Char.
Two figures entwined in a circle of burnt saplings as tangled as old cord in the bottom of a forgotten fisherman’s vessel. The char drifted from immolated bark to the sodden grey shore in lifeless clumps. An orange ember faded to red in the macabre centre, as dull as the ancient wooden boat older than pyramids, in the Dover Museum a few kilometres eastward.
Inhaling to the side in an attempt to escape the miasma, Caleb Mauthisen lowered to his haunches with a grunt and a hiss. Winter’s harsh wind broke into early Spring’s breeze off the English Channel, cutting through his button down. He reached into the fragile mess and brushed ash away from the ember. Gravel crunched under another man’s boots, a shadow upon Caleb’s back he ignored even when the usurper moved his coat.
“A little late to pick back up at the Roman Fort, isn’t it?” Caleb rolled one sleeve to his freckled elbow, popped the button on the other cuff and turned it up like its twin. No use damaging one of his two good shirts anymore than it already was.
Smoke melded with the salt water and petrol off the rocky beach, far from the sacred place the warriors buried in the trees deserved. An entire grove of honoured, but cursed dead burnt to their ashes, before they could sprout as Fae. Midgard’s progress shoved ancient ways to the side of the road, cast off with plastic bottles and crisp packets. Or untouchable curios set behind security glass, reduced down to a plaque of suppositions by detached historians in a museum.
“Think I ought to knock? Stroll up and kick my feet on the nearest ottoman?” The god who spoke towered over, his ginger hair shorn in a style becoming of modernity. Stance as militaristic as the pistol strapped to his thigh, he surveyed the English Channel as if the primordial depths would regurgitate any number of Poseidon’s children for the hell of it. In his eyes, they likely could. Not that Poseidon did anything but guide endangered fish away from nets and trawlers nowadays.
“Helios found them. Recognized the smell.”
Soldiers in olive fatigues secured the beach, cordoned a few onlookers and waved off cars. Their military and emergency support vehicles protected the charred copse, and blocked the view from the A-Road. Folk nattered at the uniformed soldiers, a few pointed in Caleb’s direction or released songbirds intercepted by Kopis Industries drones and herded to a vehicle where an intelligence officer took down each chirped request.
One of the soldiers removed their kopis and cut seaweed from the threshold of a scuffed drag mark. Mumbled into their comm that the mark ended abrupt enough to be teleportation or flight. Golden embroidery of olive leaves on his lapel and the titular blade labelled the soldier and the god:
Kopis Industries, Ares’ front in Midgard.
“Yeah, it’s distinct.” Ice-laden eyes scanned the charred branches and figures, one bent and crooked as a forgotten tree, the other as macabre and human as the half of him he couldn’t deny. The corpses crumbled in the stiff winds from the Channel, nothing but embers and charcoal left behind. “Cover me.”
“Eugh. I have you.”
“Good, ’cause this part gives me the wiggins.” The waves cycled to the shore, a rush to the ear, which receded to return in a few seconds’ time. Caleb hissed out another breath to clear his mind, and dug his fingers into the centre pile of char. Picturing the Dover beach, Caleb’s jaw clenched as he opened to his inner sight, and the gravel rustled around his mind’s eye down to the crisp packet which bobbed in the water before one of Ares’ soldiers picked it up.
Time swelled backward, the embers he touched grew hot as a lake of fire as they burned in reverse. The grove reconstructed into an inferno that tensed Caleb’s body, and stole his breath. Even if psychometry was an illusion of his semi-divine mind, the sensations rocketing around and through him felt real. The heat left sweat rolling down the back of Caleb’s neck.
“Not too far, Mauthisen.”
“Something’s in the flames.” He felt Ares’ hand rest a water bottle against his back, a steadying palm to remind Caleb the conflagration was in the past. “A spotted cloak, bits of hessian. They were bound.”
No scraps of herbs or match heads rested on the ground, nothing but the detritus of life in Britain: sandwich wrappers, old plastic drinks containers, a few clumps of garbage charred by the fire. One hundred sixty years of this didn’t make Caleb hate the smells less.
A figure through the haze. Caleb grunted with a muscle jerk in his arm, his skin inflamed and sore, he still tried to push his mind backward, far enough where he could recognize a clue to go on.
“Someone’s there. No, more than one person…”
“You’re beginning to smoke.”
“Fuck, I hate fire… Almost. She couldn’t have survived much… there’s two of them tied together, two aside from the Grove trees. Blue fabric, wait. No, Fae petals.” The heat ramped higher, inferno coloured with a terrible kaleidoscope of yellows, greens and ochres. Outside the smoke cloud, a figure undulated and spoke too soft to be heard over the din. Try as he did, Caleb couldn’t distinguish more than sharp muffles through the conflagration. “Outside the flames, I can’t tell if it’s one monster or a couple… of… oh nelly, I hate fire.”
“Time’s up.” Water glugged from the bottle as Ares poured the contents over Caleb’s head.
“Woa!” Eyes shocked open, Caleb gasped and contorted his hand out of the ember pile, shaking it off to extinguish the lick of flame which sputtered out at Ares’ spray. “Mâtarratu, or at least the recipe for it.”
“That” Ares pointed to the pile of twisted grey ash, “Was no god.”
“No, but she dressed like one. Seshat’s leopard skin, the brooch matches. Why would someone other than Seshat wear her cloak and brooch?” Caleb rose painfully slow, right hand favouring his stomach as his damp shirt clung to a muscular frame.
“Given your history, I’m not explaining how people in a household share clothes. If it’s Seshat’s stuff I might know who that is.” Ares nodded at three officers amidst the macabre, char-dead trees. They broke their attention and scurried off.
“That one bound with her. A Dryad in a blue petal dress.” Far from pleasant at the best of times, he hissed out another breath to shake off the unpleasantness of using psychometry on the departed. The burning coal sizzled in Caleb’s palm. He stopped long enough to flick the moisture off his shirt, a puff of steam carried the doused water away.
“I would guess Juliana? A Fae-born dryad who buddied up with Seshat’s cousin Tiperet. Harmonia consults with Tiperet, they’re friends. I’ll give her a call, see if Tiperet’s around. We’ll run the data to confirm, if it is Juliana, there’ll be poppy residue.”
“Why was she in Dover? I thought Tiperet worked at the Cairo Museum. It doesn’t make sense.” Caleb searched round the scorched trees, roots encircling veteran dead from a war which ceased during his infant cries. Poor bastards, first struck with Fae curses, then what? A promise of reunion dashed in flame? “Whoever did this should have known it wasn’t going to create the poison once they lit up. So why not douse the flames? They’re a kick away from the water. Why burn an entire Grove?”
“Tiperet might not have been a deity, but she had goddess blood. Enough I can’t see one person take her out. She’s also the only one to borrow Seshat’s things without being trounced with a million paper cuts.” Ares tapped at his phone, the soft clink of a message popped up and pulled his mouth down in a frown. “Confirmed, Tiperet was supposed to meet Harmonia for coffee and never showed. She’s been missing for three days. Guess we can confirm why the Kehmeti were mobilizing their Falcons last week.”
“I’d be hurt I wasn’t informed, but when will the Kehmeti ever not play close to the chest?” Caleb grit his teeth, reached for a charred piece of fabric and inwardly swore. Leopard skin.
“Right? Queen Selyka’s buckthorns are supposed to watch over our honoured dead. This Grove had Hellenes, Bogatyrs, Kehmeti. An Einherjar or two. That one was Yataban. Who has gripe against all of us and could get by the guard sigils?” Ares tossed sand to the ground, glowered at the sea until its rhythm lulled the thoughts loose of his tongue.
“I couldn’t see past the smoke.”
“Fact you could see anything is a bonus. Hera knows I don’t have the skill.”
“Few do, lucky me.”
“Humans couldn’t have done this, not with their fire.”
“Unless they were testing the method. Ares? Call Dite, Eros, Athene, the lot. Bring all your people into the Chalceus Citadel for a while.”
“You cannot be…” Ares growled, a film in the air. Pugilism a half-step closer to reality in Midgard’s plane the moment the war deity tracked Caleb’s thoughts down the line.
“Serious!? We haven’t seen Mâtarratu in over a century for a reason. I am not letting it thin the divine herd. A poison capable of god killing is not something I’m willing to allow. This? Is a failure. Fails mean future attempts. Batten down the hatches, or I will batten them for you.” The Judge pointed at the Hellenes behind them, other arm plastered to his side.
“I wrapped you in your swaddling clothes. You do not control me, Truce child.”
“Today I do.” Caleb got down on his haunches with a hiss, snapped off one of Tiperet’s fingers and held it up to the sun. Mystic marks, the odour of accelerants combated with the macabre presentation of bodies. Flagrant, displayed. “Some part of the ritual must’ve gone awry. Want it to be Dite? How about Eros, or Harmonia? Call the Areides and your Olympian siblings back to Chalceus. Or better, Hellas.”
“Lochagos, call them in. Get the Judge what he needs.” Ares snarled and tapped at the mirrored screen of his smartphone, while his staff continued to process the scene around them. “Dite’s going to be pissed, she was due at another conference.”
“Yes, Sir!”
“I’m sure you and Leonidas can make it up to her.”
“Oh, so you want us dying of fatigue, instead of immolation, eh?” Despite his outburst, Ares smirked sideways, that bit of scoundrel present as ever after all his centuries and a moment or two to control his temper.
“Like she’d give you permission to die.” Caleb tried to let out a chuckle and hissed, taking a second to blink hard and recentre.
“Do you need the sample analysed, Sir?” A Legionnaire with a plastic bag and tongs stepped to the charcoal. The uniform was as pressed and dressed as she was, even in inclement English weather. As Caleb eyed her, he saw the twinge of old beliefs, but nothing more substantial than a scant prayer or two. A convert? New believer?
“Yes. Send the info...”
“Aahh, wait nope! No, not the, nope, I ah, I got it thank you, hand the disembodied... body... part... here.” A bumbling youth tied their chin length black hair back from a round face to reveal stark blue eyes. “I got it. It’s not for me, you understand it’s... I mean can ya blame her, like, been centuries since and...”
“Hello, Icarus.” Caleb sighed with a sordid smirk, in an attempt to cover the pain and heat of his side. The discombobulation of seeing into the near past through burning wood’s memory. “Sorry. Dr. Areides, I heard your dissertation was defended better than Thermopylae.”
“Well, ah, if you wanna be specific I’d rather it was likened to Marathon since... heh... I didn’t die. Again.” A toothed grin and Icarus hugged the bag with the ashen digit, angling their back to the sea. One foot tapped at the rocks in its sneaker, the hint of two earbuds in the youth’s ears. “So... ah, yeah. Neat case. Gonna solve it, or...”
“Are you going to tell me why you of all Folk need a finger in a bag?” Caleb rose unsteady, shaking off the offer of Ares’ help.
“Right.” Tap, tap, tap went Icarus’ foot, rocks beneath their sneakers rustling at each tiny kick. “Can we not be beside a massive body of water? Bad vibes, man, like... whew...”
“Easy, Icarus.” Ares set his arm across Icarus’ shoulders, staying firm as Icarus squeaked and flinched half out of her hoodie and worn black jeans. “How did you get here so fast?”
“Oh, I took a Fae Door, then drove like a Fury after fratricide. Might’ve gotten a couple tickets if I didn’t hack the speed cameras, but egads I don’t want another strike on my Truce record, I can prove my hacking ain’t magic if you need me to Judge Caleb Judge Sir… so Amita Athene was all ‘Hark! Helios doth say some moron attempted a Ritual conflagration!’ and she was convinced there’d be fascinating data but like heck she’d leave her lecture hall, and like, it’s my day to do Me Projects instead of Her Projects or Us Projects and I was, ‘but dude it’s by water and I hate that cause of the whole drowning to death thing’ and she was all ‘what would be more distracting than a couple of ritual sacrifices, take this sample collection kit’ and I was like ‘but I don’t wanna’ and she let me rent the new Wentley and reminded me you was gonna be here Pappos, and driving the car at its top speed would make Lou jealous so…” The torrent of words ceased with the repeated pop-smacking of Icarus’ lips, fingers tapping at the plastic bag.
Ares hugged the revived Minoan into his side with a smirk.
“Athene wants her own study samples?” Caleb held back a snort at the bundle of nerves. Genius was as it did, he supposed, the youth was still Daedalus’ flesh and blood resurrected. They might have had their dust ups, but there was something comforting about Icarus’ babble. Most of the time. “Is Athene going to share her findings? And, ah, it’s alright Dr. Areides. Your AI isn’t breaking the rules, you don’t have to be nervous.”
“Can I get that in writing? A kinda Get Out of Truce Jail Card? Pass go, collect the $200?”
“Icarus.” Ares battled to quell a series of chuckles, in front of his troops. “Child, breathe. I’m proud of you for coming, don’t bother the Judge too much, he looks a bit rough.”
“Sure. Can we give the luddite his new phone and flee the water, please?” Icarus shut their eyes, fished a shiny silver smartphone out of a back pocket and shoved it at Caleb. “Sending emails are far more efficient than songbirds and transference spells into a notebook. It’s primed for you to press your thumb on the button for biometric locking. Please take it. Save me from collective minutes of stalking you via satellite and CCTV. Adds up to hours, dude.”
“Icarus!”
“It’s okay. Thank you.” Caleb took the phone and set his thumb on the button. The screen guided him through rolling his fingerprints across the surface. Once the display switched to a picture of a green pomegranate carried by an owl, Caleb gave a grunt and slid the mobile in his pocket. “I’d say tell Athene the ‘track the Judge’ mechanism worked, but she can already hear me, can’t she?”
“I… ah… yeah, well… I mean c’mon… technically I’m the one who…” Icarus’ hood flopped over their hair, and they shuffled a few paces away from the shore. Ares hovered - a protective shield from the surf. “… made it myself. Sized it for your hand, since… big hands, tiny touchscreen… recipe for suffering and after ah… yeah… kinda my personal mission to not incite the suffering thing on you since that whole Nightmare Architect thing and…”
“Thank you.” Hazarding a tight smile, Caleb herded them all away from the immediacy of the shore. The careful mask of command twisted at the edges of Ares’ eyebrows, melting into concern for Alcippe’s resurrected grandchild and the fears which bound Icarus to their death. As weighted in the genius’s belly as an anchor in Poseidon’s seas.
“We know. The river outside Moscow ate it, totes saw the whole thing.”
“Oh really? How did it get there? Please, inform me.” Caleb’s eyebrow raised.
“Sorry?”
“My life you’re talking about, remember?”
“Had your feed on like a lil livestream. You’re kinda better than half the BlastNuit streamers, but dude! How are you here already!? Did you run? And… oh gods… that’s not what you meant, oh man I mean not man! I mean, you’re male, but a demi-ma-ah I mean ah… you’re not human-human, you’re human adjacent so I shouldn’t say oh man… I’m gonna shut up now.”
“Go on, go for a drive, I’ll catch up.” Ares’ smooth baritone was more calming than the waves of the sea. Icarus tugged their hood up and fled to a luxury sedan parked askew between a crew transport and support vehicle.
“When’s the last time that kid touched grass?” Caleb huffed with a shake of his head, and dusted off his hands. “Power half the planet with her nervous system.”
“At least she didn’t pass out this time. I brought a medic for you, if you want to get that demon wound checked.”
“Yeah, apparently, I didn’t know this, but I was in Russia and my phone got destroyed in a river? Fascinating, you know? Learning about my own freaking life from a wet-behind-the-ears child with a camera phone in their pocket.”
“Wet-behind-the… bad choice of words, Cale. Bad fucking choice.”
“Oof, nope. No, you’re right, I see it. Damn, I see it.” Caleb kicked at the ground around the bodies with a chortle, dug up a few charred sticks with his boot.
“Icarus wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
“That you’re watching my every move with a fine-toothed digital comb?” Caleb fiddled with the phone, sticking it into a back pocket, then the front in an attempt to find the least obtrusive spot. Damn thing even had his contacts installed. Apps, the whole shebang.
“You’re the Judge of course we are. What happens the day you need backup?”
“Your Kopis soldier brigade shows up, blows a couple of bullet holes into potentially the wrong side, and starts another war. Gee thanks, I can do without. Kind of my job to prevent the whole Mystic dustup thing.”
“We’re not about to let our only Judge get tanked.”
“Like in Russia?” Caleb raised an eyebrow, trailing his hand to the wound on his side.
“You lost us in the Moscow transit system. We didn’t expect you to…”
“What, ditch my phone?”
“Take on the demon enclave by yourself. Even I would have called for backup.” Ares crossed his arms over his uniform. “You could have alerted seven different Realms and you didn’t. Perun was within paces of you.”
“Like heck I was going to ask him for help.” Caleb rubbed at his nose, “Tuija would have been there if he wasn’t so close. Listen, only one of me, alright? I’m tired is all.”
“Odin’s eyepatch! When’s the last time you slept? If this was five hundred years ago I’d be considering which cheek to sucker punch right now. Did you think I would let you out of my sight? Do you think Shiva does? Horus? Amaterasu and Inari? What happens if you investigate these deaths alone and you were the target?”
“Fuck, you’ve really thought about this.” Caleb walked off the stitch in his side, pacing around the circumference of the dead trees. He scoured off the lingering psychic memory of the flames, searched the place where the nebulous perpetrator stood.
“It’s my job. Owe it to my brother to look after his grandson.”
Caleb scanned the ocean, while two technicians collected samples. A pair of songbirds hopped along the periphery of the burnt ground, then fluttered off. Two ravens cawed in the lonesome sky, their vast black wings scooping at the air. Fatigue pulled at Caleb’s eyelids in conjunction to the knife-hot pain in his side. “Adopted brother.”
“True, the way you’re going through Three-Strikes, you’re either going to give us runs for our coin or end up on the back side of Frigg’s rolling pin. You do not want to get hit with that thing. She swings wide and true. Makes damn good lefse, though.”
“Don’t bring the Aesir into this. Keep it contained, I’ll inform the Truce and say I’ve taken on private investigatorial help before they try to hoist one of every Realm at me in an attempt to see through the lines.”
“You should get those wounds looked at.” Ares winced at the sore point the Aesir continued to be, reaching out to steady Caleb as he wobbled over a blackened log. With songbirds from multiple Realms being intercepted, Ares couldn’t trust any to be silent if he, also Tyr of the Aesir, showed too much affection to his grand-nephew. “The one in your heart and your side.”
“I should do a lot of things. Save the bloody world, quell an uprising of feline spirits in the Sahara, smash my head through an illegal black magic ring in Vancouver. Find the ever growing list of missing Folk. That life thing? I hear it waits for demi-gods granted a few extra decades to get things right.” Caleb’s boot stumbled on loose gravel, he flung his arm to Ares’ shoulder with a hiss.
“We’re not your enemy.”
“Didn’t say you were.” Lungs heaved in a stutter, the lull of the channel’s waves a small comfort.
“Sleep isn’t your enemy either. It’s been seven hours since Moscow? Nine? Kopis investigators have the scene, analyzing it will take time. My intel officers can intercept your Realm notices long enough for some kip. Let’s get you stitched up and slumped over. I know you won’t accept ambrosia, but Amita Hestia cooked. Looks like you could use a warm meal.”
“Sleep! A dozen dead in a Sacred Grove, what do you think I was trying to do, when I got word?” Rubbing his hand over his face, Caleb groaned deep. If he closed his eyes, would he miss the clue he needed to push ever forward, never back? The slim black notebook in his pocket buzzed with more missives from across the Realms. Triple offenders, magic to investigate, missing persons, the steady stream of demands refused to cease. “Too much t’do.”
“You used to want our help. What changed?”
“Tough couple of…” Caleb shoved his hands in his pockets, kicked another pebble into the sea. “Medic can stitch me up. What’d Hestia make? I might be coerced to eat, if the Olympian of the Hearth deigned to throw something together.”
“Thank you.” Ares hovered near enough to grab him if the demi-god faltered, the stiffness to Caleb’s shoulders as telling as the way he kept his hands stuffed in his pockets to stay upright. “Lamb soup and lemon potatoes. Enough to feed half my army, if Leander isn’t around.”
“Heh. Aww, those two are alright.” Caleb pictured Icarus’ brother inhaling half of Hestia’s kitchen for ‘leet gains’. “Don’t… ah… don’t tell Icarus or Lou I said it, I’ll hear Lou’s ‘eyyy’ from across the Realms. Make the man even more insufferable.”
Both deities shared a quiet chuckle, as Ares herded Caleb toward the medic vehicle. His followers bustled through the scene in deference to their god and the Judge. Scooping up Caleb’s peacoat, Ares felt its weight, the heft of Caleb’s belongings between it and the canvas rucksack it sat upon.
“Why didn’t the ritual work?” Caleb stunk of need, of the haggard plod of a fading soldier. Ares bit down on his cheek, the battle between his Olympian birthright and Aesir adoption scratched at his throat. That part of him, the fjords and longhouses, was buried deep and planted over. The Kopis blade won over the Carolingian sword, with a double-heaping of familial duty on his mighty shoulders.
“Aren’t that many deities left, whose death could create the stuff in the first place. Probably needed more divine-adjacent sacrifices. Ritual’s lethal, but reverent. It’s the opposite of Holy in the way a negative is the opposite colour of a photograph. Not demonic, but… flipped. Making it is an act of worship, a tempering and memorial of the dead. My hot take? Whoever tried didn’t believe in a damn thing. Someone who knew the ritual, but didn’t have the mindset to perform it. Wish I got a better look, but the smoke was too thick.”
“There can’t be many. I’ll track Icarus, make sure the kid’s okay, otherwise I’m on this. You’re not shaking me, not with god death on the line.”
“Athene, Makosh, Izanami, Erishkegal, Thoth. I’ll ask around, get a list from old Sal. Narrow down our search to the people who knew the spell enough to try to perform it, but lost faith in seeing it done. Can rule out your half-sister, if Athene did the ritual it would have been perfect.”
“Narrow list.” Ares guided Caleb to the medic vehicle, a hand hovering not far from Caleb’s side. He tried not to smell the funk of the wound, how it stunk and how Caleb’s shirt clung to his skin. It was the hardest battle to win, fending off another man’s pride.
“Yeah. Not many gods are atheists.”
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