Gunpowder Empire

Seven

Jeremy had thought bullets and cannonballs would start flying as soon as war between Rome and Lietuva was declared. That was how things worked in his world-not that people there bothered declaring war any more. They just launched missiles and sent tanks over the border. Things were more formal here. The gunpowder empires clung to rituals and customs that had their roots in the days of ancient Greece. And even if bullets and cannonballs flew fast here, too, armies didn't. They were tied to the speed at which a man could march and a horse-drawn wagon could roll. Nobody went anywhere in a hurry, not in the world of Agrippan Rome.

The people of Polisso took advantage of the time they had before the Lietuvans arrived. More soldiers came into the town, these troops tramping up from the south. More wagons full of wheat and barley came with them. As far as men and supplies went, Polisso was ready to stand siege.

Whether the walls were ready was another question. They were made of thick stone, sure enough. But even thick stone walls fell down if enough cannonballs hit them. In the home timeline, people had solved that by building huge earthen ramparts instead of stone walls. They weren't so impressive, but they worked better. A cannonball that hit piled-up earth didn't go crash! It went thud! and buried itself without doing much harm.

Nobody here had figured that out yet. It had taken two or three hundred years to see in the home timeline, and wars there had been a lot more common than they were here. There, in the centuries right after the invention of guns, Europe had been crowded with a whole slew of kingdoms and principalities and duchies and independent archbishoprics and free cities and even the occasional republic. Somebody was always fighting somebody else, and either coming up with new tricks on his own or stealing the almost-new tricks somebody else had come up with a few hundred kilometers away.

It wasn't like that here. Almost all of Europe belonged to either Rome or Lietuva. Almost all the Near East belonged to either Rome or Persia. The gunpowder empires did fight among themselves. But they usually fought once a generation, more or less. There wasn't the unending strife that had lit a fire under change in the home timeline.

And now is the time, Jeremy thought. Joy and rapture.

The first Lietuvan cavalrymen reached the outskirts of Polisso eight days after news of the declaration of war. They attacked a wagon train bringing still more grain into the town. Jeremy heard the details only later, in the market square. At the time, all he noticed were a few distant bangs, like Fourth of July fireworks at a park a couple of kilometers away. The big, clumsy matchlock pistols cavalrymen here carried couldn't be reloaded on horseback. The Lietuvans did most of their damage with bow and sword and lance.

Most of the time, they would have set fires all through the fields around Polisso. Not much point to that today, though, because it had rained the day before. The horsemen trampled long swaths through the green, growing wheat, then rode back the way they'd come.

Several of the wagons rumbled past the house where Jeremy and Amanda were living. Some of the animals that pulled them had been hurt. Some of the men who drove them had been hurt, too.

Jeremy gulped at the sight of bandages strained- soaked-with blood. He gulped even more at the sight of flesh punctured by bullets or split by swords. Some of the wounds had been roughly stitched up in the field. The drivers and guards who'd been hurt moaned or wailed or screamed.

In Los Angeles in the home timeline, Jeremy saw gore at the movies or on TV or in video games. He'd hardly ever run into the real thing himself. Oh, he'd gone past a restaurant once not long after a shooting, and he'd seen a few traffic accidents where people got hurt. But he'd never seen so many men other men had hurt on purpose before. And he'd never had the feeling, This could happen to me. He did now.

Doctors ran toward the wounded drivers and guards. They might do a little good. They had long-handled probes for digging out bullets. They could sew up sword-cuts and set broken bones. But all they had to fight pain while they worked was opium, which wasn't nearly enough. And all they had to fight infection was wine.

Injured men screamed louder when the doctors splashed it on their wounds. Jeremy would have screamed, too. Rubbing alcohol stung like the devil when you put it on a little scrape. Splashing something full of alcohol on a gaping cut… Just the idea made him shudder.

Wine wasn't that good a disinfectant-better than nothing, but not great. And there was more filth in this world than in the home timeline-far more. Some of those wounds would fester. When they did, there was nothing to do but drain them and hope for the best. A lot of the time, that wouldn't be enough, either. Some men would die of fever. No one in this alternate could do a thing about it.

About half an hour after the wagons came into Polisso, someone knocked on the front door. Jeremy opened it. Waiting in the street was a lean, dark man in a tunic of good wool but without too much embroidered ornament. After a second or two, Jeremy recognized him. “Good day, sir,” he said politely. “You're Lucio Claudio, aren't you?”

“Called Fusco. Yes, that is correct.” Lucio Claudio nodded. He had the air of somebody who liked to dot every i and cross every t. “I have the honor to act as man of affairs for Gaio Fulvio, called Magno.”

“Yes, I know. Won't you come in?” Jeremy stepped inside. “We can sit in the courtyard, if you like. Would you care for some wine and honey cakes?”

“Thank you. That would be pleasant.” By the frown ironed onto Lucio Claudio's face, he had trouble finding anything pleasant. But he was being polite, too.

Jeremy sat him down on a bench in the courtyard. He- politely-admired the flowers. Jeremy went into the kitchen to get wine and cakes for the two of them. While he was there, Amanda came in and hissed, “What's he want?“

“Don't know yet,” Jeremy answered. “He hasn't said.”

His sister looked daggers in the direction of Lucio Claudio. “He's a snoop.”

“Well, who here isn't?” Jeremy said. “He's Gaio Fulvio's man, too, and Gaio Fulvio is a big wheel in this town. People say he's got Sesto Capurnio in his back pocket. I wouldn't be surprised. I can't just ignore his man of affairs.“

“Don't trust him,” Amanda said fiercely.

“I don't intend to.” Jeremy picked up the tray. “No matter what you think, I'm not dumb.”

“Don't be, that's all.” Amanda scowled at him.

He carried the refreshments out to Lucio Claudio. Gaio Fulvio's man of affairs praised the cakes-once more, politely. He spilled out a small libation for the gods and muttered a prayer before he drank any wine. He waited for Jeremy to do the same. Jeremy did, but in place of the prayer said only, “To the spirit of the Emperor.”

“You are a Christian?” the local asked, frowning.

“Yes, we're Imperial Christians,” Jeremy answered.

“It is permitted,” Lucio Claudio admitted. His face said it wouldn't be if he had anything to do with the way things worked. He took another sip of wine, then gave a grudging nod. “Not bad.”

“Glad you like it,” Jeremy said, even if the man of affairs hadn't gone that far. “I hope your principal is pleased with his hour-reckoner?”

“He is.” Again, Lucio Claudio sounded as if he was admitting something he would rather not have. “He is,” he repeated, “though he does still wonder how you few merchants are the only ones who sell such marvelous devices.”

“Hour-reckoners are not the only things we sell, you know,” Jeremy said proudly. “We have fine razors, too, and mirrors of wonderful quality, and knives with sharp blades and many attached tools.”

Amanda had told him to be careful. He'd said he would, but he hadn't. He'd started bragging instead. And that turned out not to be such a good idea just then. He couldn't even blame the wine. He'd had only a sip.

Lucio Claudio smiled. It was the sort of smile an evil banker in a bad movie might have given when he foreclosed on a widow's mortgage. “Yes, I do know about these things,” he said. “So does Sesto Capurnio.”

Uh-oh, Jeremy thought, too late. He did his best to cover up: “I'm sure he hasn't got any complaints about quality or value.”

“No.” Lucio Claudio didn't like admitting that, either. But the shark's-teeth smile didn't slip from his face. “Because of the many, ah, unusual matters pertaining to your family, he now requests and requires an official report on your activities.”

What Jeremy thought this time wasn't, Uh-oh. It was, Damn! An official report meant imperial bureaucrats were going to take a long, close look at the traders from Crosstime Traffic. That was the last thing he wanted. Well, no. He shook his head. The last thing he wanted was to be cut off from the home timeline. He had that. Now he had this, too. Talk about adding insult to injury…

Maybe he could stall if he couldn't get out of it. He said, “Regulations state that an official report must be requested in writing.”

“So they do. And why am I not surprised that you know those regulations very well?” Lucio Claudio had a nasty sarcastic streak. He also looked to be enjoying himself. From his belt pouch he pulled a rolled-up sheet of papyrus sealed with a ribbon and a big, blobby red wax seal. He aimed it at Jeremy as if it were a pistol. “Here.”

“Thank you,” Jeremy said, meaning anything but. He broke the seal and unrolled the papyrus. It was what the local had said it was. In the most complicated classical Latin at his command, Sesto Capurnio-or more likely his secretary- ordered an official report on the deeds and practices of the Soltero family. Jeremy looked at when the report was due, as if it were one for school.

Three weeks. He sighed. It could have been worse. They could have wanted it day after tomorrow. If they were really suspicious, they would have wanted it day after tomorrow. Of course, if they were really suspicious, they would have torn the house apart for answers.

But answers they wanted, even if they were willing-for now-to ask instead of tear. The more Jeremy looked at the written request, the less happy he got. The bureaucrats of Agrippan Rome took pride in their attention to detail. They'd outdone themselves here. They wanted to know how every item Crosstime Traffic traders sold was made. If that information wasn't available, they wanted to know where the traders got each one. They wanted to know how much the traders paid for each. They wanted to find out about profit margins. They were curious about why the traders always wanted grain, not cash.

“This is a mistake.” Jeremy pointed to that question. “We take silver. Ask Livia Plurabella if you don't believe me.”

“Let me see.” Lucio Claudio examined the paragraph. He scratched his chin. “Do you claim the error makes the official request invalid?”

“I could,” Jeremy said. Gaio Fulvio's man had to know as much, too. Any mistake on an official document invalidated it. That could be true even in the home timeline. Here, it was as much an article of faith as the cult of the Emperor.

“If you do, I will return with a revised request,” Lucio Claudio said. “I do not know when I will return. I do know the date on which we want your official report will not change- unless it moves up.”

The Romans also wanted to know where Jeremy and Amanda's folks had gone. He'd already explained that to Sesto Capurnio. If they were still asking, the city prefect didn't much like what he'd heard. At least he wasn't sending men to dig up the basement and see if Mom and Dad's bodies were there. That was something-a very small something.

“I won't make the claim,” Jeremy said. Lucio Claudio looked smug. Jeremy added, “I am going to remind you there's a war on, though. If King Kuzmickas and the Lietuvans lay siege to Polisso, I don't know if I can get the official report in on time. Flying cannonballs make it hard to write.” He didn't want Lucio Claudio thinking himself the only one who could be sarcastic.

“I suggest you get to work on the report now, then.” Lucio Claudio sounded just like a teacher when a student complained about too much work. “The sooner you start, the sooner you'll finish.”

Thanks a lot, Jeremy thought. He almost said that out loud. Just in time, he swallowed it instead. He already had enough problems here. Why make things worse by offending Lucio Claudio? Sitting there eating honey cakes and sipping wine with him made the next half hour the most uncomfortable time Jeremy had ever spent. It wasn't a year before the local finally left. It only seemed that way.

Amanda looked up from the official request to her brother. She said, “Well, I know the best thing we can hope for.”

“What? The Lietuvans blow up Polisso?” he asked.

“No. Mom and Dad get back before we have to give the prefect the report.”

“Oh.” Jeremy thought about that. He nodded, but not as if his heart was in it. “We can hope, yeah, but I just don't know. Something's got really messed up in the home timeline. If it hadn't, we wouldn't have been stuck here by ourselves so long already.”

It wasn't that he was wrong. He was right. He was, in fact, much too right. Amanda had done her best not to think about why no one had sent them any messages, why no transposition chamber had shown up in the subbasement-or, for that matter, in the cave a few kilometers away.

If the Lietuvans besieged Polisso, that cave wouldn't do the Crosstime Traffic people much good. They'd be on the outside looking in. Could they get through a whole army? Maybe, but Amanda didn't see how.

She had to look at staying here not just for a summer with her folks, but forever. Forever. She couldn't imagine a scarier word. Only one thing kept her from breaking down and crying in something as close to panic as made no difference. She didn't want Jeremy laughing at her for going to pieces like a girl.

It never occurred to her to wonder how close Jeremy was to going to pieces himself.

“Sooner or later, they're bound to come after us,” he said. Was he talking to convince her, or to convince himself? “They can't just leave us here.” If he'd stopped there, it would have been a pretty good pep talk. But he went on, “I wish I knew what happened at the other end.”

“Maybe…” Amanda let her voice trail away.

“Maybe what?” Jeremy asked.

Amanda said the worst thing she could think of: “Maybe somebody… found Crosstime Traffic.”

People from the home timeline had only been traveling to the alternates for about fifty years. They hadn't discovered all of them. The math said they probably couldn't discover all of them. They hadn't even scratched the surface of the infinite swarm of alternates that were out there. They sure hadn't discovered anyone else who could go from one timeline to another.

But just because they hadn't discovered anyone like that didn't mean there wasn't anyone. In a timeline that had branched off from theirs long, long ago, other people might have figured out how to go crosstime five hundred years ago, or five thousand. They might have their own trading zone-or their own crosstime empire. And if they did, and if they noticed newcomers… they might not be friendly. They might not be friendly at all. That could be very bad news indeed.

“Nice, cheerful thought, all right,” Jeremy said. “But I don't believe it. Why now? Why not before?”

“I don't know,” Amanda said. “But why not now? If you've got a good reason, I'd love to hear it.”

She really hoped her brother would come up with something. Jeremy was smart. And he was a year older. Most of the time, that didn't matter. Every once in a while, it did. If he knew why crosstime travelers from a faraway alternate couldn't have found the home timeline, that would have been wonderful.

But he just said, “It doesn't seem likely, that's all.” “Getting stuck here doesn't seem likely, either!” Amanda burst out. “But we are! Why?”

“Something went wrong somewhere-that's got to be it,” Jeremy said, which was true but wasn't reassuring. “It doesn't mean the home timeline's been invaded by one where Alexander the Great discovered transposition chambers.”

“It could mean that. You know it could,” Amanda said.

“It could mean all kinds of things. Bombs. Earthquakes. Who knows what?“ Jeremy was trying very hard to be reasonable. ”Why come up with something that's never happened before and probably isn't happening now?“

“Because I never got stuck in an alternate before,” Amanda blazed. The more reasonable Jeremy tried to be, the less reasonable she wanted to be.

He went right on trying: “It has to be something natural, something possible, for heaven's sake.“

“What's so impossible about somebody else discovering crosstime travel?” Amanda asked. “We did ourselves, and we worry about it on some of the timelines that aren't far from ours. Why not somebody else, a long time ago?”

“Well, if somebody else did do it, they're liable to come up from the subbasement and wipe us out in the next twenty minutes,” Jeremy said. “What are we going to do about that?”

Amanda hadn't the faintest idea. She hadn't thought she could feel any worse than she did already. Now she discovered she was wrong. “Thanks a lot,” she told her brother. “You just gave me something brand new to worry about.”

He shook his head. “Nope. No point worrying about that, because we can't do anything about it. What we can do is worry about this lousy official report, and about selling as much as we can, and about doing whatever we can to make sure the Lietuvans don't take Polisso. Getting captured and sold into slavery can ruin your whole day.“

“So can getting killed,” Amanda pointed out. “That, too,” Jeremy said.

He was so grave, so earnest, so serious, that Amanda started to laugh. She couldn't help it. When Jeremy was being reasonable, she didn't want to think. When he was being serious, she wanted to act like a clown. What went through her mind was, Anybody would think he's my big brother, or something.

“I don't know what else we can do except wait and hope and keep trying our best as long as we're stuck here,” he said now.

That was what she'd been thinking, too. She hadn't liked the idea. It was the best they could manage. No doubt of that. It still seemed grim. Or it had seemed grim, till he said it. Then, all of a sudden, it was the funniest thing in the world. That made no sense at all, which didn't stop it from being true. She giggled.

Jeremy gave her an odd look. “You're weird,” he said.

“You only just noticed?” Amanda laughed harder than ever. It was probably no more than reaction to too much stress carried for too long. It felt awfully good anyhow.

Solemn as usual, Jeremy shook his head again. “No, I'd suspected it for a while now.”

“Really? What gave you the clue, Sherlock?” I'm punchy, Amanda thought. Well, who could blame me? I've earned the right.

The market square was a busy place these days. Everybody who lived in Polisso was trying to get hold of enough food to last out a siege. The soldiers who'd come to reinforce the garrison were laying in food, too. They all reminded Jeremy of squirrels gathering nuts for the winter. But that was important business for the squirrels, and this was important business for the locals.

If you had grain to sell, you could pretty much name your price. Somebody would pay it. Jeremy knew how many modii of wheat were stored under the house. He didn't want to sell them, though, even if he could make a lot of silver on the deal. The local authorities already wondered about Amanda and him. They would ask why those sacks of wheat hadn't left the city, the way they thought the grain had. They would accuse him of profiteering if he sold now.

A soldier was arguing with a farmer. “You should take less,” he said.

“How come?” the farmer said. “When am I going to get another chance to make this kind of money?”

“But you're cheating me,” the soldier said.

“By the gods, I'm not,” the farmer answered. He was a big, burly man, almost as tall as Jeremy and half again as wide through the shoulders. Next to him, the soldier was a skinny, yappy little terrier. The farmer went on, “If you don't want to pay what I ask, you don't have to. I'll find other customers.”

“Not if the city prefect or the commandant sets a top price,” the soldier said. “They can do that. All they have to do is declare danger of siege. Everybody knows that's real. Then fixing prices is as legal as buying and selling slaves.”

“Oh, yes. It's legal. But prefects don't try it very often,” the farmer said. “And do you know why? Because when they set a top price, they always set it too cursed low. Then nobody wants to sell any grain. It just disappears from the market, and people start going hungry.“

“You- You-” The soldier looked as if he couldn't find anything bad enough to call the farmer. “To the crows with you!” he snarled at last, and stalked off. Disgust showed in every line of his body.

Laughing, the farmer turned to Jeremy and said, “I'd like to see him get a better deal from anybody else.”

Jeremy nodded. The farmer thought the way a merchant had to think. But if your city was in danger, didn't you have to ease off on that approach? If you didn't, wouldn't you end up without a city to do business in? Who decided when you did that? How did whoever it was draw the line?

Those were all good questions. Jeremy didn't have good answers for any of them. He was scratching his head as he went on to the temple dedicated to the Emperor's spirit.

When he stopped in the narthex to get a pinch of incense to light on the altar, the clerk who took his three denari for it looked puzzled. “By the records, Ieremeo Soltero, you have already made the required offering. Why are you here?”

“To make another offering,” Jeremy said. “Polisso may be in danger, after all.”

“How… public-spirited of you,” the clerk said.

Jeremy did his best to look modest. He felt more like a hypocrite than ever. But he wanted officials seeing him acting public-spirited. It might help take the heat off Amanda and him. Even if it didn't, it couldn't hurt. And what were three denari to him? Nothing but Monopoly money.

The clerk gave him his receipt and the incense. It smelled sweeter than the last pinch he'd got. Maybe they saved extra-cheap stuff for people making required offerings, and gave you something better if you were doing it because you really wanted to. Jeremy didn't know for sure. Up till now, he didn't think any trader had made offerings that weren't required.

He carried the incense into the temple proper. There they were; all the gods the Romans recognized, in statue or painting or mosaic form. They all seemed to be looking at him. He didn't believe in any of them except possibly Jesus, and the Jesus he knew wasn't the same as the one in this world. The effect was impressive even so.

Several pinches of incense already smoked on the altar. Either other people wanted to look public-spirited, or they were worried. Well, I'm worried, too, Jeremy thought. But he didn't believe lighting this incense would help make his worries go away.

He lit it anyhow, then stepped on the twig he'd used to make it start burning. The smoke from the incense definitely smelled better than it had the last time he sacrificed. The image of Honorio Prisco III stared blindly from behind the altar. Jeremy recited the prayer an Imperial Christian gave the Emperor's spirit. It still felt more like pledging allegiance to the flag than praying. But neither of the two men who stood near the altar to listen to prayers complained. He'd done what he needed to do, and he'd done it right.

And now he understood-a little better, anyhow-what his dad said about the uses of hypocrisy. He wondered if he'd ever have the chance to tell Dad so.

Even though Amanda's house had running water, she liked visiting the fountain. People of the female persuasion couldn't go as many places or do as many things in this world as men could. At the baths and at the public fountains, age and wealth and social class didn't matter so much. A woman could say what she pleased, and a lot of women did.

When Amanda went to the fountain on a warm, sticky summer afternoon, she found several women complaining about the soldiers quartered in their houses. “They eat like dragons,” said a plump middle-aged woman in a saffron tunic. “And then they grumble about the cooking! Do they pay a sestertio for what they get? Do they? Not likely!”

Another woman, also plump, nodded. “They lie around snoring till all hours, too. And they don't bathe often enough- or at all.” She held her nose. For good measure, she scratched as if she had fleas.

Amanda wondered how much she'd had to do with soldiers before. Her tunic was saffron yellow, too, which meant she had money. Saffron dye wasn't cheap here. And, in this world, you had to be rich to have enough food to get overweight.

A couple of lines of Kipling from English Lit also ran through Amanda's head.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' “Chuck 'im out, the brute!”

But it's “Savior of 'is country” when the guns begin to shoot.

They'd never heard of Kipling in Agrippan Rome. But he understood what made them tick, all right.

“The soldiers aren't so bad,” the slave girl named Maria said in a low voice. “We have some in our house, too, and they don't do anything worse than pat me a little.”

In the home timeline, that would have been bad enough. It struck Maria as a miracle of moderation here. Different worlds, different standards. Amanda had to work to make herself remember that. It wasn't always easy. Of course, next to Maria's being a slave to begin with, how big a deal was it that some soldiers let their hands roam more than they might have? Probably not very.

Maria asked, “How is your mother? I have not seen her for a while.”

“She and Father, uh, left Polisso,” Amanda said. “He took her to a healer in Carnuto who's supposed to be one of the best, this side of Rome or Athens.”

“I hope he will help her,” Maria said gravely. She didn't say anything about Dad and Mom leaving the two Solters children on their own here. By local standards, they were plenty old enough to take care of themselves.

“I got a letter from my father not long ago,” Amanda said. “He says Mother is doing much better.”

“She will do better away from Polisso. I think that's very likely,” Maria said. With a sour smile, Amanda nodded. Maria let out a small, sad sigh. “Having your letters must be nice. You can talk back and forth with Carnuto, and I can't even make myself heard across the street sometimes.”

I can talk back and forth a lot farther than that-or I could if we weren't cut off, Amanda thought. Out loud, she said, “If you want, I could teach you your letters. It isn't very hard. Then you'd be able to read and write, too, at least some. And it's like anything else. The more you do, the easier it gets.”

Maria's jaw dropped. “Could you?” she whispered. “I don't think my owner would mind. I'd be worth more to him if I knew something like that. And”-her eyes widened-“and I'd be able to read the Bible for myself. What could be better than that?”

Not all the books in the New Testament here were the same as they were in the home timeline. The Gospel according to John didn't exist in Agrippan Rome. It was supposed to date from the first half of the second century. By then, history here was different enough from what had happened in Amanda's world that John either hadn't written or had never been born at all. The Acts of the Apostles had the same name, but didn't say all the same things. And some of Paul's epistles went to churches to which he hadn't written in the home timeline. Comparative Bible scholarship across timelines was a field that was just getting off the ground.

It was also a field Maria had never heard of. She never would, either. As far as she knew, hers was the Bible. Amanda said, “Yes, I think you should be able to.” There were two or three translations into classical Latin (none by St. Jerome, who'd never lived here) and several more into neoLatin. Some of those were from the classical Latin, others from the original Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek. Imperial Christians had an official version. Other kinds of Christians had different favorites.

“The Bible. The word of God, in my mouth.“ Maria looked as if she'd just gone to heaven. ”It would be a miracle.“

“No, it wouldn't,” Amanda said. “It's just something you learn how to do, like-like weaving, for instance.”

“But everybody learns how to spin and weave,” Maria said. “You have to, or you don't have any clothes. Reading isn't like that. Plenty of free women-plenty of rich women, even-can't read.”

“It's not hard, honest,” Amanda said. In the home timeline, the only people who could spin or weave were the ones who did it for a hobby and the ones who worked in living-history museums. Almost everybody could read, though. Across the timelines, people first learned what they most needed to know. Back home, that was reading. Here, it was weaving.

Livia Plurabella came up and said, “May I speak to you for a moment, Amanda Soltera?”

“Sure,” Amanda said, and turned away from Maria. The slave dropped her eyes to the cobblestones. When free people spoke with each other, she had to show she knew her place. Amanda asked, “Is something wrong with the razor you bought, my lady?”

“No, no, no.” Impatiently, the banker's wife shook her head. “I just wanted to put a flea in your ear.”

“What do you mean?” Amanda understood the phrase. The older woman wanted to warn her about something. She didn't know what the banker's wife thought she needed warning about.

Livia Plurabella spelled it out: “It's all very well to be polite to a creature like that.” She pointed toward Maria, who still made as if she were paying no attention to her social betters. “It's all very well to be polite, yes. We are by the fountain, after all. The usual rules do slip. If they didn't, we'd never hear anything juicy, would we?” She smiled, but only for a moment. “There is a difference, you know, between being polite and being friendly. That's a bit much, don't you think?“

The most annoying thing was, Livia Plurabella meant well. She was trying to save Amanda from showing bad manners. That meant Amanda couldn't get as angry as she wanted to. Smashing her water jug over the older woman's head would get her talked about, no matter how tempting it was. She said, “Oh, it's all right. I don't think the slave girl minds.”

Livia Plurabella took a deep breath. “Whether she minds isn't the point, dear,” she said sharply. Then she gave Amanda a suspicious look. “Are you making fun of me, young lady?”

“I wouldn't do that for the world,“ Amanda exclaimed.

“Hmm.” The banker's wife didn't seem any happier. “On your head be it,” she said, and stalked away.

On your head be it. No matter how Amanda usually aped the manners of this world, she wasn't really part of it. She didn't feel in her belly that being friendly with a slave was wrong, the way a free woman here would. Livia Plurabella's warning would have horrified a local merchant's daughter. It wouldn't have been necessary in the first place, because a local merchant's daughter would have played by the rules without needing to be warned. If Amanda felt like breaking the rules every once in a while, she would, and that was all there was to it.

She turned back to Maria. “Where were we? Talking about how easy reading is, weren't we?”

The slave girl said, “Don't get into trouble on my account, Mistress Amanda.” She sounded worried. She looked worried, too.

Amanda snorted. “She can't do anything to me.” Only after the words were out of her mouth did she wonder how true they were. A banker's wife was an important person in Polisso. Which people you knew, what connections you had, mattered more here than in Los Angeles. Connections mattered back home, but the laws and customs there assumed one person was just as good, just as important, as another. That wasn't true here.

Maria's expression showed how untrue it was. The slave said, “She's got clout.”

“Well, if you think we don't…” Amanda let that trail away. The merchants from Crosstime Traffic had money. Nothing made a better start for connections. But money was only a start. Amanda wasn't from here. Livia Plurabella was local. And the authorities in Polisso were already curious-to say the least-about how the crosstime traders operated. If you think we don't have clout… you may be right.

She filled her jar at the fountain. Most of the women swung full jars up onto their heads and carried them home that way. A few, though, carried them on the hip full as well as empty. Even with a hand up to support the jar on her head, she couldn't have been smooth and graceful like the locals. She would have looked like a clodhopper, a country bumpkin-but country bumpkins carried water jugs on their heads, too.

She had just left the fountain when she heard a noise like distant thunder. It came from the north. But it wasn't thunder. Some clouds drifted across the sky, but there was no sign of rain. For a moment, she was puzzled. Then she knew what it had to be-gunfire. The Lietuvan army was on the way.