The Goddess Denied (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 2) Read online

  “If she’s like Sigrun at all, she’s probably very good at anger.” Trennus tried to lighten Brandr’s mood a little, and prompt memories that he hoped were true.

  “Regin doesn’t get angry the same way. She gets sarcastic. Bitterly so, and never more so than at Joris’ pyre.” Brandr looked into the mid-distance. “Those of us who were there were in danger of being flayed alive by her tongue. And I remember her saying that this was all her fault.” He shrugged. “I told her that that kind of thinking was idiocy. That she’d married a mortal, and he’d lived a mortal span, and that that was no one’s fault.”

  “Did she say anything else?” Trennus prompted.

  Brandr rubbed at his face again, lips compressing in thought. “Just that I was an idiot. And that Joris had more deserved to be god-touched than many who’d been born that way. That he’d done more with his mortal span than any ten god-born did with their centuries. I took that a little amiss, because I don’t think my life’s been worthless. Joris was a good sorcerer, but he was a . . . very ordinary man, in most regards.” Brandr shrugged, and Trennus caught fifty or so years of subtext. “Decent, kind enough. I only met him a few times, but I never did understand why she chose him. At any rate, I figured it was the grief talking, gave her a hug, and reminded her that she’s had my contact information for decades, if she wanted to talk or a shoulder on which to weep. And then I let her be, since she seemed to want her privacy.” A grimace twisted his face. “Maybe I should have kept at her. But if anyone understood the sorrow of a long life . . . she did.” He gestured at the pictures in the hall in explanation.

  Trennus nodded, and tried to assemble the pieces in his head as he moved next to the library, where the others were all hard at work. “All right, she thought her husband’s death was somehow her fault,” Trennus told them. “That speaks to an unsettled mindset, the kind that can be used as leverage against someone. Got anything in here?”

  Kanmi held up a dustpan filled with ashes, and grimaced. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve done this?” the technomancer muttered. “Every time the Praetorians find another little extremist group and go into its safe-house . . . people burn their damned documents.” He gestured at the fireplace grating. “And because they know extremists are my hobby, Investigations tends to invite me along for the ride, so they can borrow some of my magic.” He put the ashes in a bucket filled with more of the same, including charred pieces of fragile paper. The derision in his voice was clear as he added, “It’s as if no one trusts anyone, anymore.”

  Lassair moved over, and looked down at the charred remnants in the bucket. I may be able to assist with this, Emberstone.

  “Baal knows, I won’t say no to help. This is going to be a mess.” Kanmi lifted two fingers in a beckoning gesture, and tiny pieces of ash began to rise, drifting back to the fireplace, in an elongated, slow-moving funnel. He found a pair of tweezers in the desk, and began catching larger pieces out of the flow, very carefully, and laid them on the desk. “Hope the lady doesn’t mind soot on her furniture,” Kanmi added, and snorted.

  Brandr moved to the bookcases, glancing at the shelves. “Her husband was a sorcerer, as I said,” he noted, quietly. “Many of these books are his. Technomancy. But there is less dust here, on this section of his shelves, than the rest of the room.”

  Minori moved over, and looked at the spines. “Well, the ones in Latin, I can read,” she said, after a moment. “All fairly standard textbooks except . . . hmm. A complete, bound edition of the Source Initiative’s journal for 1955 through 1960.”

  “Keep looking,” Kanmi said. “Some of your articles are in there, Min.”

  “I know. Should I sign them for her?”

  “Absolutely. Yes. You should.”

  Minori opened one of the books, and a bundle of letters fell out. “Hold off on playing in the ashes,” she called to Kanmi. “These haven’t been burned yet.”

  Everyone clustered around, and Trennus and Brandr took turns translating the stark Gothic runes. “This is her correspondence with the Odinhall, circa . . . 1955 through . . . 1963,” Brandr said, sounding confused. “She kept carbon copies of what she sent to Dvalin, reporting on her progress in tracking down the others who might have had involvement in the . . . hmm. Disturbance in Nahautl.” He squinted at the page. “Not that it says much about the disturbance itself. Though she’s directed to keep Sigrun Caetia out of the investigation, because there are indications that Sigrun . . . profited by the disturbance?” Brandr sounded disgruntled. “How could anyone think Sigrun so devoid of honor?”

  Trennus’ eyes skipped down the page. Reginleif had been a dogged investigator, and had been assigned to the Tawantinsuyu investigation, in turn. “Looks like she was pursuing many of the same avenues of research as you were, Kanmi,” he noted. “Source Initiative people, at first.” He picked up another letter. “This one says she was planning to go to the same conference that we went to, when we first met Min, but was delayed by her husband’s illness . . . pneumonia, apparently. She apologizes, Dvalin informs her that because of her delay, and the fact that she didn’t understand Min’s research in time, and thus failed to go to Tawantinsuyu ahead of us . . . and also failed to join the team in place of Sigrun, it is possible that tens of thousands of people died unnecessarily . . .” his eyebrows went up, and stayed up. “Gods,” he said, after a long moment. “They don’t put much pressure on you, do they?”

  Brandr shifted on his feet, and replied, stolidly, “We’re given the tasks we’re best suited to accomplish.”

  “Yeah, as if we were just going to let some complete stranger replace a trusted member of our team,” Kanmi muttered, darkly. “Or, better yet, if Reginleif been there and involved, trying to stop us from investigating . . . do you know how much of an international incident that would have become, as Rome put the Odinhall up on charges of interference in an Imperial investigation?” Kanmi grimaced. “Oh, and don’t tell me that she’d just have dazzled us all with illusion and then marched on, entirely by herself, to victory over the whole situation. She might be good, but no one is that good.”

  Brandr’s shoulders moved. “I can’t answer for Dvalin’s reasoning, Eshmunazar. The Master of the Runes was conveying the displeasure of the gods. More than that, I cannot say.”

  Trennus sorted through the bundle. One of them made his eyes burn to read; the lettering actually seemed to have thorns. Spikes. It crawled and moved on the page. He let it drop from his nerveless fingers, and let it sit on the desk. “I have no idea what that is, and I don’t think I want to know,” he said, letting out an explosive breath.

  Brandr squinted at it, and winced. “That . . . is a formal letter of reprimand. It’s signed by Hel herself. I probably shouldn’t read it.”

  “Do it anyway,” Kanmi said, shortly.

  Brandr did, his jaw working. And as his eyes scanned the page, the tiny blood vessels there burst, and blood began to course down his face in rivulets. “Baal’s teeth,” Kanmi muttered, as Trennus reached to take the paper out of Brandr’s hand, only to have the bear-warrior deflect him with a forearm. “You wanted me to read this? I’m reading it,” Brandr growled. “Better me than the rest of you. If I go blind, I’ll heal. You won’t.”

  Trennus’ stomach churned, and he could see the shadow of regret cross Kanmi’s face as Brandr finally dropped the letter on the table, and wiped the blood from his eyes. “Hel believes that Reginleif should have been on the slopes of a mountain called Coropuna in 1960,” the bear-warrior stated. “She says that if Regin had been there . . . something would not have happened to Sigrun. It’s . . . all very vaguely worded.” Brandr sounded grim, and blinked rapidly as his eyes healed. “Something occurred to make Sigrun dangerous in Hel’s eyes, and she would have preferred that Reginleif had been there. She also states that Regin wouldn’t be punished directly, but that human lives are fleeting.” Rage under Brandr’s calmness now. “She’s suggesting that Regin’s mortal husband would pay the price for Regin’
s mistake.”

  Kanmi closed his eyes. “That’s . . . one of the primary handles people go after when turning someone into a spy,” he commented, tiredly. “If bribery and blackmail don’t work, threatening a family member usually will.” He opened his eyes, and glanced at Trennus, and they didn’t need to read each other’s minds for thoughts to flow between them.

  Trennus was perfectly aware that Lassair had gained in power in Nahautl. Saraid had gained in power in Tawantinsuyu. Quite a bit had been diverted to Mamaquilla, who’d become the preeminent goddess of that land. Sigrun still denied that anything had happened to her in Nahautl. And had denied it again, after the events that had left Supay dead at her hands.

  But there had been something different about Sigrun since then. Oh, not all the time. Many days, she was precisely the same as she’d ever been. Stubborn about her family. Relentless on the job. Shy, reserved, formal—a little adrift with modern technology, if Kanmi’s stories about his son’s calculus were true, like someone’s grandmother confronted with a new gadget. And yet, there had been, every so often, a sense of stillness to her now. As if she both were and weren’t . . . quite there. It came and went, and weeks passed in between the impression.

  Brandr had already moved on, shaking his head. “Here’s a copy of her letter to the Odinhall . . . asking for healing for her husband . . . extension of his life . . . denied, by Loki himself, apparently. That’s dated . . . 1962.” Brandr grimaced. “Well, that’s something I didn’t know.”

  “Cause for being angry at the gods,” Kanmi said, and a moment of silence held the room for a moment, before the sorcerer went back to work, sorting out the largest charred portions of paper. “Nothing like taking the pieces from five or six different puzzles, taking out random pieces from each, throwing them in a box, and shaking them. And putting it all in a language that I don’t speak. Ben Maor should’ve come along for this. He’d enjoy this, the bastard.”

  It was slow, tedious work. Minori kept a layer of air over the scraps on the desk to prevent anyone’s breath or an errant sleeve from disturbing them. The rest of them painstakingly pieced pages together, while Brandr, fidgeting a bit, went back to looking through the bookshelves. And when they’d assembled most of a piece, Lassair was often able to . . . unburn portions of the document, sealing the pieces back together. “Read,” Kanmi said, handing one such letter to Trennus, and rubbing at the back of his neck with soot-blackened fingers. “Please tell me it’s not a bill for her dry-cleaner.”

  Trennus scanned through the document, eyes skipping over holes, and blinked. Re-read it. “Hmm,” he said, and sank to his haunches, letting the letter fall into the basket his kilt made in his lap. “She was in contact with a group called Potentia ad Populum. Know anything, Kanmi?”

  Kanmi looked up, sharply. “Power to the People. Main group’s goal is essentially democratic; they idealize Hellene democratic notions, and generally want to institute thing-style townhall governance in other places in the empire.” A thing really was just that; in Nordic cities and towns, all the adult citizens gathered, argued, and came to decisions as a whole. It was the purest form of democracy in the world today. “Unfortunately, they’ve got a couple of radical sub-factions who, as usual, want to kill all the rich, redistribute the wealth to everyone—no one ever asks along what lines, but you can assume that the people who are doing most of the killing will get the biggest shares—and live in a glorious utopia in which everyone will be equal. Especially the people with the bloodiest hands.”

  Trennus rubbed at his face for a moment, not noticing that he was tracking soot all over his cheeks. It wasn’t precisely an unknown condition for him, anyway. “She was writing to them to try to track down a Fenn named Aapo Jaatinen. A technomancer. Supposed to be in their membership rolls. She says here that she’d used a spirit-binder to track him from letters he’d sent to people like Gratian Xicohtencatl, years ago.”

  Kanmi’s head snapped up. “Impossible. I went through his correspondence with a fine-toothed comb. Xicohtencatl didn’t correspond with any Fenns. I’m sure of that.”

  Trennus shrugged. “I don’t know. I can only read what’s here.”

  Another hour. Another reconstructed document, this one with most of a paragraph at the center missing. Brandr read this one, frowning. “This is . . . notes, I think. It’s a list of . . . initials, perhaps. A.J. And . . . K.L. G.X. And . . . M.C. Each of these corresponds, apparently, to letters found in this Xicohtencatl’s belongings that had no names, just . . . initials.”

  Kanmi looked grim. “I remember these, yes. They were all sent to him via a post drop-box, care of the Source Initiative. No useful postmarks, because they were all sent from different locations, no return addresses, all typewritten. Multiple different typewriters used, too. You see, we have people who can tell precisely which machine was used—”

  “She seems to have employed a spirit-caller who bargained with water-spirits to use the dried saliva on the envelopes to track down the people who’d mailed the letters,” Brandr cut Kanmi off.

  Kanmi’s mouth opened. Shut. And then he swore. Viciously, and in several languages at once.

  Minori looked at her husband. “You didn’t think of that?” Her eyebrows arched in amusement.

  “I ran it by the forensic summoning department, and they said the bargaining would be too expensive, because it would require the spirits to go sniff several million people. And that the spirits that were the best hunters of people tended to be heavily malefic, and they were all out of virgin’s blood, thank you.” Kanmi scratched at his salt-and-pepper beard stubble, leaving more soot on his face. “Baal’s teeth and testes.”

  Trennus nodded, vigorously. “It would be expensive, yes. And they’re right about the best spirit-hunters who specialize in . . . humans . . . tending to do so because they want human lives. But Reginleif had the Odinhall to back her bargains. They . . . have a bit more of a budget than a Praetorian with an obsessive-compulsive need to investigate a group that he’s been ordered not to look into,” he added, looking at Kanmi, who made a rude noise.

  “You make a habit of doing what you’ve been told not to do, I see,” Brandr muttered, and shook his head, his long braid of hair swaying behind him. “This doesn’t help us much. This doesn’t tell us where she is now. What involvement, if any, she has in Loki’s disappearance.”

  They kept at it, as the day wore on, and they had to turn on lights against the gathering dusk. Gradually, information took shape under their fingers. Reginleif had tracked down Aapo Jaatinen, and, in 1963, rather than apprehending him as a possible conspirator involved in the events of Nahautl and Tawantinsuyu . . . had engaged in correspondence with him. “Perhaps she was drawing him out. Wanted him to expose more of his group,” Brandr suggested.

  Then there were indications that she’d gotten involved in Jaatinen’s current political group. Brandr found, tucked into other books in the room, pamphlets from Potentia ad Populum. Ones in which radical notions such as killing all the god-born were espoused. “Bring down the gods themselves,” one pamphlet asserted. “Cut them off from their base of power. Look at what happened to the Hellene gods after the fall of Troy. With only a handful of god-born left, they were nothing. No Hellene truly takes their gods seriously anymore.”

  “She wouldn’t be involved with them,” Brandr muttered. “She’s god-born. She’s investigating them, nothing more.”

  Another pamphlet was a sober and intellectual exercise in dismantling the absolute authority of the Varangarian konungs, who, in spite of their Nordic heritage, had centuries of cultural influence from the Mongols and the Slavs that they ruled, which had made them much more absolute rulers than the various kings of the Gothic nations to Raccia’s west. Returning to the thing-model was discussed, and the most radical statement in the entire document was that the power of the gods should be in the heart and mind of every man and woman alive.

  “It already is,” Kanmi said, his tone decidedly cranky. “You just ha
ve to have the will to use it.”

  “Don’t start,” Min told him. “Really, you should drop by one of my graduate seminars as a guest-speaker. We can go through the whole debate on the origin of magic. My students who say that every sorcerer and summoner born today is simply the descendant of some long-ago god-born will benefit from having you skewer them.”

  Brandr looked up, puzzled. “But . . . I thought that was precisely how it worked—”

  “Don’t,” Trennus said, hastily. “We’ll be here the rest of the evening.”

  “So, she was . . . infiltrating them,” Brandr said, with less confidence, a few minutes later. “Her control of her illusions is beyond that of any other mortal I’ve ever seen. She could pass as a normal human easily enough . . . . ”

  “The date on this letter is 1969,” Trennus said, holding up half a pieced-together scrap. “She seems to have been in regular contact with them for over five years. That’s a very long time to be infiltrating a group, completely on her own. There are no notes from her to the Odinhall, regarding this, and no replies on the topic.” He exhaled, cautiously; the paper was too damned fragile. “This is actually from Jaatinen. thanking her for her continued support of whatever his current project is, and saying that without her, they would never have been able to assemble . . . something. It’s burned out.” He frowned, and just translated directly. “. . . we would not have been able to assemble . . . to meet the Mongol threat from the east . . . first, save our people, then ensure liberty and justice for all. . . power of the gods in every heart. . . .”