But I digress. Suffice to say, it seems likely that everyone currently alive, is reaching for life. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the gardia reports from downtown Jerusalem and Rome after nightfall. The young soldiers of the Empire come home and celebrate life. And those who remain behind cling to traditions that served their ancestors well, in the hopes of propitiating their gods, and averting strife from their doors. And for some of us . . . the strife and uncertainty of daily life is the spur, the goad, that drives us to think new thoughts, contemplate new possibilities, and explore avenues previously unexplored in magic and in natural philosophy.
—Minori Eshmunazar, “Social Dynamics: War, Magic, and Science.” Speech given at the Technology and Technomancy Symposium, University of Judea, Iunius 15, 1992 AC.
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Iunius 3, 1993 AC
Psyche’s Wings, a taverna in the University district, was an assault on Maccis’ senses. Too many competing smells—perfume, soap, aftershave, and sweat. The faintly resinous tang of dryad flesh, the rank odor of satyr and centaur hide, and the familiar musk of fenris fur, all overlain with the aroma of alcohol. Not just uisce beatha or honey-mead. Sake, locally-brewed. Arak. Wheat beer and potato spirits. Not just in the glass, but oozing out of people’s skins in the foul alchemy of bodily chemistry. His ears were under attack, too—raucous laughter, shouting, and live music, amplified electronically. The speakers forced the drums into predominance, overwhelming the gentler tones of the pipes and lutes. Maccis had taken to wearing wolf-ears, a nod in the direction of solidarity with the nieten and the fenris, and he could feel them flatten against his head, just before he shifted them back to human-normal. There were at least two hundred people around him, all jammed cheek-by-jowl, watching a variety of female dancers up on stage. He hadn’t been this close to that many people outside of combat in months, and their erratic movements made the taverna look like nothing so much as a bowl of writhing worms.
He looked down at Zaya on his arm, and did his best to quell his unease. They’d been hand-fasted for just about two months now, and he’d spent much of that time working with the landsknechten. Mostly in the field, but also with the lindworms, while Zaya had found, with her mother’s assistance, a living space for them in the University area. She’d apologized for the one-bedroom apartment, but Maccis had told her, seriously, “It’s perfect, Zee. I can go into the bedroom and close the door, and the only person I share it with is you.”
He was perfectly content just being with her. The privacy seemed almost lavish to him after years in his father’s house, and in the field with the fenris, for whom there was no real privacy. He’d cooked dinner every night he was home. He hadn’t wanted to explain why, but . . . it had to do with being human. He’d eaten far too many meals of raw flesh in wolf form. Cooked food was a luxury, and even with rationing, it was almost decadent to bite into something he’d made for the two of them. Taste. Smell. Texture. Something to be savored, and not gulped down hastily in raw need.
Zaya, was still, however, the daughter of a high-ranking Chaldean Magus. As such, would make for a very good kidnapping target by Persian spies, or by Potentia ad Populum extremists. Certain precautions were in order with the apartment. Erida had warded the windows and doors personally, attuning them to their hands alone. That had necessitated a very non-standard clause in their lease contract. Maintenance was not permitted in without one of them being there. Additionally, six spirits were Zaya’s personal bodyguards, and continuously flitted in and out of existence around her. Maccis knew she couldn’t see them, but he appreciated the fact that the spirits made themselves scarce when the two of them were in bed.
But as a result of having lived a quiet, cloistered life until now, once Zee had gotten over the initial strangeness of living someplace other than her family home, she wanted to go out. See the sights. Be, on some level, a normal university student. And she’d heard about this place from one of the scholars at the archives, and had begged Maccis to go with her. He’d agreed to please her, but he’d known that he would be in for an uncomfortable evening. He was already on edge, and he wanted to snarl at anyone who brushed up too close to either of them.
“We don’t go out much anymore,” Zaya shouted over the music, finally found a recently-vacated table, and settled in. “Thank you for taking me!”
“We only used to go out once or twice a month, if I could afford it. Maybe to a cinema or a play,” Maccis returned, pushing empty cups aside with a grimace. Whatever the previous occupants had been drinking had been sticky. He looked around, and spotted, through a break in the crowd, scantily-clad dryads posing in pots of soil, with wreaths of artificial leaves and genuine flower garlands. Periodically, they’d shift position. Living statuary. Sapient topiaries. It made him even more uncomfortable than he had been before.
Zaya surveyed her surroundings with interest. He wondered if she realized that she was wearing the same expression as a sociologist who’d just discovered a previously-unknown tribe deep in the jungles of Caesaria Australis. “Oh, I think I know that girl! Isn’t that Saga, from school? She used to practice dance with me at lunch.”
Maccis squinted up at the stage, and then shrugged. If it was Saga, the last two years hadn’t been kind. She wore heavy kohl and rouge, and all of her night-black scales were visible—Judean modesty laws hadn’t quite caught up to the vagaries of nieten physiology. This particular girl lacked visible nipples, so she could dance topless in a public bar without any restrictions. She still had a full head of hair, however, despite the scales that lightly freckled her face. “It looks like her.” He paused, looking around. “You said one of the magi recommended this place?”
“Yes.” Zaya sounded confused.
“Was he young?”
“Tehro’s in his fifties. Actually, he asked me if I needed an escort, and I told him I’d bring you here, since he recommended it so highly.” Zaya was still looking at the stage, and Maccis rubbed his temples. She hasn’t even put it together yet. Gods.
A waitress emerged from the crowd and finally began clearing the empty glasses from their table. “What’s good here?” Zaya asked, having to repeat herself to be heard over the music.
“We’ve got white cheese baked in phyllo, dried fruit trays, and bread with olive oil,” the waitress shouted over the music. “I’ll bring you a bowl of almonds in a moment. What do you want to drink?”
“Water,” Maccis said, and the waitress stared at him.
“You sure that’s what you want?”
“Yes. Water. Cheese in phyllo is fine. Zee, what do you want?”
“A glass of red wine, please. Local is fine.” Zaya looked at Maccis as the waitress retreated, shaking her frowsy head. “Maccis, eighteen is the local drinking age—”
“I know. I tried uisce in Novo Gaul, because that’s what my father drinks . . . and it turns out that I can’t stand it. Taste is mostly a function of smell.” He tapped his nose, and tried to breathe shallowly. As far as he was concerned, this place was a sty meant for humans instead of pigs.
It took over thirty minutes for the waitress to return, and Maccis’ head ached by then. He tried not to laugh when Zaya took a sip of her wine and her face twisted. She’d been raised in a Chaldean household; wine was permitted, watered, even for the children. She’d been trained to recognize good vintages so as to be an excellent hostess in the future, herself. “Vinegar?” Maccis asked, watching their surroundings. He’d seen several men approach so far, smiling at Zaya . . . and only to veer away when they spotted him.
“Gods. No. Engine oil.” Her revolted tone made him chuckle at last. “It’s really loud in here.”
“Yes.”
“Crowded.”
“Yes.” He paused. “Having fun, Zee?”
“Not really. I’m sorry, Maccis. I didn’t know it was going to be . . . like this.” She shook her head and poked at the congealed mass of oily phyllo on the table between them. “What was Ninson Tehro thinking when
he recommended this place?”
“He wanted to get a pretty young girl to go with him to a place that’s ideal for single people who have no lives to meet other people who have no lives,” Maccis told her, and leaned back against the booth’s upholstery.
Zaya’s mouth fell open. His eyes flicked around again. An off-duty legionnaire—identifiable by the Roman nose, close-cropped hair, and the hard look around his eyes—leaned in over the shoulder of one of the dryads, nuzzling her ear. A raucous group of men and women in their mid-twenties occupied the table beside them, each laughing more loudly than the next, as if in competition. The noise jangled in his head, and his nose twitched as he caught the smell of something burning. They were passing a pipe around the table. Tobacco. It’s used for religious observances by natives in Caesaria Aquilonis . . . and none of them look Aquilonian.
Zaya had recovered her voice. “But I’m hand-fasted. He knows I’m hand-fasted!”
“Exactly how seriously do Chaldeans take Gothic and Gallic hand-fasting, anyway? I’ve heard Judeans calling it a practice marriage, for the gods’ sakes.”
“This is really a . . .” she groped for a term. “A place to meet people?”
“It’s a pick-up place, yes. Zee, do you see any people here who are married, other than us?” Maccis had only spotted two wedding rings so far around them. “Most married people don’t come to places like this, unless they’re looking for a threesome partner.”
“Maccis!” Zaya choked, but Maccis had been raised in a household with a fertility spirit for an aunt, and it wasn’t as if his mother, father, and Aunt Lassair hadn’t gone to bed together.
And yet, in spite of that, he understood, intuitively, that his father’s relationships with his mother and Lassair had been fundamentally different than what he saw around him in the taverna. The difference was commitment. “Zee, married people generally have lives. They invite friends over for an evening meal. They have children. They want to spend time together, and not with a crowd. These people? Don’t have lives.”
“How can you be so sure?” Zaya frowned.
“Because I’ve spent the last year with fenris, who communicate with body-language and scent as much as with mind-speech,” Maccis replied. “Wolves do everything together for survival. I can see the social cues in people now that they don’t even realize they’re showing. But wolves are also intrinsically honest. Humans who go out like this aren’t doing it for survival. And yet they all reek of desperation. They want what other people have.”
“. . . that’s a really depressing point of view, Maccis.” He didn’t respond, other than a shrug. Zaya frowned. “So what do you see in the people around us?” She gestured to the table beside them.
“The ones who are being loud because no one else would know that they were having fun if they weren’t putting on a show?”
“They look like they’re having fun.”
“Maybe they are, but it’s a display.” He snorted. “They’re not here to talk. They’re here to let the music and the alcohol remove inhibitions.” He looked at the group, analyzing how they turned towards each other. “They sit closer to each other than the other people here. They probably work together. The woman on the right is married—she’s the only one wearing a ring. But her husband isn’t here. That suggests that she’s not happy in her marriage. That’s why she’s out with friends at a taverna like this one, and not a quieter place. The man sitting next to her, the Carthaginian? He’s attracted to her. See how he leans towards her? Laughs at everything she says, and she laughs back? She returns the attraction.” Maccis’ eyes were hooded for a moment. “But every time he gets too close, she pulls back. That suggests that she’s keeping it ‘just friends’ until she’s sure of him. You can practically smell the tension between them.”
Zaya’s eyes had gone wide. “You’re getting this all from body-language?”
Maccis shrugged. “The man in the middle is attracted to the single girl, but she hardly looks at him. She keeps leaning in to talk to the man who’s playing with the married woman’s feet.” At his words, Zaya’s head jerked as she turned to look, but Maccis didn’t move his head. He could see it all without overtly looking. “He thinks she’s attractive . . . he takes his eyes off the married woman to talk to her . . . but he shifts away when she leans forwards. I think . . . yes. They’ve had sex before. She wants a relationship, but he’s pursuing other opportunities right now.”
“He sounds like a pig.”
“I can’t tell you if he is or if he isn’t. I just see behavior.”
Zaya squirmed. “So . . . do you want to go somewhere else?”
Maccis stomach, which had been churning under the force of his headache, unclenched. “I thought you’d never ask,” he admitted, tossed a couple of coins on the table, and stood to offer her his arm. They passed the bar, where the female satyr bartender gave him a saucy wink and called, “You two need a room?” in their general direction. Maccis ignored her, and shoved his way towards the door, relying on raw mass to clear a path.
Outside, in the clean air, Zaya watched as Maccis leaned over a fountain, inhaling and exhaling deeply. “I’m sorry,” she told him again, ruefully. “I didn’t know it would be like that.”
“It’s all right, though if I ever meet this Ninson Tehro, I’m going to have words with him,” Maccis said, turning to put his head down on her shoulder, and then pulled away immediately, wrinkling his nose “The baths are still open. Why don’t we go there, and get cleaned up? Get our clothes laundered.”
“I smell that bad?” Zaya laughed, half-amused, half-offended.
“You’ve got that sty on your skin. And so do I. I’m turning my own stomach here.”
“The baths are gender-segregated. That defeats the purpose of spending an evening with you before you’re back out in the field.” Zaya sighed. “Let’s just go home. I’ll . . . find something better for us next time, I promise. Something that doesn’t give you a migraine.”
“No. I promised you an evening out, and it’s not even nine postmeridian. Let’s just . . . walk till we find something. The clean air helps.” He stood back up again, and took her arm once more.
She nodded as they began to wend their way along the poured-stone sidewalks, looking at the neon signs over all the doors. A half-dozen languages, showing the truly cosmopolitan nature of the area. “So. The lindworms can talk,” Zaya said, after a minute, quietly. She’d been in the reviewing stands with her parents to watch the landsknechten company’s display of force.
“Yes. They’re people. Just like the fenris. Just like Nith.”
“Are you going to keep working with them?” A little spark of hope. He could hear the unspoken words behind the ones she’d said: You’d be home more often.
Maccis sighed. “Heolstor wants me to be his permanent rider. I told him no.”
“Why?” Zaya sounded shocked. “You’d be one of the first-ever lindworm riders . . . wouldn’t it be better than being a pilot, like you used to dream about?”
“Yes, but . . .” he hesitated. “I’m also part of Fenris’ pack.” He saw her grimace, and held up a hand. “He asked me to come back, after I had some time with you. I don’t want to abandon them.” Another hesitation, and then he blurted out, “I’ve had really odd dreams, Zee. I knew Heolstor’s name before he ever told me it.”
Zaya’s dark eyes widened, and Maccis grimaced again. “I’ve seen Sol, Rig, and myself all flying with the lindworms. But those dreams don’t make sense, Zee. I’m stealth-trained, and a shape-shifter. I can fly on my own. Sol can, too, technically. It seems like something Sophia Caetia would be telling me is my fate.”
“You want to ask Prometheus about the dreams?” she asked.
Maccis shook his head, stubbornly. “I’ll make my own fate.” He paused and amended, “We’ll make our own fate. If we can.” He exhaled, and acknowledged reality. “I don’t even know if Germania and Gaul are going to be in the Empire in six months.” He looked down at her, sobe
rly as they continued to walk. “I don’t want you to have to change schools . . . but you might want to look at the University of Cimbri-on-the-Caestus. Or maybe University of Divodurum. Someplace away from . . . everything.”
“Whatever happens, we’ll make it work out, all right?” she told him, closed her fingers on his, tightly.
Iunius 4, 1993 AC
The knocking at Inghean’s front door started just after dawn, and wouldn’t stop. “Maaaaamaaaa,” her two-year-old, Vigdis, called from her room. “Dooooor! Mama! Door!”
The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3) Page 59