Remy did not interfere in the affairs of those men any further than necessity demanded. He gave his opinion to the Archbishop, who received it with the satisfaction of a man whose expectations had been met. The Archbishop found Remy’s “measuring” of the two men, of Ladislaus Csetneki and Giles Carlier, appropriate, even confirming. He told him so plainly.

  “I am pleased that you agree with my assessment,” the Archbishop said, seated behind his heavy oak desk, the glow of the candles gilding the edges of his face in amber. “Though I am curious what you spoke of, I will not ask further. You will have your escorts.”

  Remy inclined his head. He could hear, beneath the Archbishop’s measured tone, the faint hum of satisfaction. a man of schemes pleased that his threads were being spun as intended.

  It came to him, then, that this affair was far simpler than it appeared. The Archbishop’s interest was not merely in the diplomacy of Basel or the posturing of Hungarian courtiers. What he wanted was movement. He sought to throw men toward the Holy Land, missionaries, soldiers, perhaps even pilgrims, and Remy, with his peculiar status and papal endorsement, was to serve as the spearpoint of that endeavor.

  Remy found that personally fascinating. Time and again, he had come to admire how the men of this age, though centuries apart from his own, were not dull or primitive as so many from his future might have thought. Their wit was sharp, their cunning refined by necessity and survival. To be a learned man in this era meant more than simple literacy; it meant one’s intellect was constantly honed against the whetstone of faith, politics, and survival. Their philosophies might be bound to theology, their sciences wrapped in mysticism, yet their reasoning was keen.

  To underestimate them would have been a grave error.

  And so he did not think much of the Archbishop’s schemes or ambitions. He accepted them with the calm detachment of one who had long learned that every man, holy or not, chased his own form of salvation.

  By the time the Danube began to freeze, the two envoys had departed. It was late November, 1432. Winter approached fast—sharp and pitiless. The edges of the river shimmered with thin ice, and travel by water had become treacherous. Soon the trade routes would close entirely, leaving only the long, brutal land paths open to those mad or desperate enough to brave them.

  Remy watched the last of the Archbishop’s messengers ride out under a gray sky. He could not help but think that in this world, faith and ambition were as cold and dangerous as the river itself.

  He remained in Esztergom, at least for the time being. His name had spread through the city in half rumor, and half reverence. The foreign knight in blue cloak, the foreign noble bearing the symbols of two Popes, the man who spoke like a priest and fought like a seasoned condottiere. It was inevitable, then, that the Archbishop’s men came to him for instruction.

  And so his days found a rhythm. He coached the Archbishop’s guards, tutored Jehan in letters and arms, and spent hours each week assisting in the cathedral’s clinic as physician and surgeon.

  There, among the sick and injured, he found a strange comfort. His hands, though forged for battle, had long known the gentler work of stitching flesh and setting bone. Before this second life, before he had woken in the bloodline of Valois, he had practiced both the arts of war and the sciences of healing. In deserts and cities, in sterile hospitals and field tents alike, he had known what it was to pull men from the edge of death.

  Life, he thought, was endlessly strange in how it twisted upon itself. That he now stood in a medieval infirmary, mixing tinctures and tending to peasants, would have been absurd to the man he once was. Yet here he was, doing it as though born to it.

  Sometimes, when the light was dim and the scent of herbs clung to his gloves, he felt the press of that other world upon his mind, the world he had lost.

  The thought of the future always brought him unease. To dwell on it was to let a kind of poison seep into the mind, a slow, corrosive dread that hollowed him from within. He avoided it deliberately, for he knew where such thoughts led him. To despair, to isolation, to a kind of madness only those untethered from time could understand.

  Yet the avoidance had its cost. The more he tried to live within this age, the more the loneliness grew, an isolation not of distance but of understanding. There was no one he could speak to about what he had seen, what he knew, or what he feared might come. No one who would believe him, and none who should.

  These thoughts consumed him so deeply one afternoon that he failed to notice a young squire’s blade flashing toward him until it was already descending.

  Instinct moved faster than thought. Remy’s hand shot up, catching the sword by its hilt mid-swing. The blow stopped dead, steel quivering under his grip. The squire froze, half in awe, half in terror.

  Remy’s expression was calm, almost detached. He had moved before awareness caught up. His body knew before his mind did.

  He had a memory that never faded and reflexes that were faster than human reason. Every pattern, every motion that the squire had practiced, he had already memorized. He could recall every feint, every parry, every hesitation. To him, the boy’s movements were painfully slow and predictable.

  He had deflected crossbow bolts, caught arrows from the air in battle. This was nothing compared to those moments. Yet even so, he did not let arrogance dull his caution. He never underestimated an opponent, no matter how small the threat appeared.

  For if his reflex had been slower, if even a fraction of a second had slipped, his head would have been cleaved in two.

  The cold wind swept across the courtyard, pulling him back to the present. He released the squire’s sword and straightened, the faintest smile crossing his lips.

  “Well struck,” he said evenly. “But you telegraph your intention. The moment you commit, you must empty your mind of everything except your purpose.”

  The squire, red-faced, stammered an apology. Remy ignored it and turned to the rest of the young men standing at the edge of the yard, their practice blades clutched awkwardly in their hands.

  “Listen well,” he said, voice steady. “The way you fight is not poor. You have discipline. But discipline alone does not win a fight. When the time comes and it will come, you must think only of one thing: how to defeat the enemy, and how to come back alive. Nothing else matters.”

  His words hung in the cold air.

  The squires exchanged glances, their faces thoughtful, uneasy. They nodded, murmuring assent, and dispersed to rest, leaving Remy standing alone in the yard.

  He watched them go, then turned his gaze upward. The sky had turned to the color of pewter, the sun a pale, dying ball behind the clouds. He could hear the faint toll of vespers from the cathedral tower and the distant sound of hooves beyond the walls.

  For a long while, he stood there without moving.

  There was always a strange calm after moments of danger, a silence that pressed too close. He often felt it after battle, or after near-death a silence that demanded he remember, reflect, and question why he was still alive.

  He had lived through fire and plague, through wars that had yet to happen and ones that would never be remembered. He had been reborn into a world of faith and superstition, where men believed God shaped every breath, and yet he, who knew more than any of them, often felt furthest from divine grace.

  The cold crept deeper into the air, biting at the gaps in his armor. He took off his gauntlets and flexed his fingers, feeling the ache of old scars.

  He was, he thought, not so different from the Archbishop or from Giles Carlier, or even from the young squire who had just tried to strike him. Each of them sought purpose in their own way, through faith, through reform, through discipline. He sought his by survival, by endurance, by refusing to lose himself in the flood of time.

  Remy breathed out, watching his breath turn to mist.

  This age, for all its violence and ignorance, possessed something the future had long lost, clarity. Every man here knew his place, his God, his duty. Even in error, they lived with certainty of their Lot.

  He envied that certainty.

  Sometimes, he wondered if that was why God or whatever force governed his displacement had placed him here: to remind him what faith meant when stripped of all the comforts of knowledge.

  He closed his eyes briefly, whispering a prayer that was more habit than hope.

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  When he opened them again, Jehan was watching from the edge of the yard, a book in hand and her hood drawn low against the wind. She had likely seen the whole exchange with the squire.

  “You almost lost your head,” she said dryly.

  “I almost did,” he agreed, taking up his sword again. “But almost has never killed a man.”

  Jehan rolled her eyes. “One day, it might.”

  “Then let that day come,” Remy said. “Until then, I’ll keep teaching.”

  He sheathed the blade and turned toward the chapel, where the first snowflakes of the season began to fall, melting as they touched the stones.

  It would be a long winter.

  Remy had been working on a project of his own when the interruption came. Whenever he was not reading, training, or tutoring Jehan, his hours were spent in solitude, bent over a makeshift workbench scattered with tools and sketches.

  The project was a small invention of his design, the sort of thing no man of this age would fully comprehend. It was a lever and crank mechanism designed to push the breech of a firearm back and forth with efficiency and safety.

  The barrel was rigidly mounted to a frame, the crank fixed where the barrel met the breech. As the loading lever was drawn back, the crank rotated, disengaging the breech and swinging it upward, exposing the chamber for loading. Then, with a downward push, the breech would drop and slide forward, locking neatly into place. The final twenty degrees of motion sealed it tight, the metal fitting with a precision that no smith of Esztergom could yet replicate.

  Remy took quiet satisfaction in the details, the crank’s half-inch diameter, the lever’s three and a half-inch length, the mechanical advantage of over eighty to one. With only five pounds of pressure on the lever, the mechanism produced four hundred pounds of closing force at the breech.

  Around him, the workshop smelled of oil and iron. Files, chisels, and worn sheets of vellum cluttered the table, each covered with smudged diagrams. A fast lock with a single-set trigger lay disassembled beside a Hawken-style sight and an iron trigger guard. The block of curly oak he had shaped for the stock glowed a deep amber beneath the lamplight.

  He had chosen to base the weapon loosely on the LePage-Moutier pattern, An elegant design, graceful in form but solid in function. His, however, lacked the large palm rest, as he found it cumbersome. He had spent days carefully inletting the receiver frame into the stock, a task he had never done before but which, to his quiet pleasure, had gone better than expected. After milling the outlines of the channel, he had worked patiently with sharp gouges and inletting black, shaping the oak to cradle the metal like flesh around bone.

  There was still much to do. The barrel, too long for balance, would have to be cut down to nine inches. The forestock needed thickening to house the frame’s keel. A catch would be added to secure the loading lever. The sights, both front and rear, were yet uncut. It was a project of patience and precision, a small testament to what could be made when knowledge from a world yet unborn met the tools of this century.

  He was turning a small screw into its thread when he heard a knock at the door.

  It was unusual for anyone to visit him at this hour. The man who stood outside was one of the Archbishop’s servants, typically the one who came to announce meals or errands. But this time, he did not come alone. Behind him stood a stranger, broad-shouldered, cloaked in fur heavy with snow, his face drawn with worry and windburn.

  The servant bowed slightly. “My lord,” he said, “this man seeks you. He says it is urgent.”

  The stranger stepped forward, lowering his hood. “I am of the House of Clotilde,” he said, voice trembling between pride and desperation. “Forgive the intrusion, but my son, he fell from his horse while hunting. The beast broke both forelegs; my boy broke his as well. He lies near death, and I was told you have the hands of a healer.”

  Remy studied him for a moment. Snow dripped from the man’s cloak onto the stone floor. His eyes, gray and unsteady, held the unmistakable fear of a father staring into the abyss of loss.

  The nobleman continued, almost pleading. “If you can save him, my lord, I will give you my best horse. A draft, strong and steady. Yours to keep.”

  Remy hesitated only briefly. Travel in such weather was dangerous and the snow had piled to the waist in some places, the wind cutting like glass. But he could not turn the man away. Not while he had the means to help.

  He nodded once. “We ride together,” he said simply.

  The man’s relief was visible.

  Jehan, who had been reading by the hearth, rose at once. “You will not go alone,” she said, fastening her cloak.

  And so the three of them rode out into the storm.

  Jehan’s mare struggled through the drifts, her hooves vanishing into the snow with every step. The wind howled against their faces, flinging white dust across the frozen fields. But Remy’s destrier, Morgan, pressed forward with steady power, his chest broad enough to part the snow like a ship’s prow through waves. His breath steamed through the cold air, his mane clotted with frost.

  It took hours to reach Pilisszentlélek, a large village nestled among the foothills, where the smoke of hearths rose weakly into the gray sky. The manor of the House of Clotilde stood at its edge. It was a two-story home, the lower half built of thick stone, the upper of timber and red brick. A wall of brick fencing enclosed the courtyard, its gate half-buried in snow.

  Servants with lamps rushed to meet them as they approached. The nobleman dismounted at once, shouting orders with trembling urgency.

  Remy slid down from his destrier, the snow crunching beneath his boots. One of the servants reached for Morgan’s reins, but he stopped him with a raised hand.

  “Do not touch the horse,” he said quietly. “Not unless you wish to find yourself with broken ribs. And I may have to treat two today.”

  The servant froze.

  Jehan, already dismounted, placed a gloved hand on the man’s arm. “I will take him,” she said kindly. “He bites at strangers.”

  Morgan flicked his ears, snorting, but allowed Jehan to lead him away.

  Inside, the air was thick with smoke and heat. The manor’s great hall smelled of burning pine and wet wool. The nobleman guided Remy upstairs to a chamber where his son lay on a bed of linen, pale and trembling beneath a fur coverlet. His right leg was swollen grotesquely, the thigh twisted at an unnatural angle.

  Remy knelt beside the boy, his eyes sweeping over the injury with professional detachment.

  “How long ago?”

  “Since morning,” the father answered. “The horse fell upon him. He screamed, then fainted. We set his leg as best we could, but…”

  Remy shook his head slightly. “You should have left it,” he said, not unkindly.

  He removed his gloves, feeling the skin of his fingers prickle from the heat. His hands moved steady as he examined the limb. The femur was fractured clean through, the swelling severe but not yet gangrenous.

  He looked up at the father. “Fetch boiling water. Cloth, thread, clean linen, and spirits. A strong light. Quickly.”

  The man obeyed without hesitation.

  Jehan entered moments later, her face flushed from the cold, carrying his satchel of instruments, from scalpels, bone saw, and forceps wrapped carefully in oilcloth. She met his eyes, understanding without a word.

  “Will you assist me?” he asked. He removed his blue cloak, unfastened his armor, and then placed it aside, not waiting for Jehan to reply

  She nodded. “I will.”

  They worked in silence. Remy cut away the boy’s trousers and steadied the leg. The bone had pierced the flesh in one place, the wound oozing dark blood. He irrigated it with the hot water and spirits until the flesh was clean, then set about realigning the break.

  The boy woke once, screamed, and fainted again.

  Remy did not flinch. He pressed his thumbs against the bone and pulled. A crack, a snap, then the pieces slid into place. Jehan held the lantern steady, her jaw tight.

  “Splints,” Remy said.

  She handed them to him, two lengths of planed wood from the hearth’s pile. He wrapped the leg tight with linen, securing the splints in place. When he was done, the boy’s breathing had steadied, the color returning faintly to his face.

  “He will live,” Remy said quietly. Then handed over some pills. “Let him drink this. It is for the pain. Take it when he cannot bear it.”

  The father sank to his knees beside the bed, crossing himself in gratitude. “God bless you, my lord,” he murmured. “You’ve saved my blood.”

  Remy said nothing. He wiped his hands with a cloth and stood, exhaustion settling over him like dust.

  Jehan began cleaning the instruments, her hands trembling slightly from the intensity of the work. She glanced at him. “You still surprise me,” she said.

  He gave a faint smile. “I only do what I can.”

  When they stepped outside again, the snow had ceased, leaving the world in silence. The lamps along the manor walls flickered faintly, their light caught in the frost.

  The nobleman himself came to see them off despite hoping for them to stay, pressing the reins of a great draft horse into Remy’s hand.

  “As promised,” he said. “She is strong and steady. May she serve you well.”

  Remy nodded, taking the reins. The horse, a massive gray mare with a calm, intelligent eye, snorted softly in the cold.

  “She will,” he said.

  Jehan led Morgan forward, the destrier stamping impatiently beside the new mare who seems to have already decided that it will lead the mare..

  As they mounted, Remy looked once more toward the manor, where the faint glow of the windows lingered against the snow.

  He smiled.

  The wind had calmed, the stars faint above the cloudline.

  “Come,” he said to Jehan. “Let’s ride home before more snow finds us.”

  She nodded, and together they turned their horses toward Esztergom, the quiet crunch of hooves marking their way through the frozen dark.