The Spacetime Pool (3 page)

The men greeted
Dominick with respect. Although Janelle had trouble deciphering their words,
she understood their intent. They were preparing to leave.

And she was going
with them.

* * * *

Fog muffled the
night. Janelle sat in front of Dominick on one of the two-horned animals, which
he called a biaquine. Starlight, his mount, had a silver coat with stiff hair.
He changed the animal’s saddle to a tasseled blanket woven in heavy red and
white yarn so Janelle could more easily sit with him. A few scouts went on
ahead, but the rest of the men stayed together, with extra biaquines to carry
the tents and other supplies.

Fear and curiosity
warred within Janelle. She had agreed to go with Dominick because she saw no
other viable choices, at least not where she stayed alive and healthy. But she
didn’t trust him.

They passed through
veils of mist, climbing into the mountains. Her muscles ached from the
unfamiliar ride. Moonlight lightened the fog, and she strove to keep track of
landmarks that loomed out of the night: a gnarled tree with two trunks or a
weathered statue of an elderly man in a niche of rock. Her ties to home were
growing tenuous, unable to compete with the reality of this impossible place.

Dominick put his arms
around her waist, so she didn’t fall off the biaquine. At first she sat ramrod
straight. Gradually, though, Starlight’s rocking gait lulled her. Nor did
Dominick act in any way to make her uncomfortable. She had forgotten how
comforting it felt just to be held. Her mother had always been effusive with
affection, and although her father had been less demonstrative, he had never
let them doubt his love. She had grown up secure in those close-knit ties. One
instant of violence had shattered everything. Drowning in grief, she had
withdrawn from human contact; in the past two years she had barely touched
another person.

Dominick had a
strange request. He wanted a curl of her hair. When she agreed, he pulled out
his dagger. She stiffened, her gaze riveted on the long blade as it glittered
in the moonlight, but he only cut off a small tendril. He gave it to one of his
riders, who carefully placed the strands in a packet of cloth. Then the man
took off up the trail, galloping ahead of their party.

“What’ll he do with
it?” Janelle asked.

“My monks will
examine it,” Dominick said. “To see if you are who I think.”

“How can they know
from a lock of hair?”

“They have ...
spells.”

“Spells?”

“Well,” he amended, “so
they say.”

From his tone, she
suspected he didn’t believe it any more than she did. She just hoped his monks
didn’t decide her hair had demonic properties.

Exhaustion was
catching up to her, but she feared to rest, dreading what she might find when
she awoke. She had rarely slept enough during school, often studying late into
the night. It paid off; she earned high marks, even the top grade in
Mathematical Methods of Physics. Now her simple pleasure in a job well done
seemed forlorn.

An owl hooted, its
call muted by the fog. Janelle shuddered.

“Are you cold?”
Dominick asked.

“I was thinking of
home.”

Regret softened the
hard edges of his voice. “I am sorry about this.” After a pause, he added, “But
I would be lying if I denied I am glad you are here. I never really believed
this would happen.”

“Prophecies aren’t
real.” She watched the biaquines plodding ahead of them on the trail. “A
rational explanation has to exist.”

“Truthfully?” he
said. “I don’t think the seeress made that prediction. It was Gregor, a monk
from the monastery. He is the one who can read the Jade Pool.” His voice
tightened. “Father’s soothsayer had never even been there before. She stayed at
the palace.”

“Palace?”

“Where my brother is.”

“Does he work there?”

He gave a bitter
laugh. “You could say that.”

“What does he do?”

“He is the Emperor of
Othman.”

Good Lord. What had
she landed in? “You’re the brother of an emperor?”

“Yes.” He said it
simply, just verifying a fact. “He was born first.”

If neither he nor his
brother had married, that suggested neither had legitimate offspring. “Does
that mean you’re his heir?”

“For now. Until he
sires one.”

“Sweet blazes,” she
murmured. “I’ve never heard of Othman.”

He swept out his hand
as if to show her all of the land. “The provinces stretch from the snow fields
in the far north to the great gulf in the south. Maximillian rules it, and I
govern the Atlantic Province under him.”

“The entire
continent?” It sounded like Canada and North America.

“Only the eastern
half. Britain has the rest.” In a voice that sounded deceptively soft, he
added, “For now.”

A chill went through
her. “And later?”

“That depends on what
happens with Max.”

From his tone, she
suspected that if he ever became emperor, he would kick out the British and
absorb their territories. What a strange history for the colonial revolution.

“Your brother is
afraid you’re after his throne,” she said.

“Supposedly,
whichever of us marries you will rule Othman.”

“This is crazy. I
have nothing to do with either of you.”

“Not according to the
seer.”

Or the politicians,
more likely. “Dominick, surely you see this so-called prophecy is a trick, one
guaranteed to set you and your brother against each other. It’s bunk.”

“Bunk?”

“Lies. Moonshine.”

“Moonshine.” Wryly he
added, “An apt image.”

Janelle had used the
word on instinct, and now she regretted it. It evoked sweetly faded memories of
her southern childhood: grits, biscuits and gravy, and bluegrass music. Her
family had later moved to Washington, D.C. and then Europe, but the girl who
loved country ham and the unique twang of a steel guitar was still inside of
her. Her memories glimmered of the golden hills she had wandered during late
summer days, spinning the enchanted dreams of youth. She couldn’t let herself
think she might never again see them.

“I would agree it is ‘moonshine,’”
Dominick was saying, “except everything else in the prophecy has come true. It
foretold the birth of eight children to my parents. Max and I have six
siblings, and they fit every detail predicted.” His breath condensed in the
air, spuming past her. “Gregor gave my father a sealed letter, to be opened
after father’s death. Father died of pneumonia ten years ago, three days after
his sixtieth birthday. After the funeral, Maximillian opened the letter.”

“What did it say?”

He answered quietly. “That
my father would die of pneumonia three days after his sixtieth birthday.”

She shivered. “That’s
eerie.”

“Indeed.”

“You and Maximillian
can never trust each other.”

“True. Not that I
would trust him anyway.”

“Why not?”

“He craves power.”

She suspected that
applied to Dominick as well. “Why are you so certain it’s me in that prophecy?
You’ve only seen drawings of an older woman.”

“We will verify your
signature.”

“You’ve never seen me
write, I’m sure.”

“Not writing. It’s
hard to explain.”

“Try.”

He paused for a
moment. “Your signature is inside your body. It has forty-six characters, half
each from your father and mother. You can’t see it, I think because it is too
small.” He nuzzled the top of her head. “It determines everything about you,
from the color of your eyes to whether you are a man or a woman.”

The touch of his lips
on her hair startled Janelle. It was a simple gesture, but that just made it
more intimate, as if they took such affections for granted. Attractive he might
be, but he was too threatening. She started to tell him to stop, then froze as
she realized what else he had said. The “signature” sounded like DNA. Based on
what she had seen, she wouldn’t have expected his people to know genetics at
the molecular level needed to identify a person. Then she gave a frayed laugh.
She didn’t believe they understood DNA, but she accepted gates to other
universes?

He lifted his head
and spoke stiffly. “What is funny?”

Belatedly, she
realized how her reaction must have sounded. “Dominick, I wasn’t laughing at—”
She foundered at the word “kiss,” which felt much too awkward, and wasn’t
exactly what he had done, anyway. So she told another truth. “I’m tired.
Nervous.” Softly, she added, “Don’t push.”

He let out a breath. “It
is my fault you were ill prepared. I wasn’t ready, either. I had never before
used the gate.”

“You must have
studied it.” How else could he have found her?

He shook his head, or
at least his hair rustled; seated in front of him, she couldn’t see his face.

“I just use the tools
Gregor gave me,” he said.

“The disk on your
belt.”

“Yes. Except it no
longer does anything.”

“Maybe I can get it
to work.”

She expected him to
refuse. Instead, he took his arm away from her waist, and she heard a click.
Then he pressed a metal plate into her hand. It had a diameter the size of her
palm and felt cool on her skin. No marks embellished its polished surface.

“How does it operate?”
she asked.

“I rub it. Supposedly
my finger ridges activate the spells.”

Spells indeed. If his
fingerprints operated the mechanism, it wouldn’t work for her. When she rubbed
the disk, nothing happened. “Should I touch it in any pattern?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You said before that
you calibrated it.”

“Actually, Gregor
did. He’s secretive. He tells me nothing.” Wryly he added, “I don’t think he
understands it, either.” He guided Starlight around an outcropping, and the
biaquine snorted as if to protest the inconvenience.

“What you said about ‘sheets’
earlier,” Dominick said. “What did you mean?”

Janelle handed him
back the disk. “It’s kind of abstruse.”

“Does that mean you
don’t know?”

“No,” she growled. It
was a fair question, though. “Imagine one Riemann sheet as my universe. It has
a phase.”

“Like the Moon.”

“Not that.” She
paused, thinking. “Do you have clocks here?”

“Well, yes.
Certainly.”

“Twenty-four hours a
day? Twelve and twelve again?”

“Of course.”

It relieved her to
have that much in common with him. “Think of the phase as time. Say it goes
from midnight to noon in my universe.” She almost said “like hands on an
old-fashioned clock,” but then realized analog timepieces might be the norm
here.