latirian, however, occupied a special place in Sigrun’s heart. Trennus’ eldest was a genuinely good person. She cared, deeply, for people, and was intending to volunteer as a combat medic after she was done with pre-med. And she disliked fuss and crowds. A young woman after my own heart, at least. “What can I do for you?” Sigrun asked the young woman, and reached for the cookie jar on the counter, offering it, reflexively.
“They always taste better when you hand them out,” Latirian said, with a little smile, perching on a stool in the kitchen.
“Your hands are not broken,” Sigrun returned, acerbically, but reached in and pulled out a cookie for Latirian. Getting low, she thought, and looked inside. “Only one left?”
“Isn’t that always the case, Aunt Sig?” Latirian’s voice was teasing.
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