Gunpowder Empire

Dad was checking the monitors to make sure nobody could see the family when they came out of the cave. Jeremy went over to look at the screens, too. They showed grassy hillsides. Motion and an infrared blip drew Jeremy's eye. It was only a rabbit hopping along. He relaxed. The Roman military highway arrowed off toward the west, as scornful of the landscape it crossed as any American interstate.

“Looks good,” Jeremy said.

Dad nodded. “Yes, I think so, too.” He raised his voice a little. “Come here, Melissa. See anything you don't like?”

Mom took a long, careful look at the monitors. She shook her head. “No, everything looks fine.”

“Let's go, then,” Dad said.

The mouth of the cave wasn't wide enough to let anyone in or out. A camouflaged trapdoor nearby took care of that. Jeremy and Amanda hurried down the hillside to the highway. When Jeremy got to it, the soles of his sandals slapped against the paving stones. That road had been there for two thousand years. It wasn't heavily traveled, but still… How many others had walked it before him?

The breeze blew from out of the west. The grass on either side of the road rippled like seawater. A starling flew by overhead. It made metallic twittering noises. Jeremy didn't hate starlings here the way he did in California. They belonged here. They weren't imported pests.

“Cooler here than when we left,” Mom said. Jeremy nodded. She was right. It didn't mean much, though. Weather changed randomly from one timeline to another.

“Let's go,” Dad said. They started east toward Polisso, which lay not far past the curve of the next hill.

Amanda could see the walls of Polisso ahead when the wind shifted. She wrinkled her nose. Dad broke a rule: he dropped into English to say, “Ah, the sweet smell of successpool.” The pun wouldn't work in neoLatin.

“Fu

Horse manure. Garbage-old, old garbage. Sewage. Wood smoke, thick enough to slice. People who hadn't bathed for a long time. Those were some of the notes in the symphony of stinks. The scary thing was, it could have been worse. People here knew about ru

After coughing, Amanda said, “Those who travel across time learn things about smells that those who stay home never imagine.” It sounded more impressive in neoLatin. It would have been true no matter what language she spoke.

“In a few days, you won't even notice,” Mom said. That was also true. Amanda wouldn't have believed it the first time she came to Polisso. She'd wanted to throw up. She hadn't, quite. Some people did when they first went crosstime. Living in cultures that knew little about sanitation and cared less took work.

Sandstone walls, lit by the sinking sun, seemed to turn to gold. The long black barrels of ca

A wagon drawn by half a dozen horses came rattling and squealing out of the gate. The horses' iron-shod hooves and the iron tires on the wagon wheels banged and clanked against the paving stones of the highway. The horses strained against their harness. The wagon was full of sandstone blocks. Pulling it couldn't have been easy for the animals.

The driver was a swarthy little man with a big black mustache. He wore a tunic like Jeremy's, but shabbier and with less embroidery. “Gods look out for you,” he said, as Amanda and her family stepped off onto the grass by the side of the road to give the wagon plenty of room to go by.

“And for you as well,” Dad answered politely.

“Thanks, friend,” the driver said. His neoLatin had an accent a little different from what Amanda had learned through her implant. That guttural undertone said he came from the province of Dacia-probably from right here in Polisso. Amanda sounded as if she came from Italy, or perhaps Illyricum or southern Gallia.

With a leer for Amanda, or for Mom, or maybe for both of them, the local flicked the reins. Men here weren't shy when they liked somebody's looks. Amanda stuck her nose in the air. So did her mother. The driver just laughed. You couldn't discourage them that way. The Solters family walked on toward Polisso.

A gate guard yawned, showing two broken teeth. He and his comrades wore surcoats of dull red linen over light mail-shirts. They tucked baggy wool trousers into rawhide boots that rose almost to their knees. Their helmets had a projecting brim in front and a downsweeping flair in back to protect their necks.

They all wore swords on their hips. Some of them carried pikes twice as tall as they were. The rest shouldered heavy, clumsy-looking matchlock muskets. A lot of them had nasty scars. They'd seen action somewhere.

“God look out for you,” Dad called to the guards.

“Gods look out for you as well,” answered the guard with the broken teeth. He had a small plume of red feathers sticking up from his helmet. That meant he was a sergeant. It also meant he could read and write, which many of the other guards couldn't do. And it meant he was going to ask nine million questions and write down all the answers. Sure enough, he pulled out an enormous book with pages made from parchment, a reed pen, and a brass bottle of ink. “Your names?”

“I am Ioa

Scratch, scratch, scratch, went the pen. “They call you clever, eh?” the sergeant said. “Should they?”

With a wry shrug, Dad answered, “If I were as clever as that, would I let people know I was clever?”

“Huh,” the sergeant said. “And the people with you?”

“My son, Ieremeo Soltero, called Alto,” Dad said. The sergeant nodded as he wrote that down. Jeremy was tall. Dad went on, “My wife, Melissa Soltera. My daughter, Amanda Soltera.” Women didn't have semiofficial nicknames tacked on after their family names.

“Occupation?” the sergeant asked.

“We are merchants,” Dad replied. “We work with Marco Petro, called Calvo, whom you will know. If you do not recognize us, some of your men will.”

Several guards nodded. One said, “I remember the Solteri from last year and the year before that. Don't you, Sarge?”

“Of course I do. You think I'm stupid?” the sergeant snapped. “But that doesn't matter. We've got to have the records.” He turned back to Dad. “Nature of your trade and merchandise?”

“Hour-reckoners, mirrors, knives with many attached tools, razors, and other such small things of great use, all at best prices.” Dad got in a quick sales pitch.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. The sergeant wrote it down without changing expression. He paused to reink the pen, then asked, “Declared value of your merchandise?”

“Nine hundred aurei,” Dan answered. Merchants bringing more than a thousand goldpieces' worth of goods into a town had to pay a special tax. Nobody admitted bringing in more, not if there was any way around it.

The sergeant grunted. He knew the rules at least as well as Dad. If he wanted to be difficult, he could search the Solters' packs. His broad-shouldered shrug made his mail-shirt clink. Merchants whose goods were worth more than a thousand aurei were rich enough to land a nosy sergeant in hot water. He seemed to decide snooping beyond what the law required was more trouble than it was worth. “Religion?” he asked. “Your greeting and your names make you Christians or Jews.”

“We're Imperial Christians,” Dad said. “We're peaceful people. We don't cause trouble.”

Another grunt. “Yeah, that's what they all say.” The sergeant wrote it down, though. “Now-your home province and birthplace?”