Adam snickered. “Nice try, Sig. Sit down.” At her repeated head-shake, he noted to the others in the room, dryly, “She’s afraid she’ll break it.”
“I . . . well . . . yes.” Sigrun pointed at the watch on her wrist. It was still an antiquated, wind-up, gear-run model. The electrical currents that passed through her body had burned out any other type of watch she’d ever owned, much to Adam’s chagrin. Even the digital watch he’d purchased for her last year hadn’t been shielded enough.
“This model is ley, not electrical. So long as you keep your hands off the actual memory chips, which are in the case, and only touch the keyboard, you should be fine.” Adam pulled her over, and urged her to sit down as Bodi vacated the chair. Kept his hands on her shoulders, and then leaned down to whisper in her ear, “You can’t possibly break it, Sig. It’s just new, that’s all. Not so scary.” He lifted his head, and looked at Bodi. “Show her one of the games.”
Sigrun watched as a tiny dot of light began to move around the three-dimensional space, bouncing off of moving, curved lines set up randomly around the outer edge of the sphere; none were directly in front of her, allowing her to see the entire ‘interior’ of the sphere. “The point is to keep the dot bouncing as long as possible,” Bodi told her. “Keep moving the bumper lines around . . . no, use the arrow keys. These, Aunt Sigrun.” He picked up her hand and moved it to the correct keys. It always slightly startled her, how big Bodi’s hands were now. She’d met him when he was four years old, after all, and this earnest young man with the light cocoa skin and dark eyes couldn’t possibly be the same person as the laughing little boy . . . but he was. Sigrun darted a glance at the increasing threads of silver in Adam’s hair, and concentrated on the silly game, flinching slightly as the dot of light flew directly ‘at’ her. “Out of bounds,” Bodi told her. “Here, let me show you.”
“This is a silly game,” Sigrun grumbled. “It is a waste of your machine . . . wait. Did you just lose one of the bumpers?”
“Yes. The game becomes more difficult, progressively. The better you are, the fewer bumpers are in play.”
Twenty minutes after that, Sigrun was muttering under her breath as she attempted to get the damnable bouncing ball of light to arc correctly from one bumper to another.
Two days later, when Adam mentioned that he might want to buy a calculus for their home, Sigrun nodded, and asked, tentatively, “Would it have the bouncing game?”
Adam looked at her, and laughed.
Two days after that, Sigrun felt as if she were juggling plates, and constantly in danger of dropping one. They had arrangements to make for Livorus’ sixty-fifth birthday party, not to mention his official retirement as propraetor. Though from the looks of things, Caesarion IX planned to keep him around as an unofficial ambassador and messenger. This meant that his lictor presence from the Praetorians was being cut back, and Livorus was now required to find any additional security out of his own pocket—not that he hadn’t been for years, but that meant that Adam and Sigrun had to interview dozens of new guards. They had security preparations to look into for the various parties, she’d finally gotten an appointment on the books to speak with Freya at the Odinhall, and the telephone simply wouldn’t stop ringing.
Sitting in the small home office she shared with Adam—he’d cleared space on his desk for a pure electrical computer, and was insisting that they buy a ley one for her, because this was the wave of the future—Sigrun regarded the ringing phone as if it were a poisonous snake. She sighed, put aside her current piece of foolscap, and picked up the receiver. “Ave?”
“Waes hael.” Sophia’s voice was a little dreamy. “I just read your article, sister.”
Sigrun had to think about that for a moment. “The one on seiðr and nið? I’m surprised. It was a little dry.” She shrugged to herself. Kanmi and Minori had asked her to put some of her comments over the years into a single contiguous format, and had pestered her to submit it to various journals. Sigrun had been disappointed that it hadn’t made it into a law enforcement magazine. The questions she raised, she thought, were pertinent to that field, but it probably shouldn’t have surprised her that a journal for and by mages would have picked it up, instead.
“You quoted me. I’m delighted.”
“You will have to explain what a cigar is, someday.”
“I think it has something to do with tobacco?”
Sigrun frowned. “That’s one of the drugs that the natives of Aquilonis use in their rituals?”
“Yes, but it does nothing for me. Peyote, though? Helps calm my visions quite nicely.”
“But what is a cigar?” The only way through Sophia’s maze of distractions was persistence.
“I have no idea, sister. I think it might be a club made of the leaves.” Sophia’s voice was drowsy. “I just see it in my head, and I hear the phrase. But that is not what I called to talk to you about.”
Sigrun’s stomach clenched. “Oh?”
“Yes. I have some advice for you.”
“Do you have any idea, Sophia, how I feel about advice unasked at this point in my life?” Between Sophia’s prophecies, Abigayil’s homely advice on how best to get pregnant, and the occasional people at the market who assumed that Trennus and Lassair’s children were hers, and thus felt free to tell her how to raise ‘her’ children, Sigrun had learned that a cold stare was an insufficient deterrent to kindly people who were determined to mind her business for her.
“Yes, but you’re getting it anyway.” Sophia’s voice shifted. Now, it held the overtones that Sigrun hated. “First, don’t be too angry at Fritti. It wasn’t really her fault. She’s paid the price already, as I think you’ll agree. Second, don’t be afraid to make new friends. Allies may come from the most unimagined places.”
“Sophia, you are a sham. You’re reading that one off a strip of paper from inside one of those fortune cookies you can get at Qin restaurants.” Sigrun had learned over the years that she might be able to side-track Sophia with the right combination of cajolery and humor. By refusing to take the words seriously, instead of meeting them head-on with anger and resistance.
It didn’t work this time. “You say that now,” Sophia told her, dreamily, “But in the realm of the mad, a former madman will be your guide. I see wolves with the eyes of men at your feet in the snow, and giants who might challenge the gods fighting at your side. And over them all, dark wings, billowing out against the night sky, blocking out the stars. Silver eyes in the darkness. Death might not be your ally, but her shadow will be.”
Sigrun looked at the phone. Considered, strongly, hanging up. “Thank you, Sophia,” she said, instead. “I know you mean only to help.” But gods, I wish you wouldn’t tell me these things.
“It’s no bother,” Sophia told her, cheerfully. “Oh! I’m sorry about the bad news from Freya at the Odinhall. You already knew she wasn’t going to be able to help, though.”
Sigrun ground her teeth together. “I haven’t gone to the Odinhall yet.”
A pause, while stiffened foolscap pages turned on Sophia’s side of the line. “. . . damn. I’m sorry. That’s next week. You know me, I never know what day it is.” She giggled a little. “Well, I know you’ll go anyway. You’re stubborn like that, and I wouldn’t have seen you go if you weren’t going to go. I’ll see you when you get ready to go to the land of the Fenns. Someone will need to look after the children, you know.”
“But I’m not going . . .” Sigrun realized she was talking to a dial tone, swore, and hung up.
On the one hand, it was tempting not to go to the Odinhall. Just to have something to throw back in Sophia’s face. It didn’t happen that way. Look and see. On the other hand? She’d waited two years for Freya to give her an audience. Throwing that over just to spite Sophia, to break her sister’s notion of fate was childish. It would be cutting off her nose to spite her own face, too.
She still had to get through the next week. Standing guard during Livorus’ retirement and birt
hday celebration, with the smell of cooked flamingoes and swans and a dozen other dainties brought from every corner of the Empire to appease the palate of his guests, among whom the Imperator and a few of Caesarion’s children were numbered. The designated heir, Julianus, wasn’t present, but the third son, also named Caesarion, was. He was about twenty, and a handsome young man. Livorus’ eldest son, Marcus Valerius, was twenty-seven now, and stayed by his father’s side throughout the celebrations. Marcus was in the Legion, and had made first-file centurion several years ago—something that had made Livorus beam proudly. Livorus’ daughter, Aquila Valeria, had inherited the family interest in politics. She was young and beautiful, and it looked to Sigrun as if young Caesarion was quite smitten with her, in spite of the age difference. She doubted anything would come of it, however.
Sigrun paced the halls, keeping an eye on the guests, the doors, and the windows, shifting uneasily every time her radio chattered in her ear. She wasn’t used to having an earpiece yet; it was a new innovation, a speaker so small it could nestle in the ear canal, attached to a curling wire that spiraled down to the actual radio at her waist. Every time she looked at it, she remembered when radios were so large, it had taken a grown man to move one into a house. And she also wondered how fast she was going to burn out this electronic device.
Minori wasn’t a lictor, but the Praetorians had found interesting ways to work her into Livorus’ protective detail, when she wasn’t simply doing analysis work. Her noble birth and exquisite manners made her ideal for planting among party-goers and having her chat and listen in on them. One patrician among a dozen other patricians. She was always introduced at these sorts of functions as “Lady Ijiun,” which invariably made Minori grimace, and Kanmi chuckle. The various patricians rarely looked more than twice at her; she was exquisite, she was foreign, she was noble . . . she might well be one of Livorus’ lovers, though if that were the case, at least it was discreet, and who could ask for more than that?
Absent from the celebration was Livorus’ actual lover, though the lictors would be conveying him to her residence, probably tomorrow. Mariana and Livorus had been a very steady item for the past . . . gods, has it been fourteen years? Yes. They’ve been together as long as Adam and I have. Sigrun quite liked the woman, fifteen years Livorus’ junior though she was; she was almost of an age with Poppaea, his wife, but in manner and habit, couldn’t have been more different. Mariana had been an early widow, and had opted not to remarry. She was patrician by birth, but was on the boards of three hospitals and orphanages, and her days were a steady round of efforts to improve the lives of others. Poppaea, by contrast, spent most of her days at a variety of spas, and had discovered an equal variety of what Sigrun suspected were wholly imaginary ailments as she’d approached her fiftieth year.
Sigrun passed close enough by Minori on her latest round through the room to overhear the conversation in which the sorceress was currently taking part. “I’ve heard such dreadful things about the state of affairs in Caesaria Australis,” one of the party-goers murmured, adjusting his toga slightly as he reclined on a couch, accepting a morsel from a tray. “They say that monsters wander the mountains now. Hunting the population.”
Minori shrugged slightly, and, in musically-accented Latin, replied, “I hear that often, of many places now. I have heard that self-same rumor about places in the far north of Europa. Gotaland, for example. The land of the Fenns, for another. I try to discount the improbable.”
Minori had been displeased when a Praetorian theatrical coach had started working with her and Kanmi. “Look, you’re serving an undercover purpose here. You have to give people what they expect to see, or they won’t see the character you’re creating.”
“I have studied Latin since I was six years old. I have lived in Gaul and in Rome for twenty-two years. I do not have an accent.”
“No. Doctor Minori Eshmunazar does not have an accent. She teaches at the University of Rome, is married to a Carthaginian, and speaks four languages fluently.” The Praetorian undercover specialist had smiled. “However, Lady Minori Ijiun is a delicate flower of the barbaric east. She does have an accent. Give them what they expect to see, and that’s all they’ll see.”
“This is a touch demeaning,” Minori had muttered.
“Think of it this way,” Kanmi had advised. “They’ll be so busy underestimating you as a foreigner, a barbarian, and a woman, that if any of them are actually there to make trouble? They won’t see it coming when you peel their faces off and hand the skin back to them wrapped in their own napkins.”
Minori had choked, and then laughed. “Don’t think I won’t be picturing precisely that,” she warned all of them.
Sigrun kept moving. Minori collected stories about monsters in the wake of the volcanic eruptions in Tawantinsuyu like other people collected coins. Newspaper clippings were filed in neat binders, alongside reports from Nahautl of people having spotted couatl for the first time in hundreds of years, flying over Tenochtitlan. And in the binders beside those? Neatly-kept logs on earthquake and volcanic activity all over the world. Minori had been talking, for a year or two, about the fact that the uptick in seismic activity in northern Europa was accompanied by reports of ‘monsters.’ “But no expansion in the ley-grid?” Sigrun had asked, quickly.
“None at all. No new facilities being built, either there, or in Raccia, at the moment. Maybe this is a case where, as your sister keeps saying, a ceegar actually is a ceegar?”
“I do not think that is how the phrase is meant to be used,” Sigrun had muttered, and the subject had dropped at that point.
Lassair periodically came to these formal affairs, too, though the first time she’d done so, Poppaea had had mild histrionics. Her role was similar to Minori’s: to seine the crowd for information, disquiet, anyone with a hint of a grudge in them. Sigrun really did not want the evening of Livorus’ retirement to be the night someone happened to get through with a . . . gods help them . . . blow-dart or something.
As it was, thanks to relentless caution, they got through the evening with only a few minor hitches. There was, as almost always, a line of veterans of the Legion at the back door of Livorus’ villa on evenings like these. His stature as an officer who’d been branded with the Eagle by his own men—an officer who’d accepted that gesture—gave him a certain notoriety. He was generous to legionnaires who were down on their luck . . . provided that they had made every effort through lawful means to gain employment. Broken meats and bread were always handed out at the kitchen entrance to the villa after these parties, and Livorus frequently walked out to receive salutes and speak to the former soldiers about their current situations. Some had even been hired, after background checks, as groundskeepers and maintenance staff.
Livorus’ habit of walking out with the legionnaires gave his lictors no end of headaches, and tonight was no different. Sigrun stayed close beside him the entire time, her face impassive, knowing that somewhere above her head, Adam had them covered with a rifle, and Trennus was on hand for magical counters, if needed. “Shall we go inside now, sir?” Sigrun murmured to Livorus, after about twenty minutes.
“Patience, my dear. You won’t grudge me a few more minutes on my last day in public office?”
“Of course not, dominus. However, I think we both know that this is hardly your last day of work.”
Livorus chuckled, and slipped a hand under her elbow, and turned them both back indoors, raising his hand in farewell to the various petitioners. His other hand rested on a cane; it wasn’t an affectation. His left knee bothered him a good deal these days. On good days, she still practiced swordplay with him, but those days were getting further apart, and it pained her to see her old friend showing so many signs of age. His hair had long since turned completely to iron, and creases had permanently lowered the lids over those keen blue eyes. “Of course, my dear,” he murmured. “There is no rest for the weary. Or the wicked, it would seem.”
“Hardly wicked, sir,” she t
old him, and nodded to Trennus as the Pict opened the door for them.
“Oh, I do still try for wicked, on my good days. Don’t let the cane fool you.”
“Of course, sir.”
Adam met them inside, as the last of the guests were escorted out, and the servants all began to gather to pick up the debris from the party. Kanmi and Minori joined them, and Lassair practically materialized under Trennus’ arm. Livorus looked around at them all, and put both hands on his cane, smiling faintly, as they all clustered around him in a semicircle in an anteroom off of the dining area. “I never imagined, when Sigrun first approved ben Maor’s dossier, and then, when they both approved Matrugena and Eshmunazar’s, that we would be embarking on such a long road together. Or that, in the end, I would be getting six lictors for the price of four.”
Adam shivered for a moment. Just for an instant, he was back in Sigrun’s hospital room in Judea, hearing Sophia’s dreamy voice all over again. The Godslayer, the Binder, the Archmage, and the Ascendant. And the four will become six and then seven, as the Heart of Fire and the Wolf Queen and the Truthsayer come to you. And all of you will need to be united, before the second darkness comes. Adam let a hand rest, lightly, on the small of Sigrun’s back, but his eyes never left Livorus. All right, you mad prophetess. The four have been six for a while now. Min’s Truthsayer. Lassair’s the Heart of Fire. But who in god’s name is the Wolf Queen, and what good are all your futures, if we can’t prepare for them?
The Goddess Denied Page 6
