Adam clicked the safety on the gun, and slid it into its holster at his back. He then picked up his cane, and pushed himself up from his seat at the kitchen table, before limping forwards, and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Welcome home, Sig.”
I always thought my home was you. But I don’t have a home anymore, do I? Sigrun forced a smile onto her face. He didn’t deserve her bitter thoughts. “It’s good to see you,” she told him, and for a moment, she felt it. “Am I allowed to be here?”
“Caesarion just signed a writ yesterday, joined by the provincial governors of Tyre, Damascus, Palmyra, Egypt, and Carthage, declaring that they found Julianus’ orders regarding the Goths and the Gauls to be invalid and illegal. He signed another one, recognizing New Caledonia as an autonomous and legitimate kingdom under the rule of Trennus Matrugena.” Adam sighed. “Julianus just got done stating that he now considers Judea, Carthage, and Egypt to be in a state of rebellion, and demanded that the legions impose martial law in all three areas.”
Adrenaline surged through Sigrun. Adam caught her upper arm before she could move out the door, however. “Trennus says he’ll come evacuate me, if it looks bad. Julianus’ speech was just a half-hour ago, so there probably isn’t fighting yet . . . and I hope that there won’t be.” His face was graven with lines of exhaustion. “Tren says that a Persian diplomat sent a message to him by spirit yesterday, making overtures of alliance. Can you believe it?”
“Yes, I can.” Sigrun rocked in place, keenly aware of the need to be at least three places at once. She had stolen this day away from her duty to her people, and in her hand, Freya’s apple was still oozing juice. But she could be rallying the people of this city. Those who hadn’t evacuated to New Caledonia, anyway. And at the back of her mind, the images still flickered. The western convoy, rather than heading north into the ash and debris of the volcanoes, had left its weakest members in Massalia, swelling that port city’s population. The rest, the healthiest and strongest, continued in their weary path towards Celto-Iberian Gaul, though it meant traversing the Pyrenees mountains.
Roman legions blocked the roads and Rome’s navy tried to blockade ports like Massalia, in an attempt to punish the rebellious provinces for their actions. They seem to forget that they are outnumbered, and surrounded, and rely on our people for grain to feed their population, Freya remarked, a certain taut amusement in her voice . . . .
“Sig?” Adam’s voice snapped her back to where she was. “Are you going to stay here?”
She stared around herself, disoriented, and focused on the pictures on the wall behind him. Their wedding picture, the pictures from their visit with Erida on the Caspian. “Yes. For the moment.”
“Sig . . .” He hesitated. “Do I get a kiss?”
She blinked, and glanced down at herself, ensuring that she was not in her armor. And then leaned in and gave him a kiss on the lips, light and soft, putting her arms around him very gently, so she wouldn’t injure his fragile skin. “I love you,” she told him. “Here. Let’s move to the living room, and you can tell me everything else that’s gone on.”
“Not much else to tell. One of Erida’s magi turned up murdered. Ninson Tehro. Of course, the gardia and the Praetorians are a little busy with the whole rebellion thing, so I don’t know how much they’re looking into it at the moment.” He raised his eyebrows at her as she helped him get comfortable on a couch. “Oh, and you’ll love this. Even before Caesarion’s speech, Minori and Erida refused to turn over their hydrogen spell to the Legion’s battle-sorcerers. Erida said that she and the rest of the Chaldean Magi had joined the Empire on the grounds that they would no longer be treated as weapons, but as people in Rome. She claimed the spell as intellectual property and stated that she wouldn’t release it without compensation. Hah.” He paused, his brow crinkling. “How long can you stay?”
“Until morning. We are to meet with Rome’s messengers in Valhalla.” Sigrun shrugged. “I would like to visit Sophia, while I can. And then the Wood. There are things I need to speak to Trennus and Saraid about—Lassair, too, if possible.”
“Do I get to hear these discussions?” Adam asked, raising his eyebrows.
“If you wish.” She looked around, again trying to push everything to the back of her mind. “Also, I have a surprise for you, before I leave.” Sigrun managed a smile. “A gift.”
Iulius 28, 1993 AC
The meetings between Sigrun and Caesarion, and Sigrun and Trennus had been interminable for Adam. When she was near at hand, she was able to suppress most of the arthritis pain for him, and she insisted on squeezing in an appointment with Himi into an already-crowded day, to review his EKG results and his cholesterol. He couldn’t deny that he felt better every time she very gently poked and prodded his heart, knitting together the worn fibers of the muscle, and encouraged the organ to beat more regularly. His energy increased. But she was his nurse now, more than anything else, and it grated.
She held his arm and she drove the car—he didn’t entirely trust himself at the wheel anymore, which was why Caesarion had been having him chauffeured to and from the governor’s villa. She sorted through his medications for him. When she was there. And yet, he’d told her to go. Not to bind herself to him anymore, out of duty, but to come home when love impelled her.
He was doing his best, and his best was still damned good. He was senior advisor to Caesarion and Marcus Livorus . . . and Caesarion might well end up the Emperor of a schismed-off Eastern Empire, in Adam’s opinion. Sig’s long-term interest in history had given him that kind of insight; kingdoms either survived civil wars by dividing, or by uniting under the iron grip of a powerful ruler. Julianus wanted to be that ruler, but Adam didn’t think the Emperor had a firm grip on the reality of the modern Empire. Rome had become, more than anything, an administrative center, a hub, for all the disparate provinces and subject nations under its auspices. In a very real way, Rome wasn’t really Rome, and hadn’t been, for centuries. Its mythos, its laws, its military threat, had been enough to provide unity to a billion people, and those people were Rome. But they were also themselves. Caesarion IX had ruled through the governors, and the governors had interacted with the local governments with respect for local customs, beliefs, and laws . . . so long as Rome’s laws held primacy. As such, Rome set limits, but most provinces self-governed. Trying to maintain tight control from the top down didn’t and couldn’t work with such large populations. Julianus didn’t seem to grasp that.
And yet, for all his work with Caesarion and young Livorus and everything else, Adam wanted to ask Sigrun what the point of all her work with Himi to keep his heart beating correctly really was. Keeping me alive, but what life do I actually have left? I can’t share yours. Just looking at the ageless faces of his friends—Trennus, eternally locked at thirty, Minori back to that age now, herself, Sigrun as ageless as she’d been the day he’d met her, forty years ago—made his breath catch. And listening to Sig’s account of the deaths of Forseti and Maponus made his head spin. She’d been nowhere near, physically, but she had seen it all, as if she were there. She’s always said her gods aren’t omniscient. But she’s leaving her humanity further and further behind. The way I told her to. As she . . . has to. Kanmi’s dead, but apparently he’s at least a ghost now. Min’s got that much. I could take Tren’s offer, and avoid becoming a monster. Even just dying, politely and quietly, would be better than becoming a . . . godslayer, in truth.
He kept his thoughts buried deeply, however, avoiding any questions from Saraid and Lassair that way. Finally, the meeting broke up, and Sigrun told him, with a smile in place, “I have to go soon. But first, your surprise.”
“You, wrapped up with a red ribbon, in bed?” Adam offered, leaning on his cane as they walked towards the car. Sigrun’s startled expression told him everything he needed to know on that score. That hadn’t even remotely been on her mind. “Oh, come on. Physically, you’re still as young as you always were. We haven’t in . . .” Close to two years, the mo
st male parts of his brain said, emphatically. “You’re not even twitchy?” He raised his eyebrows at her as he eased down into the seat, and she closed the door on him. He was trying for a joking tone, and not an adversarial or crotchety one, but he couldn’t tell from her expression if he was succeeding.
She got in on the driver’s side, and turned the key, letting the electric engine hum to life. “No,” Sigrun told him, her voice thoughtful. “Not especially.”
“Even if I’m not . . .” Adam looked up at the ceiling of the car, and rephrased. “There are still quite a few things I could do to make you feel good, Sig. I remember how.”
“It’s all right. There is no need.”
God damn it, yes, there is. “Himi said that all your work with my heart has reduced the chance of a cardiac event. I’m not going to die on you in bed. Besides, I like making you feel good.”
He caught the sidelong look, and then she turned her attention back to the road as she clearly sorted through answers. Trying to find the one that would hurt him least. Harah.
“Adam, it’s not you. It’s . . . me.” She shook her head. “I’m death. I’m death and ice and cold. I don’t . . . think I . . . really feel that anymore.”
“Bullshit,” Adam told her, with some force. “No fertility without death, you and Tren used to tell me. No death without life. And night is a time of passion. A time to lose restraints. I’ve done my entity and symbolism research, Sig.” His tone lost some of its force. “You just don’t want to say that the senior citizen’s discount at the local restaurants isn’t much of an attraction. It’s all right.” He managed a smile, though he was feeling remarkably gelded at the moment.
Her fingers tightened on the wheel, turning white at the knuckles. “Adam, it used to be wonderful, all right? It hasn’t been for a while, and some of that, yes, is advancing age on your part, but it was . . . fine until after Baal-Hamon’s death.” She shrugged, looking self-conscious. “Then I was tired all the damned time, and I’d . . . become night, and didn’t know it. I really think it’s me, Adam. Not you.”
“This isn’t the way to the house,” Adam noted, abruptly, getting off the sensitive subject. She’d taken them along a highway along the outskirts of Little Gothia, and out to an open field.
“No. It’s not.” She let the motorcar roll to a halt, and took the key out of the ignition, before helping him out. “Niðhoggr?” Sigrun looked up at the clear blue sky, just darkening into twilight, and the dragon appeared, landing neatly in front of them.
“We’re going flying?” Adam asked, some of his bad temper evaporating. He hadn’t been flying in almost eight years. Again, not since Baal-Hamon’s death.
More or less. Nith’s tone was ambivalent. Not hostile, but cool, and shaded with sorrow. Hold tightly to Stormborn. I will be taking us through the Veil. There is a possibility that we may be attacked by the gods of Rome during this transit.
Wait, what? Adam thought, as Sigrun lifted him into place on Nith’s neck, where a thermal blanket was positioned to protect his body from the dragon’s chill, and settled herself behind him, her arms wrapped around him. The dragon leaped into the air, making Adam’s stomach lurch at the rapid acceleration. “Look, I don’t want to go through the Veil,” he shouted. “I don’t like what I see there—” God, don’t let her see my damned shadow. Though, honestly, I don’t know if she could, she’s right where it would fall . . . oh, harah, what happens if my shadow falls on a goddess in the Veil? Will it kill her? Can she die in the Veil?
And then for several timeless instants, they were swimming through an ocean’s kelp forests, which turned into the filaments of gas in a nebula, and then they were . . . elsewhere. A surprisingly dingy, white-gray landscape, with hints of pale brown in the rock and sand. A few basalt-like boulders perched here and there, and a mercilessly bright sun overhead. Adam flung a hand up to shield his eyes, and then Sigrun tapped his shoulder. Look now. It should be better.
He squinted, realizing that she was in her full armor, and that a silvery nimbus clung to him. Seiðr. Adam looked around, trying to ascertain where on earth he was—the horizon seemed much too close, and it was unnerving him . . . and then he turned, and stopped breathing.
He could see Earth rising; the planet was three-quarters full, and between him and it, he could see the tiny speck that was Libration Station. He could see the blue of the oceans, the green-brown of the continents, and the white, multilayered swirls of the clouds, and his brain simply stopped functioning as he drank in the sight. Adam barely registered Sigrun’s gentle hands as she floated him down to the ground, but his eyes dropped from the jewel that was his planet, set in the black velvet of night, and stared down at his plain brown leather shoes as they touched down on lunar soil. Fine-grained powder that hadn’t moved from this exact position for millions of years, was now disturbed by his presence. His shoeprints would remain here . . . beside the tracks of a dragon . . . possibly until the moment that the sun swelled into a red giant, and devoured the Earth and its primary satellite. He took an experimental step or two, and felt the joy of the low gravity. No effort to any movement. His arthritis had no bearing here, and his heart didn’t have to labor to move the blood. He felt alive here, as he hadn’t, in years. “Sig . . . .”
Do you like your surprise?
“It’s beautiful.” He looked at her, at Nith, and then back at the Earth. Three sublime things, and the Earth, as fragile and beautiful as it was from up here, reminded him that seeing the sublime every day let the miraculous become ordinary. “You’re beautiful, too. Thank you, Sig.” He paused. “How in god’s name am I breathing? And the radiation—”
You have a bubble of air that will last about fifteen minutes. The reflective aura around you is repelling the radiation, as well as most of the heat. She paused. L’banah is about a hundred miles south of here. We could go there. Knock on the airlock, and I suspect they’d be happy to give you that billet, at long last. Her tone was gentle. The gravity would be good for your body and your heart. You could live here. And you could look at Earth every day.
Adam’s heart seized. “I could look at it . . . but I couldn’t help try to save it.”
You’ve done enough, Adam, don’t you think?
“Not . . . not yet. I’m not ready yet, Sig. Stop trying to—”
To what?
Get rid of me. Settle me in a retirement home where you won’t have to feel guilty about me. He barely kept the words behind his teeth. They weren’t true, and she’d brought him up here because she thought it would make him happy. So Adam bit his tongue, and stared at Earth. “I once told you that coming up here without you, starting a life without you, wasn’t what I wanted,” he finally told her. “That’s still true.” Except, of course, I don’t really have you in my life now, either. And I can’t ask you to stay around and play nurse. And I can’t say yes. “Thank you, Sig,” he told her, finally, with absolute sincerity. “This was . . . a beautiful gift.” He pushed aside the notion that she was giving a dying man his last wish, and stooped down. Sifted his fingers, protected as they were by the shimmering magic field, through the dust, wishing he could truly feel it against his skin. And closed his fingers around a piece of jagged lunar basalt that had been deposited here by an asteroid that had created a crater, millions of years ago. The edges were knife-sharp and ragged. He’d take this with him. A reminder of the reality of this visit. He slowly stood again, luxuriating in the low gravity, and looked at Sigrun, wishing he could see her face under the mask she wore.
Nith’s cool thoughts insinuated themselves into his, as Sigrun helped him mount up once more. Steelsoul, a word?
Yes?
I have thought, in times past, that if I could trade places with you, I would. The dragon’s thoughts were measured and precise. That if I could give you this immortal body, armored and perfect, I would. And that in that way, you could be with Sigrun forever, and she with you.
And where would you be, in this scenario? In my body, preparing
to die?
Most likely, yes.
I would not accept that! What, you don’t feel worthy of living?
I did not, then. My existence was previously without hope. But I would not now offer it. Nith’s words remained precise. There is, however, another possibility. If you will not accept being bound by Sigrun, I could bind you, instead. I have never done so before. You would be subject to me. But you would partake of my essence. You would be stronger. I suspect that you would share my armor, and my resilience. And, very likely, my lifespan.
If I would not accept Sigrun’s offer, what makes you think that I would accept yours? Adam’s thought was curt. But again . . . it was tempting.
I did not think that you would. But I had to make the attempt. You see, if you happened to die, while bound to me, instead of to her, you would not be subsumed by her personality. You would become a part of me, instead.
The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3) Page 77
