The Goddess Denied (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 2)

by Deborah Davitt

  Duilus stared at the cup, and then up at him. “So you’re saying that you could have taught someone how to do this?”

  “For every one thousand normal people, there is one sorcerer, ley-mage, or summoner. For every ten thousand normal people, there is one god-born. There are slightly under a billion people in the Empire at the moment—the last count I heard put it at nine hundred and fifty million. Roughly speaking, that makes for nine hundred and fifty thousand magic-users of varying degrees of power, and a grand total of under ninety-five thousand god-born. Total. And of those sorcerers, ley-mages, summoners, and god-born, somewhere between twenty to thirty-five percent of them aren’t capable of doing more than boiling a cup of water or conjuring a little light. These are people who do rely on the old, cherished, passed-down spells, because that’s all they’re capable of doing. They don’t think in terms of principles, concepts, and the application of the abstract to the concrete. Hedge-wizards. Crystal-ball aficionados.” Kanmi took another sip of his tea, watching Duilus through the steam. “Then there is the vast majority of the magic-using population—about sixty-five to eighty percent of us—who are competent, educated, well-trained professionals. Any one of whom could have done this, because they aren’t bound by two-thousand-year-old words in a book.”

  “And the remaining . . . five percent?” Duilus had just taken his first notes.

  Kanmi smiled without mirth. You’re on a fishing expedition. You’re here to see how I react to things. “The remaining five percent are people like me, Duilus. People you’d best hope are the ones enforcing the laws, and not overturning them.” He let the smile fade, and set the cup back down. “Now ask me how many violent crimes were committed by a sorcerer using magic in the last ten years.”

  “Educate me.” Duilus challenged.

  “People educate themselves, Duilus. I just put people in proximity to facts and hope alchemy occurs. Usually, it doesn’t.” He smirked. “Four hundred and thirty-seven such crimes have been entered into Imperial gardia records. The actual number is somewhat higher, because sorcerers, ley-mages, and summoners, like the god-born, police our own. We’re the only ones who can.”

  “I’ve never liked that. You’re a law unto yourselves—”

  “Would you like to try arresting me, Duilus? Would you really like to try doing that, just you, here, by yourself?” Kanmi stopped moving. Just looked at the younger man. Then continued, as if the weight of the words weren’t pressing down on the younger agent like a pallet-load of bricks. “If I had to make an estimate, on the number of crimes actually committed each year by magical means? I’d put the total number, Empire-wide, at fewer than five hundred in that ten-year span. As few as fifty a year, in other words. ”

  “So, you’re saying that magic-users are better than the rest of us? More noble and ethical?”

  Kanmi laughed out loud. “Oh, gods, no. I think that we all know what the rest of us will do to the ones who step out of line. The ones who bring the rest of civilization out with the pitchforks and the torches and try to burn the books and put out the light of knowledge, as has been tried so many times before in human history. There are a thousand normal humans for every one of us. No matter how strong someone is? No one is that strong. So yes. We take care of our own.”

  The young agent looked lost for a moment, and then managed to find his focus again. “I understand that you’re on good terms with Lady Erida Badal.”

  “Lelayn. She resumed her maiden name after the unfortunate death of her husband.”

  “There are a number of unfortunate deaths around you.”

  “Was that a question?”

  Duilus blinked. “I understand that her son—a member of a Magi family—is your personal apprentice. He lives with you and your wife.”

  “He is our mutual apprentice, and is also apprenticed to Agent Trennus Matrugena of the Praetorian Guard. All the relevant security and contact forms were filled out five years ago.” Kanmi’s tone was bland.

  “How would you characterize your relationship with Lady . . . Lelayn?”

  “Excuse me, but how is this precisely relevant to the murder of my dear and much-missed friend, Propraetor Antonius Livorus?” Kanmi bit off the ends of the words.

  “I understand that Lady Lelayn was claimed as an acquaintance by Micos Cornelius, one of the conspirators in Tawantinsuyu?” Duilus clearly thought he’d struck another telling blow here.

  “Lady Lelayn met Cornelius at a conference when he traveled once to Borsippa in Chaldea, which is the site of a major Magi academy and library. He sent her several letters requesting information from the Magi Archives, and in the spirit of amity, she granted his requests. All of those letters were turned over to Praetorian hands in 1960.” Kanmi tilted his head to the side. Going to have to try harder to connect your dots.

  Duilus’ spine stiffened. “Lady Lelayn has contributed massive amounts of money to the university here, particularly towards the building of a new library wing, which houses Magi spell books and antiquities.”

  “And?” Kanmi rested his chin in his hand now, propping his elbow on the arm of the chair.

  “Do these contributions constitute a payment to you or your wife for services?”

  “I think I should be offended at that.” Kanmi kept his tone deceptively mild. “What the lady does with her money is her own business. The Magi artifacts are here on loan,” If a very permanent sort of loan, “as is current practice between any number of libraries and museums throughout the world. We’re indebted to her for making our technomancy school more attractive to scholars who might otherwise choose to attend the University of Edo or the University of Athens, instead.” He sat back in his chair. “Get to your point, Agent. I really do not have all day.”

  “I require a list of the people who have requested access to the Magi archives in the last five years.” The words were, finally, blunt, instead of insinuating.

  Kanmi smiled. “No.”

  The younger man paused, and looked up from his notepad. “No? You’re denying the request of a Praetorian?”

  “No, I’m denying the demand of an idiot who thinks he can wave his fasces in my face and get whatever he wants.” Kanmi stared at Duilus, who stiffened in affront. “Get a warrant for any specific names or time-spans, but I spent fifteen years of my life learning from the man whose murder you’re purporting to investigate, how and when to use the power of the Praetorians. And I spent ten of those years investigating a legitimate threat from a wide-spread organization of sorcerers. Please note that I didn’t, at any point in time, get handed five years’ worth of names of legitimate researchers so that I could embark upon a literal witch-hunt that was completely unrelated to the investigation at hand. We’ve established that any one of about five hundred thousand people could have done this, you’ve found the one who did, and you have no clearly-indicated need for the names of the people who have had access to these archives.”

  The younger agent stood, radiating anger. “I’ll be in touch, Professor.”

  “I’m sure you will be. Go get your warrant. Assuming the magistrate doesn’t laugh you out of his office. I have a class to teach, and students to throw chalk at. You know the way out.”

  All in all, Kanmi considered it a pretty successful day. He went home after flunking half of his students on their practical exams and telling them that there would be exactly one makeup session next week. Masako and Athim got home from their regular school day about an hour after he did; he liked to be on hand to make sure that the only thing they accomplished studying was sorcery, and that biology stayed in the textbooks. Not that he thought Masako would let Athim get anywhere. She was . . . very much stuck on young Solinus, and Kanmi regarded this puppy love with amused skepticism. She pined every summer when the Matrugena clan went off to Britannia, and had actually asked this past year if she could go with them. Kanmi had said no, and in no uncertain terms. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Trennus. He just thought Lassair might not think two youngsters having f
un was such a bad thing. And, well, technically, so long as they used protection . . . . Stop thinking, Eshmunazar. Himi and Bodi were so much easier to deal with.

  So, Masako and Athim were parked in front of a calculus in the dining area, where he could keep an eye on them as he got dinner ready. It was his night to do so; Min had a late seminar, and would be grabbing dinner on campus, more than likely. He watched as Athim set up the parameters for the spell in the program that Bodi had written, years ago, and grinned to himself as both younger sorcerers tried to conduct the spell from the resulting generated matrix. The construct, made of whisper-thin ice crystals, formed in the air between their hands . . . and then splattered to the rug in a puddle. Two groans of annoyance, and Athim ran a hand over his head. “I don’t get it. What are we doing wrong?”

  “Garbage in, garbage out,” Kanmi said, from where he was stirring tiny dumplings filled with meat and pine nuts in a sauce made from yogurt and mint. Shish barak, almost the way his mother had made it, long ago. Of course, they hadn’t been able to afford meat most days when he was a child, so these had been potato dumplings back in the day. But every time he cooked this, he thought of his mother, who’d passed away last year. “You put a bad variable in. Check your damned work. The calculi can’t think for you.”

  “Yes, Papa,” Masako replied, immediately, flushing, and began checking over the numbers they’d put into the machine, while Athim read them off from the book that they’d been using to derive the numbers from in the first place.

  Kanmi smiled. He was fully aware that the students at the university referred to him as Esh the Bastard, and to Minori as Esh the Happy. And he was perfectly fine with that role as a teacher.

  The phone rang as he tasted his stew, and he caught it in his left hand. “Ave?” The Latin was habitual. Hebrew and Carthaginian were related languages, both from the Semitic family. He probably could have learned Hebrew quickly, if he’d wanted to, but he’d just never gotten around to it. Everyone spoke Latin and Hellene, and Hellene was a better language for discussing magic anyway.

  “Kanmi, you might want to turn on the far-viewer.” Minori’s voice was strained. “I’m here on campus, and they’ve got the news channel turned on in the cafeteria.”

  “Oh, gods, what now?” Kanmi muttered, and moved into the living area, still attached to the phone base by the long cord. He frowned at the electronic far-viewer there, and turned it on.

  They hardly watched anything else but the news on this device; it warmed up, therefore, already on the correct channel. “Riots broke out in Carthage today, as members of the Carthaginian Liberation Party marched in protest of their country’s status as a subject nation of the Roman Empire. Carthage has been subject to Rome for two thousand years, pays a token tribute every year, has limited self-rule, and a Roman governor. What was billed as a peaceful protest turned to violence as members of the CLP clashed with gardia stationed along their marching route. The protestors were apparently prepared to attempt to break through gardia barricades in an effort to reach the palace of the Roman governor, and hurled glass bottles, filled with naphtha and rags, and set on fire, at gardia members blocking their path. The gardia opened fire in return, using live rounds to attempt to disperse what had become an angry mob.”

  Kanmi put his free hand over his face for a moment. In his ear, Minori asked, “Are you seeing this?”

  “Yes. I am. CLP has been on my radar for a while.” Kanmi still collected extremist groups the way other people collected rare coins. He kept notebooks on them, clipped newspaper articles on them, read their . . . usually very-badly-written manifestoes and newsletters . . . and shook his head the whole time. Young Agent Duilus would have an aneurysm if he saw my home office. It would set off all of his threat-assessment warning lights. For exactly the wrong reasons.

  The report on the far-viewer mingled with the sound of the two young sorcerers behind him once again trying to make their spell work, to no avail. “The mob panicked, and ran, stampeding over by-standers who were packed in to observe the march in Carthage’s narrow Old Town streets. Emergency medical teams are on the scene, but there are at least two hundred dead, and several hundred more injured, including one doctor, who was on his way to work at Carthage Central Hospital, and stopped to assist injured civilians, and was caught by an errant bullet.”

  Kanmi stopped breathing for a moment. No. It’s not him. Odds are . . . substantially against it. There are hundreds, even thousands of doctors in Carthage. It’s not Himilico. “Min?” he said, realizing that his voice sounded . . . odd. “I’m . . . going to need the phone line for a bit here . . . .”

  “I just heard it, too. I wish I didn’t have to teach class—”

  “Take care of your seminar. It’s probably not him.” The words were mechanical, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. “Love you, Min.”

  He walked back into the kitchen. Hung up the phone. Turned down the stove, so his stew wouldn’t boil over. And then, very carefully, got out his book of contacts and phone numbers, and dialed the direct line for the Carthaginian Praetorian Guard’s technomancy office.

  At times like these, information tended to be very sketchy. Names of victims wouldn’t be released to the news reporters any time soon. He could have contacted the hospital directly, but he didn’t have a Praetorian badge anymore, and even so, using it to push to the front of the line would have been . . . dubious. He probably still would have used it, but as it happened, it simply wasn’t an option. Calling the hospital directly to ask an overworked receptionist to check the casualty list and waiting on hold—assuming he got through in the first place—didn’t sound like his best option, either. So he concentrated, hard, on breathing slowly and calmly as he waited for the Praetorian office to connect him with a former colleague. A fellow sorcerer. Someone with enough rank to be able to do something tangible.

  “Eshmunazar? Yes, I remember meeting you and your wife, years ago . . . one of your sons is a doctor here in Carthage? He’s probably up to his eyeballs in patients right now. It’s a bad situation out there.” Friendly voice, marked Hellene accent. “Yes, I’d be happy to check for you. I’ve got the casualty lists right . . . here . . . .”

  Behind him, Masako and Athim had stopped working on their project. They’d caught the news report, and the fact that he’d immediately gotten on the phone, and they’d picked up some of his mood. Kanmi turned, and smiled a little at his daughter, who was sitting now at the kitchen table, watching him, but his mind was a thousand miles away, and with his first-born at the moment. The line clicked, and Kanmi was about to swear at being disconnected, when his colleague’s voice came back on the line. “Eshmunazar . . . I’m so sorry.”

  Kanmi’s stomach lurched. “What do you mean, sorry?”

  “There’s no easy way to say this. He’s in surgery now. He took a bullet to the lower spinal column. There’s no prognosis listed at the moment. I’ll keep up on this for you. Least I can do for a former Praetorian . . . .”

  “Thank you,” Kanmi said, feeling numb. “I’ll call the hospital directly in a few hours.”

  He set down the phone on its base with infinite care, and very slowly, sat down at the table, opposite his daughter and apprentice, not saying a word. Underneath the numbness of shock, memories of Himi being born, a tiny, light-tan, squalling lump with arms and legs. Memories of his first-born son running to greet him, white teeth visible in a vivid smile, crowing Father! as Kanmi picked him up. Memories of Himi’s graduation. The periodic arguments over the years, most recently when Kanmi had opted to start a technomancy department in Judea, of all places . . . . Father, there’s an established school right here in Carthage. If what you want is a warmer climate than Rome, why not come here, where I live? Little flickering recollections of Himi, now thirty-one years old, complaining about his complete inability to meet any women he’d like to see on more than a casual basis. I don’t want to use a match-making service. That’s just embarrassing. Meeting someone in a taverna? Worthl
ess. Everyone there lies, male and female alike. Meet someone on the job, well, then you still have to work with them if the relationship doesn’t work out.

  And under all the memories, rushing through him in a numb tide, was a far easier emotion for Kanmi to access. Rage. Bitter, black, seething anger. Someone is going to pay for this, Kanmi thought. Someone is going to pay, and pay dearly.