The Time Roads (6 page)

“If I could fly to the stars, I would,” he told me, in one of our rare moments of intimacy.

“But would you fly back?” I said, more to myself than to Breandan.

He shifted around and grasped my face with both hands. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, I would.”

To my shame and regret, I could not find the words to reply.

He must have read my thoughts from my face, because he smiled unhappily, gave me a hurried kiss, and rose to begin his day. By the time I had bathed and dressed, he had disappeared into his laboratory. The servants brought me fresh tea and warm bread, while I reviewed my schedule, but my thoughts were scattered between my obligations as queen and those last moments with Breandan Ó Cuilinn, and in the end, I pushed aside my breakfast only half consumed.

(He loves me. I had not expected that.)

(And you do not love him in return.)

A loud rapping at the door broke into my thoughts. Even as I rose to my feet, Aidrean Ó Deághaidh burst into the room. He stopped, one hand braced against the door frame. He stared at me, his face so blank of emotion that I was immediately afraid. “Your Majesty. There’s been another murder. In Awveline City. Lord Ó Cadhla’s daughter.”

I dropped back into my chair. “Lord Ó Cadhla’s daughter. When? How?”

“Word came just half an hour ago,” he said. “By telegraph from the Garda in Awveline City. They believe it is the same murderer as before.” In a softer voice, he added, “A groundskeeper found her body at dawn, near the commons. The report is … ugly.”

My stomach gave a sickening lurch. I had read the detailed reports of those earlier murders. “Where is Lord Ó Cadhla?”

“In his rooms.”

With Aidrean following close behind, I ran to Lord Ó Cadhla’s rooms. Though it was a warm September day, servants had lit a fire and drawn the curtains. Only a single gaslight burned here, its pale yellow light hardly penetrating the gloom. Lord Ó Cadhla sat limply in one chair, his chin against his chest, his arms flung to either side.

Like a dead man,
I thought.

I knelt at Lord Ó Cadhla’s feet. A pang of relief shot through me when I saw the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

And yet, there was death in the room.

“Lord Ó Cadhla,” I said.

No response.

“Lord Ó Cadhla,” I said again. “Whatever it takes to find that murderer, I swear I shall order it done. By Christ’s mercy, by the blood I drank upon my coronation. Do you hear me? I am sending Commander Ó Deághaidh to lead the investigation.”

Lord Ó Cadhla raised his head slowly. “Your Majesty,” he whispered. With an obvious effort, he lifted his gaze to Aidrean Ó Deághaidh. “They tell me a lunatic murdered my daughter, Commander Ó Deághaidh,” he said. “A madman.” Then he gave himself a shake, and I saw a shadow of his old self. His eyes narrowed. “Find him, Commander. Find him and bring him to justice.”

“I promise, my lord.”

Aidrean Ó Deághaidh left at once. I canceled all my other appointments that I might stay with Lord Ó Cadhla until his wife and other children arrived from their estates. Later, my secretary and I wrote carefully worded announcements about the tragedy, making certain to emphasize that a senior officer of the Queen’s Constabulary would oversee the case until it was solved and justice achieved. Thereafter followed a dozen or more meetings with my other councilors and ministers—with Lord Ó Breislin to discuss who would handle Lord Ó Cadhla’s responsibilities in the interim, with Lord Ultach’s senior aide, Lord Alastar De Paor, to discuss the possibility of a terrorist connection.

Hours later, exhausted, I returned to my chambers and sank into the nearest chair. Servants had left a tray of covered dishes on the table with bread and soup. A carafe held chilled water flavored with crushed mint. I poured a glass of water and drank it off. Though I had no appetite, I forced myself to eat. The day was not even close to ending.

I drank more water, then cup after cup of hot tea, until my head cleared. Only then did I notice the bells ringing noon. Odd, surely it had to be almost sunset by now. But no, the sun hung high in the sky, a blurred disc behind a veil of clouds. Nothing had changed in this room—not the elegant furnishings, nor the scent of roses and autumn wildflowers—and yet, the taint of death had invaded here, as well.

I wish Aidrean were here.

But he was not. He was already in Awveline City, by my command, searching for Maeve Ní Cadhla’s murderer.

My hand fumbled for the bell—I thought Breandan might spare an hour from his work, and I badly wanted his company. For once, his inattention to state matters would prove a relief. The movement dislodged an envelope left upon the table. I saw Breandan’s handwriting and my name. I snatched it up.

Áine, my love. Do not be surprised by my seeming disappearance today. If all goes well with my experiment, you will see the firmest, finest proof of my long research within the week …

I hardly comprehended the rest of his letter. Something about the roads of time, of braving the perils before all the other scientists. Of gratitude. Of love. I knew not what else, because I dropped the letter onto the floor and raced toward the windows. Only now did I remember his talking about the appearance of new time fractures between Awveline City and Osraighe, and the last fine day of the year.

His balloon, I thought. It was large enough to carry his machine.

“Breandan!”

I flung open the windows. The golden towers and spires of Cill Cannig spread out before me, below a green garden bordered by summer roses. My gaze took that all in, then snapped upward to the skies. Yes, there, between the tallest towers was an expanse of gray clouds. And against that expanse, a bright red sphere, glorious and huge.

Already the sphere was shrinking as the balloon climbed higher into the skies. I could not move, could hardly breathe. Higher. Higher. Now the sphere was little more than a dot, wreathed in clouds and nearly invisible, and yet I could not look away.

Breandan, I hope—

The dot vanished. A bright flare of fire burst out, smearing my vision. I blinked.

The skies were empty. In the distance a plume of smoke rose up from the hills.

*   *   *

There is little to tell about the next few weeks—or rather, very little of those weeks remains true.

That sounds mad, I know. Let me attempt to explain.

It took several days to recover all the wreckage from Breandan’s balloon. The fall had shattered the carriage into pieces, which were strewn over the countryside. From what the Queen’s Constabulary could determine, the fire came first, then the explosion of the oxygen tanks. Nothing remained of Breandan’s golden octopus but a charred ruin. And of Breandan himself, nothing at all.

The Constabulary and Garda searched for ten days; they found no sign of body or bones.

That night I called for two bottles of wine and dismissed all my servants early. I drank until the fire burned low and cold nipped at my skin through the layers of my woolen robes. Once, around midnight, I nearly summoned my secretary, so that he might send a telegraph to Aidrean Ó Deághaidh. But that, I knew, would have been a terrible mistake. Aidrean would refuse to abandon his murder investigation simply to comfort me. He had his pride, and his sense of duty.

As had I.

And so I left off drinking and retreated to bed, where I fell into a restless slumber. My dreams consisted of scattered images of the past five years—of my first interview with Aidrean Ó Deághaidh, of the golden octopus and its leavings of iron dust, of Breandan’s face, illuminated with joy as he placed the miniature balloon into his new gigantic machine. Of Lord Ó Cadhla, as limp as a puppet, after hearing of his daughter’s brutal murder.

I woke just before dawn to the rattle of wind against my windows. It was a cold gray October morning. The skies wept with rain. One of the maids had left a window partially open, and a current of air blew through the room, carrying with it the scent of moldering leaves. My head aching from the wine, I stumbled toward the window to shut it. I paused and blinked to clear my vision. Below me, Cill Cannig looked as it always did in autumn. Copper-brown leaves whirled about. The trees stood stark and black against the dull gray skies. All around, I had the sense of a world, dying, dying into winter.

(Though all our gods and saints taught us that resurrection was our right.)

Now. I have attempted to describe in writing the next moments several times over. None of them fit what I remember. Though “remember” itself is a tenuous concept.

So. Let me just tell the story.

It was a cold, wet October dawn. I was standing by the window, as I said. This early in the day, the world seemed empty of human life, except for a few curls of smoke rising from a nearby chimney. And I, I was wishing I could undo parts of the last few weeks. Or months. Or years.

Then, of a sudden, a wrenching pain took me. My vision wavered and blurred.
The wine,
I thought confusedly, gripping the windowsill to keep my balance.

But it was not the wine. By will alone, I stared until my stomach calmed and the landscape steadied before me. It was an ordinary dawn, with smudges of saffron and indigo against the dull dark sky, the thin scarlet line running across the horizon. Ordinary, but unsettled, as though an earthquake shook my perception. I stared harder. There, in the distance, the clouds roiled. Again my stomach lurched, as though I stood aboard a plunging airship. The clouds narrowed into a funnel that raced toward me.…

Hours later, I came to, lying on the floor of my bedchamber. All I could remember was a terrible dream about the world tipping into chaos. A bruise over my left eye told me I’d fallen, but when my maid arrived, they could not remember anything of that eerie dawn. Indeed, they had difficulty pinning down memories of the previous day or even the week before.

More strangeness followed. Lord Ó Cadhla appeared at midmorning to report a peculiar incident. Commander Aidrean Ó Deághaidh had collapsed in Awveline City in a fit of madness. Of course the Garda there had taken custody of the man, and had him sequestered at once in Aonach Sanitarium, but it was odd that neither I nor Lord Ó Cadhla could remember why I had sent him away from Court.

If I had.

Part of me remembered a terrible tragedy, but the details refused to come into focus. Another part remembered a different tragedy, but that one too eluded remembrance. As the days melted away, I stopped struggling to recall anything from the past six months. It was enough to ensure that Commander Ó Deághaidh received the best care, and to plan his eventual return to the Queen’s Constabulary. (Though, to be sure, the doctors at Aonach Sanitarium were not sanguine.)

Those were the days of confusion, as I called them.

Now to explain how I remembered what had never been.

(Or rather it had been. Once. In a different world.)

It was a bright, cold November day. For once, I had an hour of leisure from my duties. A restlessness overtook me, and so, trailed by my guards, I wandered far from my usual paths, away from the public galleries and audience halls, through a series of ever-narrower corridors into an unused wing of the palace, and to a pair of high metal doors, with a heavy bar across them. My curiosity piqued, I ordered my guards to remove the bar. Leaving them behind, I entered the vast chamber that lay beyond.

Inside, it was dark and empty. A puff of stale air met my face, laden with the scent of something old and forgotten. Memory pricked at me.

We had lately added electric illumination to the palace. I pressed the switch, and light flooded the room.

It was empty—a cavern filled with dust and shadows. But my skin itched, and I took another few steps forward. My first impression was not entirely correct. Off to one side, empty shelves stretched from floor to ceiling. And there, in the nearest corner, a few scraps of crumpled paper, also coated with dust, were scattered about, as though someone had tossed them aside years before. Ahead of me, however, the room stretched unimpeded by any obstacles. It was amazing, I thought, that such an enormous space could exist within Cill Cannig without me knowing it.…

It was then I saw a pale square of light, as though someone had focused a lantern onto the tiled floor. I bent down to inspect it.

The air shimmered. Startled, I plucked back my hand.

And stopped.

There, in the center of that patch of light, lay a miniature balloon and a pile of loose papers. The balloon had once been an exquisite work of art, I saw at once, constructed of gold and silver and set with tiny ruby and emerald jewels on the jet-black basket and over the perfect red sphere of the balloon itself. But the wires connecting the balloon to its basket were bent, and the carriage itself was misshapen, as though someone had set the object too close to a hot fire.

I set the balloon aside and took up the papers, which were even stranger. They looked as though they had been sewn into a book, but the edges near the binding were torn, and the rest had turned brown, obscuring the rows and rows of neat handwriting. Curious, I picked up the top page.

June 18th, 1900. Cill Cannig, Osraighe. To Áine Lasairíona Devereaux, Queen of Éire, and my patron and benefactress in these investigations into the nature of the future …

An electric shock traveled through me. I snatched up another page. Here were formulas and schematics for a strange machine, one that resembled nothing I had ever seen before.

Except I had.

I read on, with each paragraph offering another of those electric shocks. The pages were from a journal, written by a scientist detailing his research. It was all fantastic, and yet, not entirely so. As I read about balloons and time travel, about batteries and energy sources based upon work from scientists in Mexica and the Dietsch Empire, I recognized terms from my father’s discourses about philosophy, about a certain young scientist with theories about time fractures and travel between the present and the future.…

Time fractures.

I released a long-held breath.