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

by Deborah Davitt

  Bodi sniffled and turned his face up. “You did?”

  “What did you get us?” Himi chimed in, a little more eagerly.

  “You’ll have to wait till we’re home to see. But I got your presents at the same time Agent Caetia over there was picking up a really nice picture of Machu Picchu for her home. Showed the old stone palace, beside the skyscrapers.” Something of a collector’s item now, Kanmi thought, grimacing internally. Though, a city that old? They’ll rebuild.

  He’d glanced over his shoulder at Minori, who had two fresh-faced young Praetorians now flanking her, clasping her wrist, and introducing themselves as her bodyguards while she was in Rome. Making it clear that she had a hotel room to go to, courtesy of the Praetorians, and would for as long as the hearings . . . interviews . . . interrogations . . . whatever you wanted to call them . . . about the Tawantinsuyu incident would go on. Minori’s face had cleared of all expression, but Kanmi knew her well enough to read her eyes now. She was terrified. They hadn’t been confident in their ability to keep her in a safe house here in Rome four weeks ago, when there had been a nameless, faceless assassin possibly after her for perhaps knowing more than she should. That assassin had a face and a name now, and was dead, but only after torturing her for four hours—an incident that had been the direct result of being separated from the rest of them.

  Kanmi straightened up, lifting Bodi up so that the boy’s legs dangled. “Dr. Sasaki?” he called over, very formally. Very politely. As if they hadn’t spent a night in bed together before close to twenty-four interminable hours of cramped quarters in an ornithopter and then a fixed-wing plane across the Sea of Atlas. “It would give me great pleasure if you’d join my family for dinner tonight. And any other night that you might wish to do so.”

  Minori’s look of relief had warmed him, but he knew this was a stepping stone for her, a way to regain her confidence, and a way to remember how to live without paranoia. Although, given her experiences in the past month? She’d never regain that patina of innocence. The blinders that most normal people wore, that let them ignore just how dangerous the world really was, had been ripped off, and could never really be put back on again.

  And so, Minori had stayed with him and the boys for the first week in Rome. He offered to take the couch this time, so that she could have his bed, and she’d shyly shaken her head. “Oh, so you actually like the couch?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. The boys were in bed, and they were standing in the living room.

  Minori shifted a little. “You . . . I mean . . . you don’t wish to . . . ?” Sudden insecurity in her voice, and Kanmi damned himself.

  He took her hands in his, and told her, simply, “I don’t want to pressure you, or make you feel like you have to, just to have a safe place to sleep.” Kanmi shrugged. “This apartment is as safe as I can make it, and I’ve had a lot of time to prepare the place. You, Minori? You can sleep anywhere you wish.” He paused. “Besides the boys’ bedroom. I think that may confuse them. Also, the kitchen might be uncomfortable.”

  They still argued, of course. But these were arguments about work. About magic, the proper use of it, about the merits of traditional spell-casting and modern innovation, how natural philosophy and magic could work together. About physics, and whether or not the universe was expanding, and what the math actually meant. Kanmi wasn’t sure when he’d last smiled this much. He cooked dinner every night, as he had for four years now, whenever he was home to do so. Made coffee, Nubian-style, which Minori tried, politely, but at which she still wrinkled her nose. Two days later, she brought oolong tea from a Nipponese market, and let them all try it. Her version of a tea ceremony was at least as involved as Bastet’s coffee preparation had been, and Kanmi was somewhat amused by the mental comparison he’d drawn. It was about the only resemblance between the two women at all.

  Himi and Bodi watched them argue over the dinner table, wide-eyed, until one night, Bodi burst into tears, and Kanmi stopped in mid-sentence. “What’s the matter?” he asked, sharply.

  “I don’t want you to argue,” the boy said, miserably. “I like Minori. I don’t want her to leave.”

  Minori’s mouth had fallen open. Kanmi immediately reached out and tousled Bodi’s wavy hair. “We’re not fighting,” he told his son, calmly. “We’re arguing about ideas, but we’re not fighting. There’s a difference, Bodi. A really big one.”

  His son’s dark eyes were woebegone, and Himi didn’t look any more like he believed Kanmi. “All right, I’ll tell you what. I won’t raise my voice when we’re arguing. That way, you’ll believe me, right?”

  It took a little effort to remember. Kanmi had had to shout over the top of a loud and boisterous family just to be heard from an early age, and had used volume as a method of compensating for his short stature for years. But he was rewarded when the boys started to realize that he and Minori weren’t lacing into each other. Began to relax.

  But that being said, when it was time for her to go back to Gaul, the boys were heartbroken, and clung onto her at the airport, until she hesitantly, with glances at Kanmi, promised to return.

  “Oh, I expect you won’t have any choice about that,” he told her, cheerfully. “Hearings. Questions. Investigations. It’ll be fun.”

  The six months of administrative leave, Kanmi took as something of a blessing in disguise. It let him spend a copious amount of time with his sons, reassuring them that he wasn’t about to disappear from their lives. He suspected that when Himi reached adolescence, he was probably going to hear a good deal about how he’d driven off their mother, so he wanted to make sure there was a solid foundation of trust between him and his sons before the young adult years. And he made sure to tell them both, that once they reached eighteen, if they wanted to reach out to Bastet again, they could. “Just not until you’ve reached your majority,” he told them, simply. “That was the court’s decision, and I think it was the right one. What you do when you’re adults, and can make your own choices, will be up to you.”

  He also used that time to start nosing into the whole godslayer issue for ben Maor and Caetia. If he couldn’t do research on the energy distribution loads in Tawantinsuyu, the least he could do was historical research. Progress was . . . very slow indeed. Much of the information, such as it was, seemed to be obscured in legend and myth, if not deliberately occluded. Distorted. Destroyed. Then again, if I were an entity, I wouldn’t want to leave directions on how to kill me lying around, either.

  As for Minori, while her employer, Eleutherian Industries, definitely enjoyed the publicity that her presence in Tawantinsuyu brought them, as well as her steadfast assertion that ley-power itself had had nothing to do with the disasters, her constant absences that year, as she was summoned, again and again to Rome for hearings, wore on their patience. The fact that she had two bodyguards assigned to her in Gaul wore at her patience, as well, but at the same time, she was grateful to have them. Her tiny, one-bedroom apartment in Lutetia was at least easy for them to secure, but it really wasn’t designed for more than one person at a time—as she discovered anew when Kanmi and his sons came to visit her in the capital of northwest Gaul for about a week. The two boys were noisy and didn’t stop talking or moving until they crashed, completely asleep, on her spare skihibuton atop the tatami mat, just beside her low eating table in the small living area. She was marginally surprised that Kanmi didn’t object to her own cotton mattress on the mat in her bedroom, but he reminded her, rolling his eyes, that he’d slept on a pallet on the floor as a child, and that the only difference was that hers was nicer, and he didn’t have to share it with anyone but her. “Most people at home say that our beds have health benefits,” Minori told him as she unfolded the pallet one night.

  He shrugged. “The only difference between a poor family in Tyre sleeping on the floor and a rich family sleeping on the floor in Hokkaido is that for one family, it was a choice, not a necessity. That, and I suspect you didn’t have rats scampering over you in the night, or occasional
ly wake up with one of them eating a cockroach inches from your face.”

  Minori had winced, and Kanmi had reached out, and slipped a hand under her elbow. “I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s the bedding that has the health benefits. People on every continent slept on the ground for many years before bed frames were invented. Personally, doesn’t matter a bit to me where I sleep, so long as the place is clean.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead, a little apologetically. “However you’re comfortable, Min.”

  He’d been as good as his word, too. He didn’t complain about a stiff back in the morning. Didn’t complain that he couldn’t get to sleep, either. Just held her close, and usually fell asleep long before she did. When she asked him about that, he snorted. “Just testament to the fact that I spent too much time near the Mongol border, really. You really can learn to sleep through anything. Musket-fire, in particular. This? This is much more pleasant, Min.”

  The boys, she’d discovered, would eat almost anything, no matter how strange. They’d been raised on a mix of Carthaginian, Nubian, and Roman foods. They were thus a little surprised when she served them steamed rice and a little soup for breakfast, but to her pleased surprise, they simply ate it like starving wolves, and got on with the day.

  Kanmi and the boys toured the historic places of Lutetia. It was a scenic city, and the Sequana was a beautiful river; she even went with them on one of the boat rides that took tourists all the way out to the Britannic Channel, and the boys fell asleep against them on the long evening ride back, where there was nothing to do but look at the city lights along the banks, and the stars above.

  She was astounded, however, at how empty the apartment felt when they left. As if most of what made life interesting had departed with them. The bodyguards, who had maintained a quiet vigil at the periphery of her awareness while Kanmi was there, closed back in again.

  Around that point in time, she received a letter from her mother, Aika Mori, very delicately chiding her for not having contacted her or her father. A few words to let us know that you were in good health would not have gone amiss, Aika wrote. Additionally, you seem to be in a position of uncomfortably public prominence. Is there anything that the family can do to offer you some protection?

  Minori had rubbed at her face, and had begun a letter in reply, before wincing and doing something she had not done in almost twelve years. She called her mother on the telephone. Her mother had told her, all through her long years at the Imperial Court, that she cherished the finely-written missives Minori sent her, the ability to hold the paper in her hands and know that her daughter had gracefully written the words by hand. Telephone privileges at court had been nonexistent, and Minori had maintained the same behavior in Gaul, partially out of habit, and partially out of . . . embarrassment, really. Shame. She was an exile, she knew it, and she shouldn’t be seen or heard.

  Thus, it took a moment for Aika to recognize Minori’s voice, but once she did, Min was astounded by the relief and joy in her mother’s voice. “Oh, Minori, it is so wonderful to hear your voice! Are you all right? What happened to you in Tawantinsuyu? Do you know how many Roman officials have come to see your father and ask questions about you? They asked him why you’d been trained in withstanding torture. Do you know what hearing that did to your father? To all of us?” Her mother wasn’t letting her get a word in edgewise. This was exceedingly unusual behavior for the exquisitely-mannered Aika.

  Minori apologized. And apologized. And apologized. To her frank amazement, her father came to the telephone, and spoke with her for several minutes. She wasn’t sure if his gruff, reserved tone meant that he was disappointed in her, for her having failed to speak with them first, or some sort of strange pride in her. She apologized to him, as well, and he handed the phone back to her mother. And when Aika demanded, again, “Why didn’t you contact us before now?” Minori started to answer, you could have called me when she realized that this wasn’t entirely true. She’d moved several times in Lutetia. She couldn’t even remember if she’d given them her most recent phone number. The plain fact was, she hadn’t thought that they would care, so long as she didn’t shame them.

  That was the assumption of the eighteen-year-old, who’d spent five years separated from her family, and had been facing at least four more years of separation, if not more. The assumption had made it easier to bear that separation. She’d told herself, stubbornly and repeatedly, that they didn’t care about her, because distancing herself from them mentally, made the distance hurt less.

  And it had been a lie. She’d convinced herself of it fairly thoroughly, though. Convinced herself that her mother’s beautifully-written, poetically-worded letters were just . . . thought exercises. A noblewoman writing as a noblewoman should. Not the only expression of love she’d permitted her mother for . . . at least twelve years.

  She wasn’t on a secure line, and had to plead that excuse, several times, when her mother asked about the events in Caesaria Australis, but she could understand her mother’s curiosity. Minori had lived through the events, and some days, still wasn’t sure she understood everything that had happened.

  “At least tell me what your plans are?” Aika finally asked, once she’d wound down a little.

  Minori winced. “I have been attempting to demonstrate to my employer that I am worthy of remaining with them. My managers have been generous to a fault, and I work until seven in the evening, most nights, to make up for the fact that I used all of my vacation to go to Tawantinsuyu. All the hearings I must attend in Rome, however, are wearing at my managers’ patience.”

  A pause. Aika had never held a job. She was a noble. This undoubtedly sounded like an exceedingly middle-class concern to her. “And what will you do about this?”

  “I have applied for a job at the University of Rome,” Minori admitted. She hadn’t told Kanmi that yet. If she got the job, she’d tell him then, but not before. “Their school of technomancy is not as good as the University of Edo or the University of Athens, but it would be steady, professional work.”

  A pause. “That seems a big step, to account for hearings that should only last a few more months.”

  “It’s not just that.” Minori took a deep breath, and swallowed. Nippon had, because of its status as an island kingdom along several major trade routes, never been an insular culture. Still, intermarriage with foreigners among the nobility was somewhat frowned upon. Not that we’re getting married. Though that may make it look so much worse to my family. She hesitated a moment longer, and finally said, in a rush, “I actually would like to move to Rome. I have . . . friends there.”

  “Oh, do you have a lover there?” Aika chirped cheerfully.

  “Mother!” Minori was horrified. Her father could well still be in ear-shot.

  “Minori, you are thirty, and you have never once in any of your letters mentioned any attachments of the heart. I thought I would die without grandchildren. So, tell me . . . do you have a sweetheart or not?”

  In her living room, where she sat on the floor beside her small eating table, Minori slowly crumbled in on herself and put her head on the cold, hard surface. “Yes, but Mother, please, it might not lead to anything.”

  That didn’t help matters at all. Aika was far too happy now to be halted in the full career of her imagination. She wasn’t even discomposed when Minori haltingly mentioned that Kanmi had children from a previous marriage. “What of it? Your father has half a dozen children with his lady wife.” A pause, and a muffled sound of voices in the background. “Your father wishes me to tell you that if you wish to come home and visit, it would be acceptable to him. He would be willing to meet with this man at that point in time, to see if he is worthy of his daughter.”

  Minori’s head, already on the surface of the table, couldn’t sink any lower. But she did feel as if gravity had, by some unknown quirk of physics, somehow just tripled.

  A week later, she had a letter offering her a solid professorship at the university of Rome, and, hold
ing her breath, called Kanmi to inform him. “You’re moving to Rome, eh? Is it to cut down on the commute, or am I a factor in your decision-making process?” Mild irony in the tone.

  “A full professorship in technomancy and sorcery looks good on the curriculum vitae.” Minori kept her tone sweet. “May I . . . ah, prevail upon you to help me find an apartment there?”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Kanmi finally replied, “Do you really think we need to do all the dancing around? I’ve got two kids. I’m not going to be running over to your place, having to call on the pedagogue to stay in while I’m out, racing back across town, and just plain not getting any sleep. Can’t do it, Min. If I’m not at my best, someone dies.” He paused. “And if you’re coming across town all the damned time, then you’re just wasting time in traffic, and the fact is, you need sleep, too, especially if you’re going to be teaching sorcery, damn it.”

  Minori swallowed, the phone suddenly heavy in her hand. “What are you saying?”

  “I mean this. I might be terrible at saying it, but I’m more than a little fond of you. And we’re either in each other’s lives, or not. I might have trouble trusting people, Min, but I don’t have intimacy issues. None of this separate apartments, separate lives shit. If we’re in, we’re in. No in-betweens. No separate bedrooms, either. We’d be together, not roommates with the option to fuck each other, like the warm and wonderful relationship Livorus has with his wife. Life is too short for the games people play when they’re not sure they’re with the right person.” He paused. “I’m pretty sure about you, Min. You add up.” Another pause. “Admittedly, from your perspective, I might be missing a variable or two . . . .”