Eric Flint's Blog, page 226

Changeling’s Island – Snippet 28

Changeling’s Island – Snippet 28

CHAPTER 11

“Well, that’s a good-sized rock flathead!” exclaimed his grandmother, touching it. “You were lucky!”

“I caught another one. A bit bigger.”

“But it got away,” said his grandmother, raising an eyebrow.

“No, I got it out. But I gave it to Molly.”

His grandmother turned her head askance, her face setting in lines of anger. “I thought I told you not to talk to strange women!”

“She’s not! She’s a girl from school! She’s on the bus with me every day. She’s not a stranger or anything. I went to the show with her and her parents. You even spoke to her dad,” protested Tim.

His grandmother had opened her mouth to start shouting…and stopped. “Oh. What was she doing on the beach?” It was still suspicious.

“Walking her dog. They live a bit further toward West End. She helped me find the bait, because I didn’t know where to look. And helped gut the fish. I…I thought it was only fair and…and polite to give her one for her family. Good manners. They took me to the show, and I thought I ought to give her something to say thanks.”

The last part was plainly the right thing to say. “Yer right. It was a good thing to do. Well done.”

But Tim’s curiosity, as well as some anger, was up now. “Why are you so worried about this woman? Who is she?”

His grandmother rubbed her forehead, pushing back a stray lock of dark hair. “I don’t know the whole truth of it. But she’s been botherin’ yer grandfather’s side of the family forever. I didn’t believe it all, but yer grandfather reckoned his great-grandfather nearly got drowned by her. He didn’t go near the water alone, and said you always kept iron next to your skin if you did. My family, we used to sail a lot, always been fishermen. But they farmed. Didn’t even go mutton-birding.

She took a deep breath. “I didn’t think much of it, but your father…he took to diving. He could swim like a fish by the time he was eight. He used to go and get us crayfish and abalone. I didn’t think much about it, my brothers all did it; me, I collected muttonfish when I was littler than him. He used to go down most days…I was busy on the farm, I always said it was all right as long as there was two of yer. He would meet yer Uncle Dicky, and the two of them would go down to the beach and fish and dive and fool about. And then one day, when he was about thirteen, he went off to meet your uncle to dive. Dicky didn’t show up, but he went anyway, even though he wasn’t ‘lowed to. And he had a run-in with a woman down there. He wouldn’t ever tell me no more about it. Just that she nearly killed him. I tried to get him to talk to the cops, I tried to get his teacher and even that priest to talk to him. He wasn’t talking to no one. But he never went back diving.” She shook herself. “And yer to stay out the water. No diving. No strange women. No going down on yer own again. That seal-woman is around, and she’s bad luck — trouble, too.”

Tim was seething with this. It was crazy and so unfair. Just because of something his father did. He was about to say something and then he remembered that well, actually, he had met a strange woman down there. One that looked a bit like Lorde. Maybe he should just let it blow over a bit. Otherwise maybe next she’d stop him going to sea with Jon, too. He had a bit of money in his pouch, but not enough to see the back of her and this place forever…and he liked being out on the boat. So he just kept quiet.

Maybe his quiet got to his grandmother, because after their fish tea she said: “Yer could open that present. It’s Christmas Eve. Some people open them then. Yer could see if it got broken by that damned copper.”

Tim didn’t need any urging. He was feeling flat and depressed. He opened the box. On the top was a pack of what Tim assumed were fishing lures. Plastic fish with hooks, silver oblongs with hooks.

“What is it?” his grandmother asked.

“Fishing stuff, I think.” He held it out to her.

She took it, and peered at it in her odd sideways fashion. “Wobblers. Good for Aussie salmon and yellowtail. He knows his fishing.”

Tim pulled the plastic packet out from the lower section of the box. It was red. He shook it out, and a lifejacket — the kind with sleeves and an inflation cartridge, which doubled as a windbreaker and waterproof, the kind Jon and his deckie wore, fell out. Tim had to put it on immediately. It was so cool. Jon had even gotten the size about right! It fitted him much better than the boat-spare he’d been using.

He was surprised by a little whimper from his grandmother. She’d sat down on the hard kitchen chair, and was staring at him. Not her usual sideways stare, but straight at him. Her suntanned face was as white as a sheet.

“Are you all right, Gran?” he asked, hastily stepping over to her.

She grabbed his arm with that iron-hard grip of hers. Squeezed. Nodded at him. He noticed a tiny tear leaking from her eye.

She sniffed. Rubbed her eye and said gruffly, “Yer promise me yer will always wear that jacket when yer at sea. Always. Yer hear me?”

“Yes, Gran.” It wasn’t exactly a hard promise to make. It was just…brilliant! All he needed was a chance to go to sea with it now. It was kind of like designer label jeans, only better. You had one of those jackets…you had arrived. You were the real thing. You were an ab diver, or at least a proper deckie. He couldn’t help smiling and standing up a bit straighter. Jon must have thought he did okay.

“Yer look like yer grandfather sometimes,” said his grandmother, shaking her head. “Now off to bed with yer. We’ll go down and try for some salmon tomorrow with them shiny new jigs of yours, after we have our dinner.”

* * *

“How on earth did you get that? That’s the biggest flattie I ever saw,” exclaimed her father, when Molly walked in with it.

“We caught it,” said Molly proudly.

“Of all the luck! I’ve never caught anything near that size.” He paused. “Who’s ‘we’? One of the guests?”

“Tim from school. He was down on the beach. He caught two. Both whoppers, in, like, fifteen minutes, and most of that was bringing them in.”

“Hey! Does he give lessons?”

Molly, thinking of Tim and the fact he didn’t even know what a pipi was, packed up laughing. “This was his first time.”

“Whoa Nellie! Talk about beginner’s luck.”

“Yeah, he, like, has this old rod, and can’t cast, but he can catch. You should show him how to cast, Daddy. He’s a nice kid. He…was saying he wished he had a dad to show him.”

“Divorce can sometimes be really hard on kids,” said her father, nodding. “But it happens, Molly.”

“Yeah, and on top of it all, his grandmother is, like, really weird. I mean, no TV, no Internet. Never goes anywhere. She told him not to talk to strange women.”

“Sounds like good advice to me,” he said with a grin. “But you’re not that strange, are you?”

“That’s what I said to him. I said I’d lend him some books.”

 

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 19

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 19

“Glowworms are quite harmless on your clothing,” daSaenz said. The scorn Daniel heard in his tone was probably not just imagination. “Here, I’ll see if I can coax it on to the lantern. Hold still.”

DaSaenz bent at Daniel’s feet; Daniel felt the lantern case pressing against the toe of his boot. The glow had stopped where it was; in fact Daniel had never seen it move, just realized that there was a blob of light on his foot. By effort of will he kept from kicking out violently.

“Are they amoebas?” Miranda said, holding Daniel’s hand firmly. She was changing the subject, bless her heart.

She’s afraid I’m going to turn her childhood dream into something unpleasant, Daniel realized. Aloud he said, “They’re true multi-celled animals, dear. They eat sulfur from the limestone and give off light.”

“There!” said daSaenz, rising. The smear of light had transferred onto the back of the lantern; it seemed to have contracted into a brighter version of itself at half its previous inch diameter. “It seems to me that if you know that, Leary, you should also have learned that the glowworms are harmless.”

“I accept that they’re harmless,” Daniel said, keeping his tone pleasant for Miranda’s sake. “I was just surprised to find something crawling on me when I hadn’t seen it until you turned the light out.”

“They etch the rock with mild acid,” daSaenz said. “I suppose a glowworm could burn your bare skin slightly, though I don’t recall hearing of that happening.”

DaSaenz waggled the lantern, visible for the glow, then let it hang back against his chest. “Daylight kills them, turns them to fine dust. I’ll leave the lantern in the sun when we return.”

The glowworms didn’t illuminate the chamber, but Daniel saw daSaenz’ silhouette turn toward Miranda as he said, “Your husband isn’t quite correct, mistress. There’s no sulfur in limestone, but there are inclusions of iron pyrites, fool’s gold, in this bed. The glowworms ingest the pyrites, separate the sulfur from the iron in the crystals, and excrete the iron on objects which contain no sulfur themselves. I’ve forestalled –”

He gestured again with the lantern.

“– this one from plating the toe of Leary’s boots, since he was concerned about it.”

Daniel said nothing. He knew very little chemistry.

“They give off light when they crack the sulfur out of the fool’s gold,” daSaenz said. “One of my great-uncles had read geology. He told my father that he thought more of the cave is a result of the glowworms eating away the stone than just rainwater like most caves. From photographs the chamber has continued to grow in the past 700 years, despite the manor being built on top and blocking further drainage.”

“Don’t you worry that the house is going to fall in?” Daniel said. He immediately felt like a fool.

“No, I don’t, Leary,” daSaenz said. “But if you’re concerned about your safety, you’re welcome to return to the entrance and wait for us.”

“Sorry,” Daniel muttered. He was making a fool of himself in front of Miranda. This young pup is making a fool of me!

He gave himself up to the moment. The worms, so called, must be only a few cell layers thick. Daniel had seen no sign of the creatures in the lantern light, even though he must have been standing on the one which then crawled on his boot.

Because their glow was faint even in absolute darkness, Daniel couldn’t judge how near they were. Some of them seemed infinitely far away, though he’d seen the cave walls in the lantern and knew that the farthest were within a hundred feet of where he stood.

“They’re beautiful,” Miranda said. “They’re wonderful. Thank you, Daniel, for bringing me here. And thank you, Master daSaenz.”

“This is the least that my family can do for such important people,” daSaenz said. “A famous Cinnabar captain, and the daughter of Midshipman Dorst. Who was well-known here on Jardin even if not so famous on his own world.”

“My father is known here?” Miranda said, her grip on Daniel’s wrist tightening. “Known for what, please?”

“I’m sure my mother can give you all the details when you speak with her,” daSaenz said. “Midshipman Dorst visited in my grandfather’s time, of course, so I have only scraps of knowledge.”

He coughed and said, “This was a little thing, as I said. This is the ante-room where the public is allowed. Now I’ll show you a portion of the caves that very few even of my family have seen.”

DaSaenz switched on the lantern. Daniel turned his head and found that he could still see ghosts of the glowworms on the back wall and floor of the chamber behind him, opposite the broad cone of light. The yellow hue had spared his night vision.

“Unless perhaps you’re afraid, Leary?” daSaenz said.

“No,” said Daniel. Though he kept his voice calm, he was clenching his right fist behind his back. “But Miranda may not –”

“I’d like to go on, Daniel,” she said. “If that’s all right with you?”

“Lead on, daSaenz,” Daniel said, his voice raspy. “Anywhere you go, I’ll keep up. We will.”

DaSaenz walked toward the end of the chamber opposite the entrance tunnel, his lantern spreading a broad fan of yellow on the floor ahead. Even knowing they were there, Daniel saw no sign of the glowworms. What had looked like a shadowed fold in the rock became a narrow passage about five feet high when they approached it.

DaSaenz turned sideways and pulled the lantern out on its strap to move it from his chest. He slipped into the passage, sending flickers of lantern light back to those in the chamber.

Daniel thought quickly. “I’ll lead,” he said, following their guide before Miranda could. He half-knelt to give his waist more room in the triangular passage. It was awkward and uncomfortable and extremely embarrassing, but he did it.

Five feet into the crack, Daniel came out into a tunnel with squared walls and a six-foot ceiling. A metal door was inset in the sidewall.

DaSaenz waited beside it until Miranda sidled into the tunnel with less difficulty than Daniel had had. “This is the elevator to the manor,” daSaenz said, tapping the panel. “We’ll be going up in a moment. But if you’re still willing and able, Leary? It’s going to be quite narrow at the beginning.”

“I’ll manage,” said Daniel. His voice was gruff. Even if I’ve got to strip and rub my skin off on the rock.

The rock had been carved out only in front of the elevator. The crack leading to the next chamber must have been left unimproved to deter visitors. It continued out the far end of the elevator landing. DaSaenz squirmed into it.

“Go ahead,” Daniel said, gesturing Miranda on. If he got stuck, he would back out and decide what to do next. He didn’t want to force her to back out also, and he didn’t want anybody, even Miranda, to be staring at him as he made up his mind about what to do next.

He’d beat it, one way or another. He wouldn’t have been so successful had he not kept clear in his mind the number of ways things could go wrong with a plan, though.

“Are there other openings in the anteroom, Master daSaenz?” Miranda said. Her voice was muffled by her own body.

Daniel got down on all fours and squeezed himself into the passage. His upper shoulder blade — the right one — brushed repeatedly against the rock. The fabric was supposed to be tough, though he didn’t care if this jaunt converted his outfit to wiping rags.

“Eighteen,” said their guide. Daniel could barely hear him. “Most of them are just cracks, but you can crawl a distance into four of them.”

Daniel was in complete darkness. He assumed daSaenz had kept the lantern on, but none of the light leaked back past the two bodies ahead of Daniel and the kinks in the passage. At least it didn’t seem to be narrowing.

DaSaenz said something. Miranda paused and Daniel’s left hand touched her foot.

“Daniel,” she said. Her head must be turned, though Daniel couldn’t see even the foot he was touching. “It’s going to get tight in a moment, but it’s just a short place. Will you be all right?”

“Keep moving,” Daniel said. How in hell was he supposed to know if he’d be all right until he reached the pinch? He certainly wasn’t better for talking about it in a tunnel tighter than a grave!

Miranda moved on. Daniel waited a moment, lying on his side and trying to control his breath. The air wasn’t bad, though it had an odd mustiness. There couldn’t be much circulation down here.

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 10

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 10

“Why on earth would he do that?” Even as he said it Phillip realized there was probably a good reason why Dietrich hadn’t immediately taken the boy to Frau Kilian. “What have you been up to?” Phillip reconsidered the merits of that question the moment he’d uttered it and held up his hands. “No, don’t tell me. I’m sure that Dietrich has a very good reason. This Paulus is in Dietrich’s room?” Claus nodded.

Phillip surveyed his current experiment. There was nothing that needed to be cleaned and put away other than the reaction vessel with its precious sample. However, nothing had happened in the last hour and a half, and it was becoming more and more obvious that nothing was going to happen. With the immediate problem dealt with he started thinking about his new problem. He turned to Claus. “I have to get some things from my room. I want you to get a bucket of water, as hot as possible, and some soap. I’ll meet you in your room.”

“Why do you want soap and hot water, Herr Gribbleflotz?” Claus asked.

“So I can wash my hands of course,” Phillip said. “Now get moving.”

Phillip watched the youth sprint out of the laboratory and wondered if he had ever been that young.

****

He managed to get to Dietrich’s room without being noticed. Not that there would have been any questions asked about him being up and around at this hour, but he preferred not to take any risks. He slipped into the room and saw the reassuring sight of Dietrich and his new acquaintance watching over a second young apprentice. Sitting on the floor was the requested bucket of water. Phillip was happy to notice the steam coming off of it.

“Hi, Dietrich. Who’s the patient?”

“Thanks for coming, Phillip.” Dietrich gestured towards the boy lying on the bed. “Paulus here managed to cut open his leg rather badly. And I think it needs to be stitched up.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Phillip said as he removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “I’ve never sewn human flesh before.

“My mother has insisted on sewing up cuts that weren’t half as bad as Paulus’.”

“What? You mean you know how to sew up cuts? If you know how to do that, why do you need me?” Phillip demanded.

“I said my mother did the sewing. I didn’t say I ever watched her doing it,” Dietrich said.

That was different. “Squeamish?” Philip asked.

Dietrich nodded. “You would be too if you’d ever seen what a saw can do.”

Phillip didn’t even want to think about the damage a woodsman’s saw could do to human flesh. In an effort to rid his mind of that thought he picked up the candle holder and dropped to his knees so he could examine the injury. Fortunately, this wound had not been made by a saw. “It seems like a clean cut,” he said as he ran his little finger the length of the wound. In fact it was too clean a cut. He turned and looked straight at Dietrich. “Was it a knife?”

Dietrich shook his head. “From what Paulus told me, it was probably a piece of copper guttering.”

Phillip raised his brows at that. Copper guttering was usually found on roofs. Which raised the question, what had the boy been doing on a roof at this time of night. He thought about asking, but with a gentle shake of his head reconsidered. It was probably better that he didn’t know. “Just as long as it wasn’t a fight,” he said, making it clear that he was not going to be a party to keeping quiet about a fight where knives had been used.

“It was copper spouting,” Dietrich affirmed.

Phillip studied Dietrich for a few seconds. It seemed he honestly believed the cut wasn’t from a knife. That was good enough for him. He felt in his satchel for his clothes repair kit and a small pot of ointment. He selected a curved needle that he used to sew lightweight leather and threaded it with some of his coarsest thread before sticking it point-first into the wood of the bucket so he could find it again easily. Then he opened the pot of ointment and took a big dab on his index finger and smeared it into the full length of the wound. There was an intake of breath followed by a yip of pain and the muscles of Paulus’ leg tensed; reminding Phillip that he’d forgotten something. He rolled up one of the handkerchiefs that had been used to bind the wound and told Paulus to bite on it.

The impossible happened and Paulus turned even paler as he tried to focus on the bloodied handkerchief. “Why?” he muttered as he tried to push it away from his mouth.”

“So your screams don’t wake everyone up and get us all into trouble.” Phillip punctuated the word trouble by shoving the handkerchief into Paulus’ mouth and got to work.

The first thing he did was use the other bloodied handkerchief to wipe the skin around the wound so his hand wouldn’t slip and grabbed the flesh on both sides of the injury with his left hand. With the edges of the wound held together he reached for his needle with his right hand, and froze. Just because he knew how to sew didn’t mean he knew how to sew flesh together. The only sewing of flesh he’d ever seen was when cook sewed the belly of a chicken or goose closed after filling them with stuffing.

The room around him was so quite you could hear a pin drop. Phillip looked up at the terrified face of Paulus. Well, that made two of them. He swallowed and stuck the needle into Paulus’ flesh. It was much harder to force it through the flesh than he’d expected, and his ointment smeared fingers slipped on the needle. He wiped his hand on a rag and tried again, this time managing to get the point of the curved needle to come out the other side of the wound. He left enough thread to tie off later and selected a spot a quarter inch along for his next stitch. With the thread held reasonably firmly by the flesh it had been forced through Phillip was able to make a knot. He continued along the wound, using a modified blanket-stitch, until he had the whole wound sewn closed. With a sigh of relief he wiped his sweaty brow on his shirt sleeve and sat back to admire his handiwork. It was very neat and tidy. He smiled at Paulus. “Almost finished.”

Paulus didn’t respond, but then he wouldn’t, having fainted shortly after Phillip started pushing a needle into his flesh. Phillip hadn’t noticed that Paulus’ muscles had stopped tensing with every jab of the needle because he’d been so intent on his task that the rest of the world might as well not have existed.

He tied he last stitch and cut the thread with the candle before using its light to examine the stitched wound. There didn’t seem to be any leakage, so he smeared another finger’s worth of his special ointment over wound. “There you are,” he said as he got back to his feet. “As good as new.” At this point he noticed Paulus had fainted and turned to Dietrich. “The stitches need to be removed sometime, but I don’t know when,” he said as he washed his arms and hands.

“My mother usually left them in for a week,” Dietrich said. ”

“You’ll remove them?” Phillip asked. “Good,” he replied when Dietrich nodded. He made a final check that he hadn’t forgotten anything and noticed the needle sticking out of the bucket. He didn’t remember sticking it there, but he must have. He grabbed it and returned it to its slot in his clothes repair kit. “Well, if that’s everything. I’ll leave you to clean up in here and be on my way, and remember . . .”

“You were never here,” Dietrich said.

Phillip met and matched Dietrich’s smile before checking out the two junior apprentices. Paulus looked like he’d fallen asleep, while Claus looked like he would soon follow him. Satisfied he’d done all he could, Phillip pulled on his jacket and left.

****

The next day Phillip got into the laboratory early so he could clean up last night’s experiment before one of the apprentices could get to it and throw out his precious flecks of nobilis auri. He carefully washed and dried the flecks before brushing them onto a clean glass. He was so intent on getting every last particle that he didn’t notice his supervising journeyman come up behind him. Fortunately, instead of disturbing his concentration, which could have resulted in his losing some of his flecks, Wilhelm Neuffer waited until he’d finished before speaking.

 

Shadow’s Blade – Snippet 28

Shadow’s Blade – Snippet 28

CHAPTER 10

I first met Orestes Quinley when Kona and I were still working in the Robbery detail of the Violent Crimes Bureau. Back then, he was a small-time criminal who wound up doing a couple of years in Eyman State Prison for burglary. He was also a weremyste of limited power — limited enough that the prison held him for a while, until he earned his parole.

In the years since then, Orestes, who also went by the name Brother Q, had gone straight and had made himself into a sorcerer of some power. He owned a small shop in the Maryvale precinct of Phoenix called Brother Q’s Shop of the Occult, which had to be one of the worst names for a business ever. In all my years of going to see Q, I had never seen an actual customer in the place. But the work kept Q out of trouble, and I hadn’t seen any evidence to suggest that the guy was starving or on the verge of being evicted.

During my time on the force, and in the year and a half since I had become a PI, Q had been a reliable informant on matters relating to magic. Kona thought he was crazy, and I suppose she had good reason. There was no denying that he was strange. He always referred to himself in the third person, and on occasion, for no reason whatsoever, he spoke in verse. He’d been doing this since the day I met him, and while I’m sure it began as an affectation, I wasn’t sure he could have stopped now if he tried.

But the truth was, I liked and trusted the guy, and I think he felt the same way about me. To this day, I was the only cop who had busted him and made the charges stick. I’ll admit that was a strange basis for a friendship, but it worked for us.

Often when I pulled up to Q’s place he was seated outside in an old lawn chair, sunglasses perched on the end of his nose. Not today. The door to his shop was shut, and a faded “Closed” sign had been placed in a window by the entrance.

I knocked on the door, waited, knocked again.

After a minute or so, I heard someone moving around inside.

I pounded on the door once more, rattling the frame. “Open up, Q.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Jay Fearsson. Let me in, will you? I have questions for you, and I have a twenty with your name on it.”

No answer.

“Q?”

“Yeah, all right,” he said. But I could tell he didn’t want to talk to me. He unlatched the chain and an instant later the door swung open.

Q stood before me in ragged jeans and a torn, faded Jimmy Cliff t-shirt. As always, his hair was in dreadlocks, and a gold hoop shone in his left ear. He also had a dark, angry bruise on his cheek, below his right eye.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“What?” He frowned. “Oh, that. Q had a fight with his woman.”

“She hit you?”

He nodded, turned, and walked into the shop. I closed the door behind me and followed.

“You hit her first?”

He rounded on me. “Q did no such thing! Q doesn’t hit women. Never has. Q was sorely tempted that night, let me tell you. But Q left instead. Seemed the best idea.”

“You’re back now.”

“Yeah, but she’s gone.”

“I’m sorry, Q,” I said, and meant it.

He shrugged. “Love and marriage ain’t for the faint of heart; ‘times Q think men and women be better off far apart.”

I grinned. “That was a good one.”

He led me to the back of the shop and sat in a wooden chair indicating that I should do the same. “What’chyou after, Brother J?”

“I don’t know.”

His eyebrows went up. “That’s gonna make it hard for Q to earn that twenty you mentioned.”

“What do you know about a silver-haired weremyste? Dresses well, might be from Great Britain.”

“Q needs more to go on,” he said. But he averted his gaze as he said it.

“All right. He’s into dark magic, blood spells. And here’s something that might set him apart: He doesn’t need to cut himself in order to access the blood he uses. He doesn’t need to cut anyone else for that matter. He can draw it out of people; all he has to do is touch them.” I leaned forward, staring at Q, who continued to avoid my gaze. “That ring a bell?”

“He’s bad news,” Q said, his voice low.

“I think I just said as much.”

“Q doesn’t know much more about him than you do. He’s from England like you said, an’ he’s as dark as a man can be.”

“He have a name?”

“Q’s heard people call him Fitzwater, but that might not be his real name.”

“Who’s he working for?”

Q shook his head. “A man with power like that? People work for him.”

That made sense. Chances were that silver-haired — Fitzwater — answered directly to Saorla.

“He’s looking for something, Q. A magical weapon of some sort. I don’t know more than that. He thought Burt Kendall had it, and he killed him before tearing his shop apart to find it.”

Q’s eyes found mine. “Burt’s dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, shit. I always liked him.”

“Do you know what this guy Fitzwater might be chasing?”

Q got up and walked to the nearest window, his hands in his jeans pockets, his shoulders hunched. Despite his quirks, he was usually jovial — that was his default mood — and I wasn’t sure what to make of this quiet, brooding version of my old friend. I couldn’t tell if he was broken up about his woman leaving, or just plain scared of Fitzwater. “Q doesn’t carry weapons,” he said, his back to me. “You know that. It’s bad mojo.”

Which wasn’t at all what I had asked.

“I didn’t suggest that you had it here. I asked you if you know what the guy’s after. And since you won’t look at me, and you won’t answer my question, I’m guessing you do.”

He shifted his stance enough to let me see the sullen cast of his features. Then he faced the window again.

“Q –”

“This one’s different, Brother J. You come to Q all the time with questions like these. Except none of them have been like this. Not even when you were after the Blind Angel dude. This is different.”

“So it’s going to cost me more than twenty.”

He turned at that. “Q’s not talkin’ about money,” he said, shaking his head. “This is different. You’re not askin’ for help to put away some small-time conjurer, or even t’ stop a killer. You’re askin’ Q to take sides in a war.”

“A war? What kind of weapon is this?”

Q clamped his mouth shut and glared at me, no doubt wishing he hadn’t answered my knock in the first place.

“There’s no war yet,” I said. “I’d know if there was. But if this weapon is that powerful, then I need to find it now, before the killing starts in earnest. So yeah, I guess I am asking you to take sides. Did you really think you could avoid that choice forever? Was your plan to hunker down and hope that every dark sorcerer in the city ignored you until the fighting ended?”

“How do you know Q won’t join the dark ones and help them kick your ass?”

I laughed. That probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do, given that I still needed information from him.

“Q’s stronger than you think, Jay. There’s plenty out there who’d want Q on their side. And there’s even more who don’t want Q as an enemy. You get what Q’s sayin’?”

“I’m not laughing at the idea of you kicking my ass, Q. I swear I’m not. I’m laughing because never in a million years would you join forces with dark sorcerers. That’s not your way.”

He tried to scowl at me, but wasn’t very successful. After a few seconds, a reluctant grin split his face, and the whole room seemed to get brighter. That was the Q I knew.

“That might be the best thing you’ve ever said to Q.”

I shrugged. “I meant it. I understand you not wanting to get in the middle of this. And you and I have done business long enough that you know I would never let slip where the information came from. But I have to know what I’m hunting for.”

His smile had faded, leaving his expression solemn and fearful. “It’s a knife.”

I blinked. “That must be some knife.”

“It’s old. Really old. Q’s never seen it, but he’s heard folks talk about it for a long, long time. It’s made of stone. Pale, the color o’ coffee with cream in it. ‘Cept for a streak of red in the blade, like blood.”

“In the blade or on it?”

“In it,” Q said. “Embedded in the stone.”

“You say you’ve never seen it. Do you know where it is, or who has it?”

“Q don’t know any more than he’s told you. Not who has it or where, not even where it comes from. Like Q said, it’s old. And it’s supposed to be powerful, wicked. Some people would pay a lot of money to have it. An’ others, includin’ Q, don’t want it anywhere near them.”

 

Shadow’s Blade – Snippet 27

Shadow’s Blade – Snippet 27

. . . Sources tell me it could be here. The speaker was an older man, with silver hair and a neatly trimmed goatee to match. He stood in the center of the shop, and a younger man, tall, athletic, watched from a pace or two behind him. I assumed the younger man was a weremancer, but because Burt wasn’t a weremyste, he couldn’t see the magic in people. And with this spell, I saw what Burt saw.

Both the older man and his companion appeared perfectly normal in the scried image; no magical blur obscured their features. The silver-haired gentleman wore a linen suit and a silk tie, and though I knew that he could kill with a mere touch of his hand, I couldn’t help thinking that this was how every villain in every Hollywood movie should look: elegant, handsome, effortlessly graceful. And so I ask you again, Mister Kendall, he said, do you have it?

Even his voice was smooth, a soft tenor tinged with the hint of a British accent.

I told you, already, Burt answered, sounding loud and clumsy by comparison, I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you could tell me what it looks like —

No, I think that would be a bad idea, on the off chance that you’re telling me the truth.

I am —

The older man raised a hand, and Burt fell silent.

You, come here.

Burt turned, allowing me to see his assistant — the guy with the tattoos and piercings who now lay dead in the middle of the shop. At that moment he still stood with Burt behind the counter, but at the silver-haired man’s summons, he walked out into the shop area. I had no doubt that the older man had used a spell to compel him.

Tommy, don’t, Burt said.

The kid ignored him.

Tommy is it? Silver-hair asked. Tommy didn’t answer, but that didn’t seem to surprise the man. As the kid stopped beside him, Silver-hair drew a knife from his pocket and laid the edge along Tommy’s neck. The kid didn’t so much as flinch. Now then, Mister Kendall, I will ask you my questions, and you will answer me. If you refuse, he’ll die. If you lie to me, I’ll know it, and he’ll die. Are we clear?

Please, I honestly don’t know —

Silver-haired quieted him again.

Do me the courtesy of allowing me to ask my questions. Have you had any objects of unusual origin brought in over the last month or so?

Unusual origin? I don’t even know what that means.

The older man pressed the blade harder against Tommy’s neck. Still, the kid’s expression remained blank. Think, Mister Kendall. Poor Tommy is depending on you.

You’re trying to find magical items, Burt said, his words a rushed jumble. Talismans, maybe old books, that sort of thing?

Have you received anything of that sort?

No. I keep an eye out for them. I have a certain clientele that wants to know when magical stuff comes in, and I haven’t had anything to show them in months. I swear it.

This particular piece might have resembled a weapon.

You mean like a magic gun?

Silver-hair glanced back at his companion and huffed a sigh. Then he faced Burt again, and when he did, Burt let out a scream that made me flinch.

He collapsed to the floor, clutching his leg. A few moments later, Silver-hair’s friend hoisted him to his feet once more.

I’m a tolerant man, but my patience is not without its limits. Where do you keep your magical items?

The pawned ones I keep in back, Burt said, his voice strained. On a shelf over my desk. If the loans aren’t repaid, I bring them out to that case. He pointed at a nearby display case. But aside from what’s there now, I’ve got nothing. I told you, I haven’t gotten anything new in —

His words trailed into another scream. I didn’t know what Silver-hair had done to him this time, but I had to grit my teeth against a rising tide of nausea.

You disappoint me, Mister Kendall. I had hoped to avoid this.

I couldn’t tell if he said more. Burt’s cries drowned out every other sound. I let the vision fade and slipped the stone back into my pocket before closing my eyes and rubbing a hand across my forehead. A headache had started to build behind my eyes.

“Well?” Kona asked.

I shook my head. “I didn’t see much. It was definitely our silver-haired friend again, and another guy who I’m sure was a weremyste.” I described what I’d seen in the stone and repeated as much of the conversation as I could remember. “I’m assuming that one of the spells intended to torture Burt wound up killing him, at which point they probably shot him in the chest to make people think it was a robbery gone bad. I’d guess that they searched the place and then used the kid’s blood to power the spell that wrecked the shop.”

Kona pursed her lips, staring down at Burt’s corpse. “Is it possible that the kid saw something Burt missed?”

“It’s possible. But I don’t think that this kind of seeing spell will work on him. They had him in a . . . a thrall of some sort. During the final minutes of his life, he had no idea what he was seeing or doing.”

“So we don’t even know if they got what they were after,” Kevin said.

I surveyed the shop, taking in the level of destruction. “I’m guessing now,” I said. “But I don’t think they did. I have a feeling our friend was pretty well ticked off when he cast that last spell.”

“Would you know what they were after if you saw it?” Kona asked me.

“I might.”

She nodded once. “Then let’s take a look around.”

A doorway behind the counter drew my eye. The door stood ajar and a sign on it read “Employees only.”

“Anyone been back there yet?” I asked.

“We’ve been all over this place, but we don’t know what we’re after.”

I nodded and followed her into the back. The mess back here was almost as bad as that out front, though the one display case in this part of the building, which stood against the far wall, had not been shattered. It held a few handguns, including what appeared to be an original Colt .44-40 six-shooter. Apparently Silver-hair didn’t know crap about non-magical weapons. If he had really wanted to convince anyone that this was a robbery, he wouldn’t have left the Colt.

The shelf over Burt’s desk was empty, as he told Silver-hair it would be. The desk drawers had been pulled out and dumped on the floor, and with Kona’s permission, I searched through the pile of pencils and pens, papers and paper clips. As I expected, I didn’t find anything of note. Either Silver-hair found what he was after, or Burt was telling the truth. I was betting on the latter.

“There’s nothing here, Kona. At least nothing I can see. I can help you with this one, if you’ll let me. You’re probably not going to find these guys through the usual channels.”

“We could use the help, Justis. Thanks.” After the conversation we’d had about Gracie the day before, it felt good to be on the same page with her. Then she had to go and spoil it, at least that’s how she would think of it. “If this thing he’s after isn’t here, where else might it be?”

I met her gaze, and despite the grim surroundings, a grin tugged at the corners of my mouth. “You’re not going to like my answer.”

It took her a moment, and when it came to her, she rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t tell me.”

“What?” Kevin asked, looking from one of us to the other.

“Brother Q,” Kona and I said in unison. I was smiling as we said the name. She wasn’t.

 

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 18

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 18

CHAPTER 7

DaSaenz Estate on Jardin

DaSaenz flew the aircar well. That was a relief to Daniel, though it hadn’t crossed his mind before they took off.

He’d ridden with some very bad drivers without worrying particularly about it. An aircar ride, even with Hogg driving, didn’t make the top ten most dangerous experiences of Daniel’s normal life. Miranda was sitting beside him this time, however.

“Would you like the top up?” daSaenz called over his shoulder.

Daniel looked at Miranda. “No, I like the breeze,” she said.

After a moment she added, “This is a wonderful way to see the country. I’ve, well, I’ve never ridden in an aircar before.”

Daniel squeezed her hand. He hadn’t realized that, though it shouldn’t have surprised him. Miranda and her mother had lived in Xenos where trams made personal transport unnecessary and flight was banned save for emergency vehicles. Daniel didn’t own or drive an aircar, so he and Miranda had always taken the monorail when they visited Bantry.

They were swinging around the hill above Cuvier. DaSaenz stayed about three hundred feet up and kept his speed down to fifty miles an hour, though the car was obviously capable of going much faster — especially with the top up to smooth the airflow.

“That house on the peak is where you live?” Daniel said, leaning closer to the driver. They got only occasional glimpses of the building’s buttresses through the tops of the native trees. The foliage grew from a base of filaments which rose in a slender cone over a hundred feet above the ground. The road at the bottom of the valley was the only other human construction now that they had left Cuvier behind.

“Yes, we just call it the manor,” daSaenz said. “It’s Starscape Manor in town, I’m told. There’s an elevator down from the house, but we’ll enter at the bottom and go up to mother when you’ve seen the caves.”

Ahead was a twenty-foot high rock face too sheer for vegetation to take root. In front of it was a graveled parking area onto which daSaenz sent the car in a descending arc. A sturdy kiosk was built against the cliff. Nearby a metal door was built into the rockface.

“That’s the entrance to the caves?” Miranda said. “It looks like the door of a bank vault.”

“Supposedly my ancestor Captain daSaenz had the door made from the colony ship’s sheathing,” daSaenz said. He flared the aircar neatly, hovered an instant, and settled the last six inches to the ground in front of the entrance. “The caves are dangerous to people without an experienced guide.”

He shut off the fans and turned in his seat. “I suppose there was a certain amount of pride of ownership too, of course,” he said. “And initially I don’t believe the colonists realized that the glowworms were confined to this cave system. At least in seven hundred years, no other occurrence has been found.”

Close up, what Daniel had thought of as a kiosk looked more like a pillbox. The walls were of closely fitted stone; the windows were small and now covered with armored glass which appeared to have replaced the original bars, as the slits in the masonry had been widened slightly. The door on one side was of the same heavy metal as that of the cave entrance.

DaSaenz was coming around to Miranda’s side of the car before Daniel could get there. She hopped out on her own and smiled at their host. Miranda still practiced with school hockey teams to keep fit — which she certainly was.

The kiosk’s door opened. A middle-aged man got out and bowed. His uniform was the same shade of red as the aircar, and it was piped with gold.

“Good evening, sir,” he said. The guard didn’t have a gun, but the baton hanging from his belt was a meter long. “How may I help you, sir?”

“Open the cave for me and my guests, then close it after we’ve gone in,” daSaenz said. “We’ll leave through the manor. Oh — and we’ll need one of the lanterns.”

The guard trotted obediently back into the kiosk. The cave door — it was four inches thick — began to open with the high-pitched whine of a hydraulic pump.

A moment later the guard returned with a flat six-inch lens of yellow crystal. It had a loop handle on top, but there was also a strap which daSaenz hung around his neck. The power supply must be part of the backing plate.

“I’ll lead,” daSaenz said to Daniel. He completely ignored the guard who was waiting for further orders. “Keep with me. That shouldn’t be difficult since I’ll have the light.”

Daniel and Miranda could have walked abreast through the cave entrance, but he took the lead so that he was between her and their guide. The worst you could really say about daSaenz was that he was brusque, as aristocrats by birth often are.

Daniel smiled faintly. As I have been in my time, particularly if I’ve been drinking. I still don’t like daSaenz.

The entrance started as a tunnel, clearly artificial. It was high enough that Daniel could walk upright but daSaenz ducked slightly. He probably would have cleared the ceiling also, but his caution was an instinctive response.

“According to legend there was just a narrow fissure here,” daSaenz said. “A boy, one of my distant ancestors, crawled in. When he came back with stories about the lights — the glowworms, of course — his father blasted the rock wide enough that he could get in himself. The present entrance was built within that first generation.”

The outer door closed and blocked the final leakage of sunshine, daSaenz switched on the lantern he carried. Its deep yellow light flooded the tunnel ahead — they had almost reached the end — and spilled out into a much larger chamber beyond.

DaSaenz stepped aside so that the others could join him. “Why is the light this color?” Miranda asked.

“It doesn’t harm your night vision,” daSaenz said. “And it doesn’t seem to affect the glowworms either — ultraviolet is fatal to them. But I’ll turn this out in a moment after you’ve had a chance to view the cave itself.”

The chamber was a hollow spire rather than a dome, reaching higher than the lantern could illuminate even when daSaenz pointed it straight up. The base was a near oval measuring seventy feet by a hundred at an eyeball estimate.

Lowering the lantern again, daSaenz tapped an object with the toe of his boot. “Notice this?” he said. “It was a plastic food container. And that –”

He tapped a wrinkled rectangle about eight inches square.

“– was a piece of paper, a wrapper I think. Though there may have been writing on the upper side, which of course can’t be viewed now.”

Daniel squatted and tapped the second item with his fingernail. It was a sheet of metal, just as he had thought from its gleam in the lantern light.

“Look at the bottom,” daSaenz said.

Daniel raised the piece between his thumb and forefinger and turned it over. The underside was paper. The top had been plated with metal.

“There are other bits of human trash here,” daSaenz said, gesturing toward the cave floor. “These are enough to show you what happens. Now I’ll show you how it happens.”

He switched out the light. Daniel grabbed daSaenz’ arm by reflex; his other fist was cocked for a memory-guided punch to their guide’s belly.

Before Daniel swung, his eyes noticed irregular pastel blotches all around. The larger blurs contained scatterings of bright points.

“It’s what Daddy described,” Miranda said quietly. “Like being in the Matrix, surrounded by stars.”

It’s nothing like the Matrix! Daniel thought, but Miranda’s hand touched his hip. He quickly released daSaenz and edged toward Miranda.

“Sorry,” he said to their guide, embarrassed at his reaction. “I was startled.”

The glowworms ranged in size from the pad of his thumb to a few that were the size of his palm. There had been no sign of them before daSaenz turned out the lantern. A number clustered close by on the floor, including a pale blue patch under Daniel’s right boot. In fact —

He jerked his foot back. The blotch came with it.

“It’s on my foot!” Daniel said, hoping he didn’t sound as panicked as he felt. He bent to release the closures and kick the boot away. Could he hop back to the entrance without stepping on another with his bare skin?

 

Changeling’s Island – Snippet 27

Changeling’s Island – Snippet 27

Tim laughed until he had to sit down on the wet sand. It was neat to have someone like himself to talk to. He hadn’t realized he’d missed it so much.

* * *

He was a lot different from the miserable kid who had been kind to her on the flight over, thought Molly. That kid had been pale and a bit weedy, and had looked out of place. Tim was tanned to quite dark-skinned now, and his shirt looked too tight for him. And he looked more comfortable here even than he had been on the bus or at school. More confident. Telling her about how cool it was to go spearing flounder in the dark. Very full of his adventures on the boat with Jon McKay. Other than the fact that he was an ab diver, Molly didn’t know much about the guy. Tim plainly thought his word was law.

It was strange that Tim been here for so long during the holidays without showing up at the island’s functions and parties. But then, his grandmother never seemed to go out.

Talk went on to fishing. “I’m supposed to find nippers or pipis,” admitted Tim. “Gran seemed to think I’d know what they are, and how to find them. I have used squid and a hand line, but not this stuff.” He pointed at the rod.

“Dad fishes off the beach. But he mostly catches little flathead, too small to keep. I’ve helped him collect bait. If you want pipis, they’re just about wall-to-wall in the next bay. We’ve got a sort of pump for the sand-yabbies. I don’t think you can catch them with your hands.”

Soon they had their trousers rolled up and were collecting the little shellfish, “helped” by Bunce’s earnest digging, and then trying to work out how to put a shell on a hook. It was, Molly admitted to herself, more fun than she’d had so far that holiday. And fishing with Tim was more exciting, too, because it was not like with her dad, standing around waiting for something to happen, getting bored. Things happened, and fast. They had only managed — as a team effort — to cast out the broken shells on a hook on the third try, and that had barely had time to get wet before they had a fish on the hook, pulling the line, and jerking the rod around, bending it like a grass-stalk in the breeze.

“It’s a big one! What do I do now?” asked Tim, clinging onto the rod, as the reel screamed.

“Wind it in! Keep the rod pointed up,” said Molly. That was the extent of her knowledge.

The reel screamed again. “It’s heavy! It’s pulling like mad. I’ll keep the rod up, if you wind the reel. I need two hands.”

Bunce started barking and prancing around them with the excitement. Eventually they had to run backward up the beach — and fall over Bunce — and get up and run again, to pull the fish up onto the shining wet sand.

It was a mammoth-sized flathead, yellow with leopard-pattern brown spots and dots of red, and a huge, wide, flat mouth full of sharp teeth, and eyes with a golden iris that formed an odd crescent. It looked like a fantasy book’s dragon’s eye, staring at them.

“Watch it! The gill-covers have nasty spikes,” yelled Tim as she bent to try and pick it up. “Here, hold the rod. I’ll kill it.”

He did, stabbing it neatly through the head with the knife from his pocket. “Quick and clean, Jon says.”

Molly was glad he was there to do it. Bunce growled at the fish and sniffed it. “Don’t you dare eat it, you menace!” said Molly. “Boy, my dad would be green with envy!”

Tim laughed. “We’d better catch another then, so you can take this one home. Nan told me she was expecting fish for tea.”

“We’ll never catch two.”

But they did, the second not quite the size of the first, or quite so difficult or so mixed up in their efforts, but still a big fish. And then Tim…stopped. Put the reel down carefully on the bag. “I suppose we’d better fillet them and clean the guts out. Only I am not too sure how to do it…I was just doing the skinning with Mally. How can we carry the fillets? I haven’t got a plastic bag or anything.”

“Aren’t you going to try again?” asked Molly.

He shook his head, looking a little regretful. “That’s enough. Jon says you always leave fish in the sea for tomorrow, and we don’t have a freezer, and we’ve got a goose for tomorrow…” He colored. “Gran caught it. She thought the copper was on to her.”

“The copper?” asked Molly.

Tim looked uncomfortable. “He wanted to know where your place was. Something about a gun safe. He was lost.”

“But he came and had a cup of tea back in November. With that nice guy you went fishing with.”

Tim bit his lip and stood silent for a moment. Then he looked at the fish. “Well…I suppose I’d better try to deal with these.”

Molly wondered just what it was about the policeman that had made Tim so uncomfortable. She nearly asked, but then a tangle of blue baling twine and bits of dry seaweed, which had obviously been cast up by the tide, blew along the beach and nearly hit her in the face. It would have, if she hadn’t caught it. She held it out to him: “Boy, the wind is getting up. We could put the fish on some of this string and carry them home. My dad knows how to fillet fish.”

“I wish mine was around to show me,” said Tim, quietly.

What did you say to that? You could hear it hurt him. “We could at least take the guts out. I know how to do that from catching wrasse,” she said, changing the subject.

Tim grinned, obviously making an effort to pull himself away from whatever he’d been thinking of. “Here’s my knife,” he said, holding it out. “Just don’t tell Gran. She said I was never to let go of it.”

“She sounds, like, really weird,” said Molly.

“No!” he said defensively, and then pulled a face. “Yeah, I guess she is a bit. But she’s, well, I guess sort of living in the past or something. Like we don’t have TV, let alone the Internet. I didn’t think I could live without it.”

“I don’t think I could,” said Molly, cutting the fish’s belly open. “You can haul out the stuff inside. So, like, what do you do? I mean, no Internet, no TV…”

“Pull out fish guts,” he said, waving them around. “I’ve been working during the holidays, and Gran has always got jobs for me to do when I get home. I read. Play Starcraft. It’s a bit dead, but I’ve been so tired after being at sea. And I might be going to Melbourne later in the holidays. Or Jon said he was going to organize for me to take a motorboat handler’s ticket. That’d be cool. He’s a good guy, Jon.”

“I can lend you some books,” said Molly. It all sounded fairly dreary to her. Well, the motorboat part might be all right.

“That’d be great! I was wondering about the library, but it’s a long way to town.”

“We go in to fetch guests, and on Wednesdays when the ferry comes in, to shop.”

“Ah. I might scrounge a lift sometime. Nan gets Hailey’s dad, uh, Mr. Burke to collect our post and stuff.” He pushed a strand of the blue baling twine through the fish’s mouth. “There you go. Bunce will think you are carrying it for him.” The wolfhound lolled against Tim, panting affectionately.

“He likes you anyway. You can’t give it to me, though.”

“Why not? They’re too big for us to eat more than a fillet each,” said Tim, taking the guts out of the second fish.

It would be nice to shock her father with it. And, well, she felt she’d been part of catching it, and he really didn’t seem to be only being polite. “Um, like, if you’re sure? My dad will be green with envy.”

Tim nodded, waved at the sea. “Yeah. There are more fish out there, anyway.”

A little later Molly walked home with the flathead. The string was heavy and cut at her hand, but it was still going to be worth it, just to show her father. She found herself grinning at the thought of their method of catching fish. It had all been a lot more fun than just a walk down the beach with Bunce. It must be so strange for Tim. She didn’t really know a lot about him, about his family, or his weird grandmother. Why was he afraid of the cops? Why did he get miserable so easily? Maybe his grandmother was up to something. Or…were his parents really divorced? Maybe his father was in jail or something?

* * *

Áed was pleased with his work. He had made his peace with the Cu — the noble hound. It would seem the dog had the blood of the ancient hounds of the Irish chieftains in its veins, and was proof against most magics. Too, the steel studs in its collar had protected it from the sea-dog, and it had driven her off. And the dog’s mistress was helping to counter the selkie’s charms as well. Young humans had more in common than an old fae and young human, no matter what magics she used to make herself beautiful and seductive.

He’d flung the sea-wrack blue cord at the Cu’s mistress, set with the little charms that he had been able to add to it. She had taken his actions, as many humans did, for the wind, and “accepted” the gift by catching the tangle of twine before it hit her in the face. Such are the traps and gifts of Faerie. And she had taken a piece of it with her to string the fish onto. In way of such charms…she might try to throw it away, but it would fall into a pocket or end up being used for something in her home. The spells he’d placed on it would work, slowly, on her. He could summon her now. She would come and help to protect the master when Áed called.

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 09

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 09

Chapter 2

Dr. Phil’s Journey

Saturday, January 5, 1613, Augsburg

The smoke was making Paulus Rauner’s eyes water as he forced the sack stuffed with damp straw taken from the local stable down as far as he could into the chimney. Finally he was satisfied it was in place and turned his attention to getting down off the roof before it started to have an effect. The roof was slate, and it was wet, so he had to be very careful. But even being careful he still managed to slip, catching his leg against the roof of a protruding dormer window as he desperately fought to keep his balance. He managed not to fall, and a few minutes later he was safely on the ground.

“Did you do it?” Claus Schorer asked.

Paulus nodded. “It shouldn’t be long before they’re smoked out. That’ll teach them to insult my sister.”

“Then let’s get out of here. I don’t want to be around when they come out the doors.”

Paulus sent the house of Master Fleckhammer a satisfied smirk before loping off after his friend.

They covered several hundred yards before Paulus’ leg started bothering him. He ran a hand over where it was sore and it came up covered in something sticky. He sniffed his hand. It didn’t smell yucky, so he touched it with the tip of his tongue. It was salty. “Hang on, Claus. I think I cut myself.”

Claus joined him and they slipped into the moonlight to have a look at the injury. Paulus couldn’t see much, but Claus was able to crouch down and peer at it closely. “Ouch! That hurt,” Paulus protested as Claus poked the injury

“It’s bleeding a lot. Do you have a handkerchief?” Claus asked as he dug his out of a shirt sleeve.

Paulus passed him a linen handkerchief and watched and winced as Claus tied it to his injury. Their respite was disturbed by the sounds of activity coming from the direction they’d come. “What’s that?” he asked.

Claus cocked his head and listened for a moment before shooting to his feet. “I’ve no idea, and I have no intention of hanging around to find out. Can you run?”

Paulus wasn’t sure, but he was equally unwilling to hang around and risk getting caught. “I think so.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

They covered almost two blocks before Paulus had to stop.

“What’s the matter?” Claus asked.

“It hurts,” Paulus protested.

“It’ll hurt a lot more if we’re caught.”

Paulus felt the pad covering his injury. It was tacky. “I’m still bleeding.’

Claus adjusted the pad and tied it tighter to the leg. “Just keep going. We can’t afford to be caught on the streets at this time of night.”

Paulus answered by starting moving again. If the night watch were to discover them they would be in big trouble. Not just for being out without permission, but also because they would immediately become suspects to what he hoped was happening at Master Fleckhammer’s house.

Ten minutes later they slipped almost unnoticed into their dormitory — almost, because their roommate was in the room.

“Where have you two been?” Dietrich Besserer demanded in a loud whisper.

“Out,” Claus said as he struggled to light a candle.

“I can see that you’ve been out. I want to know where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to. And what’s wrong with Paulus?”

“He cut himself.” Claus took his lit candle and moved closer to Paulus.

“You haven’t been fighting I hope?'” Dietrich demanded. “You know they take a dim view of fighting.”

“Of course I haven’t been fighting,” Paulus said. It came out with distinct pauses as even the slightest movement was shooting excruciating pain through his leg, causing him to suck in air each time.

“Let me have a look at what you’ve done,” Dietrich said as he rolled out of his bed and stepped into the circle of light around Paulus’ leg. “That doesn’t look good.”

“Tell me about it,” Paulus muttered between sharp intakes of breath.

Dietrich took a closer look. He was the youngest of six brothers in a family of carpenters and woodsmen, and he’d often seen the results of axes and saws making contact with human flesh. This cut looked bad. “That’s going to need to be sewn shut. Claus, go and get Frau Kilian.

Claus and Paulus glanced at each other before shaking their heads. “We can’t do that,” Claus said. “Frau Kilian would report it, and then we’d be in trouble.’

“What have you two been up to?” Dietrich asked. Then quickly he waved his hands at them. “Never mind, it’s not important. We need someone who can sew your cut and won’t tell tales.” He himself wasn’t a candidate. One reason he wasn’t following the rest of his family was because he was squeamish. Contrary to what his brothers might say he did not faint at the sight of blood, nor was he afraid of the sight of blood. He just found the sight of someone’s lifeblood pumping out of their body uncomfortable, and he preferred not to look when an injury was being treated. As a result, he’d never actually seen his mother sew anybody up. And then there was the fact his sewing skills were so bad he didn’t even own a needle and thread. However, there was one apprentice known throughout the assay office for his sewing skills, and not only that, he was also known for his knowledge of the apothecary’s arts. Dietrich took another look at Paulus’ cut. Yes, they were going to need both of these skills if this little accident was to be kept quiet. “Do you know Phillip Gribbleflotz?” he asked Claus.

“I know who he is.”

“That’s close enough” Dietrich said. “I want you to find him and bring him here.”

“Why?” Claus asked.

“Because his father was an apothecary and he knows how to sew. Now get a move on.”

“I know how to sew,” Paulus said.

“Do you want to sew up your wound?” Dietrich asked. Paulus shook his head. “Then we need Phillip.” Dietrich found his eyes watching a drop of blood form on the bottom of Paulus’ foot. The spell was broken when it grew too big and splattered onto the floor. His mind drifted to the fact someone was going to have to clean that up, and then he noticed Claus was still standing by the door. “I told you to go. Now get. The sooner Phillip gets here the sooner we can forget this ever happened.”

Claus stared pleadingly at Dietrich. “I don’t know where his room is.”

Dietrich raised his eyes to the heavens. He was sure he hadn’t been this bad when he started his apprenticeship. “He won’t be in his room. Try Herr Neuffer’s laboratory first. You do know where that is?” Claus gave a single nod. “If he’s not in there he’s probably in the library. Now go.” The final instruction was reinforced with a foot in the behind.

****

As a senior apprentice, who had also made a significant contribution to the assay office shooting team beating the Goldsmith’s guild in the Augsburg inter-guild shooting competition for the last four years, Phillip Gribbleflotz had special privileges not granted to lesser beings, such as being permitted to conduct his own experiments in the laboratory after work. There were some things he was not supposed to do, and being a conscientious youth, Phillip abided by these restrictions, most of the time.

This winter’s evening he was shivering in the cold as he studied the latest in his experiments. Ink and quill would have been unreliable in these conditions, so he was recording his observations with a pencil. Not that there had been much to observe so far.

“Herr Gribbleflotz, thank the lord that I have found you. Please, come quickly. Paulus has hurt himself badly and needs a cut in his leg stitched close.”

Phillip didn’t like having his experiments disturbed. That was one reason he conducted them late into the night. Which reminded him, he glanced at the candle he was using to record time. It had to be after ten o’clock. He turned round to face the intruder. It was one of the new apprentices, a boy all of twelve years of age. “What do you want?”

Claus managed to choke out his message in the face of Phillip’s hostility.

“Why are you bothering me with this? It’s Frau Kilian’s job to care for the junior apprentices.”

“Herr Besserer said to get you, Herr Gribbleflotz.”

 

Changeling’s Island – Snippet 26

Changeling’s Island – Snippet 26

His grandmother nodded. “My little helper caught him.”

“Some people do shoot them. They were talking about it at school.”

“Yes, but yer got to have a permit for that, an’ that costs money, which we ain’t got. I’ll claim it’s Aboriginal hunting if they asked me.”

“But you’re not Aboriginal,” said Tim.

She snorted. “They say I am. So, so are you. Now drink yer tea, we got some cows to shift.”

Tim was left to puzzle this out, as his grandmother was plainly not going to tell him any more about it. Her tone — and he’d gotten quite good at reading that — said he shouldn’t ask. They moved cows, patched a piece of broken, rusty fence, and went back to the house. It was hot, but windy. “Pity about the wind. I’d love to go for flounder again,” said Tim.

“It’ll settle in a few days. Yer could try for flathead off the beach. There’s an old rod of mine in the back of the shed yer could take. Call it an early present.”

Once, not even that long ago, that would have not raised much excitement. Now it was different. “Really?”

“Yer looked after yer grandfather’s flask well enough, and yer seem to have bit of common sense, when you’re not driving,” said his grandmother, dryly.

“I will look after it. I promise. I’ve never done any fishing, except on the boat with a hand-line. I don’t really know what to do.”

“Yer put a bait on and cast…oh, get it out. There’s a canvas bag next to it with sinkers and stuff. I’ll show yer quickly, and you can go and try. I’ve got to do some baking. You keep your knife by you, stay away from seals, and don’t talk to any strange women.”

So she showed him, and soon Tim was walking down through the paddocks and bush to the sea, a long rod on his shoulder, wondering just how many strange women his nutty grandmother thought he’d find down there.

The sea was a far call from the calm of his flounder-spearing night, but not as rough as on some days he’d been working for Jon out on it. He looked at the low-tide-exposed gleaming sand where his grandmother assured him there’d be pipis and nippers for bait. She obviously thought anyone who could breathe would know what those were, and Tim hadn’t wanted to ask any more questions in case she changed her mind. It was good to be down here, with the wind and salt in his face, the beach under his bare feet. His toes would have to dig into the sand like roots to keep him from blowing away if the wind got up any more, thought Tim, burrowing them into the wet sand anyway, and feeling, somehow, like a tall tree, firm against the wind. He stood there for a while leaning into the wind, before walking toward the low rock that jutted into the water, that he’d been told to fish off.

And there was a strange woman…riding a surfboard, so it was kind of logical for her to be here. She was hot, and not just for her wave riding. Tim had fantasies about a girl that looked like Lorde, and this girl looked very like her. The black wetsuit didn’t leave that much to his imagination. She waved. He waved back, more than just a little surprised.

There was obviously a deeper patch of water, there near the rock, because the waves were not breaking there. The surfer girl paddled into that and sat up on her board to talk to him: “Hello. You must be Tim Ryan.”

She had a beautiful smile and long, dark wavy hair that hung down over her breasts. The wetsuit was unzipped enough to let Tim wonder what, if anything, she was wearing under it. He was trying not to stare, and failing. “Uh. Yes.”

“I’m Maeve,” she said, giving him a little wave.

Her smile made Hailey’s best try to be charming look like a candle to a searchlight. Tim swallowed, trying to find something not stupid to say, and to stop staring. She had a rich lilting voice…and his mother’s Irish accent.

* * *

Áed had been afraid that the selkie would be in ambush. He’d been sure she would be waiting and watching, but Áed had hoped that he’d made her wary. Instead it seemed to have made the seal-woman determined to use her powers to the fullest. Because seals looked graceful and their little ones soft, because men and sharks had hunted them…men seemed to forget that seals too were relentless hunters. She was drawing on the human side of Áed’s master, letting Áed master’s own idea of beauty provide the magical glamour. She looked like the woman of his dreams, because she was what he dreamed, rather than her own more voluptuous self.

Áed searched desperately for some way to distract his master. But she was easily able to counter his small magics. She could probably kill him, if she chose, or get the master to banish him, he was that enthralled. Yet…Áed’s poor master should have just rushed into the water after her…blinded by the charm and magic, not even aware that he was drowning. And he hadn’t. She was trying to talk him away from the land that gave him strength. The land touched the master’s bare feet, and he was a part of it, and it seemed its spirits, even if they would not help him fight men, protected him, at least from magics and enchantments. That…and maybe the Aos Sí blood that allowed him to look at her glamour, and perhaps see through it.

But would it be enough? She was clever, she watched humans and understood them all too well, and there was nothing a little creature of air and darkness could do against her power, drawn from the vastness of the sea.

Her look told him that he would suffer if he even tried.

Áed fled…

To find help.

Fortunately, it was on the beach, and it had very long legs. Four of them, and when taunted by Áed, the huge wolfhound could run faster than a stag.

The human girl who had been with the dog was left far behind, even if she too had long legs and could run well for her kind.

* * *

“I’d love to try it! But I haven’t got any bathers,” said Tim. “Anyway, I’ve never surfed, and really I wouldn’t know what to do.” A cautious part of his mind said he would only make a complete fool of himself if he took her up on her offer of having a go at riding the board.

“Oh, it’s easy enough. I’ll show you,” she said.

There was an enormous splash. Tim turned and saw what he first took for a sea monster, and then realized that it was merely a huge brown coarse-haired whiskery dog’s head above the water — with the rest of the dog submerged, but swimming, and barking.

Looking back along the beach, Tim could see Molly pelting along the beach.

The surfer girl looked at the dog, at Tim, at the runner…and said: “I see you have friends. Another time.” And she paddled the board away, far faster than the swimming Bunce, who did a deep-throated woof at her and it, before he turned shoreward.

“Bunce!” gasped Molly. “Come here,”…pant…”bad dog!”

The bad dog in question surged and bounced out of the shallows with a vast doggy grin, hurtled out of the water to Tim, and leaned against his legs, wet and hairy. Bunce looked adoringly up at Tim, tongue lolling, as if he was best thing he’d ever seen. He didn’t have to look that far up, either. He was a huge dog. It was a hard look to resist. Tim patted the big head, a bit warily. He hadn’t had much to do with dogs, let alone ones quite this size. He got a big, sloppy lick of appreciation.

“Don’t think you can hide behind Tim, you…you faithless ratbag,” said Molly, grabbing him by the studded collar. The collar was more imposing than the dog, who was pretending to be very small, and succeeding quite well, for a cart-horse. “Sorry, Tim. He just took off. I don’t know what got” — she panted — “into him.” She stared crossly at the large dog thumping his tail at her and panting back. “He always comes when I call him.”

“He just can’t resist surfboards,” said Tim, mildly irritated that the gorgeous woman had paddled off, but still pleased to see Molly and her daft dog.

Molly wrinkled her brow. “What surfboard?” she asked.

“That woman on a surfboard. She was here when Bunce came to show off his moustache.” Tim pointed out at the sea. And then blinked because neither the woman nor the surfboard was visible. “Hello. Where has she gone?”

Molly looked at the sea. Dug into the magazine pocket of her camo trousers, and came out with a book and a small pair of binoculars. She stared at the water, searching. “There’s a seal. Did you think that was a surfboard? Maybe Bunce thought the seal was another dog. He’s not very fond of other dogs.”

Before Tim could tell her that he wasn’t blind, didn’t need glasses and did know the difference between a woman and a seal, the Irish wolfhound curved his back.

Molly let go of his collar and backed off, but not quite fast enough, as he shook himself, sending what seemed like half the ocean spraying over the two of them. “Oh, Bunce! If you’ve damaged the binocs I’ll kill you, and Dad’ll kill me!” shrieked Molly.

By the time the binoculars had been carefully dried of the few droplets, inspected and the end result greeted with some relief, with an apologetic dog trying to lick them, the surfer had been momentarily forgotten. The two of them were talking with the ease that bus journeys together had brought, about how the holidays had been so far, and that had led into books, and the folly of parents, or in Tim’s case, a grandparent. “She says I am to take this old knife with me everywhere. And not talk to strange women.”

Molly stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m not that strange.”

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 08

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 08

Ulrich was immediately suspicious. “Would that someone be Otto Hofbauer?” he asked.

“No, it was Wolfgang Manlich.”

“From the brewer’s guild? What does he need better powder for?” Ulrich asked. “He won two of his events.”

“He might be by and far the best shot in Augsburg, but the competition in the intercity competitions is fierce, and he wants every advantage he can get. And seeing how Bartholomäus Kellner, using the special powder I made for you, leapt up five places compared with his score last year in the open one hundred yard competition, he seems to think that powder might be just the edge he needs.”

Ulrich had absolutely no idea how much it had cost to produce the super pure saltpetre and sulphur, so he resorted to the old standby. “It’s going to be expensive,” he said.

“Of course it’s going to be expensive,” Georg agreed. “I’ve bought supposedly super pure ingredients before. But I’ve never used anything as good as the saltpetre and sulphur you provided me with. If the price isn’t too much more than I’ve paid previously, I’m interested in buying as much as you can get me.” He looked at Ulrich expectantly. “So, how much is it going to cost per pfundt?”

In the face of Georg’s determination Ulrich had no choice but to admit he didn’t know. “But I’m sure I can get you a price soon.”

“How soon?” Georg asked. “Herr Manlich wants to start practicing with the new powder before he leaves for the next Schützenfest.”

“I’ll see that you have a price by Wednesday.”

“Thank you.” Georg collected his wife and they walked off.

Ulrich was still watching Georg and his wife walk away when he felt a jab in the ribs. That was a signal from Magdalena that he’d been ignoring her. He hastened to remedy the situation before she jabbed him again. “Yes?”

“I asked you what Herr Böcklin wanted,” she said.

“He just wanted to know how much it would cost to buy a supply of our new super pure saltpetre and sulphur.”

“But the assay office doesn’t sell super pure saltpetre and sulphur,” Magdalena said.

“We do now.” Ulrich noticed Paul Paler and his wife were close by. He changed direction and headed towards them. “Paul,” he called out.

Paul reacted to his name being called out by turning towards Ulrich. “Yes, Herr Hechstetter?”

“I promised Georg Böcklin that I would give him a price for super pure saltpetre and sulphur by Wednesday. See to it.”

“Yes, Herr Hechstetter.”

****

Paul Paler muttered into his beard as he glared after his boss. It was just like Herr Hechstetter to offload a job like that onto him and expect an answer in a couple of days.

“What did you say?” Elisabeth Welser asked.

Paul smiled at his wife. “Nothing you want to hear. Herr Hechstetter wants me to calculate a price to supply Herr Böcklin with super pure saltpetre and sulphur by Wednesday.”

“You won’t have time to do that. We’re going round to mother’s tomorrow.”

That was a good enough reason to insist he had to do it himself, but using that excuse to avoid his mother-in-law probably wasn’t worth the domestic strife it was bound to cause. “Don’t worry, dear. I’m sure Jakob Reihing will be able to assemble the necessary figures before Wednesday.”

“Good!” There was a certain something in the way Elisabeth said the word that told Paul he’d made a wise decision. “And there’s Anna Maria and Jakob. Why not ask him now?”

Paul glanced in the direction Elisabeth was pointing and easily identified Jakob and his wife. They looked happy, and he really didn’t want to break the mood, as he knew the news he had to impart would surely do.

“Come on,” Elisabeth said as she tugged at his arm. “Anna Maria, Jakob,” she called. “Wait a moment.”

Paul saw Jakob and his wife had heard and had stopped so they could catch up. Reluctantly he let Anna Maria drag him towards them.

“How can we help you?” Jakob asked.

“Herr Hechstetter just promised Herr Böcklin that he would give him a price for super pure saltpetre and sulphur by Wednesday, and I need you to collect the necessary information so I can work out a price.”

“Oh, that’s easily done,” Jakob said.

“It is?” Paul was surprised at how happy Jakob appeared to be at having such a task dumped on him at such short notice.

Jakob nodded his head. “Phillip Gribbleflotz is a compulsive note taker. I’m sure he’ll have all the information you need to calculate a price in his notes. I should be able to get you all the information you need by lunch time tomorrow.”

****

The next day Paul presented himself in Ulrich’s office. “Herr Hechstetter, I have the pricing estimates for the super pure saltpetre and sulphur you requested.”

“Already? That was quick work.” Ulrich held out a hand for the piece of paper Paul was holding. “I hope they’re accurate.”

“The apprentice charged with purifying the saltpetre and sulphur kept very detailed notes on everything to do with the task. From his notes it was a simple task to calculate how much it cost to produce the saltpetre and sulphur, and therefore how much we would have to sell it for to make a profit.”

“That’ll be young Phillip Gribbleflotz again?”

Paul nodded. “I’ve already set him to making more saltpetre and sulphur.”

Ulrich glanced up for the estimate he was reading. “Good, good. We really must do something for the young man to demonstrate our appreciation for his good work.”

“Well, he’s an apprentice, and they’re always short of money,” Paul suggested.

A few days later

Phillip laid down his pen and flexed his hands. He’d used the money Master Paler had given him to buy writing paper, and he was now was slowly copying a collection of treatises on alchemy by his great grandfather that he’d found in the assay office’s library. This hand written copy would be the beginning of his own library

August 1609

The parcel arrived for Phillip in the post. Mail of any kind for the apprentices was rare, and parcels, especially anything the size of the parcel Phillip received, were doubly rare. So there was a lot of interest in the parcel and his fellow apprentices gathered around Phillip as he examined the parcel.

“Who’s it from, Phillip?” Frederik asked.

Phillip pointed to the return address written on the parcel. “It’s from my mother.” He stared at the address. Last time he’d heard from his mother she’d been in Stuttgart, living in the household of her father, his grandfather. But the parcel had been posted in Neuburg. It was possible that his grandfather, who was a surgeon in the service of the duke of Württemberg, had been sent to Neuburg, but according to the only other letter he’d received from his mother since he started his apprenticeship he’d been firmly settled in Stuttgart.

Phillip untied the string that was holding the parcel together and carefully opened the wrapping to expose a number of worn journals and a letter. He opened the letter and quickly read it before shoving it under his shirt. Then he turned his attention to the journals. He picked the top one up reverently and opened it.

“What’d she send you?” Frederik asked.

Phillip lowered the journal. “These are some of my great grandfather’s diaries. My grandfather left them to Mama, but she had to wait for probate to be granted before she could take possession of them and send them to me.”

“I’m sorry to hear your grandfather died,” Christoph said.

Phillip could only nod in acceptance of Christoph’s sympathy. He certainly couldn’t tell him that his grandfather had died a year ago and his mother hadn’t bothered to let him know until now.

“Those are really the diaries of Paracelsus?” Frederik asked.

Phillip held one of them open on the front page and pointed to the name written there.

“Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim,” Frederik read. “That must be a diary from before he adopted the name of Paracelsus.”

Phillip checked the dates in the half dozen diaries he’d received. “That one is from his time at the University of Ferrara and the others cover his subsequent travels.”

“And your mother had them? You really are the great grandson of Paracelsus,” Heinrich Weidemann said with a touch of awe intermixed with disbelief.

“Was there ever any doubt?” Christoph asked.