Author: Nate

22rd day of the month of Kan, Imperial Year 2379
(Saturday, May 13, 1899 in the Terran common era)
6th year of the Wizards’ War
Hall of the Ancients, Isle of Mages

Archmage Irziben, 65th Guildmaster of the Isle of Mages and through it the head of the Wizards’ Guild worldwide, was a tired and worried woman.  She knew she didn’t look her 117 years – at her level of skill and power keeping your physical body in a youthful state was a triviality – but it seemed to her that she now felt every one of those years every bit as much as someone with the trivial magic of common folk.

She sat alone with her thoughts, joined only by one of her apprentices, who remained silent; the ancients had always come and gone as they pleased except when they sat in council, and nearly all of them had abandoned the Island and the Guild.  It was one reason she never wanted to take the Spell of Undying and join them – rejuvenation was an inconvenience, but the ancients all seemed to lack urgency or ambition. To her, that was something essential to humanity.  Not that all of them had ever been human…

She has done so much to break the guild out of its pretense of neutrality, taking the role in the open as a leader among nations that the guild had always deserved.  It had come so close! and yet she was likely the last leader of the Wizards’ Guild.  Damned Feldaren and its economy and its machines; by the time the guild had realized the threat they posed, a little less than two centuries ago, they were already a continent-striding power. The Guild’s past techniques of suppressing innovation and co-opting the most intelligent could at most slow them down.

Irziben’s old master, Alrik, had seen that – and working through proxies, had set about to make sure that the two Slave Wars would lead to Feldaren’s defeat.  Instead, by the end of the second they had seen the humiliation of all of the Guild’s allies and proxies.  She had been a grown woman then and beginning to be a powerful mage.

For almost thirty years she, Alrik, and a few others had labored to prepare the Guild to fight them without relying on others. To take its rightful place in the world.  As the time approached, he seemed to lose his nerve.  When he refused to start taking the steps they had prepared for, a group of younger mages asked him to step down and allow them to lead – with the implied threat of a battle, which they were sure he’d lose.  She had been one leader among them, and as his former apprentice, she had been the one to let him know.

Looking back, she still thought he would have lost that battle.  Instead of either openly stepping down in their favor or fighting, he had simply told her he was leaving and then walked off a moment later through a door in space-time that they, at the time, could not replicate.

His caution had seemed wrong at first – while the war was never as easy as some had expected, they had always had a path to victory in sight.  Then the cruel Gods and crueler chance conspired to destroy everything she had worked for.  These dashed newcomers, with even better machines, and knowledge of scientific arts far beyond even Feldaren’s, had appeared where they could do the most harm.

Now bombs rained down on the Island night and day, aircraft had driven her dragon-riders from the sky, and while the supply of magical ore beneath the Island remained inexhaustible, it did them little good – it took slaves to mine it and wizards with the ability to attune it – and she had too few left of either.

Ironically, in the midst of the war, the incident through which the newcomers arrived was the key to figuring out what Alrik had done.  Two young wizards had, separately, come up with the separate pieces of her final plan.  One was very bright; she had figured out how to go one better on Alrik, and open a gate between worlds rather than just to plane-walk.  It was small, opened briefly, and where it went was entirely unpredictable until it was opened…

The other was not especially bright, just very persistent, and very fond of old papers; his years in the archives had let him find an old report on how to explode unattuned magical ore. It was not the sort of thing that was useful under normal circumstances, and difficult enough that the guild had never taken steps to prevent it – but now it proved valuable in the process of retreating elsewhere and had stymied the armies of their enemies.

Opening the gate used a terrible amount of magic, but it was worth it – they had only to keep trying and she was certain it would open to someplace with enough magic, and a non-hostile environment.  Then they would evacuate as much of the guild as could pass through the gate and then detonate the remaining seam of magical ore under the island.

With the ability to keep the gate stable for at most an hour or two, a huge number of younger wizards would be left to die, but the enemy fleet would go with them. It was unknown just how much ore was under the island; she worried a little it would be so much as to split the world in half.  She’d prefer there to be a world to return to someday – for the guild to rule – but the important thing is that she and the senior leadership would survive somewhere in the universe.

“Guildmaster?” a voice said, interrupting Irziben from her reminiscence. She saw that it was Kallen, the young wizard who had invented the gate.  She was standing there with Roberto – the wizard who had rediscovered the explosive use of unattuned ore. He was atypical, having kept the name his parents had given him after joining the guild; it spoke to his lack of imagination, although she could mostly forgive that given his diligence.

“Yes,” Irziben said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.  The two hadn’t been working together until recently, and she was curious what they could have come up with.

“Roberto and I had an idea,” Kallen said, “for how to save the guild.”

“I have a plan for that,” said Irziben.

“She means the entire guild,” said Roberto. “I found a report from one of the ancients, who had been plane-walking, from a world a bit like ours, you see, where…” and he’d have likely gone on if Kallen hadn’t interrupted him.

“We can make a bigger gate,” Kallen said. “We can use the gate to absorb the energy of exploding ore.  It doesn’t even take that much of it to enlarge the gate; if I’m right about what you’ve been planning to do, we can easily just send the whole island through instead.”

“You’re sure?”

“We’re sure.  We’ve already tried it at a small scale,” said Kallen.

“How quickly can we do this?”

“How quickly can you get …” Kallen took a moment to remove a scrap of paper from her robe and read it, “according to our calculations, we need about a little less than a ton and a half of unattuned ore, so however quickly you can get that moved next to the gate.  We have enough for that, right?”

A ton and a half of ore sounded like a lot, but it was terribly heavy stuff, and that was only 150 ten kilo bars, which were each the size of a large brick.  They’d been stockpiling it ever since Roberto had made his discovery, and they had several times that accumulated in the dungeons beneath them.  It was simply a matter of moving it, and between apprentices and slaves, it would not be hard.

“Under an hour,” said Irziben. “I’ll order that much ore be moved.  What happens to the enemy fleet when we go?”

“That’s the best part,” said Kallen. “Roberto, you tell her.”

“We can’t be sure, but we’re expecting a big bang. The expanded gate is always a sphere, and our calculations were for a sphere that can hold the whole island, centered here.  That’s about a 25km radius.  That makes for long ways down.”

Roberto went on, “I can’t guarantee it, but there’s good reason to think that this seam of ore comes from volcanic activity under the island, and that the crust isn’t anywhere near that thick.  I wish I could stick around and survive seeing it.  That much water meeting that much magma is going to be glorious.”

“I see,” said Irziben, truly smiling for the first time in a long time. She sent her apprentice to get the remaining Archmages.  They still had to wait for a reasonable world to appear on the far side of the gate, but when it did they would be leaving with the full resources and manpower of the Island behind them.  For now, this was a one-way trip, but with her leadership and a new world friendly to their magic, they would rule the new world, and someday, they would be back to reclaim their place in this one.

End of Part I

Saturday evening
Brasserie « Light of the Future », Old Feldaren

We were in a restaurant’s private room that Matsumoto had reserved for us; it was a fusion place, Terran European – Japanese – Feldarenese, and whatever “Light of the Future” meant (also written in Japanese and the local Old Imperial characters), the name literally printed in angled quotes. Dinner was over, and we were taking a break before dessert.

“So, what did you think of His Majesty?” asked Legatus Matsumoto.

“He seemed very informal for royalty,” said Joel. “At least he didn’t seem badly hurt.  Have you met him before?”

“Not in person,” she replied. “I’ve spoken to him using the same mirror you have, and over a secure phone line. He wasn’t informal with me, of course, but he was still very open and plain-spoken.  We don’t see that very often in my line of work.”

Joel’s father asked her a question, “Have you ever had to deal with something like this before?”

“Like this, in what way?”

“Any of it, really.”

“I’ve been the trade representative to the US, essentially Mr. Hull’s counterpart, for a few years,” she said. “I haven’t personally worked with any other worlds through the Gate, but there are a handful of others with anchors where we trade openly.” She stopped to think for a moment. “I’ve got two other colleagues that handle them, with more than one each.  It was all routine, before the King asked us to inquire with the brotherhood. He wanted to know if there was any truth to the rumors that they’d helped Princess Christina go to … what turned out to be to your world.”

“What about something like the present situation in Obdrest?” asked Joel’s father.

“Not personally, no.  The Alliance has been formally at peace since its founding.  Toyeri – that’s the continent across the ocean to the East – has not had an easy time the past 50 years, and some of my older colleagues have dealt with similar things, but never in an ally as critical as Obdrest.”

“Why is Obdrest so important? From what Joel has said, it’s a small country, and an ocean away,” he asked.

“It’s a very strategic one,” said Matsumoto, and she was about to say more when Dormer interrupted.

“Maybe Joel can explain it. He should understand this from the exam if nothing else,” he said.

“Ummm…” said Joel. “A lot of trade? And right off the coast of Shirek? Or is it Zirek? The bad guys, from the Slave Wars.”

I cringed a little, and fortunately Dormer corrected him. “Those are the capitals; the countries are Zir and Shir, but that’s basically correct.  Our navy, and naval bases in our country we let the Union use, are a big part of making sure they don’t trouble the world again. We’re also a big part of keeping the Human Sea navigable and free of pirates and sea monsters.”

My dad’s jaw just about dropped to the table.  “Did you just say sea monsters?”

I remembered that I had really wanted to get back to the Natural Science Museum; or better yet, take my folks to a zoo before they went home tomorrow.  Then again, maybe seeing live dragons — well, the lesser drakes bred from them — at the zoo was a terrible idea.

“I did,” said Dormer. “I realize your world is different, but in ours, only these two continents belong to humans, and only the nearer half of Toyeri and the flat parts of the Etciv, really.”

“Fascinating,” said my father. “Some of what Oliver and I were talking about on the flight over makes more sense now.”

It seemed like the adults were going to be talking for a while. I really wanted to get a chance to talk to Joel, and make sure he was really on board with staying with what we’d seen today.

Getting up from my seat, I said to Joel, “I want to get some fresh air. You want to go for a walk?”

“Yeah, definitely,” he said.  He cocked his head to Dormer, who nodded back.  Morgan hadn’t joined us at dinner, and I suspected he’d end up following from a safe distance, but we didn’t spot him while leaving.  Old Feldaren was a neighborhood just to the far side (relative to where we were staying) of the capitol district, which was where we’d seen a bunch of tourist spots on our prior trip.  It was also just south of the big bridge across the Great Darien.  It seemed safe and Matsumoto had said it was a somewhat fashionable area.  The streets were narrow, and the main shopping area was closed to car traffic for the evening; this restaurant was in what appeared to have once been a small apartment building, split across several floors.  It had been a short walk from the nearest subway station.

I figured we’d head for the main shopping street. Coming from New York, it felt safely anonymous to talk in a crowd, but Joel indicated we should walk away the opposite way, toward the river instead.  “I want to see the bridge,” he said, “and it’s too busy over there.”

Compared to the main drag, the residential part was quiet; a few folks were around, mostly older ones on their stoops, although we passed one person closer to our age out walking a dog.  The buildings were narrow, stone or brick, mostly three or four floors; I couldn’t tell if they were big townhouses or small apartments.

“Dormer and Morgan have been telling me about security,” he continued, “and I can’t be too cautious right now.”

“Got it,” I said. “That was what I was going to ask you about.  Are you still OK staying here?”

“Shoot, man, I wish I knew,” he said, and he let out a long breath. “I don’t know if I have a choice, really.”

“How can you not have a choice?”

“If I head home, this basically all disappears.  I’m safe, but I go back to just being some guy at school.  I never get to find out what my mom’s life was like, or if my life could have been different.” He shook his head. “My dad told me not to worry about him, and that things are going well with his business, but it’s like… this could change our lives, you know?”

“That sounds like you’ve decided.”

“I wish.  I mean, I had.  You know how excited I was.  That whole thing today made the danger a lot more real, and how weird this place is.”  We walked for a bit before he went on; we were getting close to the river. “My great uncle was OK, but I don’t think in our world he would have been.  You don’t burn that much hair off and look OK, even if that wasn’t like the war movie face blown off thing.”

“You think they healed him with magic?” I asked.

Joel nodded.

I had encountered the idea of magical healing in the history textbook – not that they explained much about magic, I guess assuming whatever part of it was general knowledge, was general knowledge – but it only registered now. “Oh, crud,” I said, – well, something saltier to that effect – “if Anne had been over here, she’d probably be OK.”

“You don’t know that, Mark.  Maybe she would have, or maybe they’d have missed it, too.”

We walked a bit longer, reaching the river. There was a clear view up to the bridge.  It looked impressive from the air, but it was crazy large from here.  The river on this side was wide enough that the far side was faint glimmers, and the suspension bridge looked impossible – just a pair of huge silvery-metal arches over the river from each side that joined in the center, and the roadway crossing below it, whatever cables it had invisible in the darkness.

“I had the same thought about my mom,” said Joel, “a while back when I was talking to Dormer about magic here. I asked him about what they could have done for her here, and what he said made a lot of sense, but it still bugs me.”

He went on. “Magic can cure cancer here, at least the normal kinds… and just like at home, it sounds like breast cancer is a real common one. It wasn’t all that sudden for her or anything, and she knew what they could do here.  So, whatever she thought was waiting for her here, it was worse than dying to her.”

“I’m sorry, Joel, that’s rough.”

“I guess that’s what I really mean by I don’t have a choice,” Joel said. “Somebody as good as killed her, right?” I’ve always known Joel to be an easy-going guy; he could be enthusiastic at times, sometimes about dumb stuff, but I don’t think I had ever seen the expression or tone of voice he had now… very serious, very resolved. “Dormer was telling me after we talked to my great-uncle about some of the things they knew.  For my mother, it’s not much, but they think all the stuff going on – her being driven away, all the deaths in the family, even the bombing today – that it’s all part of the same thing.”

“I don’t know that I can do much,” he said, “but I owe it to her to try to do something.”

“So, you’re staying?”

“Yeah,” he said. “How about you?”

I nodded. “Well, for the year I signed up for. NY is home, and whether I’m here or there as you said, ‘I’m just some guy,’ or more like ‘just some weirdo.’”

“Well, I’m glad to have you here for the year, and don’t put yourself down. You’re annoyingly smart and if you ever apply yourself, you’re going to do a lot more with your life than I ever would have back at home.”

“Thanks. I don’t know about that,” I said. “We should get back before our folks start to worry.”

“We should,” he said, and he looked around to make sure no one was nearby. “Besides, over here you’re the best friend of a future King. If nothing else, mark my words – no pun intended – before the year is over, we’re both going to have girlfriends.”

“No pun intended, my ass.  What are you going to do, knight me?”

He laughed, I laughed, and we headed back to the restaurant in better spirits than we’d left it.

Jordi’s Market, main concourse, Riverside terminal
Mid-afternoon

Elise had the front of the shop to herself for a while; the coworker who had come in for the morning had gone home, and the manager was in the back, doing paperwork.  She wasn’t especially fond of having to handle customers on her own, but she’d been working there a while and it was about as good a job as you could get in high school – the hours were flexible, the customers mostly undemanding, and the location was bright, safe, and conveniently on the way between school and home.

The man who came in was hardly worth noticing at first; other than a face that looked a little too young for all the gray in his hair, a thoroughly average adult in a suit. Probably coming back to the station to head home after working the morning – many office workers had to come in on Saturday, and it wasn’t that unusual for them to start filtering out early.

Elise figured she could guess what he would buy – coffee or a bottled tea, as he looked too old for soda or juice, and probably a newspaper or magazine to read on the train.  Maybe a pre-packed dinner, or some beer to bring home.  She hoped he wouldn’t ask for some of the wine or liquor they had on shelves behind the counter – at her age, Elise was not supposed to sell them, and yet the manager hated being disturbed for small things.

The man did none of those, instead walking straight up to the counter.  She hoped it was a question, and not a request for the liquor or for lottery tickets – with a sports betting shop elsewhere in the station, the manager here didn’t bother to stock them.

“Hello, sir, can I help you?” she said.

“I think so,” the man said, smiling slightly. He had a distinct accent but hadn’t said enough for her to place it.  “I’ve seen you coming here before, you go to the Queen Sara Academy, yes?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t think I know you,” said Elise; her hand was below the counter just over a pair of buttons, one of which could summon the manager from the back, the other of which was a silent alarm. Being in one of the biggest and busiest stations in the world, police were never very far away, and this location had literally never been successfully robbed.

“I’m sorry, miss, truly! I mean you no harm.  I should have introduced myself first.  My name is Paul Jekanis, here is my card.” He placed a business card on the counter, facing her.  She read it without picking it up – it said he was an investigator for a company called Magnus Trading.

“Thank you, but what business do you have with me?” she asked.

“My employer does a lot of business abroad, especially in Obdrest.  Your school is known for having the children of many important families.”

Elise said nothing, and he continued.

“It can often be worth knowing about their coming and going before their parents make the news.  We have found commercial advantage in that in the past, but our contacts departed.  I’m sure you’ve heard that some of the Obdresti students returned to their country?”

“Yes,” she said, “One of my close friends did.”

“So, when we hear about things like that, we are able to figure out that there may be turmoil in Obdrest, just as we now hear in the news.  It lets the principals of my firm make better choices about where to send ships or invest in cargo.”

“Isn’t that insider trading?”

“I’m not a lawyer, Miss, but as I understand it such things are for public markets, not for the private purchase or consignment of cargo.”

The accent, she thought, sounded a bit like Old Imperial, as was his last name.  She’d grown up knowing just enough to get by with older members of her family; three of her grandparents had been native speakers, and her father had been functionally bilingual.

“I see,” she said.  “What is it that you’re asking me, exactly?”

“Just to let us know if there is anything of note at the school – new transfer students, people leaving to go abroad, any sons or daughters of VIPs making a name for themselves whether good or bad,” he said. “We’ll reward you generously for your time in letting us know whatever you find out.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Please keep the card and leave a message with the receptionist if you’d like to do business.”

Saturday, early afternoon
The townhouse where we’d be staying

The next little while after Dormer and Joel left was confused; we doubled back to the plaza outside Champion’s expecting to have to go in to find the rest of our families, but the moms, plus April and Sammy were waiting outside.

“Where are Joel and Vince?” asked Joel’s stepmom.

“I’ll explain everything when we get there,” said Morgan, “but right now we need to get back to the boys’ apartment to wait for them.”

As it turned out, none of us had thought to get any local currency from Dormer, nor had any of us thought about exchanging dollars at the gate – I wondered whether they would have done so.  Joel’s mom had her group return to the plaza on realizing there was no way to pay for anything.

The apartment would have been in a far walking distance – not too much more than a mile – had the weather been nicer, and if we hadn’t had a six-year-old along.  As it stood, we took the streetcar – according to Morgan there was a line which went directly from the terminal to past our school. The apartment building they’d found was just a couple of blocks off Surrat-Efrel Boulevard, the main avenue the streetcar ran along.  I recognized the name as one of the early elected Emperors after Marcus the Conqueror; he’d been in some questions on the entrance exam, among other things for having established the precedent of retiring after twenty years.

My student ID wouldn’t start getting me free rides until Tuesday, which was the first day of school. Fortunately, Morgan had been staying here for some time and had local change.  The fare was 5 mil, or roughly 50c; a silver coin called a “half wheel.”  For something worth that, it was quite a small coin – around the same size as a nickel.  April was young enough to ride for half-fare. More people got off the streetcar than got on with us, and the ride was quiet and uncrowded.

The neighborhood where we got off had some shops along Surrat-Efrel but compared to my part of Queens it felt very suburban. I’d wanted to check the shops out, but Morgan was insistent we go straight to the apartment.  Our apartment was two short blocks from the main street, going away from the river.  It was a brick building, essentially two townhouses next to each other – our apartment was on the left, split across both floors, while the other half was a separate unit on each floor.  Morgan had the ground floor to himself, and Dormer the upper. There were covered parking spots along one side, one of them occupied; a brick-and-iron fence separated the small front yard from the street.

Morgan had a set of keys and let us in; the first floor was mostly a combined living room and kitchen, reasonably spacious by New York standards, although it seemed like the room would feel crowded if we all stayed in for the afternoon.  Stairs led up, and there was a door next to the kitchen leading back to a small laundry room and half bath, as well as the back door.

Overall, it was nice enough, although it wasn’t remotely home-y in its current state – the furniture was new and still in plastic or paper wrappings, and Joel’s and my boxes were stacked up next to the stairs, as was my bicycle; I stuck it for now in the laundry room to keep it out of the way.

Joel’s mom took it upon herself to start unwrapping the furniture; my dad decided to task Sammy with helping her. I spent a while hauling boxes upstairs, or for a few of the heavy boxes of my books, unpacking them here and bringing their contents up piecemeal.  A couple of Joel’s boxes were too heavy to carry, probably also full of books, and I figured he could deal with those himself.

The two bedrooms had the bathroom between them; the back one was smaller, and as the freeloader here I figured I should take that one — although it also occurred to me that it would be quieter of street noise and was facing west and thus better for sleeping late, so it wasn’t entirely unselfish of me.

One very pleasant surprise is that the whole place was air conditioned; it wasn’t central air, but the permanently mounted wall units were much quieter than the window ones my folks would grudgingly bring out in the worst of summer, and they had the benefit that each room could have its own temperature.

Hauling boxes proved to be a pretty good distraction, and by the time I was done the living room looked much better.  My folks had also started putting together a list of things we’d need; while the place was furnished, it was empty of anything like cups, plates, cleaning supplies, or even toilet paper.  Breakfast had been on the late side, but it was a bit past 1 and everyone was starting to get hungry again; with no food in the house, and no cash, my mom was going to walk over to check on Morgan next door, when Joel, his dad, and Dormer arrived.

Dormer gave us the update on what had happened; the Obdresti King was alive and mostly recovered via magical healing; overall casualties were significant but mostly non-fatal. Someone had sent a truck filled with explosives into the parliament building.  They suspected the same rebels who had been responsible for a similar incident four years ago, but no one had claimed credit yet. There had been reports of seeing a driver bailing out of the truck shortly before it struck, but if so, they were lost in the ensuing confusion.

Joel seemed relatively calm, which seemed out of place to me; they hadn’t used the word “terrorist” here, but it seemed very much like the sort of thing that qualified. If someone had it in for his great-uncle, or the whole government, surely that meant he was at a great risk himself. I figured I’d better talk to him privately. We had a little over 24 hours to decide whether to stay, and while my own worries were mostly over whether I was better off being lonely and homesick here vs. lonely, grieving and depressed at home, I realized that he had a lot more to worry about.

We were still set to meet up with the diplomats for dinner, and we needed lunch, and if we were staying, we had to figure out how to get other household things.  It seemed like the right kind of distraction for a weird day, and in the end, rather than tourist things we returned to near the station to get lunch and shop.

Interlude
Hull’s Office, South Riverside

Joel wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting for someplace safer, but a long walk through the business district to an older, brownstone office building wasn’t it. Hull had rented the top floor as the “United States Trade Mission,” which was still mostly empty. Dormer settled them in Hull’s office itself, while he disappeared into a conference room.

I am so NOT ready for this, Joel thought.

“Remind me how far off Obdrest is,” asked his father.

“About four thousand miles east, on the other side of the ocean,” said Joel.  “Sort of like Chicago to Europe.”

His dad had more questions about the geography, and some of the history; it took Joel a few minutes to realize that it wasn’t about the answers but was an attempt to distract him.  I mean, the King was old, and I think Dormer said he was unhealthy, but I thought I’d get to meet him. I’ve never even been there, how am I supposed to figure out if I want to spend the rest of my life there?

“Your friend Mark’s mom had wanted to see a movie here, and it got me thinking,” said his dad.  “If the US trade mission here works, there’s going to be a huge opportunity for films and videos from each side to be sold on the other.”

“Dad, if I decide to go back to New York and business here doesn’t work out, are we going to be OK?”

“Joel,” his dad said, “we’re going to be fine.  There are opportunities here, sure, and if you stick with it, I want an excuse to spend time over here.  My business will be fine, though, so please don’t worry about that if you decide not to stay.”

“What about my step-, um, Laura, going back to work?” asked Joel.

Joel’s dad shook his head. “She was always going to go back to work when April got old enough to be in school.” He looked at Joel.  “Like I said, don’t worry about us. I know this is a way to be closer to your mom, learn more about her life.  I miss her, too, you know.”

After a moment, his dad continued, “Look, Joel, I’m very proud of how seriously you’ve taken this, and I’ll back you up on whatever decision you think is right.  If this all is too much for you, we can all go back to New York tomorrow.”

“Thanks, dad,” said Joel.  He and his dad started talking about his mom for a little while, when Dormer returned, looking a little less pale than he had.

“The King, your great-uncle, survived the explosion, thank the Gods,” said Dormer.  “He’d like to speak to you. You can come in, too, Mr. Ross, if you’d like to speak to him.”

The conference room looked like any other, but instead of a speakerphone, there was what looked like a small screen sitting on the table; he could see something moving on it but from this angle it was unclear what. “Some kind of video phone?” asked Joel.

The voice from the other side was old, and out of breath, but it was as loud as if in the same room and sounded like it was here far too clearly for a long-distance phone call.  “That’s one way to describe it,” said the voice in a distinct but unplaceable accent, and Joel figured that must be the King.  “Sit down so that I can see you,” said the King, and Joel stepped closer and then sat down.  There was a faint shimmer to the screen, but otherwise it was perfectly clear.

The man on the other side of the screen was sitting half-reclined in a hospital gown, with a couple of tubes attached to his arm.  His short white hair was badly scorched on one side, but otherwise he looked uninjured.

“It makes sense that you’ve never seen a magic mirror before,” said the King.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Joel.

“You can drop the honorifics, Joel, we’re all family here.  Just call me ‘uncle’ until you learn enough Obdresti to converse.  You too, Mr. Ross.”

“OK,” said Joel.

“I take it, that’s my cue to leave, Your Majesty?” asked Dormer.

“That’s up to Joel,” said the King.

Joel shrugged. “I can’t see any reason he should leave?”

“Neither can I,” said the King, “so let’s move on. I hadn’t expected we’d get to talk so soon, but the news from over here must have been a shock, and I wanted you to be able to put a face to your family over here.”

“Thank you,” said Joel. “It was. I’m glad to finally meet you, and that you’re OK.  The news said there was no word when we saw the broadcast.”

“Our country got lucky, and not just on my account,” said the King. “If they’d had a decent mage on their side, it would have been much worse. Some guards died in the blast, but it was all conventional.  It takes more than that to kill an old soldier like me, and I think with healing magic and doctors we won’t have lost any of the lords or delegates.

“I don’t know how much you understand about the situation here,” said the King, “but I know Dormer has told you some.  Even if you knew nothing about it, after today I’d imagine you’d have some reservations about staying.  I can’t blame you if you do; I grew up knowing that even with two older brothers there was an outside chance I’d end up on the throne, where you’ve had less than half a year to come to terms with that.”

“It’s a lot to worry about,” said Joel.

“Yes,” said the King, “and I wouldn’t wish that on a sixteen-year-old. You and I are the last living descendants of my father, Alexander Marius, and there is simply no one else who can hope to hold the Kingdom together.”

“How do you know for sure that I am who you think I am?”

“Except for darker hair, you are the spitting image of your grandfather, my nephew.  There is no question of who your mother was, thanks to your government and the Brotherhood.  If there is any further question when it comes time to acknowledge you publicly, it is a very simple matter to test descent with magic, but I have zero doubt.”

“How do you know I’d be ready to be a good King?”

“No one is ever ready to be King, at least in a system like ours. As for being a good one, worrying about that is a better first step than some members of our family ever managed.”

“A system like yours?”

“I’m supposedly an absolute monarch, but in practice…” There was a distant, unintelligible voice from the King’s side; he turned his head, and his voice could no longer be heard, but it looked like he was yelling. Turning back to the mirror, he said, “I’m afraid my doctors need to check me again. We’ll find a time to talk again when you’re settled in.”

The King continued, “Dormer, make sure you are clear with him about the full situation. I’ll be in touch.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Dormer, and the screen turned into a very ordinary looking mirror.

Sat, August 29
Queen Sara Memorial Academy

When the meeting was over and we went outside, Joel was talking to someone in a school uniform.  “Hey Mark,” he said, waving me over. “This is Neil Mayhan, he’s the student council vice president, and going into his second year, like us.”

“Hi,” I said to Neil.

“Hello, it’s good to meet you,” said Neil. “Now that you’re done, the Dean has asked me to conduct a tour for your families.”

Neil seemed nice enough in a bland, preppy sort of way, and he gave a bit more color to what was essentially the same tour the Dean had given us in the spring.  The main difference was that the academic buildings were deserted, and the classrooms spotlessly clean since the semester hadn’t started yet.  One thing he pointed out that we hadn’t seen on the prior trip was the school’s computer lab – two rooms of what to my eyes looked like antiques, one-piece green screen terminals, separated by a glassed-in operator’s room.  “We’re one of the few high schools with a mainframe dedicated to teaching and student use,” said Neil.

“No personal computers?” I asked.

“There’s no need for those toys,” Neil said. “There was a computer club that kept some for students to use, but I don’t think they’ll have enough members to keep it running this year.  Besides, government and big business, the kind of leadership we prepare students for, run on mainframes.”

I really wanted to come up with some witty response, but all that came to mind was this place is that far behind? and even I had better sense than to say that.  I suspect the “ah, OK,” that I did say may have sounded a bit skeptical.

The clubs at the arts center seemed busier than I remembered, and he made a point of showing us the student council room.  It was very different from the metal furniture I remembered from the G.O. office at our old school; a lot of wood, looking old and expensive.  A painting of a matronly woman overlooked the room – from the textbook photos, it seemed likely to be an older Queen Sara of Penrose. She looked much better in her statue.

“Most of the club rooms are closed or still getting set up for the year, so I thought I’d show you ours.  Most are smaller, of course, but there are enough that right now every social or cultural club who wants one has one. Have either of you given thought to what you will be doing for extracurriculars?”

I shrugged, but Joel answered, “When we were here before, the Dean mentioned that there was a soccer club as well as the team, so I thought I’d try out for that.”

“I’m on the team itself, and tryouts are pretty competitive,” said Neil. “Were you playing competitively at your last school?”

“No,” said Joel, “but I played in a weekend league and over the summer.”

“Well, the club is open to anyone, and I suppose we’ll see about the team,” said Neil. “And you – Mark, was it? – no interests outside of class you’d want to pursue?”

I shrugged again. “I just got here; I’ll need to see what there is.  That computer club could be interesting if they’re looking for members.”

“You should give some thought to how things like that look on a college application,” said Neil. “Especially if you aren’t well off and will need a scholarship, you’d do better to join something that shows leadership, not some hobby for nerds.”

I wasn’t planning to continue on for senior year here, let alone college, and I suspected my grades would be more of a problem than my extracurriculars screaming “nerd,” as if they didn’t already – my prior forays in trying to start a D&D club, for example, and I had technically been the vice president of Martin’s “Action Movie Appreciation Society” for a couple of years.  It didn’t seem worth arguing, though, so I just shrugged.

I decided to drop back, walking closer to my folks after that. Joel seemed to be getting along well with Neil and had a bunch of questions about the soccer team.  He also never asked about whether the school had a band, and I thought to myself to ask him about that later.

“How do you find time to do both student council and competitive Soccer?” Joel asked.

“It isn’t easy,” said Neil, “but it’s just a matter of efficiency, and my family has a full-time tutor for my sister and I, so I make the most of the remaining time to study.”

“That sounds handy.”

“Very,” said Neil.  “The dean said you were transferring in from abroad.  How did you end up coming here?”

Joel gave a very brief discussion of having been contacted by the State Department, leaving out the original reason why, and playing up Hull’s interest in boosting trade.

“Interesting.  What does your father do?” asked Neil.

“He owns an import business,” said Joel.

“Is that why you were selected?” asked Neil.

“Could be,” said Joel. “He’s certainly interested in doing business through the gate if the legalities work out for it.”  That was the first I’d heard of that; it made sense, if nothing else, as an excuse to check on Joel.  The little I’d heard of the legalities sounded painful, or at least they had been – it was hard to get a conversation in with Hull without hearing how much he wanted that to change.

They went on as we finished with the art center and went through roughly the same walk-through of the sports center.  It was quieter than it had been, like the rest of the campus; I asked Neil about it.

“It’s the last weekend before classes start,” he said, “even people who were practicing over the summer are likely to take this weekend time off. It’s only a few of us who are the most dedicated right now.”

He didn’t wait for a response, and other than noticing that only a few lanes in the pool were in use, the sport center was just as boring.  I thought briefly about asking Neil about the Dueling Club sign to get his take on the fencing club, but he and Joel were talking soccer practically the whole way through the center.

We ended back at the administration building. On reaching there, Neil said that he was heading back to the student council office, and to Joel that he looked forward to seeing him at soccer tryouts.  We went inside and met the same assistant and a very bored bus driver.  There were also a pair of student handbooks and packets each with our student ID, which would double as a transit pass, and a whole mess of paperwork to go over with our parents tonight.  The assistant also let us know that our class assignments had not been made yet, and to come by on Monday or before classes started on Tuesday morning to get our schedules.

Except for Special Agent Morgan, we all went to breakfast at Riva’s, a family restaurant a few blocks down the main road from the school, and according to Dormer, a favorite after-school hangout especially for its ice cream. It was our first exposure to chains in this world; my mom picked up a brochure at the front desk, which turned out to be a very long list of locations.

The breakfast menu was an odd mix of many unfamiliar names and mostly familiar foods; everyone found something they could order, although April asked for ice cream all through the meal.  The main topic of discussion was what to do with the day; we were to meet the diplomats again around dinner time and could occupy ourselves until then.  My folks not had not been on the tour before and wanted to see the main sights; April wanted to see the dragons again, and I wanted to explore the Natural Science Museum a bit more as well.  In the end, both sets of parents decided to head into the city, and possibly split up there.

Wherever Morgan had gone off to while we ate, he reappeared on our way back to get the bus; after some further discussion with Dormer about traffic, we decided to have the bus drop us at the main station – Riverside Terminal – and then take a train into the city.  The station building, which looked large from the air, seemed even bigger coming in from the ground.  In addition to the train station, it was the largest shopping center in this part of the city and in the late mid-morning on Saturday was already quite busy.

It was never clear to me why we made a stop to shop there; there had been some discussion of clothing shopping on the bus, but we ended up in two groups – Joel’s and my mothers, April, and Sammy heading off to Champion’s, the main department store leaving Joel, both of our fathers, Dormer, and I to wait for them.  While waiting, Joel’s dad suggested we track down electronics, and Dormer indicated that we’d do better at a specialty place instead of the department store. He suggested one called New Akiba.  “Is that named after the district in Tokyo?” Joel’s dad asked Dormer.

“I have no idea,” replied Dormer.

The shop was in a building to itself, across a pedestrian plaza from the station, and nearly the size of a small department store.  On the walk over, we’d talked with Dormer about what the apartment already had, which included a TV but not a VCR, so we decided to get a local one as the old player I’d brought would not work with the local TVs.  I had a monitor that it would work with, for my own room, whenever our moving boxes arrived.

Inside the store, it could have been any big electronics store back in the states.  The big TVs were a very visible display near the main entrance, and Joel’s dad decided to head that way — guessing that VCRs would be near them, I suspect.  We didn’t get there; as we got to the display TVs, the blood drained out of Dormer’s face.  A moment later, I noticed the news on the screen – the news person saying something silently in front of a screen with grainy images of the marble front of a burning building, or what was left of it, with one corner fully collapsed.  The sound was off so we could not hear what was being said but the text below it was clear: “Explosion at the Obdresti Parliament.”

Collecting himself after a moment, Dormer turned to the rest of us and said, “I’ve got to find a payphone. Don’t move from here; I’ll be back in a moment.”

As he started to walk off, Morgan, who had been keeping his distance enough that I’d long since lost sight of him, walked up. He nodded his head to Dormer, who kept going, and then stood off just far enough from us that I’m not sure whether someone would have realized he was with us.

Several minutes went by; Joel tried to turn the TV’s volume up and had figured out where the button was, just in time to hear “…there’s no word on the King…” when Dormer came back.

“We’ve got to get you someplace safer, until I know more,” he said to Joel.  Then, to Morgan, “Find the rest of both families and get them to the apartment; I’ll bring Joel and his father there or send word to meet elsewhere.”

A moment later, he, Joel and Joel’s dad were off.  Morgan looked at my dad and me.

“I guess we should find Ruth and Samuel,” said my dad.

Sat, August 29
Manhattan, NYC, and City of Feldaren

I was starting to get used to coming into the city to the Federal Building; the exam had been here, and then there’s been a long meeting with my parents, Delgado, and Dormer. They hadn’t agreed on the spot, and I think half thought this was a hoax, but after sleeping on it, they’d agreed – although they were coming with Joel and I for the weekend to help us move in, and to see the other world for themselves.

So today, Joel’s family and mine were both here at the Federal Building; I was surprised that my brother had wanted to come, but even he was along. This was a regular opening of the gate, but they’d somehow arranged for the gate to reopen briefly on Sunday evening, so our families would be able to stay the night.

Unlike our prior trip, I’d thought to bring a camera, a very basic autofocus SLR I’d bought freshman year with birthday money and then I’d kind of lost interest in.  I had it, a couple of books, and my laptop in my backpack; the rest of my things, including my bike, had gone into the same moving truck that had Joel’s and would come through later today after us.

Hull and Delgado met us in the lobby of the building and escorted us to the sub-basement level I’d gotten familiar with by then.  The whole thing, I think, became real for my folks when they saw the gate.  “I’ve been wondering about this,” my dad asked of Hull while we waited for Oliver to show up and give us the all-clear to enter, “but how does this possibly not violate conservation of matter?”

“That’s a good question,” said Hull. “We’ve had physicists analyze this, and it shouldn’t be possible.  We’ve asked the folks on the other side of the gate, and their only explanation is ‘it’s magic.’”

“From what you’ve said, we have to accept that it’s real in their world,” said my dad, “but surely there’s no such thing as magic on our side?”

Oliver heard the end of that exchange from the other side of the gate, and spoke before Hull could reply, “That’s one of the odd things about your world; from what we’ve seen most habitable worlds the gate connects to have at least some magic.  Yours has none, or at least undetectably little.”

My dad shook his head.  Oliver indicated we should go through, so we did.  When we’d gathered on the other side, he stopped us, saying, “My apologies, but with so much more traffic lately we have had to put some customs procedures in place, and it appears that someone has brought through a banned item.”

A man and a woman in the uniform of the brotherhood had been discreetly pointing what looked like wands at us as we came through, and the man had waved his hand to Oliver.  Oliver walked over to him, spoke quietly, and then returned to us.  “It’s not very precise with a large group, but someone’s brought tobacco.”

My mother was the first to react, saying to my dad, “David, you said you’d quit!”

“I did,” said my dad, “it’s been years.”

I gave a nasty glance at my brother.  My folks noticed.  “Samuel Clemens Berg, your brother had better not be right,” said my mom.  That was her habit when angry with one of us, and my folks had given us each a mouthful, although I’d always thought I’d gotten it worse – my folks had given me the middle name “Aurelius.”  Names like that were the perils being the kids of hardcore academics, I suppose.

My brother gave a hand shrug, and then to Oliver he said, “OK, you caught me, officer!” and produced a pack out of his pocket.

The man who had been scanning us took it from him, and said, “Don’t worry, sir.  You can have them back when you return through the gate.”

“He most certainly can NOT,” said my mom.  “Please destroy those – and trust me, he’ll be in trouble for this.”

“Of course, Mrs. Berg, that’s your privilege as his mother,” said the man who’d scanned him. “From our side, it’s enough that they weren’t brought through.”

It occurred to me when we’d toured previously, I hadn’t noticed anyone smoking.  It’s a foul habit, and I made a mental note to ask one of our hosts whether this meant that somehow this world didn’t have tobacco.

After another brief round of introductions, we headed outside, and for a moment my heart sank – a short and very mundane looking train sat on the track just outside the Gate building.  Fortunately, on the other side of it was another flying carriage, to my relief given my parents’ remaining skepticism, and unsurprisingly, Joel’s sister April was over the moon to get to fly in one again.

We were met by Legatus Matsumoto from the foreign ministry, who was already on board.  Everyone was there from our prior trip, and even with the addition of my parents and brother, we had plenty of room to stretch out – I took pictures this time and went back afterwards and counted nine rows besides the pilots’, for a seating capacity of 36.  The flight was as smooth and quiet as I remembered, and I kept busy taking pictures.  Most of our group were quiet, but April and Joel’s father spent a little bit of the flight up front talking to the pilot, while my dad spoke to Oliver in a long discussion of the influences of Roman culture on their world.

Unlike the prior trip, we did not approach downtown, instead landing south along the river near the school.  This time, only the two families – Joel’s and mine – left the carriage, followed by Dormer and Morgan – the two of them would be responsible for Joel’s security going forward.  The rest of the group remained on the carriage and being able to see one of these take off outside of it confirmed that they were just as quiet from the outside.

We were supposed to wait for a bus, but my mom had asked the distance, and after hearing that it would be a ten-minute walk, put her foot down.  It was still early, and the weather was mild so far, although my memory of being here in May was that it would warm up quite a bit – I was not looking forward to the days when a full uniform was called for.

The school entrance was not entirely empty; it was a little before 8AM, but a few students filtered in with us, and most noticeably a group of girls in workout clothes who crossed our path just inside the main entrance.  We were not greeted at the gate as before, but Dormer knew where to go, and the administration building was hard to miss on the way in.  We were met there by the office assistant to the upper and lower school Deans. She let us know that we were early, and that Dean Jerdew would be with us shortly.

When the Dean came out to meet us, after greetings and brief introductions with my parents, he invited Joel and Joel’s folks into his office.  They were in for maybe half an hour, while I talked to my folks about the classes I planned to take and got chided by my mom for completely neglecting the literature of this new world, no matter that it hadn’t been mandatory for the entrance exam and was perhaps my least favorite subject in school.

When they were done, I was very much surprised to be called in alone.  The Dean’s office was nicer than the NY public school principal’s offices I’d been in, but this very much felt like being called in for having done something wrong.

“Good morning, Mr. Berg,” he said.  There was a file sitting open on his desk; I thought I spotted my test scores, a copy of my high school’s transcript, and a photo they’d taken of me the day I took the exam.

“Good morning, Dean Jerdew,” I said, hoping I had the right way to address him.

He indicated to sit, and then said, “Congratulations on your exam performance.  We don’t take many transfer students, and you and your friend both did extremely well.  There were only three transfers this year who scored well enough to come in on scholarships.  Having said that, I have questions for you that I thought you would answer more candidly without your parents here.”

He waited for me, and after I nodded, he continued.  “This whole situation is odd, and while I’ve been given the official story of why you are here, can you tell me why you chose to attend here this year?”

“Mr. Hull, from our government, encouraged me to apply at the same time Joel did, but at the time, I wasn’t interested,” I said. “A close friend of mine died over the summer, and I really need to get away from things at home for a while.  Joel is one of my only other friends, so I’m glad it was possible to take the exam so late.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, “and it was possible to take the exam so late because we’re responsive to requests from our foreign ministry.  I’m certain there’s more to all of this than just encouraging trade with your side of the gate,” and here he paused for a moment looking at me very closely.  Then he continued, “but if you know about what else is going on there, I suppose you are smart enough not to say anything about it.”

I shrugged. “Thanks. I think,” I said, and when he said nothing further, I asked him “You said you had more than one question?”

“Yes.  I don’t know what to make of your transcript.  We pride ourselves on admissions purely based on testing, and it’s not that unusual to get students whose prior academic records aren’t as strong as their test scores.

“It is unusual to see those students do well enough to get a scholarship.  I was really surprised to see your grades. Aside from your average, the distribution is odd. Having a bimodal distribution isn’t odd in itself, we see top students who excel in the humanities who have difficulties with math, or vice versa, but many of your best and worst grades are distributed among the same subjects.

“Some of what the counselor from your school wrote seems to be related to that, but I wanted to hear from you why you thought that your grades varied so highly.”

He stopped there, waiting for me.

After a moment, I decided to just answer honestly, as I saw it. “I think you’ll see that I did better overall last year, right? Anyway, I have a hard time getting homework and papers done on time, or sometimes at all.  A lot of what you see there, I think, is how much weight that particular teacher put on other work vs. exams, and how many points I lost for handing in papers late.  It probably says there that 65 is the minimum passing grade? I’m fairly sure that the 68s I’ve gotten are pretty much their way of saying ‘He did well on all the exams, so I can’t really fail him outright.’”

The Dean looked disappointed.  “That’s a bit more specific than your counselor was, but it amounts to about the same.  This isn’t an easy place for a bright but unmotivated student, especially so far away from your parents and support network.  I can’t make you get extra support, but we want our students to be successful here, and I hope you’ll take advantage of resources outside of class if you’ve had difficulties in the past.”

I didn’t have a good answer for that, so I just replied, “Yes, sir,” and waited for him. He started getting up, and when I started to stand, he waved me to sit down.  “I’ll get your parents now.”

The rest of the meeting mostly discussed my electives and class placement. The class was still to be determined – although he let us know that they would do their best to place Joel and I in the same class, as we’d both requested.  There was also a warning that I was taking the sciences in the wrong order, if I chose to stay for my last year – the prior year at home, I had taken AP computer science as my elective.  At my school in NY, most folks took chemistry as their science class in 10^th grade, something that was true here for students in the science honors track as well.  I could take physics with the rest of my class, but unlike my old school where only one or the other science beyond biology was required, I would need to take chemistry to graduate. I planned to go back home after this year, so it didn’t worry me, but he warned me that I’d be taking it as a third year in a class full of younger students if I stayed.

Fri, August 28
Lassander, Kingdom of Obdrest
The King’s private study

Phillip was in his study again; this time, he was not alone.

“Your majesty, I’ve heard some rather unbelievable rumors,” said Sophie; she was the Duchess of Lassander, and his brother Carl’s widow.

“Don’t ‘your majesty’ me, Sophie,” he said. “We’ve known each other more than 50 years now. Just ask what you’re going to.”

“You never were one for pleasantries,” she replied, “but you’ve gotten positively grouchy these past few years.”

“Justifiably,” he said.

“We all must move on,” she replied, “and I wanted to ask if the reason some of your senior security people had been at the Gate had to do with Princess Christina’s disappearance.”

“Why pay attention to such rumors now, Sophie?” he said.  “Ever since she disappeared, there have been rumors that the Gatekeepers let her through.”

“I’ve heard the same rumors, but until they came up again recently, I never believed them.”

“You should have,” said Phillip. “There aren’t many ways you can make someone disappear so completely that there’s no trace of a body, nor a ghost.”

“So, she did?  The Brotherhood confirmed it?”

“I’ve been pretty certain of it since the magicians my brother hired couldn’t find anything.”

“So does that mean she’s been found?” asked Sophie.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Phillip, shaking his head. “She died young, on the other side of the gate.”

“Oh, how horrible. Will the brotherhood let you bring her remains home?”

“She had a husband there; I don’t intend to have our people ask.”

“There’s a child, then,” said Sophie.

Phillip didn’t answer right away. “Whatever you think you know, keep to yourself.  I’ll let you know the rest when the time is right, but if you breathe a word of this to your nephew all bets are off.”

“I have never understood why you dislike him so much,” said Sophie.

“Distrust, not dislike. If I haven’t gotten that through to you yet, I never will.”

“Very well, then.  I’ll keep this to myself, but if I’ve come this close to figuring it out on my own, others will eventually.”

Sun, August 2
Queens, New York City

I slept very badly the night after Anne’s memorial. I woke up drenched in sweat even with the air conditioner having been on all night, with the sense that I’d had running nightmares but no memory of what they were about.  I had over a month until school started, but I was already dreading going back with no one who I knew well left there.

Before, I’d dismissed Mr. Hull’s idea of my attending school with Joel as a bad idea out of hand, but it didn’t seem that way now.  Anne was gone, and just about everything at school and around the neighborhood seemed likely to remind me of her, and of the odd questions her mom had raised.  A year at school away from home meant a year away from my brother, and his incessant fights with our folks.  I still had Hull’s business card in my desk drawer; it was early on a Sunday morning, so I doubted I’d reach him directly, and for all I knew he’d be on the other side of the gate.  It might be too late to get in, I thought; I hadn’t gotten to talk to Joel much at the memorial, but it had sounded like he was done with the exam.

I figured I’d leave a message, anyway, and did so.  Not wanting to stay at home later in the morning, I gave Joel a call to see if he was around and wanted to get lunch.  We met up, as we often did, at the BK near his house.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I paused for a minute.  “I thought I was doing OK, but Anne’s mom said something weird after the memorial, and I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Shoot, like weird how?”

“Kind of like, she thought Anne and I should have been dating,” I said, “but she didn’t like me that way. I don’t think?”

“The heck if I know,” said Joel, and then he thought for a second, and then kind of grimaced. “It could actually kind of make sense, looking back.”

“How do you mean?”

“You probably never noticed how annoyed Anne was when she found out you had asked Reina out at the end of 8th grade.”

“I remember we weren’t hanging out much that summer, but that was it.”

“More recently, she was bugging you about bicycling more, and getting into shape.”

I shrugged.

“She was at least too protective of you for just a friend.  I thought you were right that it was kind of a big-sister thing, but I dunno, liking you could fit.”

I took a long drink of my soda before saying anything else.  “Ah, crud.  It never crossed my mind, and I guess I’ll never know now.”

“It’s kind a pity she wasn’t your type,” Joel said. “Maybe she was hoping you’d grow out of it.”

“What do you mean my type?”

“I remember you talking about crushes on three different girls. You asked two of them out, right?”

“Yeah, so?” I said.

“What did they all have in common?” When I didn’t answer, he went on, “You know, huge tracts of land.”

I groaned.  “Hey, Reina was just really nice to me in 8th grade and I kind of thought she might have liked me when we had to work together in that stupid theater project in English class.”

“And what about Holly?” Joel asked.

“She was the only girl who came for a while when we tried to get the D&D club together.”

“Don’t lump me into starting that.  I went to a few meetings before you gave up.  Also, she wasn’t the only girl, remember?”

“Oh yeah, duh,” I said. “Anne came to a few meetings.”

“I think all of them, even if she was just hanging out and studying,” said Joel.  “So fine, you had something in common with two of them, what about Lana?”

“OK, fine, she’s never said two words to me, but she’s hot.”

“Way too tall for you, and out of either of our leagues. Here, at least. So, what do they have in common?”

I glared at him. “They’re all smart.”

“Everyone is smart at our school, test to get in and all that,” said Joel. “Anne’s at least as smart as any of those three.”

“Was,” I said, looking down.

“Oh, shoot, sorry. Yeah, was,” Joel sighed. After a pause, he continued, “and maybe I’m wrong, but if I got the idea that you are a boobs guy, I’ll bet she did too.”

He wasn’t wrong about my general preferences, but I didn’t think I would have been so superficial about it if a girl had ever shown any interest in me as more than a friend.  Still, the thought that her mom might have been right, and Anne might have kept something like that to herself because of something that dumb depressed me further.

Joel broke what was becoming an awkward silence.  “Sorry, Mark. I know this is all heavy, especially given how things went the last time you thought someone liked you.”

He was referring to Holly; when I asked Reina out, she was really nice about saying no thanks. Holly hadn’t been.

Joel went on. “Anne was my friend, too, and at least you had the guts to ask some girls out.”

“I guess,” I said. “Whatever happened to that 9th grade girl you liked, the clarinetist?”

“Nothing, we talked after practice a few times, but I never got around to asking her to hang out or something. This year in the other world is going to be different.”

“That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Remember I said Mr. Hull had suggested I go with you?”

“Yeah.  I also remember telling you that you should come along, and you said it would be a bad idea.”

“OK, yeah.  Things have changed a lot since then,” I said. “I decided a year to get away from things here would be good.  I left a message for Hull about it.”

“Sweet! I’ll give Dormer a call and see if there’s anything he can do from his side.  It would be really good to have you there.” He paused and looked a little embarrassed. “I’m a little freaked out about going there when I don’t know anybody. It really will be good to have you there.”

“First I have to get in,” I said. “What can you tell me about the exam?”

Joel had taken the exam seriously, despite Dormer’s belief that he just had to do well enough not to embarrass Legatus Matsumoto to her colleagues.  It had paid off, and he had done well enough not just to qualify for admission, but for a full scholarship. The Obdresti crown would still be paying for his living expenses, and it sounded like the Obrestis, the Feldaren foreign ministry, and the US government would all somehow be working together on security… but he took quite a bit of pride in saying that neither they nor his dad would be paying a dime for his tuition.  The scholarship also came with free lunches, and a monthly transit pass.

The exam itself didn’t sound much worse than the PSATs we’d taken the prior year, just a lot longer.  The minimum score to get in was high, and higher for juniors – or as their system went, second years – but to get into our school in NYC you had to be in a very high percentile on city-wide tests just to qualify to sit for the school’s own test, and then only about one kid in 20 who took the test got in.

I’ve always been good at taking tests; they often seem like a game or a fun sort of puzzle to me, and maybe for that reason, I don’t get stressed with them as often as most people seem to.  On the other hand, I had less than a month until school would be starting, and Joel had had half the summer to study. It wasn’t clear it was even still possible for me to go, but Hull and Dormer both seemed like they could be persuasive.

We walked to his house to borrow the study guides Dormer had given him, and I headed home late in the afternoon so I could get dinner with my dad; we were supposed to be driving back upstate in the morning.  He was in the living room when I got home, working on some papers for the coming semester, but looked up almost immediately from them to ask me, “Why was someone from the State Department calling you?”

It had been Agent Delgado, and after a long and less than comfortable explanation to my dad, I called her back.  They had been forcing the gate to open more frequently while making arrangements for Joel’s move, and she said she’d see what Hull could do when it next opened.

Sat, August 1
Lassander, Kingdom of Obdrest
The King’s private study

Phillip Marius, better known to his nation as Phillip V, and to the world as King of Obdrest, felt every one of his 71 years.  He had never wanted the crown, and with two older brothers, two nephews, and a positive horde of his brothers’ grandchildren – not to mention great-grandchildren, he’d never expected to be.  But the past few years had seen one death after another.

Today, he was sitting in his study, waiting for the phone to ring.  Not literally; he had one half of a pair of magic mirrors. They couldn’t be tapped, could be taken anywhere, and you could see the speaker, but it was close enough. His was face down for privacy, and soon enough, it spoke – muffled by speaking into the table: “Good afternoon, your majesty!”

He turned the mirror over and propped it on a book.  “Good morning, Dormer.” The gate was six hours behind Obdrest, and it was just past dawn there; the younger man looked far too cheerful for the hour. “I take it you have good news about Christina’s son?”

“I do, Your Majesty. Prince Joel passed the entrance examination,” said Dormer, “and his father has agreed to let him come here for the year.   I think that will be long enough to convince him to stay.”

“Thank you, Dormer.  I don’t suppose we know for sure how a 16-year-old boy will react to all this, but you’ve got the best sense of him.  Are the security arrangements sound?”

“My counterpart from the Americans is an old veteran, Your Majesty. I think you’d like him, and I’m learning by his example.  The Feldarenese security services seem solid as well,” here Dormer paused a moment, “I’d be happier if Joel could stay at our ambassador’s residence, but they make a good point about the difficulty in keeping his identity confidential there.”

“One I agree with, and not just in case he decides to return to his world,” said Philip. “I can’t prove that someone was behind the deaths of Louis and Brinna, and I certainly can’t put a name to them, but I am firmly convinced that we have an enemy who can reach past our best security here. Let Joel enjoy his first year here in as much peace as he can.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Speaking of keeping him safe, keep an eye out for my sister-in-law, or someone working for her.”

“What is your concern about the Duchess of Lassander?”

“I hope it’s nothing, but Sophie is too perceptive by half. She means well, but she has a terrible blind spot for her family.”

Monday, July 27th
Upstate NY, my grandfather’s cabin

Near the end of July, my time at camp was over without the little luck talking to girls I’d Had from the prior year but having had a good time anyway.   I’d had a couple of quiet days at my grandfather’s cabin. I couldn’t shake a certain unease about being on my own a lot during the coming school year — with Joel away and Anne busy with college applications — but it seemed like it would be a nice break for a few weeks going into August.

That changed with one phone call; my dad picked up.  After a moment, he said, “Mark, it’s for you,” and he looked worried.

It was Anne’s mother on the phone.  “There’s been an accident,” she said. “Anne was out running in the morning, and she was hit by a truck.”

“Oh no!” I said, or something stronger to that effect. “Is she going to be alright?”

“It’s too soon to know. We’re with her at the hospital.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“She’s resting now, but she was asking about you.  She’s likely to be here for a while, and I know it would mean a lot if you could come visit in the next few days.”

“Of course, Mrs. Adler.  Can I put my dad back on? He’ll be the one to drive me there.”

They talked for a little while.  After the call, my dad told me, “I think this sounds serious, and that we should drive down to the city tonight.  With traffic, it will be too late to make visiting hours, but what do you say we spend the night at home and go visit first thing in the morning?”

We didn’t talk much on the drive down, and when we got in, we called Anne’s mother at the hospital.  It sounded like she was still resting, and that there was no change in her condition, so we ordered a pizza, and I went to bed worried.

In the morning, my father called the hospital room to see how she was doing and whether we could come visit. There was no answer when the switchboard put him through to the room, so he called her house.  I only heard his half of the conversation, but from the “I’m so sorry,” it was clear that things had gotten worse. It did not occur to me what he was really hearing.  When he got off the phone, my father looked more tired than I could remember seeing him.

“Mark,” he said, “Anne passed away overnight. That was her grandmother who was watching the house while her parents were at the hospital.”

“How did that happen?” I asked. “It sounded like she was going to be OK yesterday; healthy people our age don’t just die.”

“I don’t know, Mark.  Her grandmother didn’t say how.”

If I hadn’t already been sitting down, I would have needed to.  “That’s just not possible.  She is one of the healthiest people I know.  How do you just die overnight if you’re fine after the accident?”

“I don’t know exactly what happened, but her mom said she’d be in the hospital for a while, right?  They don’t keep people in the hospital any longer than they have to without a good reason.”

The rest of that day and the next few were a bit of a blur; we talked to her mom later in the day, and she asked me pass the news to Anne’s close friends at school and to let them know about the memorial service.  I talked to Joel, and digging up a class directory, I called one of the girls in my year who was on the softball team with Anne.  She’d send word on to the rest of their team, and the softball girls in Anne’s year would know how to reach the rest of her friends.

The memorial service was on Saturday; a lot of people from school turned out.  While waiting for the service, my dad and I heard what had happened — the accident had damaged the big artery leading out of her heart, which had started to rupture overnight.  They’d tried surgery, but it failed to save her.

My dad and I sat with Joel’s family; it was a nice service, with a bunch of her relatives sharing memories of her, and the captain of the softball team said a few words as well.  I was really surprised that her mom mentioned me in her remarks, referring to me as “Anne’s oldest friend.”

Afterwards, there was a reception at their house; my dad and I went, as did a few of Anne’s close friends from her class and I think their parents, but Joel and his family didn’t go.  I didn’t know anyone else there besides my dad, Anne’s folks, and her grandmother.  I’d been to funerals for a couple of really old family members I hadn’t known well, but nobody I’d really known had died, let alone someone my own age.  It felt sad, awkward, and when Anne’s mother took the time to speak to me, I really did not know what to say, so I stuck with what my dad had suggested before we went in.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Adler,” I said.  She looked sad and far away, and for someone who was younger than my folks, very old.

“Thank you, Mark,” she said. “It means a lot to have you here.  She always missed you over the summers.  When you were away in seventh grade, too.”

“I never knew that,” I said. We’d gone to my grandfather’s cabin upstate pretty much every summer, except when my parent’s academic careers had taken us elsewhere – most notably when I’d lost a year between sixth and seventh grade. She’d always done more to keep in touch than I had, and I suddenly felt terrible about that. “I wish we could have gotten to the city sooner.”

“It’s OK, Mark. She was already resting,” her voice broke up, and she took a moment before she said, “the doctors tell us there is nothing more anyone could have done.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again.  It was getting repetitive, but I really didn’t know what else to say.

She patted me on the shoulder. “When we first got to the hospital to see her, she asked us to check in on you to make sure you were OK while she was there.  She cared about you an awful lot, and you’ve been friends for such a long time.”

“I know, Mrs. Adler,” I said. “She’s been like a sister to me.” …had been? That she was gone still felt very much less than real.

“That’s probably what it was, Mark, but I’ve wondered for a long time if it was more than that for her.”

I did not know what to say to that, and I wasn’t sure I got what she meant.  Even more so, I wasn’t expecting what she said next: “I half expected you two would end up dating one of these days.”

I shook my head and kept from saying the first thing that came to mind, she really didn’t see me that way!  I’m not sure that she was the one I’d have been trying to convince. Instead, I just said “I don’t know, but I miss her very badly. I’m so sorry.”

“We all miss her,” she said, and when she moved off to speak to someone else, I felt even more alone than I had.

June 1st
William Jennings Bryan High School
Cafeteria, lunch break

“That was pretty crazy,” I said to Joel.  We hadn’t had a chance to talk about the tour afterwards; Count Dormer had offered to take his family out to dinner after while I’d headed home.

“You mean the trip on Saturday, right, not the American History class?” Joel joked, and after a pause, “Yeah, maybe. I mean, kind of the craziest thing was how normal everything was, right?”

“Not for me.  Flying carriages? Cool, but not normal.  Dragon skeletons which looked like they could have eaten a T-Rex for dinner? Scary, and definitely not normal.”

“Malls. Preppy kids in uniforms,” Joel countered. “I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it.”

“I guess.”  I thought for a minute.  “So does that mean you’re going?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m leaning towards it.  Being Crown Prince, and later King, I could do a lot to help my family, and it sounds more fun than getting a real job here.”

“You’re not worried about whatever has been killing off the royal family there?”

“Of course, I’m worried,” said Joel, “but it’s not like there aren’t things to worry about here.  It’s only been about a month since they closed school early because they were worried about riots.”  He was talking about after the Rodney King verdict; there hadn’t been riots in New York, like there had been in Los Angeles, but we’d all been sent home mid-day out of concern.

“Yeah, it’s no picnic here,” I replied, “but that stuff isn’t personal.”

“Neither was the bomb, but I’ll bet you remember drills ducking your head in the hallway of P.S.11 just as much as I do,” said Joel.

“Ok, Ok.”

“Besides,” said Joel, “I bet kings get all the girls.”

“Wouldn’t you be worried more about being stuck in an arranged marriage?”

“They seem way too modern for that.”

“I really need to borrow that history book from you. We saw one really big, modern city,” I said, and shook my head. “How do you know the whole world is like that?”

“I don’t, and you can keep the history book.  But this,” and here he made a wide gesture with his arm, “sucks.”

I shrugged. “At least it’s the devil we know.”

“You should have more of a sense of adventure.  I can ask Dormer if they can sponsor you or whatever, you should come.”

“Hull suggested the same thing,” I shook my head, “and it’s crazy.  I’ve got a hard enough time here, why start over?”

“You’d be the exotic foreign student with a Prince for a best friend. Even you could get a girlfriend with that going for you.”

“That’d be nice, but computer geeks are probably just as much girl repellent there as here.  Look, just send me a postcard when you settle in,” I said, and tried to change the subject. “How is your final paper for American History going?”

Badly, it sounded like; he’s picked from a list of suggestions and didn’t care much about the Constitutional convention.  I’d had the opposite problem; I’d sold the teacher on my topic, but as usual it was turning into a long narrative without any real thesis.

I had biked that day, and Anne had practice, so we didn’t see each other after school; the next day, when we talked, and I told her about the trip she seemed relieved to hear that I’d turned Hull down and amused that their first emperor shared the long form of my name.  She seemed a bit on edge around Joel after that, and with finals and a few papers left to do, we were all very busy.

June-July

The last few weeks of the school year seemed to take forever.  Big papers for English and American History, finals in most of my classes, and my only two close friends avoiding each other did not make for a pleasant time.

Then it was summer, and Joel had to study for the entrance exam — more out of pride than necessity, since he would be sponsored if he did poorly — and he disappeared into that. Anne went off to her sports camp, and I didn’t really know anyone else well enough to keep in touch over the summer.  A little ways into July, I left town myself – to spend three weeks at the academic “camp” which my folks had shipped me off to the year before.

The prior year I’d gotten a low-end 286 laptop to get me to agree to go, essentially a bribe to allow my parents a few kid-free weeks. My brother, being fonder of the outdoors, had been spending a big chunk of his summers at a more traditional outdoorsy camp for several years. The one I attended was at a college campus in suburban Connecticut.  Much to my surprise, I’d enjoyed it, and looked forward to going this year.  While there was nothing computer-related, the classes were fluffy and entertaining, and I’d had some luck talking to girls which I’d never had at home.

This year, I’d asked my parents if I could do the full double session of 6 weeks, but it was important to them that I went along for the family vacation to the cabin in upstate NY, so I was there for three weeks again.

Anne had sent a letter while I was at camp, and I felt a little bad about just having sent a postcard back.  Still, I’d see her at the end of the summer, and it sounded like as usual she was having fun.  Joel sent a postcard.  Slightly odd-sized, it had a picture of a dragon on it and sure enough, it was one someone had brought back from the other world; his note didn’t say whether his folks had bought it on the tour or if he’d asked Dormer to get it for him.