“All of us?” Trennus muttered, folding himself into the front seat. With his frame, the backseat of any vehicle was simply not an option. He straightened, cautiously, and felt his head brush the ceiling. “That’s going to make the dayshift tomorrow nasty.”
“Tell me about it,” Sigrun muttered, getting into the backseat, directly behind him. “I’ve been on duty since eight this morning,” she added, leaning her head back as ben Maor tipped the valet and slid into the driver’s side, taking the wheel.
Trennus glanced at her as the ley-powered engine hummed to life. “What are we doing tonight?”
“The propraetor has been invited to a cultural evening by the local governor and the king,” Adam told him, digging out a small electronic device from one pocket, and activating it. It wouldn’t help with any passive recording devices, but it would block any radio signals leaving the vehicle. “We need to be a visible presence, apparently. After that, we might be heading to the palace.”
“It’s the first time the tlatoani has agreed to see the propraetor,” Sigrun agreed, her eyes closed. Tlatoani was the local title for the emperor of Nahautl. “I would say it should be interesting, but the chances of them doing any substantive conversing at a cultural evening are . . . limited.”
Trennus groaned under his breath. They’d been in Nahautl for three weeks at this point; three weeks spent mostly waiting for various people to agree to see Livorus. “Considering that half the decisions that the local emperor makes have to be endorsed by the regional Roman governor, I’d have thought that the governor would tell him ‘meet with the propraetor,’ and it would be over and done with.”
“Patience,” Sigrun counseled, in Bláthach Gallic. The Bláthach Peninsula had been colonized largely by Picts and other Britannian tribes, which meant that the dialect was close enough to his native Pictish for them to use it as a bridge language, though he spoke Gothic very well. She had a very light accent in his tongue, and Trennus found it charming. “Some of it is genuine scheduling conflicts. Some of it is posturing to show how important and busy each person is. And some of it seems to be that the tlatoani wants nothing to do with Livorus. He has a reputation, after all.”
“I’m patient. I’m just wondering if we’re ever going to make progress.” Trennus glanced up as Adam grunted in annoyance and swerved around a truck in the late-night traffic. “Sorry. Latin it is.” He grinned at Adam. “I promise, we’re not telling secrets.”
Trennus had occasionally wondered if he dared ask Sigrun out for a cup of tea. There were no regulations against fraternization. But though Sigrun seemed fond of all the lictors on the team, he couldn’t read her reactions, and he thought it entirely likely that he’d have no chance at all. He’d been good with girls back home, just after his apprenticeship had begun. He’d gone to the midsummer fires with a different girl each year, and had enjoyed the festivities enormously . . . and then his mentor had been killed, he’d spent half that year tracking down her killer, and then he’d been off to Londonium. And from that point on, he’d been either in a library, in the field, chasing rogue summoners, training at the gym, or, once a year, out in the forest, killing a deer for Saraid. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost the knack of talking to women properly. Summoners didn’t tend to be social creatures. Most of them tended to be reclusive.
And people’s reaction to summoners depended greatly on what region they were from. Traveling summoners tended to get a bit less respect, and a bit more suspicion; they weren’t known to the local spirits or people. An intercessor who’d spent his or her whole life in a given city, like Londonium, working to help the humans and spirits there understand each other, formalizing contracts and bindings between them, might have the social rank of a magistrate. If they found that a human had broken a contract with a spirit, and had been trying to force the spirit to continue with their end of the bargain, the summoner could take legal action. The Chaldean and Median Magi, for example, were revered by their people; they held the whole of their societies together, inside the Persian Empire. But because the Magi had so much power, people who lived close to their borders, who had no summoners of their own, or few . . . such as Judeans like Adam . . . regarded summoners with outright fear and suspicion.
He risked another glance back at Sigrun, and then turned his attention out the window of the motorcar, studying the darkened cityscape; hundreds of thousands of lights speckled the region. Tenochtitlan was, like Venetia, a city of bridges. Dozens of them crossed Lake Texcoco, from the central island long occupied by the Nahautl, to the banks, which now housed sprawling suburbs, like Tlatelolco. It had been, centuries ago, an independent city-state, but had been absorbed into the greater metropolitan whole. Some of the bridges were ancient, and Roman-built, with the characteristic arched supports that reminded Trennus of aqueducts back in Europa. Others were modern suspension bridges made of webs of steel cable and poured stone. All were lit up at night, lines of light crisscrossing the dark waters of the lake. Ancient canals still cut across the central island, and people still paddled canoes under the poured-stone bridges of the modern city. And night or day, these waterways reflected light back up at the sky.
That mix of modern and ancient was found everywhere in the city center; the old step pyramids dedicated to Quetzalcoatl and the sun were intact, though the tzompantli, or skull racks, had not had their displays added to for centuries. And alongside these ancient stone buildings were newer ones. Skyscrapers thirty and forty stories tall, and even a couple of modern pyramids, built, still, in the stepped fashion . . . but in glass and steel. These were illuminated at night, and their light cast the ancient stone ones into stark relief. Most of the buildings were accessible from the second floor, and the first floors were left deliberately empty, to allow for flooding; single-family homes in this region were built on stilts, again, to allow the lake to do what the lake would do.
The only drawback as far as Trennus was concerned, other than the muggy, fiercely hot climate, was the mosquitoes. The damned insects were prevalent here, and he hadn’t gone a day without two or three bites. They’d all had to have malaria shots before coming to this province for precisely that reason.
Trennus peered around again. “We’re not heading for the palace,” he noted.
“Not yet,” ben Maor agreed. “An ollamaliztli competition, first. I’ve only seen clips of it being played on the far-viewer before. It’s supposed to be almost as visceral as anything put on in the Colosseum in Rome. I suppose we’ll see.”
“By visceral, do you mean we’re actually going to be seeing people’s viscera tonight?” Trennus asked it almost casually. “I don’t like to go to gladiatorial matches that are scheduled to go the distance if I’ve eaten first.” Mortal bouts weren’t common in the arenas these days, unless a convicted felon had asked for the chance to fight for his life. But every once in a while, two gladiators decided that they’d insulted each other too many times, and the grudges could only be washed away by blood.
“No idea, but we’re all going to be too busy watching the crowd to see anything on the court, I suspect.” Ben Maor took an off-ramp, arcing down from the overhead bridge and into the crowded maze of streets that covered the island at the center of the city and the lake. Showing his id, he got them into a parking lot barricaded to the general public, beside an ancient stone building, rebuilt and expanded upon over the centuries, until it had the general appearance of a Roman coliseum on the outside. The exterior arched openings were filled with statues of the local gods, illuminated by spotlights at night. Hundreds of people filed along the walkways beside the huge building, heading in through large glass doors. Trennus, on exiting their car, could hear the roar of the crowd from inside the arena, screaming and cheering, a wall of sound that actually vibrated in the ground and in his sternum.
He half-closed his eyes for a moment, and looked with his inner senses. Sure enough, this arena was positioned directly atop a ley-line, and it was in resonance with another one that paralleled i
t, less than a mile away. That was a lot of energy to tap directly into. Sometimes, a resonant pair was separated by a long distance; they might be a hundred miles apart, for example, and that made for a poor line to tap into. Sometimes, two lines intersected, and if both were open lines, it made for the best and strongest feed of ley-energy possible. “What have you got?” Adam asked.
“They built it in a good place,” Trennus commented. “It’s not going to subside, sink, or tilt over, like that tower they built a few hundred years ago in Pisa. Even if Popocatépetl over there—” he gestured, vaguely, to the west, towards a volcano usually visible on the horizon, “happens to erupt, the seismic disturbance from that probably won’t do much to the building.” He stomped one booted foot on the ground. The earth here was soggy and a little apt to slide, but the people here had built, and built smartly, in accordance with the ley-lines and the geology of the region. That pleased him, obscurely.
Adam gestured, and they all headed into the building, showing their identification again at the door. “Kanmi already scouted the venue,” Sigrun noted, as they headed up centuries-old stone steps, fighting their way through crowds of people in colorful Nahautl finery, all vertical lines and light cottons, imported from Egypt and southern Novo Gaul. “Livorus wants me next to him, along with Ehecatl.”
“Well, you are supposed to be his sweet young thing. I wouldn’t let you out of arm’s reach, either,” Trennus told her, lightly, and then realized what that sounded like, hastily retrenching, “I mean, if I were him. Not that he is . . . I mean . . . gods.”
Sigrun just looked at him, smiled, and put a hand on his shoulder. Even through his long-sleeved shirt, her hands were cool. Trennus winced. “I swear, once upon a time, I knew how to talk to women. I went to the bonfires all the time. It was easier, then.” Before . . . everything.
Sigrun shook her head. “We’re people, nothing more. It’s easy. Open your mouth, words come out.” She gave him an amused look. “Most of the time, you have no problem talking to me.”
“That’s because most of the time I don’t think of you as a w . . . I mean, I think of you as a colleague, most of the time.” Trennus paused. Looked at ben Maor. “You want to throw me a line here?”
Ben Maor’s eyebrows hovered close to his hairline. “Would you like some salt for that foot you’re currently mouthing?”
Trennus sighed, and flicked his braids back over his shoulders in mild annoyance. “No, no, it’s tastier unseasoned.”
Sigrun chuckled, and offered, changing the subject, “Kanmi’s going to be in the rafters, along with imperial and gubernatorial security. You will be at ground level, mixing with the, well, sorry . . . peasantry.” She grimaced. Nahautl society was still highly stratified, more so than even Rome’s, and certainly more so than Novo Gaul or Nova Germania’s. “Adam’s going to be outside the box, keeping an eye on everything behind the scenes. With a gun.”
Trennus nodded, all business now. “Anything in particular I should be looking for?”
“Anyone who looks like they’re looking up at the box where Livorus and the governor are sitting. While you’re at it . . . listen. Mingle. Talk. See if you can pick up anything on the political situation here.” Sigrun shrugged, and gave him an apologetic look. “I know. It’s difficult to split your attention between information gathering and body-guarding, but this is a pretty good opportunity. We need to make the most of it.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but I don’t exactly look like a local. Kanmi might have a better shot at it than I do.”
“Yes, but then we’d have you positioned in the rafters, some two hundred feet above ground,” Adam told him, and Trennus grimaced. It wasn’t that he was afraid of heights. It had a lot more to do with the fact that it was much easier to pull on ley-lines when he was in contact with the ground. Solid matter was richer in ley-lines; this form of matter was simply denser, and had more strings attached to it, as a result, than the more diffuse states of water and air. There probably were ley-lines in space, connecting one star to another, but no ley-mage had yet taken a Judean or Hellene or Nipponese rocket into space to find out.
“You could be in the rafters with a rifle, Kanmi on the ground, and I’d be on guard in the background,” Trennus offered, and glanced behind them as another, much shorter man cut through the crowds of people to get to them. There was only a faint trace of a smile in his dark eyes, and the Nahautl man wore a white, sleeveless shirt and trousers, cut loosely and in local festival-day colors—which was to say, brilliant vermillion, with chartreuse lines. His sleeveless shirt showed dozens of black-inked tattoos . . . and heavy scarring to his upper left arm, which looked rather as if a shark had taken a bite out of it. “Company,” Trennus said, tersely.
Sigrun turned, and her face lightened into a smile. “Ehecatl. There you are. Ehe, this is Trennus, your replacement on the team. Unless you want back in permanently. In which case, I will tell Livorus make room on the payroll for both of you.”
The band of tension that Trennus hadn’t even realized had wrapped around his chest broke at her words. They did consider him part of the team.
He watched as Adam and the Nahautl man traded wrist-clasps. “Good to see you again. You’re looking a lot better than the last time I saw you,” Adam noted.
Ehecatl snorted, and held up his left arm so they could all better the twisted mass of scar tissue—a deep channel, in fact—that carved through the side of it. “I’m still working on getting the strength back, but the doctors reattached the ends of the muscles. I’m at about eighty-five percent, they say. With time and work, I might get as much as ninety-five percent back. But I won’t know what I can do till I’ve seen proper action.”
Sigrun winced. “I could have healed that, old friend. Now that it’s healed on its own, I can’t help you.”
Ehecatl made a rude noise in her direction. “You already had the girl’s wounds, and you had to finish healing those yourself. By the time you were done returning her to her family, I was out of surgery and on medical leave. It’s not a problem . . . and I think it would be presumptuous of me to expect healing every time I fall down.” He gave her a tight grin. “Aside from which, I’ve seen what it costs. No, no. I’ll lick my own wounds.”
He turned and offered a wrist-clasp to Trennus as Adam introduced them. He looked up at the Pict, and shook his head. Trennus was a full foot taller than he was. “You’re definitely not a stealth model, are you?”
“I’ve snuck up on deer in my home forest a few times,” Trennus told him, smiling ruefully. “Anywhere else, it’s not my strong point, no.” He shook his head, and glanced at Adam. “All right. I’m on the ground, then.”
They’d climbed up to the level of the box seats, and now, he nodded to them all, opened the swinging door in front of him, and headed down into the huge stadium. The swirling cacophony of voices that hit him like a wall, magnified as each voice echoed off the poured-stone steps and floors. As he pushed his way carefully through the crowd as he reached the lowest floor, he eyed the small court, built at ground level. This was an ollamaliztli court; the national pastime of Nahautl, which had once been played before major sacrificial events. History stated that once upon a time, the losers had gone on to become sacrificial victims, themselves.
The court itself was the oldest part of the building, and was sunken, with stone walls, and two loops of stone statuary, sticking out of the walls at the narrow ends of the rectangular playing area like a key from a lock, perpendicular to the ground. There were a handful of players warming up on the court; they were barefoot, but wore loincloths, loin-guards, and wicker greaves, as well as a sort of yoke, made from aluminum, strapped to their waists, to enlarge their overall pelvic region. This yoke both protected them, and allowed them to strike the ball harder. The ball itself was made of hard rubber, black, about a foot in diameter, and about six pounds in weight. The players could not use their hands to catch and throw, and kicking the ball directly might actually result i
n a broken bone in a foot. No, all strikes had to be done with the hips . . . and this was a full-contact sport. Complete with tackling and grabbing. Eye-gouging and choking were the only prohibited tactics. If Team A managed to get the ball to hit the wall at the back of Team B’s side of the court, it counted as a point. If either team managed to rebound the heavy ball through the loop of stone on their opponent’s side, it was an automatic win. Since the stone ring was eighteen feet above the court level, this very rarely happened.
At court-level, he milled with the people who occupied the cheap seats directly behind the expensive court-side benches, buying a cup of pulque—fermented agave nectar, as light and sweet as hard cider—from a vendor to blend in, and held the metal cup lightly in his hand, pretending to drink periodically. A glass wall separated the audience from the players, so that these tin cups couldn’t be thrown down on them for a bad performance. A good thing, too, or else we’d be having human sacrifice here today after all, eh?
Trennus, that’s not very funny.
Lassair? What are you doing?
You can’t understand a word these people are saying, Trennus.
Well, no.
How do Stormborn and Steelsoul expect you to ask questions and listen to people’s discontent, if you do not speak their language?
. . . I have no idea. I’m just following orders, my lady.
Let me fix that for you.
Trennus’ head snapped upwards as a fizzling sound filled his ears. What are you doing? He turned, and looked at the pair of Nahautl in festival-wear beside him, a man and a woman . . . and realized that they were speaking in . . . Pictish. Or at least, he was hearing them in his native dialect of Gallic. Their lip movements didn’t match the sounds his mind perceived, however.
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