As a child, Randall's parents had insisted that he learn how to play the piano. He never found out why. Maybe it was just one of those things that a well brought up child was expected to be able to do. The piano didn't exist in this new world, it seemed, but they had a very similar instrument called a balichord and they had one in the common room of the Interesting Weasel. It was similar enough that when Randall sat down on the small padded stool a few days after the arrival of the army and tried to play it he was able to perform a very passable rendition of The Girl with the Flaxen Hair by Debussy, although the sound the instrument produced had a slightly tinny quality and the notes died away quicker. The balichird was intended to play with a somewhat faster rhythm, it seemed.

He stopped playing when he realised how dangerous it was to be playing twenty first century music. If someone heard him and started whistling the tune while walking down the street and a priest heard, they would know that there was a hibernator in the city. Fortunately there was a book of sheet music sitting on the balichord. The notation was different from what he was used to, but he was soon able to figure it out and was soon playing contemporary music on it. Randall thought it compared poorly to Debussy, let alone Bach or Beethoven, but it had a certain charm to it.

Soon, people were gathering around to hear him play. Just staff members and their families for the most part, as it was too early in the day for there to be any customers, but they enjoyed the music, to Randall's delight, and were soon clapping along to the rhythm. One of the coal boys even began accompanying him on a hand carved flute, the two very different sounds complimenting each other surprisingly well.

"You're pretty good," said Maisey when he'd finished and Randall was looking through the book for another tune to play. "Bert usually plays, but he's off with a broken arm. Perhaps you could fill in for him until he's back in action." She pushed her tangly red hair back out of her eyes and reached out to leaf through the book. "This was one of his favourites. The Drunken Farmer."

Randall stared at the music as he tried to interpret it into a form he was familiar with, then began tapping it out on the keyboard. It turned out to be simple to play and pleasing to the ear and his audience gathered around closer until Maisey's father, the tavern's owner, chased them off back to their work. He glared disapprovingly at Randall, but there was nothing he could do about the Hero of Duffield and the Tamer of the Barons and so he merely grumbled to himself as he went back to his bookkeeping, leaving Randall and Maisey alone with the balichord.

"Is it hard to learn?" asked Maisey.

"The balichord? Well, I learned on an instrument similar to this and it took me about a year to become reasonably good. You could probably learn the basics quite quickly, though." He stood and gestured for the girl to take his seat. "Stick to the white keys for the time being. You can see that they come in groups of seven..."

Maisey turned out to have a natural talent for the music and was soon playing a rather basic version of The Drunken Farmer with growing confidence. She turned to grin happily back at Randall and he smiled back encouragingly, surprised by how happy he suddenly felt. This was nice! Teaching music to a young girl who, in other circumstances, might have been his daughter. He'd always been too busy with his business dealings to think about having a family and he felt a sudden regret at what he'd been missing. This simple feeling. This simple sense of togetherness with someone you cared for. He should have had a child, he scolded himself. He should have found the time...

But if he had, he or she would almost certainly have perished in the nuclear apocalypse, he suddenly realised. And even if he or she had survived, their life would have been a living hell in the aftermath. Radiation, starvation, roving gangs of thugs stealing and raping their way across the ruined landscape. No, he was suddenly immensely glad that he hadn't had a family, but it wasn't too late. He was still fairly young, and Dolly was only just in her forties. He found himself imagining himself, Dolly and Maisy living together as a family, with Dolly maybe bearing him more children in the fulness of time. Maisey would become merely the eldest of the children he would raise with Dolly, and in time there would be grandchildren...

He was jolted out of his happy thoughts by the sensation of someone hovering behind him and be turned to see Loach standing there, a smile of amused condescension on his face. "You're doing great," said Randall to Maisey, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Keep practicing." She smiled back at him again as Randall crossed the room to see what Loach wanted.

"Nice," said Loach, nodding his head towards the girl. "You like 'em young too, I see."

"She's sixteen," said Randall, feeling a flush of uncharacteristic anger.

"In medieval societies, fourteen year olds are married and expecting their first child. There's absolutely no reason..."

"I said she's sixteen!" Randall was astonished to find that his hands had balled into fists of their own accord. He forced himself to open them and crossed his arms. The sheer fantasy that he might be able to beat up this man... A mouse would have a better chance against a tiger.

"Well, if you don't want her..."

Randall had no clear memory of what happened next, but the next thing he knew Loach was backed up against the wall with Randall's arm against his throat. The feel of his face told him that he was wearing a mask of fury.

Loach laughed in amusement. "Touched a nerve, did I? Do you seriously imagine that she's not already being well bedded by some young lad?"

Randall stepped back from the other man, suddenly feeling foolish. Loach was right, of course, and he even knew the young man's name. Edward Fuller, the stableman's son. A young lad he hadn't met yet. He suddenly wondered how he'd feel if (when) he did meet him. Would he be overbearing and intimidating, like a father faced with the boy dating his daughter? Edward would simply tell him to get lost if he did that, of course, as he would have every right to. Randall wasn't Maisey's father. Maisey already had a father, and he seemed to be perfectly happy with the young lad bedding his daughter. And why wouldn't he? The man wanted grandchildren to look after him in his old age, and Loach was right. Maisey was long past the age when she would normally have been married. If she waited much longer, she would practically be an old maid.

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"I just don't want you messing up their relationship," he said therefore.

Loach laughed aloud. "Relationship?" he said scornfully. "Don't you remember what it was like to be sixteen? He doesn't want a relationship. He just wants to screw her brains out until she gets pregnant and her father forces him to marry her."

Randall recoiled, struck as much by the truth of his words as by the way he'd said it. "You are a thoroughly despicable person," he said, glancing around to see if Maisey had overheard. Thankfully she was still fully engrossed in the balichord.

"I'm a criminal, what did you expect? At least I'm honest about what I am. Not like you who pretends to be so decent and respectable. And yet, back in the old world, I'm pretty sure you were responsible for a thousand times as much human misery as I was. You owned companies that owned smaller companies that owned smaller companies, and right at the bottom were a million squalid little sweat shops in which women and children worked sixteen hours a day trying to earn enough money to stave off starvation for another day. Trying, and failing, to pay off their debts. Wage slaves, Randall. You were a slave master, just like all big businessmen. You just put a respectable face on it."

A thousand counter-arguments rose in Randall's mind, about destitute people earning something rather than nothing, but they sounded weak and pathetic even in his own mind. "What do you want?" he said, therefore. "Why did you come here?"

"Some of your new nob friends have been visiting my establishment," the crime boss replied. "Gambling. A lot. Losing a lot, and not caring. As if they're expecting to come into a lot of money soon."

Randall swore. "The idiots! The rich can be just as stupid as the poor, it seems. Who? Do you have names?"

Loach reached into a pouch and withdrew a scrap of paper. Randall took it and looked at the list of names written on it. "Shit! There's people here that should know nothing about our fictional gold mine. Word must be spreading. One nob tells his mate who tells all his mates... it only takes one to tell a priest... I'll have a word with Duke Latimer. Hopefully he'll be able to keep the rest in line."

"I could have some of my boys pay them a visit," suggested Loach with a smile. "They might prove to be a bit more persuasive."

"Do you have full control over them yet? Last I heard they were still being a little stubborn."

"The dirt Jane's dug up on them's doing the trick. I can send the worst of them to the gallows any time I want with a word to the magistrates and they're making sure the rest of them toe the line. I think they've pretty much accepted me as their new boss. The main thing is that there's still plenty of money coming in. They don't really care who's running things so long as they get paid."

"And how's Jane? If she's the one digging up the dirt, any chance they'll want to bump her off?"

"They don't know she's the one digging up the dirt. They think she's just my squeeze."

Randall couldn't help but chuckle despite himself. "And what does she think about that?"

Loach smiled in return. It wasn't a pretty sight. "She doesn't know. She thinks they think she's just my accountant. She probably wouldn't care if she did know, tell the truth. She's doing God's work, after all. Wallowing in the mud for a while probably makes her feel all virtuous, like a martyr, and she thinks she's going to be lifted up to glory later. Sitting at God's right hand while the rest of us burn in hell."

"Be funny if she's right, wouldn't it? Haven't you ever wondered if maybe the Christians were right all along?"

"You die and the conqueror worms eat you up. Saints and sinners alike. There's no heaven, ho hell, so we might as well make things as good for ourselves as we can while we're here."

Randall nodded. "I'll go see Latimer now," he said. "I'll let you know if I need your men."

The two men turned to go. Behind them, Maisey continued to play the balichord, the music improving as the girl steadily grew in skill and confidence.

☆☆☆

In her private rooms in The Halls of Valhalla, Jane had drawn what looked like an old style ouija board on a sheet of parchment and was watching as a pigeon walked steadily from letter to letter, spelling out a message from Emily.

Jane couldn't help but be amused at the sight of it. Back in olden times, ignorant fools had used methods like this to communicate with evil spirits, damning themselves in the process, and now she was using it to do God's holy work. Once, the very sight of such a board would have caused her ro rise up in horror and indignation, but now she knew that the board itself was just a tool. It was the use to which it was put that made it good or evil.

What would she do if an actual demon tried to communicate with her? she wondered. She assumed than an evil spirit would be able to take control of a regular pigeon and fool her into thinking she was receiving a message from Emily, and it would certainly have the motive to do so. The denizens of Hell would like nothing more than to sabotage her mission to bring God back to the world. How would she know? Maybe she could arrange a series of code words that would let her know that it was really Emily she was talking to. No, it was too late for that. If she did it now, she might be arranging code words with a demon which would lead her to ignore genuine messages from Emily.

She leaned back in her chair and stared across at the stack of papers piled on the other side of the desk on which she'd begun copying out the Bible from the electronic version she had on her head phone. Written in the local language, as it was locals she would be teaching it to when it was complete. She fixed her gaze upon the thick, rigid sheets of parchment as if it were God Himself sitting on her desk and listened for His still, small voice within herself. In front of her, on the wooden table, the pigeon stared at her, first with one eye, then the other, as if wondering what she was doing. Had she lost interest in the message she was trying to send?

Jane listened, and after a few moments she relaxed, focusing on the pigeon again. God had answered, as He always did. The message was a genuine one, from the real Emily. The suggestion, made by a school friend back in her teens, that the still, small voice of God always told her what she wanted to hear, failed to trouble her.

Seeing that Jane was once again paying attention to her, the pigeon resumed the spelling out of its message, that Emily was coming to Elmton. She was currently staying at a small town thirty miles to the south and would arrive towards sundown the next day to take charge of the effort to take control of the machines. Jane resisted the urge to smile in case Emily, looking at her through the pigeon's eyes, read it for the amused contempt it was. Emily was nothing more than a tool being used by God to advance His own eternal plan, but part of the plan required that the other woman be left to her delusions for the time being. If Emily wanted to believe that she would be in charge, then she had to be allowed to do so.

"That's great news," she said, therefore. "It's been so hard, stuck here with these idiot, grunting men who treat me as nothing more than a life support mechanism for a head phone. It'll be so good to be able to talk to a woman again. Really talk, I mean. I'm really looking forward to seeing you again!"

The pigeon bobbed its head at her, then flew to the open window. It looked back at Jane for a moment, then flew out into the clear, blue sky. Jane watched it go, then got ready to get back to work looking over the gambling hall's accounts.