They walked out to the street—searching the crowd of pedestrians, always looking over their shoulders.
“Where would you like to go?” he said.
“I don’t know. It’s not so easy to pick, now that we’re fugitives. Those guys could be anywhere.”
“But we have lots of places to hide. We just have to keep moving.”
They walked for a time along a chaotic street, nothing like a ballroom, the noises nothing like music. The Transit Authority people knew they had to dance; if they were really going to hide, it would be in places like this, where dancing was next to impossible.
But they couldn’t do that, could they?
Finally, Ned said, “We could go watch Rome burn. And fiddle.”
“Hm. I’d like to find a door to the Glen Island Casino. 1939.”
“Glenn Miller played there, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“We could find one, I think.”
“If we have to keep moving anyway, we’ll hit on it eventually.”
He took her hand, pulled her close and pressed his other hand against the small of her back. Ignoring the tuneless crowd, he danced with her.
“Lead on, my dear.”
The Librarian’s Daughter
The prophet stood in a marble chamber of the great palace and broke a princess’s heart by telling her what she already knew, but with an authority she couldn’t deny. The prophet, called the Dreamer, wrapped the coat of a spotted horse tight around herself, the head with its gaping eye holes pulled over her face like a hood. Even so long after the mare’s death the skin smelled like a slaughterhouse, bloody and wet. It had belonged to a dear friend, though, so the Dreamer hugged it close. The mare whispered dreams to her, and she became a prophet.
“Two paths lie before you. In one, you marry for political reasons a man you have never seen. The union brings peace to two warring kingdoms. You will be known as the Just, and history will remember you kindly, as it has not remembered many of your ancestors. But you will always carry regret in your heart.”
The Dreamer’s blood rushed hot, her skin flushed, the horse’s coat grew sticky with her sweat. She held its legs twined around her arms, the bulk of it wrapped around her body. Its weight bent her shoulders. She gazed around the chamber with eyes that were not her own.
“In the other, you marry your true love.” She nodded to the man who stood beside the princess, a distant cousin who had wooed her and won her heart. They clung to each other like vines. “War follows. Ambition. Pride. Strife. You sometimes ask yourself, did he marry you for love or for your throne? But your nights together are sweet until the end.”
The man lunged two great strides, breaking from the princess, who tried to hold him back. Anger made his skin red, and he snarled.
“How dare you? How dare you speak so to the Royal House?”
The spell broke, the air turned cool. The Dreamer took a deep breath, smelling leather now instead of death. The prophecy had ended. She bowed deeply to the royals but did not remove the horse skin cloak.
“Her Highness asked the fortune of her marriage told.”
He wanted to hurt her, she could tell by the way his hands clenched and his body trembled. But he did not dare because she was the Dreamer and no one dared touch her. She had faced kings and emperors more powerful than this whelp and had not flinched.
The princess, a charming girl of eighteen with black hair and cream skin, held her face in her hands. Every monarch confronted these paths: the well-being of their people or the gratification of their own desires. Which would she chose? This was no longer a vague, academic question; her father the king was gravely ill. The Dreamer’s vision had forced the choice on her at last.
“Darling, don’t listen to her.” The beloved tried to laugh, a harsh sound in the room’s stillness. “What is prophecy? We will prove her wrong!”
“Be quiet,” the princess said.
The Dreamer bowed again. “I will take my leave now.”
“Thank you, Dreamer.” The princess sat straight, rigid in her velvet throne. Her eyes dry, she nodded graciously at the Dreamer and did not glance at her princely cousin. She looked as though she had made a decision. Her lover’s violent reaction to the prophecy may have made the choice for her. “Will you stay with us this night? There will be a small feast.”
Her small feast could feed a poor village for a year. Roast peacock, puddings, sugary sauces and brandied fruits; a warm night in a feather bed. They always invited her to stay for the feast, no matter how dire her predictions.