“I . . . think I’m . . . going to sit down now,” Trennus decided, after a moment, letting his shoulders hit the wall, and sliding down. He’d been concentrating, intently, on work, and had just had several shocks in a row, the last of which had been a direct hit on his libido.
No, no, you’ll get the wine all over your kilt, and then you’ll have to change out of it. Lassair’s form collapsed inwards, becoming the amorphous ball of light and shadow that she usually manifested as, all flickering flame and tendrils of energy.
What . . . wine . . . oh. Trennus looked down, just in time to realize why his feet were wet, swore, and padded on just his toes for the lavatory, where he grabbed several towels and brought them back out. All things considered, he was rather grateful for the distraction.
Were the clothes sufficient? I understand that humans are uncomfortable with their corporeal nature. Which is odd, considering that you’re mostly corporeal all the time. She bobbed along beside him, like a firefly for a moment, right at the level of his elbow.
Trennus did his level best to suppress any number of images that promptly leaped into his mind. She had somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty percent of his soul in her keeping at the moment. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t hear him, but there were definitely things he tried, very hard, to keep suppressed when he could feel her presence. Her previous summoner had used her in horrific fashion, and she really didn’t need to hear or feel human male urges, as far as Trennus was concerned. It could panic her, and he didn’t want to cause her any discomfort.
Red eyes appeared in the swirl of white light, appearing to study him. The one who bound me before is dead. I know that. You killed him. And more.
Trennus winced. Her previous summoner . . . the man had been a Gaul. He’d had a name, and a Name. Trennus wouldn’t even think the name, and the Name itself . . . he’d dealt with that. The kinds of things that the summoner in question had done, the ways in which he’d bound his spirits and compelled them, had outraged all of the local spirits. His actions had resulted in strings of possessed villagers being forced to do things, and awakening, appalled, with fragmentary memories of killing their own families while a shadowy figure watched and applauded. Stealing money from banks, and handing it over to a faceless person, before having their throats cut. There had been just enough survivors to put together a pattern, and the pattern had led Trennus to a vineyard, bought within the past five years, but with the fruit left on the vines to rot, the trees withering in the ground as the spirits of the earth and nature all around fled in revolt against what was being done there. So he’d made his way in, masking his path with ley-energy . . . and had watched and listened to the bound spirits. One of them had dared to tell him the true Name of the summoner . . . and Trennus had found the man in the pressing shed, raping the decaying, dead body of a former worker. A body with a spirit bound inside of it. Forcing energies out of her as he did, draining her. Binding her essence into him, to promote his own long life. Lassair.
He’d been able to see her, bound inside the decaying corpse. Just a flicker of flame. Barely there. He’d seen the knots of compulsion that bound her to the summoner, and he’d tossed her just a whisper of thought: What’s your Name? I’ll protect it. I’ll protect you.
Just a shimmer of thought had conveyed her Name to him, and he’d used it, used it to divide her from the summoner, stolen her as she manifested in the palm of his hand like a dying ember . . . and even as the corpse dropped, limply, to the floor, and the other summoner had looked up, confused, his pants down around his ankles, snarling . . . Trennus had whispered the man’s true Name, and begun the words of a spell no one was supposed to know.
He’d found it in the belongings of the Sangua Foederis summoner who’d murdered Senecita Tancorix, the ley-mage who’d been his teacher. Saraid had taken the grimoires and hidden them, entrusting him with them. He’d concealed this knowledge from everyone, including all the summoners who’d taught him in Londonium. It was, fortunately, a completely useless spell . . . unless you happened to know your target’s Name.
But with that? You could unName them. Write them right out of reality. Oh, people would remember the person. They’d still have been born, all the things that they’d done would stay done. Time didn’t unravel itself, just for a Name. But that person no longer existed. What Akhenaten had wanted to do to the gods of old, by effacing their names from the monuments, Trennus had done in a moment of cold, plain rage. He’d unmade a man, and he’d seen, just for an instant, the total panic in the man’s eyes. This wasn’t death. This was oblivion. Mind, body, and soul, erased.
He’d never tell anyone what he’d done. There was no one who’d think it other than an inherently evil act. Maybe the gods themselves would judge it so, but if they had, none of them had informed him of that fact, as yet. Truthfully, it would probably have been cleaner to put a bullet into him. But Trennus hadn’t had a gun. He’d just had words and power and knowledge. And, as he’d told Adam ben Maor a year ago . . . knowledge itself was neither good nor bad. It was the ends to which it was put that made it so. Looking at Lassair now, Trennus could not believe for an instant that he’d acted wrongly.
And that dying flicker of flame had had so much of her life removed, so much of her essence . . . her Name had been all she could remember of herself. There had been no past for her, beyond what her summoner had demanded of her. No self left, beyond that, either. And Trennus had refused to let her die, to drop into oblivion with the man he’d unNamed . . . so he’d bound her, himself. More to the point, he’d bound himself to her. Ceded her fifty percent of his soul, on the spot, just to keep darkness from claiming her. And that, too, he couldn’t think of as a bad thing at all. All those thoughts, at once, raced through his mind, and just the act of remembering let him calm down. “Lassair,” Trennus told her, gently, tossing one sodden towel at his sink, and beginning to mop up the rest of the wine with a second, “The human form was lovely. Truly. And I thank you for startling away the landlady for at least the rest of the night. But . . . .”
You didn’t like it? Wistfulness in her tone.
Trennus looked up at the ceiling. Gods. “No, I liked it. I’m just not likely to think straight around you if you manifest like that. Nor would any other man.” He turned and gave her a rueful look. “It’s a corporeal thing, really. Sometimes, our bodies think for us. You manifest like that, and it’s not my mind or spirit that’s doing the bulk of my thinking. I . . . well. You probably don’t understand.”
Bodies are definitely strange, confusing things, she told him, after a moment. Still . . . there’s something familiar here. Like a memory. Every time I incarnate, it feels a little closer. This last time, the closest of all. Confusion, and intrigue now. I would like to remember more. From . . . before.
Trennus looked up at the ceiling. “All right,” he told her, in a tone of resignation. “I foresee weeks of wearing a blindfold and cold showers ahead of me.”
These are strange rituals. What do you hope to accomplish with them?
“Preservation of my sanity, Lassair. Preservation of my sanity.”
___________________
Maius 6, 1955 AC
Hatasahl Flight 149 left Rome for Jerusalem on time. Adam found the sound of the ventilation system to be quite soothing, and the roar of the jet turbines exhilarating. Jets were among the few Judean-built vehicles that actually used an internal combustion engine, as opposed to electrical battery systems, and they used chemical propellants, unlike almost every other modern vehicle. “Ley-powered planes are quieter,” Kanmi complained, cheerfully from where he sat, one row up, with his family. He’d turned around to look back at Adam, and shook a finger at his fellow lictor, as if the noise ratio around them was the Judean’s fault.
In close to a year of working with the Carthaginian, not one of his fellow lictors had, until today, met either the mysterious Bastet or Kanmi’s two children; Adam hadn’t known what to expect of Kanmi’s wife, though he’d known she wa
s Nubian and tall. He was startled to realize that Bastet stood a good four inches taller than her sorcerer husband. Likewise, he’d known from the single wedding picture that Kanmi carried with him, that she hadn’t been subjected to the Nubian custom of lip-plating, which involved piercing a woman’s lower lip and stretching it around a series of increasingly wider diameter discs. It was considered a mark of beauty among some of the more southern and rural tribes, but apparently, Bastet had been raised in one of the larger cities. She also definitely did not have the self-effacing demeanor of the few Nubian women Adam had met, here and there, in Jerusalem over the years. She’d been sent to the University of Athens by her father, and had definitely taken on a more Hellenized and modern manner. Adam’s eyebrows shot up now as he overheard her telling Kanmi, in a tone of annoyance, “I really don’t see why we couldn’t have taken an Alroma flight. The propraetor is Roman. I don’t know how I’m going to get any reading done with all this incessant engine noise. I have at least three journal articles I need to get through.”
“You were the one who said you wanted a vacation,” Kanmi said, turning back to her, his voice absolutely neutral. There was none of the needling tone he usually employed on his fellow lictors. “Perhaps you could put the journal articles to the side for the moment.” He then leaned forward and made sure his younger son was buckled in correctly.
Adam knew that Kanmi was agitated at the moment, but there were no signs of it in his voice or face. The sorcerer had caught him before they’d boarded, pulling him aside to reiterate, “I’m not enthusiastic about having my family along for this.”
“We’ll keep them out of trouble. Chances are, there won’t be any.” Theoretically, no one besides them, Livorus, and the Imperator knew what this trip was about.
Theoretically.
Of course, there were all the couriers who’d taken messages to Chaldean and Median contacts and the Chaldeans and the Medians themselves . . . . Adam grimaced. “All right, I realize that we don’t have a good track record on staying out of trouble. But . . . the other lictors, the ones in charge of Poppaea and Livorus’ children? They’re good. They’ll take care of them.”
“I know. I just feel a need to express, once again, how completely fucked this entire notion is. And I couldn’t convince her not to come.” Kanmi’s face had been an expressionless mask, but his tone had been as furious as Adam had ever heard it. And then he’d exhaled, and put it to the side. “Once they’re in a safe location, however, you can count on me, ben Maor.”
“Why does everyone keep telling me these things? I’m actually not in charge.”
“Livorus said you were. Effective this morning. He said he’d run it by Caetia to make sure she wasn’t offended to be outranked by someone technically junior to her on the team.” Kanmi shrugged. “Makes sense to me. Short-term, this assignment, you know the area better than anyone. Long-term . . . “ Kanmi’s eyes narrowed. “Well, we’ll see.”
Adam looked up at the ceiling. “Well, that would have been nice to know.”
“You know the propraetor. He does things in his own time, and in his own way. I’m sure he’ll tell you that you’re in charge sooner or later.” Kanmi’s tone had held needles, as had the quick flash of his grin.
Kanmi had introduced each of the other lictors to his family. Himi, age six, and Bodi, age four, had stared up at Trennus, in particular, squeaked, and had hidden behind their mother for a moment, peering out, wide-eyed. Adam figured that he understood why; the Britannian stood a foot taller than their father, and his sleeves were rolled up, displaying both blue-ink knot-work tattoos and the fact that Trennus actually carried a fair amount of muscle mass. Finally, Himi had edged out, as Trennus dropped down to a crouch to talk to them, his eyes kind behind his glasses, and, after a moment, had asked, in good Latin, “Why do you wear a dress?”
Kanmi had shouted with laughter, and Trennus had looked up at the ceiling. “That’s my boy,” Kanmi had chortled . . . just as Bastet had frowned, her expression irritated. “Don’t encourage him,” she’d chided. “Himilico, that’s rude.”
“No, it’s all right, and nothing I haven’t heard from men five times his age.” Trennus offered Himi a wrist to clasp. “It’s not a dress. It’s a kilt. Long and storied tradition. This pattern can only be worn by someone in my family. Anyone else who wears it, well, they get their heads knocked in. Or they get laughed at. One of the two.”
______________________
Bastet, for her part, on being introduced to her husband’s coworkers, had no idea what to do with them. She’d never entirely understood how he’d gotten pulled into the Praetorians in the first place; his degree in technomancy at the University of Athens had been in an engineering specialty. She’d assumed he’d be taking a job with some engineering firm, possibly with the ley-grid, or, at most, that he’d have gone back to school to get his doctorate, so he could teach. Instead, he’d been drawn in as a levy to the legions, and from there, he’d been pulled into the Praetorians. She’d assumed it was for his technical acumen. She knew he was brilliant, in that regard, but everything he’d ever talked to her about, back in their school days, had been practical applications of magic to technology. Sending power through capacitors and vacuum tubes and wires to modulate it. The potential for calculi to speed up the mathematics needed for military enchantments. Things like that. The fact that he’d been tapped for a protective detail? She’d chalked it up to the fact that they needed someone to check if the telephones had been tapped and to ensure that the lights stayed on.
The huge Pict was clearly a barbarian. Nevermind that his wrist-clasp was as gentle as if he held a baby chick in the palm of his hand; he was clearly one generation removed from frothing at the mouth and charging into battle, painted blue and naked. The long braids, the tattoos, the hairy arms, throat, and light beard, not to mention the ’kilt’? Since living outside of Nubia, she’d adopted many Roman and Hellene ideas. To dress as something other than Roman was to be a barbarian. And she’d done her best to be Roman in her demeanor and dress.
The Judean man was at least a known factor. Many Judeans came to Tyre on business; their capital city was only thirty or forty miles from the provincial border, after all. This one, for all that Kanmi introduced him as the leader of the detail, looked younger than her husband, and that didn’t make sense at all . . . except that, well, Kanmi was an engineer, and this one, clearly, was a solider. Probably intelligent enough, but still, soldiers were knuckle-draggers. Everyone knew that.
And the final introduction was to some Gothic tribeswoman, who wore, for some unknown reason, a cloak made of white feathers that came down to her waist, over the top of a leather bodice and black jeans. Cold eyes, cold face, cold hair, all washed-out and diluted-looking, like the third round of coffee poured from the same beans. Baraka, the third pot was called. Bastet had given her husband a quick, cautious glance, trying to discern if he liked this ice-pick as the Gothic woman had given her a quick, impersonal wrist-clasp. Bastet’s eyes had narrowed when she’d caught amusement in Kanmi’s glance at Sigrun. He did like the woman, but the female seemed to have about as much personality as the spear she carried in one hand. And with that, a shock of relief, in Bastet’s mind. Oh. She’s a tribade.
And with each of them neatly categorized in her mind, Bastet had dismissed them all. Two barbarians and one Judean, none of them particularly intelligent. They were the workhorses of the protective detail, the ones who were in charge of throwing themselves in front of any bullets or arrows destined for the propraetor, and her Kanmi was their technician, the one who made sure that their radios and devices worked.
It wasn’t that Kanmi had never talked to Bastet about his job. And it wasn’t that she didn’t think her husband was good at what he did. It was all a question of very selective hearing and memory, and how she’d isolated and segregated information in her head, as a way of dealing with it. She didn’t have to worry about Kanmi if he wasn’t in danger, and clearly, a technical special
ist in charge of radios and electronics wasn’t going to be in much danger. He even carried a slide-rule in one of his pockets! And if she didn’t have to worry about him, she was free to be irritated with him for not being around as much as she’d like him to be. And clearly, since all he was, was a high-priced technician, her job was the more important one. She saved lives at the hospital. And the sooner he stopped playing around, and got real job, one that let him stay home, without all these separations, the better it would be for her and the children. But instead, he was being stubborn about it.
So, she put on an uncomfortable smile and made nice until it was time to board the flight. This was the first time she’d ever been on a pleasure-trip in her life. Her father had allowed her to have more of an education than other women in Nubia tended to receive, on the assumption that she would return home and live a dedicated life of service to her people; she’d expected to do nothing more, until she met Kanmi, and, in marrying him in defiance of her father’s wishes, had quickly changed her citizenship to Carthaginian. And then medical school, apprenticeship in the hospital, two children . . . yes, the whole vacation idea was a new one. And she intended to make the most of it.
___________________
The flight from Rome to Jerusalem wasn’t actually all that long. Fourteen hundred miles, in a more or less straight line, made for four hours or so in the air, all told. Adam passed the time watching the others in first class, particularly Trennus and Sigrun, who each had convulsive grips on the arms of their chairs. He finally leaned to his left, across the aisle, to where they sat side-by-side in the seats across the aisle from Adam, and told them both, “You do realize that the safety lecture on entry is just standard procedure, right?”
“Don’t help me,” Trennus said, not opening his eyes. “Please. Just don’t try to help me.”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 55