The Devil's Daughters

She's hard and she's cold and she's mean...

For us the living, the track Hurricane Ida's on is that of the following of the Devil's Daughters: Camille. Katrina.

What worries me here is that when the real killers come... sixteen years is a long time. Long enough for the tree limbs to grow up through the power lines. For the detritus to build up in the canals.

For folks to forget. Or just not know, because they came in after. And have only seen the little storms, if that.

Over here where we are, the local hotels have filled up with Louisiana license plates. I'm glad when I see that, because it means those who can hit the road as soon as the forecasts became clear, no fooling around.

But there will always be those who won't or can't hit the road. And the next three days will be brutal, the during and the after.

A little more than a year after Katrina, my wife and daughter and I drove through on our way to Long Island. In Mississippi, Katrina's eyewall had left a clear path through the pines, a couple hundred yards wide and miles long, parallel to the highway north to Jackson.

Growing up, Camille just... Camille, like Audrey, could silence a room just by mentioning her.

The Devil's brood grows. I just hope Ida doesn't add to the body count.

From The River To The Sea - Second Excerpt

Earlier this year, I posted a bit from my to-be-published Book 2 of my Old Empire series. In that excerpt, we came to be introduced to a rather silly group of ne'er do wells, adventurers with a somewhat questionable history.

For this week's story, I'm putting up another excerpt. And yes, we're introduced here to another, slightly less silly, pair of ne'er do wells.

One of them whose history is just beginning to unfold. But that's what stories are for, isn't it?

An Excerpt from From The River To The Sea, Book 2 of the Old Empire Series by M. K. Dreysen

Far to the south of where Rudolphus grunted and cursed every over-extravagant meal his friends had ever eaten, an old man stumbled to his chamberpot.

Once he'd satisfied himself that he wouldn't piss the bed, not yet by God not yet, Marcesus then made his way to the window to try and gauge whether the Empire's sway still held.

The torches lining up in the far distance told him the worst. "Son of a bitch."

Well, almost the worst. Marcesus turned away from the tower's south window and hurried to pack.

He had time to escape the city and its fate. Just. He'd purchased the tower, despite the laborious climb, for reason of the view. Three stories above the crowded streets.

And here, the payoff. The approaching army, whoever they were, hadn't yet encircled the city.

Best of all, the port remained open. A few hours remained before the dawn tide; Marcesus had traced the moon's progress as he always had. Now, he thanked God's providence for a habit that had rarely seemed so useful.

He'd come here to get far enough away from Rome to drift into the political void, yet not so far away as to fall away from the protection of the legions. Five years of good dry heat had done wonders for Marcesus's arthritis. And his book collection.

He mourned every one that he couldn't tuck into his pack. Mourned them, and glanced at them not at all once he'd packed his bag. Clothing, the good pair of boots, the heavy cloak he hoped he wouldn't need. A small handful of books, yes, and most of all the correspondence. Whether the Empire or their enemies, he wouldn't leave the letters to be found by either.

"The bastards might yet survive this," Marcesus reminded himself. The last thing he needed was one of the governor's oh-so-supercilious bootlickers going through the tower, looking for ammunition.

Marcesus stopped at the door, back already warning him that this had better be a short walk. He surveyed his room. "It'll have to do," he told himself, then closed the door and went looking for a boat headed somewhere else.

Behind him, five years' worth of accumulated life testified that its owner had just stepped away for a moment or two. Behind the papers, the wards that Marcesus had cast, and other lingering traces of his workings, began to fade to quiescence.

He stepped out of the tower and into the time of running away. Past the time of drunks and yet too early for the time of the bakers.

Marcesus expected to walk through the empty streets, to the port and the captains making ready for the tidal change, without disturbing the conscience of anyone that he knew. And, so far as anyone who might count in the governor's reckoning, Marcesus did escape from the city without notice.

The merchants, the ones who'd parted with coins only grudgingly when their sons required tutoring, slept in their villas. Most of the soldiers, too, snored in their single story barracks. Their officers had usually been much more willing to part with coins because generating reports was part of their budget. At least when the pay chests arrived on time.

Marcesus had taken their teasing over the years. "Old man, how long does it take you to get to your rooms?"

He shook his head. None of the townfolk, or the plain soldiers, deserved what was to come. But Marcesus had no way to stop it. The soldiers manning the walls tonight, and their commander, braced for what awaited. The legion's commander had warned the populous of the chance that the city could fall under siege.

Herrion had done his duty, Marcesus acknowledged. But the habits of Empire, the mindset Marcesus had observed now for decades, held more sway than the threat of war.

The habit, and the governor's rituals. Marcesus felt them now, whispers at the edge of his mind. The promise of protection. Marcesus spit into the street, fought off Nonnian's false dreams.

The governor knelt in his villa every night, and whispered those dreams to the city. Of peace, of power, of wealth. Even asleep, Nonnian's promises lingered, soothed the sleeping city.

Well, except for the girl. "I guess I should have known," Marcesus whispered to himself.

Nonnian had taken the governor's position just months before Marcesus himself had found his way to the city. The bakers, the brewers, the merchants, the folk of the street, these faces too the old man remembered, and in most cases treasured.

The soldiers rotated regularly. The sailors and those they carried drifted to anonymity just by the fact of their staying here for almost less than a minute.

The girl was, in many ways, the most constant face of all. And, Marcesus reminded himself, his truest friend here in Antioch.

She sat, huddled against the winter night, in the one alleyway he needed to pass through; the last such before the piers.

Marcesus paced his way through the shadows. She had to have hidden here knowing that most would need torches to find her. Away from the fitful moon, the buildings almost merging overhead.

Marcesus didn't need the moon light. Too many hours tracking her progress through the city, when he'd given her a coin "To post this letter, and another when you return if its been done properly." Ceila's mind, the surface thoughts at least, was as familiar to him as her face.

She'd ever refused his offer of a place to stay. Five years since he'd passed her a penny, "Where's a quiet, safe place for an old man to sleep, young lady?"

Ceila had shown him to a tavern that night. The next morning, Marcesus had been little surprised to find her waiting outside the tavern's door. "Just in case you need more directions," she'd said.

He'd taken her up on the offer. And when he'd found the tower rooms, he'd promised her, "If you ever need a safe place to stay, there's a room for you."

She'd never once accepted the aid he'd offered. Even when the occasional snow or ice storm made the street life unimaginable to Marcesus, Ceila had kept that distance.

Marcessus let these memories run through his mind while he stopped and wrote a note in the shadows. When he'd finished it, he took two keys from his pockets, two silver coins as well, and folded the letter around them all. Satisfied the letter would hold these things safely, the old man bent over the sleeping form, tucked the letter beneath her arm, and turned for the port.

****

Ceil prided herself on her instincts. Which tavern she needed to avoid because the locals were far too close to the governor's limits. When she could visit the market in safety. When the riots were gearing up. The merchants and soldiers to avoid. The thieves who'd share a penny from the day's take, and the ones who always found themselves a little short of the fees their master demanded.

If she were the bragging type, Ceila would have told the other street kids, "There's no way in hell someone could sneak up on me at night." And she'd have believed it.

Until she woke in the pre-dawn stillness with a heavy letter beneath her folded hands. Heavy because of the coins, and two other small metal objects. The coins kept her from throwing the letter away and running as far and fast as she could.

Ceila's pulse rushed and pounded like she'd taken to her heels anyway. Her face flushed, her chest heaved.

The paper crumpled in her hands; she gripped the letter until the metal poked at her fingers.

So far as Ceila knew, only one person in the entire world even knew that she could read.

Merchants and soldiers alike preferred messengers who couldn't. She earned her living, such as it was, in part because none of her customers knew what the old man had taught her. That was one of the reasons she'd refused every offer the old man had made for a place to stay.

It would have been bad for business. "Fine, Marcessus," she whispered. "What the hell do you want?"

She put aside the fear, how he'd found her, how he'd snuck up on her at night. That part she'd have to consider later. Right now she needed a way to read the letter. The moon, when Ceila stuck her head out of the alleyway, was almost, but not quite, enough.

The only torches lit at this time of the night hung outside of the barracks. Light from the bakers' windows would do it, as well, but the bakers didn't open their shutters until they'd filled their shelves for the day's selling.

Ceila checked both ends of the alley; the streets on port side and hill side remained clear. Satisfied for the moment, Ceila returned to her corner and patiently sparked one of her precious candle stubs, carefully horded from the tower and her lessons with the old man, to life.

"C: As we both suspected, the Persians have arrived. I cannot say yet whether the city will fall; if not this time, then soon."

Ceila snorted at that. From what she knew of the old man, Marcessus considered history in decades. She might be an old woman, toothless and bent, and the old bastard's ghost would still count that as "soon".

She continued reading. "I've taken to the water. As ever, I assumed that you would refuse any offer to accompany me."

'Damned right,' Ceila muttered. She was willing to admit Marcessus had shown himself no threat, at least compared to the average. She wanted it kept that way.

"Still, I hope that you'll accept a different offer of aid. The larger key is for the tower itself; the smaller key for a chest you'll discover there. However, you won't find the chest, nor open it, until you've read and well understand certain of the books you'll find in the tower. Actually, I should say your new library. The tower and all it contains are yours. You've learned enough I think to begin taking advantage of what they contain; I hope that you do so. Close the shutters and lock the doors, in the manner that I've shown you, and the tower will protect you from any that might come looking. I hope someday to receive letters from you. Search well and you'll find instructions for getting them to me. Be well, stay safe. M. P.S. I leave the coins to help bridge the time until you find the right books to read."

Ceila had tucked the coins and keys into her pocket first thing; she blew out the candle and sent the letter into hiding along with them. Then she lifted her own pack, little more than a sailcloth bag full of those possessions she allowed herself, and left the alley and its shadows.

The alley should have concealed the candle's light; she'd used it often enough in reading the books Marcessus assigned to her. But if the Persian army really did ready to attack the city, the Roman soldiers would be far more paranoid than they normally were.

Ceila moved through the remaining hour before dawn deliberately. She stopped at corners to listen. Walked across streets, then turned to look and watch.

Finally, when she'd convinced herself that she was, as ever, beneath the notice of anyone important, Ceila walked to the tower. Such as it was.

Five years ago, Ceila had brought Marcessus to the tower because it was the only building that anyone would sell to an outsider. Well, a scholar, anyway. Merchants had golds, soldiers connections. Scholars being possessed of neither, Antioch's citizens had, collectively, laughed in the old man's face.

Marcessus hadn't given up. Which impressed Ceila, then and now. He'd kept asking, and eventually someone had decided to offload the neighborhood eyesore. None of them expecting that Marcessus would have the funds to buy the slowly collapsing pile of rock.

Visually, the tower hadn't improved any in the five years since she'd first brought Marcessus to see it. Three stories of desert brown stone, unmortared to begin with and the stones were migrating for freedom. Few of them remained in their original position.

But the tower did, somehow, yet stand true. Ceila had walked the stairs often enough to feel it. Only, as she did now, every time she approached, her mind insisted that the tower would collapse beneath her as soon as she climbed high enough to be killed in the fall.

And that feeling had gotten stronger, Ceila thought. Almost as though Marcessus had encouraged it, somehow. She shrugged the familiar tingle of fear away. Then, after glancing around to check yet again that no one watched, she unlocked the door and slipped inside.

The latch, and the lock, thudded home. Ceila listened to the echo. The darkness of the ground floor agreed with the outside of the tower. It whispered to her, said "You aren't safe here. Run, before I collapse and take you with me."

Even when she sparked one of the candle stubs alight, the room continued to press its message of decrepitude.

But just as with the outside view of the place, the feeling here was a familiar one. And, now, Ceila felt herself feeling possessive. The dust and cobwebs in the corners, the way the stones didn't quite align with each other. They hinted that, in daylight, you might be able to see between them.

And that they might come apart completely the next time an earthquake rumbled. The room was tiny, too, not very much taller than Ceila. It insisted that, "Linger here and you'll soon know the feeling of your tomb."

She smiled. At the room, at the cracked and twisted stones of the stair leading up. If someone came looking, broke the door to see what might be hiding in these shadows, they'd take a look at the stairs and the room and think twice of daring the rest of the tower.

Ceila climbed past the broken steps. Oh, they were every bit as broken as they looked; but the fractured pieces held her just as well as full stones might have. Her eyes, and the tower, wanted her to believe otherwise. But her feet and balance told her something else.

By the time she and her dancing candleflame twisted around the winding stair to the second level, she'd left most of the unease behind. The steps here still showed their cracks, but the second floor room felt just a little more secure. If almost as empty.

"Why haven't you filled it with bookshelves?" she'd asked Marcessus. "You're always complaining there's no more room for your books."

The old man had chuckled. "It serves for visitors. The kind you don't show the important things to."

She'd taken a year or two to figure that one out. Oh, the second floor room's furniture was obvious enough. A handful of chairs and a low small table between them, all arrayed in front of the second story fireplace. Ceila had more than once listened to Marcessus host visitors in this room.

Ceila's memories of her mother faded, little by little, with every year. She remembered the room that had been theirs, and the few neighbors. When someone came to your home, you sat them down in midst of your life, because it was all you had. And they'd only had visitors they knew, anyway...

"Damnit," Marcessus had muttered. Ceila sat in one of the tower's windows, a pillow under her butt and Marcessus's current assignment, Thucydides, open on her lap. "Stay there until I get rid of whoever it is," Marcessus told her.

By now, Ceila had learned the routine. Her job was simple, stay in the third story room, behind the door Marcessus closed but did not lock. If it was someone that did talk themselves into the library, for whatever reason, Ceil would jump into the special wardrobe.

The one with a nook in the tower stone hidden behind a false backing.

Ceila had not quite mastered the art of reading while this went on. Instead, she concentrated on what she could hear of the conversation below. On this occasion, the visitor was indeed someone who, when he insisted, could avail himself of Marcessus's library. "Oh hell," Ceila whispered, when she heard the governor's voice coming from the other side of the door.

She'd just pushed her way past Marcessus's winter clothes and slid the concealing door closed when Nonnian entered the room. So she hadn't the chance to watch Marcessus's face. The scholar had found himself caught between hope at the governor's ability to pay.

And frustration at his consistent proclivity to ask far more for his coin than any sane person could provide. "You say the maps are recent, Marcessus? How recent?"

Ceila snorted; she wasn't the only one who'd become accustomed to the way the old scholar didn't quite connect with time as normal folks knew it.

"Perhaps... five? Ten years? The maps are from the legion's survey, they're notated as being generated by order of a Commander Roclivius."

"Legate," Nonnian corrected. "Rocliv commanded the legion some two years before I, and I believe you as well, came to Antioch. So, yes, five years. Show me, please?"

Ceila listened as the scrolls were unrolled. "Ah," Nonnian said. "Yes. These do appear to be the same as those included in my own reports..."

"You had doubts?" Marcessus asked.

"Not doubts, so much as concerns over the time intervening. The land might not have changed, but Rocliv's worries and my own differ. Five years is time enough for new enemies to arise, don't you agree?"

Marcessus had agreed, well enough to leave the next day, a purse full of the governor's coin and a squad of legion soldiers to escort him on his "Cartographic expedition", as he'd called it.

That had also been the first time that Marcessus had left Ceila a key to the tower. And the peculiar set of instructions regarding its use. "When you leave, as you're locking up, stop and picture the room on the other side of the door in your mind."

He'd made her practice until she could hold the image, of dust and low ceiling and stones barely holding themselves together, to the old scholar's satisfaction. Though how he knew when she'd managed it, Ceila couldn't tell.

The occasions since, when he'd gone away to draw new maps of smuggler's caves, or search Alexandria for a record of Caesar's Egyptian travels, or the half a dozen other scholarly pursuits for the governor or a similar few wealthy merchants, Marcessus had marked each trip by handing Ceila the key.

And making her practice the visualization until she did so automatically, without pause to consider it, on locking up the tower. "You'll have an explanation," Marcessus had promised. "But for now, practice first. Theory comes after you've mastered the process."

Only now, as she stood in front of the door to the final level, did Ceila realize that the explanation Marcessus had promised would never come. The tower was hers, now, the scholar's letter had said. No further explanation provided.

Except for whatever information the books on the other side of the door might give. This door, too, testified to the tower's decay. The wood looked dry, felt that way and more to the touch. But the joins under her fingers held smooth and clean, and she knew from experience that light did not bleed past the door when it shut.

Ceila traced the lock with her fingers, hesitating in the face of what unlocking the door meant. Then she inserted the key and opened the door to her new home.

Farewell, Charlie

If you've ever played with a live drummer, you'll know.

If you haven't... what might you listen for?

One: Charlie's time, his beat. Always.

Two: Charlie makes every four bars sound just a little different than the previous, just that little bit more interesting. In accompaniment, bass is famously quarter (or eighth) note solos, running beneath.

Drums are, as well. How do you keep time? And, and! How do you keep it moving, keep it flowing, keep the interest and the ear and get their asses up and grooving?

Like this:

Go on, Charlie Watts. I bet there's a great little three piece who've been waiting for a drummer.

Stuff I've Been Enjoying This Summer

Stuff I've Been Enjoying This Summer

A few of those bits and pieces I've read that gave me joy this summer:

Stephen King's latest book, Billy Summers. I'm surprised this one didn't come out as part of King's Hard Case Crime run, since it's pretty much an ode to Lawrence Block, Max Allan Collins, and Donald Westlake.

I enjoyed the hell out of Billy Summers; it's an interesting King visit to the land of the Dark Half, only this time with the novel within a novel so well developed that the whole thing reads as a love letter to writers.

That said, if you are a writer, you might end up doing what I did and getting tangled up with the second half of this book. All in all, the book's story line fits within the genre (The Day of the Jackal/The Dead Zone). However, the second half went off in a slightly different tone and direction than I expected from the first half's setup.

This isn't a knock on King. It's just something I noticed, one of those times where the part of my brain that notices this stuff goes "Hey, I'd have done that differently".

And, once I did, I come up with a question for those writers and readers who end up with the same reaction: is it the introduction of a particular new character at the middle of the book, and their subsequent impact on the story and resolution? Yeah, how that character is introduced is a cliche (see the "Ode to Richard Stark" notes above), but that's so much a part of this genre as to be archtypical. I have my quibbles about doing it the way King did, and whether "it's genre appropriate" means you can't see things a little differently, but what I'm really wondering here is about the way characters change the story logic.

Or to put it another way: for me, every story has its own internal logic. And every writer sees that logic in their own way, in their own voice. This is the real magic of having so very many writers pecking away at their own stories. How often then do you get a chance where you can actually point to a story and go "There, that's where King's logic kicks in"?

That or I'm just seeing things, that's cool too. Either way, the story did what I think every writer wants, it made me walk away from it happy I'd read it, and tangled up enough with it to keep thinking about it.

I've been enjoying Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Monday evening short stories. Visiting Kris's weekly story every Monday evening has been a wonderful part of my schedule for a couple years now.

Since Rusch writes short stories regularly, keeping up with all of them can be difficult, so this is a great way to catch some stories that I would never have otherwise found, along with the occasional brand new story. Do you know of any other writers regularly publishing short stories on their own sites? If so, drop a line in the comments and point us all to them!

In the nonfiction realm, I've been enjoying Athena Scalzi's run over at John Scalzi's Whatever. Basically, Athena's taken a year away from school, and got put to work on her dad's website in the meantime. (As a father of a teenaged daughter myself, I admit I giggled. Especially as a grandson and son who got put to work variously with a shovel, a butcher's apron, a lawn mower, paintbrush...)

I got a kick out of Athena's view of the world, and how that came out in her writing journey, and I look forward to seeing whether she goes on to continue.

And, I'll be in her corner cheering for Athena as she wrestles with what her last post of this summer indicates has been going on behind the scenes this year. (Which is another parallel, as our own daughter is starting her own college journey. I am so proud of her I can't even, and I was delighted that she decided that she needed a year or two at the local community college before going farther. Not just that that means she's at home for another year or two (who's crying here, anyway?), but that she gets the chance to take a look at the savannah before the lions show up.)

Look, I took a similar face plant on the academic road, taking a year at community college is, can be, one of the enjoyable experiences if you embrace it. That said, formal or informal learning aside, I think and hope that Athena will go on to find a way through to something good, and I'll be happy to quietly cheer her along the way. And in the meantime we all got some pretty good writing out of her pause in the sojourn.

Stay safe, New England and Tampico

Way back in the Way Back, I worked a couple years on Long Island and made several lifelong friends there. I remember how much trouble it can be when the Island gets waterlogged. Same vein, while I have never been to Tampico, but I do know quite a few folks from that area. Stay safe, all.

Elements Of Natural Boundaries

This week's story turned out to hold 'only' the magic of friendship. Sometimes characters hold their story so closely that it's all I can do to just hang on and record it.

Lis Comal is kind of like that. Presented for those who were, or those who are, or those who are sending their's off to the first semester...

Elements of Natural Boundaries - a story by M. K. Dreysen

Against a backdrop of do-nothing wind and a moon that could have tried a little harder, Lis Comal contemplated the nature of endings.

The backdrop came courtesy of the too-small window. The contemplation thanks to the DJ's giggle when Lis requested Lola in her best throaty voice. The DJ had giggled, and then twenty minutes later played Lis's recorded request over the midnight airwaves. "This one's for Lis on a night for the lonely."

Lonely, that's what it was, Lis told herself. Not the phone call from Mom Lissner and the "Did you sign up for school yet?" questions with no answers.

Lis had a gig. Swing shift, too, so the tea in the coffee pot and that she'd made it to the Twilight Zone hour fit right in. Classes, not so much, but she'd told that lie because Lis couldn't tell any truths while standing there in Mom L's driveway.

She'd had a lot of time on the drive up to sit with the truth of it. Aya's truth, and Lis in her wake. With the inevitable consequence when some girl Lis had never heard of answered the door to Aya's apartment.

Four and a half hours and a year since Aya had graduated and left Corpus for the big city and the letters and the few phone calls hadn't covered what happened when Lis finally graduated and followed Aya's breadcrumbs. This meant, what exactly?

Lola on request, now, and in a few weeks Pearl Jam's Ten would debut and Lis would find herself with a whole new soundtrack to cover these hours.

Bennie showing up with a request for a ride along wasn't supposed to fit Lis's mood. "Dorm party, all the kids who got here early need someone for a beer run and I'm the only local." And, Bennie didn't need to add, the only one who knew someone over twenty-one.

Lis jumped in Bennie's ancient Ford, unsure of anything but that she kind of enjoyed the way the lights and the highway, unfinished Beltway promising more, streamed by. "They give you money?"

"Enough for a case." All that the scholarship-and-loan kids could scrape together. Bennie's home neighborhood, the convenience store her older brother minded the counter on, hid away in old pines. Lis didn't trust those pines, their shadows and the way they grew from the needles. But she carried the case of Budweiser to Bennie's car and tried to pretend that she wasn't nervous about it or the too-many too-close trees.

Sitting in a room with a handful of other kids, all of them pretending the lukewarm Bud tasted good, all of whom had accepted the Honors College scholarship that Lis hadn't quite made the grade for, should have been a downer. Here it is two o' the clock, Lis Comal, you should be miserable at this.

She couldn't bring herself to be so. Not when Bennie and Oni sat close enough Lis could see the future, and Dan "from Michigan" and Rick "from Wisconsin" started comparing notes on cold winters and Moira turned the TV on "because they run The Next Generation after the Twilight Zone" and of course it was a Q episode.

Lis felt years stretch out in front of her. A couple of them here in Moira and Bennie's dorm room suite, all the geeks wandering in and out as decompression demanded, and then a few more years after that in the series of apartments the three of them could afford. Lis felt and saw this future and drained the beer with neither qualm nor notice.

She opened up another, had half-drained that one with about the same lack of thought to it, still basking in the future's embrace, before Lis felt the weight of the question. 'What's the price? There has to be one, right?' she asked herself.

That question wound its way through Lis's mind, through the late hours and the shifts at the music store while everyone else hit their first classes. She fought it off with "You're just hurt because of Aya. Trying to make everything about that pain." Lis even said these lines out loud, into the mirror as Alive and Evenflow buoyed her spirits.

Only.

Her garage apartment was, more than anything, cheap. It had its charms, though, and one of them was that you didn't need to interact with the owners.

Lis came home to the other girl sitting on the stairs.

Gem. Her name was Gem, as in "I do it to pay for college" Gem, yeah right, of course Aya hooked up with an "I do it to pay for college" Gem as soon as she shook the dust loose. Only, now Gem was sitting on Lis's little porch in the pre-dawn and the pleasant little buzz was disappearing.

"What's wrong?"

"Aya. She's. It's hard to explain."

"Drugs?"

"Not exactly."

That helped. Aya had lost a year before. Freshman year of high school, Lis still in eighth grade and she'd gone that whole year wondering why Aya didn't answer the phone, didn't talk.

Aya, who'd switched to Sprite because caffeine in any amount felt too close to speed. Aya, who didn't bug Lis about the cigarettes only because she cadged them off Lis whenever the opportunity arose.

But that "Not Exactly". Lis sighed and pointed at her little apartment's door. "Come in and tell me." And so Gem came in; she got the story out before the pot of coffee had even finished brewing.

Mostly, it was nothing. "She wanted cash, you know? So she found a research gig."

"Engineering needs women?"

"Yep."

Which was how Aya's lost year hadn't much affected her scholastic pursuits. "How many hours a week was the job supposed to be?"

"Fifteen. More when they had a grant due, but those were supposed to be summer hours."

"How long has she been awake?"

Gem had said "Three days", but when Lis got to their apartment, she'd have sworn it was more like a week. "Aya?"

The whole place looked like a robot's graveyard. Mixed in with a generous dose of dirty laundry and unwashed dishes and random cat yark.

Lis found Aya sitting in the apartment's only bedroom, staring at the wall. The one that she'd covered in sketches, force diagrams and the wiring and motors needed to realized the movements she hoped for. "Aya?"

It didn't feel like the time Aya's parents had called, begging Lis to come over and talk Aya into going to rehab.

And, in that moment when Lis wondered what would happen when she touched Aya's shoulder, it felt like she'd walked backwards around the circle and come right round again.

Thank God that Aya's muscles were still there. Hair, raggedy assed and dirty. Skin too oily, face breaking out, sure. And a lot of smell. But she didn't feel like a soda straw beneath Lis's fingers. Aya was still here.

Just lost in the moment. "Hey girl. Love you, but I just need a moment..."

"What you need is a kick in the ass. And about a week's worth of sleep."

Lis got the smile she was looking for. Eventually. And then the pen put down and Aya turning away from her diagrams. "I did it again, didn't I?"

"Just you being you."

The hug felt solid, good. Like friends. "Gem's asleep on my floor."

Aya blinked. "Oh, shit."

"Yeah, go to bed, bitch." Lis punctuated the word with a pillow against Aya's head, softly. "See you tonight."

Lis didn't leave until Aya's snores were coming, soft and steady.

****

"How'd your deferred year go, Ms. Comal?"

Chaotic. Quiet. A lot of phone calls from Mom L. But here it was May and Lis had made her appointment with the department's student counselor and she had a schedule printout in her hand. Summer classes, one each session. To get her feet wet, to get her gig at Sam Goody used to scheduling around her classes.

And to make sure the half scholarship didn't expire completely.

She'd been excited, standing in line for the paperwork that advisors and crew pulled from the boxes in a constant stream. Lis had been terrified that she'd get there, say "Comal, with a C" and find nothing waiting for her. Closer she got to the head of the line, worse the fear came on.

But Gem, "Cormier", standing there behind her, helped. A lot. "I only do it to pay for college" had turned into "Doctor Young, my linear algebra prof, found an internship for me. Good grades and I'm off the stage forever, thank God."

"Not quite how I planned it, Mrs. Tranh. But that's ok."

"Damned right, sweetie. You're here and smiling and healthy, and anytime you can say that you're ahead of the game. Now let's talk about your fall schedule."

Resistance Begins At Home

A few months ago now, I ran an excerpt, Chapter 1 of a novel called Katerina's Loss, which will be the second book in my Boyar's Curse series.

For this week's story, I'm putting up Chapter 2 of Katerina's Loss for your enjoyment.

Chapter 2: Resistance Begins at Home - an excerpt from Katerina's Loss, a novel by M. K. Dreysen

There were spaces, intervals, little pieces of time and energy. They came on from the endless space, perhaps as random occurences.

She didn't choose to see randomness, chaos. She chose to count these as regular intervals. Exhausted patience, measures.

Of the capacity of her captors.

The first stake by which she measured her confinement was, as it must be, the night she was captured. The train ran from Boston to New York, and back again. Katerina Malagena was booked beneath the lights. Eight performances a week. She gave them her all.

And then once a month, took back a little. Three days away to somewhere anywhere that her face and her voice and the dance in her step went unrecognized.

Ok, try instead undemanded. She was hardly a household name. No Caruso, no Schumann, and her adoring throngs typically consisted of Times reporters angling for a drink and a good time. The drinks she allowed, because why not?

Good times she reserved for her own enjoyment. The train to Boston being a simple example. And in July, when the nights in the city grew toward uncomfortable? New England held its oppressive states, she didn't argue it. But it was better than New York, for just a few weeks longer, and that was enough. Katie had enjoyed the snow falls in December, the changing of the leaves in September, but that she required a light coat, even in July... that was something else again.

A reminder perhaps... but no. Long ago and far away and if she ever ran into Rik again that would be the time to maneuver.

She'd booked the trip to England on a whim. The train went through Sandy Hook; the flyer in her New York hotel had been too appealing, that day, to pass up.

Katie stepped off the boat in Blackpool with no ideas. Other than that Katerina Malagena was no longer among the living. Or the dead, but Katie had no intention of adding useful information to that pile. She had new lives to consider.

"Then why'd we need to return to the old world to find them?" she asked herself. Getting no answer, she boarded yet another train. To Dover, and the continent beyond, assuming the boats were in good order. And they were, so the world awaited.

Money she had. This was almost more inconvenience than aid, given the nuisance of wiring ahead. But an unaccompanied woman required pretense. The fees she'd collected from the performances in New York were sufficient to the means. And her banks were, after all, no longer an ocean and a fair few languages away...

Amsterdam and then Brussels were as good a route as any. It was only when she stood outside the antiquities shop, window display nothing more than dust with obscure methods of arranging it, that she admitted there might have been something else at work.

The stones, hidden discretely away, in various places. They whispered to her now, standing in front of this shop. "Connections... Tales... Information..." they said.

"Power?" they hoped.

"Even as stones, you believe yourselves only a moment away?" she whispered. Not disbelievingly. She'd held them too long, she had some knowledge now of their nature, these stone and earth and fire creatures.

They collected themselves, and threw their will against their prison. The matrix which bound them didn't even vibrate in response to their effort. An old game this.

Katie placed her hands in her pockets. Between seams, under her left hand, she'd sewn in a pocket for holding one of the stones. There was room enough for her finger to find the sapphire. At her touch, the stone opened her eyes and mind to the place around.

The place inside the window. Most of it, documents, silver tarnished brass steel porcelain and paintings the proprietor let go for pennies or pounds or a good entertaining story. The profit was in the being there, this proprietor believed, and the stories that wandered in.

The silver and gold kept the roof over her head, and the taxes paid, and the bread and meat and the fresh vegetables, wasn't the world so much more alive when she had a fresh orange in her hand, and wasn't the little girl she'd been so much closer when she bit the flesh and dribbled the juice down her chin?

"Thessalina..." Katie whispered. She stepped to the side of the window, and up against the wall. She could see now, and the stone and its spirit would hide her from eyes and ears while she did this thing. "A name of story? From story?"

Thess's father had taught her this way. She's seen no need to change it. Her shelves were filled with loving, and hating, and all those tales families told themselves of their grandfather's sword, their Aunt Gretchen's silver, the precious few books they held.

Few of them worth much to others, all of them priceless. Katie let these go by her inquisitive mind. These quiescent objects awaited forgetfulness and the touch of a hero in equal measure.

There were legends in the store, however. Three of them slumbered among the rest. Katie let her spirit move in their orbits, webs. The letter had been here the longest, it lived in the bottom of a secretary's drawer, in the back along the eastern wall where the owner did her daily books, or just read a novel when it suited her to do so rather than bow to the necessity of work. The letter sat in a comfortable pile of other letters and receipts and bits and pieces the owner had stashed here because she had simply opened the drawer and found a spot.

"My Dear Amerigo," the letter began. It ended "With warmest regards, Leonardo." Between was description, or perhaps yet imaginative projection, of a planned voyage. To first the new continent, and then... "The Atlantean occurence is rare, Amerigo. A thousand lifetimes might yet pass before we mere mortals are blessed again with this possibility."

The letter itself breathed of legend and story, the parchment and the ink burned in Katie's eye. As well blew the whispers of what could come, would come, the fire in the deep that awaited this letter's discovery some few decades hence.

Katie smiled, hearing now the clatter of something very like typewriter keys and the chatter of a descendant of the telegraph as secrets and dreams spun their way to conspiracy.

The photograph sat in a hat box dedicated to that task. Daguerrotypes, postcards, the image nestled among the sights of the world grand and personal. Between a picture of the Eiger on paper barely larger than a postage stamp, and a much larger portrait of a Native American wearing significant regalia, the photograph in question spent its time.

The subject should never have sat for a photograph. Oh, Josephine had appeared in portraits and paintings beyond number. The Empress had reason to. But the Niepce and Daguerre processes were only in their infancy, barely yet more than fancies of imagination when the Empress died.

And yet here her image appeared, as a young woman. Perhaps before the revolution? Katie had no feel for the period, she'd left Paris to her father. At the time she'd been far more interested in Istanbul, Damascus, the Ottoman Empire more generally. She'd gone there with some interest in how the place had developed since Constantinople, once there lost herself to its stories and timelessness.

The photograph spoke of mysteries hints impossibilities. Accusation of forgeries cunningly wrought. A university professor, still in swaddling cloth at this day, would discover it. Raise it to the world as an example of the invidious cunning of the master con man. The photograph dreamt of its place in the archives of a Swedish university, a curiosity; a place where her smile would await to tantalize generations of students with "Could it possibly be?"

The photograph and the letter spoke to Katie; she let them whisper together, two old neighbors gossiping over their back fence. She let her spirit-knowledge-observation turn and sift and there.

The third object of interest, power, lay by itself on a desk, between the blotter and its placeholder. Slipped between as it might have gone by accident, hidden, an afterthought. Just a penny, in an obscure place as those most common coins so often find themselves. This one spoke of centuries, millenia.

Which Katie rather liked, all things considered.

The penny whispered to her of journeys, miles and miles. As with the photograph and the letter, this coin claimed an impossibility. It claimed the lineage of Wu Zhu, this coin did, and the stamping and the hole in the center belied it. But its travels... this coin had seen the Roman Republic and the Empire.

It had travelled the Levant, only in far more interesting times, and far more intimately, than Katie's time there. Lies, stories, it showed her a hill and cruciform torture under sunset; Jerusalem and a man who carried dreams of prophecy and that which may yet come. The centurions with blood on their swords and a mountain with the cries of women and children between its skirts.

Justinian stood and poured this coin, and a fistful of others, into the hands of a gathered trio: "You will deliver drawings of what we have dreamt here. All this and more for a concrete expression of my desire." And the coin was there in the pocket of the engineer when the Hagia came to life. It had lost the burnished sheen from his thumb, the engineer rubbing the coin in tension throughout his day's efforts. It had been long since the coin was polished.

These and more, the coin claimed to have been present for. Ransoms, tolls, bribes, the penny had exchanged hands at the behest of the dukes and the peasants, and seen the world in the doing.

The last passage it spoke of, before finding itself to the family whose desk had been lost under a pile of old cloth for the past two centuries, was one of torture and madness. The coin had exchanged hands, south, through the African trade, in humans now. Across the Atlantic then, on a passage of death and despair, into the hands of children. Time thin and malleable until more ship-born passage, to Halifax and a ship's yard to help pay for a beer, the sailor having had his fill of rum and needing nothing more in this world at that moment than a reminder of bitter brown ale and the home he'd left across the water. The sailor came back with the coin as change just a few days later; he'd changed ships, to bring himself through malaria and the hallucinations and the end in Belfast, just miles short of home.

This coin, of all of them, Katie would have. She let the stone's view of the shop fade, dim enough so that she could walk into the shop and be recognized. Near enough so that the coin's presence never left her mind.

Katie walked the wares, never betraying her interest, and knowledge. The books, she ran her hands over their spines, and the dust she pushed aside with two fingers, or an elbow. In the back, a wardrobe spoke to her, hinted of something, some story it might yet be privy to, but that was tomorrow not today and yet only a possibility. There were more legends in waiting, Katie had discovered, than actualiities thereof.

She drew three postcards from the photograph's hatbox. Not the photo itself, no, but she would need reason to have browsed. And, the lady behind the counter, chatting of family now and their delight in the interesting and the widely travelled, did have bills to pay, no matter her true heart's desire.

There it was. Next to what looked like a druggist's case, the desk and the case crammed into less space than either would have preferred and the blotter and her fingers found it. Just at the edge, Katie slid a finger beneath the placeholder, then pinched the coin into her palm.

She had no idea of the coin's place in the world, whether its stories were lies or truths hard won. No matter. As the shop's proprietor would have it, Katie knew stories and legends for power long before this place existed. She was just the listener this coin had been waiting for. Katie left the small payment, and a little more besides, that the lady behind the counter requested, and then left that place. To arrange for lodgings, and to find out of the way places.

The kind just right for hearing of tales and travels.

The kind of contemplation just perfect for distraction. Perhaps... perhaps Katie might have gone to the train station. Just then, she may have escaped what was to come.

But that's not the way it happened. But before she sank into the coin's stories, or maybe they were lies, she first wandered into a shop selling ink and paper. When she sat at the first of the succession of cafe tables, she set out the creamy thick paper and the pen and the ink. For no reason. Perhaps for notes, and drawings of the views through the coin's eye.

For two days, mornings over coffee, lunch over tea, dinner over wine, she sketched and made notes. Of places and people and the actions that they performed.

And Katie wrote, then discarded, a note to her father. Three times she did this thing.

The coin's lies, or perhaps they were stories, absorbed her attention. Enough so that the four people, two women dressed in the most modern of styles, two men somewhat less refined, drifted in and out of her peripheral vision. In pairs, they would join her at a cafe. Or across the street. Lingering over papers or coffee or conversation in a language she didn't quite remember.

Late on the evening of the second day, Katie tore her third attempt at a letter to shreds. Then stood, to pack everything away and return to the hotel. Whatever the coin's truth, or not, she'd need more than a few hours of contemplation to unriddle it. The weave of them may have been nothing more than a bauble's moment...

The ladies chatting behind her were concerned now with rumors and portents. Gossip, from the court of the Habsburgs.

Which gossip Katie had heard just yesterday. From the same pair.

She didn't stop her hands. Katie encouraged them, in their picking up and placing of things in the leather bag, really more of a horseman's saddlebag than anything remotely fashionable. It was the most practical of bags, and it held all of her papers and notes and failed attempts at letters. She let her hands do this work while her mind sifted through the past two days.

For glimpses of the pair of gossipers. Were they alone? Katie wondered. How many more? She felt, believed, there had been more, but if so, she couldn't yet match the brief memories and hints with concrete evidence. Such as the gossip she'd heard now twice, in the same rhythms and tiny little gasps, of the little pieces of power Franz Josef's nephew had begun to wield. As though these things mattered to anyone outside of the court.

Katie slung the saddlebag over her shoulder, smiled at the waiter as he moved in to clear the table. Denied her hand when it reached for the ruby. Not here, not now. The evening sun had not yet relinquished its hold, too many people too much attention she would have to wait.

For the pair of men who couldn't quite allow her to walk around the corner. They gave themselves away just a breath or two before she made the turn. And once they did, she catalogued them. At lunch today, they'd taken a seat on tables to either side of her, the mustachioed one had read the London Times, the same one he carried under his arm now.

The bald one had read the Berliner Morgenpost. But he'd at least thrown his morning read away, in favor now of the Borsen-Courier. Which spoke of his broad mindedness. Or perhaps his capacity for humor. Either way, Katie led the two to her hotel.

Which they knew well enough, as they didn't quite make the turn onto the street. Satisfied of her unawareness? If she'd wanted to, that would have been the perfect time to disappear, to leave her four interested observers to their games. Let them play if they must.

Except she wondered, as she made her way to the back room, on the left out of the lift, no of course she didn't require a view, it would only distract her. And who needed the noise while she was trying to sleep?

Safe in her room, door locked, Katie scattered the stones on the desk, and laid the penny between them. Rough, unpolished but for her fingers and time, and the tarnished coin joined the chorus from the spirits bound.

They told a story, two stories together. First, that Katie had had no opportunity to run. The pair of women had sped their way, by carriage, to a safe house across the street. They observed her passage through the hotel doors. If she'd taken the chance and run, Katie would have had been taken before she could reach the station.

Second story: that the coin was bait in a trap. And not for Katie. "No, she's been dead and gone for three centuries at least." And yet here the coin was, and the people arrayed to take Lian. Where?

The stones and the coin showed her a building, of stone and glass, a church or no. An abbey, hidden away by forest and time and space, some little refuge from the world's cares turned now to a new purpose. The four watchers, and a dozen or more of their compatriots coming along to affect the trap itself... they were as lights in the darkness, close yet still some hours away. The watchers had wired the abbey, the trap had been sprung.

"Who are you, that you believe me to be Lian?" Katie asked the stones. Their origin, the abbey... yet much of this answer was yet hidden from her. Lian had died, Katie had buried her godmother herself, beneath a maple tree overlooking Niagara Falls. And yet here Lian, her actions her legends the fear of her, reached out from the grave after centuries. "Who are you, that you won't come looking for me, or Rik, next?"

Or the others, the shadow children, those lost and re-created and de novo beings hidden from the reach of knowledge. Some lifelong enemies there, some allies of convenience, some of them she protected. But none of them would she leave to be hunted as animals.

When Katie wrote this time, "Father, I need your help." In the old Greek the words came, what little she knew or could guess. "The Church is moving against the children. I know not yet what or how, but they come for me now. They believe me to be Lian, yet she is dust these long years. What do they fear so, Father? And why?"

She wrapped the letter, tight, small. Poked among the stones, chose the emerald so that he would know with certainty. "Where to hide it?" she asked the stones. "Where, who..."

She left for the antique shop. If it were good enough to serve as her trap, it were good enough to serve as her saving grace. She paused only to insure that the other stones were back in their places, between seams and other hidden pockets.

Behind, she left only the coin, sitting in the middle of the desk. "Let them come," she told the coin. "I need only a few hours, and a little luck."

It was enough to distract them. Time enough to drift out the back door, across the city to the curio shop. "I must beg of you one small favor."

The wardrobe, the apothecary's case, these things and more would, she knew, find their way to Rik. Some few decades hence, he would open the drawers and find her note, and the emerald.

This knowledge was small comfort when she stepped from the shop and into the arms of those who'd come to take her. Small.

But as strong as a spider's anchor in the foggy dawn. Her father would come. Eventually. And in the mean time, Katerina would discover just who these people were, and why they and the Church behind them had turned their attention to her world.

A Summer Wind Down

And this week's story looks like it concludes this current arc of the In Council series.

Oh, I think there are plenty more adventures here to understand. But for now, I think Martha, Russ, and their friends and enemies will be turning to more quiet endeavors, at least for a bit.

That's what usually happens, after all, when entering...

A Summer Wind Down - an In Council story by M. K. Dreysen

Martha Hazard didn't, as a general rule, attend funerals.

This might have had something to do with being from a small family. Parents still doing well, and their parents. Not a lot of cousins and so on, or at least not at that stage of life.

Martha admitted she was young enough the topic just hadn't come up that often.

But she did have an opinion. And that being, Martha would much rather that funerals, if she had to attend them, come in winter.

Clear frosty skies. Or miserable late winter rains. Either way. The north wind should blow and herald that which lay behind it.

Not the wind off the Gulf. All the humidity, where she didn't ever feel like she'd quite dried off after the morning shower. And the heat, of course.

At least the heat pressed in and weighed down the moments. Jessica, first, and the only a week later Len and Dwight's mother.

Martha and Russ stood at her mentor's side, both of them worried whether he'd make it without falling down, and gave what comfort they could. And to Len as well, the younger Thompkins sibling embarrassed at his own tears.

Martha wondered whether the Laughing Man's mask, the one that Len had set aside when Momma began her last day's journey, hid more than Len wanted to admit to. Or if it had turned from mask to crutch in that odd alchemy tools sometimes undergo.

****

The flight back started quiet, three little mice consumed with their thoughts. By the time they'd headed over to the carousel and its winding cargo of bags, they'd started little conversations.

The short ones, a couple of exchanges, a few words here and there, and then more silence. No strain, just short.

The companionable moment came to an end when Renau's apprentice stepped between Martha and her gear. "Ah, this does look like perfect timing then. You without your toys, and me with a grudge."

Martha pulled up short. "There's no way... huh. I guess your boss did take care of you. Memory jar?"

"Or something like it. Weeks of hell re-absorbing my memories. I've spent the last six weeks with the worst headache you can imagine. I'm here for a little pain relief." The guy reached to pull something out from behind his back.

Whatever it was, Martha could feel it, smell it, the power rolled from it and warped the air between the two about-to-be combatants.

Then Dwight stepped between the two of them. "Hold."

And whatever Renau's apprentice had been about to unleash, his muscles stopped participating in the process. "Professor... I... ah..."

"You've chosen an an awfully public venue for this, Martin." Dwight looked around. The almost empty baggage claim and the almost midnight hour belied his words, but Martin couldn't really deny the point.

Dwight nodded. And at his nod, a circle, just the faintest hint of dark purple light, began to inscribe itself around them all, Russ, Dwight included. A shadow wall, one that held their voices and threatened to swallow all the light coming and going, began rising up as well.

Martin visibly, audibly, gulped. "I... you owe me, Martha Hazard. And I intend to collect." Shaking his head, whether at himself, circumstances, or whatever, Renau's apprentice turned and ran for the doors.

"I'll be sure and make time for you, Martin!" Martha called after him.

When she turned back, Russ and Dwight were giggling. Martha cocked an eyebrow at the both of them. "What?"

"How long do you think it'll take him to calm down and figure it out?" Russ asked. "The illusion, I mean?"

Dwight straight out laughed, now. "He'll just add it to Martha's account when he does."

Martha shook her head as she bent to her gear. "Easy enough for you to say."

"It's an unfortunate part of the age you're at. So many of your fellow apprentices view the power they're beginning to understand as an avenue to more immediate gratification. Very human, when you think about it."

"Very annoying."

"That too. Listen," and Dwight waved to include Russ in the conversation. "You two have tuition bills coming up, right?"

Russ groaned. "I've been trying not to think about it. The bill came while we were gone. Mom said they'll take it in three installments..."

Martha's face showed the graduate student's long-suffering financial pain.

Dwight smiled. "It turns out that my Chair funds will cover those tuition bills." He stopped to enjoy the happiness.

Momentarily. "There's only one problem. You two have to go to Accounting to file the paperwork."

Martha frowned; Russ's face echoed ever clueless freshman that had ever been. "Accounting?" Martha started. "But that's just..."

"Not the main office. There's a... well. Let's just say that we have our own branch of the administration. For our particular needs. It's in the basement."

"The basement?"

"You'll need the key. Oh, and the map. We'll get you a list of the guardians, of course, and the pass codes and puzzles. Can't forget the puzzles..."

Martha looked at Russ's face, now gone from clueless to real fear. And Dwight's, lost in contemplation. "Traps," Dwight mumbled. "I need to look up which moon phase we're in..."

Martha Hazard couldn't help but smile and throw one arm over Russ's worried shoulders, and the other arm through Dwight's elbow. "Don't worry, kid. A little blood and some pain, just call it our contribution to the semester bill. And a reminder."

Russ snorted. "Of what?"

"Of why we got into the gig."