Master of the Revels

by Nicole Galland

  DAY 1991 (10 JANUARY, YEAR 6)

  Post from LTG Octavian K. Frink:

  Blev (cc Rudge):

  For obvious reasons (re: Lyons/Stokes/Oda/Shore) I’m keeping my eye on anything in the system that pings as outlier. Double-checking a DEDE assignment in a theater we haven’t built out yet. Why are we Sending a DOer back to fourth-century Sicily? Sicily looms large on the geopolitical map, but we’ve never been within a century of that DTAP.

  And why does the DEDE prep require a knowledge of mosaics?

  Your paterfamilias,

  Okie

  Reply from Dr. Roger Blevins:

  Okie (cc Rudge):

  Nothing to worry about, but I understand your curiosity. This is a support mission only. Hardly worth the name of “DEDE.” Very long-term butterfly effect to gather new historical data on site to feed into the Chronotron.

  —Blev

  From Dr. Constantine Rudge:

  Not sure I follow your grammar in that last sentence, Roger. What kind of historical data are we talking about, and what benefit is it to DODO? Curious to know the origin of this hardly-a-DEDE. Thanks.

  —Constantine Rudge

  From Dr. Roger Blevins:

  The Mosaic Gambit will slightly alter the long-term fortunes of a prominent Sicilian family, with the result that 1,400 years later they will be landlords of an ISR that would otherwise have been destroyed in World War II. The lost archives from that ISR represent a century of missing data that will no longer be missing once we keep the building from being bombed. We can then dump those archives into the Chronotron and voilà: more data points for calculating maximum causality of future DEDEs.

  Hope that helps.

  —Roger

  From Dr. Constantine Rudge:

  I’m not familiar with ISR as an acronym, please explain.

  I assume the Chronotron has confirmed there is no undesirable collateral impact.

  Also, still curious to know the origin of this idea.

  —CR

  From Dr. Roger Blevins:

  Institute of Scientific Research—sorry, need to update the Acronym page.

  —Roger

  From Dr. Constantine Rudge:

  Which institute of scientific research?

  From Dr. Roger Blevins:

  The Prussian Royal Observatory. It was destroyed in World War II. Now it won’t be.

  From LTG Octavian K. Frink:

  Just catching up on this thread, gentlemen. Raises a couple of questions: First, what kind of data will that yield, and second, how exactly does this DEDE prevent the observatory from being destroyed?

  From Dr. Roger Blevins:

  Obviously we won’t know what the data is until we see it. But the Royal Observatory is where Berkowski took the famous solar eclipse photo in 1851. Any data that increases our understanding of technology’s impact on magic is intrinsically of value to DODO, and the site where the terminal event of the technology-magic conflict occurred is an obvious place to look.

  According to the Chronotron, the Sicily Mosaic Gambit DEDE, once successfully accomplished, leads to a patrician family in Sicily gradually rising in prominence over the course of the Roman Empire, maintaining their wealth and influence after the fall of Rome, and migrating from Sicily to the northeastern frontier of what eventually becomes the Holy Roman Empire.

  As a result of this DEDE, the family will have enough political and financial clout 1,400 years later to sponsor and build the Royal Observatory on their own estate. Their estate is safely distant from the front when World War II happens. Therefore the observatory will not be destroyed.

  —Roger

  From LTG Octavian K. Frink:

  Thanks to Frank Oda, we already know everything we need to know about the “technology-magic conflict,” otherwise we wouldn’t be in business. There is no practical benefit to deepening our academic understanding of something we’ve already mastered operationally.

  That said, ancillary data in those archives might prove useful. As long as the Chronotron finds no negative collateral effects, and the DEDE itself is brief, low risk, and cheap to prep for, I’ll green-light it.

  But next time, clear it with me before establishing a new theater of operation, Roger.

  —Okie

  From Dr. Constantine Rudge:

  I respectfully disagree with your first paragraph, Octavian. After we put a man on the moon, we didn’t stop studying orbital mechanics or astrophysics. Assuming no collateral impact, I think this is a terrific research opportunity.

  Still waiting to hear the origin of it, however. Please satisfy my curiosity. Thanks so much.

  —Constantine Rudge

  From Dr. Roger Blevins:

  Thank you, Dr. Rudge, I heartily concur.

  While this idea was mine, I was inspired by our headline witch, Gráinne. She is understandably fascinated by the fate of magic in the four hundred years since her own time, and she was asking a lot of questions we had no answers to. You remember at the Fuggers’ New Year’s Eve party, how she monopolized that young woman, Cara Samuels, who introduced herself as an amateur historian of magic? With the success of this DEDE, we might be on the road to satisfying Gráinne’s curiosity, to our own benefit as well.

  —Roger

  From Dr. Constantine Rudge:

  Thank you, Dr. Blevins. Good to know.

  —C. Rudge

  [Sent moments later]

  Exchange of posts between Dr. Constantine Rudge and LTG Octavian K. Frink on private ODIN channel

  DAY 1991 (10 JANUARY, YEAR 6)

  Post from Dr. Constantine Rudge:

  Removing Roger from the thread.

  Keep an eye on this DEDE. Per our conversation over dinner the other week, I believe Roger is besotted with Gráinne, which is not surprising given how she presents to all men in leadership positions, and most especially to him. While she certainly behaves like a team player, her contribution to the Black Friday clusterfuck last fall remains unclear. She is a valuable asset, but also canny and not interested in playing by the rules.

  Reply from LTG Octavian K. Frink:

  Copy that.

  Post by Melisande Stokes on her personal GRIMNIR channel

  DAY 1991 (10 JANUARY, YEAR 6)

  Tristan was away in the 1606 London DTAP for what we anticipated would be a long stretch, but of course years of experience have taught us all that it could go on much longer—or much shorter. And we had no idea when to expect Oda-sensei’s return. So we kept the ODEC powered up and went about our other work. I had created a comfortable study-nest for myself on the living room sofa, and from here I have been multitasking (not a skill that comes naturally), going down rabbit holes on the Florentine estate to which Chira is being Sent, as well as Berkowski and his eclipse photo, and of course Shakespeare’s London, including Tilney (but there isn’t much on him). Because my thoughts were with Tristan, tonight I was focused exclusively on Macbeth. Erzsébet flounced about the house carrying Proust’s Greatest Hits and fussing about finding just the right place to sit; Mortimer was in Frank’s study, sorting through inconsistencies in the ODIN data and swearing a lot; Rebecca was doing the monthly accounts at her desk in the nook off the kitchen (including crunching numbers to see if East House Trust can indeed make an offer on the house that backs up to this one . . . be still my heart). She’s got the ultimate Yankee-WASP stiff-upper-lip thing, but I know her well enough to tell she is antsy about Frank’s absence and I hope he gets Homed from fifteenth-century Kyoto ASAP. The cats have been giving her a wide berth, as if they don’t know how to cope with their uneasy den-mother.

  I was deep into the weeds of Google’s 1.5 million results for “origin superstition Macbeth witches curse” when I came across a page from the website called LondonHomicides.com. I sat up a little in anticipation and began to read:

  The superstition behind Macbeth being bad luck has many supposed origins, but the oldest goes back to the first recorded performance in April 1606. According to a virul
ent rumor as memorialized in a tavern ballad of 1608, one of the witches’ spells was put to use immediately after the debut performance by a rumored witch, who used the charms to—

  I was interrupted by a ping. Tristan’s laptop rested on the far side of the sofa (he had been doing last-minute prep there) and his cell phone sat atop it. He had forgotten to turn it off, and the ping was an incoming text. I returned my attention to the web page, just as Erzsébet was making her literary-maven entrance into the room. Without apology or hesitation, she set down Proust, picked up the phone, and examined the face of it.

  “Erzsébet,” I said. “Put it down. That’s an invasion of privacy.”

  She pursed her lips in her signature expression of weary sarcasm. “Privacy is not a thing we have here,” she said. “Anyhow, I already know all of the people who text Tristan on this phone.” She looked again. “Oh. Maybe not.”

  I held out my hand. “Give it to me, please.”

  She shot me a look. “You are more qualified to invade his privacy than I am simply because you engage in fornication with him?” But then she handed me the phone as if it were a dairy product that had suddenly expired.

  The number was blocked. The message was not:

  “Hey, bro, surprise! Did your bae tell you I was coming? Arrived 2 days early to throw any bad guys off the scent. At Sakura on Mass Ave near Sundry’s, LMK if you want to grab a sake.”

  “I’m going for a walk,” Erzsébet announced. “My eyes are straining from so much reading, I need to take the air.”

  “Erzsébet, you’re not going to Sakura.”

  “Pah, why do you think I would do such a thing? I do not have the interest in Tristan Lyons’s family that you surely do. I am simply taking the air.”

  “Nobody goes out after dark alone. It’s after dark. In January. In Boston. You hate the air of Boston in January. It’s cold and damp and you complain about it every year.”

  “Then I shall stroll briskly and perhaps stop in someplace for a cocktail to warm me.”

  “You’ll get carded. Anyhow, somebody could have hacked into my exchange with his sister. This could be the setup for an ambush.”

  “You are not the boss of me,” she said in a lofty tone, as if quoting Dante. “If you are staying here on the couch awaiting your lover, then I shall see you upon my return.”

  She moved toward the front hallway, where her vintage mink (which she has owned since it was new) hung on a wall hook, taking up more space than any other coat. Before donning it, she picked up her rabbit fur hat off the sundries basket on a side table.

  “Erzsébet, none of us go out after dark alone, period.”

  She began humming to herself. That is never a good sign. She’d once killed someone while humming to herself. Shit.

  “That means if you go, I go with you,” I said. “That’s how this works, you know that.” I pulled my phone from the back pocket of my jeans and whipped off a group text: “Going out with E on Mass Ave so disregard trip wire, which is about to go off. Back before 10, text as needed.” (All our phones are rigged to geolocate each other, thanks to Mortimer, but I wanted to leave Rebecca more details.) I knew I’d get an earful from Tristan when he got back and saw the group text. He doesn’t want any of us ever going out at night, at all, period. I thought about asking Mortimer to come with, but that would leave Rebecca alone, and IMHO she’s a bit disoriented by Frank’s absence. And I was starting to suffer from cabin fever, so I was privately grateful that Erzsébet was “forcing” me to go out for a walk.

  “Please yourself,” Erzsébet said indifferently.

  Mortimer had been at weapons practice earlier and I saw a knife handle sticking out of his coat pocket. I considered taking it even though I knew the blade was rounded off. But you don’t take someone’s weapon without permission, and Erzsébet would be out the door before I had a chance to ask. We were safe, I reminded myself. If Gráinne was actually planning to ambush me, she’d have done something at Sundry’s Market. I should not have to be armed to walk down Massachusetts Avenue.

  Bundled up against the raw New England night, we made our way down the street to Mass Ave and then turned left for a couple of blocks, past Sundry’s Market, to Sakura. This was a new fusion gastropub, the kind that mixed sake into things that don’t go well with sake but could be price-gouged because they had been mixed with sake. The clientele were mostly Harvard Law students, and on weekend nights it was lively, but now—early dinner on a Tuesday of winter break—it was pretty quiet. Three or four small parties were at tables eating.

  The only person at the bar, with her back to us as we entered, was a woman in a black hoodie that turned out to read Inigo Jones Fangirl on the back in gothic font (it was initially obscured by her extremely long ponytail). Her hair was Tristan’s color, between blond and light brown, and her head was bent as if looking at her phone. She was the only person seated alone in the restaurant. Erzsébet nudged my arm and pointed toward the young woman with her chin.

  “Yes, that’s her. Satisfied?” I whispered crossly. “Can we go back now?”

  “We will sit across from her,” Erzsébet whispered back. “We will hide in plain sight and make sure she is not here to rendezvous with anyone unsavory.”

  “Then we should at least sit out of sight,” I said, and nodded toward a darkened two-top in the far corner.

  “That will make us look suspicious,” she said. “That is the kind of thing Tristan would do, and we do not want to appear to have any connection to Tristan.”

  “Speak quietly when you say his name, it’s not a common name,” I hissed.

  She flounced casually across the room to a stool directly across the U-shaped bar from the woman. She settled herself onto the stool with a heavy sigh, which caused the young woman to look up briefly, notice that there was nothing interesting to notice, and go back to her phone.

  The bar had recessed up-lighting, which gave her and the bartender a look half Victorian-music-hall performer, half Star Trek crew. I looked at the young woman. There was a possible family resemblance, although tricky to say for sure in the weird lighting. Tristan’s lantern jaw was more delicate on her. She looked a bit like a young David Bowie, but less rock star and more field hockey midfielder. Not strikingly feminine (the way her brother is strikingly masculine). A ceramic sake bottle was on the bar near her; as we settled in, the server cleared it and placed a bottle of Kirin on the bar. There was a menagerie of small origami animals arrayed before her.

  I grumpily ordered a Kirin, and Erzsébet requested a saketini. There was some Japanese pop music playing softly—Kenshi Yonezu, I think—which helped mask conversation without being annoying. The young woman across the bar remained absorbed in her phone.

  As we waited to be served, Erzsébet pulled the dog-eared Macbeth from her handbag and checked act 4, as if hoping the lines would have changed since we left East House. “I have also been reading the essays in here about the historical figure,” she informed me. “He was not the evil monster of the story. As usual, the victors write the history.”

  “It’s not intended to be a history play,” I said. “I didn’t even know there was a real-life Macbeth.”

  “You see? That is literary assassination. Even for the few who know he is real, his reputation is ruined forever. Shakespeare only made him bad to flatter King James, who was descended from Macbeth’s enemies. You know that Gráinne hated Shakespeare.”

  “Yes, she thought he had a thing against the Irish.”

  “It was more because Shakespeare sucked up to the people in power, even if they did not deserve it. Like Tristan was doing when I first met you both.”

  “He was not sucking up—”

  “Of course he was. Do you remember how he leapt to his feet when that hideous man with the fake leg—”

  “The brigadier general? His boss? The one you killed?”

  “I did not kill him, we have been over this,” she said in a bored voice. “I was mentioning it as an example of Tristan
sucking up to somebody in charge even though that person was a bad man.”

  “Lower your voice,” I hissed. “Anyhow, you’re criticizing him for showing respect to his commanding officer?”

  “No, for sucking up to him,” emphasized Erzsébet, not lowering her voice. “I am in this way comparing Tristan with Shakespeare, who is very popular in America, so I do not see why you should get defensive about it.”

  The bartender delivered our drinks and I nodded thanks. As I reached for the Kirin bottle, a hand pressed on my shoulder to prevent me. “Excuse me,” said a cheery voice behind my left shoulder. I turned to see the young woman we had pegged as Tristan’s sister. She was shorter than I expected, smiling broadly (a little too broadly). “It’s a funny thing. I’ve got a brother named Tristan who lives or works somewhere in this part of town, and it’s not a common name, so I just wondered if one of you happened to be the woman he’s sleeping with.” Her blue-green eyes darted between the two of us, and still grinning, she pointed at me. “You’re the one who blushed, so I’m going to guess you’re Mel. I’m Robin.” She grabbed my hand and shook it. “I don’t know if you’re his work associate or his lover, but I’ve never met either, so this is a thrill for me.”

  She reached for Erzsébet’s hand, but Erzsébet retracted it. “You are very forward,” she scolded.

  “Oh shit,” said Robin, looking genuinely taken aback. “I’m sorry about that, I’m not always great with boundaries. I’m working on it, though.” She raised her eyebrows hopefully and again offered her hand. This time Erzsébet took it, said her name, and dropped the hand.

  Robin noticed Macbeth. The smile vanished and she went pale. “You’re reading that?” she asked. “Anything interesting in it?”

  “I am an avid reader of great literature,” said Erzsébet, pleased to share this news with somebody not predisposed to disbelieve her.

  For a moment, Robin seemed to be almost in a fugue state. Then she shook her head and with obvious effort replaced the slightly manic smile on her face. “Have you read The Fountainhead? Ayn Rand.”