milliways_bar | Someone has been very quietly investigating.

There was no door where an overheard conversation or two said there was a door, at least not for him. There was a door where an overheard conversation or two said there was an area where one might go to enjoy the outdoors. Said outdoors consisted of a field, a lake, a forest, and a number of mountains in the distance. Other than the mountains, it reminded him a little of the trip he and Sebastien had taken to Scotland once though it was a little too temperate, in his opinion, to be an exact duplicate. He resolved to examine some of the flora and fauna to provide further information.

There were rooms upstairs, one of which he'd taken for the night and the foreseeable future. He'd been pleased to find that a bit of written communication had allowed the counter to extract payment from his accounts; it would cause the bankers no small amount of befuddlement and no doubt confuse even Sebastien, but he chose to withdraw his funds from where they sat and apply them to his balance here. Better safe than sorry and he might as well have access to his money, after all.

And so, some work done for the morning, Jack settled at the counter and ordered himself a hearty breakfast. Usually, he ate like a still-growing lad for all that he was no longer a teenager (whatever he looked like) but today he was just... ravenous. It was a bit queer, but Jack had enough adjusting to make that he wasn't about to start wondering about largely untroublesome questions.

[tinytag: Jack Priest]

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Many, many centuries in Teja's future, but still not quite as far as the majority of men in this place.-

"Lutetia Parisiorum," Teja says, "in Gaul, where the Franks settled?"

Pause.

"There are many men in this place from a hundred years further on than you were, even. To you, their behaviour and assumptions would seem as odd as they are to me."

"And there are still others who come from entirely different places," he pointed out.

"I am familiar enough from experience to take most such things in stride and judge a man or woman on their own merits as opposed to unfamiliar customs."

"It took me some time to become used to the strangeness," Teja says, "and I have offended some men -- and, indeed, women -- and was almost eaten by wolfmen, until I learned."

He is a very very good actor, is Jack Priest.

But on that, he twitches. On one word, one specific word.

Wolfmen.

"There are wolves in this place?"

"They are called werewolves," Teja says, "and to me, they were the stuff of old wives' tales -- but in this place, they are real. They are men that shift their shapes to that of wolves around the full moon; and on that night, and the one before and after, the outside of this place belongs to them. You would venture out at your own risk. In another place, one would assume men would hunt and kill such creatures; but not here. Many that my people would have thought weird, uncanny nithings are allowed to be what they are, in peace, in this place."

"I am well familiar with the creature," and his voice held some note, some emotion undefined.

He was dead. He was here. He was constantly hungry.

Sebastien's ring burned his fingers.

"Though they were thought hunted out in my time."

"So you are from a world that held such creatures, or at least still remembered them as reality?" Teja says. "I visited such a world, since I came here. In that world, they are no lunger hunted if they would harm no man. It is the same with blood-drinkers, there. Did your world have those, also?"

"The wampyr are known. The laws on their existance vary from country to country. Their very presence is considered a capital offense in the New World, but most of Europe is less extreme."

He'd been raised and eventually become the companion to one of their oldest. He wouldn't be discussing that, however.

"It was a city in the new world, named Saint Louis, that my vampire friend took me to," Teja says.

He, also, is not likely to mention that the vampire whom he met here, in the tavern at the end of the known cosmos, has become more than a friend to him.

"We went to see a concert of a symphonic orchestra, many instruments played in harmony and perfection."

It had been something of a revelation to Teja, 'best harpist of his people' that he was.

"An orchestra? At the mission of St. Louis?"

...that sounded just a bit insane.

"It is a great city, a hundred years from your time, not just a mission," Teja says. "If by a 'mission' you mean a missionary outpost of some Christians, among what they deem 'heathens'?"

"Did they finally manage to broker some manner of peace with the Iroquis?" he asked curiously. After all, he was dead.

"What are the Iroquis?" Teja asks.

"The native tribe who have been trouble to any and all who might attempt to colonize farther into the continent. The French are making some headway, but at the moment their war magics have proven terribly effective against foreign invasion."

"Oh, I have heard of them," Teja says. "From yet another man who lives in the lands beyond the oceans. They have been cruelly subjected and have become strangers and barbarians in their own lands. It is not a good thing."

"I'm not from there," he pointed out. "I'm an Englishman. But I did set up my house there."

He was no Englishman, but he had had a home in New Amsterdam. And you'd better believe Sebastien had Heard About It over the fact that they'd had to flee to Boston.

"In the lands beyond the oceans?" Teja says. "And yes, I was shown on maps, with the discovery of those new lands, the once-unimportant backwater of Britannia had gained much importance, hence the many Englishmen in this place, at least among those that are from Earth."

He laughed, a clear bell-like sound. Boyish.

"That's one way to put it, yes, I suppose. Though most Englishman would be a little huffed to hear their country called 'backwater'."

"It was, in my time," Teja says. "The Romans had long given up on it, and then it was given over to various barbarian tribes that were related to us, but had never made the way south, as the Goths, the Gepids, the Vandals had."

"Just because it's truth doesn't mean that fools won't be offended," he pointed out with a teasing smile.

"Who would mind the opinion of fools?" Teja says, with a light shrug.

"Oh, fools can cause enough trouble," he said loftily. "And very little is 'fool proof' no matter what something may label itself."

"But a sane man would not listen to them," Teja says, "but instead say and do what his own conscience and best knowledge tell him."

"In certain situations. A sane man does what will best accomplish his goals without dissatisfying his conscience."

"As long as he keeps his honour," Teja says. "But yes, ruses to gull the gullible are of course needed. We sent some of our men to the enemy, to pretend they were going to defect; they were given a tour of the encampment, then allowed to leave to get their men. That was an easy, and useful, way of exploiting their foolishness."

Someone has been very quietly investigating.

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