The silence in the solar was heavy, thick with the scent of woodsmoke and the lingering chill of the stone walls. Victoria remained motionless, her fingers still tangled in the laces of her dark wool dress. She did not look like a woman afraid of a ghost; she looked like a woman who had spent years preparing for her husband to finally break, and now that the moment had arrived, she was simply deciding how to dispose of the pieces.
Thomas kept his hand extended. On the screen only he could see, a high-resolution image of the Earth from space glowed in brilliant blues and swirling whites. It was a perspective that no human in this century could even conceive of, yet here it was, a digital miracle resting in a calloused palm. He felt a bead of sweat roll down the back of his neck. He knew that in this world, people were killed for far less than claiming to see invisible spirits.
"You say you are not Thomas," Victoria said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper. "You say you are a man from a world that has not happened. If I go to the door right now and call for the guards, they will take you to the bishop. They will put you in a cell until you remember who you are, or until you stop breathing. Do you understand that?"
"I do," Thomas said, his voice steadier than he felt. "But if you do that, you go back to the life you had. You stay married to a man who drinks your coin away and treats you like a piece of furniture. You stay in this drafty hall, waiting for the next plague or the next war to take everything you have. I am offering you something else."
He took a step closer, careful not to startle her. He needed to speak her language, the language of survival and power. He couldn't talk about democracy or human rights yet. He had to talk about the things that kept a medieval manor from sliding into ruin.
"I know things, Victoria," he said, focusing on her eyes. "I know how to make the soil give more grain than it ever has. I know how to find metal in the earth without guessing. I know how to make medicines from the weeds in the garden that will stop a wound from rotting. I have a library in my hand that holds every secret of every man who will ever live."
Victoria looked at his empty palm again. She reached out, her hand trembling slightly, and passed her fingers through the space where the phone sat. She felt nothing but air. Her brow furrowed, a flicker of genuine confusion breaking through her icy mask.
"You speak with words I do not know," she murmured. "But you speak them with a clarity he never possessed. Thomas would never use the word library to describe his own hand. He barely knew how to read the ledger."
She pulled her hand back, tucking it into the folds of her skirt. "Prove it. If you have all this knowledge, tell me something I do not know. Tell me something that will change tomorrow."
Thomas swiped his thumb across the air, the motion fluid and practiced. He opened a weather app, then a historical climate archive he had downloaded during his frantic second day. He searched for the current region and the approximate year he had narrowed down through the constellations he had checked the night before.
"Tonight, the wind will shift to the north," Thomas said. "By dawn, there will be a frost. It is too early for frost, and the men have not covered the late garden. If you do not move the herbs and cover the vines, you will lose the harvest that feeds this house through the winter."
Victoria scoffed. "The sky is clear. The air is mild. There has never been a frost this early in my lifetime."
"There will be one tonight," Thomas insisted. "The invisible glass tells me so. It sees the air moving hundreds of miles away. It knows what is coming before the birds do."
Victoria stared at him for a long heartbeat. She was weighing the cost of being wrong against the cost of believing a madman. Finally, she turned and walked to the door.
"If there is no frost," she said over her shoulder, "I will have the priest here by noon. If there is... then we will talk more about your silver."
Thomas didn't sleep that night. He sat by the dying fire, scrolling through offline maps and survival guides. He looked up how to forge high-carbon steel, how to build a basic blast furnace, and how to refine saltpeter. He felt like a man trying to build a cathedral with a toothpick. He had the blueprints, but he lacked the tools, the materials, and the people he could trust.
When dawn broke, the narrow window of the solar was covered in a delicate, crystalline layer of white. The courtyard below was ghost-white, the mud frozen into hard, jagged peaks. In the distance, he could hear the confused shouts of the laborers.
The door creaked open. Victoria stood there, wrapped in a heavy fur cloak. Her face was pale, and her eyes were wide with a mixture of terror and an almost feral excitement.
"The garden is safe," she said, her breath hitching. "I had the girls bring the pots inside and cover the vines with hemp sacks. Every other garden in the village is black and dead this morning. The steward is calling it a miracle from the saints."
"It isn't a miracle," Thomas said, standing up. "It is just knowing. And I know a lot more than that."
Victoria closed the door and bolted it. She walked toward him, her movements no longer stiff with resentment, but fluid with purpose. She stopped inches from him, looking at his hand as if she could finally see the glow.
"You told me you found silver," she said. "You told me you could make us richer than the King."
"I can," Thomas said. "But we have to be smart. If we just start digging, we lose it. We need a reason to own that hill. We need a reason why no one else can go there."
Victoria nodded, her mind already racing. "There is a hill to the east, the one with the grey stones. It is part of the common land, but the count has been looking to sell off pieces of the outskirts to pay his debts to the crown. He thinks it is worthless because the grass is thin and the water is bitter."
Thomas checked a geological survey map he had cached. The bitter water was a sign of mineral runoff. He zoomed in on a LIDAR scan of the terrain. The signatures were unmistakable.
"The water is bitter because of what is under the ground," Thomas explained, trying to keep his voice simple. "It is not a curse. It is a sign of wealth. If we buy that hill, we own the silver. But we need to make the count think he is cheating us. We need him to think I am the fool everyone says I am."
Victoria's lips curled into a small, sharp smile. It was the first time Thomas had seen her look truly happy, though it was a happiness born of cunning.
"I can do that," she said. "I will tell him you have a madness for the hunt, and you want that hill because you saw a white hart there in a dream. I will tell him I am desperate to keep you happy so you do not spend our gold on women in the city. He will think he is taking advantage of a desperate wife and a soft-headed husband."
She reached out and, for the first time, she took his hand. Not the empty palm, but his wrist, holding it firmly. Her skin was cold, but her grip was like iron.
"But Thomas," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "If we do this, there is no going back. If people find out about your invisible glass, they will kill us. If the count finds out we lied, he will hang us. From this moment on, you are not a man from the future. You are the lord of this manor, and I am your counsel. We are alone in this."
"I know," Thomas said. He looked down at her, seeing the strength beneath the heavy wool and the forced smiles. He realized that the man who had occupied this body before him had been a fool in more ways than one. He had been married to the most dangerous, capable person in the valley and had treated her like a burden.
"Then tell me," Victoria said, letting go of his wrist. "How do we get the silver out of the cold ground without a hundred men seeing it?"
Thomas pulled the phone up again. He searched for ancient mining techniques and modified them with modern physics. "We don't need a hundred men. We need ten men who are loyal, and a machine that can do the work of fifty. I will show the blacksmith how to build a pump to keep the water out, and a winch that does not break."
"The blacksmith is a drunk," Victoria noted.
"Then we will find a drunk who wants to be a rich man," Thomas countered.
Victoria nodded slowly. "I will handle the count. I will leave for his estate within the hour. While I am gone, you must play your part. Do not stare at your hand where the servants can see. Walk the fields. Speak to the steward. Be the man they expect, just for a little while longer."
As she turned to leave, Thomas felt a sudden surge of something he hadn't felt since waking up in this cold, dark world: hope. He wasn't just a victim of a freak accident anymore. He was an architect.
"Victoria," he called out.
She paused at the door.
"Thank you," he said.
She didn't smile, but the tension in her shoulders seemed to ease just a fraction. "Save your thanks for when the first bar of silver is in my hand, Thomas. Until then, just try not to get us burned at the stake."
The door closed, and Thomas was left alone with his invisible screen. He looked at the map of the hill, the red vein of the silver deposit shimmering over the medieval landscape. He had a wife he barely knew, a body that wasn't his, and a world that wanted to kill him for the very things that would save it.
He swiped to a new tab and began to search: How to build a defensive fortification using 12th-century stone.