Master of the Revels

by Nicole Galland

  It was not a great distance, but the water was gushing past us as if it were going down a drain. Man and book disappeared with barely a splash.

  There was an awful, unnatural stillness on the dock. Will was staring into the river, jaw slack, horrified. Tilney looked stunned. I felt too wobbly to rise safely. I’m a strong swimmer, but that current was fierce, the water was filthy and full of treachery: trash, animal carcasses. Except for the bright dots of boat lanterns, it was black across the loud and rushing surface.

  Finally Will turned to Tilney. “You have drowned my brother,” he said, sounding like he was about to vomit.

  All the fire in Tilney was doused. Without responding, he stood, and as if in a trance, he walked slowly away up the steps, into the darkness.

  “We must go downriver and find him!” I shouted over the rushing current. The only boat tied here was the royal barge, moored to the far edge of the dock; there were guards within. No wherries would presume to come within hailing distance of the royal steps. The only way to follow the current was to go back into the palace grounds, exit through the main gate, and make our way upriver to the Whitehall stairs, hail a wherry and tell him we were looking for a lost man downriver. That would take at least a quarter hour.

  Tilney was already out of sight above.

  “Come,” I said to Will, grabbing his hand and tugging. “Hurry.”

  It was only then I remembered Tristan. And Gráinne.

  Oh, fuuuuuuuck.

  AFTER ACTION REPORT

  DOER: Melisande Stokes

  THEATER: Fourth-century Sicily

  OPERATION: Guard mosaic

  DEDE: Prevent wagon being overturned

  DTAP: 309 CE, domestic and administrative compound between Piazza and Sophiana

  Livia had granted me a few hours alone in the family shrine to pray to the gods for mercy, which gave me time enough to finish writing my story into the wax tablet. I had nothing to gain from that, but in a state of crisis, it grounded me and helped me think. Or try to, anyhow.

  Then she Homed me to the present day. Thanks to some kind of magical osmosis that allowed her to grasp precisely from where Quince had come, I landed in ODEC #4 at DODO headquarters.

  I pulled on the hospital gown they keep in the ODECs for returning DOers and thumbed the release button. The door hissed open. I stepped out, blinking in the harsh fluorescent lights of the glassed-off bio-containment zone. I turned, stone-faced, toward the control panels. I could see the technicians on the other side of the glass, where the lighting was dimmer, but I couldn’t make out their faces clearly. I waited for a very long three or four seconds, and then heads began to bob, shoulders pivot, hands scramble at controls. I heard the metallic click that meant the audio channel had been opened.

  “That’s right, it’s me,” I said blandly. “Melisande Stokes.”

  The audio channel clicked off. There was now increased movement on the other side of the glass.

  “I’m going to decon,” I said, gesturing to the shower unit.

  Audio clicked back on. “Stay where you are.”

  “No matter what happens next, I need to decontaminate,” I said.

  “We need you to stay where you are until we’ve established proper protocol—”

  “Have fun with that,” I said, and walked out of ODEC #4’s isolation zone. This was the unit closest to the shower. I turned on the faucet, slipped off the hospital johnny, and stepped inside.

  I was hoping inspiration would strike while I was rinsing off, but no. I turned off the shower, toweled off, put on a bathrobe from the pile they keep in there, and stepped out. To find three handguns leveled at me.

  Armed DOSECOPS guards in riot gear had surrounded the shower while I was in it. The muzzles of their weapons nearly touched me.

  “Ms. Stokes,” said a voice of indeterminate gender, over the loudspeaker. “This is your escort. You will follow them to the medical suite.”

  I pointed to a door on my side of the glass, ten feet away. “You mean this medical suite?”

  “Do not attempt to communicate,” said the voice. “I am the night supervisor, and I will be reporting your arrival to my superiors.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Don’t communicate.”

  I held up my hands and let the riot police herd me six steps through the little door of the stainless steel recovery ward. It had been cool in the decontamination unit, but it was frigid in here. One of the DOSECOPS handed his gun off to another. With brusque don’t try anything funny, bitch body language, he unlocked a supply cabinet high on the wall and pulled out a pair of sticky-soled socks. These were tossed onto one of the two hospital beds in a rough gesture more fitting for a police procedural than a medical suite. This helpful employee then relocked the cabinet, retrieved his gun, glowered at me through the Plexiglas of his riot helmet, and signaled the other two guards to exit the room. He kept his weapon trained at me as he backed out. I heard the door lock behind him.

  I sat on the bed. “Now what?” I asked as I put on the socks. After waiting about a minute for a response, I tried again. “What time is it?”

  “Three thirty a.m.,” came the disembodied voice of the night supervisor.

  “And the date?”

  Instead of an answer, Muzak began to play over the sound system.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” I muttered.

  Time passed and nothing happened. I’m sure Blevins had been contacted by the time I was out of the shower, and this delay was deliberate. The anticipatory thrill and all that. I’ve been patiently resilient with him since Day 1, but after three hours in a bathrobe, with the air-conditioning set to 58 degrees Fahrenheit (there’s a thermometer high on the wall), I ran out of patience. In deliberate view of the surveillance camera, I crossed to the wall panel holding the intake console. It’s locked, of course, but it’s a combo lock, and I was on the committee that decided to make the combo easy to remember in case of emergency, so I know it (alphanumeric for DODOMedRoom1). I opened it and unfolded the keyboard.

  “Stop that,” said the supervisor’s voice over the audio channel. Then the Muzak resumed.

  The IU requires a password, but again, it’s just DODOMedRoom1. Melisande Stokes had been expunged from the system, of course, but the night nurse had logged in when he came on duty. As Chris Burton, RN, I lodged a complaint that the Muzak was an attempt to brainwash me.

  “Step away from the console,” said the night supervisor’s voice.

  I moved to a new screen that allowed me to update the nurse’s own medical file. I gave him active cases of leprosy, smallpox, West Nile virus, tuberculosis, cholera, measles, and hep C.

  “Stop that,” ordered the night supervisor.

  I moved to a new screen and filed a complaint that I wasn’t receiving proper medical treatment. I pressed “enter”—and heard the door unlock. I turned, expecting to be rushed by DOSECOPS.

  Roger Blevins entered. His hair wasn’t as perfectly coiffed as usual, and I suspect that under his sheared beaver coat, he was in his pajamas. He was glowering with the kind of tragic victorious rage I usually associate with Russell Crowe characters.

  “You are a traitor,” he said. “The next time you see the outside of this building, you’ll be in an armored van en route to your execution.”

  “As long as there’s no Muzak,” I said.

  “This is not a joke, Dr. Stokes,” he said. “If you want to save yourself, you’ll cooperate with me. Where is Colonel Lyons?”

  It was music to my ears that he didn’t know anything about Tristan’s situation. “Sorry, that’s privileged information above your pay grade.”

  “You’re hardly in a position to determine that,” he said, irritated.

  “I’ll talk to Constantine Rudge,” I said. I knew he wouldn’t agree to this, but if the conversation was being archived, Rudge would eventually learn of it and possibly consider back-channel communications. “But I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

&nbs
p; “If you make me play hardball, you will regret it.”

  “How? You’ll fire me?”

  “You were my most promising student,” he said, managing to sound as if this were solely his accomplishment. “I’m very disappointed it has come to this.”

  He signaled toward the surveillance camera. The DOSECOPS reentered, weapons drawn. Blevins stepped back against the wall near the door to avoid their weapons, which were all leveled at me.

  Behind them, a technician armed with a Leatherman loped in. As the guards’ weapons remained trained on me, the techie began to unscrew the entire intake console from its housing cabinet. Blevins gave me a superior so there look, as if he were imitating Erzsébet.

  I huffed a laugh. “That the best you got?” I asked. He deflated. (It’s satisfying to give him attitude. Not wow, really happy Gráinne blew up our lives so now I can sass him satisfying, but it’s something.)

  “I hope you like that bathrobe,” he said. “Because that’s your entire wardrobe, indefinitely, until you’re willing to talk.”

  “Put me in a secure room alone with Constantine Rudge and I’ll talk,” I said.

  “You only get to Dr. Rudge through me,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Oh, well,” I said, and pursed my lips together.

  Grunting under the unwieldy shape and weight of his burden, Mr. Leatherman carried out the console unit. Blevins left with him, shooting me a final warning look. Once they were safely clear of me, the DOSECOPS also exited, guns trained on me to the last moment.

  After an hour, I heard the heating kick on. I checked the thermostat and saw it had been reset to 68. After another hour, it was warm enough for me to doze off on the bed.

  When I awoke, I was under a light cotton hospital blanket. On the table between the recovery beds was a pile of saltines, Skittles, and single-serve apple juice containers, the kind they keep in the break room.

  “You could have tossed in a couple of granola bars,” I groused to the surveillance camera.

  I was alone in there for a long time. I would guess about twenty-four hours, but it’s hard to keep track without a timepiece. I did a lot of jumping jacks and isometric exercises, which a series of disembodied supervisory voices told me was inappropriate behavior in a recovery room. Gráinne hadn’t shown up. I admit I was relieved, because, unlike Blevins, she wouldn’t pull any punches. Then I realized her absence might mean she was in 1606 London taking down Tristan, or somewhere else taking down someone else, and I felt sick.

  There must have been frantic back-channel negotiations taking place along the Blevins-Frink-Rudge spectrum. Finally, a disembodied supervisory voice told me Blevins had “scheduled an exit interview” and would arrive in an hour. A piece of paper was pushed under the door. I picked it up. It was an itemized bill for the bathrobe ($80) and the break room nourishment ($17).

  “Dock my 401(k),” I said, waving the bill at the surveillance camera.

  Blevins appeared about two hours later. He was dressed for real this time, with his hair back in its usual shape, and he was sipping a large coffee and noshing on a blueberry muffin. I was still in the white terry cloth bathrobe and the floor was littered with saltine wrappers.

  “Where’s Colonel Lyons?”

  “Ask Gráinne,” I said, which threw him for a moment.

  He barked some questions at me—why was I interfering with Quince’s DEDE, for what misguided cause was I betraying my country, for which villainous mastermind was I working. I ignored him, pushed the little pointed straw of the final apple juice box through its tinfoil opening, and sipped at it. He would never have released me on his own. The order must have come from higher up, which meant he’d have to obey it whether or not he could bully me into talking. If Gráinne wasn’t in the picture, I was safe.

  Once he’d finished his coffee, he treated me to some more insults and accusations, and in response I offered him some saltines. He stood up and nearly spat in disgust. “You’re free to leave.”

  “That’s mighty white of you,” I said as he left.

  I remained on the hospital bed in the sticky-soled socks and bathrobe, until a new disembodied voice asked me when I would be ready to vacate the room.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s February. This is a bathrobe. I know there are civilian clothes for when Anachrons arrive, so I’d appreciate something I can wear home without getting hypothermia.”

  “We don’t equip traitors,” said the voice, sounding bored.

  At least we now know that the power outage from the blizzard didn’t knock out the East House surveillance system.

  I’ve never seen Mortimer look so confused as when he threw open the front door to find me shivering on the step in frozen socks and a damp bathrobe. But I don’t have frostbite and I’m pretty sure after a good night’s sleep or two, I’ll be fine to go back for a final Strand.

  Letter from Dr. Roger Blevins to LTG Octavian K. Frink

  DAY 2040 (28 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

  I need to set the record straight, Okie. I’m not saying Constantine Rudge’s description of what happened over the weekend is inaccurate, merely that it’s incomplete. Yes, it’s true, we kept Melisande Stokes in a secure room until I had a chance to interview (not “interrogate”) her. But I wasn’t “refusing to let her dress”; rather it’s that we don’t have an inventory of street clothes on hand, so she was kept in a bathrobe and hospital johnny because that’s literally all there was to offer her.

  Those are just quibbles, however. As is the fact, which Rudge completely glosses over in his account to you, that Dr. Stokes committed a cybercrime by accessing restricted, encrypted material (somebody else’s medical records, as well as several communications channels) stored in a secured government intranet (ODIN) and falsifying them.

  But most urgently, our Sicily DOer, Arturo Quince, reports that she interfered with his attempted DEDE on multiple Strands—sometimes he manages to sabotage the mosaic, but sometimes she sabotages his sabotage attempt. Her actions are hostile toward a government mission, which makes her an enemy agent. So of course I would want to turn her over to the CIA. (As well as the FBI, but signs point to interference by a foreign government.)

  For Rudge to complain (when he barged into the building without warning) that I was about to hand her over to the appropriate authorities without explaining to you why I was about to do so misrepresents the situation. Frankly, I find it suspicious that he wished to prevent me. And to be honest, that you backed him up. In the spirit of decades of friendship, Okie, help me make sense of this.

  Quince had only two more Strands to this DEDE (before Dr. Stokes skewed things with her interference). Keeping her under guard here in the building for that duration, which we are equipped to do, was the best way to have maximized Quince’s chances of success. For Rudge to set her loose—into the wild, so to speak, to potentially strike again—that is insensible to me. It’s as if Rudge—our consultant with the highest security clearance!—doesn’t want us to succeed at this DEDE.

  —Roger

  Post by Melisande Stokes on her personal GRIMNIR channel

  DAY 2041 (1 MARCH, YEAR 6)

  I slept so deeply that waking was like recovering from diachronic travel. At Mortimer’s instruction, I stayed in the master bedroom because Rebecca is “still in Japan, for a little longer than we had anticipated” (um, excuse me?).

  Crumpled on a chest at the foot of the bed were my clothes that I’d left behind when Erzsébet last Sent me to Sicily. I dressed quickly and went downstairs. Mortimer was seated at Frank’s desk, one of the cats curled up in his lap. A blue-and-white webpage was on the screen.

  “Hunting for bugs?” I asked, coming in.

  “Oh, hey, Mel,” he said. “Sleep well? I’m taking a little mental break, actually. I read your final report and got curious about the substitution cipher in the mosaics.”

  “Why? That’s preschool-level encryption for you,” I said. I did not want to think about those damn mosaics while I was between Strands. �
�Anyhow, all it unlocks is a phrase from some arcane alchemical blessing.”

  Mortimer shrugged. “I needed a little mind candy. Giving myself fifteen minutes for decryption.”

  I sat on a stool beside him. “What do you mean—decrypt what? The whole thing’s gone. Exposure and pillaging made it disappear a thousand years ago, there’s nothing to search for.”

  “The Internet disagrees with you,” he said, and nodded toward the screen. “It was eventually swallowed up in a massive mudslide and so . . .” He read off the screen: “‘It lay forgotten and undisturbed under a protective layer of earth for 1,700 years, until a few decades ago.’”

  “A . . . mudslide?” I echoed. The topography of the site, relative to the mountainside, didn’t sync with a mudslide seismic enough to cover that sprawling compound.

  “Yep. Now it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site that gets half a million visitors per year.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “That’s why I’m interested. Let’s find Hanno Gisgon’s mosaic.” He began clicking through links.

  I looked over his shoulder. It was disorienting to see photos of the floors I knew so well now. The stony-faced cupids fishing, Orpheus taming the beasts, the emperor’s time-lapse chariot race, even the latrines we’d used. All devoid of furniture and people. Eerie.

  A legend in the upper right corner of the screen provided a map of the whole compound, with links to each chamber. I pointed. “That’s the room where it was being set.”

  Mortimer clicked on it. A mosaic filled the screen.

  I knew it wouldn’t be Quince’s comet design. But Hanno Gisgon hadn’t stuck with his Nine Muses either. The mosaic on the screen depicted a group of young women—one blond, one redheaded, two with black brows much darker than their hair. All save one wear nothing but mammalare and extremely (excuse the term) truncated subligar. The one exception wears only a see-through golden dress, which drapes over one arm but leaves the other arm and one breast exposed. This young woman’s face and expression and even the proportions of her body bear a remarkable resemblance to Livia’s.