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Historical Fiction
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The Cistern
Approx. 12 min read
Thallos found the rope ladder still fixed to the siege ramp when the sun was two hands above the ridge, and he did not want to climb it. At the top the wind came off the desert flat and dry, carrying nothing. That was the first thing he noticed and could not place until later, no smoke.
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The Registry Number
Approx. 21 min read
An East Berlin records clerk encounters her own name inside the surveillance system she has served for years. The discovery changes how she reads both its files and the people around her.
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Custer’s Luck
Approx. 17 min read
A cavalry general who chose caution finds himself on the ridge where the other version of him chose otherwise. He knows how it ends. He can't stop it, and he isn't sure he wants to.
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The Prophet and the Poison
Approx. 7 min read
The room smelled of figs and something bitter underneath them, a smell Iras had stopped noticing after the third day. Cleopatra sat on the low couch with her feet bare, watching a slave girl drink from a small clay cup.
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Household Gods
Approx. 20 min read
Three months of transport had done what three months of transport always did. The wax on half the tablets had cracked in the cold, and someone in Gaul had let rain into the wagon, so the wood underneath had swollen and split along the grain. His orders were simple. Sort what could be saved, note what couldn’t, and burn the rest before the damp bred mold that would ruin the good tablets stacked beside them.
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The Gentleman Bandit’s Last Ride
Approx. 7 min read
The sack smelled faintly of flour and mice. Charles Boles held it open between his hands and considered, for perhaps the hundredth time, the foolishness of the whole business. A grown man in a good wool coat, standing behind an oak tree with a flour sack over his head.
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The Beak and the Dark
Approx. 8 min read
Being the private notebook of Dr. Amброise Verrin, physician of the parish of Saint-Roch, kept against the express instruction of the magistrate
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The Door Beneath Jerusalem
Approx. 8 min read
By then the village had stopped expecting him. His mother was dead. His father’s fields had gone to bramble. The boy who used to run after his horse with a willow switch in his hand was now a broad-backed man with two daughters and a bald place showing under his cap.
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Measured Ground
Approx. 7 min read
The villa had been known for decades. A few test trenches in the 1970s, another survey in the nineties, and now a proper excavation before a housing development claimed the field. It was respectable work, the sort that filled journals but rarely newspapers. Roman pottery. Animal bone. Coins worn almost smooth. Fragments of painted plaster that hinted at rooms grander than the low hills around them deserved.
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The Empty Voyage
Approx. 6 min read
The fishing boat found them at sunrise. Old Håkon, who had spent forty years working the waters outside Trondheimsfjorden, noticed the sail first. It hung loose against the mast, catching just enough wind to push the vessel toward shore.