“What else would Rome know? What else would Rome understand?”
“You have attacked previous ley-facilities, as I said, but not this one. Why attack them before? Why not attack this one, now?”
Smoke Jaguar flipped his knife around in his hands. “The ley-lines are a fetter,” he said, after a moment. “A shackle. A way the Nahautl seek to bind us. Make us dependent on them. My people don’t wish to be bound. We wish to be free. Free to join with the rest of Quecha . . . to the south. To be one with our people again.”
Adam remembered, all too well, Ehecatl’s cynical reaction to the briefing on the rebels’ supposed goals. “Yes, and I guarantee, that ten years after they join the Quechan Provinces, and have been the most affluent part of a crushingly a poor nation for the whole of that time, they’ll be begging to come back to Nahautl and be the poorest in a rich nation. No one ever wants what they have in front of them. All the words about how they speak Quechan, they’re ethnically Quechan . . . sound like so much horseshit to me.”
He didn’t quote the Nahautl man to Smoke Jaguar now. Simply nodded, and asked again, “So why not attack this one? Was it simply inconveniently located?”
The Quechan man grimaced and spat, displaying those pointed teeth again. “A year ago, a priest of the Nahautl came to the south, and a Roman pigfucker with a Nahautl last name. The priest went to all of the temples here. Temples who had supported us in our struggle, you understand? And he stirred them up. Tried to tell them that Chaac was the same as Tlaloc, and that they should all be worshipping the way they do in Nahautl. Because they were the same god. The priests laughed him out, but some of the people . . . they listened. Because he was god-born. They listened, and they followed.” Smoke Jaguar spat again. “The world would be a better place without any god-born, I think. And I think the Roman pigfucker agreed with me on that.”
Sigrun stirred, but didn’t speak. Adam didn’t dare look at her. “Go on,” Adam invited, quietly.
“I didn’t like the god-born priest. Didn’t like a Nahautl man coming in with Nahautl beliefs. He wanted us to worship the gods in the oldest ways. I don’t like Rome . . . but I have three children. A son. Two daughters.” Smoke Jaguar flipped the knife around in his hand again. “In the old days, a daughter could be sold for seven hundred cacao beans as a future sacrifice. Because the priests said that without sacrifice, the sun would be destroyed. Rome came. Sacrifices stopped. The sun is still here.” He flipped the knife around in his hand, one more time, and then leaned down to stab it into the earth. “Whether you call him Chaac or Tlaloc . . . the heart wasn’t enough for him. Them. Whatever. He demanded the sweetest sacrifices. He demanded tears of the victims before they were taken to the altar. Parents tore out the fingernails of their own children to force them to weep, so that the tears could be collected in a bowl for the gods to drink.” He’d been staring at the knife embedded in the ground, but now raised his eyes and met Adam’s gaze, squarely. “I don’t know if the gods required it, or if it was how the priests and the god-born held power, but why would I ever want to go back to that?”
Adam nodded slowly. He didn’t need to look at Sigrun to see the sincerity in the man’s eyes. “What does this have to do with the ley-facility being left untouched?” he asked.
“That was by agreement with the other one. The Roman pigfucker.” Smoke Jaguar spat again. “I don’t like him much either, but he’s a sorcerer. He’s in an alliance of convenience, I think, with the priest. It won’t last long.” The man’s filed teeth bared in a cold grin. “Their goals are too different, and I can see the hate in both their eyes. The pigfucker wants to fight Rome. Get rid of the governor. He thinks he can use the priest to that aim, and then . . . rule Nahautl. Keep the king as a puppet.” Smoke Jaguar shrugged. “Priest thinks the same thing. I don’t care about them, except that the sorcerer swore that he’d free Tikal. Let us join with Quecha, when he throws out Rome.” Another shrug. “I don’t think it’ll happen. But confusion to the Nahautl is good. He asked for us to step up our attacks, to be distracting, so that when the ‘revolution comes’ to the north, all eyes will be on the south, and the legions will not be positioned to resist.” Smoke Jaguar exhaled. “A dream over mescal fumes, perhaps. But not attacking their facility, in exchange for access to his information sources? Increasing the number of our attacks, while remaining cautious, in exchange for supplies? That was a bargain worth making.” He shook his head. “If he and the priest did plant a sacrificed man under that ley-station, and if they return to this area? I will send you their heads, myself.”
Interesting. He’s loyal to his culture, his people, but he’s not a reactionary. The two usually go hand in hand. He might be pragmatic enough that Livorus can actually negotiate with him. Adam leaned forward, in spite of his bound hands. “Look . . . I’m Judean. My people struggled against Rome, centuries ago. We won self-rule, not by force of arms, but by . . . bargaining. Diplomacy. It took a long time, but my people are largely free today.” He met the Quechan’s man’s eyes. “But I understand what it means to wish to be free of another country. Of another’s power.”
Smoke Jaguar nodded after a moment, and Adam knew he’d made a connection there, inside the man’s head. That could make all the difference. The Quechan man now saw him as at least similar to himself. And that could be built on. He exhaled. “The priest is named Tototl, correct? And the sorcerer is named Xicohtencatl?”
Smoke Jaguar looked up, clearly surprised. “You knew already?”
“Not this,” Adam said. “Tell us everything about the two of them. Everything you know. I will bring your words to the propraetor. And if you agree to refrain from violence for a term of six months, as a show of good faith, I think that Livorus would agree to arbitrate discussions about some measures of local autonomy. You might not get everything you want. Not at first. It’s slower this way. But as you just told me . . . we don’t have to go back to the old ways of doing things. We don’t have to sacrifice the blood of our people, to achieve what we want. Not in this. Not here. Not today.”
He was almost shaking with the effort to convince the man. And he was actually surprised when Smoke Jaguar began to converse with him, quietly, and at much greater length, about what he’d learned about the two conspirators, over the course of the months he’d been reluctantly affiliated with them.
For her part, Sigrun remained silent, except, near the end, when she leaned in closer and whispered to Adam, “Secondary locations?”
Adam blinked, and then realized, Good point. “My companion asks a good question. Do you know of any fallback locations to which they might have fled?”
Smoke Jaguar shook his head, and looked off into the mid-distance for a moment. “Teotihuacán,” he said, suddenly.
Adam blinked. That name hadn’t been included in any of the briefing materials he’d looked at. “Ah . . . what?” he asked.
“It’s an abandoned city,” Sigrun supplied, quietly. “It fell over five hundred years before Tenochtitlan was built by the Nahautl. It was thought to be a place of myth, until the ruins were relocated about twenty years ago by a group that was interesting in mining opportunities north of Tenochtitlan.” She shrugged. “Archaeologists have been excavating the whole place since then. Multilevel apartment homes. Huge pyramid temples.”
The Quechan man turned and stared at Sigrun, openly. It was the most she’d said all at once. “How do you know all of that?” Adam asked. “That wasn’t in the mission briefing . . . .”
Sigrun flushed. “I . . . ah . . . like to read about history and archaeology,” she admitted. She caught the look Adam was giving her, and muttered, under her breath, “You read about astronomy all the time.”
Smoke Jaguar shook his head, and dismissed the sideline. “Teotihuacán was once a great city. A trading partner of Tikal for many years, until it was abandoned. The priest, Tototl . . . said that the Pyramid of the Sun was the holiest place in Caesaria Aquilonis. That it was over a cave, from which all mankind had bee
n birthed. Chicomoztoc. And he said that this was Tlaloc’s most sacred temple.”
Sigrun paused, her eyes flicking from side to side, as if she were reading a book inside her mind. “From what I remember, no one knows for certain to which god the Pyramid of the Sun was dedicated. Even the Temple of the Moon is in dispute . . . there are images of a spider goddess there, but . . . .” She shrugged.
“All I know is what they told me. If they were to go anywhere, it would be there, I think. They sometimes talked about the power that lay hidden under it, in the cave of life and death.” Smoke Jaguar shrugged. “I’m no priest. But I know Chaac’s sacred places are caves, cenotes. Places from which life can be born . . . and into which we pass, when it is our time to go into the earth. Life, death, life.”
Sigrun exhaled, and looked at Adam, nodding. “It does make sense.”
Their hands were untied, and Adam had to rub at his hands, cautiously, to allow blood-flow to return, and Smoke Jaguar, no fool, had his priest of Chaac draw up a document, written on two pieces of foolscap from Adam’s notebook, that stated what Adam had agreed to do—to speak to Livorus about arbitrating some measures of regional autonomy, in exchange for the rebels’ vow to use peaceful methods of resistance for at least the next six months. Adam signed both, making sure that all the words were written in ink, and took his copy, folding it and putting it in his pocket, for lack of anything better to do with it. It didn’t look or feel like an important historical document, but he supposed it might become one. In time. If it didn’t become an infamous one, if everyone on all sides broke their words, instead.
They were fed, loaded back into the truck—this time, with their arms unbound, but still with the bags over their heads—and the rebels began the long drive back out of the jungles. Just being able to use his hands in the truck made it much more comfortable, and easier to keep from slamming into Sigrun. No words, the whole way back, though Adam was dying to know if Ehecatl had managed to stick with them the whole way to the rebel compound, or not. Even using Hellene for that query might be too much of a risk.
And thus, at sundown on dies Saturnis, they were pushed out of the truck. Their weapons were dropped at their feet, with the warning, in Latin, “No tricks. We have guns trained on you right now . . . .” and then the rebels left them there, at the side of a road outside of Tikal. Adam found his feet, pulling the bag off his head in time to see the vehicle, disappear back down the road, and into the jungle once more, a cloud of noxious vapors trailing behind it. He bent to scoop up his pistol as Sigrun retrieved her spear.
“Think Ehecatl made it with us?” Adam asked as they began to trudge towards the town, using the massive temple of Tikal as a landmark. The road wasn’t an Imperial highway by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it was poured stone, unlike the mud track in the jungle that they’d just traversed, twice.
“Of course I did.” The Nahautl man’s voice came from directly to Adam’s left, and the Judean’s head rocked back, his eyes widening. “I’m not going to drop my invisibility until we’re back in town, and I have a chance to make it look like I was there the whole time.” Ehecatl snorted. “I was on the side of the truck with you, both times. But the guards kept looking in, so I couldn’t really tell you I was there, eh?”
“So, you know where their camp is?” Sigrun asked.
“I know where their camp is today,” the Nahautl man returned. “These rebels pick up and move around a lot. This was probably a temporary meeting spot, nothing more. They’ve been a pain in the ass for over ten years down here. And their leader hasn’t stayed alive by being an idiot.”
Adam cleared his throat. “So, you listened to the whole conversation?”
“Best I could, yes. Believe me when I tell you, if I thought they’d been party to the sacrifice, I would have stayed behind to kill his men, regardless of your word, ben Maor.” Ehecatl’s voice, coming out of empty air, was grim. “He sounded genuine about that much, at least.”
“And the agreement itself?” Adam asked, wiping sweat off his face.
“We’ll see. I doubt the tlatoani would be much pleased to have these lands defect to Quecha, but as for me, I could care less. Let them go. Watch and see how many of their people migrate north to Tenochtitlan, and see how quickly Smoke Jaguar and others like him rule an empty land.”
“The problem will be convincing your emperor that Rome has a right to give away his lands,” Sigrun muttered. “But, that’s not what any of us are paid to worry about.”
They made a full report to Livorus in his rooms, and the propraetor listened, his blue eyes distant, and reviewed the paper Adam had signed. “I’ll have to coordinate with the Foreign Office back home, to a certain extent. Lifelong bureaucrats with a nuanced view of a region thanks to long study of a country and its customs tend to take it somewhat amiss when a political appointee comes into a situation and rearranges all the place-settings and cutlery.” Livorus’ tone was exquisitely dry. “Suffice to say, this won’t be an issue that we’ll be able to resolve in a week or two’s time. And our investigation must go on. Now, as to that . . . Teotihuacán?” Livorus pulled out a map and traced their route with a finger. “Another two days of driving, at the least,” he murmured. “Even if we were to leave tonight . . . and we must inform Eshmunazar and Matrugena along the way. Hmm. They’ll be best served by going through Xicohtencatl and Tototl’s residences, while they await our arrival. Perhaps they’ll find corroborating evidence.” Livorus looked around. “While I’m not exceptionally fond of the notion of spending the next six months here in Nahautl arbitrating talks between rebels and the local government . . . exceptional work on the diplomatic front today, ben Maor. Thank you.” He paused. “Let us hope Smoke Jaguar has not given us a false lead and a wasted chase, eh?”
Adam accepted the praise, but shifted uneasily. They were banking a lot on the word of a rebel. Sigrun’s truth sense was one thing, but it only told her when the person knew what they were saying was a lie. It didn’t help at all if the person in question were ignorant or misinformed.
As they headed for the suite of rooms that they’d been allocated to clean up and at least get a night’s sleep after a very long, hot, sweaty day . . . and Adam frankly thought he might pass blood in his urine tonight from his bruised kidneys after the rough ride in the truck . . . he paused outside the door of his room. “Archaeology?”
“It’s interesting. It shows us how civilizations were born, and how they died. It shows us how they transformed. It shows us that some gods died off with their people. And, going even further back, it shows us how we came to be.” Sigrun paused, unlocking her own door, and leaned on the frame. Hanks of her hair had worked their way free over the course of the day, and hung in sticky, sweat-stiff strands around her face. “I liked reading about how they found the remains of Homo habilis last year, and how the natural philosophers are arguing about how they fit into the history of mankind.”
Adam just stared at her for a long moment, his lips twitching. “And this doesn’t bother you at all?”
She stared at him blankly. “I don’t understand the question.”
“You’re god-born. You talk about gods and civilizations dying and don’t even bat an eyelash. You mention the remains of humans that predate creation myths. And it doesn’t bother you?”
Sigrun half-laughed, half-snorted. “I would have to be pretty stupid not to comprehend that the gods gave us reason with the understanding that we would use it. And that the history of humanity is a long, upwards struggle towards reason, and that as we have learned, the old metaphors that the gods used to teach us when we were young, have been altered, and they have given us new ones to help us understand our new discoveries.” Her smile faded. “But as for the rest? Yes. Everything dies. Every single one of my people knows this, Adam. It will all end in fire. In Ragnarok. Some people see it as a literal battle between good and evil. Some people think now it’s a metaphor for the sun’s rapid expansion into a red giant, consuming all l
ife on Earth. Either way . . . everything ends.”
“You have the most depressing point of view in the world, Sigrun.”
“That doesn’t make it any less true, Adam.” A faint smile. “As I said a few days ago, my native language doesn’t even have a future tense. Consider what that means about the point of view of my ancestors, and how surprised they would be, to realize that we’re all still here.”
With that, she walked into her room, and closed the door behind her.
____________________
Iunius 11-13, 1954 AC
Trennus and Kanmi had, on reaching the midway point of their trek back north, stopped, found a hotel, and called back to the hotel in Tikal to check in with Livorus . . . only to hear that Sigrun and Adam, with Ehecatl, were going into what was almost certainly a trap. “Fuck,” Kanmi swore, hanging up the phone in the public booth in the lobby, and had pounded the side of his fist against the glass wall of the booth for a moment, even as Trennus, on the other side, raised both hands, palms up, and mouthed, “What?” at him.
Kanmi had opened the door of the booth, and muttered, “Upstairs.”
“Bad?” Trennus’ eyes widened slightly.
“Could be worse. I’m not sure how, but it could be.” The part that was annoying him more than anything else, was that if they’d known about the meeting just a few hours before, they could have been there to back the other half of the lictor team up. Instead . . . they might not even know the outcome tomorrow night, when they reached Tenochtitlan and had access to a phone line again.
He explained the mess as best he could to Trennus, who paced back and forth in one of their adjoining rooms, his braids bouncing as he shook his head. “I should have left one of my amulets with Sigrun,” Trennus muttered. “We’d have been able to keep in touch that way—”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 37