End of the journey?

 

Chapter 21 - Charcoal for the Hearths
 
We rode the rest of the way to the gates of Lundenna in fitful morning sunlight. The rain had stopped and impossible landscapes featuring foggy castles and misty forests towered over us. A blue sky the color of forgotten lakes showed in rifts and patches.

It almost hurt to feel so alive.

Snippets of ground fog appeared and disappeared and intense local showers dampened the pavement of the ancient road now and then. The horses moved with spirit, enjoying the day as much as their riders were. We traveled at a comfortable walk through fields and woodlands that were nowhere deserted but grew increasingly busy as we approached the city. Twice we passed through sizeable towns that lacked official weghusen but had taverns and inns in plenty.

We had been through a fight together, the eight of us. People had tried to kill us and we still lived. The intensity of the experience made me dizzy. Magic roads, dream interviews with gods, a gun that reloads itself, seeing with my eyes closed, walking around in a body that wasn’t my own—there could be no explanation for everything that had happened.

I had to accept that much and go on doing what I needed to do. Would I ever be able to go back to being Gus Gallant? Or was I Alenna Docht Adelwalt now and for the rest of my life? I shook my head. If it could be done, it could be undone; I just had to find out how. I needed answers, I needed to know so much.

I had to start somewhere. “How many people live in Lundenna?” I asked Rotgar, looking up at him. He loomed over me on his tall charger because I was back on my own horse instead of the attenuated Easterling racer Valto had loaned me last night. My Honey was as much smaller than Rotgar’s Froggie as I was smaller than the nobleman from Proits himself.

Valto, riding on the other side of me answered first. “Fifty thousand, perhaps more. And about that many again in the towns and hamlets no more than a league from its walls.”

I hadn’t wanted Valto to answer. He’d been trying to boss me around since breakfast. After what we’d been through together, I loved him like the brother Gus had never had. But he was Alenna’s older brother, and I wasn’t really Alenna and this whole thing was because I was running away from Orley Adelwalt’s plans to marry the real Alenna off to Duke Awful for political advantage.

Duke Awful wasn’t his real name; he was Ondakong Yuvil (which I realized with some part of my borrowed memory was actually spelled Eovil), a sort of junior ruler of Esvelk, one of the five Bloddish kingdoms. Valto had been sent to fetch me back for the wedding, and the solidarity we had shared because of the fight in the darkness was getting in the way of me telling him where to stuff it.

“What do they all do in Lundenna?” I asked. Fifty thousand didn’t seem all that much, San Bernardino was four times that size and didn’t amount to much even just in California but here and now, Lundenna was the biggest city on this island.

“Steal,” said Zenner behind us, riding alongside alongside Lillakatye and Kilda. “They are great thieves. They steal from each other and from the Saxons and the Bloddings and Valesings and most of all from Rema.”

“Zenner is a nobleman,” said Lilla. “He doesn’t like commoners getting a cut of the plunder.” That got a laugh.

Rotgar laughed hardest. I’d found out from the others that he had the highest rank among us, son of the Keyning of Proits, an area on the continent as big as all five Bloddish kingdoms put together; younger son by the junior wife but still. Through his mother, he had a claim to one of the northern earldoms and the title of Haltine of Oberumber, one notch below Alenna’s father’s rank as Orley of Moleena.

Zenner grinned but denied being a nobleman himself. “I’m just a jumped-up yeoman, a civil servant.” That last he said in Remice because Bloddish didn’t have the words. “A thrall to the great hall,” he said, trying to find a phrase.

“A flunky,” Lillakatye put in and it took me a second to realize that, again, she had displayed her knowledge of English. Bloddish had a word, hlanger, that meant a companion of lesser rank, a sidekick, but she had definitely used English.

“They are traders, buyers and sellers,” said Valto before I could decide to react to Lilla’s anachronism. “And they make some things themselves.”

Rotgar nodded. “Books. They gather wisdom to them from everywhere and write it down. Oxford and Jorvik and Portsmuth and Bly, all send their wisest writings to Lundenna to be doubled and trebled and folded into books.” I got the gist of that but wondered at the details.

“Maps,” agreed Zenner. “Outside of Altarema and Yezbuul, the best maps are drawn in Lundenna.”

“Leather,” Kilda piped up, directly behind me. “Everyone on Blodsey eats meat when they can, but in Lundenna, they make leather from the hides.” The Bloddish word for leather sounded the same as the English one, I noted. Kilda added, “That’s why you can smell the place ten leagues away if the wind likes you not.” More laughter from everyone.

I had noticed the smell when the wind was from the south since we left our last stop, a smokey, acrid reek like burning garbage. It gave me pause to think of that—what did fifty thousand people in a medieval city do with their garbage? I bet they made tons of that, too.

“They craft a lot of leather goods, and vellum for making books. And cloth of wool and linen,” Rotgar agreed with Kilda. He frowned. “It is a rich city but it has more poor folk than you would think. People so poor, they have to make coins of iron and lead so they can buy and sell the filth they need to stay alive.” No one laughed at that.

“Speaking of metal,” said Zenner, “they have foundries for iron and brass. And they make all kinds of ship’s fittings, rope and sails and candles and casks. Everything but the masts and the ships themselves.”

“Why don’t they make ships?” I asked. “If they do a lot of shipping?”

“Look around,” said Rotgar, waving at the countryside. “There are not enough tall trees near to the city for shipbuilding.”

Before the last weghus, we had passed lots of woods and even gone through patches of real forest but the nearer we got to Lundenna, the fewer trees we saw and what few there were grew in the regular plantings of orchards. And more and more, I saw what looked like clay mounds topped with stubby chimneys from which wisps of smoke trailed to the sky. Having seen sundance on the pavement in a desert summer, I recognized the wavy pattern in the air above these mounds as heat. And near every one of the clay covered structures, scraggly patches of brush grew barely more than head high, ten or twelve feet at the most.

“What are those things?” I asked, pointing at a mound a few hundred yards off the road.

“Collyards,” said Valto. “They heat the wood they cut from the coppices to turn into coal for the city. It burns cleaner and hotter than wood itself.” Charcoal I realized he meant. Coppices I guessed were the patches of brush allowed to grow tall enough to make fuel.

I watched boys and old men tear one of the mounds apart. It must have cooled considerably because they didn’t get burned doing that. Some of them loaded bundles of the charcoal on their backs and headed off toward the city, others stacked loads into carts pulled by goats or dogs. We had already passed several such travelers and the fresh coal had a not completely unpleasant smell but what a hard, filthy and probably sometimes dangerous way to make a living.

I looked around at our little party again. Even Cordle and Lang, our hireswords, were dressed in finery compared to most of the people we had passed on the road. Myself, I wore a lynx fur over a woolen gown and had a linen gown under that. Riches almost beyond imagining for the dirty-faced boys who fed the city’s need for fuel. And every one of the horses we rode were probably worth as much as these people made in a lifetime, let alone the fabulous Easterling racers, The Black and The Gray, that had cost Valto a total of four hundred gold marks.

Kilda, my servant, dressed almost as fine as myself, earned eight marks a year for her wages. I had asked. That was probably ten times as much as the coal-boys were paid who mostly had to provide their own food, clothing and shelter. Kilda ate what I ate and slept in my room, and besides her wages got two suits of clothes a year and boots, and every other year a new coat. The boys who were not barefoot wore rags on their feet in the early spring cold.

What pleasure I had taken in the day faded more than a little and we all rode in silence for a time.

The hamlets and towns around Lundenna grew closer together the nearer we got to the city walls and the old Imperial road we were using served as the main street for most of these communities, something that was discouraged further out along its length. About a mile or more from the gates, in the midst of a town, another high road came in from the west and joined the one we were traveling. The road got about 50% wider but the traffic more than doubled.

We also saw more mounted and armored men, some wearing the livery of Medley, the Bloddish kingdom that included Moleena and the area north and west of Lundenna. Their badge was five blue stars on a white field with the middle one set off by red bars and their coats all had red sleeves with white and blue trim. I looked at them warily but they couldn’t know I was a fugitive, we had traveled faster than any news could have reached here.

Other armored men wore the Lundenna symbols: a red sword, point up, crossed by a sheaf of wheat. Men wearing a patch with a blue field, a gold star and a white ship represented Sudaryk, the south Bloddish kingdom.

No one got in our way, no one stopped or hindered us and we proceeded to the gates of the City where there was, naturally, a line waiting to get in. There were actually four gates, two for getting in and two for getting out. When the two inbound gates were both open, the entrance was about thirty feet wide. Armored men in Lundenna markings lounged around the gate, carrying axes mounted on long poles.

A man sat on a platform collecting fees for entering. If you were a local or a tradesman with regular business in the city, you just showed him the badge you paid for by the month and went on inside. Otherwise, it was like entering the weghus but more expensive and probably especially so since we were obviously a party of nobles. A groat for each horse and rider and two pence apiece for each extra horse. Four times what we had paid at the weghus.

But cheap enough. Once inside, the only laws that would apply to us were city laws. No one, not Alenna’s father, mother or fiance; not Zenner’s boss, the Duke of Shanghai, or the boss further up that ladder, the Remice Emperor or any other mundane force could demand that the city arrest me and hand me over. I would have a safe place to stop and think things over and find things out about my situation. Maybe find a way back to my own world.

Rotgar paid at the gate, Valto ignored several outrageously cheap offers for his two racing horses, Lillakatye and Kilda pressed close to me on either side and we went thru the gate into a wide courtyard, kind of like the central plaza at Disneyland but without the statues of Walt and Mickey.

I noted that the transaction had been conducted in Bloddish, more or less, but a different accent than I had heard so far. Despite being reckoned a Saxon city, the language of the conquerors prevailed in Lundenna.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

Rotgar spoke first. “Find an inn and something to drink.”

Zenner put in, “We all have contacts in the City, lady. We get in touch with our people and make plans.”

I looked at him with a bit of suspicion dawning. “You’re free of the oath to me now.” I glanced at Valto. “You, too.”

They both nodded but appeared ready to take no other action.

Valto spoke first. “I’ll be staying with you, swester. If for no other reason than to watch him.” He indicated Zenner with a wave of his hand and a sly grin.

The Remice factotum grinned back. “And my purposes would not be served if your brother were to snatch you, so I’ll be watching him.”

Lillakatye snorted and Rotgar laughed out loud.

I shook my head, not displeased but still a bit worried.

While we were negotiating the gates, the fitful sun had come out again and the light had that clear golden quality of morning. I wanted to get a better look, so I pushed the hood of my coat back and shook out my hair, of which I had an oversupply. I was just beginning to feel a new optimism when I noticed several people in the street staring at me.

Someone pointed. Someone else shouted, “Baldur’s licht! Den heo!” in the peculiar accented Bloddish that was the Lundenna common speech. “Baldur’s light! It’s her!”

Her who? Me?

Out of the frying pan...?

 

Chapter 22 - Blondie
 

My little group of comrades closed ranks around me as we moved through the open space within the gate. This was the New Temple Gate Square on the northwest corner of the city. Niuhofgatt Vorkael, in Saxon-accented Bloddish. One side of the square was the city wall and the gates behind us—the north segment of the Saxon wall, only about sixty years old I found out.

To the right were the stables and barracks of the City Guard including a sort of open area where a troop of guardsmen took turns swinging those vicious-looking armored clubs at head-high posts serving as practice dummies.

To the left sat the Gotthoff den Tiw-Waz, the temple of Tyr. I heard Kilda beside me sniff; she must have recognized the upright stylized spear symbol. I almost smiled, but Tyr was not really a laughing matter. His name in Bloddish meant something close to Gift of Godhood. Another of his names was Rothand, Redhand, because he let the monster-wolf Fenris devour his right hand rather than betray his promise to protect the Earth.

Kilda might prefer Baldur who died an innocent, but I thought it was telling that Tiw-Waz’s temple was across the street from the local copshop. At least, the Deputy Sheriff Gus Gallant part of me found it interesting.

On three partly-enclosed platforms above the gates sat machines like giant crossbows, the scorpions I had heard described. The one above the City Guard enclosure was so large, I mentally nicknamed it the Lobster. It was the only one manned, by two guardsmen, and it was protected by a moveable canvas roof. The other two were not strung that I could tell from a distance and seemed to be liberally smeared with some sort of grease. The medieval equivalent of Cosmoline, perhaps.

I kept looking around, rubber-necking like a country rube in the big city, which was more or less true. Neither Alenna nor Gus had ever seen anything quite like Lundenna. Or smelled it either. Only the cold weather made the stink bearable, I decided. The gutters ran down the middle of the streets, gathered in one place and disappeared under the western wall. With the rain, they were overfull, and I didn’t try very hard to identify the objects carried in the flood.

But maybe the city had seen me before. Several people had pointed me out when I tossed back my hood, as if I were some local celebrity. “It’s her,” they told each other. I wondered who they thought I was? The news spread among little groups, and some even pointed at me. A few people stopped what they were doing to simply stare. I was tempted to make rude gestures at them, but I refrained.

Directly across the square from the gates, several markets seemed to be operating. One sold green stuff, scarce at this time of year but they had scallions, leeks, kale, cabbages and some herbs I didn’t know. Also root vegetables like onions, turnips, and a reddish lumpy thing I did not recognize. Carts from outside the city seemed to be stopping there to sell produce, with a few of them moving on, perhaps after not getting the offer for their goods they wanted. People buying veggies put their groceries into baskets or bags and circulated on. Other markets sold live fowl, sausages, small clay pots, and gloves.

“There’s your gloves, Zenner,” I said. “You can maybe get a better pair now.”

He scoffed. “Not likely this close to the city gates, I can see from here that the goods are poor. I’ll find better at one of the shops deeper in the city.”

I smiled, thinking I should have known, Zenner would like to nourish his inner dandy even if his practicality often got in the way. A complex, interesting man, I thought, smiling his direction again and wondering vaguely why Rotgar and Valto were frowning at him.

“’Tis not market day,” Kilda commented beside me. “Else this square would be filled with stalls selling effenmuch.” I thought that last word had been English slang for a moment but realized then that it was Bloddinger for “all kinds of things.” As opposed to effenowt, “nothing at all.”

Lillakatye chuckled. “Those birds the one fellow is selling look like they’ve traveled a harder road than we have.”

They did look scrawny and ill-used, most of them caged but the presumably prized specimens hanging upside down by their feet, peevish and quarreling. I thought of the Trial of Wedna that Kilda had told me about and stopped smiling, suddenly sympathizing with the birds.

“I like not this crowd we are gathering to us,” said Rotgar.

I glanced around and realized that there were more people looking at us than there were just going about their business. “Vad gedden?” I asked. What’s going on?

Lilla and Valto moved close to me on either side. “They’re all looking at you, cupcake,” said the big blonde woman.

“They don’t act like foes,” said Valto, “but there are more and more of them, and they are blocking our way out of the square.”

Four streets opened off the square and a couple of narrower passages that might be considered alleys. Past the copshop, the street that direction went between a livery stable and a large tavern/inn in the style of the inner buildings of the weghusen we had used on the road. Another street passed between the market and the inn.

Paralleling the other wall, another street in front of the temple led toward what looked to be more temples and perhaps administrative buildings which was certainly what sat across from Tiw-Waz’s digs. The Stedgattkantoren was the name for the place Rotgar supplied when I asked: City Gate Offices. A mix of Saxon and Bloddish in the name, I realized. Gatt was the same in both languages, but sted was Saxon for city; that would be borg in Bloddish. Kantoren meant offices in Bloddish, literally counters. I didn’t know if Saxon had a word for office. Hof maybe? Which meant court, plaza or temple in Bloddish. I didn’t know much Saxon and was surprised that I knew any.

The widest street passed between the Gate Office and the market, Breidgata which I translated as Broadway. That seemed to be the way we were going.

All of the streets were laid with stones near the buildings but were nothing much more than muddy ditches filled with brown water down their middles. Still, on horseback, we had no trouble pushing our way through the crowds; murmuring and grumbling, they got out of our way.

But what I heard them saying disturbed me.

“It is her, the Beauty of the North,” was the clearest expression of the main sentiment. I didn’t like that much because they kept indicating they meant me. Well, the word in Bloddish for beauty as in a beautiful woman is the same as that for a blonde: skaynheta. With some of the Saxon accents, this came out as ‘shernhed’ often as not. Then again, almost all of us were blond, except for Zenner with black hair, and Cordle with brown. Rotgar with ginger-streaked locks was still considered a blond by the locals. Even my horse is blond, I reflected.

A few called me “vana kvinna,” fair lady or just lady. And more than one addressed me as “Hochadelsdochter.” Roughly translated, Princess or maybe Countess? Did they know Alenna’s father was Orley of Molina? I didn’t think so.

Our marching order was three or four side by side, with Valto, Rotgar, and Zenner in front, followed by The Gray, Kilda, me, and Lillakatye. Cordle, Lang, and the two packhorses brought up the rear.

Being surrounded by large horses ridden by aggressive men kept the crowds off, and we made our way down Broadway. The guys had discussed renting us a “burghus,” a townhouse in the Adelvorkael, the Noble Quarter and we were making our way that direction. I had nothing useful to input to that topic so followed along, bemused by the growing tumult surrounding our island of horseflesh.

“Den Skaynelkin fur Kongsdochter!” someone in the crowd shouted. “Heyra den Unze Svota Skaynelkin.” Blondie for Princess! Hurrah for Our Sweet Blondie! The whole loony mass of them took up the cry, shouting it over and over. Some of them supplemented the madness with “Narthenkael den Evich! Narthlings Reygelen!” Northcorner forever? Northerners Rule?

Mystifying and I didn’t like it at all. “I’m nobody’s sweet blondie,” I complained to Kilda.

Lillakatye snorted then said, “Oh shit! It’s Easter next week!”

I did a double take because she had spoken in Bloddish and Easter was the same word. Well, close.

But you could almost see lights go on over Rotgar and Valto’s heads. They both turned to look at me, grinning. “The city holds a Greenfeast on Easter,” Valto shouted an explanation. “The different quarters of the city each choose a maiden to try for Princess of the Feast. And the crowd has chosen you to be theirs!”

“Oh shit,” I said in English.

“It’s quite an honor,” said Rotgar, his grin so wide he looked like a South Park Canadian.

“It’s a friggin’ beauty contest,” I muttered, again in English.

Kilda had not quite understood me. She shook her head. “Not Frigga. Idunn is Goddess of Easter.”

Idunn! Oh, Lord, or Lady, rather, one of my patrons among the violent crew of Norse gods, and the one who had granted me the power to speak the languages here. At least, I thought she had. I’d met her three times so far, and I was evidently one of her favorites.

“I’m going to win this thing, aren’t I?” I said. Not vanity in the slightest, more like despair.

Someone heard me. “Heo diger skall vinna!” She says she’s going to win! The crowd took that one up, too!

“Craptastic,” I muttered, and Katye snorted again.

Cups and pots of ale appeared in the crowd, some of them being passed overhead. Our guys around me refused to accept anything handed to them but our progress slowed to almost nothing.

An inn ahead on the left looked like it might offer refuge. At least it had a wall around it, if we could get in. People in upstairs windows and even on roofs waved and shouted. One fat guy right across from us on top of a bakery screamed, “Blondie, do you love me?”

I wrinkled my nose at him and he yelled. “I am slain by love!” He staggered as if he had taken a heavy blow, hugged a chimney to keep from falling, dodged back and yelled, “Love burns!” before we got far enough ahead that I could no longer see or hear him without looking back.

“Never look back!” Katye advised and I nodded.

“Vante! Ad vante!” Zenner called in Remice. “Sempre ad vante!” Always forward.

When the innkeeper apparently realized we were heading his way, he opened the gates of his establishment and sent out a dozen men armed with cudgels to keep the crowd off us till we could get inside. A few lucky, or unlucky, enthusiasts made it in with us but promptly got heddunkeln, head knocks, and tossed back out.

“Welcome!” another large fat man proclaimed. “Welcome to The Green Gosling! The finest walled inn on Broadway in the Northcorner!”

“Probably the best one run by a fat guy with wine stains in his beard, too,” Lillakatye said under her breath.

Rotgar started to speak to him but he had his eyes on me. “Princess, you give me pride to serve you. Call me Hubricht, say your wish and it will be done!”

“Ikka den ikka," I agreed. "Rooms away from the walls and stabling for our beasts,” I said. “Don’t let him cheat us, brother,” I added to Valto. I wanted Hubricht to know I had family here, even if Valto was Alenna’s kin and not mine.

Zenner helped me dismount and I shivered. The noise of the crowd outside the walls had not lessened. What had I gotten myself into now?

Conversations, divine and inane...

 

Chapter 23 - No Lunks
 

The Green Gosling Inn made a rectangle with one of the long sides on the street and the gate we had entered by in the middle. The walls of the compound held up two-story buildings surrounding a courtyard in the center. The street-side structures were a tavern and a stable. Next to the tavern, making the short end of the rectangle on that side, a kitchen building stood with baths alongside on the ground floor and two dormitories above it for women, I learned later.

The construction methods varied with the front buildings being half-stone with some brick and timber while the newer looking construction in the back was mostly split plank with some plaster covered walls.

The back wall of the compound held latrines, the innkeeper’s family rooms, and storage buildings. The other short side had a smithy, more storage and a dormitory for men. The courtyard in the middle included two small garden plots and a chicken yard. A pair of large, furry, black-and-white dogs, named Snout and Wagger, did impromptu comedy sketches in all the open areas. Usually involving tripping someone.

Hubricht, the innkeeper, showed us to rooms and shooed the dogs away when they followed us upstairs. I shared a room with Kilda at the top of a flight of stairs, and Lillakatye got a smaller one next down the hall. These were above the innkeeper’s own rooms and those of his family. Valto, Rotgar and Zenner had rooms above the common area in the front building facing ours across the courtyard, and Lang and Cordle got bunks in the men’s dormitory above the smithy.

My room was smaller than either of the rooms Alenna had back in Moleena, big enough for a bed, a table, a chair and a keldringer/wardrobe and not much else. Katye’s room was even smaller. Both rooms smelled nicer than I expected, though; most of the construction was of cedar or some other fragrant wood, and the keldringer and bed had herbs and flower petals sprinkled inside and between the linens. Rushes covered the floor. I wondered if the guys’ rooms got flowers, too.

I felt a little guilty for flopping onto the bed while Kilda bustled around putting some of our stuff away, but it had been a long hard ride and my tiny body was exhausted. My mind reeled a bit, too. A lot had happened in not much more than 48 hours.

Kilda didn’t seem to mind me flaking out at all. “Let me get things put away, and I can ask for a mid-day meal be prepared.” She beamed at me. Having something to do always seemed to make her happy.

I nodded agreement and closed my eyes, so I didn’t have to watch her bustling around. I still felt guilty but being an adelsdochter came with privileges and at the moment I felt inclined to take advantage of them. Just knowing that I would not have to get back on a horse in a few minutes made the cramps in my thighs and butt I had endured for so long relax into an almost pleasant ache.

It seemed ridiculous that it had been barely two full days since I saw the naked girl in the fountain in Los Perdidos, California. So much had happened.

First of all, instead of a nearly forty-year-old male Sheriff’s Deputy named Gus Gallant in the 21st century, I was now to all appearances Alenna docht Adelwalt, a fourteen-year-old runaway bride in what seemed to be an alternate timeline of the 10th century. Or thereabouts. No one seemed to know a calendar I could recognize.

After much struggle and some strife along the Bright Road, I had reached the relative security of Lundenna, this world’s version of London, a free city where Alenna’s father and prospective husband could not legally compel me. And I had friends, my companions on the trip:

Kilda, my maid and confidant, the only one here I had told about being Corporal Gus Gallant.
Rotgar, my noble guardian, appointed by Alenna’s father, Adelwalt.
Valto, Alenna’s half-brother and nearly a physical double of my old male self.
Zenner, a spy from Rema, charged by the Dux of Song Isle with returning me to Alenna’s mother.
Katye, a strange woman-warrior and healer who may also be a displaced person from another reality.
Lang and Cordle, hired swords who went through battle with me and my friends.

Everyone speaks a version of Old Norse called Bloddingr or Bloddish, but I understand it because… because magic works and the gods are interfering busybodies.

Just thinking about the situation made me feel exhausted. I closed my eyes, determined not to think of the death and destruction we had dealt to the ambushers night before last.

* * *

I guess I fell asleep, not too surprising considering all that had happened. The bed was soft enough and the room while not toasty was warm in comparison to the early spring weather outside. Kilda bustled around quietly and at one point, pulled my cloak off the back of the door and threw it over my legs. I was tired, safe and cared for. No wonder I slept. Or maybe I had another sort of help.

At first, I became aware of dreaming of being in high school. Only instead of being Gus, I was Alenna: a high school freshman girl with ponytails and a satchel full of books. I hurried through corridors that looked familiar but were not any of the schools that I had actually attended. I felt ridiculous and a little worried, knowing even in the dream that I was not Alenna and that someone might notice.

I felt a skirt brushing around my knees but did not look down to see what I might be wearing. I didn’t want to know and it wasn’t that sort of dream. I felt hurried and harried as if I were late for a class. All of the other students were taller than me and I couldn’t see much of the scenery. A few of the boys looked directly at me and smiled but mostly everyone ignored me.

I came to an old-fashioned door with a frosted glass window and “R.T. Firefly, Counselor” painted on it. I had the idea in the dream that I had an appointment, so I pushed my way through.

A slender red-headed man sat behind a desk in one of those cubbyhole offices that school counselors seemed to get stuck with. He wore an old-fashioned suit from my world and had thick black eyebrows and a mustache painted on his ruddy face. “Say the magic woid and win a hunnert dollars,” he said. He looked like Danny Kaye doing a Groucho Marx impression.

I stood there blinking because for some reason he was hard to look at, as if he had a light behind or inside of him.

The room, the books I was holding, the eyebrows and mustache all faded away leaving me standing in front of… a person I realized must be another of the gods. Now he wore an armored coat like Rotgar wore, but his was lacquered black and red. His red-blond beard and mustache were almost as wispy as Rotgar’s too, and he held a knife in one hand and a cup in the other. Something flickered above the cup as if it held a burning liquid. The cubbyhole office had disappeared and we were in some vague space that resembled Adelwalt’s great hall.

He looked at himself then at me, smiling. “Interesting,” he said. “You know who I am?” He put the knife and burning cup on a desk that still looked like something you might find in a high school counselor’s office.

“Hlokki,” I whispered, giving the name in its Bloddish version though I had never heard it while waking. He wasn’t someone good Bloddings talked about much.

He nodded. “The others have taken an interest in you, so I thought I would see what was up.”

“Please, don’t,” I said.

He laughed softly and his blue eyes twinkled. “What do you want more than anything else in the world?” he asked. “I might be able to give it to you. Especially if it is information?”

I kept blinking. “I want to go home. I want to go back to being myself. This—“ I gestured vaguely at the slender body that I wore. “This is not me. I want to be Corporal Gus Gallant of San Bernardino, California in the U.S. Of A. again.”

He smiled. “That might be possible. But probably not soon. You’ve been given a role in a drama that is being played out. And only you can play that part because you have gifts no one else has.”

I wept a little in the dream and it pained me to do so because it came out as girlish whimpers and sobs and I felt humiliated and helpless. The scene changed while my dream eyes were filled with tears.

I saw a girl who looked a lot like me, like Alenna, and the world seemed to be my old world again. This was not high school, though, but another familiar and more specific place. It looked like the Sheriff substation in Barstow, with Alenna sitting in an institutional green chair wrapped in one of the beige thermal blankets all deputies carried around in the trunk of their cruisers.

A voice was saying somewhere. “I called Child Protective Services. They’ll send someone to take her until we can find out where she belongs….”

I knew what that meant. Alenna would be going into the foster home system where I, as Gus Gallant, had grown up.

I gasped and heard Kilda ask, “Varkensey?” Meaning, “Are you awake?”

* * *

I opened my eyes, the reality of the dream bursting like a bubble and leaving only a vague memory, like a soapy smell in the air. “Ig amst nu,” I said. “I am now.”

“Don’t say ‘ig amst’,” she said. “They say ‘ikk bent’ here in the city. You don’t want to sound like you’re from the sticks.” She grinned while saying so.

I grinned back, rolling my eyes. “Get bent,” I said in English.

“Who? I don’t know anyone named Gitt.” She frowned.

I giggled, a sound that annoyed me but I couldn’t help it. “I mean, I’m hungry. Is it midday?”

“Soon enough,” she agreed. “The innkeeper said he will serve us in a self-dining room.” She meant a private dining room, self-dining sounded weird if you translated it directly.

Someone scratched at the door then entered. Katye. The tall war-wife looked twice life-size in the narrow doorway. “I’m hungry,” she said. “Who do we have to shoot to get some lunch?”

“Lunks?” repeated Kilda, confused again.

“It’s what they call leek soup with bacon where she’s from,” I said. Katye winked at me. “And don’t say ‘ig hebst honger’; it’s ‘ikk heft honger’ here in the city.” I winked back at her.

“I’m one of those hicks from the sticks, I guess,” said Katye. “But leek soup does sound pretty good right now, doesn’t it?”

“Hicks from the sticks” was “Yugelen aff den kugelen,” and I got the giggles again.

“Are you from Wesmarch?” asked Kilda. “They eat a lot of leeks there, I hear.”

Katye just shook her head. “I’m from a lot further away than that.” She grinned at me.

I nodded. “We are going to have to have that talk,” I said and she nodded back. She held her hand up in a split-finger, Mr. Spock salute but neither of us was willing to delay eating to discuss it.

Nothing up my sleeve...

 

Chapter 24 - Chicken Club
 
We did have lunch, or middagaten, in a private dining room behind the common room in the front building of the Green Gosling. The innkeeper himself poured ale and wine for all eight of us, though he looked a bit miffed to have our two hirelings eating at the same table. He didn’t water the wine like the serving girl had back in Molina, but Kilda did the task for herself and for me. Zenner took his wine straight and the others drank ale.

Being small with a teenage metabolism, I didn’t figure it would be wise to drink too much wine but no one here seemed to drink plain water. I remembered reading somewhere that water in medieval cities was not safe to drink without some alcohol added. I didn’t know if that were true but I did know what the city smelled like.

Lunch was fresh-baked bread, roast pork with gravy, barley and lentil soup, baked turnips, boiled cabbage, and raisin pie for dessert. A plate of cheese and another of early greens from the kitchen garden got passed around enthusiastically. No lunks but it all tasted marvelous.

“Are we going to rent a townhouse?” Rotgar wanted to know once everyone had knocked the edge off their hunger.

“Or we could go to the Remice Apartment Building and have the consular staff find us room,” suggested Zenner. Of necessity, part of that was in the Latin-like Remice language since Bloddingr didn’t have words for ‘Apartment Building’ or ‘consular staff’ or Zenner didn’t know them.

“We have family in the city…” Valto began.

“We’re staying here for now,” I cut them all off.

They looked at me. Rotgar smiled, Zenner shrugged and Valto muttered something but amazingly, no one disputed my decision at the moment. “It’s a nice enough place and we have things to work out between us,” I said. “Maybe we don’t all want to stay in the same place for a long time.” They looked at one another warily but still did not disagree.

Lillakatye sniggered. “Three dogs with one bone,” she said.

I started to ask what she meant by that when Hubricht, the innkeeper, appeared at the doorway to the kitchen again. “Um, there are some men here from the North Corner Greenfeast Mootlygt.”

Mootlygt? Oh, committee. Less common words in Bloddish did not always translate immediately in my head.

Everyone at the table grinned at me. Lang and Cordle tried to hide theirs but the rest of them let their amusement show.

“These are the guys that want me to be their High Noble Daughter and run for Princess of the City, right?” I asked. This nonsense had started with the crowd that gathered around us when we entered the city. It was an effen beauty contest.

Hubricht nodded. “There’s a crowd of them but I’ll just let in their leaders.” He turned to go and everyone’s grin got twice as wide.

Except mine. I tried to scowl but feared it came out as more of a pout. I didn’t want to be anyone’s Princess even if I did look the part.

“I don’t want to see them,” I said, trying not to whine. The guys from the Mootlygt could take their idea of running me for Princess of the Greenfeast and stuff it in a pigeon’s carcass then feed the bird to a stray dog. I blinked, realizing I had heard that very expression somewhere. Was I fitting into this world a little too well?

Zenner, Rotgar and Katye grinned at me but Valto rolled his eyes and Kilda looked concerned. Lang and Cordle tried to look like they weren’t listening to the squabbles of the quality folk.

Hubricht had not turned them away, so the three men came into the private dining room of the Green Gosling, a young guy, an old guy and a guy who was even fatter than Hubricht.

“Adelkvinna,” said Hubricht, “please meet Alfhode Orstedd, who is the speechleader of the mootlygt; Alderman Kelvan Apdegrote, representative of the Steddmote on the committee; and Lechsa Vinwold who serves as Gesundwaksa for the princesses.”

Such a mix of Bloddish and Saxon names and offices as to make someone’s head hurt. So, the young guy was Elfhat Famous-in-the-City. The old guy was Senator (roughly) Kelvan Of-the-Four-Pennies, interesting that his personal name did not translate. And the fat guy was Doctor Wool-friend whose job was to be Health-watcher. Or maybe Welfare Guardian?

I frowned at them. Alfhode (I could not think of him as Elfhat without the temptation to giggle) smiled at me and winked. He was a little too good-looking and knew it. Unfortunately, I seemed to know it, as well. Looking at him made me feel uncomfortable in a peculiar way. I glanced at Rotgar who was rubbing his furry chin thoughtfully. Like a lot of younger men I had seen in the city, Alfhode was clean-shaven.

Doc Vinwold smiled while trying to look serious. He put a hand in his own beard and pulled at it which seemed very curious. “It’s Finwald,” he muttered, evidently preferring the more Bloddish pronunciation of his name. Was it wood or wool he was a friend to? He might make me giggle as well, so I quickly looked at the third man.

Senator Kelvan grinned at me, showing his teeth and I realized that this was not a facial expression much used in the city. For an old guy, he had what looked like a full set of healthy choppers. “You were right, Hubricht,” he said to the innkeeper. Then to me, “My dear one, you are a star shining in a winter’s night. The trial is over—you will be our Rijkwyfsteddin...”

I opened my mouth. Rijkwyfsteddin meant Queen of the City.

Kelvan held a finger up and continued, “…sich du will medcommen zint unzwe Hochadelsdochter medstrabe.” If you will agree to be our Princess candidate.

“I’m not anybody’s princess!” I protested again. I stood up and Kilda stood with me. She put an arm around my elbow but I shook her off. Katye and the men at my table stirred and looked at one another.

Kelvan still grinned at me. “Ikka den sich alles wilta dish?” Even if everyone chooses you? His use of Lundenna verb forms was confusing me; they weren’t Bloddish or Saxon, either one.

Alfhode had to stick his oar in, too. “Hochadelsdochter ap Allesin!” Everyone’s princess.

Fucking Elfhat. “No! Nicht ikka, noch, nei, undachnichtlig!” I said, not quite shouting at him. No! Not even, never, no, definitely not! He didn’t even wear a hat but had a ton of blond hair only a little darker than my own. I looked away, trying to stay annoyed with him.

“Bedenken mish, da kvinna gert mertalle muckelzun,” said Kelvan with his hand up to his mouth in a theatrical aside to the doctor.

I stared. In the cityspeech, he’d done a fair job of translating a line from Shakespeare. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. He got a laugh from almost everyone but me — and Katye was also looking at him with a hardened expression.

“Onsel tidden ger happensteise…” Katye muttered. Once is happenstance…

“Twassel tidden ger medgerrungen…” I supplied. Twice is coincidence…

“Treisel tidden ger wunderzun?” said Kelvan. Three times is a miracle?

“That’s not how it goes,” I said. I put a hand through my outer gown into the hidden pocket with my Baby Glock. It was there and the shape of it reassured me.

“De treisel bent…” began Katye. She had a hand under the table and I didn’t doubt she had reached for a weapon, too.

Kelvan interrupted, “…de skarma!” Third time is the charm?

“…Feundligheit.” Katye finished what she had been saying in a growl, though enemyness wasn’t a word in English.

My five men at the table suddenly all stood up with hands on their weapons.

Rotgar demanded, “Wad gern dess?” What’s happening? Valto made a noise and Zenner checked with his left hand that his mustache was still there. Lang and Cordle eyed the food on the table but kept their hands on their weapons.

“Nothing,” I said. “But Katye and I need a private meeting with the Senator.”

Lillakatye nodded but Kilda shook her head. “No, chick. He scares you and that can’t be good.”

“You can come too,” I assured her. She turned pale and grabbed my arm. She knew who I really was, even if she didn’t want to think about it. I knew the distinction between myself and the real Alenna had occurred to her, I could read it in her eyes.

“What is the meaning of this?” the doctor wanted to know.

Everyone started talking at once.

Kelvan was looking at my right hand inside the slit in my outer gown. I had the only pocket in the room and, I hoped, the only gun. He changed his gaze to my face and nodded. “We do need to talk,” he said. I couldn’t hear him over the hubbub but I read his lips.

I nodded toward the doors to the rest of the inn then led the way, Lillakatye at my side and Kilda following. Kelvan fell in behind her. I motioned Hubricht over to me. “We need another room, a private one,” I shouted at him when he got close.

He looked at Valto but I reached out and grabbed his beard. “Look at me! I pay the bills,” I told him. “Find us a room where no one can hear what we say.”

Before he could do so, Rotgar and Valto had grabbed him. The room got quieter. They didn’t know who to glare at so Valto settled on me and Rotgar spread it around. “Sister,” said Valto, sternly. “You will include me in any private meeting with anyone! I insist.”

“Do you seriously think I can’t take care of myself?” I asked him. “How many crows lie under the moon and who struck the blows that felled them?”

Rotgar looked half-persuaded by that argument but Valto didn’t give up. “Ikka den sao, ungernichting!” Even so, nothing doing! “I’m your brother!”

I sighed. “Let go of the gutwera, and you can wait outside the door. If any of us raise our voices, you can come in.” Gutwera was a title for respectable shopkeepers, taverners, stablemasters and other temporary upper servants; it meant good man.

He considered that. Rotgar let go of Hubricht and apologized, then started to pry Valto’s grip loose. “Let her have this, Yungwalt. Your dad can’t make her do what he wants, what chance do you have?”

That worked. Sort of. Valto let go of Hubricht, muttered, “Dett ger mish dor,” which doesn’t translate well but means, “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure if to me or to the innkeeper.

Hubricht nodded and beamed, this probably was nothing to some quarrels he had witnessed. No one had taken out any knives yet, despite having fingered them longingly. “Denka ungernicht den faschen, ikka,” he said. More or less, think nothing of it. He showed us to another room, this one lined with heavy drapes to keep sound out or in.

I went inside first then Kilda and Katye and we searched the room, feeling the walls behind the drapes to make sure no one else was hiding inside. Kelvan watched us as if he approved.

Valto stopped him before he entered. “Are you carrying any weapons?” he asked.

Kelvan made a motion like Bullwinkle trying a magic trick and pulled a something out of one sleeve. “Nix dach an hohenkugel,” he said. Nothing but a chicken club, what looked like a baked drumstick. Katye and I smiled and I motioned the man to come on in. “Let him in, Valto, and wait outside in case I scream.”

A chicken club? The thought of never having a sandwich at Jack in the Box ever again made me wistful for a moment. I glanced at the breakfast still at the table and noticed that our hire-swords had gone back to eating since the crisis seemed to have passed.

“I’ll come in if it’s too quiet for too long, too,” Valto said. I had to forgive him. He was trying to be a good brother.

“Ikka,” I agreed.

Rotgar waved before shutting the door, pulling a fish face at the last moment to try to make me laugh.

The room had a small table and two benches but none of us sat down. Lilakatye took the chicken leg from Kelvan, sniffed of it then passed it back. “It’s made of wood,” she said, moving an eyebrow sideways. Kelvan disappeared it up his sleeve again with another of those un-citylike grins.

“What can you tell us about who you are?” I asked in English.

His eyes got very wide and he glanced first at Katye then at Kilda. It was obvious that the war wife had understood me and my servant had not.

“Ikka den ikka,” he said in Bloddish. Then, “What do you want to know?” in English.

The answers to some questions get complicated...

 

“Who are you?” I asked. “Where did you come from?” I spoke English. He had something of the air of an aging conman about him, and I didn’t know what kind of answer I might get.

He spread his hands as if apologizing. Big knobby hands that seemed to have done a lot of work. Perhaps I had been unfair with the conman label. “I am who you see before you, Kelvan Apdegrote,” he said. “An old man who has lived in this city for more than fifty years.”

He smiled which made him look charming, instead of slightly manic and maybe carnivorous like when he grinned. “My last name comes from when I was a child and Henrik Blodde himself gave me a grote to watch his horse.” A grote was one of the quarter-sized silver coins worth four fenniks, or pennies. He reminisced some more. “It was down by the bridge to Sudwarrow. And those four pennies were the beginning of my fortune.”

He did not look remarkable. He might have been sixty or older, with rounded shoulders and beard and hair that were well past grey and nearly white. He had clear, healthy-looking blue eyes, a sizable nose and a full set of teeth, which in its way was a bit remarkable. Most people his age I had met in this world had a few gaps in their smile. Maybe that’s why he grinned wider and more often than other people in the city. He looked a bit like someone you might have seen in a movie somewhere, playing someone’s uncle or grandfather. Lovable but maybe not quite honest.

He didn’t seem afraid of us, despite Lillakatye’s fierce warrior-woman expression and fingering of the knife she wore on her belt. She stood as tall as he did and looked him in the eye. But he kept glancing toward the hand I had in my pocket as if he knew about the Glock I had brought with me from another world. Even so, he looked more curious than apprehensive.

Katye repeated my second question after a brief digression into Bloddish. “Nae gie unswe nich duur skaite-butter, altwira.” Don’t give us any of your shit-butter, old man. Then in English, “Where did you come from?”

“Right here,” Kelvan said in the same language. He grinned. “London. Or as they call it here-and-now, Lundenna.” He made an expansive gesture to take in the room, the inn, the street outside and even the whole city.

He did seem to have a slight accent, but I had heard so much Bloddish recently that I could not be sure what English accent he might be using. Not a thick one at any rate but maybe something you might hear on the BBC. Or was he just rusty at speaking it?

“You came here as a child?” I asked. Well, so had I. Alenna, me here-and-now, wouldn’t be fifteen for a few more days.

He didn’t answer that question. Instead, he seemed to consider how I had asked it./ “You two are Americans?” he asked. “Extraordinary. Three travelers in the city at the same time and all speaking English.” He shook his shaggy head. “The gods must be up to something.” He made as if to look behind him then shook the gesture off like he didn’t want to appear paranoid.

I narrowed my eyes at him, but he only grinned at me. “What do you know about the gods?” I asked, privately annoyed that my intimidating Deputy Sheriff glare had been left behind when I traveled to this world. I knew I looked now like a high school freshman cheerleader dressed up to guest star on Game of Thrones.

He shrugged. “Not any more than they want me to know, I’m sure. Have either of you met any other travelers?”

Travelers. He meant people like me who had come from another world. I didn’t intend to answer him, but I must have shaken my head.

“No, huh?” he said, looking at me. “But you have had dealings with the gods? In dreams, maybe? Word is out that you have Dunnar’s lightning in a bell you carry.”

Lillakatye snorted. “The hire-swords,” she said in Bloddish, Lang and Cordle, who we had added to our group a dozen miles or so before we were attacked. “The tale likely won them a few pints.” Pint was almost the same word in Bloddish, Saxon and English, I noticed, but shook off the distraction.

I realized ruefully that no one had told our redshirts not to talk about it and it might not have done any good if someone had. I’d been a soldier, tavern talk about fights you’d been in was one of the perks of the job. Katye raised an eyebrow at me and I nodded, in agreement. Nothing to be done about it now.

Kelvan looked at my tall companion, bringing us back to introducing ourselves. “And you can call on Freya’s light to heal wounds, it is said.” He wasn’t asking.

She traded a grin with him and another shrug with me. “Could be,” she grunted, switching back to English. She put a hand up and pulled on the thick yellow braid hanging down her back. “I think I kind of like you, old man. But I don’t trust you any further than I could punt your fat ass. What can you do? Have the gods, whatever they are, been good to you as well?”

I thought I detected a bit of New York or New Jersey in the way she said that and I couldn’t help smiling a bit. It struck me suddenly what a remarkable person was Lillakatye, six feet or so of blonde Valkyrie with an attitude that would not be out of place in the front four of a championship football team back home. Had she also been male, there-and-then?

Kelvan, again, did not seem non-plussed by her challenge. He waggled his bushy eyebrows, made a couple of stagey passes with his hands and gestured at the fire in the brazier across the room. It flared suddenly, burned green, then red before subsiding into smaller, ordinary yellow flames.

“Hoo, hah,” said Lillakatye, and Kilda suppressed a shriek. We all looked at her, having mostly forgotten she was in the room. She had stepped back against the front wall, as far from Kelvan as she could get and had one hand at her mouth while the other reached out toward me.

I moved over and gave her a side hug to comfort her. “Nu, ikka nu,” I murmured. “You’re okay, just a little fireworks show.” She was my responsibility and I hers, and she was one of the eight who had ridden into ambush and survived. We had a bond even beside that, since she knew part of my history with the original teenage witch Alenna.

“I don’t understand half of what is being said, then the fire goes black,” she whispered. She cut her eyes toward the brazier but did not look directly at it.

Black? I hadn’t seen that. Did it look different to… to someone who was not a traveler?

Kelvan smiled blandly at us. “I didn’t mean to frighten anyone,” he said in Bloddish. “Just a bit of foolery.” With a gesture, he produced the wooden drumstick from his sleeve again. “I was just pulling a leg to keep things light. Bite?” He offered the fake treat to Kilda.

Lillakatye snorted and Kilda shook her head, retreating a bit, but not toward the fire. “I’ll wait by the door,” she said.

“Don’t stand right in front of it in case Valto gets a knot in his tail and comes crashing in,” I warned her. She nodded and took a seat out of the way on a stool.

I glanced back at Kelvan. He looked, not anxious but as if he were waiting for something that might be unpleasant. When he realized he had my attention again, he tugged on his beard before speaking. “So we’ve each been touched and given gifts by the gods, who must surely want something from us.”

“Habst du en thred denn unlykk, altwira?” asked Lillakatye. Have you a thread to untangle, old man?

Kelvan shrugged. “I think it must have something to do with the upcoming choice as to whether to elect a new High King,” he said, speaking English again.

“Wait, what?” I asked. “I heard something about this but when and where is it?”

“At Midsummer, three months from now, all the Bloddish realms will meet at Dingwald to discuss this and hear arguments from other concerned parties. If they decide to elect a High King, they will probably conclude the business right there. The rest of the island can’t hope to withstand whatever a unified Blodland might want to do, so it’s going to be a big deal, one way or another,” Kelvan explained. “I’m supposed to attend to present the views of Lundenna to the Volkerding.”

His little speech was mostly English but some of the words were in Bloddish, or maybe Saxon. Volkerding meant parliament, or maybe congress. And Dingwald was Parliament Wood.

That still seemed remote and unrelated to Alenna or myself. “Ikka den sao?” I asked. So what?

He pointed at me and answered in English. “Your brother Valto has been named to be there, and that big teenager, Redfish, as well, to represent their lords who are important nobles. Also, it’s likely that the Remice Dux of Song Isle will send LuRenart to at least listen in.” LuRenart was Zenner, another of my companions. “So you are quite firmly caught in this web.” Yeah, well. The Duke, or Dux, of Song Isle was Alenna’s mother’s new husband; in effect, my stepfather.

“Olberggenir app Helskaiten!” I protested. Mountains of Hell-shit, meaning he was full of it. You can’t beat Bloddish for expressive cussing.

He laughed, shaking his head. “It’s true. Not to mention that your fiance, Eovil of Esvelk, has been suggested as a candidate for High King if it comes to a vote. He’s an Ondakong and his grandmother was one of Henrik Blodde’s daughters.”

Henrik Blodde was the legendary conqueror who had turned most of Il Bian, the island called Britain in my world, into Blodsey, named after himself. The conquest had happened almost ninety years ago and Henry had been dead for sixty years. He’d been the first, and so far, the only High King of the Bloddings.

I didn’t know much more than that about the history of Alenna’s world. I needed more information but I didn’t even know what questions to ask or who to start asking. Apdegrote looked like my best chance for a willing and capable interviewee. I had so much I wanted to know.

But Alenna’s past hung over me and clouded my intent. Alenna’s Tahtie, her dad, Adelwalt, the Orley of Moleena, had done well for her it seemed, choosing such a husband to be. And yet she had run away and used magic to leave me in her place.

Grandson of Henry the Conqueror? What kind of power did the man have? Could he send a small army into Lundenna, the Free City, and winkle me out like an oyster. Yikes.

I found another stool and sat down, looking at Lillakatye for support.

She hadn’t been distracted by my internal argument and stayed focused on the immediate questions. “How do you know this stuff?” Katye demanded, her lush blonde brows gathered like clouds over her winter blue eyes.

Her intensity brought me back to the moment, too, and back on my feet. I wondered just how many free drinks Lang and Cordle had gotten off our adventures and whether our Warwife would try to take it out of their hides.

Kelvan gestured with his hands, showing his palms while grinning. “You see before you the chief representative of the Fourth Estate in the here-and-now. Information is my business.”

Katye and I boggled as that penetrated. We traded glances. I stood up again because Kilda had come over to try to share my stool. I patted her on the shoulder before moving away. “You….? You publish a newspaper?” I asked him, in English, of course, since I didn’t know any Bloddish words for the verb or the noun. But he surely didn’t mean a blog or a podcast or something like a rumormonger or medieval equivalent of a information broker.

Kelvan nodded. “De Tyddingr app Lundenna,” he said with some pride.

The London Tides. I wanted to hit him for multiple reasons.

I glared at him when he called me "our little princess."

 

“You’re publishing a newspaper? Here-and-now?” I boggled a bit.

We were still in the inner room at the inn, a fire in one corner, Kilda my servant sitting by the door while Lillakatye and I questioned Lord Kelvan Apdegrote, a slippery customer who had just admitted to publishing a newspaper called The London Tides, or Tyddingr ap Lundenna. Except we were in a world that seemed firmly medieval.

Kelvan grinned and nodded, laying the charm on thick. He played the lovable rascal as well as anyone ever did. “The hardest part has been inventing paper. Ink was easier. Workable type and a press weren’t too hard. Took me most of thirty years to get my paper-making up to a volume to be able to put out an eight page tabloid once a week.”

He made a face. “I had to invent advertising and stock companies and all kinds of other things along the way to make it all work.” He was definitely a person out of their own time, similar to myself. Would I have the gumption to spend thirty years on such a project. I doubted it.

My tall blonde companion, Lillakatye, another anachronistic traveler apparently, laughed out loud. “I think I read this in a book somewhere? Guy falls into a pothole in a thunderstorm and when he climbs out he’s in Ancient Rome?” A big girl who I had seen both fight with axe and spear and use magic to heal, she looked much like the legends of Valkyries but denied being one.

Kelvan nodded again. “I read that one back, uh, back home?” He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Sure was a lot easier for the character in the story than it has been for me. And he was working with more primitive tech. It’s been a long time, I don’t remember the title or the author but it was where I got the idea.”

He mused a moment. “I tried the first thing he did, double entry bookkeeping. One, I wasn’t all that sure, myself, how to make it work and two, seems someone already invented that here, maybe a thousand years ago.” He grinned and shrugged. “So no easy fortune for me showing people how to draw a zero and write it down twice.”

Katye laughed again. “Maybe it was him? Mysterious Martinus?” That was what the locals in ancient Rome had called the main character.

I remembered the book, too. I had read a lot of science fiction, both as a boy and during down times in the Navy. I even remembered the title and author: Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp.

I remembered something else, too. “Kelvan?” I squeaked. Damn teenage girl voice. But another book I had read. “Did you ever read Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen?” By H. Beam Piper, I was pretty sure.

Kelvan nodded, a bit sheepishly. “Uh, that one too. That’s why I picked Kelvan as my name. Uh, Kalvan means bald, here, by the way. I was young, I guess I jinxed myself.” He rubbed his bald spot, “Prophetic.”

“Wait,” said Katye. “I remember that one, Kalvan invents gunpowder doesn’t he?” Another science fiction reader falls into an alternate universe? Three-for-three, what are the odds?

“Dunkel med detta skaite,” Kelvan said, dropping back into Bloddish to curse. Thump that shit. Then back into English. “Martinus didn’t invent it either, too destabilizing on the world. But it’s actually too late, the Chinese probably have black powder already. It just hasn’t spread this far west yet. Is that what you have in your little bell?” he asked, looking at me.

The bell referred to my police-issued Glock from my home time; glock being the local word for bell.

I shook my head, not as a no but as a refusal to talk about that. It had occurred to me that now I had one more thing to worry about: the Crosstime Police. The guys who regulated technology across timelines. It wasn’t stupid to think that they or something like them might exist. After all, I had already had conversations with gods.

And speaking of gods, this began to look more and more like some of their doing. Three anachronistic travelers in one place? Dunnar and Idunn might not be subtle enough for some plan that would use a fact like that, but I had just talked to Hlokki and that red-headed weasel was certainly crooked enough to do it, all while pretending he knew nothing about what was going on.

But, the fewer people who knew about the Baby Glock in my pocket, the better. Plus, Kelvan was a newspaperman and I was myself a cop. Cops traditionally have good reason to distrust the rumormongers that many reporters turn out to be.

Kelvan still looked like he wanted an answer but I didn’t have to try to out-stubborn him.

“A weekly tabloid newspaper?” mused Lillakatye, taking the focus off me. “In a town of 50,000, Lundenna’s that big isn’t it? You could probably support a full-size daily.”

Kelvan snorted but looked amused. “If I could produce that much paper and sell that much advertising, I might. Maybe someday. Right now, I’m thinking of myself as Ben Franklin putting out the Saturday Evening Post. Besides, half or more of the paper my plant produces goes to other things, like books and documents. I’m trying to build another plant but there is only one of me.”

“Books?” I said. I hadn’t seen any since I got here but I might not have been in the company of someone likely to have one. “You mean real printed books?”

He nodded and did another of his magic tricks, pulling a small book from somewhere inside his robe. He presented it to me with a flourish. “Signed by the author, which is myself,” he said, grinning at my expression.

I took the little volume, about five by eight inches I judged, though it appeared larger in my small hands. The cover was leather, stretched over thin wood. An illustration had been worked into the front side in colored inks or dyes. It showed a green hill above a blue lake or bay, with flowers dotting the hill. A title in gold above the illustration read, “varforr ∂e he∂o bin blodde.” Why the Sea Is Wet. Except for the two funny-looking ‘d’s, the letters looked like modern English lower case. I had no trouble reading it but I wondered why Blodde was spelled with regular ‘d’s.

“It’s the story of the funeral journey from Lundenna to Yorvik to bury Henrik Blodde. The chose a gravesite on a hill so he could look out on the shallow bay where he and his men waded ashore. I was there,” Kelvan said simply.

“En boeke,” said Kilda from her stool with a bit of wonder in her voice. A book. She had probably seen very few.

Katye moved to look over my shoulder as I opened to the first page. Here the author was identified as “kelvan yien ∂e grote” but the signature under it was æpdegrote. Both were appellations I realized, not really last names the way I thought of them. A grote was the quarter-sized four penny coin in Blodsey, so “yien ∂e grote” was “given the four pennies,” while “æpdegrote” was “of the four pennies.” Again with two different kinds of ‘d’s, and a funny looking ‘a’ — a puzzle, but for later.

“He died here in the city,” Lillakatye said, as if she had already known that.

Kelvan nodded. “Poisoned by the Apothecaries Guild. The guilds were and are the enemies of most progress, here-and-now.” He made a face. “The cover is made of leather instead of cloth as a sop to the Tanners Guild because my paper is replacing vellum for a lot of things.” He shrugged. “I have to travel with guards lately.”

I glanced at Kelda who had once described Lundenna as reeking from the fumes of the leather industry but then, paper-making was pretty stinky, too. I remembered that from driving through Eureka, California. Not that a medieval city didn’t have other reasons to smell bad.

But guards for the man who invented paper?

When I looked a question at him he added, “I left my men out in the street.” He flashed another grin, “The Scribes Guild is mad at me too, since I can produce a thousand books with no more labor than they require to make two. Paper’s still expensive, but much cheaper than vellum, so I can sell my books for a tenth what they have to charge.”

Katye pointed at the book in my hands. “How much?”

“Free for our little princess.” He continued despite my glare, “But normally two krone.” A krone was sixteen pennies which made a coin about the size of an old silver dollar. A day’s wage for someone skilled like a smith or a scribe was a just a grote, four pennies. Fourpence?

Eight days’ labor for a bargain book? No wonder books were rare if they normally cost ten times as much. My eyes got bigger while I thought about the impact printing had had on my own world. And Kelvan had jumped from that revolutionary idea to another: newspapers.

“How much do you charge for your Tyddingr?” I asked.

“Half a penny, it would be a loss except for the advertising.”

“Who advertises?” I wondered aloud.

“Right now, the biggest advertisers are the used horse dealers, the wineshops, and the Apothecaries Guild.” He grinned again. “I charge them extra.”

“Used horse dealers,” Katye snorted. She wasn’t from the West Coast of my world so she didn’t immediately think of Cal Worthington and his dog Spot that might be any sort of animal from LA commercials back when I had been a kid. I had to grin, too, and Kelvan seemed to appreciate our amusement.

“I’ve been building a small classified section. Lonely hearts, estate sales, rooms to let. Eleven words for a farthing,” Kelvan seemed proud and dismissive of his accomplishments, both at the same time. “Odd, but I’ve had to make a rule, you can’t take out a classified just to insult someone.” He raised his eyebrows.

Katye laughed out loud. “The personals were getting personal?”

Kelvan nodded, suppressing another grin.

Something else occurred ot me to ask him. “You came here fifty years ago as a child? How do you know about newspapers, printing, advertising? How young were you?” I asked.

“I arrived as a child but I had lived nearly a whole lifetime back in the Other Earth.” He shook his head like a horse getting rid of a fly. “I don’t think time is congruent between the worlds. And if I’d known I was coming I would have studied the sort of things I needed. How to make sulfuric acid in quantity, why you don’t make paper out of wood until you have a big enough industrial base, how to make paper white without poisoning your workers.” He shook his head again, frowning at the memory of his failures.

“Congruent?” I blinked at the mathematically flavored word. But he had arrived younger than he had been in his own world? So had I, plus I wasn’t the same sex. Was he? I didn’t ask just then.

He explained himself a bit more. “Time is relative, didn’t Einstein say something similar? I don’t think it flows at the same speed, maybe not even in the same direction all the time,” he amplified his meaning, making it even more complicated and strange.

Katye and I looked at each other, the implications of that speculation beginning to soak in.

“So,” I said, “if and when I find a way to go back home, the time there might be a lot longer or shorter than it was here?”

“Why would you want to go back?” Katye asked and Kelvan’s look seemed to hold the same question.

Maybe they were both where and when they wanted to be but they weren’t living in the body of a reluctant princess who was supposed to marry Duke Evil.

Who's the pretty boy?

 

I didn’t have to answer because someone knocked on the door. Valto’s voice came through. “Lord Kelvan, one of your men says there is trouble in the street.”

Kelvan hustled to the door and opened it. Alenna’s tall blond brother towered over a dark fellow who looked as if he might moonlight as a stoat. He had a pinched up weaselly face and wore patched clothes in nondescript colors.

Valto started to speak but the man interrupted. “Nonkel, the Tanner Guild has hired some bullnecks to wait for you to come out.” Nonkel was uncle, another way of referring to one’s boss. Bullnecks (the same word in Bloddish) were porters and stevedores, burly men who made their livings with their strength. The usual sort someone would hire to cause trouble, probably paid in wine or ale.

“You had them under your eye, Welmund? Good work. Are our boys ready to get in their way?” Kelvan tried to leave the room, but Valto did not give him enough room.

“Aye. We’ve sticks and nets, and ropes to knot their robes round their ankles.” The little weasel face split in a grin missing several teeth. He had to lean sideways to talk around my half-brother’s bulk.

“Better than better,” said Kelvan looking at Valto’s hand on Welmund’s shoulder, holding the little man in place. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt.” Again, he tried to get past but Valto had to move only an inch or so to discourage him.

“I need to go see to my men,” the senator said.

Valto was being very coplike. “It sounds like if you go down there, there’s going to be a fight.”

Rotgar appeared at the end of the little passageway outside our conference room and there really was not room for him at all.

Kelvan’s posture lost a little of its starch. “Adelkenner…” he began. Noble acquaintances, meaning roughly, gentlemen, but Rotgar didn’t let him finish.

“Valto’s right. It will be better if we go upstairs where we can see the whole street without being seen,” Rotgar said. “Meddekorin, too.” He meant Kilda, Lillakatye and I, calling us ‘girls’ in effect. Sticking that -ko- in there made it worse, implying that we were little and cute. I got annoyed then distracted for a moment, realizing that the particle, used as an ending, did the same thing in Japanese back in the Other World.

Kelvan’s minion was allowed to go downstairs with a message and Valto led the way for the rest of us, Rotgar pushing into a corner to stand aside so he could bring up the rear. Which left him wide open as Lillakatye passed, taking the opportunity to step on his foot and plant an elbow in his middle.

“Oof,” he said.

“Hit ger mish dor, Garko,” said Katye sweetly, apologizing and calling him a cute little fishie at the same time. I grinned but Rotgar couldn’t see it since I was already past him. I heard him laugh good-naturedly.

We went single file up the narrow staircase to the roof. It didn’t get much use above the level with sleeping rooms for some of the inn workers, but it eventually opened out onto a balcony over the street. In hot weather, the servants probably slept out here but right at the moment, it seemed unlikely that Lundenna ever got hot.

I remembered the baker who had shouted from a rooftop at me on our way into the city. I shook my head, that had been this morning though I had had a nap since then. I looked around the balcony and sure enough, there was a chimney at one end coming up, probably, from the common room below. I avoided it, remembering that the baker had gotten burned.

Time might or might not be relative but it sure moved fast sometimes.

A cold misty ceiling hung above the city with scattered skylights of yellow sun poking through diagonally. It was late afternoon or early evening in the middle of March; the sun would be setting soon. The angle of the light made the city look dramatic, with some walls brightly lit while others were in shadow. The streets appeared rain-washed and clean, except for the gutters running down the middle of most of them.

Not more than a hundred yards away, back toward the North Gate, I could see the rooftop the baker had used to swear love to me. I couldn’t help smiling. The man had been funny, if embarrassing, with his over-the-top proclamation. I turned my attention back to the street below.

The most prominent things were the three groups of men struggling in front of the inn. Some pedestrian traffic like we had seen earlier pooled at either end of the lane, leaving room for the men armed with sticks, nets, ropes and loud voices to push and shove each other. A couple of enterprising fried pie sellers were already working the crowds, the alewives were probably not far behind.

It was a messy situation though no one was actually trading blows yet, it could easily come to that.

“Go back to Sow Boil,” shouted someone and this amused the spectators, several of whom took up the cry. Sudharrow, meaning South Fort, was the settlement across the Temms River where many of the tanneries were located. Suge Wallop in Bloddish, or Sow Boil in English, was a probably traditional insult.

An even ruder version, Suge Stir was being used too. A stir was a cookpot, but also slang for a whore’s bed. Alenna must have been listening at doors when she shouldn’t have to know that bit of vocabulary with her sheltered upbringing. The crowd indiscriminately echoed the catcalls. They didn’t care what the issues were, they just wanted to see some action.

The bullnecks were distinguished by their bullnecks, natch; powerfully built men in rough clothing, some of them armed with staves or cudgels. The quicker ones armed with ropes and nets must be Kelvan’s men, along with some stick wielders who seemed to be helping them. The third set might be servants of the inn, trying to keep the other two groups from forcing the gate. They were better dressed with longer weapons, some of them carrying polearms like absurdly long-handled hammers.

I wondered if anyone had called the cops, or here-and-now, the City Guard. The local cops would be armored and have edged weapons available, totally outclassing any of the three groups below. But there were no callboxes on the corners; someone would have to send a messenger to the copshop which wasn’t that far away. I wondered if Hubrict had already done so.

My guys on the balcony with me, Rotgar, Valto, and Zenner, all had swords. Lillakatye had her axe, and Lang and Cordle waiting on the floor below also had steel blades. And me with my Lightning-in-a-Bell. We didn’t really have anything to worry about from the ill-armed rabble below us.

We watched saying little for a bit. The bullnecks’ aggression kept threatening to turn the confrontation to real violence. The inn’s men retreated, backs to the gate. Kelvan’s guys seemed resolute but overmatched in size and numbers.

I glanced at the councilor-newspaperman. He had the end of his sleeve in his mouth, chewing it. The agitators down there were sent by the guilds to deal with him.

Zenner stepped closer to me. “Say the word, kvinne, and we will clear the street with steel.” He motioned to include Valto and Rotgar in his offer; they nodded, grimly. After a moment, so did Katye, her hand on her belt where her axe hung. Just showing up, armored and well-armed might end the proto-riot. Or make it worse.

I noticed the Remice spy had not called me kvinnikin. Or worse, princess. Just lady, ceding me authority here. I shook my head. “Wait, nothing is happening yet. Maybe they’ll all get tired and go home.”

Kelvan snorted, but said nothing.

Hubricht appeared again, took a look, then disappeared, probably to go downstairs and arm his kitchen staff with cleavers and skewers. Or make that call for the cops.

The other two recruiters for the Greenfeast Pageant stayed out of the way. Being gentlemen of rank, they were allowed to carry steel weapons in the City but neither was so armed. Just as Kelvan wasn’t, though I suspected the old prestidigitator had a gedunker, a weighted club, concealed on his person somewhere. Or something even more lethal.

I listened to what they were saying below.

“Yield the door!” the leader of the bullnecks commanded the inn’s men.

“Bedunkenthusel!” replied the man with the long hammer. Go thump yourself, in English.

“Farthingnarry! Sugeswivver! Skaitaterin! Lekkerhund!” The insults flew on all sides. A farthingnarry was a rent-a-thug, a goon. The others were more vulgar. That last one I didn’t know but I could guess. The crowd was loving it.

“As long as they’re just shouting at each other…” I started to say when the situation abruptly changed.

Down the street, five men approached on horseback, coming from the zAdelkael, the Noble Quarter. Four were dressed like noble retainers in partial armor and one was obviously a nobleman himself. He sat tall and helmet less, his golden hair shining in a stray bolt from the sun. His beard was darker and neatly shaped. I couldn’t see his eye color from this distance but I was sure it must be blue.

“Vad gae hen hier?” asked Katye. “What’s he doing here?”

Something in my chest ached at the sight of this man. My hands trembled. “Vie den dunke erst hen?” I asked. Who the thump is he? Why am I reacting just to his physical presence?

No one answered any of my questions, especially not the ones I wasn’t saying out loud.

But the man himself spoke, with enough volume we heard him clearly on the balcony above. “Vie den guifehren ar demvelke?” Who are the leaders of you folk?

The head bullneck, plus one of the inn’s people, and one of Kelvan’s guys stepped forward enough to identify themselves. Negotiations appeared to begin at a lower volume as the blond noble rode his horse into the middle of what only a moment ago had looked like the beginnings of a riot.

His men arrayed themselves at convenient positions around him, hands on their weapons. They carried steel: swords and spears, and they wore breastplates and helmets. If they attacked the potential rioters, it would be a slaughter.

The man in the middle radiated calm, authority and reason, his face unconcealed and his hands staying away from his weapons. But I found myself worried about the safety of the apparent peacemaker. The bullnecks in particular looked to still be dangerous, especially as Kelvan’s men appeared to be backing off from the confrontation. I noticed their movements only peripherally. It was hard to take my eyes off the noble on horseback.

I licked my lips. “Vie er det skeyn kanobbe?” I asked. Who’s the pretty boy?

Katye and Rotgar both grinned at me and Zenner smiled but it was Valto who answered. “Det ar dura huswarda kvill bevan, swesel.” That’s your husband to be, sis. “Het ar Ondakong Eovil, hensel.” It’s Duke Awful, himself.

When I heard his name, something inside me turned upside down. “Ikk bint sich dunken mikke.” I am so fucked.

“Meyt ikka, sartin,” agreed Katye. Probably, for sure.