“You also don’t generally get drunk when you’re out of town, and you also don’t exactly have a lot to prove,” Sigrun told him, her tone wry.
“Sorcerers at my level should never get drunk, anyway. Remind me to tell you some time what happened at the graduate seminar I attended once at the University of Alexandria, where two of the students decided to partake of some peyote they’d had smuggled in from Caesaria Aquilonis.”
Sigrun winced. “Did they decide to slay any invisible dragons?”
“No, but they thought the professor had turned into a bear and when he approached to find out why they were giggling and staring into space, they thought the bear was attacking them.” Ptah-ases looked resigned. “They panicked and attacked him, when his defenses were down. They brought one of the chandeliers down on him, and he didn’t react quickly enough. There was glass everywhere.”
“. . . gods. Was he all right?”
“If they’d been alone, he wouldn’t have been. Two of us stepped in and restrained them—I had to practically strangle one of them to knock him out—and then called for the doctors. As it was, he almost died of blood loss.” Ptah grimaced. “The campus officials took pictures as an object lesson in what not to do.”
Sigrun shuddered. Normal humans did quite enough damage, in their minds or out of them. Sorcerers, summoners, ley-mages, and god-born were held to a higher standard. She changed the subject slightly. “The man last night was surprisingly belligerent about his faith, Ptah. I’ve met other Atenists besides you. This was the first one who tried to say that I didn’t exist. Or that everything I am is a lie.” It still troubled her, a little. She didn’t know, some days, what this modern world was coming to, really.
“Believe something strongly enough, and the world might shape itself to your belief,” he replied, lightly, and touched her shoulder, gently. “Look. I’m a decorated veteran of the Foreign Legions. I’ve been a Praetorian for fifteen years. My wife and children are happy back in Thebes. I find that the people who are loudest in matters of faith? Are using their own as a club. A way of cowing or beating others down. A matter of power. They’re bullies, trying to make themselves bigger and more important, than they really are, because no other facet of their life has any real meaning, my friend.” Ptah-ases shrugged. “Try thinking of how small and insignificant and petty their lives are, my friend. And rise above them.”
Sigrun regarded him, and smiled faintly. “You give good advice, even when it grieves me to hear such things.” She nodded at the door. “Is the propraetor available?”
“He’s up, he’s had his coffee, and he’s being shaved. He has dispatches to read, too, so make it brief. I’m going off-duty in an hour and getting some sleep. Assuming I’m allowed to.” Another quick, needling smile. “You might have plans for another incident today. Do you? Just so I’m apprised of the schedule.”
“You have short-timer’s disease in the worst possible way, Ptah.”
“By the sun, yes, I do. I cannot wait until my replacement shows up and I can finally cycle home. See my wife and children. Bask in the sun. You northerners can keep your snow, valkyrie,” The Egyptian chuckled, and tapped on the door. “Sir? Caetia to see you,” he called through it.
“Let her in,” a voice called back, in perfect Latin, free of any regional dialects. The very crispness of the speech indicated that the speaker was a patrician, native to Rome. “It’s that, or I continue listening to the two of you chatter in the hall, yes?”
Smile widening slightly, Sigrun stepped through the door, and bowed her head, bringing one fist to her chest in a light salute. “Propraetor. Good morning.”
Propraetor Antonius Livorus sat in the bathing area of the hotel room, patiently allowing his personal body-servant to shave him with a straight razor, didn’t turn his head, but he did lift a hand to acknowledge her. “A moment,” he murmured. The proprietor wasn’t a tall man, barely five foot six in height, and built on lean, wiry lines. He was in his late forties; his iron-gray hair was cut short, and barely brushed forward over his high forehead; his face was almost cadaverously thin, and his blue eyes were sharp and piercing behind the sharp prow of his patrician nose. Sigrun towered over him, but felt, as always, slightly awkward and oafish around him; the man held a certain leashed power about him, and she respected his incisive intellect.
The Hellene attendant negotiated the tricky area under the propraetor’s nose. It wouldn’t do to give the representative of Rome a nick in a visible area today. It would detract from his gravitas, among other things. A propraetor’s duties varied, and sometimes greatly; the title meant, literally, ‘beside the praetor.’ Praetors were elected or appointed from the patrician class, as needed, to fill many roles—some led armies in times of crises. Most, however, were magistrates. A propraetor was a special appointment, only given by the sitting emperor or empress. Livorus’ full tile was propraetor inter cives et peregrinos . . . or a magistrate empowered to resolve disputes among citizens and foreigners. This could mean between citizens and subjects, or even subjects and the subjects of foreign kingdoms. And being appointed directly by the emperor gave the man a vast degree of latitude and personal power. Livorus in particular had the quiet reputation as the emperor’s right hand, and personal trouble-shooter.
The propraetor gestured his attendant away, and wiped at his face. “I will never understand how someone can do this properly themselves,” he murmured, gesturing at his face as he turned to study himself in the mirror.
“Personally, I can’t fathom allowing anyone that close to my throat with a naked blade, sir.” Sigrun watched as the Hellene began to clean the blade and other hygiene equipment.
Livorus chuckled and moved to a chair at the room’s single desk. His simple breakfast was only half-eaten; nothing more than toast, fruit, and coffee. “So. Sigrun. Fair morning to you, as well. I trust you had a restful evening?” Faint humor in those pale blue eyes.
“Ah . . . about that, sir? I just wished to apologize once more—” Sigrun didn’t shift from foot to foot. She knew precisely on what grounds she’d acted the night before, and was confident that anyone who reported her presence would mostly report, a valkyrie or a god-born was involved in a dispute last night not a Praetorian had an Atenist arrested for public drunkenness, proselytizing, and harboring potential revolutionary sentiments. Still, Livorus could be angry at the potential for jeopardizing a delicate diplomatic situation. And if he was, she’d accept it.
“I’ve already had the local Praetorian office call in to verify that you are who you said you were.” Livorus dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “We’ve more important things to focus on today, my dear.”
Sigrun allowed herself one brief exhalation of relief, and then she focused on the matter at hand. “What time do you want to meet with the Chahiksichahiks, sir?”
“Arrange for it at the ninth hour antemeridian, if you would. It may take several hours of negotiations to allow us onto their lands to look for the girl.” Livorus’ eyes went cold. “And that is if, and only if, their leaders do not know what business their shamans and god-born are about.”
“Their shamans and god-born are, generally speaking, among the leaders of their people. I find it hard to believe that their elders wouldn’t know precisely what is going on.” Sigrun kept her face expressionless, but her stomach twisted. The Chahiksichahiks were treated, under the laws of Rome, as a petty kingdom. They had signed a formal, if limited alliance with Rome, but had a few diplomatic ties. They had their own land, the borders of which they guarded, and which had been, in the main, respected for hundreds of years. The terms of their status as a subject state mainly involved a guarantee that they would not be harassed on religious grounds or for their land, so long as they did not participate in human sacrifice, didn’t make war on their neighbors, and so on. They had little in the way of material wealth, being primarily hunter-gatherers, and thus paid almost no taxes—something that chagrinned their neighbors in Novo Gaul, and even larger, more
industrialized regional nations like the Diné or the Iroquois Confederacy.
Kidnapping a young girl and holding her captive with the potential for sacrificing her would certainly break at least two of those treaty clauses. The problem was, the gardia in Marcomanni had an informant within the kingdom send them a tip to tell them that the girl had indeed been taken prisoner, with the intent to sacrifice her. They did not know why someone would wish to do this, after centuries of peace between the nations of this land. Livorus had even speculated that this could all be a sham. That someone within the tribe had wanted to discredit their king and elders, and that the kidnapping had been staged, to make Rome retaliate. The permutations along that line of thought—that it could be a deliberate provocation to make Rome or Nova Germania overreact, and look bad to the other petty kingdoms—got successively more tangled, the longer they’d tried to think them out.
All in all, it required a delicate touch, and Livorus had been handed the problem. They’d interfaced with the local Praetorian office in Marcomanni, questioned the girl’s parents, and moved where the evidence had taken them. . . . but there was still a high degree of uncertainty in the entire situation. They had no understanding of the true motivations involved. Which always made a scenario that much more dangerous.
Livorus nodded to her now, and picked up a dispatch. Printed in the clear on foolscap, the entire surface was covered in neat Roman letters, all equally spaced. No clear words, anywhere. He placed a thin foolscap template over it, blocking out some of the letters on the page, revealing others. The letters that appeared in the windows of the stencil spelled out the real message. He’d burn the template once he’d decoded today’s messages. One-time stencils, usually bound in a tablet together, were vital to the security of messages sent by the empire. If even one code tablet went missing, all others from the same batch were immediately discarded. “We’ll give them the benefit of some doubt, my dear,” Livorus told her, neatly transcribing the message to a wax tablet for easier reading. “The Chahiksichahiks have been a fairly peaceful subject state for centuries. They’ve abided by the laws of Rome for generations. I doubt all of them wish to throw away stability and security for an ancient ritual.” He tapped the stylus against his chin. “I doubt a fight will even be required. With luck, all that will be required is showing the fasces, and they’ll turn the girl over to us.”
“Wouldn’t that require their leaders to know where she is, sir?” Sigrun’s tone was exquisitely dry.
The propraetor glanced up, and blue eyes met gray, just for an instant. “Caught me, my dear. No, I don’t actually believe that they’re all innocent of knowledge. But I have no doubts that they wish to be ignorant of it. And that they’ll protest, vigorously, that they had no knowledge of the kidnapping, or of the shamans’ intentions towards the girl.” Livorus nodded towards the door. “Dismissed. Get some breakfast. It’s going to be a very busy day, I fear.”
Sigrun made her way back downstairs, nodding to Ptah-ases on her way back out again. Down in the dining area, Adam and the last member of Livorus’ entourage were eating breakfast. “Fair morning,” Ehecatl Itztli told her, looking up, his dark eyes amused.
The Nahautl man wasn’t physically imposing, being built on slim lines, but he moved like a jaguar. Of their group, he and Adam were the closest in skills; he wasn’t a mage of any sort, but he knew very well how to kill a magic-user. Like many Nahautl men, he shaved his head on both sides, leaving a long, straight, black line of hair, like a horse’s mane. Unlike many younger men, however, he chose not to spike this with egg whites or pomade, letting it hang loose to his shoulders. The scalp itself was tattooed in thick, black images. A serpent and a jaguar were visible there, and, on his arms, bared to the elbow by his rolled sleeves, images of his strange, squat-looking gods. Sigrun knew that across his back he had a feathered serpent, as well, indicating that he’d consecrated himself to Quetzalcoatl in his youth, as well as Tezcatlipoca, the jaguar god of his people. Each marking was intended to protect him; the tattoos served as invisible armor, and had been placed on his skin by skilled Nahautl priests and sorcerers. Several of them even allowed him to turn himself invisible . . . without being a sorcerer or ley-mage, himself. Ehecatl grinned at her over his coffee. “I see you’re back in the chicken-suit.”
Sigrun winced as she sat down, picking up her breakfast menu. “Don’t say that,” she told him, but without force. “That was Villu’s thing.”
“I’m carrying it on in his memory.” Ehecatl quipped, but an expression of regret shifted over his face briefly. He glanced at Adam. “You’re new enough to the team that you probably don’t know all the details, but the man you replaced? Cunomorinus Villu. Bravest Gaul I’ve ever met.” He grinned again. “Managed to put up with Sigrun here every day for two years.”
Adam chuckled. “She’s not so bad.” He flagged down a waiter for Sigrun, who sighed and ordered toast, fruit, and tea, herself. “You know, when I joined your detail, everyone told me that Villu had died, but no one ever said how.”
Sigrun stared down into her cup, feeling sick to her stomach. “It was in Hellas, of all places,” she managed. She didn’t like remembering it. Her first partner, a Nubian sorcerer, had rotated out of the detail, in the natural manner of things. Villu had replaced him, and she’d just gotten used to the man when disaster had struck.
“Hellas?” Adam’s eyebrows shot up. “They’re civilized there. I wouldn’t have thought of it as a place that the propraetor would be visiting.”
Ehecatl chuckled. “You’d think that, but the man’s called everywhere on the globe. In this case, a Roman diplomat had been accused of raping and murdering a Hellene girl. The locals were up in arms. Can’t blame them. I would have been, too.” He shrugged. “We got on-scene, and it turned out that we could definitively prove the diplomat’s whereabouts the whole evening. He’d been with his wife and a group of guests for a dinner party. All the servants and slaves and all the guests—even the people who didn’t like him—said that he was there. And yet, we had twenty people in a taverna ten miles away, insisting that they’d seen him walk out the door with the girl just before midnight.”
Adam raised his head, his dark eyes narrowing. “Disguise of some sort?”
“Spirit. A malefic one,” Sigrun said, grimly, the word bitten off. “Doppelganger. What the Gauls call a fetch. Usually takes the victim’s own face and haunts them. Tells them that they’re about to die. Does nasty things to the victim’s family and friends. The worse they are, the nastier the things they do.” She swallowed a sip of the tea the waiter had just left on the table for her, scalding the back of her throat. She welcomed the pain, obscurely. “My guess was that the doppelganger would have moved on to the diplomat’s wife and children next. They . . . like the fear. They like the pain. They relish the betrayal.”
Adam frowned. “I thought spirits had to be . . . summoned.” He said the last word with distaste. Sigrun wasn’t surprised. He’d fought on the Wall for years, and grown up in Judea, a province perennially under threat from attacks by Persian, Chaldean, and Median magi.
“Some do. Some are here in this world, more or less permanently. Some can come here at will.” Sigrun shrugged.
“So, was this one summoned?” Adam persisted.
Ehecatl shrugged. “There was a certain amount of evidence that the Roman diplomat had offended a local summoner. We couldn’t prove that he’d summoned the fetch and bargained with it to impersonate the diplomat. We could have run back to Athens to find ourselves a different summoner to bind or banish the spirit. . . even bargain with it, for information—“
“I won’t bargain with that sort of spirit,” Sigrun said, tightly. She’d seen the girl’s body in the morgue, and stared now at her toast. Wondering if she’d see another girl’s body in a morgue slot by the end of the day.
“Proof would have been optimal,” Ehecatl reminded her, and rubbed at his eyes. “Hellene law even has provisions for spirit-testimony—”
&nb
sp; That provoked a mild snort from Adam, but he didn’t interrupt. “At any rate,” the Nahautl man said, wearily, “The locals did have legends about a spirit in a local cave that liked to play tricks. We tracked down where it had its lair. Sigrun and Ptah-ases went to go kill it. But Villu and I stayed behind to protect the diplomat and Livorus.”
Sigrun very carefully set her cup down. She’d lost what little appetite she’d had.
Adam winced. “I think I see where this is going. The mob in Hellas was still out for revenge, and didn’t believe what you’d found?”
She shook her head slowly, staring down at the wood of the table. “It’s not always the monsters that we have to fight,” Sigrun said, quietly. “Sometimes, the worst monster of all, is humanity itself.” She closed her eyes against the pictures in her mind. The Roman villa, the local consulate, had been filled with shattered tiles, broken furniture, and blood. “Ptah and I heard you over the radio,” she added, looking at Ehecatl, her lips tight. Once again, fruitlessly apologizing, “We just couldn’t. . . . get there fast enough.”
“Villu was a damned fine ley-mage. But we were too far from the local ley-lines for him to do much. One of the reasons he was back on protective detail, and not off in the mountains, helping to kill the fetch.” Ehecatl rubbed at his face, his expression bleak. “You get thirty, forty people in a room together, and they’re just . . . a mob. They’re not people anymore. They’re an animal. One mind, many bodies, all howling, and no thought in them but blood. It’s a kind of madness. And one I don’t wish to see again.” He stared out the window into the bright sunlight, his obsidian eyes unreadable. “They broke through the barriers he put up, between the front door and the atrium. Flooded into the house. And they tore Villu apart, for standing between them and the diplomat.”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 5