The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1)

by Deborah Davitt

  “One of my companions is a healer,” Adam replied, tersely, accepting the fresh shirt, which had the hospital’s crest on the left side, which he recognized as the one at which his mother worked as a trauma nurse. Please don’t let her be on duty tonight. “I’m barely bleeding. I’ll be fine.” He limped towards where the last of their motorcade’s vehicles was parked, and flashed his badge at a gardia officer who tried to stop him from leaving.

  This gave the news media just enough time to spot him, and move in. “Agent ben Maor? Lictor, over here. Can you give us any sort of a statement?” Voices, flashes from photography, right in his face.

  He had just enough time to wonder how the hell they recognized him, and scrambled to assemble his thoughts. “We’re not releasing any official statements tonight, as far as I know,” he began, in Hebrew, keeping his face stone-straight. “Information is still being developed by local law enforcement.” That was code for we haven’t decided what we’re going to say. He paused. “And it would be premature to say anything at this time.”

  “Adi bat Eran, Jerusalem Daily News. Lictor, was Propraetor Livorus inside the facility at the time of the attack? His family was observed leaving several hours ago.”

  Adam cursed mentally. He hadn’t been told what to say, and didn’t want to confirm anything before Livorus had decided if he’d officially been present or not. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the propraetor’s movements.”

  “Hayyim ben Itamar, the Gethsemane Gazette.” Adam had always found it amusing that this particular local newspaper had named itself after an upscale park, but there it was. “What were you doing here, if the propraetor was not at this location?”

  “I have a lifelong interest in all things aerospace,” Adam replied, blankly. “I took the opportunity tonight to examine the proposed moon base exhibitions.”

  Hands waved frantically. “Hesperus Catsullus, with the International News Bureau, Jerusalem branch.” That, in Latin, caught Adam’s ear. “Lictor, the propraetor was photographed leaving the scene an hour ago in his motorcade. As were several high-ranking Persian dignitaries, in separate vehicles. Were they here to meet with one another?”

  Damn it. “As I just said, I’m not at liberty to discuss the propraetor’s itinerary. As to the Persian dignitaries, I’m not on the distribution list for their schedules.” It was snide, but Adam was tired.

  “Adi bat Eran again. Lictor, my station’s viewers would like to know . . . one of the other lictors, the Britannian, wears his native garb while on duty. The, ah, kilt, I think it’s called.” The woman licked her lips nervously as Adam turned and looked at her. “We’ve had a number of people call in to ask, in the last day, why you don’t wear the skullcap. They ask if you’re ashamed to be Judean.”

  Adam just stared at her, as all the cameras flashed again. “In the midst of this crime scene,” he said, after a long pause, “I think that was an incredibly trivial thing to ask, Madam bat Eran.” He held up a hand to forestall her. “No. I’m not ashamed to be Judean. But I also don’t choose to advertise it, when it makes me stand out from the other lictors. I also don’t chose to wear it in daily life, again because it makes me stand out in every other country within the Empire. I choose not to be observant, Madam bat Eran, because it allows me to defend the rights of people who chose to be so. I’ll go to my grave defending people’s right to observe the rites of our faith as much or as little as they choose. But anyone who accuses me of being ashamed of what I am, just because I do not behave in precisely the same way in which they do? Should strongly reconsider their opinions.” The words were bitten out. This was his entire argument with his brother, all over again, years of it, and he was having it with his entire country instead of with Mikayel. Adam nodded curtly to the reporters. “I have nothing more to say. Good evening.”

  He sat behind the wheel of the car for a moment, not knowing what the hell to do or where to go, and then, wearily, tabbed the radio embedded in the console. “Ben Maor here,” he said into the receiver. “What’s the propraetor’s status?”

  A familiar voice came over the speakers, one of the lictors from Poppaea’s detail. “He’s back at the governor’s mansion, and we’ve got twice the number of guards on the place that we had before. Matrugena’s at the hospital. So’s Eshmunazar, for observation. From the looks of you on the far-seer just now? So should you be.”

  “. . . oh. Oh, lord. That was live?” Adam turned inside the car and stared back at the parking lot.

  “Yes. And judging from the reactions of the JDF guards around here when you started into Hebrew, you really need sleep, ben Maor. If it’s any consolation, a couple of them seem to want to clasp your wrist and buy you a beer.”

  “Right . . .” Adam stared off into the distance. “. . . All right. I’m going to the hospital now.”

  The nighttime streets were still surprisingly busy. Little Roma and Little Nippon did thriving business when Old Town had shut down for the evening, as did the Hellene district. But the main hospital was in Old Town, so Adam wended his way through the narrow, cobbled streets, found the newish parking garage beside the ancient hospital building, and limped his way to one of the doors. The drive had given his muscles plenty of time to stiffen up, and they screamed, unrelentingly, as he made his way to the ER entrance.

  Inside, he allowed a doctor who wasn’t occupied with treating some of the victims from the convention center to clean, suture, and bandage his various claw marks. And asking about Sigrun and the others and waving his badge got him a report. Trennus had been admitted for observation. Kanmi was in a bed on the third floor, being dosed with saline and blood thinners. Sigrun was in surgery, and the doctors needed to talk with him and Trennus about her. In fact, a doctor in green surgical scrubs appeared at his left elbow in his treatment cubical as the nurse was finishing the last of his leg wounds. “Agent ben Maor? Agent Matrugena said you’d known Agent Caetia longer. I need to ask you a few questions about her treatment.” Most surgeons in Judea were either clean-shaven, or had very minimal beards, for hygiene purposes. A mask could only do so much, after all. This doctor was no exception, having only a slight goatee, and short hair, easily kept under a surgical cap.

  Adam nodded and straightened up. “What’s her condition?”

  “We’re . . . not really certain.” The surgeon sounded uncomfortable. “We’ve never actually operated on a go . . . a, er, spirit-touched person before.” He ran a hand over his hair in mild agitation. “We opened the chest cavity to work, immediately, on the heart itself. This was . . . actually extremely difficult, as her skin resisted the scalpels. We were forced to use rotating saws that we’d normally use to cut through bone, in fact.” The surgeon looked at Adam. “Forgive me. I don’t usually explain such details to those who know the patient well, but you have to understand that this is . . . a highly exceptional case. We noted that she was . . . healing rapidly and that her body was resisting being open, in fact. However, because her heart was having such difficulty beating—it was damaging itself with every beat, essentially . . . we have attempted to hook her up to a heart bypass machine to allow us to stop her heart from beating, so we can repair the damage to the aorta.” He sounded bewildered. “Inserting the cannulae into her veins to allow her blood to be circulated without her heart was almost impossible. And the heart . . . even though it was damaging itself with each beat, now that it’s no longer moving, her regenerative abilities seem to be knitting the organ together as quickly as we can suture it. There’s a paper in this, I think, if she’ll allow us to publish it.”

  Adam stared at him, feeling nauseous. He didn’t want to picture Sigrun splayed open on a table like one of the autopsies he’d attended in the Praetorians. “I don’t think this is really the time to be talking about journal articles.” At his tone, the doctor looked abashed, and held up his hands in apology. “What do you need to know?”

  The doctor shook his head, rapidly. “Is this . . . normal?”

  “She recovered from sec
ond- and third-degree burns over about eighty percent of her body last year. I’m not sure what ‘normal’ is for a valkyrie, but I suspect her healing abilities are among the most powerful of her kind.” Adam winced as the nurse beside tied off the last suture on his arm. “Once you’re sure that the heart is healing, and you’ve removed the . . . tubes that connect her to the heart-lung machine—”

  “The cannulae, yes . . . .”

  “You might be able to close her up and let her healing take over.” Adam raised his hands, indicating his general ignorance.

  “Do you know what her blood-type is? We’ve been trying to match her, and a Hellene doctor on staff says she’s type ‘AK negative.’ Which we’re not familiar with, unfortunately.” The surgeon raised his own hands now. “He’s telling us that standard procedure on . . . a spirit-touched . . . is to provide type O-negative human blood and not worry about cross-matching.”

  Adam blinked, and had to think back to the hospital in Nahautl. “That’s what they did for her in Tenochtitlan, yes. The extra antigen group makes it impossible for her to donate to a normal human, but universal donor blood is still universal. She can accept it. And I know her type is rare, even for a god-born. They’re, what, five percent of the world’s population, and I think her blood type is carried by five percent of the god-born population.”

  The surgeon just stared at him for a moment. “Does she have any allergies to medication?”

  “No, but she’ll be a pain in your ass when she wakes up . . .” Adam refused to say if she wakes up, “. . . on the topic of pain medication. She’ll refuse to take it.” Adam forced a smile. “I’d recommend clubbing her over the head and giving her the medication anyway. In fact, I volunteer to help.” God damn it, Sig. Why in god’s name did you do this? It should be me on that table, spread open like a Roman priest is about to try for haruspication. Not that they’d find much of a future in my entrails.

  “I . . . see.” The surgeon hesitated. “Also, I wanted to ask about the nature of her wounds. They look like bullet wounds, but there were no bullets in the wounds.”

  Adam grimaced, and opened the neck of the hospital gown he’d been given. “That would be because she took them from me, doctor.” He pulled the fabric out of the way, showing the white, clean lines in exactly the places where the bullets had penetrated his skin. “You’ll note that the scars are all in the same precise places as the wounds are on her?”

  The doctor opened and closed his mouth. “I . . . ah. Thank you, Agent ben Maor. That’s all the questions I had.”

  That was, naturally, the moment that his mother, as a senior ER nurse, put her head around the corner, and got a good look at the healed scars that hadn’t been there the day before. The sutured claw marks on both arms, one leg, and his right ribs. Her green eyes, under her nursing cap, went wide, and she paled before her professional mien returned. Adam pulled the annoying patient gown back into place and nodded to her as she said, “Ah, I took the liberty of getting you some clothing from the gift-shop, Agent ben Maor.”

  “Thank you,” Adam replied, accepting the paper bag from her. “Pretty much everything I wore earlier is a total loss.” His slacks had been blood-soaked and slashed through in multiple locations. His shirt had been stiff with blood, and had had multiple bullet holes through it. His shoes might be salvageable, once they were rinsed. He looked around, but the surgeon had already retreated. “How soon can I see the rest of my team?” he asked Abigayil instead.

  “Ah . . . Eshmunazar’s upstairs, resting. I think the Britannian is with him. You won’t be permitted to see the Goth woman until she’s in post-op,” his mother told him.

  “Any chance I can use the shower facilities before I put the clothes on?” he asked, and brought the tail of his hair around in explanation. The entire lower third was glued together by dried blood, and the vast majority of the rest of his body was in similar condition. They’d had to clean around each of his wounds to suture them, but there was no getting around the fact that he reeked of blood and smoke and, god help him, hyena sweat.

  “Ah . . . I think we can make an exception for you, Agent,” his mother told him. He could see her hands shaking, but was impressed by how steady her voice was as she ushered him through the halls. He had a feeling she’d unleash a torrent of questions on him as soon as she had him alone, but she surprised him again by just reaching up and hugging him very tightly at first. “I’m so very glad you’re all right,” she told him.

  Then the questions had started. Was he all right, what had happened, couldn’t he at least consider a job that didn’t involve him being cut to ribbons by demons? Had that really been an efreet that the news media had captured on camera? Shouldn’t he talk to a priest or a rabbi to see if his soul was in danger from having accepted magical assistance derived from a heathen god?

  ___________________

  Adam did his best not to snap. He could hear the stress, love, and fear in her voice, but it was hard not to deal with her the way he’d dealt with the reporters. He made his escape into the showers, and emerged, having kept his bandages dry and feeling quite a bit more human. He checked on Kanmi and Trennus. Kanmi’s room was ablaze with Lassair’s light, as she perched on Trennus’ shoulder. And Trennus sat beside Kanmi’s bed in a folding chair, reading a book, glancing up as Adam entered the room. “He’s asleep. Probably best for him.”

  Adam glanced around. “His wife’s not here yet?”

  “Showed up an hour ago and demanded to see his chart.” Trennus’ voice was quiet, but the Pict’s lips curled down at the corners, an unexpected expression from him. Trennus hardly ever frowned. “His doctor and she wound up each throwing their weight around a bit. When she got the answers she wanted, she had a few words with Kanmi, and then left. Said he was in stable condition and they could talk about him quitting the Praetorians when he got out of the hospital.”

  Adam’s eyebrows rose. The last thing he wanted was to lose a member of his team, and he honestly couldn’t imagine working with a sorcerer who wasn’t Kanmi at this point. The man was versatile and powerful, and they’d just started being able to respect each other. “I don’t want to break in a new team-member,” he commented, blankly. “He wants out?”

  “He told her there was nothing to talk about, and that he was keeping his job as long as the Praetorians wanted him.” Trennus’ lips quirked. “I’d always been told that Nubian women were self-effacing. Bastet’s . . . anything but.” His smile widened. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Pictish women are spitfires.”

  There was an unspoken but at the end of the sentence, and Adam shared it. Strong-willed is one thing. But likely to impede Kanmi’s ability to function? Will a marriage divided over his job become a problem for the rest of us? Adam was, however, far too tired to deal with any of that right now. He changed the subject, squinting at Trennus. No bandages. “You’re looking fit.”

  “Lassair took care of my cuts.” Trennus raised his eyebrows at Adam.

  “If it costs a year of someone’s life to get emergency assistance in battle, what in god’s name are you paying to have her fix your wounds and . . .” Adam looked at Lassair for a moment, “provide light to read by?”

  Trennus’ lips quirked up. “Oh, she does a bit more than that.”

  “And my question remains.”

  “Bad manners to discuss the terms of a bargain.”

  Adam found a chair and slumped into it. “I can’t go see Sig till she’s out of surgery. So ignore my bad manners and talk to me.”

  Trennus shook his head and set his lips. It was Lassair who answered, I offer my aid freely, Steelsoul. Godslayer. The phoenix’s head tilted, allowing her to look at him with one ruby eye, and then the other. Trennus saved my life. My existence depends on his. It is . . . mutually very beneficial for me to aid him. She tipped her head again. I could heal your injuries, if you wished. No bargains are needed, between some people. There is . . . giving freely. Without expectation of return. This is someth
ing that Trennus has taught me.

  Adam stared at the firebird. “I . . . ah.” His stomach churned for a moment. “I think I’ll wear my wounds for now. I . . . don’t . . . . Once was enough today.” Sig already paid for one set of wounds. Don’t need Lassair paying for another set. Besides, my mother would have it that my soul’s in enough peril already as is.

  Your soul is in no danger from me, Godslayer. When Lassair spoke their names, they sounded as if the words had weight and substance. When Lassair said the word Godslayer, it had a different sound to it than when Sophia had used the term, almost a year ago. And the spirit had caught more of Adam’s thoughts than he’d intended. I only heal whom I love, and I have grown to love each of you. Your souls are fair to look on. Even though each of you believes them blemished. I healed Stormborn earlier, or tried to. Emberstone, I could only repair his heart. There was too much water in him for me to easily deal with, otherwise. I am not good with water.

  Adam shook his head. “I might take you up on it tomorrow. But . . . not today. I . . . thank you, though.” He shook his head, staring at the bland tile floor, and then told Trennus, “Lassair seems to be a bit more powerful than the rest of the spirits we saw today. Other than the efreet, maybe.” A whisper of memory came back to him then. Sigrun’s deranged-sounding sister, Sophia, on the phone from Hellas. Telling him that Lassair had once been a fertility goddess. The firebird certainly didn’t look like one.