In High Places

Five

As far as Jacques was concerned, the slave barracks were just. . . barracks. They were more crowded than the ones in Paris or in Count Guillaume's fort. The beds weren't as good— thin pallets of musty straw wrapped in scratchy fabric. The food wasn't as good, either, and they didn't get as much of it. But he could sleep on his pallet, and they didn't starve him. He had nothing to do but wait. A lot of soldiering was like that, too.

He did have interesting people to wait with. Some of the men in the barracks were black as ebony, almost as black as coal. When he first saw them, he thought they were captive demons. When they found out, they thought he was an idiot. They spoke better Arabic than he did, though with an odd accent.

"We were taken in war," one of them said. "It must have been God's will, though what we did to make Him angry at us, I cannot say." He spread his hands, palms up. Those palms were pale. So were the soles of his feet. That fascinated Jacques. The black man—his name was Musa ibn Ibrahim—went on, "And what of you, stranger? Till we came here, all the men we ever saw had brown eyes and black hair, whether their skin was light or dark."

Jacques' hair was an ordinary brown, his eyes gray. He said, "Some in my kingdom have hair darker than mine, some lighter. Some have yellow hair."

"Yes, I have seen this," Musa agreed. "It is peculiar."

"Not as peculiar as a black hide," Jacques said. But Musa only thought that was funny. Everyone in his kingdom was black, and so to him people were supposed to be that way. Jacques went on, "Some people—a few—in my kingdom have hair the color of polished copper."

"This I have not seen." Musa ibn Ibrahim raised an eyebrow. It was hard to make out against his dark skin. "I think you are telling stories to see what I will believe."

"By God and Jesus and Henri, I am not," Jacques said indignantly. "Ask any of the men from the north who are here. They will tell you the same."

Musa sighed. "Who knows what a Christian oath is worth? Muhammad was the seal of prophets, so Satan must have sent this Henri."

Muslims always said that. Jacques' fists bunched. He didn't feel like hearing it now. "You take it back!" he said. He was bigger than the black man, but Musa was older and no doubt more experienced. Musa also looked ready to fight, but he didn't throw the first punch.

"Hold up, both of you," an older man said. "They whip you if you brawl. They don't want you damaging the merchandise."

"I am not merchandise," Musa ibn Ibrahim said with dignity. "I am a man."

"Well, so am I," Jacques said, "and I'm a man you insulted."

"I did not insult you. I insulted your foolish religion," Musa said.

"Same thing!" Jacques said. "Shall I tell you what Christians think of Muhammad?"

"Who cares about such ignorant opinions?" Musa said, but Jacques saw him get angry. To Jacques' surprise, Musa saw himself getting angry, too. He started to laugh. "We are in a mirror, you and I. But which of us is holding it and which the reflection?"

Jacques knew what he thought. He needed a little while to realize the black man would think the opposite. He said, "If there were any Jews here, they would tell us we're both wrong."

"Ah, do you have Jews in your country?" Musa ibn Ibrahim asked. "I know there are some in the Maghrib, the land between my kingdom and Spain, and they say some of these Spaniards are Jews, too. In my land, though, we have none."

"You're lucky. We have a few," Jacques said. "We'd have more, too, if we didn't give them a hard time."

Musa looked at him. "We feel that way about Christians."

The Kingdom of Versailles felt that way about Muslims, too. But it couldn't treat them as badly as it treated Jews. The rich, powerful Muslim lands to the south would have gone to war to protect the Muslims in the kingdom if it did more than make them pay a special tax. Jacques didn't want to admit his land was too weak to do everything it wanted to. He changed the subject instead, asking, "What kind of dangerous animals do you have?"

"You mean, besides Christians?" Musa said slyly. Jacques spluttered. The black man laughed. He'd wanted to hit a nerve, and he had. He went on, "Well, the beast a warrior measures himself against is the lion."

"Lions? You really have lions?" Jacques said. Musa gave back a sober nod. The idea of lions impressed Jacques almost as much as the other man's color. "Have you hunted them?"

"I have killed three," Musa ibn Ibrahim declared with somber pride. Believe me or not—I don't care. I know what I have done, his manner seemed to say. Because of that manner, Jacques did believe him. Musa asked, "And what beasts have you? Not lions, by the way you speak of them. You are lucky if you do not."

"We have wolves and bears," Jacques said.

They were just names to the other captive. Jacques had to explain what they were. At first, Musa wasn't much impressed. "Wild dogs? We have wild dogs, too. I did not think to name them."

"Big wild dogs," Jacques said. "They can weigh almost as much as a man. And they hunt in packs. A lion could kill one wolf, I suppose. But I don't think a lion could beat a pack of wolves."

"Lions hunt in prides, too," Musa said, which Jacques hadn't known. "What of these other beasts, these beers?"

"Bears," Jacques said, laughing. "A beer is something else." As well as he could, he told Musa about bears. He wondered how much sense his words made to the black man. Then he wondered how well he understood Musa. Which of them was the looker, which the image he looked at? Or were they just two mirrors, looking back at each other?

Annette found herself bored in the slave barracks. She'd expected a lot of things, but not that. She asked permission to write a letter to her kin in Marseille, asking for ransom. The men who'd caught her refused. "It would take too long," one of them said. "We need the money now, as soon as the next auction comes. And we would have to pay to send the letter all that way, and find someone who was going there to carry it."

They plainly meant it. They'd stopped worrying about her judo tricks, too—they didn't seem to have time to worry about them. In the home timeline, she could have telephoned or e-mailed or faxed or, when speed wasn't too important, put a stamp on an envelope and thrown it in a mailbox. Mail here was catch-as-catch-can. If you wanted to send a letter, you found someone who was going your way and paid him to take it. The person who got it would usually pay him a little something, too.

The other women in the barracks thought she was odd for knowing how to read and write. If any of them could, they didn't want to admit it. To amuse themselves, they spun wool into thread, rolled dice for pebbles they dug out of the rammed-earth floor, and chattered. The chatter didn't amount to much—mostly how they'd got caught and how many men would be sorry they weren't coming home. The Muslims among them also complained about how naked they felt without their veils.

To keep from seeming like a white crow, Annette complained about that, too, even if she didn't mean it. But she said, "Even if we don't have men to take care of us, we've got to do the best we can for ourselves. After all, we're people, too."

A couple of the others nodded. More looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. "What can we do?" one of them said. "They're going to sell us, and then we'll be stuck with whoever buys us."

"Even so," Annette said stubbornly. "We can make things better, or we can make them worse. Look at Sheherezade and the stories she told to Harun al-Rashid. She was just a harem girl, but she ended up a queen." The Arabian Nights were popular in this alternate, too. Not all the stories were the same as the ones in the home timeline, but lots of different versions circulated there, too.

"Yes, but Sheherezade was beautiful," said the other woman, who unfortunately wasn't.

"So what?" Annette said. That made all the other women exclaim. To them, if you weren't beautiful, you weren't anything. "So what?" Annette repeated. "Harun al-Rashid had lots of beautiful girls in his harem. He was the caliph. He could have as many beautiful girls as he wanted. If Sheherezade had been beautiful and stupid, he would have called her once and never bothered to do it again. She didn't get where she was because she was beautiful. She got there because she was smart. And if you're smart, you can get somewhere, too."

In the home timeline, that would have been water to a fish.

Here, Annette might have been preaching revolution. Some of the women saw what she was driving at. One of them said, "If you're really smart, you won't let your master know just how smart you are."

That might have held some truth in the home timeline, too. Bits and pieces of sexism lingered there even at the end of the twenty-first century. They sometimes popped up in surprising places, too. Things were better than they had been a hundred years before, though, and much better than they had been two hundred years earlier. Here, what the woman said was plain old good advice.

"If you want to show off how clever you are, you'll end up in trouble," another woman predicted.

"If you need to show off, you aren't as clever as you think you are," Annette said. "I didn't mean that. But if you act helpless and foolish all the time, what will happen to you?"

"You'll catch a man, and he'll take care of you." The other woman looked down her nose at Annette. "Well, you probably won't. Your tongue is too sharp."

"I'd rather have a sharp tongue than an empty head," Annette said. The other woman squealed. For a second, Annette thought she'd end up in a fight, which she hadn't done since she was in the fourth grade. She remembered using that judo throw against one of the slavers—it was about the last thing she did remember for a while. The other woman would fly through the air with the greatest of ease, too, if she came after her.

But she didn't. She just said, "You'll find out," and went back to her spinning.

Most of the time, the comeback would only have annoyed Annette. The way things were, it held too much truth for comfort. One way or another, she would find out, and sooner, not later. Before long, there would be another auction, and someone would buy her. Then she would see firsthand what slavery was like. If she ever escaped, that might come in handy as research. If she didn't. . .

Or maybe no one would buy her, and she'd have to come back to the barracks. Would that be better or worse? She had a hard time deciding. At least she wouldn't turn into property. But she would have to face the humiliating notion that nobody wanted her, even as a slave.

A slave. Back when she was training, they'd warned her, Anything that can happen to anyone else in that alternate can happen to you. Oh, she was immunized against diseases the locals could catch. Drinking the water probably wouldn't give her the galloping trots. She had had insect repellent to keep away bedbugs and lice. Now she didn't, and she itched. But the idea that they could sell her in the market square like a kilo of corned beef seemed ridiculous.

In the home timeline, it would have been. They took slavery for granted here. The only time the locals saw anything wrong with it was when they were being sold instead of doing the buying. To Annette, that was the wrong attitude. The thing was wrong all the time. Why couldn't they see it?

The home timeline had slaves, too. But its slaves had plugs or batteries. In this alternate, as in so many others, they didn't have machines to do things for them. They had to use people instead. And they did, and they didn't lose a minute's sleep over how unfair and evil it was.

It still didn't feel real to Annette, right up until the morning they took her out to the market square.

Every so often, Jacques had had daydreams about buying a slave. Owning one would make life easier for him. It would also be a sign that he'd arrived, that he'd become somebody. He knew lots of people who had dreams like that. In fact, he hardly knew anybody who didn't.

But who had daydreams about getting sold into slavery?

They tied Jacques' hands together behind him. They tied his left leg to Musa ibn Ibrahim's left leg. They tied another man's left leg to Jacques'. When they had all the men who were going up for sale in a line, they marched them all out into the market square. It was a slow, awkward march. They had to get used to staying in step with one another. Nobody fell down, which would have made things even worse. Jacques stumbled once. Catching himself without flailing his arms wasn't easy, but he managed.

Another line of luckless people was coming out of the women's barracks. Was Khadija there? Jacques smiled when he spotted her. A familiar face was nice. A familiar pretty face was nicer.

Guards with matchlock muskets stood not far from the auctioneer's platform. Slow, small trails of smoke rose from the men's lengths of match. The matchlocks were ready to shoot. If anybody tried to get away—if anybody could try to get away—he (or she) would be sorry.

Jacques looked out at the crowd in front of the platform. Some of the people out there would be customers. Others would just be out for a morning's entertainment. They would look over the men, ogle the women, and listen to the bidders going against one another. Then they would head off to their eateries and coffeehouses and gossip about what they'd seen and heard.

The auctioneer stepped up onto the platform. He was a small, dapper man with spotless white robes and a neatly trimmed black beard with a few streaks of gray. Bowing to the crowd, he said, "Welcome, my masters, welcome, three times welcome." His voice was bigger and deeper than Jacques would have expected from a man his size. It easily filled the square. Bowing again, the auctioneer went on, "In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, we have several fine lots of slaves to present to you this day."

In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. Where was the compassion here? Where was the mercy? Did the auctioneer even notice they were missing from what he did? Jacques didn't think so. Would he notice if he went up on the block himself instead of selling others? Jacques nodded to himself. Yes, very likely he would.

Up went the first man out of the barracks. He was middle-aged and scrawny. "He will work hard for you," the auctioneer said, trying to make him sound as attractive as possible. "See how honest he looks?"

Musa ibn Ibrahim laughed softly. "As if any slave is likely to be honest! Or is it different in your country, man who knows not lions?"

"Not a bit," Jacques whispered back. Musa laughed again. Jacques didn't intend to be any more honest than he could help once he got sold. He owed himself more than he owed any master, especially one he hadn't chosen for himself.

A few bids came in for the scrawny man. In spite of everything the auctioneer could do, he went for thirty dinars—less than half a pound of silver. That wasn't much of a price, and the auctioneer didn't look thrilled to get his silver. For that matter, the fellow who bought the scrawny man didn't look thrilled to have him.

Up came another man. He looked as ordinary as the one who'd gone before him, but he said he was a skilled mason. A big man out in the crowd asked him a couple of questions. He answered without any trouble. "See how clever he is!" the auctioneer cried. "He will do well for you!" The second man did better for the auctioneer, bringing in almost twice what the scrawny fellow had sold for. The big man who'd questioned him sent a flunky up with the money.

The big man bought several other slaves, including a couple of Musa's countrymen. He and an older fellow bid against each other time after time. More often than not, the big man outspent his rival. The older man looked less and less happy each time it happened. At last, he burst out, "A plague take you, Marwan! Have you all the silver in the world to call your own?"

The big man bowed. "Not all of it, sir, but enough for my needs, for which I thank God. What man could ask for more?"

"That is well said," declared the auctioneer, who didn't care where money came from as long as it came.

'Ten years ago, who in Madrid had heard of Marwan al-Baghdadi?" the older man said, playing to the crowd. "Who? Anyone? And now he dares to bid against me—me, Hassan ibn Hussein! Has my family not led here for generations? Where is the justice?"

"I have silver. I earned it honestly. I am free to spend it as I see fit," Marwan replied. "That's justice, as I see it." He had backers in the crowd, too, and they nodded and clapped their hands.

Hassan ibn Hussein frowned. "Silver goes only so far, sir. There is also blood."

Jacques would have agreed with that, but Marwan didn't. "Blood says your great-great-great-great-grandfather made your family's silver," he answered, politely but firmly. "It says nothing about what kind of man you are yourself. But silver you've earned on your own—well, that may say you have done well in the world."

His followers clapped again. They weren't rich enough to buy slaves, but they probably dreamt of the days when they would be. Hassan ibn Hussein muttered under his breath. He didn't say anything more, not out loud. But when the next man came up on the block, he bid the fellow's price up and up, even though the new slave didn't look very strong and didn't seem very smart.

His last bid raised the price to more than three times what the man looked to be worth. He glared over at Marwan al-Baghdadi, waiting for him to bump things up still further. By the way Hassan's eyes gleamed, he thought they'd both put their prestige on the line over the slave. Maybe he thought so, but Marwan didn't. With a smile and a bow, he said, "He's all yours, my friend."

Hassan ibn Hussein gaped. He looked like a fish just pulled from the water. Marwan had left him as high and dry as if he were a fish just pulled from the water. Now he had to lay out all that silver on a slave who wasn't worth it. That left him less money to buy slaves he really wanted at prices he could really afford to pay.

"That is an angry man," Musa ibn Ibrahim whispered to Jacques. "I hope he doesn't buy me. He would make me pay for his own folly."

Looking at the fearsome scowl on Hassan's face, Jacques nodded. "He tried to make this Marwan into a fool, but Marwan turned the tables on him."

A helper undid the rope that bound Musa's leg to Jacques. The black man got up on the platform. "See what a fine figure of a man we have here!" the auctioneer exclaimed. He asked Musa, "How were you taken?"

"In war. I was unlucky. It was the will of God," Musa answered.

"Do you see? He speaks Arabic well, and he is a pious man," the auctioneer called to the crowd. "He will work hard for you!"

Marwan al-Baghdadi bid on Musa. So did a couple of other men. Hassan ibn Hussein kept out of the auction. Marwan won it, and probably paid a little less than Musa might have brought.

That helper undid the rope between Jacques and the man behind him. He gave Jacques a little push, muttering, "Go on." Jacques went. He took his place where the others for sale had stood before him.

"See how white and fair he is!" the auctioneer said. "A Frank from the North!" Muslims called all Christians Franks, after the vanished Kingdom of France. The auctioneer eyed him. "Do you speak Arabic, fellow? Do you understand it?"

"No, I'm sorry, your Excellency, but I don't understand even a word of Arabic," Jacques answered—in Arabic.

The auctioneer threw back his head and laughed. "Clever as well as fair!" he said, and looked back to the crowd. "How much for this big, strong, smart slave? He will be a foreman in a few years, if God is kind."

Hassan ibn Hussein opened the bidding. Another man raised it a couple of dinars. Then Marwan al-Baghdadi spoke up. Jacques hoped Marwan would buy him, as much because the man was a great traveler as for any other reason. He'd come here to Madrid all the way from far-off, fabled Baghdad.

Hassan and Marwan and two other men bid Jacques' price up and up. When it got over a pound of silver, the other men dropped out, first one, then the other. At not quite a pound and a half of silver, Hassan sent Marwan a look that should have killed him. Marwan smiled back, which only made Hassan angrier. Angry or not, he threw both hands in the air instead of raising his bid again.

"Going once! Going twice! Sold!" the auctioneer chanted, and pointed toward Marwan al-Baghdadi. "Sold to this fine gentleman here!" He shoved Jacques, not too hard. "Go to your new master. Serve him well." Jacques got down off the platform. One of Marwan's men took charge of him. The fellow tied his left leg back to that of Musa, the last slave Marwan had bought.

"There," the man said, straightening up. "You're not going anywhere."

"No, I suppose not." Jacques hoped that sounded like a nice, meek answer. No, he wasn't going anywhere—not unless he saw a chance.

Annette had expected it to be ladies first, but it wasn't. They sold the men before they got around to the women. She had to stand out in the sun for two or three hours before things started happening with her. It wasn't torture or anything. The day was warm, but it wasn't hot. A man with a clay jar of water and a dipper went up and down the line. The waiting women could have a drink whenever they wanted to. The water in that jar was surprisingly cool. Had the jar been metal, the water would have been warmer. Sure enough, evaporation caused cooling, just the way they said it did in physics.

She watched Jacques get sold. He got down off the platform and went over to his new owner. Like the others who got sold, he didn't seem especially upset. This was part of life here—not a part anybody liked, but a part everybody knew how to handle. Annette didn't—couldn't—understand it. Why weren't they all screaming their heads off? This was wrong. And so it was, to her. But not to them.

Then the women started going up on the block. The auctioneer made his dumb jokes. He asked them questions about what they'd been before they got caught. If their answers showed they had two brain cells to rub together, he praised them to the skies. He wanted them to go for high prices, because that meant his commission went up.

Every so often, mostly with women who said they'd had children, he would look at their teeth. Whenever he did, Annette would grind hers. He really might have been selling horses up there, not human beings at all.

Except he was. And her own turn came closer every time someone else stepped down from the platform. And then she was stepping up onto it. "Here is a fine girl, good for all sorts of things!" the auctioneer said, and then, "Tell them your name, sweetheart."

"I am not your sweetheart, God be praised," Annette said coldly, which only made him chuckle. She went on, "I am Khadija, daughter of the merchant Muhammad al-Marsawi. If you send to Marseille, my father will pay far more than I cost to ransom me."

"There you go!" The auctioneer beamed at her. He beamed out at the crowd. "Hear that, my friends? Do you hear that? Spend a little money now, make more money later. How can you go wrong?" He looked back at Annette. "So you're a merchant's daughter, are you? What can you do?"

"I read and write Arabic and French," she said, adding, "I speak French, too," in that language. Returning to Arabic, she went on, "And I can cipher. I could keep your books better than whatever cheating fool you use now."

The auctioneer blinked. Annette wondered if she'd laid it on too thick. Women here weren't usually able to do things like that. If they could, they weren't supposed to brag about it. "Hear what a clever maid this is!" the auctioneer cried after that little startled pause. "You can put her to the test, if you like. And if she fails, by God, you can beat her as she deserves!"

Out in the crowd, men were nodding. If a donkey balked, they would beat it to make it go. And if a slave failed, they would beat him—or her, too. Why not? A slave was just as much their property as a donkey was.

"What am I bid, then?" the auctioneer called. "If she is as good as she says she is—and I believe her—you will get your money's worth from her even if you never see a copper of this ransom."

It boiled down to Hassan ibn Hussein against Marwan al-Baghdadi. She thought the older man wanted her for the ransom, the younger one for what she could do. She hoped Hassan would win—that gave her a better chance of getting free. But Marwan seemed to have more silver than he knew what to do with. Every time Hassan bid, Marwan raised the price. Finally, a horrible look on his face, Hassan turned away. "Going once!" the auctioneer called. "Going twice! . . . Sold!"

Numbly, Annette got down off the platform. Sold. She'd been sold.

Jacques was glad Marwan had also bought Khadija. At least there would be someone else he knew in the household. He had no idea how often he would have the chance to see her, but you could often work those things out. A lot of the time, it just depended on getting in good with a steward or a butler or maybe a head cook. He would have to look around and see which way the wind blew.

After the auction was over, Marwan paraded his new slaves through the streets of Madrid. Here as in the Kingdom of Versailles, you showed off if you were a rich man. Showing off was a big part of being rich. And the story of how he'd outbid Hassan ibn Hussein time after time would race through the city faster than wind-whipped fire. His prestige would rise. Hassan's would fall.

Marwan himself swaggered along at the head of the procession. He was having fun, laughing and joking with passersby and throwing coins to beggars and cripples and children.

"He acts like a prince, or a man who wants to be a prince," Musa ibn Ibrahim whispered.

"He does, doesn't he?" Jacques said. "I wonder what the men who are princes in this city will say to that."

"My very thought," Musa agreed. "I wonder what they will say after Hassan ibn Hussein whispers in their ears. And he will whisper in them, unless he shouts in them instead."

"Nothing we can do about that," Jacques said, and Musa nodded. What could a slave do about anything? Not much. Back in Paris, Jacques could have whispered into Duke Raoul's ear. The duke might not have paid any attention to him—but then again, he might have. Here, the only people Jacques knew were Musa and Khadija, and they were both slaves, too.

"Almost there," one of Marwan al-Baghdadi's men called.

From up on a roof or behind a shuttered window, someone said, "More slaves for the demons to eat up!"

"I don't like the sound of that," Jacques said. "I hope he's just a friend of Hassan ibn Hussein's."

"I fear no demons," Musa said stoutly. "As long as I worship God, how can demons harm me?" But in spite of his bold words, the black man nervously looked this way and that. Jacques wondered what he thought demons looked like. Jacques had thought they looked like him.

Marwan's man laughed. "Pay no heed to what foolish folk say. Sometimes we take slaves out to my master's country estates while it is still dark, so they can start work as soon as the sun comes up. The ignorant and lazy do not see them go, and so they think something bad has happened to them. In the name of God, it is a lie."

That sounded fair enough. All the same, Jacques would have scratched his head if his hands weren't tied behind his back. What the hidden man had said was so strange, he didn't know what to make of it. If someone had warned him that he'd be beaten or that he wouldn't get enough to eat, those threats would have made sense. But talk about demons? He supposed Madrid had its share of crazy people, like any other place.

Marwan al-Baghdadi's house was larger than most of the others on its block. Its outer wall was freshly whitewashed. The tiles on the roof were new and bright red—sun and rain hadn't faded them yet. All those things were signs of wealth, but didn't prove it. Coming back to the house with a new troop of slaves—that proved it.

Once the last slave went inside, Marwan's men closed the door and barred it. They undid the ropes that tied one slave's leg to another's, and also the bonds on their hands. Jacques chafed at his wrists where the rope had rubbed them raw. He looked around the courtyard in which the slaves stood. It held a fountain, a garden of flowers and herbs, and an old-looking statue of a lion.

"If you work well for me, I will treat you well," Marwan said. "You will have plenty to eat. You will have plenty to do, too, but not too much. If I work you to death, I lose the money I paid for you. But if you try to run away, you will be very, very sorry. I promise you that. You have no idea how sorry you will be. And you will not escape. I promise you that, too."

As usual, he sounded like a man who knew what he was talking about. Jacques didn't intend to try to disappear right away. He wanted to wait till he had a better notion of the lie of the land and what things were like here. If he saw a chance then . . . That would be a different story.

The stew Marwan's cooks served was full of mutton and barley and onions. You could have seconds if you wanted. Jacques did. His new owner seemed to be telling the truth about the food, anyway. And the beds in the men's hall were real cots with wood frames and mattresses on leather lashings, not just pallets on the floor. He hadn't slept so soft since he left Paris. It wasn't what he wanted, but it could have been worse.

It could have been worse. Everyone around Annette said so. She supposed the locals knew what they were talking about. Marwan al-Baghdadi did seem to give his slaves enough to eat. He worked them only till they got very tired, not till they fell over dead. No law told him he had to be so generous. No custom did, either. Everybody seemed to know stories about masters who made him look like a saint by comparison. But if he was such a saint, why did he own slaves?

Like the others, Annette had to get up at sunrise. After breakfast, she went to Marwan's kitchens. They were always full of women, and the women always had plenty to do. In low-tech kitchens, there always seemed to be more work than people to do it.

Something as simple as the heat under a pot wasn't simple. You couldn't just turn a valve or a switch to control it. You had to keep a real live fire going, feeding it sticks every so often so it didn't get too big or too small. If it did, whatever was in the pot either burned or didn't cook at all. And you got in trouble.

Annette had had practice back in Marseille. She needed all of that not to give herself away a dozen times a day. She didn't lose her breakfast when she had to gut freshly beheaded ducks or chickens or pigeons. She just thanked heaven she didn't have to use the hatchet herself.

Washing dishes was as bad as getting food ready for cooking. There was no hot water. There was no dishwashing soap—even people-washing soap was an expensive luxury. Plates and cups mostly weren't glazed. Things stuck to them and soaked into them. There were no scouring pads, either. There was sand and there was elbow grease and there was time, lots and lots of time.

People talked. People sang. People scrubbed in rhythm. People chopped vegetables in rhythm. Every so often, people wandered out into the courtyard for a break. If you didn't do it too often or stay out there too long, nobody yelled at you. Annette was cautious. She didn't want to get in trouble. Some of the other women stayed out more. They did get yelled at. Nobody pulled out a cat-o'-nine-tails and whipped them, though.

Every so often, Annette and Jacques took a break at the same time. Then, not quite by accident, it was more than every so often. Some of the older women in the kitchens smiled behind their hands. But Annette wasn't the only one with a friend. Nobody made any big fuss about it.

Jacques said, "It could be worse," too. He was pleased with the way he'd helped repair a wagon.

"You should be working for yourself," Annette said.

He shrugged. "I suppose so. I hope I will again one of these days. But for now . . ." He shrugged again. Slavery was part of his world. He didn't like it at all, but it didn't sicken his spirit the way it did Annette's.

"We have to get away," she said. She wouldn't have said that to anyone else. Trusting anyone from an alternate didn't come easy for somebody from the home timeline. But you couldn't stay all alone, either. The poet who said nobody was an island knew what he was talking about.

Jacques looked around to make sure nobody could overhear. "Wait till they relax about us," he said in a low voice. "Wait till they think we're all right. Then . . ." Annette nodded.

But they left sooner than that, though not in the way they'd intended. A woman shook Annette awake in the middle of the night, saying, "Come with me. We are going to take you to another of the master's properties."

She yawned and got out of bed. Several more slaves were already up. The woman woke a couple of others. Then she led them all out of the female slaves' barracks. Annette thought they would go out on the road, but they didn't. Instead, the woman who'd wakened them led them to a doorway that looked like all the rest. When she opened it, it showed nothing but a stairway leading down.

One of the slaves laughed nervously. "Does this take us to the underworld?" she asked.

"No, no, no. Don't be foolish." The leader sounded as businesslike as if she came from the home timeline. "Just go down. Others will be waiting for you."

Down they went, farther than Annette had expected. The chamber at the bottom of the stairway was bigger than she'd thought it would be. Torches on the walls cast a dim, yellow, flickering light. As the woman had said, other slaves—men— already stood there. After a moment, Annette spotted Jacques. He saw her, too, and waved.

"Stay back near the edges of the chamber, everyone." Mar-wan al-Baghdadi's big voice raised echoes from the ceiling. "Do not go out near the center. It is not safe. By God, no harm will come to you as long as you do what I tell you to do."

Annette yawned again. What was he talking about? You'd almost think . . .

One instant, the middle of the underground chamber was empty. Then, silently and without any fuss, a huge, shiny metal box appeared out of nowhere. Slaves screamed and shrank back against the walls. Annette screamed with them. Her amazement was mixed with delight, not fear. That was—could only be—a Crosstime Traffic transposition chamber.