She really hoped her brother would come up with something. Jeremy was smart. And he was a year older. Most of the time, that didn't matter. Every once in a while, it did. If he knew why crosstime travelers from a faraway alternate couldn't have found the home timeline, that would have been wonderful.
But he just said, “It doesn't seem likely, that's all.” “Getting stuck here doesn't seem likely, either!” Amanda burst out. “But we are! Why?”
“Something went wrong somewhere-that's got to be it,” Jeremy said, which was true but wasn't reassuring. “It doesn't mean the home timeline's been invaded by one where Alexander the Great discovered transposition chambers.”
“It could mean that. You know it could,” Amanda said.
“It could mean all kinds of things. Bombs. Earthquakes. Who knows what?“ Jeremy was trying very hard to be reasonable. ”Why come up with something that's never happened before and probably isn't happening now?“
“Because I never got stuck in an alternate before,” Amanda blazed. The more reasonable Jeremy tried to be, the less reasonable she wanted to be.
He went right on trying: “It has to be something natural, something possible, for heaven's sake.“
“What's so impossible about somebody else discovering crosstime travel?” Amanda asked. “We did ourselves, and we worry about it on some of the timelines that aren't far from ours. Why not somebody else, a long time ago?”
“Well, if somebody else did do it, they're liable to come up from the subbasement and wipe us out in the next twenty minutes,” Jeremy said. “What are we going to do about that?”
Amanda hadn't the faintest idea. She hadn't thought she could feel any worse than she did already. Now she discovered she was wrong. “Thanks a lot,” she told her brother. “You just gave me something brand new to worry about.”
He shook his head. “Nope. No point worrying about that, because we can't do anything about it. What we can do is worry about this lousy official report, and about selling as much as we can, and about doing whatever we can to make sure the Lietuvans don't take Polisso. Getting captured and sold into slavery can ruin your whole day.“
“So can getting killed,” Amanda pointed out. “That, too,” Jeremy said.
He was so grave, so earnest, so serious, that Amanda started to laugh. She couldn't help it. When Jeremy was being reasonable, she didn't want to think. When he was being serious, she wanted to act like a clown. What went through her mind was, Anybody would think he's my big brother, or something.
“I don't know what else we can do except wait and hope and keep trying our best as long as we're stuck here,” he said now.
That was what she'd been thinking, too. She hadn't liked the idea. It was the best they could manage. No doubt of that. It still seemed grim. Or it had seemed grim, till he said it. Then, all of a sudden, it was the funniest thing in the world. That made no sense at all, which didn't stop it from being true. She giggled.
Jeremy gave her an odd look. “You're weird,” he said.
“You only just noticed?” Amanda laughed harder than ever. It was probably no more than reaction to too much stress carried for too long. It felt awfully good anyhow.
Solemn as usual, Jeremy shook his head again. “No, I'd suspected it for a while now.”
“Really? What gave you the clue, Sherlock?” I'm punchy, Amanda thought. Well, who could blame me? I've earned the right.
The market square was a busy place these days. Everybody who lived in Polisso was trying to get hold of enough food to last out a siege. The soldiers who'd come to reinforce the garrison were laying in food, too. They all reminded Jeremy of squirrels gathering nuts for the winter. But that was important business for the squirrels, and this was important business for the locals.
If you had grain to sell, you could pretty much name your price. Somebody would pay it. Jeremy knew how many modii of wheat were stored under the house. He didn't want to sell them, though, even if he could make a lot of silver on the deal. The local authorities already wondered about Amanda and him. They would ask why those sacks of wheat hadn't left the city, the way they thought the grain had. They would accuse him of profiteering if he sold now.
A soldier was arguing with a farmer. “You should take less,” he said.
“How come?” the farmer said. “When am I going to get another chance to make this kind of money?”
“But you're cheating me,” the soldier said.
“By the gods, I'm not,” the farmer answered. He was a big, burly man, almost as tall as Jeremy and half again as wide through the shoulders. Next to him, the soldier was a skinny, yappy little terrier. The farmer went on, “If you don't want to pay what I ask, you don't have to. I'll find other customers.”
“Not if the city prefect or the commandant sets a top price,” the soldier said. “They can do that. All they have to do is declare danger of siege. Everybody knows that's real. Then fixing prices is as legal as buying and selling slaves.”
“Oh, yes. It's legal. But prefects don't try it very often,” the farmer said. “And do you know why? Because when they set a top price, they always set it too cursed low. Then nobody wants to sell any grain. It just disappears from the market, and people start going hungry.“
“You- You-” The soldier looked as if he couldn't find anything bad enough to call the farmer. “To the crows with you!” he snarled at last, and stalked off. Disgust showed in every line of his body.
Laughing, the farmer turned to Jeremy and said, “I'd like to see him get a better deal from anybody else.”
Jeremy nodded. The farmer thought the way a merchant had to think. But if your city was in danger, didn't you have to ease off on that approach? If you didn't, wouldn't you end up without a city to do business in? Who decided when you did that? How did whoever it was draw the line?
Those were all good questions. Jeremy didn't have good answers for any of them. He was scratching his head as he went on to the temple dedicated to the Emperor's spirit.
When he stopped in the narthex to get a pinch of incense to light on the altar, the clerk who took his three denari for it looked puzzled. “By the records, Ieremeo Soltero, you have already made the required offering. Why are you here?”
“To make another offering,” Jeremy said. “Polisso may be in danger, after all.”
“How… public-spirited of you,” the clerk said.
Jeremy did his best to look modest. He felt more like a hypocrite than ever. But he wanted officials seeing him acting public-spirited. It might help take the heat off Amanda and him. Even if it didn't, it couldn't hurt. And what were three denari to him? Nothing but Monopoly money.
The clerk gave him his receipt and the incense. It smelled sweeter than the last pinch he'd got. Maybe they saved extra-cheap stuff for people making required offerings, and gave you something better if you were doing it because you really wanted to. Jeremy didn't know for sure. Up till now, he didn't think any trader had made offerings that weren't required.
He carried the incense into the temple proper. There they were; all the gods the Romans recognized, in statue or painting or mosaic form. They all seemed to be looking at him. He didn't believe in any of them except possibly Jesus, and the Jesus he knew wasn't the same as the one in this world. The effect was impressive even so.
Several pinches of incense already smoked on the altar. Either other people wanted to look public-spirited, or they were worried. Well, I'm worried, too, Jeremy thought. But he didn't believe lighting this incense would help make his worries go away.
He lit it anyhow, then stepped on the twig he'd used to make it start burning. The smoke from the incense definitely smelled better than it had the last time he sacrificed. The image of Honorio Prisco III stared blindly from behind the altar. Jeremy recited the prayer an Imperial Christian gave the Emperor's spirit. It still felt more like pledging allegiance to the flag than praying. But neither of the two men who stood near the altar to listen to prayers complained. He'd done what he needed to do, and he'd done it right.