Kiss Across Kingdoms

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  His neck was bare, the skin pale. There were markings there that only one of the blood could read. Alex studied the invisible traces, his heart lifting. He left the man to slumber and returned to Atiya and Sydney. “Rafe has been here,” he said. “He must have needed to feed after escaping the fortress.”

  “I didn’t think you needed to feed while Veris and Taylor and Brody were watching over us.”

  “If his heart has been running too freely, or if he has lost blood, he would need to feed to compensate.” He climbed on the horse. “That means I know where Rafe is, and it’s not in Mathrafel.” He nodded in the direction of Bran’s hut. “Half a mile from here.”

  Even Atiya seemed to sense they were close to their destination, for he kept trying to break out into a gallop. Finally, Alex let him have his head and they pounded along the vale.

  Rafe was waiting for them, standing outside the hut and leaning on the long ax, which he had been using to chop wood for the cooking fire.

  The child Efa had been placing the wood on the old tree stump for Rafe to split, and Bran was sitting on a wider log placed end-down in the dirt, next to the door of the round hut, his injured arm held against his chest and his face turned up to the sun.

  When Rafe saw it was them, he dropped the ax and hurried forward.

  Alex and Sydney slid from their saddles and met him just in front of the horses’ noses. For long minutes, Alex lost track of who was kissing who and didn’t care.

  Then he realized that Efa had moved closer to them and was watching them with some annoyance. Alex tapped Rafe’s shoulder and nodded toward Efa.

  Rafe turned to face her and bent a little to put himself at her height. “These are the people I told you about.”

  Efa crossed her arms, her face tightening up. “You didn’t say that one of them was a girl!”

  * * * * *

  Alex balanced himself carefully on the old beams that had been used to build the original roof supports. They were solid enough despite their age, but they were rounded and difficult to walk upon. Also, they were hidden beneath a thick thatch of straw. Most of the straw was molding and no longer shed water and much of it was growing wild grass upon it, the seeds blown here by the wind and fed by the rain. Alex had volunteered to replace the worst of it using some of the new bale of straw that Rafe had bought for the children. He had watched men thatching roofs in the past. Similar to many survival skills, it was more difficult to do than it appeared to be when one merely watched it being done.

  However, the work was relaxing, for the sun was warm on the back of his shoulders and the air was just cool enough to stop him from overheating. Plus, the view from the very top of the conical roof was spectacular, with the land rolling for miles to the horizon.

  They had agreed to remain at the hut until the outcome of the battle between Mercia and Powys and the invading Vikings was decided. “Once the land is clear of soldiers looking for trouble, we can travel to the monastery where I think the monk who is copying Nennius’ book will be,” Rafe had said. “Then, finally, we can jump home.”

  The sun was high when Alex glanced west and saw thick dark smoke rising into the pale blue sky. He studied it for a while, then climbed down to the ground.

  Rafe was dressing another deer and Sydney was being Sydney—she was teaching Efa to hold a knife for maximum strength of grip. The youngest child, Cefin, was sitting on the ground playing knucklebones.

  “The fortress is burning,” Alex said.

  Sydney straightened up, shading her eyes to look at him.

  “Does that mean Powys is losing?” Rafe asked from over by the tree, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. He held the other hand out from his side, for it was thick with blood and gore.

  Sydney looked down as Efa gripped a fold of her gunna, then back at them. “I don’t think it matters who is losing.”

  “If the Vikings win, then we’ll have a devil of a time getting to the monastery,” Alex pointed out.

  “I don’t think we should even try,” Sydney said. “Not right now.”

  Rafe plunged his hands into the bucket of water standing nearby and scrubbed them. “Talking to the monk, getting him to add the extra pages…that’s the whole reason we’re here.”

  “Maybe it’s not, anymore,” Sydney said. She smiled down at Efa and rested her hand on the girl’s head. “Things have changed so much, maybe that’s not even needed anymore.”

  “You’ve been thinking it through,” Alex told her. “Are you saying we should jump back now?”

  Sydney sighed. “If we still need to talk to the monk, then we can always slip back here again and this time we’ll be braced for the chaos and for change and will deal with it better. If we don’t need to speak to the monk anymore, then there’s no reason to stay here. The only way we will know what to do, though, is to go back and see what changes have been made.”

  “Better to speak to the monk anyway,” Rafe said. “Hedge our bets.”

  Sydney shook her head. “The monastery is three days’ ride away, you said. That’s a lot of miles, all of them filled with one or two armies on the run, trying to hide away from the victors of this battle. They’ll be desperate. I don’t want to take that risk.”

  “You can stay here,” Rafe said.

  Sydney shook her head. “It’s not risk to me that I’m worried about. No, Rafe. I say we go home. Now. I can’t make decisions in a vacuum. I need information. I need to know what has changed.”

  Alex smiled.

  “What are you laughing at, infidel?” Rafe demanded.

  “You heard the Lady,” Alex told him. “We’re going home. Now.”

  * * * * *

  Sydney dropped down in front of Bran once last time and looked him in the eye. “You understand what you are to tell Rhys when he comes back inside?” she asked.

  Bran showed her the folded and sealed letter that he had tucked up the sleeve over his missing hand. “I’m to give him this and tell him that he and two dear friends of his wrote it and he must follow the instructions.” His brow wrinkled. “He really won’t remember anything?”

  “Leave him be,” Rafe said softly. “We’ll be fine.”

  “This is the first time in your history when you’ll have a gap in your memory,” Alex told him. “Brody had a hell of a time adjusting to the changes when he emerged on the other side of a time jump. I want to minimize that with you.”

  “The letter will do,” Rafe said. “I’m not as stubborn as Brody.”

  Alex snorted. “If you say so.”

  Sydney smiled and got to her feet. “Goodbye Bran, Efa, Cefin.”

  Alex bent over Bran. “Your arm is healing well. You should have no other trouble with it, except for learning how to live without the hand.”

  “If Rhys is to stay, that will be easier than I hoped,” Bran said frankly.

  “I’m staying,” Rafe assured him. “Except, I think, we might all have to relocate to somewhere in England. We can talk about that when I get back. We’re just going to step outside for a minute, okay?”

  Bran nodded and Efa and Cefin watched them leave, their eyes big.

  Alex stepped out to the bare patch of earth in front of the hut and Rafe and Sydney moved to his side. He slid his arms around their waists. “Remember that when we get back, any changes we have made will have echoed down to our time already. The others won’t remember anything of the way it was when we left.”

  Sydney drew in a slow breath to steady herself. “Kiss me,” she demanded.

  Rafe turned her chin up and kissed her. Alex tightened his arms around them both, and felt the giant invisible hand swipe them off their feet….

  * * * * *

  …and opened his eyes, blinking to clear his vision.

  The familiar wood paneling that covered the ceiling of Sydney’s bedroom was marked with long shadows the way it did in the morning when the sunlight peered directly through the windows.

  The windows were open and he could smell freshly cut lawn.<
br />
  Someone stirred, next to him.

  “Oh, my aching back!” Rafe muttered and groaned.

  “Welcome back,” Taylor said.

  Alex lifted his head. Taylor was standing at the end of the bed and gave him a small smile as he spotted her.

  Brody pushed the bedroom door open and hurried in. “I heard Rafe speaking… they’re back!” He gave a great gusty sigh of relief.

  Veris was standing beside Taylor, looking down at them. He crossed his arms. “I have a letter telling me your house burned down,” he growled. “And I even remember it burning…yet here we are standing in your house. What the fuck did you do back there?”

  “What the hell happened here, then?” Sydney shot back.

  “Quickly,” Alex said, struggling to sit up. “Tell me, what country lies to the west of England?”

  Taylor looked surprised. “Wales, of course.”

  “Not Gronoya?”

  “What’s Gronoya?” Brody said.

  “Who burned down my house?” Rafe demanded. “I’ll kill them!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “So let me get this straight,” Veris said, leaning forward on his elbows. “You brokered peace, put on England’s first Olympic Games, let a girl beat you in the arena, were enslaved and saved the life of the King of Powys. Rafe outed one of the blood and also knocked him into the next century. Sydney became the Queen of Mercia’s favorite warrior, saved her daughter from dying and was the reason this whole games-for-honor thing worked at all.”

  They were sitting in the big, casual living room at the back of the house, where the tall French windows were propped open to let in the early morning breeze and the heavenly smell of cut grass. The air was scented with roses, for the rose bushes were just outside the windows.

  Heavy traffic on the Santa Monica could be heard in the distance and overhead, a plane was circling into LAX. The sights, the sounds, the scents were heavenly, all except Veris’ scowling visage.

  Sydney was sipping her third cup of coffee. She had bolted down the first two as if she was drinking water. Marit was sitting on the arm of the sofa next to her.

  Brody was standing by the door to the living room, as if he really didn’t want to be there.

  Taylor was much closer to Veris, where he sat in the upright chair almost as if he was the judge in the room.

  Veris looked at them all. “What part of ‘don’t change history’ did you not understand?” he demanded.

  Rafe was fidgeting in the armchair. He had not agreed with Alex about finding a peaceful solution, yet he had gone along with it because Alex had asked him to trust him. Now, he leaned over and picked up the folder letter sitting on the coffee table between them. “You mean ‘don’t change history’ the way you didn’t change history?” He let the letter drop back down. “You deliberately changed things because you were peeved about the council. We at least had a better excuse.”

  Veris sat back and crossed his arms. “So you say.” Disbelief tinged his voice.

  Sydney got to her feet. “Of course you don’t believe us. You were here. You don’t remember the way it was.”

  Veris rose, too. “If we really were living in an alternative stub of time, then when you changed things, none of us should have been able to remember the Council burning down the house with you three in it, yet the letter is here. We remember it.”

  “Because you were already living in this timeline when it happened,” Sydney told him. “The changes we made took days to put into place. Every time we changed even the smallest thing, it rippled down to here.”

  “A butterfly lands in Beijing, it rains in Chicago,” Brody said from over by the door.

  “I know the principle,” Veris growled. “If the changes had already been made, then the house should still be gone, yet here we are.”

  “More changes,” Sydney told him. “Changes that happened after the house was gone. You don’t remember them as changes, because your memories say you lived through a time when the house wasn’t burned down. Review your memories. Can you really remember seeing the house burn down?”

  Brody moved closer to the sofa. “I can’t,” he said softly. “I only remember Veris telling me the Council had come after us, because of what is in that letter.” He nodded to the letter on the table.

  Alex moved over to Sydney’s side. “Successive waves of change came through and you changed a short period of time in the middle of those changes.”

  Veris scowled at him. “And you of everyone should have known better! You’ve been listening to us for years talk about how little changes can create massive ones at this end!”

  “If you had seen the timescape as I saw it, you would have known that peace was the only alternative,” Alex told him.

  “Back off, Veris,” Sydney said quietly. “You’re being a hypocrite.”

  Veris’ arms loosened and his eyes widened as he looked at her. Then he sighed and sank back down onto the chair he had been sitting on. “True,” he said. “We did exactly what you did and our reasons were just as solid.” He glared at Rafe. “Unless you preferred to jump back to no bodies and instant, permanent death?”

  Brody snorted. “Way to apologize, big guy.”

  Veris pushed his hand through his hair. “Ah…this is such a fucking mess,” he groused. “Are the Council still pissed at us, or not? Do we have to pull up the drawbridge?”

  “Why don’t you ask them?” Sydney suggested. She hadn’t returned to her seat. She was still standing over Veris, not backing down an inch.

  “As if I know anyone on the Council,” Veris growled. Then he looked at Rafe. “You do, though.”

  Rafe frowned and his gaze focused inward as he reviewed his memories. “I do,” he said at last. “And it’s not the person I remember from before.”

  “Who is it?” Taylor asked curiously.

  Rafe smiled as he glanced at Alex. “You won’t believe this.”

  * * * * *

  The limousine wasn’t a stretch limo, although it had the blackened windows and anonymous look that most limousines in Los Angeles tended to have. Because there were so many of them in the city it would pass by unremarked, especially here in Beverly Hills.

  Everyone, including Mia and the twins and Marit, stood on the wide steps up to the front doors of the house, watching the limousine as it rolled around the curved driveway and halted under the portico, out of the sun that was playing on the roses just beyond the big columns holding up the portico roof.

  The driver did not get out of the car. Instead, the back door was opened from the inside and a long pair of legs emerged, encased in high quality worsted wool suiting. The passenger unfolded themselves and stood up, looking at the ten people ranged on the steps.

  “Siorus!” Alex breathed.

  The thin, tall man gave him a tight smile. “Cyrus, the man you call Siorus, was my brother. My name is Herakleides.”

  “Was your brother?” Sydney echoed.

  “For various transgressions and sins, my brother was excommunicated by the Council, some years ago.” Herakleides said it with a degree of defensiveness, as if he was apologizing for the family’s black sheep.

  “Excommunicated?” Taylor repeated. “He was on the Council itself?”

  “He means kicked out of the brotherhood of the Blood,” Veris said. “Not even to be provided the minimal protection that one of the Blood can give to another, with no hope of appeal.”

  “Is he even alive?” Brody asked.

  “I don’t know,” Herakleides replied, still sounding apologetic. “Perhaps this story you have offered to tell me will shed some light on that, as you clearly have met my brother somewhere in the past.”

  * * * * *

  Because this was a formal occasion, they used the front room, which featured all the wood paneling and pleated leather furniture, chandeliers and carvings a Supreme Court judge would naturally be expected to have. Mia took the twins down to the playroom in the basement, while Marit stayed by Sydney’s
side.

  Herakleides paid no attention to the room. It was likely, Alex thought, that he had seen far too many grand rooms like this to be even slightly impressed. Instead, the councilor sat in the big wing chair and listened while Alex and Sydney between them, with asides from Rafe, told the story of their call back to the tenth century and what happened there.

  Veris was even more frank about the role he and Brody and Taylor had played in saving the three of them and Alex realized he was exaggerating just slightly the drama of the event. It wasn’t enough to make the adventure sound impossible. It did showcase the Council’s peremptory judgment.

  Herakleides listened to it all without comment. Then he looked from one to the other of them, weighing them all up. He folded his hands together on his crossed knee. “The reason that Rafael remembers another contact on the Council is because that is a latent memory from the alternative timeline. That Council is the one that reacted to the news that you were attempting to change time.” He gave them a stiff smile. “I do not know if I was a part of that alternative Council or not, as I only remember the Council in this timeline and we were not informed of your activities.”

  “Why not?” Veris asked.

  “I imagine,” Herakleides said dryly, “that my brother reached out to Thorsby and told him what you were trying to do. They were…close, the pair of them.” He grimaced. “Two peas in a pod, actually. Thorsby is not a part of the Council as I know it, which is why we were not informed in this timeline.”

  “Everything keeps coming back to Cyrus,” Sydney pointed out.

  “That’s because he’s the one that started all this in the first place,” Rafe said.

  Everyone looked at him.

  Rafe was wearing one of his expensive business suits and sitting in the chair that was the twin of the one Herakleides had chosen for himself. He lifted his hands up, offering his explanation with a gracious gesture. “He revealed that he was a time traveler, back in the tenth century. He told me that he had made a deal with the Vikings to get even with someone in the future by changing history and their world as they knew it. He didn’t say who.”