Sigrun let her helmet and mask dissolve, showing her features now. “This is bacterial meningitis? And it’s not responding to conventional antibiotics?”
“Normally, if one type didn’t work, we’d move the patients on to a different strain,” one of the doctors put in, and grimaced, rubbing at her eyes tiredly. “Most of the production plants in Hellas are gone. India was manufacturing a good portion of our supply, but shipping from overseas is a shambles. There are some plants in Cimbri-on-the-Caestus that are still producing products, but . . . limited types.”
So Sigrun worked to reduce fevers. All that really took was a touch of her hands. It was much more difficult, in bodies so small and delicate, to stimulate the immune responses without making the fevers worse. But she encouraged their bodies to attack the bacteria, and was gratified when seven out of ten of her patients, including young Alaric, were able to open their eyes. The most she could do for the worst cases was to give them and their doctors a fighting chance against the disease. She stroked hair back from one unconscious child’s face. “I’ve seen too many cases of typhoid and meningitis in the refugee camps in Judea,” she told the doctor standing beside her, quietly. “Bad hygiene, until Frittigil got the situation under better control. It’s a pleasure to have been able to help for once.”
“Won’t you . . . stay and eat something?” one of the mothers asked her, timidly. “You look so tired.”
Sigrun shook her head. “I am hunting the people responsible for Crann Péitseog. But I thank you for the offer.” She smiled a little, as Alaric, the first of her small patients to have woken up, now waved a piece of foolscap urgently in her direction. She squinted down at it, and blinked. “This is me?” she hazarded a guess. The figure was mostly done in black ink, after all, with white hair instead of copper-tinged . . . and huge black wings. “I don’t have wings, little one.”
“Yes, you do!” He pointed at her cloak, and Sigrun chuckled, ruefully. Give it a hundred years or so, and I might. Gods only know what I would do with them. They would only be in my way. Look at Reginleif. She can barely find a comfortable chair. She left the ward, her mood darkening. Assuming there’s a world left to inhabit in a hundred years.
She’d just reached the roof, where Nith had landed next to the helicopter pad, when Minori’s voice crackled though her mind. Sigrun!
Yes? You know, we do have satellite phones. We could occasionally use those—
No time. We tracked down the cell of the Carthaginian Liberation Party that gave the Potentia people their assistance. Kanmi’s not very pleased with them at the moment. Minori sounded agitated, but also . . . Amaterasu, under Minori’s voice, was approving. They smuggled the Potentia people out of Carthage on an absolutely antique diesel-powered transport ship that landed in Tidewater—
That’s a major port south of here, near Croatoan, Sigrun recognized it, immediately. Did they cut the diamonds? How many people did they ship here?
Two dozen, organized into three-man cells. Each of them left here with eight to ten small diamonds—no more than three carats, each. That’s enough storage space for a minor blast. Enough to take down a single structure, like that office building down in Arlesus. But more importantly, three groups left with two twenty-carat diamonds, and two sixty-carat ones, between them. I took a look at the mineralogical report on one of the two sixty-carat ones . . . . Minori’s voice was taut with worry.
Bad?
Unstable. Flaws and inclusions, making it difficult to incise a spell into it correctly. If you have to detour too often around impurities in a matrix, it can make the spell itself unstable. That’s why most thinking people prefer lab-grown. You get a clean, pure product. Minori paused.
Sounds like that could make the spell less effective. Sigrun perched on Nith’s back, but they didn’t rise into the air just yet.
Kanmi’s voice joined the conversation. It could make the spell a dud, or it could leave them no room for safeguards, as we saw in Crann Péitseog. Even in mind-speech, he was biting off the ends of his words. Alternately, yes, it could cause the spell matrix to collapse in on itself, and continue the process until it happens to run out of fuel.
Sigrun exhaled. I don’t suppose they were helpful enough to provide their helpful Egyptian hosts, say, a list of targets?
Major cities, but just the ones we’ve already expected. Water sources, they’ve already demonstrated, don’t have to be rivers. A water tower holds enough hydrogen to level an area for miles. So soft targets with high potential body counts like skyscrapers and hospitals should be considered. Places that concentrate people’s faith—like temples. Emblems of the cities, like that statue of Odin and his ravens out in Mannahata Harbor, for instance . . . .
Back up. Hospitals? Sigrun felt a chill go through her. I am at one such right now. Let me . . . talk to the administrators.
The worst of it was, a bomb-sniffing dog couldn’t find a diamond. Spell-incised gems were small, inconspicuous, and could be worn, set in jewelry, by anyone. Could be carried in a pocket, and discarded anywhere. Laser inscription technology had highly refined the production of spell-matrix stones; people like Erida had been rare craftsmen before this century. And now, spells could be manufactured, with calculi assistance. Sigrun wasn’t sure what that boded for the future, assuming the world didn’t end in 1999 the way her sister still foretold, but she wasn’t sure that it was a good thing. This kind of manufactured spell could be used by anyone. That was something that Potentia ad Populum claimed was a good thing. It took the powers of the sorcerers, the ley-mages, and the god-born, and put them in the hands of ordinary mortals. An equalizer, their literature stated.
Sigrun had no problem with seeing a god-touched weapon like Caliburn in Adam’s hands. Adam had proven himself. He had the kind of meticulous discipline that Kanmi, Minori, Sigrun, and Trennus all tried to inculcate in the students that they trained. He had ethics. He had honor. And he had very good judgment. The vast majority of normal people lacked one or more of those vital components. Some mages and god-born did, as well, but . . . that was what training was supposed to weed out. Sigrun wasn’t sure she wanted to live in a world where anyone with enough denarii could buy the power of the gods, and literally hold it in the palm of their hands.
She left the hospital staff searching through the lost-and-found and the trash and . . . everywhere, really. She and Tyr had already notified the local gardia, months ago, that the city could be a target, based on its prominence and its waterways. She had to trust that everyone here was going to do their jobs. And now, she needed to do her own.
It was night now, and Sigrun could feel the guilt-bonds even more clearly as they swept through the air towards the north end of the island. The stars above were rivaled by the ley-lights of the city below, and she felt as if they were flying between two endless planes of stars, or above a perfectly still pool, mirroring the heavens above. A dizzying moment, as the perspective changed, and Nith came in for a landing . . . very lightly . . . behind a grungy motor lodge, and snuffled, in some disgust, at the dumpster by the kitchen door. He is here?
They are here. He has two others with him. All guilt-tied. I can feel them now clearly. Sigrun slipped off his neck, and hovered in the air, her spear coming to her hand. There are many other people in the building, however. At least two hundred occupants, I think. She could pick out forms behind the walls, with her othersight. Gray, in the main. Some people with pale burgundy overlaying their forms as they lay together in bed, moving together, sweetly. Some people cloud-pale with boredom as they watched the far-viewers. And those three, up there . . . tight-wound knots. Power in one of them—a sorcerer. The other two were normal mortals, on edge with fear and apprehension.
You wish to reduce the potential for them to damage this inn, and harm those others here? Nith swiveled his head, studying the area. Each room has one window, and one door, both facing the front area, not this odiferous alleyway.
You’re unusually fastidious sometimes, my friend.
Alleys always seem to smell the same. They have not changed, from century to century. Though there is less human excrement and horse manure in this place and time. Also, fewer dead animals. Nith paused. Enter their room, and I will leap over the building and land at the front. In that fashion, you may throw them out the window, and I will endeavor to catch them without . . . damaging them. He bared diamond fangs at her. You will even retain the element of surprise in that fashion, assuming that you do not kick down the door.
Sigrun sighed. This would be so much easier if you actually fit inside most doorways. Very well. We will try it that way. At times like these, she missed Adam acutely. Having someone human-sized to go up the stairs with her, a solid presence at her back, steady hands holding a gun on their targets. And yet, at the same time, while it would have been reassuring to have someone there . . . Adam’s presence would have been superfluous. His ability to back her up would have been almost inconsequential. You really need to try to take a human form at some point.
Nith studied her. On those occasions on which you have been injured, how do you imagine that I carried you to your room in the keep? In my teeth, perhaps?
Sigrun froze in place, disconcerted. So . . . you can?
I do not think you would find the form particularly human, but it is bipedal.
When I was burned, you removed my clothing, so that it would not heal into the wounds?
Correct. The lacings were confusing. I do not understand how humans are so adept with their fingers. Nith’s tone was rueful. It matters little. You were bleeding and wounded. I tended you. His tone had gone neutral, and the words became even more formal than usual.
Sigrun inhaled. It could wait. It could definitely wait. I’ll try for a more circumspect entrance than you usually allow me, she told Nith, and rose into the air.
Her armor had one unintentional, and very welcome side-effect; it completely concealed the tell-tale glow of her rune-marks, and she could keep the hood of her cloak down over the luminous eye-crystals. She flew up and over the roof, setting down gently on the third-floor balcony, just outside of room 346. She tested the area for seiðr, and found wards on the door and windows—wards keyed to detect living flesh that didn’t match the occupants’ DNA, and administer a mild electrical shock, as well as set off an alarm in the mind of the sorcerer who’d created the spell. Internally, Sigrun snorted. The electrical shock would feel like a lover’s kiss, but she didn’t want them warned. She could tear the spell apart with her own seiðr, or, thanks to Freya and Minori’s teachings, could more carefully disassemble it, and hope that the sorcerer didn’t notice his spell being unmade around him.
Or, she could use a slightly different approach. Night was, after all, her time.
Sigrun willed herself into insubstantiality, and slipped right through the crack between the door and its jamb. She poured herself through, like mist, roiling through, and was able to perceive, in her othersight, that the wards did not twitch at her passage, and that the three men in the room were much occupied with dumping out a bag of gems onto one of the twin beds. “You’re sure we want to hit so many locations at once?” one of them asked, in Latin.
“The valkyrie is here in the city. Showing off for the news media again. She’s at some hospital, supposedly curing some sick children, but it’s all a big production to ensure that people keep believing,” the sorcerer told them. He was a startlingly tall Nubian, much like Zoskales Ezana, one of her first Praetorian partners, back in the day. The words grated at her; yes, she’d thought of the need for belief, but humans needed, more than anything else, hope. A reason to get out of bed in the morning. “We can set a few of these rocks under some of the bridges. This entire city will grind to a halt, and Mannahata itself will be isolated, cut off, without them. We’ll set the largest one,” and he hefted a diamond almost as large as a quail’s egg in his fingers, “at the ley-power tapping station, the large one right by the port. That’ll shut down power to the entire region, if I’ve calculated correctly, and should take out most of the city.”
Sigrun rebuilt her form, pulling herself in from mist and shadow. She wasn’t entirely done, when the sorcerer looked up, still holding the diamond in his hand, and caught sight of her. “Ignite!” he shouted, frantically, and pulled up wards of pure magic around himself and his two companions. She could see the spell matrices hovering in the air around him as the automatic wards pulled up first, like a chain-link woven of pure energy, and he was already incanting for more. All fire protection. “Detonate! She’s here—” He looked down at the jewel in his hand, and then up at Sigrun, and she could see the thought ripple across his face. I can take one of them with me. I can kill a god, right here, right now, and her death will level the city—
No time for her spear, or lightning, or any other tactics. She could shred his wards with seiðr, but even that would take precious seconds. The other two men panicked, and shouted, and tried to fumble for the pile of gems in front of them on the bed. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion, as the sorcerer reached down with his will, to shatter a water main beneath the hotel. She could see his power reaching out like a blade, shearing through the stories below them—
No time. No choice. Sigrun met the man’s eyes, though he surely could not see her own. “Die,” she said, and lanced out with one of the powers she tried very hard not to use.
Hel and Supay had used this power differently. When Supay had used it, it had been a vicious, injurious attack with his stone club that had added metaphysical damage to the physical. It had been a product of his worldview—one locked in stone since his people had first built their civilization, and a product of how his people had seen him. Hel’s attack had been more sophisticated, and more horrific. She’d used it on Sigrun and on Brandr, but Sigrun had already been very much akin to Hel at that point. But every cell in Brandr’s body, or very nearly, had split at the seams. Only the bear-warrior’s enormous resilience and regeneration had saved him.
Sigrun had been surprised the first time she’d used it, that it didn’t result in all the electricity in someone’s body dissipating, leaving them inert. Instead, all the heat in their bodies drained away, flash-freezing them. Almost every cell burst, but not directly, by being lysed, as Hel had done, but through the expansion of water inside every cell. Sigrun imagined that it was probably quite painful, but also mercifully brief. It also demanded a concentrated burst of energy, when used, and thus she let herself return to shadow and mist and flowed forwards, rematerializing to snatch the diamond spell-stone out of the frozen, statue-like hand of the sorcerer.
It had happened so quickly, the other two weren’t even aware yet of their colleague’s demise. Sigrun rematerialized and crammed the large gem into one of their open mouths, and kept her hand firmly over the man’s lips, preventing him from spitting it out. They both stopped moving, rooted in place with horror. “Is there enough water in your saliva to set that thing off?” Sigrun asked, her voice cold. “I would imagine, if it did, that it would be a fizzle. But it would be a rather spectacular one, from your point of view, as the inside of your skull splattered on the walls. Of course, your point of view would be, perforce, a brief one.” She squeezed the man’s cheeks with her armored fingers to extract the stone. “Ah, what a pity. Not quite enough water, or perhaps the technomancers actually put a few precautionary clauses into its spellwork.” Her fingers, around the gem, curled into a fist, and she pulled back her arm, and slammed it into his face, knocking him to the ground. The other one, foolishly, managed draw a gun—and she realized, in a frozen instant, that it was a flare-gun. The sprinkler system.
The thought articulated itself after she had already reacted, pulling a shell of seiðr over herself and the bed on which the gems lay, sparkling innocently, as the flare-gun punched against her side, fire exploding out of its projectile. The water spigot overhead churned to life . . . and the spray bounced off her shield, pouring down to the floor in a perfect circle around them. Sigrun pulled back
her elbow and slammed the flare-gun wielder in the face . . . and blinked a little as a set of claws sliced through the wall in front of her, tearing open the face of the building with a terrible scrape of shearing brick and rending metal. All she saw, for an instant, were Nith’s moonsilver eyes in the blackness, and then the enormous clawed hand darted in, and the man she’d just elbowed screamed as he was yanked out into the darkness, arms and legs dangling. There was another horrifying scream from outside, that ended with a wet gurgle, and then the clawed hand, with its talons extended and the length of swords, came back into the room. I will take the prisoner now, Nith said, his voice an angry rumble in her mind, accompanied by a seismic sort of tremor in the floor that was surely his voice, growling out loud.
She could smell urine, suddenly, and looked down. The man in on the floor in front of her had just wet himself. “Don’t damage this one. The gods of the Gauls wish to question these men.”
I will not damage him, for so long as he does not attempt to escape, Nith returned, and the clawed hand clamped around the man. Sigrun could hear screams and shouts and sirens from outside, and scooped the various gems back into the sack. The best part about being an entity, in her opinion, was the fact that she no longer had to do paperwork when interfacing with local gardia. She tucked the spell-stones away. The gardia were not going to take these into evidence. They were not going to be lost, stolen from a custodial warehouse, and used by someone else. She was going to return them to Minori and Erida for study, and tell them that once they’d finished examining them and burning out the spells incised inside them, that it was time to dump them at the bottom of the Pacifica.
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