Master of the Revels

by Nicole Galland

  “That’s a Sonobe unit,” I said, watching Robin’s creation. She looked up, surprised I would know this. “Our daughter used to fill the house with modular origami. Frank taught her when she was little. One of our granddaughters is very good at it as well.”

  “Yes, you really always have to go back,” Erzsébet was meanwhile saying to Robin sympathetically. “You must effect whatever change is required multiple times, before the multiverse agrees to lurch in the direction you’re trying to get it to go. It is a cumbersome and very unpopular form of magic among witches.”

  “It’s kind of like Groundhog Day,” said Mortimer helpfully. “You have to keep doing the same thing until it finally, y’know, takes. So you can’t just go back for Tristan, you have to go back on a different Strand and do it again—and then, sorry about this, but you need to stay there until Tristan shows up so you can steer him away from the Globe.”

  “But wait a sec,” she said. “If I go back to a different Strand, couldn’t that be a Strand on which Tristan’s not dead? Like, I could go back, fix the script, and then come back and Tristan is here and everything’s fine. Isn’t that a possibility?”

  Mortimer and I exchanged uncertain looks. That was the sort of query usually fielded by Frank or Tristan. I am seasoned at translating Frank’s insights into layman’s terms—that was my chief employment at DODO, in fact—but I have no training as a physicist.

  “It will not work that way,” said Erzsébet. “The multiverse is a very complicated environment, and you ordinary humans are constantly trying to inflict your ignorant ideas of cause and effect upon it.”

  “Now c’mon, Erzsébet,” said Mortimer, “our ignorant ideas of cause and effect have been working pretty well for DODO for half a decade now.”

  “Because DODO has the Chronotron to do calculations beyond the scope of even very efficient witches,” I amended.

  “Exactly!” said Erzsébet. “In the natural order, there is no way to calculate such complicated meddling, which is why we never tried such complicated meddling until Tristan and his people came along and started all this nonsense. No witch I know of in all of human history has, to use this vulgar term, fucked around with reality as much as this. You all think you can bully everyone else’s reality without consequences to yourself? This is always the problem with you people.”

  “Wow, I hope you don’t talk that way to Tristan,” said Robin.

  “We do know this much,” I said to Robin. “A person will always be Homed back to the Strand they were Sent back in time from. Whatever Strand you are Sent to, you are Homed back to your . . . home Strand.”

  “And why’s that?” asked Robin.

  “Just because,” said Erzsébet with irritated impatience. “That is how it works.”

  “So . . . no matter what Strand I go back to, I will always be Homed to this Strand, in which Tristan was attacked by Gráinne at the Globe in April of 1606.”

  “Yes,” I said. “So our only hope of saving Tristan is for you to go back and prevent the attack. Simply moving you around in space-time like a chess piece is not going to trigger a reality in which your brother never gets attacked.”

  “Okay,” said Robin, sounding grim. She’d dropped the Sonobe unit to the side and begun a new one. “So I have to go back, I get that. But . . . how many times did Gráinne have to go back in time—I mean, on how many different Strands did she have to coax Tilney, to get the change to the Macbeth script to show up in our reality?”

  “We can’t know that,” I said.

  “Here’s why I’m asking,” said Robin. “I read your paper about Diachronic Mission Duration.” (This is a white paper I wrote three years ago about UDET, or “Unity of DOer-Experienced Time.”) “It says that if you spend one day in a DTAP, you come back one day later here; if you spend one week there, you come back one week later here. You can’t spend a year in a DTAP and then come back one day after you left.”

  “That’s essentially correct,” I said.

  “So, if Gráinne started this just a couple of weeks ago, she wouldn’t have had time to go back on too many Strands, would she? I mean, unless she was spending all of her time just going back, talking to Tilney, Homing, going back to a different Strand, talking to Tilney, Homing.” She was already starting a third Sonobe unit.

  “It does seem odd,” I agreed. “Sometimes change can be affected in as little as two or three Strands, but only very minor tweaks, involving matters that are perceived by very few people. Perception, on the level of neurological tissue, is part of the equation.” Robin made a questioning face. “That just means the more people are affected by an event, the harder it is—the more Strands it takes—to affect change. Well-known lines in a well-known play by the world’s most famous playwright—that should take ten or twelve Strands at least.”

  “She can Wend,” Erzsébet said. “That may account for it.” And then to Robin: “Wending is a skill that only a very few witches have—Gráinne is one of them. I had an aunt who could Wend, but she found it exhausting. The remarkable thing about Gráinne is her energy. I see you do not understand this word ‘Wend,’ Robin Lyons. It means to be able to slip between Strands. To move from a moment in one Strand to the same moment in another without being Homed in between. Sort of.”

  “That wouldn’t save much time, though, really, would it?” Robin asked. “She still ends up in the new place naked, right? Each time, she’s still got to get clothing, and—”

  “To the best of our understanding,” I said, “Gráinne is able to be on all the Strands essentially simultaneously.”

  Robin’s jaw actually dropped open and she paused briefly from her (extraordinarily rapid) folding. “What? How?”

  “We’re not sure,” said Mortimer. “Roger Blevins set up a lab to experiment and data-mine, but Gráinne didn’t want her data mined. In the few months she was there before she took control, it didn’t go anywhere. Blevins tasked me with hacking something up to sift through all the data, but then we never got any data.”

  “So she has us at a disadvantage,” I said. “If it’s purely a numbers game, she will always be able to, mm, out-Strand us.”

  “And is it? Purely a numbers game?” Robin asked. “I mean, on how many Strands might she have attacked Tristan?”

  Mortimer shook his head. “We don’t know if it’s a numbers game. Nothing like this came up at DODO. We never had to compete directly with a dedicated antagonist this way. He only went back once before she attacked him, but that data point is almost meaningless out of context, and we don’t have context. Erzsébet, whatcha got?”

  Erzsébet had been fussing with her számológép. “It should take three Strands for Robin’s efforts to result in the script being reset. It is beyond even my exceptional abilities to determine how many Strands, if any, it will take to prevent Gráinne’s attack on Tristan. Not even the Chronotron could calculate that particular kind of problem.”

  “I don’t understand why you don’t just Send me back to right before she attacks him,” argued Robin. “First I save him, and then once he’s safe, then I can go back and fix the script.”

  Erzsébet shook her head. “They happen on the same Strand. It is too risky to experiment with such a situation, especially with Gráinne involved. Go there, change the script, and then hide yourself away someplace safe until Tristan arrives. Ned Shakespeare sounds fond of you. Put yourself in his care.”

  I bit my tongue. I could not disagree with her, but I wanted to. Frank’s protracted absence is gnawing at my sense of safety.

  So Robin is resting here tonight, and then she will head back for Strand 2 tomorrow.

  FREYA’S TRANSCRIPT OF

  CHIRA YASIN LAJANI’S REPORT TO MORTIMER SHORE ON BURNER PHONE

  DAY 2003 (22 JANUARY, YEAR 6)

  CHIRA: I’ve completed Strand number three of the Ascella DEDE, and I need to tell you something.

  MORTIMER: That’s what I’m here for.

  CHIRA: Each time the DEDE has gone smoothly,
and I have gotten Dana away safely from her enslavers. But after this third Strand, the Chronotron has upped the number of times I will need to do this from seventeen—already very high—to eighty-seven.

  MORTIMER: Wow. Is that a record?

  CHIRA: I recall Erzsébet emphasizing in the early days that if there is so much resistance to a change, it is better not to make that change but to find something else to change in order to get the result you want.

  MORTIMER: That’s factored into the algorithms of the Chronotron. So something’s fishy. Maybe somebody is giving you busywork to keep you unavailable for other missions?

  CHIRA: Maybe. Also, DODO keeps misplacing my DEDE reports.

  MORTIMER: (pause) What?

  CHIRA: Yes. Somebody is trying to make sure that whatever I do is not on the official record.

  MORTIMER: Gráinne.

  CHIRA: I think so.

  MORTIMER: Anything else? Any news on Berkowski chatter?

  CHIRA: I’m not sure. That Sicily DEDE seems to have some connection to Berkowski, but I have no idea what. I heard the DOer—Arturo Quince, I don’t know him well—I heard him tell a friend in the cafeteria that it was worth getting a little scratched up on the first Strand because it was a success. It had something to do with the embellishment of a domestic and administrative compound near a major trade route. I’ll try to get more data and send it to you.

  AFTER ACTION REPORT

  DOER: Melisande Stokes

  THEATER: Fourth-century Sicily

  OPERATION: Guard mosaic

  DEDE: Prevent wagon being overturned

  DTAP: 309 CE, compound between Piazza and Sophiana

  STRAND: 1

  ON SITE DATES: Days 2000–2003 (19–22 January)

  I have quick recovery reflexes, but this was a first for me: I arrived underwater.

  We had been unable to locate a map of this place, except for the screenshot of the map DOer Arturo Quince had CADded after his first Strand. Erzsébet had studied it and was determined to Send me to arrive just before dawn in the courtyard around which the domestic life of the compound revolves. For the record, she was spot-on: there is a pool in the center of the courtyard, and that’s where I arrived. In 309 CE Sicily, my first inhalation was all water.

  My body thrashed reflexively before I was completely conscious. I broke the surface gagging and couldn’t manage to arrange myself vertically. In the rush of adrenaline I couldn’t remember where I was supposed to be—a disorientation that cartwheeled into alarm as strong arms hauled me roughly from the pool.

  Whoever held me pinned my elbows to my sides and pushed me down into a squat on cold marble paving stones. One arm clasped me in a hard embrace from behind, while a callused hand whacked my upper back, as if I were choking. I tried to lean over toward my left side, but he mistook that as struggling to escape and jerked me harshly back to vertical. He shouted for backup into the darkness.

  I stopped struggling and resigned myself to coughing up water while erect.

  After my third gag, a female voice demanded, in accented Latin, “Stop that, Rufus! Stand aside!”

  The man released me, and I fell forward, spitting. A teenage girl in a long white tunic stepped out of the darkness, backlit by a torch.

  “Who has Sent you? Answer when you’ve finished retching.” It was a friendly-sounding command. This was the witch I knew lived here, the daughter of the owner.

  My lungs were finally clear. Shakily, my diaphragm laboring, I rose to my feet. She made a gesture, and her attendant thrust the torch closer to my shivering wet body. “Just like the other one,” said the attendant, a freckled redhead. “Her sinews are strong and weak in strange places.”

  “Not strange, Arria, just different,” said the witch matter-of-factly. To the man who had rescued me, she said, “Resume your duties, Rufus. Thank you for saving my new idiot of a slave from drowning.”

  I couldn’t tell if she had just used magic on Rufus to change his memory of what had happened or if she was simply advising him to play along. Whichever it was, he nodded and retreated beyond the pool.

  “I am Livia Saturnina,” she announced, “eldest daughter of Marcus Livius Saturninus. I am pleased you are female, it is more convenient than when your compatriot arrived. Come with me.” She turned and strode briskly, confidently, out of the courtyard. Her attendant (that was Arria) followed with the torch, and I came after. We passed under the colonnade ringing the courtyard and then into a chamber, about four paces square, with a tiled floor. This contained what in the wobbling torchlight appeared to be a wicker chaise longue, some stools, and a narrow table. Without pausing, Livia walked through to an inner chamber. I peeked in after her.

  The inner room was warmer, with a low bronze brazier in the middle of it that was being stoked by a blond teenage girl. This room was also tiled in mosaics on the walls and the floor. A small chandelier of oil lamps glowed dimly. There were three single-width beds against the walls, with brightly woven coverings over the mattresses. Also several wooden chests, some leather stools, and small tables of different heights—everything hugging the perimeter of the room. Here too the walls and floors were tiled, as I knew to expect of a Roman villa of the era. The wall mosaics were merely decorative, but the floor depicted boats at sea, piloted by poker-faced angels industriously hauling dozens of species of fish to their death. It was so detailed and busy it made my eyes hurt, even in the dim light.

  In addition to the blond girl stoking the fire, there was a seated brunette dressed like to Livia. “Come, Julia,” Livia said, and then pivoted to return to the exterior chamber. To me: “My sister, Livia Julia.”

  Julia rose, her brown hair pouring down her back in a loose plait bound with copper wire. With her towheaded attendant, she followed her sister into the front room. Her attendant, via pulley, lowered a branched chandelier from the ceiling to hip height. Arria lit the oil lamps on it from her torch; the towheaded servant raised the light again, and Arria went outside to douse the torch.

  I could now see Livia’s face. She looked about seventeen by modern standards. She was handsome, with strong Roman features and piercingly intelligent dark eyes. Her thick hair was an auburn much lighter than her brows, so likely dyed or bleached.

  “Your name,” she said.

  “Melia,” I replied.

  “Tell me everything, Melia.” Her affect was startlingly contemporary, like the AP students I tutored in grad school.

  “Everything about what?” I asked, trying to sound stupid.

  She gave me a knowing look, the smile fading. At her gesture, the servant brought a stool to the center of the room, and as Livia sank onto it, her sister, Julia, crossed to the narrow table. I now saw that on this were displayed a gaggle of gold and silver hair ribbons, pins, and necklaces. Julia considered the array before her, picked up two decorations, and showed them to her attendant/lady-in-waiting/slave. (Okay, slave. But we should avoid projecting our own associations with slavery onto this situation. Almost everyone who wasn’t a member of the family here was probably a slave. Slaves were ubiquitous in ancient Rome—chances are even the family physician was a slave.) The blond slave began to pin Livia’s hair up in a loose whorl atop her head.

  “Tell me everything about you and your friend,” Livia said. “I sensed he had a secret, but I had no idea it was a lover. It’s outrageously presumptuous to come here for your tryst. Tell me whom you’re hiding from.”

  “And why your sinews are so funny-looking,” said Arria.

  “That’s irrelevant, Arria,” said Livia, but she sounded amused.

  I have good posture for a bookworm. But these appearance-obsessed young women were scrutinizing my frame more than I have ever been scrutinized in my life, except maybe the time I was nearly sold as a concubine in 250 BCE Athens (spoiler: I was deemed too bony, so there were no takers). I have modern diet and dental hygiene on my side, but also more sun exposure than they ever will. All in all, their attempts to read my body confused them.

&
nbsp; “How old are you?” demanded Julia.

  “Younger than your mother but older than you,” I replied.

  “I want my butt to look that good when I’m an old lady,” said Arria heartily.

  “Never mind about her butt, look at her belly,” said the other attendant, glancing up from Livia’s hair.

  “She’s got the ropey arms of a slave,” said sister Julia, as if mildly disgusted. “Thank you, Thalia, I’ll take over.” She nudged Thalia aside and moved a pin in her sister’s hair. Livia pulled her head away slightly as if it hurt. “Nothing else can account for it,” Julia continued, as she draped a golden chain around her sister’s coiffure. “And her heels are callused. She’s a runaway slave, she and that hunky paramour of hers.”

  Livia was studying me, face a neutral mask.

  “I’m an athlete in my own time,” I said. And then, dialing it back a bit: “A retired athlete.”

  “A female gladiator?” gasped Thalia. “I’ve heard of such wonders.”

  “Female gladiators are slaves,” said Julia in a so there voice. She draped another ornament over the whorls of Livia’s braids and began to pin it into place.

  “They’re not always slaves,” said Livia. “I doubt she is a slave any more than the man is.”

  “That’s correct,” I said. “I have no wish to interrupt the routine of your household. I would earn your regard enough to borrow a tunic, but please do not let me interfere otherwise with your daily life.”

  “We want you to interfere,” said Arria. “We’re bored. Tell us all about your lover. He’s hot.” Julia and Thalia giggled with her.

  “Tell me why you came here with your lover,” Livia demanded in a firm but friendly voice—the good cop, confident of the suspect’s compliance. “Tell me where you come from. I hope for your sake that your answer matches his.”

  “Whatever the man told you, it’s a lie,” I said. “And you’re mistaken. He is not my lover.”

  “Oh good,” said Arria. “That means he’s mine.”

  “Arria!” hissed Julia jealously, as if Arria had won him just by saying she wanted to.