They’d finally moved to a less powerfully smell  alley. Tina dropped her cloth covered hands from her face, taking that deeper breath that her lungs had been screaming for..

“Where am I- where are we supposed to be from then, to people here, now?” she wanted to know, thinking about her own families likely ancient roots. “Germany? Spain?”

“From the north,” Devon said. “Kiev. If anyone asks, just say you are Rus. With your hair and complexion no one will question that.”

Her red hair?  Pales skin and freckles?

“Rus?” Tina asked. “Russian then?”

“Not really,” he told her. “Actual Russia won’t exist for a few centuries. The Rus were the Norsemen who carved their own small kingdoms there.”

“You mean Russians are really the Vikings?” Tina asked. That would explain a few things. Probably a lot really.  But that wasn’t in what she’d read, or remembered reading.

“In a way,” he told her leading her around about the seventh corner in the last five minutes.  Constantinople was built like maze.  Oh yes, she remembered now.

“So you’re a Viking?” she said. “Is that where you came from originally? Norway? Sweden?”

“No place so mundane,” he told her. “I am from Ymiria.”

“Where exactly is that?” Tina wanted to know.

“The Halls of the Mountain Kings,” Devon replied matter of fatly.

“And where is that?” Tina asked, growing frustrated with him again.

“No place you need to be worried about,” Devon told her with a sigh. “Let’s get something to eat. I’m hungry, aren’t you?”

“Are you sure it’s safe?” she asked, even though she was hungry. “It’s the middle ages. Couldn’t we get, like, food poisoning or hepatitis?”

The food was supposed to be kind of Greek, but they were probably at least eight hundred years before Louis Pasteur was even born.

“If you are worried, eat what is cooked and don’t drink the water,” he told her, angling towards what looked like some kind of patio restaurant packed with patrons eating and drinking and waving their hands around at each other.

“Well, what can I drink?” she asked, getting alarmed.

“The wine should be fine,” he said. “It’s probably watered down, but that’s not a bad thing. They will probably have mead and beer as well.”

Sitting at the patio they were served food that reminded her of what they served – would serve – in Greek restaurants back in Toronto. The lamb at least was well cooked, the bread not too stale. And although she did have to scrape mold off of the cheese they were served, and at least the main drink of choice wasn’t ouzo. Flush toilets too, weren’t going to be invented for several hundred years, but Tina had roughed it in the past. Afterwards Devon dragged her to the tailors, and clothing promised for the next morning. The whole going from shop to shop was exhausting, though fascinating as well. She’d never imagined a trip like this, not in her entire life.

“What now?” she said, standing outside the dresser’s shop on the cobblestones streets.

The shadows had turned quite far over the afternoon. It was going to get dark in a few hours.

“Now we talk to the man who has what we came for,” Devon told her.

“What you came for,” Tina reminded him. “I’m still not sure why I have to be here anyways. I don’t think I really got to read much about ancient Greece or the middle ages.”

“You’re my assistant, remember,” he replied. “I have to say, I'm impressed by how quickly you’ve adapted to your situation. Others have handled it with less... decorum.”

“I've always been a fast learner when it comes to terrible situations,” she told him. “And this place isn’t so awful, once you get used to it. I’ve camped with my family in worse places... maybe. Besides, the sooner this is done, the sooner we get to go home, right?”

Devon nodded, not stating that it would depend on how the stars and planets aligned and one never knew how such alignments worked out.