SARS OUTBREAK: WHO QUARANTINES TORONTO, FLIGHTS DIVERTED: A World Health Organization spokesperson denied that the respiratory disease is spread by travelers from parallel timelines. Meanwhile, the outbreak in Ontario claimed its fourth …
SAUCERWATCH: GOVERNMENT TESTING UFOS AT GROOM LAKE: Observers who have seen curious shapes in the sky above Area 51 say the current cover story is an increasingly desperate attempt to divert attention from the truth about the alien saucer tech …
HOUSE MEETS TO REVIEW EMERGENCY BILL: Congress is meeting today to vote on the Protecting America from Parallel Universe Attackers (PAPUA) bill, described by former president Cheney (deceased) as “vital measures to protect us in these perilous times.” The bill was drafted by the newly sworn-in president last week in the wake of …
COULTER: NOW IS THE TIME TO INTERN TRAITORS
RUSSIA: PUTIN DENOUNCES “AUTHORITARIAN CONSPIRACY”: Russian President Vladimir Putin today denied former President Cheney’s account of the terrorist nuclear attack on the Capitol, describing it as implausible and accusing US authorities of concocting a “fairy tale” to provide cover for a coup …
END (NEWS FEED)
The Final Countdown
The track from Kirschford down to the Linden Valley—which also defined the border of the duchy of Niejwein and Baron Cromalloch’s ridings—was unusually crowded with carriages and riders this day. A local farmer out tending his herd might have watched with some surprise; the majority of the traffic was clearly upper-class, whole families of minor nobility and their close servants taking to the road in a swarm, as if some great festival had been decreed in the nearby market town of Glantzwurt. But there was no such god’s day coming, nor rumor of a royal court tour through the provinces. The aristocracy were more usually to be found on their home estates, staying away from the fetid kennels of the capital at this time of year.
But there were no curious farmers, of course. The soldiers who had ridden ahead with the morning sunrise had made it grimly clear that this procession was not to be witnessed; and in the wake of the savagery of spring and early summer’s rampage, those tenants who had survived unscathed were more than cooperative. So the hedgerows were mostly empty of curious eyes as the convoy creaked and squealed and neighed along the Linden Valley—curious eyes which might, if they were owned by unusually well-traveled commoners, recognize the emblems of the witch-families.
The Clan was on the move, and nothing would be the same again.
A covered wagon or a noble’s carriage is an uncomfortable way to travel at the best of times, alternately chill and drafty or chokingly, stiflingly hot (depending on the season), rocking on crude leaf springs or crashing from rut to stone on no springs at all, the seats a wooden bench (perhaps with a thin cushion to save the noble posterior from the insults of the road). The horsemen might have had a better time of it, but for the dust clouds flung up by the hooves of close to a hundred animals, and the flies. To exchange a stifling shuttered box for biting insects and mud that slowly clung to sweating man and horse alike was perhaps no choice at all. But one thing they agreed: It was essential to move together, and the path of least resistance was, to say the least, unsafe.
“Why can’t we go to ’merca, Ma?”
Helena voh Wu gritted her teeth as one carriage wheel bounced across a stone in the road. Tess, her second-youngest, was four years old and bright by disposition, but the exodus was taking its toll after two days, and the question came out as a whine. “We can’t go there, dear. I told you, it’s not safe.”
“But it’s where Da goes when he travels?”
“That’s different.” Helena rested a hand lightly on the crib. Markus was asleep—had, in fact, cried himself to sleep after a wailing tantrum. He didn’t travel well. “We can’t go there.”
“But why can’t we—”
The other occupant of the carriage raised her eyes from the book she had been absorbed in. “For Sky Lady’s love, leave your ma be, Tess. See you not, she was trying to sleep?”
Helena smiled gratefully at her. Kara, her sister-in-law, was traveling with them of necessity, for her husband Sir Leon was already busied with the residual duty of the postal corvée; his young wife, her pregnancy not yet showing, was just another parcel to be transferred between houses in this desperately busy time. Not that Sir Leon believed the most outlandish warnings of the radical faction, but there was little harm in sending Kara for a vacation with her eldest brother’s family.
Now Kara shook her head and raised an eyebrow at Helena. The latter nodded, and Kara lifted Tess onto her lap, grunting slightly with the effort. “Once upon a time we could all travel freely to America, at least those of us the Postal Service would permit, and it was a wondrous place, full of magic and treasure. But that’s not where we’re going, Tess. There are bad men in America, and evil wizards; they are hunting our menfolk who travel there, and they want to hunt us all down and throw us in their deepest dungeons.”
The child’s eyes were growing wider with every sentence. Helena was about to suggest that Kara lighten up on the story, but she continued, gently bouncing Tess upon her knee: “But don’t worry, we have a plan. We’re going on a journey somewhere else, to a new world like America but different, one where the k—where the rulers don’t hate and fear us. We’re going to cross over there and we’ll be safe. You’ll have a new dress, and practice your Anglischprache, and it’ll be a great adventure! And the bad men won’t be able to find us.”
Tess looked doubtful. “Will the bad men get Da?”
Helena’s heart missed a beat. “Of course not!” she said hotly. Gyorg ven Wu would be deep underground, shuffling between doppelgangered bunkers with a full wheelbarrow as often as the blood-pressure monitor said was safe: a beast of burden, toiling to carry the vital necessities of life between a basement somewhere in Massachusetts and a dungeon or wine cellar beneath a castle or mansion in the Gruinmarkt. Ammunition, tools, medicine, gold, anything that Clan Security deemed necessary. The flow of luxuries had stopped cold, the personal allowance abolished in the wake of the wave of assassinations that had accompanied the horridness in the Anglischprache capital.
“Your da is safe,” Kara reassured the child. “He’ll come to see us soon enough. I expect he’ll bring you chocolate.”
Helena cast her a reproving look—chocolate was an expensive import to gift on a child—but Kara caught her eye and shook her head slightly. The effect of the work chocolate in Tess was remarkable. “Want chocolate!” she exclaimed. “All the chocolate!”
Kara smiled over Tess’s head, then grimaced as one of the front wheels thumped over the edge of a rut and the carriage crashed down a few inches. Markus twitched, clenched a tiny fist close to his mouth uneasily as Helena leaned over him. “I wish we had a smoother road to travel,” she said quietly. “Or that we could walk from nearer home.”
“The queen’s men have arranged a safely defended house,” Kara observed. “They wouldn’t force us to travel this way without good reason. She wouldn’t let them.”
“She?”
“Her Majesty.” An odd look stole across her face, one part nostalgia to two parts regret. “I was one of her maids. She was very wise.”
So you never tire of reminding us, Helena thought, but held her tongue; with another ennervating day’s drive ahead, there was nothing to gain from picking a fight. Then Tess chirped up again: “Tell me about the queen?”
“Surely.” Kara ruffled her hair. “Queen Helge was the child of Duke Alfredo and his wife. One day when she was younger than your brother Markus, when her parents were traveling to their country estates, they were set upon by assassins sent by—”