"That... or perhaps you enacted your plan elsewhere. If I tell you to try to enact your plan in Jacob's Bell and a different one somewhere else, then that's guaranteeing either it's subtle or it won't work. Self-consistent time travel is amazingly irritating. Whatever the actual outcome, it has to look to me as if it failed in Jacob's Bell."

"Assuming it's self-consistent. Which does seem like the safest assumption.

Do you have a way to get back, or are you planning on staying here? Now. Whichever."

"The Behaims seemed to think it was self-consistent, and they're working on a way of sending me back."

"Did they say what their angle is? Malcolm Behaim is a miser; if he's spending resources on getting you back he expects a long-term profit somehow."

"He expects me to help them when I return to my time, more or less."

"Seems a bit of a gamble for him, but I guess if he set the rates high enough it could make sense. Chronomancers do tend to be very good at delaying payoffs; he might not even mind about the sixty years."

"Yeah. And he didn't even know that the Charybdis actually existed."

"Until you told him, I assume? That's definitely the kind of thing I'd want to know about in his position."

"Yeah, pretty much."

"So if you're from the future, did you know in advance that the money catches on?"

"No, actually, I've only been a practitioner for a few weeks and if it caught on I didn't hear of it in Jacob's Bell. Ah, I'm actually the one who came up with the idea."

"Oh. Impressive.

But you couldn't go weeks in the normal world without hearing someone mention money, so that sounds like it doesn't catch on. Unfortunate."

"Maybe; it does sort of rely on the Lord's rep, and when money was, ah, invented amongst non-practitioners it did take longer than sixty years to catch on everywhere." Pause. "Or... I think you're rather influential in Jacob's Bell by then, and you'll meet me. Perhaps you could somehow ensure I didn't get to hear about it then?"

She smiles a bit at "rather influential."

"Probably easier to just not introduce it there until after; I'm not sure how it would work to keep one specific person from finding out."

"Sure, that works, too, as long as the end result is me not having heard about it if it succeeds."

"The drawback is then there's no progress in Jacob's Bell for that plan for sixty years. Well, I'll have time to work it out."

"Thank you. It's probably for the best. Inclined to trust me more with your plans, now?"

"Unfortunately, step one is to end the pointless status games by winning them. After that, the extra clout from having Jacob's Bell as home turf, so to speak, should help capture some dangerous things. I couldn't do that now even if I were powerful enough, because everyone would very reasonably fear that I'm stockpiling weapons. Really, of course, there are things that are simply freer than they should be.

I could say how I hope to win the pointless power competition decisively enough, but that one I'd be worried about someone gleaning the information from you somehow."

"Mm. And about sealing things, there was this other plan I was enacting—I didn't use Solomon's seal on the Charybdis..." And she explains about her seal once again.

Rose laughs. "There is an implausible number of plots going on here. This is great.

I don't think that one interacts badly with mine, but it might be downright impossible to get a demon to agree. Solomon's is a big enough change, for them."

"The more plots you have, the likeliest it is one of them will work," she says, grinning. "I did special-case Solomon's in mine anyway, so it should be fine if demons in particular don't agree."

"So when I said there are ancient traditions expiring, you were sitting on an attempt to start a new one this whole time. And a much better one than some of what we've got, too."

"I suppose that's a way to put it."

"Good luck. I'm sure you know how much of an uphill battle that is, but each step forward is an improvement anyway whether or not the plan succeeds."

"Exactly. But I want to help with your plan, too, however I can."