Maccis winced. “I’m aware,” he said, doing his best not to hang his head.
“I’m going to have a conversation with him and Erida, myself. You see, I have no objection to the two of you, assuming you’re still getting along in a year or two, getting hand-fasted.” Trennus shrugged. “You’re wearing our clan-markings. That means you’re an adult under Britannian law, if not the law of the Empire. I have no idea how Chaldeans mark adulthood, and they don’t have a hand-fasting tradition.” Hand-fasting, in the Gallic and Gothic fashion, was a one-year agreement to live as husband and wife, which could be extended at the end of the first year, or could be made into permanent marriage by the advent of a child. For most Gauls and Goths, it wasn’t a real marriage until a child was born.
Maccis shifted, uncomfortably. “Da . . . it’s probably early days to talk about that.”
“Just treat her honorably while you and she are figuring out if that’s in the future for you or not.”
He flushed. “Of course I will!”
“Erida’s made it clear before this that between the dissolution of the Chaldean government, and her own bad experiences, that she wasn’t expecting her children to have arranged marriages. Which is why Athim and Deiana getting along so well in the last year hasn’t been at issue.” Trennus paused, looking across at Maccis, steadily. “Just go slowly.”
This was almost as bad as his eventual talk with Zhi was going to be. Athim and Deiana were one thing. Zaya was Zhi and Erida’s first-born daughter. “I wasn’t intending on going fast. I don’t want to mess up her life.” Maccis hunched his shoulders a little. “She’s brilliant, Da. She’s the next Keeper of the Archives, and she could apply to any university in the world, and they’d take her today, before she’s even graduated. I’m not . . . going to mess with any of that.”
And what of your future? Saraid asked. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder. How do you see your days progressing? Why do you believe you will disturb her bright path, merely by being in it?
“I . . .” Maccis snapped his teeth shut. This was a little much, considering that he’d been able to touch Zaya’s hand for all of three days, so far. “I don’t even know how to answer that, Mother. I wanted to study biochemistry. Go to Mars. That’s always been my dream. Go make a dead world bloom.” He laughed under his breath. “It’s just a stupid kid’s dream, though. I can see what’s going on in the world. I get a pretty good idea of it, in the refugee center.” He looked up at his mother, meeting those leaf-dappled eyes. “Rig’s home, because Inghean’s about to give birth to their first child. He and I had a long talk last week, about the kind of work he does. Behind enemy lines. Under the cover of illusion. Rig was telling me he really needs someone who can interface with the fenris landsknechten for him. And I guess, as some of the Hellene refugees start volunteering, the legions will . . . need a liaison even more.” He looked down again. “I told him I’d think about it.”
He could feel his father and mother both stiffen a little, and looked up in time to see the distress in his father’s eyes, which startled him. He’d always assumed that his father’s children with Lassair held more of Trennus’ heart. In a flash, he suddenly realized that while his father loved Lassair, she was a demanding mate. Saraid was a giving mate, and his father had, over the years, perhaps come to cherish her the more for it. And none of it had anything to do with how Trennus felt about any of his children, as individuals, either—he always treated them with even-handed equity, punishing and rewarding based on what he saw directly before him. But while Maccis had always understood that his father loved him, he’d never understood, until that moment, how much. “Dreams aren’t stupid,” his father told him. “You shouldn’t give up on them.”
“With the world falling apart around us? Sure, the moon base at L’banah and the Mars base are being maintained. Uncle Adam called them humanity’s last, best hope a few weeks ago.” Maccis’ lips curled downwards. “But someone with my particular talents doesn’t have many more choices right now than Solinus did. He wanted to be a chemical engineer. Instead, he commands a front-line infantry unit. Maybe, someday, if the war’s over . . . I can go to college then.” Maccis had looked at that particular piece of reality a while ago, and realized that it probably wasn’t going to happen. Tasalus had finished off his degree, and gone directly to work in the JDF as an interrogations specialist, with an eye towards working in counterintelligence. Deiana had finished her degree work, and so had Linditus, and both were currently in Britannia, getting people from coastal regions to higher ground, helping build levies, and in Deiana’s case, working with Athim to bargain with increasingly reluctant spirits to help the humans in the region. Fyriacus and Enica? One was already enlisted, the other was part-time at the hospital. Vorvena? Working full-time with the refugees. Maccis had few illusions left about his fate—the war was going to consume him, too. But at least he had a few choices about how. “If the war ends, the mad gods are put down, and everything turns out all right? If Zaya and I happen to be . . . I don’t know. Married and happy? Then maybe we can figure out if she can be Keeper of the Archives on Mars. But . . . I kind of don’t think they’d let her do that.” Maccis shrugged. “In the meantime, it doesn’t really matter. I’m not going to . . . gods. I’m not going to mess up her chances at going to college and learning and . . . being everything she can be.” In other words, no, I’m not going to get her knocked up. And you can tell Zhi and Erida that, too.
There are many unknowns in the future, Saraid admitted. But I must insist that you work for your own happiness, too. Do not put your own joy entirely aside in your dealings with Fireflower, my son. I beg of you. I have watched those dear to me do precisely this for far too many years.
After that kind of conversation, and the naked distress in his parents’ faces, dinner was actually a breeze.
Maius 6, 1991 AC
“You are quite sure that you wish to do this?” Sigrun asked Zaya. Adam stood beside them, white-haired, but still upright and straight, outside the sliding glass doors of the drab, institutional building. “You do not have to do so. And I can think of little here that would be of interest to a young person, Zaya.”
Zaya fidgeted. She had been in and out of the ben Maor house on the heels of Maccis and his siblings frequently over the years. She knew about the magic of the cookie jar. She knew that if you caught Sigrun at just the right time on a baking day, she’d give the first person who asked, a warm heel of bread, fresh-cut from the loaf, with butter and lignonberry jam. She’d known the woman since her father and the valkyrie had gone off to fight the efreeti between the Mongol and Persian armies. She thought it fair to say she knew the woman.
At the moment, however, there was nothing behind the valkyrie’s eyes but an opaque sheet of ice. Zaya shook herself a little. “If she’s up for visitors . . . it might make her feel better, right?” She shifted uncomfortably. Her mother had insisted that she dress properly for this visit. Not that Zaya owned anything that wasn’t exceptionally well-made (again, her mother’s insistence, there), but there were items that were more comfortable or less comfortable. The tailored skirt and matching capelet fell into the uncomfortable category.
“Try not to stare,” Sigrun advised, her voice tired. “I do not know if she will even be aware that you are in the room. She does not really seem to exist in the present anymore. Just the past and the future. Sometimes she reacts to people in the room, and sometimes, I don’t think she sees them.” The valkyrie looked down for a moment. “My best advice is to sit still, and reply calmly to anything she says. Please don’t ask her questions.” Sigrun’s voice was, for an instant, miserable. “I do not know what will cause her to fray apart further. Let her guide the conversation.”
Zaya nodded, rapidly. “Also,” Adam ben Maor said, quietly, “try to control your face. It’s difficult. I’ve known her for thirty-six years. I’ve butted heads with her any number of times. And I hate seeing her like this.” He paused. “Sig will go in first. Sophia�
��s a little anxious around men now, which is why she only has female nurses. Though she seems not to have any problems with me.” He grimaced. “We’ll try her with Tren in a week or so. But today? I’ll bring you in after a moment, and we’ll see how she does with you.”
Zaya watched through a two-way mirror as Sigrun entered the room, and spoke to the woman there. Long, tousled golden hair, a patient’s robe and a loose tunic and pants, plus slippers. There were scars on that lovely face, from where Lassair and the doctors hadn’t been able to fix everything, but they looked to be healing, and her teeth were growing back in, as evinced when she smiled at Sigrun as if nothing were wrong. “Sister! Did you come to help me paint today?” The woman gestured at an easel, which was one of only a few furnishings in the room. A table, bolted to the floor. A wooden scoop chair, which was embedded on a metal post in front of the table. A wrought-iron bed, also attached to the floor, with a thin pallet and no blankets.
“Doesn’t she get cold?” Zaya asked Adam, softly.
“They’re concerned that she might tear up a sheet or a blanket and try to hang herself,” Adam told her, softly.
Zaya winced, and watched as Sophia’s hands darted about like nervous birds, touching her hair, her face, her clothing, in a continuous circle. Sigrun reached out and caught her hands, gently, and guided her to the chair. “I can paint with you, if you like, sister, but let me do your hair for you, first. You always seem to like that. I brought a brush . . . .”
“You’re going to want to shear all yours off, when you know the Godslayer’s dead. When you’re walking the long road of the Styx. It’ll just be too much effort, in the end, however.” Sophia’s voice was sing-song. “Just like falling on your spear. Too much effort.”
Adam started a little, shaking his head. Sophia tipped her head to the side, and twisted to look at Sigrun. “But don’t fret. How could he be the Godslayer if he could really die?”
“We’re as mortal as anyone else. The godslayers of old were, too. The one made out of stone was slain by the pazuzu, Sophia. All it and the summoners who called it could manage to do was stick it in a jar. A jar that broke.” Sigrun had worked up to the nape of her sister’s neck with the brush now, and her golden hair curled like a living thing now in Sigrun’s hands. “The Assassin was crushed beneath Akhenaten's roof. Godslayers can die. I place no faith in them.”
“Oh, of course they can die. Well, their shells can. They inhabit mortal bodies, just like the spirits of the Veil do.” Sophia leaned back now, her eyes half-closed, relaxed by her sister’s ministrations. “And yet, they’re eternal. Perfect. Unchanging. They can’t die. They don’t take the risks that a Veil spirit does. And they can never learn. Because perfect beings can’t do that.”
Adam looked down at Zaya. “That’s the voice of prophecy. You’ll hear a lot of that. It’s almost the only way she speaks right now.” He shrugged stiffly. “She’s relaxed. We can go in now.”
Zaya crept in behind Adam, using his body as a shield. What had started as an I should do something was rapidly feeling like more and more of a bad idea. “Godslayer!” Sophia trilled, and looked up at Adam as he moved to the side to perch on the edge of the bed, focusing beyond him “It’s so good to see you. Have you told her she’s not allowed to die for you yet?”
Zaya watched Adam ben Maor’s lined face go blank. “Several decades ago, yes,” he said, carefully. “It’s good to see you, Sophia. Though I wonder that you never seem to be uncomfortable around me, the way you are about other men.”
A cloud seemed to pass over the woman’s fine-boned features. “Oh, I know you’d never do anything like that,” Sophia said, dismissively, and began to shift around, uncomfortably, as if the way she was sitting hurt her. “It wasn’t in your nature when you were alive. Nor after your demise.” A look of distress crossed her face, and she reached up to catch at the brush. “Stop!” she wailed, “Stop pulling my hair, you wretched beasts—” A flicker, a change of expression. A child’s pout now. “Mother, stop pulling at my hair, it hurts.”
Zaya’s mouth fell open, and Sigrun immediately stopped brushing her sister’s hair, and what looked like fear on Adam’s face as he glanced at Sigrun. The valkyrie was oblivious to the by-play as she murmured to Sophia, “It’s just me. Here. I’ll sit on the edge of the desk, so you can see me, and I’ll finish braiding your hair for you. The nurses never do a good job.”
“They’ll cut it all off,” Sophia agreed, sounding calmer. “You’ll come in and find it shaved a quarter inch from my skin. Ease of care, they’ll say, and you’ll have the one who did it fired.” Her gaze slid past Sigrun, finding Zaya in the doorway. And then Sophia half-shrieked and shoved herself out of the chair, tearing her hair out of Sigrun’s patient hands, and then she crab-walked back to the closest wall, while Zaya stood there, her mouth hanging open. “Fireflower,” Sophia whispered, closing her eyes, just as Adam got back to his feet, slowly, and moved to get Zaya out of the room. “Fireflower-that-was, oh, how your parents will mourn for you.” The green eyes snapped back open, and Sophia slid forwards, till she was on her knees. “Why didn’t you kill him? Why didn’t you kill him at Troy?”
Zaya darted a glance from Adam to Sigrun, her knees shaking under her. Sophia sounded so . . . desperate. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zaya told her. “I’ve never been to Troy.”
“Of course you haven’t! You’re not yet who you were.” Sophia sank back, as Sigrun moved in and put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. Dimly, Zaya realized that this was to ensure that Sophia didn’t hurt herself . . . or Zaya. Again, she felt small and useless.
Sophia leaned back against the wall with an audible sigh of relief, and then smiled. Radiantly. “It’s so good to see these young people,” she told Sigrun, suddenly focusing on her sister’s face again. “That’s why I agreed to watch over the children when you were off with Loki. They’re all going to live. Even Linditus and Deiana and beautiful Tasalus. They’re here in Judea, and even the faces of the nurses that I’ll see in the asylum? No skulls, Sigrun. No rotting flesh.”
Adam started to beckon Zaya out of the room, but stopped, as Sophia called after them, “Fireflower is new. I didn’t see her here before. Never in the asylum. She must be here because I put my boots on. And that’s different, and the difference frightens Apollo almost as much as seeing two godslayers in the same room!” She turned back to Sigrun. “Oh! Did I tell you my new joke? I’ll ask my madness-doctors if they understand it, someday. If they know what a ceegar is, if it’s just a ceegar.” She tipped her head to the side and laughed. “And they’re going to tell me that they have no idea, and then they’re going to write in my chart that unlike the centaurs and the harpies, my madness isn’t caused by a god, so I should be able to become healthy again. Isn’t that funny! They won’t think it’s caused by a god!” She laughed again, harder. “You’re going to ask Saraid and Lassair to try to help you fix me, and that’s not going to work. But it’s all right, Sigrun.” The laughter melted off her face, and was replaced by a frown. “Are you going to finish my hair, sister? I want to look my best.” The little-girl expression was back again. “I’m going to a circle-dance tonight.”
Out of the room, Zaya stared at Adam. “What just happened? What do boots have to do with anything?” Her voice sank in dread. “And what does she see in me?”
Adam patted her shoulder, gently. “I wouldn’t worry about any of it,” he told her, quietly. “Sig and I have talked for years about not living our lives by the dictates of Sophia’s prophecies. Though they often seem to come true, one way or another.” His voice held a thoughtful note, and Zaya found a low bench in the hall and sat down, heavily.
Her mind raced. “She asked about Troy.” She glanced around the hall, and then looked up into Adam’s kindly brown eyes. “Prometheus lives in my parents’ house. Harboring his strength.” Hecate came once in a while, Zaya presumed, to pass along information but the titan and the goddess usually retreated to his chambers, and
then there was usually silence through the whole house for a while. “Prometheus was at Troy. Maybe he might understand what she meant.” Zaya swallowed, hard. “Reincarnation isn’t real. I wasn’t Achilles or someone, in another life.”
“Explain that to about a billion Buddhists and Hindus,” Adam told her, his eyebrows quirking. “Even Sigrun’s people believe in it, to a very limited extent. Remind her to tell you the story of her namesake. Actually, don’t. It’s depressing how the people in the story never learn the central lesson of each life and keep making the same mistakes over and over again.” He made a flicking gesture, dismissing the line of thought. Adam lowered himself, slowly, to a crouch in front of Zaya, and she could hear his knees pop as he did so. “You’ve got access to the Magi library. Read Prometheus the Fire-Bringer. Read everything else you can get on Troy, if it makes you feel better. But don’t drive yourself crazy about it. Otherwise, you’ll . . .” he looked back over his shoulder, and sighed. “You’ll be no better off than the rest of us.”
Zaya nodded slowly, and got to her feet. Sophia looked no older than twenty-two, twenty-three at the most. Technically, neither did Sigrun, but Sigrun carried with her a sense of . . . age and distance, that the younger sister simply didn’t have. “Master ben Maor?” she said, as Adam guided her out of the hospital.
“At this point, I’ve known you for five years, Zaya. I think you can safely call me Uncle Adam like all of Tren’s children do.”
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