Then we must seek an antidote for your sister’s despair. I would have thought Prometheus’ hope, and the breaking of the visions would be enough.
Her prophecies have a way of coming true, my friend. Sigrun sighed. Give me concrete proof that I will not wind up alone, walking that dark road that is the Styx . . . and then I will be able to repudiate her despair.
She said that the vision had changed, in part. She said you carried a golden chain around your wrist, and a dark shadow over you.
And yet, I am still on that road. Covered in blood, and alone but for a raven. Every other detail the same. And still impossible in most respects. Sigrun shrugged. She now viewed Loki’s curse as a very positive thing. While it persisted, she couldn’t walk that dark road, pregnant with the child of a man who was both dead and alive at the same time. She’d come to the conclusion that this meant Adam would be comatose at some point, and that she’d . . . somehow become pregnant by him. Worse. He could be made an Immortal after we conceived a child. Gelded, lobotomized, and possessed. Appalling thoughts. She looked up at Nith. Take me back to the Judea house, Nith, please. I need to find a way to tell Adam that there may be changes, and I do not even know how to tell him this without . . . saying everything.
The Judea house. Nith’s voice was questioning. Not ‘home.’
Sigrun closed her eyes. I suppose, in the end, home is where the people I love are. The house is just a place. Her throat was tight. Come on. Time matters in the real world.
Nith returned her to the house just before sunrise. Sigrun banished her armor, and slipped in the back door, silencing the wards, as usual, with a palm to the black stone statue of a pugnaces britanniae, or a Britannian war-dog, that stood by the door here, with its mate in the foyer. Spirits were bound to these statues, in a contract Trennus had arranged, and they would come to life and pin and bite any intruder not on the ‘allowed’ list who entered the house.
Old age or not, arthritis or not, Adam still heard every creak in the house. And when he didn’t expect her home, he’d been known to come down the stairs, slowly, with a pistol in the hand that didn’t hold a cane. As he did now, moving slowly through the dining room in his bare feet, towards the kitchen. “It’s just me,” Sigrun said, tiredly, eying the gun warily, and raising her hands slightly, before she slumped into a chair at the kitchen table and put her face in her hands. Out in the back yard, she could hear Nith curling up, with a thump, against the apple tree.
“What’s the matter?” Adam asked, safing the gun and putting it on the counter. He came over, and put his hands on her shoulders. “Sig . . . you look like someone died.”
“Someone did,” Sigrun said, quietly. “Rome. The Empire.” She looked up at him, and her throat clenched. “I am actually grateful Livorus did not live to see what is coming.”
Adam sat down beside her, taking her hands. “What’s going on?”
“You know about the sacrifices that Fenris stopped. Maccis described them.” Her tone was flat, as she tried to find the right words. “Rome’s gods came to Valhalla tonight. They demanded Fenris for punishment. And when the gods of my people refused to give them Fenris, they demanded me. Because they need a scapegoat. A public execution that they could show to the gods of Nahautl. And because I am eminently culpable for the deaths of four gods.”
Adam’s fingers had clenched on hers hard enough to make the bones creak. “No,” he said.
“They threatened the refugees. They said that millions of our people currently in Roman lands would suffer if my gods did not turn me over. And that if a public example was not made, that the gods of Nahautl and Quecha would not be dissuaded from continuing to butcher each other’s’ mortals as sacrifices to empower themselves.”
“Sig—”
“I was going to volunteer—”
“Sigrun! They’d crucify you!” Adam’s voice became a shout. “They’d leave you to hang from two pieces of wood outside of Rome and let you rot there!”
“And I would not die that way,” Sigrun reminded him, quietly. “I would stay alive for weeks or months. Head and heart, Adam.” And perhaps not even then. Perhaps when my mortal body dies, I will merely demanifest, and retreat to the Veil, until I can reshape my form? I do not know what rules pertain to me. Dying might require being slain by another entity with my essence devoured in the mortal realm. If it doesn’t explode outwards, in a ripple of all the borrowed energy I currently possess. She squeezed his fingers gently. “My gods refused to turn me over. They have defied Rome. Jupiter may bargain more gently with them now. Rome needs us—my people, I mean. And the Gauls. Rome cannot afford a civil war now, or the loss of half its armies.” She looked down. “But that being said, I must resign my position as a Praetorian. I probably should have done so a year ago. But I was holding onto the memory of things past.” She shrugged. “Also, a few other precautions. Sophia’s care comes out of my bank account. I’ll sign it over to you. And we’ll take my name off the house, so it can’t be seized as a foreign asset.”
“Sigrun. If your people break away from the Empire . . . you won’t be a subject of the Empire anymore. Judea will still be a subject nation . . . .” Adam grappled with it. “You’d be considered a hostile foreign national. Like a Persian who wants to live here, while holding onto Persian citizenship, while we’re at war with their country.”
Oh, I’d be far worse than that, Adam. I’d be like an enemy general, or a spy.
He went on, not hearing her unspoken thoughts. “You’d need permission just to visit here . . . unless Judea recognized Germania, separately from Rome, and established diplomatic relations directly, which we can’t . . . .” His fingers tightened on hers.
Sigrun nodded, looking down. “I let Medea sell my father’s house in Cimbri. It was easier, at the time.” She grimaced. “But I can buy a house in Burgundoi, if necessary. You might like the climate.” Do I have the right to drag him to Burgundoi, away from whatever slim assurance of safety lies here? Would he even leave? Are Sophia’s futures broken now?
Adam’s mind was still back at the pass. “Trennus. The Picts. We have part of Gaul sitting in our backyard. Is Gaul going to secede, too?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if Germania will, for certain. It is currently on Rome to respond, and I hope that the government will tell their gods not to be . . . well . . . stupid.” Though that would be a world-wide first. Mortals directing their gods, instead of vice-versa. Sigrun considered it. “If the Pictish lands are recognized as part of Gaul, and thus separate from Judea and Tyre, it creates a strategic nightmare, because if they secede, the Legion couldn’t enter their lands to defend the entire northern stretch of the Wall. And if they’re considered still part of Carthage and Gaul, then the entire population will have to move, or . . . we’ll have pitched battles north of here. This time between Gaul and the legions.” She sighed. “The Persians would see a civil war and sweep in to eat up any portions of the Empire that they could.” Sigrun looked over at Adam, her expression bleak. “Trading my life to prevent all of this is sounding better and better. But my gods will not permit it. And the gods of Rome are too cunning to be so foolish. But there will be still . . . consequences.”
Adam looked at her. “Would they try to pull some kind of a snatch-and-grab operation on you? It’s something special operations is trained in, you know.”
Sigrun blinked. She didn’t think there was a human spec ops team in the world who could take her captive now . . . but they could capture Adam. Under threat to him, she’d probably hand herself over, willingly. “I’ll ask Nith to stand guard in the bedroom,” she said, shrugging.
Adam gave her a dubious glance. “I’m not sure I know how to feel about that,” he said, dryly. “You’re the one who makes such a point of the fact that he’s a person.”
“And how many times did we have to stand guard inside Livorus’ room, when we were lictors?” Sigrun returned, but shifted, uneasily. She wasn’t concerned for herself, but for him. Perhaps I
can get him to move to the Caledonian Forest, into Tren’s protection. That would be easiest and safest for everyone. Of course, then there’s convincing him of that. “Of course, that doesn’t keep the house safe when I’m not here.”
“I’ll worry about the house. You worry about yourself.”
Martius 18, 1993 AC
Adam and Trennus accompanied Sigrun to the mansion of the governor the next morning. In a way, it was the ending of an era. Trennus had turned in his badge last year on becoming, well, king of his people. His people didn’t believe in crowns, and his installation into office had consisted of sitting on a large, apparently sacred stone. Saraid had already put the royal wyrms on his wrists. That had been it. Now, Sigrun was the last of the former lictors to turn in her badge, but she’d opted to do it in her own time, and in her own way.
The governorship had changed hands. Emperor Caesarion IX was now seventy, though god-born, and had seven children. His heir was Julianus, the eldest son. But his third son, also named Caesarion, had served in the Legion as an officer. He was a close friend of Marcus Livorus, and had married Marcus’ sister, Aquila, some years ago. And he had just been appointed governor of Judea. As such, he’d brought his family with him, and Marcus was, apparently, shopping for a villa in Little Roma, himself. “Welcome,” young Caesarion told them as they were escorted into his library by a servant. Aquila and Marcus both looked up, and Adam’s heart seized. When he’d first met Propraetor Livorus, Livorus had only been forty-nine years old, and Adam had thought him an engaging, intelligent, middle-aged man.
Marcus, his son? Was now fifty. And he looked enough like Adam’s first glimpse of Antonius Livorus to make him think that he was seeing a ghost. And yet, he looked young to Adam’s eyes, where Antonius had looked . . . old. This is what Sig feels like all the damned time, he thought, as everyone stood to exchange wrist-clasps, or bows, as the case might be. And he could see tears glimmering at the edges of Sig’s eyes as she accepted a wrist-clasp from Marcus. “You do so look like your father,” she murmured. “I still miss him.”
“I am not so illustrious as he was, nor do I have half of his acumen,” Marcus admitted, tiredly. “There are rumblings in the communiqués from Rome that Germania may secede. Is that why you are here today?”
Sigrun nodded. “It has been . . . somewhat inappropriate for me to remain a Praetorian for some time now,” she said. Adam thought her phrasing obscure, and marked the faint sidelong look. Sigrun was not a good liar. She might tell a technical truth, but even then, her face tended to reveal her discomfort. “I am here to turn in my badge today. But I choose to surrender it to you.” She reached into her poke, and pulled out the slim folder with her identification in it. Pulled out the silver badge, and handed it to young Livorus. “Because I could not give it to your father.”
“Why Judea, dominus?” Adam asked Caesarion, quietly, and off to the side. “You and Marcus were doing good work in the Senate, and Aquila was working for sorcerers’ rights.”
Caesarion shrugged. “I think that perhaps I ruffled too many feathers in the Senate. Marcus, too. My father appointed me here to quiet things down for the time being. I was the one saying that we should have pursued more peaceful methods with Persia before the war broke out. But I also said that if we’re going to be at war, be at war. Go after an aggressor and make them pay, as we always have. Be a lion in war, and a watch-dog in peace. And taking half an enemy’s lands has a way of bringing them to the negotiating table to sue for their return, yes?” He shook his head. “Instead, we’ve been bogged down over the Wall. Again. Would I like to get Chaldea and Media back? Yes. But at the moment, there are entire districts over there that are depopulated. And there’s the question of the mad godlings. For a while, I had hoped that the cease-fire would hold, as both sides worked to eradicate the godlings’ ghul. That we might be able to make some kind of a mutual defense pact with Persia, for as long as the mad godlings happened to roam the earth.”
“You’ve read the JI report on the ghul?” Adam’s words were cautious.
“Yes. Young Matrugena is a very capable interrogator. And so we see that Persia is, essentially, appeasing the mad ones.” Caesarion grimaced, his voice still quiet, as the others, on the other side of the room, chattered. “It’s been the way of kingdoms since time began. A superior power appears? You pay them tribute, and convince them to attack your enemies, or at least to protect you from them. You wait until that superior power is weakened . . . and then you strike, and take your freedom back from them.” Caesarion sighed. “The problem is, the godlings do not actually appear to be rational, thinking creatures. Using the same tactics on them that have been applied to conquerors will not work, I think.”
Adam nodded. He liked the younger man, and it was a pity that the third-born son would never attain a rank higher than governor of a distant province. Julianus, the eldest son, was just past fifty-two, and was the scandal-mongers’ darling; while Caesarion had had two divorces, Julianus had had four, and a string of lovers of both genders. This had both a positive and negative effect on his reputation in Rome; it made Julianus appear to be a virile and vigorous man, but to adherents of the values of the old republic, fidelity within marriage was still important. On the whole, however, Julianus enjoyed popularity in the press. But in Adam’s opinion, Julianus had no gravitas. Caesarion had been in the Legion, had worked in the Senate for the past ten years or so, and had come to understand policies and policy-making. “I think the world would be a better place if more countries followed the Pictish customs of kingship,” he murmured.
“What, get the new king drunk and wrestle with him in the mud?” Caesarion said, raising his eyebrows.
Adam snorted. “No. Have the old king pick which of his offspring, of either gender, happens to be the most capable. And in the event of an entire generation of dunces, adopt a better heir.”
Caesarion chuckled faintly, and put his hands behind his back. “That sounded as if there might have been a compliment in there, much veiled. Thank you, but I have no such ambitions. Let Julianus inherit the whole mess when my father dies. I do not envy him at all.”
They rejoined the group, Adam leaning on his cane, as the butler announced another guest had just arrived. Adam turned, wincing inwardly as his knees protested, and his eyebrows shot up. “This is a reunion,” he said. “Mazatl Itztli. It’s good to see you once more.”
The hair, shaved at the sides and spiked in the middle, was gray now, but Mazatl still wore jade earplugs . . . and his arms, bare under his gray tweed cloak, still bore the mosaic of tattoos that marked him as a Jaguar warrior. Ehecatl’s son was, damnably, older than his father had been, when Adam had worked with Ehecatl as a lictor. Older than when Ehecatl had narrowly avoided being sacrificed to Tlaloc, in fact. “Commander,” Mazatl said, offering a wrist, with a smile. “I didn’t expect to find you or Agents Caetia or Matrugena here.”
“We’re all celebrating the fact that we’re no longer commanders or agents,” Adam said, dryly. “Sigrun finally turned in her badge.”
Mazatl grimaced. “Damned shame. I thought you were as permanent as the Atlas mountains,” he told Sigrun, then turned back to the others. “Governor? I understand there are some new travel restrictions that went into effect yesterday for people going to Nahautl.”
Caesarion nodded. “The situation there is deteriorating, rapidly.”
“Understood, dominus. I’m not liking the news I’m seeing on the far-viewer.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“My wife and children are here. But my father—one of Propraetor Livorus’ former lictors—is still living there, on the outskirts of Tenochtitlan. I would like travel waivers to go there and . . . to bring him here.” Mazatl grimaced. “I’m first-born. I would have done this years ago, except, well . . . he’s old, dominus. He didn’t want to die anyplace other than where he’s lived, and where my mother’s body is buried.”
“I understand that,” Adam said, leaning on his stick.
“I couldn’t wait to leave Judea when I was a young man. I traveled the world. But this is where my roots are, now. I wouldn’t want to leave my home any more than Ehecatl wants to leave his.” He caught the way Sigrun’s expression tightened, but . . . damn it all. He’d put his blood and his sweat into their house. It was theirs. And he wasn’t going to go halfway around the world because someone said jump.
Trennus and Sigrun exchanged glances, and Tren grimaced, too. Caesarion studied Mazatl. “Your father is, what, seventy-five or so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He doesn’t seem much of a risk to bring here. I’ll have my secretary issue the requisite travel papers for you and for him . . . in deference to the memory of Antonius Livorus, and in respect to your father’s—and your—years of service.”
The next three weeks saw tensions escalate rapidly between the remains of Germania and Nova Germania, Gaul and Novo Gaul, and Rome itself. Adam was privy to a fair bit of information at Judean Intelligence that wasn’t being directly promulgated, but even so, he shook his head at the far-viewer reports. Rome publically denounced the sacrifices in Nahautl that had led to the deaths of over a thousand Gallic men and women. Local gardia and Praetorians were trying to get into the back country to other temple sites, to verify reports of Nahautl residents also being rounded up for sacrifice, but every time they managed to get through roadblocks and red tape, the sites had usually recently undergone a thorough cleaning, apparently with bleach. Far to the south, in the Quechan provinces of Nahautl, with whom Livorus had brokered semi-autonomous regional rule, international observers reported what the Nahautl and Quecha both referred to, euphemistically, as “deer hunting.” This phrase had been used in both regional languages since ancient times to refer to the capture of slaves in battle for use as sacrifices.
The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3) Page 48