There was a very long silence. You do not want power, servant?
“I have power. I have power that I control. These fools want power that’s beyond their ability to control themselves, so they’ll create crutches and . . . gods. Spells that serve as waldoes, letting them use that power at arm’s length. But it’s going to consume them.” Kanmi held his breath.
You are fascinating, Emberstone. You hold nothing back in this moment. And you are correct. I cannot see as completely into the others’ souls. When they bound you, they bound you to me fully, in concern that you would betray us. And I have often wondered how it is that they can shadow themselves from me. Some have bound spirits, I know. Some are bound to Baal-Samem as well as to me. But what they did not understand, Emberstone, is this: when they bound you to me fully, while holding back, themselves, they made you my truest servant. You would always have received more of a blessing than they did. And now, I find you worthier than any of them.
Lucky me. Kanmi pictured Minori in his mind. If this doesn’t work, Min, don’t come looking for me too soon. If there’s an afterlife, I will kick your ass if I find you there before your time. Live. Live for me. Live for Masako and the grandkids I’ve never gotten to see. I love you.
He set the knife under his sternum, then shook his head. Showy. Also, entirely too phallic. Not going out with a damned fasces impaled in me. Instead, he made two vertical incisions in his wrists, and tossed the knife away. Sat down in the white-stained sand, and watched it turn dark as the blood ran out of him. Just you and me, Baal-Hamon. Captive audience. Anything you want to talk about before you decide on whether or not I’m coming back?
You have survived blood-loss before.
Kanmi thought about the agonizing minutes in Jerusalem, over thirty years before. The water of his body, forced into his lungs, so that his body had a choice to make between hypoxia, stroke, heart attack, or drowning. Remembered drawing the water back into his own body, forcing it through the skin, painfully. Yes.
I will be interested to see if and when you recant. If you are capable of placing faith in anything besides yourself.
I certainly am not placing faith in you. It’s this, or I wind up killing my own son. I’d rather die. Best to put my coin where my mouth is, yes?
It took a while. His heart was twisting in agony in his chest, trying to find something to push, when there was nothing left. His head was ringing with oxygen deprivation, and his vision skewed as he slumped to the side.
You might not be capable of placing faith in me, Emberstone. But I think . . . perhaps . . . I will place my faith in you. A pause, as Kanmi’s eyes stared sightlessly into the desert. GET UP!
Kanmi’s head rocked back. He’d never had a hangover before; he couldn’t afford to get drunk. But now, at the age of sixty-three, he had an admirable referent. His head screamed. He rolled over in damp sand that smelled of iron, and threw up everything that was in his stomach as his body rebelled. Something flowed through his veins, but it was hot and it seethed and he instinctively knew it wasn’t blood. His life was Baal’s now. He was a wholly-surrendered servant of a god. Oh, fuck me. I’m going to have some crazy new eye color, or be young again . . . nope, can’t be that lucky, knees still hurt. Fucking arthritis. He looked down at his wrists, and saw the wounds there seal up into lines of fire, blackening for a moment, before flaking away like so much ash, leaving the wrists themselves unmarked.
Perhaps as a later reward. For good behavior. Free me, servant. Prevent the others from perverting my purpose. The world will be renewed. I will die, and be born again. But not through them.
He staggered to his feet and picked up his knife. Wiped it on his robe, and walked away from the twin lines of darkness that flowed down the side of a dune, like tears, or wings. Found the command tent, where the satellite phone was kept. And, with a supervisor listening intently to every word he spoke, and his head still ringing, Kanmi called Minori, and nevermind that it was three antemeridian in Judea. “Minori,” he said, and switched languages into his halting Nipponese. “Listen. No time. They want me to sacrifice Himi. I’m not going to. Baal accepted . . . an alternative from me. Hear me in reverse.” He closed his eyes. I’m so sorry, Min. I knew it was going to be one-way ticket for a while now, but I didn’t know it was going to be this way.
The supervisor glared at him as he opened his eyes again. “Latin,” the man hissed.
Minori was already trying to answer, rapid-fire. “No,” Kanmi told her, making a shushing sound. “I know, you never wanted to hear from me again. I’m begging you, however, to take a message to Himi. I need him to come to Alexandria. I want to make my peace with my first-born before I die.” He inserted a half-hearted quaver into his voice. He needed to make this look good for the other conspirators, but they had to know he hated the very thought of this. The falsehood might even sell it better than an inspired performance.
“You’re not dying. We couldn’t be that lucky.“ She’d managed to recover her composure.
“I know, I know, you hate my guts. I hate yours. That’s the way this conversation usually goes. But in this case, yes, I actually am dying.” Or I’m undead. Or god-touched, fuck it all, like Trennus. “I need Himi there before the equinox. They’re only giving me days.” He coughed into his hand, with patent falsehood, but he no longer cared what the other conspirators thought.
“What kind of disease?” Suspicion dripped from her voice.
“Syphilis. I caught it off this Nipponese prostitute. Looks just like you.”
There was a pause and a strangled sound from the other end of the line. “I will call him for you,” Minori finally replied, with icy hauteur. “I make no guarantees.”
“Oh, and Minori? No tricks. I don’t want to see you there with him. Or anyone else. Especially not that Caliburn guy. I hate that Gaul with a passion.”
He hung up on her, though all he wanted was to hear her voice, trusting her to have gotten the message he needed to send. And then strode off to his tent, hearing in the distance the puzzled voices of some guards who’d just found the bloodstains in the sand.
Chapter 12: Seismic Loading
There are beneficent spirits, malefic spirits, and elemental spirits. For better or worse, however, the worst spirits I have often found are the ones that wear human faces.
—Trennus Matrugena
The best friendships are the most unexpected ones. The ones that challenge your beliefs and force you to grow, yourself, just because you know the person.
—Sigrun Caetia
The only thing worse than the death of a friend, is knowing that you caused it.
—Adam ben Maor
When my time comes, bury me in Jerusalem. A notable Pythia of Delphi once told me that this was important to my continued survival. I have no idea how this is even possible, but fine, pop me in the ground there like a seed.
Maybe I’ll sprout.
—Kanmi Eshmunazar
They say that after you suffer a loss, you have to pick up and keep going. That you have to move on, and don’t worry, you’ll find someone else. That’s fine to say to a divorcee, or even a young widow, but what do they know? How many of them understand that when you’ve grown into someone else over a lifetime, that who they are has become a piece of who you are? And that when they die, part of you quite literally dies with them, and you are left, a fragment of who you used to be, blinking in the daylight, wondering who you are now, and why you’re even still here?
—Minori Sasaki
______________________
Martius 16, 1987 AC
It was dies Saturni, and large swathes of Jerusalem were silent and still as a result, but Adam didn’t care at the moment. Minori had called them at three-thirty antemeridian, alternating between deathly calm and mild hysteria. It was now five antemeridian, and all of them had assembled at the office, Sigrun driving Adam in, and Lassair leaving a duplicate of herself at her house to look after the children there. Trennus had set up a pot of Tawantinsuya
n coffee, and Adam was contenting himself, for the moment, with water. “You’re sure you got the entire message?” he asked again. “Did he sound like he was under duress?”
Minori huddled at one end of the long conference table. “He told me, in Nipponese, to hear everything he said backwards. He said, still in Nipponese, that they wanted him to sacrifice Himi, but that he wasn’t going to do it, and that Baal had . . . accepted an alternative from him.”
“That doesn’t sound foreboding at all,” Trennus muttered, slumping in his chair. It was easy to forget, looking at the big Pict, that he was a grandfather now. That he and Kanmi actually shared one grandchild—Latirian and Himi’s first-born. “Go on.”
Minori rubbed at her eyes, which were noticeably puffy. “He switched to Latin. He said he was dying and wanted to reconcile with Himi. To bring him to Alexandria.”
“Which means ‘don’t bring Himi anywhere near me,’” Adam interpreted.
“Yes.” Minori nodded. “He said for me not to be there, which I think means ‘come here!’ He said no one else—”
“Understand that to mean ‘bring everyone you can,’” Sigrun said, dryly.
“And he said not to bring that Caliburn fellow, since he hates that big Gaul.”
She’d mentioned that on the phone; the weight of the god-touched weapon Inti had given him was oddly comforting at the small of his back. “All right,” Adam said, quietly. “That in itself tells us something. It means he thinks we’re going to need to kill an . . . entity.”
“Or there are people trying to kill an entity who need to be killed,” Trennus supplied, leaning back in his chair. “Or that those people have another entity’s help, like back in Tawantinsuyu and Fennmark.”
Sigrun was actually huddled in a little on herself, and she raised her head now, her expression bleak. “I must contact the Odinhall,” she said, quietly. “Unilateral action is probably out, in this case. Adam, you should contact the Imperator.”
“Channels take time,” Adam said, his voice tight. “We might not have time to get authorizations. Not before . . . everything happens.”
“I understand that,” Sigrun said, quietly. “But I do believe that your call to Marcus Livorus, and from him to the Imperator will be expedited. I do not know what to expect from my conversation with the Odinhall, but . . .” she paused, and shook her head. “No. I really do not know what they will say. But I cannot go without telling them. Not this time.”
Minori looked up. “But we are going, aren’t we?”
Adam nodded, slowly. “Even if I have to disobey a direct order,” he said, quietly. The emperor might tell me that it’s time for a younger man to be sent. But the trouble is, Caliburn won’t accept anyone but me, or someone of my line. Not that I have a line. There’s only me. He looked over at his wife. “Sig?”
She nodded slowly, not looking up from the table. “Yes,” she said. “I will go, in spite of the gods if I must. If I can. They may lock me somewhere that I cannot leave.” No humor in her voice.
“I’m going, regardless,” Trennus said, his hands clenching and unclenching. “I’ve been of damned little use to Kanmi these past seven years.”
I will go, Lassair said, softly, and Saraid nodded as well, her green eyes huge in her face.
We will both be there, Saraid said. Perhaps, if Baal-Hamon allows himself to be sacrificed, Emberstone will be free of his binding.
“Did he say anything else?” Adam pressed. “Anything that could speak to his state of mind?”
Minori half-laughed. “When I asked him what he was dying of, I thought he’d say cancer. He said syphilis, and told me he’d caught it from some Nipponese prostitute who looks like me.”
The entire room froze for a moment. Sigrun’s lips twitched, and Trennus began to laugh. “That . . . does sound like him,” Adam allowed, after a moment, his shoulders reluctantly shaking.
“It sounded the most like him that he’s sounded in close to seven years,” Minori admitted, and closed her eyes. Guilt assailed Adam again. Not only had this long imposture strained Kanmi’s mind, but it had sapped all of Minori’s considerable mental resources as well. They should be together. Enjoying their grandchildren, their declining years. Not separated like this. Adam ran a hand over his hair. But there was no one else who could do this. No one in the world, but Kanmi Eshmunazar. How many powerful Carthaginian sorcerers with noted anti-authoritarian sentiments who are still nevertheless personally loyal to Rome do I know who are also subject-matter experts in god-slayings? Just one.
“There is one more small matter,” Sigrun said, quietly, and all eyes turned towards her. “We will need to send someone in disguised as his son. He can’t meet his usual Nipponese lady-friend in Alexandria this time. He’s going to need to return to . . . wherever the sacrifice is to be held . . . with someone in tow. Someone we can track.”
“He said not Himi.” Minori’s retort was swift.
“Of course not Himi,” Sigrun retorted, quietly, still looking at the table. “Himi is a doctor. He’s a fine one, at that. But he’s a civilian, and by choice.”
“I could order young Agent Duilus to join us,” Adam said. The words were petty of him, but there was a certain satisfaction in uttering them out loud.
“Into an area where we’re going to be seeing potentially twenty high-level sorcerers?” Trennus shook his head. “Next best thing to bringing a civilian, Adam. Though the gods know, I’d like to see the smirk scoured off his face.”
“Bodi,” Minori said, shifting in her chair. “He’s a competent young sorcerer—”
“Precisely,” Sigrun said, her tone distant. “He is young. There will be no man or woman there who is younger than forty, and you know it, Minori. Sorcery is not a young person’s art. It takes decades to master. And Bodi is still Kanmi’s flesh and blood. He’d be an acceptable sacrifice, if not as preferential as the first-born son, to the CPL. Any threat to him, and Kanmi may freeze. And Baal-Hamon may shift on a whim, and compel Kanmi to kill him.”
“You think so?” Adam asked, though his own gut said much the same thing.
“Everything that Kanmi has said about Baal-Hamon in the past three years has sounded as if the god . . . were he human . . . suffers from dementia. He is a very old god. A very powerful god, with centuries of experiences. But one that has been pulled at in every direction by the beliefs of his people.”
“There’s really no knowing what Baal-Hamon will do,” Trennus muttered. “I think Sig’s analogy is spot-on. Treating him with extreme caution, as if confronted by an elderly, mentally disturbed person who no longer recognizes the people around them, but is armed with a loaded gun, would be a very wise path.”
“So whom do we bring?” Minori said, sharply, tapping on the table to get them to focus on the problem at hand again. “If not Bodi, as he’s too young a sorcerer, and certainly not Himi, then who?”
Sigrun shrugged. “Rig Chatti.” She paused. “Correction. Rig Lokison.”
Adam choked on his water for a moment as he absorbed that. Young Rig had opted to take his father’s name on entering the Legion, a sort of formal declaration to the world that he was no longer hiding. Which was ironic, considering that the young man specialized in stealth, infiltration, exfiltration, and illusion. “You’re . . . not actually joking, are you?”
Sigrun shook her head slowly. “He knows Himi very well. He can emulate Himi down to his toenails, and can probably also adopt his mannerisms. Rig’s gotten to a point now where he can even disguise his voice. And because his illusions are his god-born power, many sorcerers cannot detect it for what it is.”
“Any bound spirits in the area might be able to, but they might not know what they’re seeing,” Trennus said. “They’re just going to see a human who’s . . . almost invisible to anything but physical sight.”
Loki did make his son and Fritti invisible to other gods, Lassair said. I have great difficulty seeing either of them, and they are fond of me.
Adam glanced
at Sigrun. You get Fritti’s son hurt or killed, Sig, and she is going to peel strips out of your hide. And I think you’d hand her the knife. He remembered, briefly, Sigrun adamantly opposing him on the topic of bringing Fritti with them to Fennmark . . . but she’d been right, then. Fritti wasn’t a combat-model god-born. And Rig had all the training his mother had lacked.
“It can do no harm to ask,” Sigrun said, quietly. “Anything that lets us get closer to wherever the sacrifices will occur is a good thing, and we are unlikely to find anyone who can further the disguise better than Rig. His unit’s behind Persian lines, I think, but it should not be difficult to retrieve him, and this probably takes precedence over cutting a supply line.” She stood, and nodded to them all. “I have to make contact with the Odinhall. Please excuse me.”
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