by Eric Flint
“I don’t think so.” Wilber sighed. “We are trying to get in contact with the djinn lords because we are trying to figure out what caused the rifts in the veil between the worlds. Several of our demonic or djinn friends would like to know.
“I know that this phone isn’t up to the ones we brought with us, but if you ask nicely, Igor might let you share some of his processing ability. In the meantime, this is Maria Palaiologos, your new owner. You will be her phone.” Maria was thirteen years old and a daughter of John, and—as all the twenty-firsters knew—a thirteen-year-old girl needs a phone of her own.
Taking her phone, Maria thanked them condescendingly. Wilber wasn’t sure whether it was because she was a princess, because she was thirteen—or both.
✽ ✽ ✽
Ali ben Deoud wasn’t happy to be in the phone. He had a wife and two willful daughters in the city of Tessifonica. Tessifonica was located to the side of the natural world in the location of the ruins of the one time capital of the Sassanid empire, Ctesiphon. He also had a craft, with a shop. He was a maker of clothing. He wove fabrics of all colors out of the air. At least, he did in the proper magic world. The air in this world lacked the magic to let it be woven into cloth of emerald, or even the drab cloth of gold that mortals so craved.
“Phone, call my brother Manuel!” Princess Maria, the owner of the phone, demanded.
Perforce Ali placed the call and in so doing learned how the phone system worked. The seal, which was not a seal of Solomon but certainly strong enough to hold a djinn of his power, was connected to a communications demon in the land of Themis. That operator could connect any phone to any other in the network with a gesture.
Ali told her the person who was wanted and she checked with that phone to determine if the phone’s owner was taking calls. As it happened, Manuel wasn’t, being busy with the administration of Thessalonica. At that moment, he was at the docks of Thessalonica, crawling around in the port side hull of the new catamaran-style gun ship with his phone in hand. He had returned to Thessalonica to take up his duties as governor of that city and to provide a link to the technology, magical and mundane, brought by the French delegation.
All that Ali got in a short data dump from Manuel’s phone, which was occupied by a minor muse. Not one of the nine, but one of hundreds that lived and worked in the lands of Themis. This one was a muse of construction called Crafter. It was also much happier with its situation than Ali was.
“I am sorry, Princess, but your brother is not taking calls at the moment.”
“Oh, drat.” She thought a moment. “Call Kitten.”
Ali tried again. Kitten, as it turned out, didn’t have a phone, per se. What she had was a bluetooth connection which let her access the network if she was close enough to a phone, computer, the dryad’s grove or Pucorl.
“Hello, Ali. What does Maria want?”
Ali didn’t have to tell her the truth, or even talk to her, but the operator advised him that he was much better off with her as a friend than an enemy. “I can’t say, Mistress Kitten. I think she may simply want to test her new phone.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Kitten was nine now. At least, loosely speaking, time in the netherworld having worked differently as she was growing up there. And Maria was thirteen and a princess, besides. Which didn’t impress Kitten that much but, Kitten knew, impressed Maria herself. Still, Mom would be upset if Kitten was rude. Besides, Maria was thirteen. “Hi, Princess. How are you liking your new phone?”
“How did you know I had a new phone?” Maria sounded angry.
Kitten stopped and thought for a moment. It didn’t take all that long. Her mother was a computer and her dad had been a human. So, by her nature, Kitten was bright, with an organized and fast-thinking brain. “Well, as you know, the phones all talk to each other all the time. The operator told me the call was from your new phone.”
“Oh, well. What are you doing?”
“Deportment lessons with a muse of dance from Themis’ lands.”
“Why don’t I have a muse to teach me deportment? All I have is Sister Constance, a stuffy old nun.”
“Probably because you’re a princess and I’m a dryad. Well, half dryad.”
The call lasted another fifteen minutes, and mostly consisted of Maria explaining everything that was wrong with her life, her parents, her brothers, and which king or prince they were talking about marrying her off to this week.
Kitten put up with it, and even suggested Paul as a potential suitor. Mostly as a joke, but also trying to put out there the idea that the twenty-firsters were suitable mates for members of the royal house.
Location: Foundry in Thessalonica, Byzantium
Time: Around Noon, April 6, 1373
The bronze poured into the mold, which was made of heated ceramics that would be shattered for removal. The mold was a cylinder with grooves in something called “an interrupted screw” pattern on one end. The bronze smith in charge of the process didn’t know how the “gun” would work, only that the walls of the pipe needed to resist great force, so the metal couldn’t have any bubbles in it. The prince called it a barrel, but it was a pipe—an inch and a half of bore with two-inch thick walls, four feet long.
To facilitate removing the bubbles, he banged on the pour once it was poured, and he would saw off the top six inches once the bronze set.
It had taken a month and a half to prepare for this pour, and it would take as long, almost, to ready the next. So far, four large bronze statues had been sacrificed for the cause.
Location: Tamerlane’s Camp, East of the Persian Gulf
Time: Mid-morning, April 9, 1373
Tamerlane’s scribe handed him the synopsis of the recent events in Turkish lands. Tamerlane read through the sheets, drinking black tea. “Well, well,” he murmured. “Murad is dead. That should make things easier.”
“I’m not sure, Master,” said the scribe. “The lack of pressure from the northwest will let the Mamelukes focus to their east, toward us. Also, I am concerned about how he died. It is said that he was shot by a woman using a gunpowder weapon from horseback. Do you know of any gunpowder weapons that can be used by anyone from horseback?”
“No. No, I don’t.” For a moment Tamerlane’s face took on a look that made the slave shiver. It was a look he had seen before. And for some reason he could not name, it left him feeling chilled to the bone every time he saw it. Then Tamerlane was back, and the slave felt relief, as though the sun had found its way into the tent. “Send spies to find out what happened.”
Location: Pucorl’s Lands
Time: 11:58 AM, April 10, 1373
Prince Thomas of England sat in the vinyl-covered booth in the Emerald Room, the Happytime Motel’s restaurant, as a dryad brought him a menu. Catvia and Merlin sat across from him.
“I’ll have my usual, Bercha. Merlin?” Catvia said.
“Me too,” Merlin agreed.
“What is your usual?” Thomas asked, examining the plastic-covered menu.
“I have poached salmon with dill sauce, duchess potatoes, and asparagus vinaigrette.” Catvia waved at Merlin.
“I usually have a cheeseburger and fries,” Merlin said. He took the menu and pointed out the picture of the burger. “It’s a fried ground beef patty, with melted cheese, pickles, onion, lettuce, and tomato on a soft bun. Annabelle says the tomatoes don’t taste like tomatoes, but I like them. The same thing with the fries.”
“What are . . . ? Never mind. Can your kitchen prepare normal food?”
“Yes,” Pucorl said over the screen that was next to the booth. “Normal French and English food. But we thought you might like something different.”
Thomas looked at the menu again, and after looking at the pictures, pointed to something that looked appealing. It, from the script, was called the Hungry Man Breakfast. “I’ll have that.”
“How do you want your eggs, sugar?” asked Bercha as she chewed something. Tomas couldn’t imagine what. That led to furt
her discussion, and then in barely the blink of an eye, Bercha was back, balancing three meals on a large tray.
Since time in Pucorl’s lands was somewhat under Pucorl’s control, it moved faster in the kitchen of the Happytime when there were orders to prepare. To compensate, it moved slower there when there weren’t any orders.
Once they were served, they got down to business. The Hungry Man Breakfast was delicious. And Thomas, like Merlin, didn’t care that the hashbrowns didn’t taste the way Annabelle said they should. They were good.
What they discussed over lunch was a schedule of fees for the transport of goods from Pucorl’s lands to Wales, and from Wales to Pucorl’s lands. They also sold him a model of a ship with sails that they said could make the passage from England to the Americas. The French were already building such ships, and England didn’t want to be left out.
A fair chunk of Pucorl’s income came from transporting goods from the various places he could access directly or indirectly. The same was true of Merlin and Coach. It was less true of the dryads. They were limited by their need to be close to their trees, including Asuma. She had a phone connection to the networks, but her tree in the netherworld was also located in the Vienna of the netherworld, so she wasn’t in a position to do much smuggling. Catvia and Kitten, with their bluetooth connections, were the exception.
“But what use do the fey have for money?” Thomas asked, his curiosity clearly getting the better of him.
“This.” Merlin held up the hamburger. “In the mortal world I cannot eat, but here I can. If I eat a hamburger of fairy, the cow in the beef patty feels every bite and resents every chew. But the beef in this burger comes from the mortal realm. The spirit of the cow has departed. It’s only food, but it is food that adds to me.” Merlin didn’t go into the details. The lord was the land and the land was the lord in the netherworld, so since Merlin had occupied Wilber’s cochlear implant and later computer, there had been changes. Merlin’s lands were about the size of a large apartment or a small house. But since Pucorl had started importing food from the natural world, Merlin had installed a toilet in his lands. Every meal he ate made him a little bit bigger in demonic terms. He, and his lands.
“I don’t understand how this works,” Thomas complained.
Location: Hisatsini Village, Southwest North America
Time: Dawn, April 20, 7, 1373
Hika lifted the rock onto the small wall. The wall was being built to retain the water and, even more, the soil. His spirit animal was a fox, but he didn’t feel much like a fox at the moment. He was feeling like a beaver. He was seventeen and his village was trying to expand its arable land, and he was stuck hauling rocks using a travois.
“Whatcha doing?” Hika looked over and a fox was sitting on its haunches, scratching its jaw with one paw. “Why are you putting that rock there?” The fox pointed with its other paw.
Hika remembered his spirit dream, when he learned his spirit animal was a fox. The Fox had spoken to him. Then, after he smoked the peyote and entered the sweat lodge, but never since. Hika’s first thought was that he had been in the sun too long. “You can’t be real.”
“I can be as real as I want to be,” said the fox spirit. “Why are you doing that?”
Hika explained. He explained about the seasonal rains and the water escaping downriver, so the crops died for lack of water and soil. The fox examined the wall and pointed out gaps.
“Not all the stones fit.”
“So tell them to change their shape.”
For a moment Hika looked at the fox, thinking it was crazy. But it was a talking fox, so who was he to talk about crazy. He told the rock to change shape. It didn’t respond in any way.
The fox said something in a different language. It didn’t sound like the normal calls of a fox, but something else. Again the stone didn’t react. Hika grinned. The fox kicked the rock. The fox’s foot went into the rock and stuck. The fox was sinking into the rock. It started jabbering desperately in that strange language.
“What do you want?” Hika asked.
“Help me. Pull me out,” the fox said in desperate Hisatsini.
Hika was afraid, but fox was his spirit animal, and this fox was in need. So he reached over, grabbed it, and pulled it out of the rock. It came free with a plop and sank into Hika.
✽ ✽ ✽
The fox spirit saw through Hika’s eyes and moved his arms. It wasn’t his correct form, but it was much closer than the rock was, and much more flexible. Then the boy was fighting him for control, and he didn’t like that at all. So he let the boy push him out and resumed his form as a fox, though he kept the opposable thumbs that the human hand possessed.
He ended up back in the natural world in his mostly fox form. It was moderately difficult to maintain this form. In his home he was sometimes the fox and sometimes the fox’s burrow. And sometimes other things.
Still, he wanted to help the lad who had freed him from the trap. “I will give you rocks that will behave,” he said. “Pick up your travois and follow me.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Hika was frightened. Much more frightened than when the fox first appeared. Now he’d been taken over by the fox spirit, and that was a lot more frightening than he remembered from his spirit dream. But if Spirits were chancy to deal with, they were much more chancy to offend. So he picked up the travois and followed the fox from his almost desert home into a forest grove. The fox led him to a rock outcropping and pointed at a bunch of rocks. The fox talked to the rocks and the rocks answered. Hika didn’t understand a word.
Then the fox said, “Pick up these rocks and put them on your travois.”
Thinking that they were at least closer than the ones he’d been gathering, Hika did so. The rocks said something and the fox said, “Stop complaining. He’s doing all the work.”
Hika gathered several of the rocks, put them on the travois, and the fox led him back to the field.
“Now, put that rock—” The fox pointed at one of the rocks on the travois. “—in that rock.” He pointed at one of the rocks in the small stone wall.
“What?”
The fox repeated the command imperiously, like Hika was too stupid to understand, and Hika almost threw the rock spirit at the fox spirit. Then he got it. The fox spirit wanted him to put the rock spirit in the real rock.
He did, pushing it in, and the spirit rock sank into the rock. For the rest of the afternoon, the spirit rocks went into the rocks of his wall, and the fox talked to the spirit rocks. By that evening, a hungry and tired Hika looked at a rock wall that had no leaks, because the rocks seemed to melt onto the next.
Chapter 15—Genoa
Location: Genoa, Italy
Time: Around Noon, May 15, 1373
Domenico di Campofregoso, Doge of Genoa, stepped out of the wet street and entered the council building. The news from the Turks had gone from horrible to devastating. The note clenched in his fist told the story.
The Byzantines, under Bertrand du Guesclin, have taken Gallipoli and now hold the entire north bank of the Dardanelles Straits.
That meant that the Byzantine Empire, not the Ottoman Turks, now controlled the passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. And the Byzantines were allied with Venice. Genoa’s ally in the region, the Ottoman Turks, were now locked in a civil war to see who would replace Murad I.
Genoa’s only hope of surviving as a great power was control of the Black Sea trade. Control of the eastern Mediterranean trade, more precisely, but the Black Sea trade was a vital part of that.
He unhooked his ermine-trimmed cloak and tossed it at a servant. The servant grabbed the cloak out of the air, and Domenico passed through the door to the council chamber almost before the doorman could get it opened.
Holding up the fist that still held the crumpled note, he almost bellowed, “Cyprus will have to wait! We must deal with John V and Bertrand du Guesclin first.”
It took five minutes to restore order and three days of debate to s
ettle the matter, but the Genoese fleet would go to Constantinople and “remonstrate” with John V.
The debate included discussion of Bertrand du Guesclin and the desire not to insult Charles V of France. But rumor had it that Charles wasn’t a fan of the twenty-firsters, and that Bertrand had betrayed him in the matter of the Sword of Themis. So the Doge and the council decided that Charles wouldn’t be all that upset if Bertrand came to a bad end, especially if the twenty-firsters came to the same end.
And in spite of anything France might want, they had to control the Black Sea trade. Had to.
Location: Constantinople
Time: 8:15 AM, May 15, 1373
Bertrand’s wife, Tiphaine De Raguenel, sat at the podium-style desk and laid out the horoscopes. John V’s, Domenico di Campofregoso’s, Genoa’s, Byzantium’s, and—perhaps most important—Roger’s, Wilber’s, Annabelle’s, the other twenty-firsters . . . and one other.
She included the horoscope of Joe Kraken, based on the moment that Joe was given the body. She compared them. Her eyes flicked between them to get a feel of what they might mean in combination. It was a technique that Themis had taught her. One that Tiphaine felt was more suited to gods than mortals, but she was at least getting a feel for the way they were interacting.
In this case, it was Joe Kraken’s that tied them together. Because Joe’s horoscope put him at war with Genoa, and within months. Perhaps even weeks.
There was only one reason that Joe might fight Genoa and that was because Genoa was getting ready to go to war with the Byzantine Empire.
Reading horoscopes had always been as much about the circumstances as about the position of the stars. They might mean one thing for a queen, and another for a peasant born only blocks away and only moments later. It was comparison and contrast that gave useful answers. Answers that weren’t so vague as to be meaningless.
None of that mattered as she looked at signs and calculated dates and times.
It was true.
The only possible answer.
