“Sure,” Amanda said, and turned away from Maria. The slave dropped her eyes to the cobblestones. When free people spoke with each other, she had to show she knew her place. Amanda asked, “Is something wrong with the razor you bought, my lady?”

“No, no, no.” Impatiently, the banker's wife shook her head. “I just wanted to put a flea in your ear.”

“What do you mean?” Amanda understood the phrase. The older woman wanted to warn her about something. She didn't know what the banker's wife thought she needed warning about.

Livia Plurabella spelled it out: “It's all very well to be polite to a creature like that.” She pointed toward Maria, who still made as if she were paying no attention to her social betters. “It's all very well to be polite, yes. We are by the fountain, after all. The usual rules do slip. If they didn't, we'd never hear anything juicy, would we?” She smiled, but only for a moment. “There is a difference, you know, between being polite and being friendly. That's a bit much, don't you think?“

The most annoying thing was, Livia Plurabella meant well. She was trying to save Amanda from showing bad manners. That meant Amanda couldn't get as angry as she wanted to. Smashing her water jug over the older woman's head would get her talked about, no matter how tempting it was. She said, “Oh, it's all right. I don't think the slave girl minds.”

Livia Plurabella took a deep breath. “Whether she minds isn't the point, dear,” she said sharply. Then she gave Amanda a suspicious look. “Are you making fun of me, young lady?”

“I wouldn't do that for the world,“ Amanda exclaimed.

“Hmm.” The banker's wife didn't seem any happier. “On your head be it,” she said, and stalked away.

On your head be it. No matter how Amanda usually aped the manners of this world, she wasn't really part of it. She didn't feel in her belly that being friendly with a slave was wrong, the way a free woman here would. Livia Plurabella's warning would have horrified a local merchant's daughter. It wouldn't have been necessary in the first place, because a local merchant's daughter would have played by the rules without needing to be warned. If Amanda felt like breaking the rules every once in a while, she would, and that was all there was to it.

She turned back to Maria. “Where were we? Talking about how easy reading is, weren't we?”

The slave girl said, “Don't get into trouble on my account, Mistress Amanda.” She sounded worried. She looked worried, too.

Amanda snorted. “She can't do anything to me.” Only after the words were out of her mouth did she wonder how true they were. A banker's wife was an important person in Polisso. Which people you knew, what connections you had, mattered more here than in Los Angeles. Connections mattered back home, but the laws and customs there assumed one person was just as good, just as important, as another. That wasn't true here.

Maria's expression showed how untrue it was. The slave said, “She's got clout.”

“Well, if you think we don't…” Amanda let that trail away. The merchants from Crosstime Traffic had money. Nothing made a better start for connections. But money was only a start. Amanda wasn't from here. Livia Plurabella was local. And the authorities in Polisso were already curious-to say the least-about how the crosstime traders operated. If you think we don't have clout… you may be right.

She filled her jar at the fountain. Most of the women swung full jars up onto their heads and carried them home that way. A few, though, carried them on the hip full as well as empty. Even with a hand up to support the jar on her head, she couldn't have been smooth and graceful like the locals. She would have looked like a clodhopper, a country bumpkin-but country bumpkins carried water jugs on their heads, too.

She had just left the fountain when she heard a noise like distant thunder. It came from the north. But it wasn't thunder. Some clouds drifted across the sky, but there was no sign of rain. For a moment, she was puzzled. Then she knew what it had to be-gunfire. The Lietuvan army was on the way.

Eight

Jeremy didn't know whether climbing up on the city wall was a good idea. Amanda thought he was nuts. Maybe he was. But he wanted to see what was going on out beyond Polisso. He wasn't the only one, either. Lots of locals were up there, staring out at the advancing Lietuvan army.

Soldiers hurried back and forth on the top of the wall. If ordinary people got in their way, they pushed them aside. They didn't waste time being nice. Not far from Jeremy, a soldier knocked a man sprawling. When the local lurched to his feet, blood dripped down his face. He didn't say anything. If he had, the soldiers might have pitched him off the wall, and it was a long way down.

On came the Lietuvans. Their army was bigger than the Roman force that had come into Polisso. It flew banners of gold, green, and red-the colors of Lithuania in the home timeline. Lietuvan soldiers wore dull blue surcoats and tunics and breeches. That made them easy to tell apart from the Romans. Their helmets were simpler-more like iron pots plopped on their heads. Their weapons seemed almost identical, though. Horsemen had pistols or lances or bows and sabers. Foot soldiers carried pikes or muskets and straight swords.

They had cannon, too. You couldn't very well besiege a town without them. Slowly, the guns left the road and began taking up positions around the city. Cavalrymen went with them to protect them from any Roman attack.

But the Romans didn't seem interested in sallying from Polisso, not right then. Instead, they started shooting from the wall. Jeremy wished he had earplugs. Having a cannon go off close by was like getting smacked in the side of the head.

Flames belched from the gun's muzzle. So did a great cloud of dark gray smoke. The cannon and its four-wheeled carriage jerked back from the recoil. Ropes kept it from jerking back too far. At a sergeant's shouted orders, the gun crew yanked on the ropes and ran it forward again. A man with a dripping swab on the end of a long pole stuck it down the barrel to make sure no bits of powder or wadding still smoldered inside. The swab steamed when he brought it out again.

That smoke made Jeremy cough. It also smelled familiar. He wondered why for a couple of seconds. He'd never stood near a cannon going off before. Then he knew what the odor reminded him of. He'd smelled it at parks on the Fourth of July, when they set off fireworks. Gunpowder then, gunpowder now. Pretty flowers of flame in the night air then. A cannonball flying now.

Jeremy saw the divot it kicked up when it hit. It kept rolling after it struck the ground, too. The Lietuvans in its path dodged. Jeremy had read about a Civil War soldier who tried to stop a rolling cannonball with his foot. He'd ended up having the foot amputated.

The cannon crew were reloading as fast as they could. Another man used a tool called a worm-like a short corkscrew on the end of a long pole-to drag out any chunks of wadding the swab might have missed. As soon as he finished, still another man set a bag of powder in the muzzle of the gun. A soldier with a rammer shoved it down to the back of the cannon. In went the cannonball. It got rammed down, too. So did rags-the wadding-which made the cannonball fit tightly inside the barrel.

At the rear of the cannon, a soldier poked a sharp spike into the touch-hole. He punctured the powder bag so fire could reach the charge inside. To make sure it did, he sprinkled a little finely ground gunpowder in and around the touch-hole. “Ready!” he yelled to the sergeant. All the men on the gun crew jumped to one side, so the recoiling gun carriage wouldn't run over them.

“Fire!” the sergeant shouted. A soldier with a length of slowly burning fuse-they called it match here-on the end of a long stick, a linstock, brought the smoldering end to the touch-hole. Jeremy heard a brief fizz as the fine priming powder there caught. Then-boom!-the powder in the main charge caught and sent the cannonball hurtling toward the Lietuvans. The whole cycle started over.