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

by Deborah Davitt

  “Then release it,” Cocohuay told him, instantly. “You know this to be unjust.”

  I tend to agree, Saraid said, quietly.

  From Lassair, at the moment, nothing. His usual chorus was missing a vital voice. This agitated him, but Kanmi caught his elbow and kept him moving. “Research,” Kanmi told him, curtly. “Then we need to get back to Livorus and the others with more information.”

  Back to the south now, past the Lizard figure—occupied. Past the Tree. Emphatically occupied. Cocohuay’s luminous eyes never seemed to leave Trennus’ face, and in spite of the light chill in the air, the Pict was sweating. Finally, they made it down to the tower, which was positioned near the road, and between the Tree and a figure meant to look like Hands. The tower itself was comparatively modest, about sixty feet tall, and narrow. It had evidently originally been an observation point, built here sixty or seventy years ago, to allow people to get a good view of the Lines in all direction. Now, however? There were guards by the entrance, and a few up on the observation deck, armed with muskets. Trennus could feel energy resonating from the structure, and had to close his eyes for an instant. It was positioned directly over one of the intersecting ley-lines. “They’ve drilled down and laid copper directly to the ley-line’s position.”

  Kanmi dropped to his haunches and put his hands on the ground, and something moved past Trennus as he did; a rush of power, and a sense of weight. One of Kanmi’s targeted gravitic waves, being sent into the ground ahead of them. “Huh. They drilled right through the foundation, feels like,” Kanmi said, thoughtfully. “Normally that would weaken the structure, but I expect they thought it was worth the risk. Goes . . . yes. A solid forty feet down, right into the bedrock.” He stood back up, brushing his hands to remove the khaki dust from them. “I think it’s time to throw our Praetorian weight around and get a tour, don’t you?”

  “They might let me in,” Cocohuay murmured, “but my disguise is not good for up close. More for at a distance.”

  Trennus grimaced. “If you distract the guards,” he told Kanmi, “make a big Praetorian fasces of yourself—”

  Kanmi’s grin split his face. “That’s become such a useful word for us . . . .”

  “—I can probably make us a door around the back.”

  “The guards up on the observation platform are going to notice us, and that’s probably not optimal for stealth.” Kanmi grimaced.

  At that moment, something in Trennus’ chest tugged, hard. Trennus! Lassair’s voice cried out. Trennus! Flamesower! We are bound, we are captive, and I do not know where we are being taken! Come to us! Come to us now!

  Trennus dropped to his knees, wind knocked out of him. The stones of the desert pavement dug into the bare skin left uncovered between boots and kilt. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t there. He was five hundred miles away, in Cuzco, ducking down, pulling himself into a ball inside a . . . cart? A push-trolley such as those used by housekeeping? One with symbols and signs etched into the metal on the inside. Binding symbols. No, Lassair, don’t—

  They have a knife to Truthsayer’s throat. They are taking us away. I do not know where—

  There were cracks in the symbols, between the door and the metal that held the hinge. Marred spots in the binding. You can free yourself. Leave.

  I cannot. If I do, Truthsayer will die. If I de-manifest, I might lose the child. A child I did not think we could have, Trennus. No. I will not take that chance, not while there is still a choice. Best they think me utterly helpless, for the moment. And this way, I can still reach you, for a time. Lassair’s voice held a frozen sort of calm, over the top of raging fires of anger that were threatening to break free. Feel where we go, dear one. Feel me. I am here. You are here. We are one.

  Trennus opened his eyes, staring to the south, dazed. “Who?” he said, out loud. “Show me a face. Give me a Name.” Rage started to build. This was a different sort of feeling than it had been a few years ago, when he’d first found Lassair. There was panic in it this time, not just anger and outrage. This was his life. This was his family, incipient though it was. I’ll kill them. I’ll unName them.

  Kanmi had a hand on his shoulder. “What’s going on?”

  “Someone’s taken Asha and Minori.” Trennus’ voice was dazed.

  “What?” Kanmi’s voice was a rasp.

  “They’re prisoners.” Flicker of vision through Lassair’s eyes. Two lictors, on the ground, one bleeding from eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Just like the professor in Lutetia, Trennus thought, numbly. “Chimali Matlal is down, not sure if he’s alive or not. Arkadios Sanna . . . probably dead. Massive hemorrhage, looks like, from the brain.”

  “Fucking Baal, torn asunder and scattered to the waves. Where? When? Who?” Kanmi was exerting surprising pressure on Trennus’ shoulder, as if trying to pull the answer out of him by hand-strength alone.

  Two female faces, both Tawantinsuyan, one with a knife to Minori’s throat. A male face, familiar. “Morrigan’s mercy, it’s the man Minori recognized from the conference. Two women with him, one with a knife to Min’s throat . . . two men I don’t recognize, dead on the floor . . . Lassair says Minori took them out.” Trennus’ surprise was distant, and he felt Kanmi’s hand tighten further on his shoulder.

  “Well, now, isn’t that something?” Kanmi said, quietly. “They’re going to be all right, Matrugena.”

  Trennus shook his head, blindly. “They’re in transit. I can’t tell where they’re going. But they’re still . . . in Cuzco, I think.” The vision dipped and swayed. “They have L . . . Asha confined. Think they’re getting into a vehicle now.” He raised his head and stared at Cocohuay, not really seeing her. “Can your lady do anything?”

  Cocohuay shook her head, looking lost. “I do not know. My lady loses power, the further she is from the sea, but gains in power when the moon is full . . . and when it is visible in the sky.” She gestured up at the noonday sun.

  “In other words, in Cuzco, in broad daylight, don’t ask for much,” Kanmi interpreted, grimly. “Matru. Tren.” The Carthaginian dropped to a crouch beside the Pict in the dirt. “Ask Asha this. How did they sneak up on them?”

  Masks. Masks of spirit and blood. Trennus was hardly aware that he was relaying the words even as Lassair spoke them, his voice taking on her inflections. He could feel cold steel all around him, trapping him, confining him, and all he knew was that he needed to get to her, and now.

  “All right.” Kanmi’s tone became harsher. “We need to get to a phone line. And, chances are, the closest one is in that tower. We now have a bona fide reason to get in there. We need to contact Livorus and the rest of the team. They’re closer to the problem than we are. They can get to Minori and Asha faster than we can. So first, tell Asha to yell at Caetia.”

  I cannot reach Stormborn, Lassair reported, her tone frantic, and Trennus found himself mouthing the words with her. She is outside of my range, and I am not soul-bound or blood-bonded to her.

  “Fine. Screw it. Phone it is. Cocohuay? Mistress, if you would stay out here, and try to look as much like a tourist as you can? We’d be obliged. Come on, Trennus. On your feet. You’re fully linked with her right now, aren’t you?”

  Trennus nodded, his eyes still fixed on the darkness all around him, the tight confines of the cart. “I need you to drop it down to regular levels. I know she’s scared right now. Scared for herself, scared for Minori, scared for everything. I know you want to be there for her. But right now, I need you here, not five hundred miles away.”

  The bracing good sense in Kanmi’s voice got Trennus’ attention. He sent Lassair a mental caress, and pulled his attention back into his own body. And as he did, the distance that had been keeping the rage at bay shattered, and he rose to his full height. “I’m going to kill them,” he said, quietly. It wasn’t a snarl, or a growl or anything like that. It was a plain, calm, empty declaration.

  “Yes. You will. And whatever you leave of them, I’m going to turn into confetti fit for a corona
tion parade.” Kanmi’s dark eyes glittered. “But now? We get in touch with the team.”

  That was more easily said than done. Kanmi’s polite smile and badge didn’t get them past the door into the tower. He stole a look to his left, at the vacant, empty look in Trennus’ eyes, and shook his head at the guards outside the door. “Look. We’re Praetorian Guard, and we need to check in with our superiors. Just let us use the phone line, and we’ll be out of your hair.”

  “This area is strictly off-limits—”

  Kanmi sighed. “I did try to warn you,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. Trennus was a very damned powerful ley-mage. On a bad day, he could squeeze energy out of the faintest resonances from miles away. He was currently very angry, and standing atop the richest field of ley-energy any of them had ever seen.

  The stone of the walls of the tower itself melted around the door, glowing red hot and extruding like rapidly caramelizing sugar, reaching out in whorls and loops of red-hot lava for the guards. They caught the movement out of the corners of their eyes, turned to look, yelped, and ducked out of the way as the stone sloughed itself like a snake’s skin. Then the wave of rock crashed to the earth, splattering to the ground in a spray of melted slag. It splattered the guards, whose clothing caught fire, and who screamed and threw themselves to the ground, fruitlessly trying to put out the liquid heat that seared their flesh. Kanmi flicked a hand at the spray, catching and freezing it, repelling it like a handful of gravel thrown by the wind. Then Trennus caught Kanmi’s arm, and hauled him a step or two back, as the door, which now no longer had walls to support it, teetered, wobbled . . . and then fell inward.

  Kanmi looked up at his friend as they walked over the warmed steel of the door. “Would have been more impressive if we hadn’t scuttled out of the way.” He didn’t actually feel like joking. Trennus in a murderous rage was like watching a big, friendly dog remember that it had wolf in its ancestry. His own rage was a black and bitter thing, comforting in its familiarity. It was what kept him company in the long watches of the night.

  Just inside the door, various guards frantically reached for their guns. “Stand down,” Kanmi told them, calmly. “All we need is to use the phone. Maybe the lavatory while we’re at it.”

  Half a dozen muskets rose and aimed, and Kanmi exhaled and snapped out the command word to a pre-prepared spell, freezing the air not in front of himself and Trennus, but in a semicircle around the edges of the room, blocking the guards with frozen nitrogen an inch thick. He pulled the heat in, and used it to power the second spell, which he began to incant on the heels of the first. Concentrated the heat, condensed it to a blade, and sent it whipping around the outside of the icy enclosure. He was breaking one of the cardinal rules of both weapons use and sorcery: never aim at what you can’t see. But he was letting the enemy see the heat blade as it came, though it was so hot it was damned near invisible. He fueled it with his rage, and did not actually care at the moment, if it worked as intended, and sawed off the muzzles of the muskets, or if it sliced through flesh instead. From some of the muffled cries, he thought a few of the slower learners might have lost some fingers. Then he nodded to Trennus. “Your turn.”

  Tren’s head came up, and he slapped at the icewall with force from under the ground, shattering it, and slabs of dry ice toppled backwards to lean against the far walls, effectively entombing the guards. Sucks to be them today, Kanmi thought, distantly, and walked forwards to the front desk. He and Trennus had practiced this as a breaching technique that would, optimally, leave very few dead. And the glorious thing about this set-up was, the guards could only risk moving the ice if they were willing to lose a few layers of skin . . . or had thick leather gloves.

  Kanmi lifted the phone, and dialed the number of their hotel from memory. The front desk should be able to put him in touch with Livorus. At worst, he could tell them to have the local gardia and the tiny contingent of local Praetorians—all members of the secondary, non-lictor division concerned with counterfeit coinage, as best Kanmi remembered—call him back.

  Every day at this time, Kanmi knew, there was a woman at the front desk. He’d noticed it in particular because the Tawantinsuyan woman had chattered freely with both Minori and Lassair, asking them about their homelands, and Lassair hadn’t known what to say. It had also been intriguing, because the woman hadn’t seemed to notice that Lassair’s lips never moved during their conversations. Too blinded by the spirit’s beauty, perhaps.

  But it was a man’s voice on the other end of the line that answered. Kanmi’s eyes narrowed. It might be nothing, or it could be something. “Ave,” he said. “This is Grigorius Zabat, Athens Daily News. Would it be possible for me to speak with Propraetor Livorus? My paper would like to interview him for a story on the Chaldean offensive.”

  Grigorius Zabat was one of their prepared codes on the team. All press queries were supposed to be directed first to the lictors, and from the lictors to Livorus. Claiming to be Grigorius was a way of asking anyone currently on duty, This is us. Is it safe to talk?

  “I’m sorry, Master . . . Zabat? . . . Give me a moment and I’ll patch you through to one of the lictors.”

  Kanmi relaxed, slightly. Ben Maor, Caetia, and Livorus had to be back from the palace by now. Had to have found the four men on the floor of the otherwise empty room. He could hear footsteps running down the stairwell behind him, and, covering the mouthpiece with one hand, asked, “You want to get that?”

  “Not a problem.” Trennus’ reply was flat, and he pulled stone from the walls again, this time shaping the molten mass across the steel inner door. Kanmi muttered a quick incantation, stealing the heat, and poured it into one of the batteries in one of his pockets. There was pounding on the other side of the door now, but the guards on that side weren’t going anywhere, any time soon. A muffled musket shot, and Kanmi rolled his eyes and kept the mouthpiece covered until all the ammunition on the other side was spent.

  “Ave,” a new voice said, and Kanmi’s spine prickled. “This is Agent ben Maor speaking.”

  Cold settled over Kanmi. Even a gardia member would have been told to put Grigorius through to a real lictor. And this person was assuming Adam’s name—something ben Maor would never permit. So he put a smile on his face to ensure that there’d be one in his voice, and replied, “Oh, Agent ben Maor! The head of the propraetor’s security detail. I’ve wanted to interview you since that incident in Judea. This is Grigorius Zabat. Could you tell me and my paper just a little about that dreadful night at the convention center?”

  “I’m sorry, no.” Kanmi was listening, intently, for accent and intonation. Quechan inflections to the Latin, but only faint. “I’d be happy to pass along your request for an interview to the propraetor.”

  “When might he be available?”

  “I really couldn’t say. He might not be for some time.”

  “Can you tell me how his meeting with the Emperor of Tawantinsuyu went this afternoon?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “It was on the propraetor’s public schedule, Agent.” Kanmi said it innocently. It hadn’t been, of course, but the more he got this man to talk, the more he might let slip.

  A pause. “It went very well. The propraetor has agreed to further talks over the next several days. He and the emperor are closeted in the palace here in Cuzco.” Another pause. “You’re not calling on an international line.” Sudden hostility. “You’re not a reporter—”

  Kanmi hung up. The black rage was now a seething mass in the middle of his skull, pushing out all thought. “Tren?”

  “Our people aren’t at the hotel?”

  “I’d put money on it that our people aren’t even in Cuzco. I’d bet my sons’ college fund that they’re prisoners.”

  “I don’t bet against you when our luck is this bad.”

  Cocohuay now moved into the building as Kanmi and Trennus began hauling people out from under the dry ice, and binding them with whatever was available. Telep
hone cords. Power cables. In a couple of cases, Trennus bent pieces of metal with ley-energy and looped them around the guards’ hands, embedding the ends in the walls. Then they peeled the stone back from the door Trennus had entombed, and took down the next set of guards, including a commander. Cocohuay was patient throughout this, and even healed most of the guards’ wounds. “You must see what is in the center of this place,” she told them, urgently. “You must feel it.”

  “I must find out what has been done with our people,” Kanmi told her, sharply. “That just became our priority.”

  “I think,” the god-born woman told him, regarding him with her huge, moon-like eyes, “that everything here connects in some fashion.”

  Kanmi rose from securing one last prisoner, and pulled her into a side room. “You’re damned right. It does.” His voice was a harsh whisper. “The Sapa Inca started this whole ‘public works’ project. There are entities trapped here. These lines connect to the towers. Similar things up north in Nahautl. Our people go missing when we investigate, and right when we send them to talk to the Sapa Inca. At the moment? I’m going to find out which of the towers is the main one, and find someone here who can call in and confirm where the fuck our people are, and I’m going to make him do it.” The black morass was threatening to gape wider in his mind, and he clamped down on it, hard. “Once we have that confirmation? Then we’ll figure out what to do about it.”

  ___________________

  Minori Sasaki regained consciousness slowly. She remembered, dimly, a cloth that smelled of camphor and other chemicals being pressed to her face after the man and the women had forced her into a truck at the back of the hotel, near the garbage collection area. The world had wavered for an instant, and gone black.

  Now, she wasn’t sure where she was. It was dark, and she was no longer moving. Tightness across her cheeks, and something stuffed in her mouth. A gag, to prevent her from incanting, though all she really needed was a word or a gesture for focus.