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“Do you want to hear an utterly filthy rumor?”
Two women in intricately beaded dresses paused near Eliot in his pillory, tittering.
“They say Lord Pasternak is more beast than man, now that he’s returned from the wars. His poor wife!”
“No! And in the bedchamber?”
“My scullery maid walked with hers to market. It’s rumored in that house that Lord Pasternak’s member works as a dog’s does now, with all the horrors that entails. Imagine, Catherine!”
“I cannot! Doing one’s wifely duties, only to be stuck in place like a common beast?”
The other woman nodded hard, her eyes wide. “Like the very beasts! Some grotesque knot swelling inside your most secret flower, accidental and horrific the first time but soon expected. Imagine growing used to such a thing!”
“I cannot! I fear I am too delicate of mind to picture it!” Catherine lowered her voice. “Do you suppose he claws at her? To be ravished by some beast of a man… I shudder for her.”
“A fine man, of course,” her friend added as another group passed them. One of the men spared a kick for Eliot, who growled. “His military prowess… why, when word first came back that Pasternak had armored a herd of sheep and had them driven into the fray, I confess, I laughed! I laughed, Catherine. But his archers made such cunning use of the confusion, and he won the day. And now, making him a lord!”
“An honor,” said Catherine.
“Yes, such an honor. Though one does wonder about the bloodlines, should the rumors be true.”
“Suppose they are! Do you imagine that her… her flower is sore after a round with him?”
“Once that animal’s knot deflates, you mean? Surely so!” They both laughed, continuing on their way.
Eliot frowned up at the sky, trying to calculate the time of day. He’d been promised a full two days in the pillory, and that time was surely about up. When he’d first landed in this time after sustaining an electrical zap from one of Hardison’s art forgery machines, he’d quickly angered the local baron’s guards with his foreign dress and odd speech. The audience he’d been promised after his sentence was his only hope to free himself and get back to his own time.
Sure enough, a pair of burly guards with the sort of crude, mass-produced weapons you saw at wartime came along. “Follow, and do as we say,” one commanded. “Your lucky day, pig. The Baroness wants to see you in her garden.”
The Baroness’s walled garden seemed to be a different world from the chaotic hustle and bustle of the lower town. The lady herself, a tall woman in an intricately patterned hijab, sat in the very center, picnicking by a burbling fountain.
“Leave us,” she said to the guards as they approached.
“But my lady—”
“The wizard will protect me if this man is violent,” the Baroness said sweetly. “But she assures me that he is not, and have we not learned to trust her word? Leave us now.”
The guards did, not without a great amount of grumbling.
“Sit,” said the Baroness, patting the blanket beside her. “I apologize for the cold welcome you’ve received thus far, traveler. Once a sentence is passed in wartime, it is politically unpleasant to commute it without appearing weak. Enemies gather on all sides, many already within these walls. But I’m told you know much of warfare already.”
“You seem to know a lot about me,” said Eliot.
The Baroness nodded. “I keep a wizard in these gardens. Sometimes her all-seeing eye casts itself towards the future, to all our benefit. She spoke much of you. Do have some wine and cheese. You look parched.”
Eliot sniffed at the wine suspiciously, but he couldn’t deny how thirsty he was. He sipped. “It’s delicious,” he said, pleased. “But you’re drinking water.”
The Baroness flushed. “The Wizard predicts that I am with child,” she explained. “If I abstain from wine and beer, she tells me it will grow to be a strong leader. But this news is yet a secret.”
“I won’t tell,” Eliot promised, eating bread and cheese with all the table manners he could muster after two days’ starvation. “May I meet this wizard?”
The Baroness nodded. “She said you must. I will be sad to lose her, you know. We’ll feast tonight in both of your honor. A final farewell. Come, wizard!”
Breanna emerged from the hedge maze. She wore a well–tailored facsimile of a cartoon wizard’s robes, complete with a star-studded conical hat. “My lady,” she said with a curtsey. To Eliot, she added, “Walk with me, traveler.”
They left the Baroness to her picnic and walked the hedge maze arm in arm. Once Breanna judged they were far enough away to speak undisturbed, she said, “You have questions.”
“Uh, yeah I have questions! I saw you this morning.”
Breanna sighed. “And I saw you three months ago.” She sat on a bench under a trellis of climbing pink roses and patted the seat next to her. “Three months ago, you disappeared for half the afternoon, then got all cagey and pulled me away to tell me this would happen. Gave me a list of predictions to tell the Baroness so she’d trust me, and told me how to get us home. Because from your perspective, I’d already done it.”
“I think I hate time travel,” said Eliot, rubbing his head.
“You have no idea how much it’s possible to hate time travel. The minute we get home, we’re unplugging Hardison’s shitty machine and killing it with hammers before it can time-strand anyone else.”
“Agreed,” said Eliot. “So how do we fix this?”
“Simple,” Breanna told him. “Or… sort of simple. See, we can’t perfectly recreate the conditions that brought us here. But there’s a once in a century lightning storm tonight, and I’ve rigged up my wizard tower to spark us back into the past. There’s just one thing missing.”
Eliot saw the hesitation in her face and frowned. “What one thing?”
“You had a tattoo when you came back,” said Breanna. “Just a small one on your shoulder! An alchemical diagram. I have a very nice tattoo artist standing by who knows all about modern sterilization methods thanks to me. It’s no big deal. We get you that tattoo, let the Baroness wine and dine us to see us off in style, then go out to my wizard tower—which is admittedly more of a wizard garden shack—and wait for the storm.”
“Fine,” said Eliot. “Let’s do it.”
He had some trouble maintaining a straight face at the banquet, which had a fair approximation of pepperoni pizza as its centerpiece. The Baroness’s chefs used a tangy white sauce in place of the tomatoes they wouldn’t have for a few more centuries. Eliot made a mental note to try to replicate it at home.
“I got homesick and made just one small culinary suggestion,” said Breanna shamefacedly. “Three months is a long fucking time!"
“I’m just impressed you got it to taste so similar,” Eliot admitted. The fresh tattoo on his shoulder stung, but he knew better than to touch it.
“All credit to the chef,” said Breanna. “Vladimir’s an artist.”
As the clock tower struck nine, they made their way into the garden shack, which was lined with intricate patterns of metal.
“Remember, find me and give me the same directions as last time,” said Breanna. “And I’ll see you soon, Eliot.” They embraced.
“See you on the other side, kid,” Eliot told her as lightning struck and the world went white.