Síomón started. “Why, sir?”
“Let us call it a break in habit. Mathematics requires a suppleness of mind, and I hope to regain a certain flexibility, shall we say.” He shot Síomón a sharp glance. “Are you worried about your studies?”
“I hardly know, sir.”
Ó Dónaill nodded. “You are though. I can see it. However, do not fret. As I said, I’m taking a sabbatical, but I shan’t disappear from the university.”
He moved a heap of papers to one side of his desk. They contained rows and rows of calculations, Síomón noticed, as he glanced over them. Then his skin went cold as he recognized the complicated formulae. He had presented these same ones to Ó Dónaill the previous semester.
And he’d rejected them.
He glanced up to see Ó Dónaill studying him.
“How goes your research?” Ó Dónaill said.
“It goes … with difficulty, sir.”
“I warned you about that.”
“You did, sir.”
Síomón took another sip of coffee. He wondered if Ó Dónaill would admit to reviewing Síomón’s work, but the professor’s next comment was about a new monograph from a Frankish mathematician that had caused a stir. They discussed the theory a while. When Síomón finished his coffee, Ó Dónaill offered him more, but Síomón politely declined.
“Then I must beg your indulgence and bid you good day,” Ó Dónaill said. “I’ve stumbled upon an interesting line of research and would like to mark good progress before the day ends. But do come again, especially if you have questions concerning your research. I would not like it said that I abandoned my students. And speaking of that, I meant to ask before—how goes it with your sister?”
Síomón’s stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch at this change in topic. “Not well, sir. But the doctors are hopeful.”
Ó Dónaill shook his head. “Then we must hope, but it grieves me to see such promise lost.”
Their interview trailed off into commonplace exchanges, and Ó Dónaill’s repeated assurances that Síomón should not hesitate to come again if he had questions. Síomón descended the stairs, more dissatisfied with himself than before.
He took a footpath to the nearest gates, which opened onto Gúilidhe Square, a wide expanse paved with gray cobblestones, and fountains in each of the four corners. In the past two hours, the chill had vanished from the air, the sun had already burned away the fog, and the sky overhead had cleared to a pale blue, speckled with clouds. Here, outside the university grounds, motorcars and carriages choked the avenues bordering the plaza. The world in general appeared oblivious to the murders.
Síomón threaded his way directly across the square. He had just gained the northern edge, when a boy in a shabby coat thrust a newssheet at Síomón. “News! News of the day! Death in high places. Scandal in the capital.” Then as Simon shook his head, he added, “Just ten penny, sir.”
With a muttered curse for the boy’s persistence, Síomón paid the boy and stuffed the newssheet into his pocket. He had to get away from the traffic and the noise. As soon as he could break free, he hailed a cab.
“To Aonach Sanitarium,” he said, climbing inside the first one that approached.
“Right, sir.”
The cabbie maneuvered his horses and cab into the thoroughfare leading away from the square. Síomón settled back and pulled the newssheet from his pocket.
SENSATION IN COURT, read the headlines. Doctor Breandan Reid Ó Cuilinn, a renowned scientist and the queen’s favorite, had plunged to his death from a balloon during an experiment. The cause for the balloon’s malfunction remained uncertain. The Queen’s Constabulary was conducting a thorough examination of the incident.
The rest of the article disappeared into hyperbole and incoherent smudges. This has nothing to do with me, Síomón thought, but he found his pulse beating faster at the mention of the Queen’s Constabulary. He crumpled the paper in his hand and looked out the cab’s window. As though to confirm the news, a line of blue messenger balloons glided north toward the capital in Osraighe and Cill Cannig. Aidrean Ó Deághaidh. A strangely unsettling man. Why had he quit his studies in mathematics? Did he regret working on this case of Awveline’s murdered students and not that of the queen’s lover?
The cab stopped abruptly. The cabbie swore. Ahead, voices rose in complaint, and someone shouted about a blockage. Síomón leaned out the window and saw a long motorcade creeping through the intersection ahead. Small pennants lined one automobile’s roof—the mark of a visiting dignitary.
Lord Ó Cadhla.
He drew back into the cab, feeling ill. Maeve’s father must have arrived by train that morning. Death in high places, indeed.
The noon bells rang, and still the traffic did not move. Síomón glanced at the newssheet, but he no longer had any desire to read about Court gossip. He stuffed the paper into his jacket pocket and closed his eyes to wait. The closed cab smelled strongly of sweat, old leather, and horse—it reminded him of the stables at home. Soon he was dozing and hardly noticed when the last vehicles in the motorcade passed by, and the lines of traffic oozed into motion.
He stood on a high peak, his gaze turned upward. Night had fallen. Glittering digits, like pinpricks of fire, stippled the dark skies. Síomón tilted back his head, trying to take in the entire number …
“Aonach Sanitarium,” bawled the cabbie, rapping against the cab’s roof.
Síomón jolted awake. Still groggy, he paid the cabbie and dealt with the gate guards. By the time he reached the main building, his head had cleared.
His visit was unexpected, however, and there was a delay before Doctor Loisg arrived in the lobby. The man frowned, obviously unhappy to see Síomón.
“Mr. Madóc. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but today is not your regular day. I’m not certain we can accommodate you.”
“I understand,” Síomón replied. “However, you’ve said more than once my visits are helpful. Is there a reason why I should not see my sister?”
Loisg frowned again. “I did say that. But she spent a somewhat restless night.…”
“Indulge me this once,” Síomón said. “I promise not to distress her.”
The other man studied him a long moment, his round face uncharacteristically pensive. “Perhaps you are right,” he said at last. “Come with me.”
He dispatched a crew of orderlies to prepare Gwen Madóc for her visit, while he and Síomón followed at a much slower pace. He described the changes in Gwen’s behavior over the past day. She had left off reciting numbers, he said, his voice curiously distressed. She either wept or sat in dull silence, and when Loisg attempted to soothe her, she had struck him.
“We’ve installed an observation window,” Loisg told Síomón. “So that we can watch without your sister being aware. Just a precaution, you understand. Do you object?”
They had arrived at the third floor, to the visitation room itself. Síomón paused and searched Loisg’s face, but found only a doctor’s reasonable concern. “No. Not really.”
Loisg unlocked the room. Síomón proceeded alone. As always, he felt a jump of panic when the door closed behind him, and he heard the audible click of the lock.
Gwen sat underneath the windows, hands circling through the air as she murmured her numbers. She wore a simple, loose-fitting dress today, instead of her usual hospital gown, and someone had brushed and plaited her long fair hair. She appeared content, or at least absorbed, with no sign of the violence Loisg had described.
He scanned the room, noting the small observation window at the far end. No doubt Loisg was already stationed there, along with his orderlies. Telling himself that he had nothing to hide, and certainly not from his sister’s caretakers, Síomón eased around to a point opposite Gwen and lowered himself to the floor. Gwen seemed oblivious to his presence. She continued to gesture in those strange rhythmic patterns, her long fingers catching and stroking the air, as though weaving strands of light. “Seven,” she whispe
red. “Seven and thirteen and seventeen.”
She had returned to the early stages of her illness, when she recited only the simplest primes. He even recognized the old intensity in her whisper, as though her numbers represented words in a different language.…
Síomón’s skin prickled as he made the connection at last.
“Seven,” he said, when she paused. “That’s when our parents died.”
Gwen trembled, but did not look in his direction. “Thirteen. Seventeen.”
He remembered thirteen, when their uncle arranged a meeting with Glasfryn from Awveline University. Seven and thirteen. These were dates burned into Gwen’s memory, which even madness could not eradicate. But seventeen?
He glanced toward the observation window. Witnesses be damned, he thought and crossed the room to Gwen’s side. Gwen stiffened, her jaw working in sudden alarm. Síomón stopped a few paces away and knelt so that his face was level with hers.
“Nineteen,” he said softly.
Her eyes widened slightly. Síomón waited, hardly daring to breathe. His patience was rewarded when, at last, she whispered, “Twenty-nine.”
Keeping his voice calm, he repeated the number.
Again, he had another long wait before Gwen spoke. “Thirty-one,” she whispered. “Thirty-seven.”
Síomón drew a pencil and the newssheet from his jacket pocket. Gwen immediately tensed. He waited, motionless, until she calmed.
This time, he initiated the exchange. “Seven.”
“Thirteen.”
“Seventeen.”
They repeated the sequence, Síomón writing down each number in the margins and empty spaces.
“… Thirty-seven. Forty-one. Forty-three.”
The third time through the sequence, Gwen stirred restlessly, her gaze flickering from Síomón’s paper to his face, as though she expected something more. He tried repeating the numbers, but she struck the pencil from his hands. Before he could soothe her, the attendants arrived and led an unusually pliant Gwen away.
Loisg escorted Síomón to the lobby in uncharacteristic silence. “You were right to come, sir,” he said, when they arrived at the front doors. “Quite right. We have made true progress today, you and I and your sister. Kindness—that is the key to your sister’s illness.”
Only part of the solution, Síomón thought as he walked along the sanitarium’s winding paths, between the stately trees and their rain of falling leaves. The true key was written on the sheet of newsprint in his pocket.
* * *
That night Síomón pored over Gwen’s numbers. He started by working through a series of basic formulae, each designed to expose any underlying patterns. When these proved fruitless, he applied the newer analysis methods discussed in academic journals. No success. Finally, on a decision based midway between frustration and whimsy, he turned to more fantastical methods—Lîvod’s color theories, Frankonia’s exploration into the electrical properties of numbers, the latest research from Egypt, Iran, and the Gujarat Empire.
Seven. Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-nine. Thirty-one. Thirty-seven. Forty-one. Forty-three.
He found himself doodling numbers on his scrap paper—huge numbers interspersed with smaller ones. Their pattern echoed Gwen’s patterns and recalled his dream of numbers burning like stars across the night. Numbers whose voices sang to him, the notes changing as he transformed them through calculations.
He had Garret brew a pot of strong tea, then requested privacy for the evening. Garret, ever deferential, withdrew to his own room.
Síomón pulled out a well-thumbed primer on mathematical history. He skimmed the sections on Pythagoras, with his belief in mystical properties; on Fermat and his seemingly logical theory on primes, which had proved false; on Fermat’s correspondent, the monk-conjurer Mersenne, and Euclid, who had posited that the list of primes was infinite, and therefore led to immortality.
I wanted my name written in the same list, Síomón thought as he turned the page. An arrogant wish, but arrogance seemed a prerequisite for mathematicians, especially those who put forth unpopular theories, such as his own. Ó Deághaidh had mocked him. Ó Dónaill had tried to discourage him, but Síomón knew the proper sequence of numbers could transform lives. He distinctly remembered …
Cold washed over him. Slowly, he laid down his lead stick and stared at the open book on his desk. The scrap paper was gone—possibly now another crumpled ball upon the floor. Instead, the once-empty margins of his book were decorated with a tapestry of miniscule numbers. When had he written them?
He reached out to shut the book. Paper crackled inside his breast pocket. Síomón stopped, hand hovering over his desk. He’d emptied all his pockets before the assembly—he was certain of that. Just another bit of foolscap, he told himself. He was always storing bits of paper about his person. He’d simply forgotten about this one.
He was still making excuses as he felt inside the pocket. His fingers met a rigid square—completely unlike the usual crumpled note. Hands trembling, he plucked out the object and let it fall onto his desk.
It was a thin packet of stiff brown paper, its edges sealed and one flap folded over to make an envelope. Síomón examined it, searching for any kind of mark or label to indicate what hid inside. When he flipped it over, the contents hissed. Like sand or sugar, he thought. He tore off one corner and poured out the contents onto his desk.
White powder streamed out to make a perfect pyramid. He stared at it warily. Not sugar. Definitely not sand. The grains were too fine. Where had he seen its like before?
You remember. You and Evan …
He wet his forefinger and touched the substance, making a slight dent in the pyramid’s smooth surface. After a moment’s hesitation, he transferred a miniscule amount to his tongue.
A strange taste filled his mouth, bitter and sweet at the same time. Within a moment, his tongue went numb. Cocaine. He and Evan had experimented with the drug one night, after reading texts from the addict philosophers of the previous century—another of those laughably regrettable incidents from their first year at the university. Síomón had forgotten the episode until now.
He closed his eyes. He had no memory of acquiring this substance, and yet he must have. But when?
Certain symbols have a mystical significance, Pythagoras believed. Our reality is mathematical. Our souls can rise to union with the divine.
Discounted theories from a long-dead mathematician, sometimes remembered as a genius, persecuted in his own time, whose secret society ended in bloody and violent suppression.
Seven. Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-nine. Thirty-one. Thirty-seven. Forty-one. Forty-three.
Now I remember.
* * *
The summer they turned seven, an unusual heat wave muffled County Laingford. Every breeze had died off. Even the messenger balloons appeared stranded, and the buzz from their engines set the air vibrating, as though from gargantuan mosquitoes. Síomón and Gwen spent their hours in their playroom, or in subdued conversation with their aunt and uncle, who had come to supervise them while their parents traveled on holiday on the Continent.
The news came on a Monday. That day, the skies were empty of balloons; the sun was a dull smudge against the sheets of clouds. Síomón and Gwen had retreated to the mansion’s cool cellars with boxes of colored chalk. Síomón drew a series of squares, then rectangles, then circles. Whatever came to mind.
Gwen worked more deliberately. She brushed the wall clear of grit, then laid out her pieces of chalk with care. Síomón paused from his drawing to watch as she sketched the gardens surrounding their house. It was more than just a picture—woven in between the lush foliage and graceful trees, he could pick out a three curling between the branches like a snake, a six that also looked like a ripple in the pond, a seven disguised as the gardener’s scythe.
“Síomón. Gwen.”
Gwen paused, her chalk poised above the next number. Síomón, always obedient, called back, “Down h
ere, Bríghid.”
Bríghid clattered down the stairs, her face pale and her eyes wet with tears. “Come quick, master and miss,” was all she said. With gentle hands, she laid aside Gwen’s chalk, brushed down their clothes, and smoothed their tousled hair. No time for washing their faces. It didn’t matter, she said as she led them upstairs and into the grand front parlor, before retreating with a final whispered encouragement.
Their aunt and uncle sat on the magnificent sofa where their parents so often entertained guests. With a twinge of dread, Síomón took in his uncle’s black suit, his aunt’s black veil and dress, unrelieved by any jewels.
Uncle Liam stood and held out his arms. “Síomón. Gwen. Come here.”
Síomón felt a sudden heaviness in his chest. He glanced to Gwen at his side. She too had turned immobile, and there was a frightened, frozen look on her face. Síomón fumbled for his sister’s hand. She clasped him tightly, her fingers unnaturally cold in the summer heat.
Their uncle glanced at his wife, as though puzzled how to proceed. Aunt Eilín swept her veil to one side and knelt. “Síomón. Gwen, love. I have terrible news.”
Their parents had died, she told them. The cause had been a freak accident—two balloons colliding in midair had scattered their wreckage over the train rails in the remote Italian countryside. Moments later, a train had rounded a curve, and despite the engineer’s efforts, the engine had derailed and plunged into a ravine, taking all the passenger cars with it. There had been no survivors.
“You’ll stay here, in your own home,” Aunt Eilín said. “We’ll take care of you, I promise. Your mama and papa made every provision for your upbringing.”
Síomón tried to speak, but his throat and chest hurt too much. Gwen let go of his hand and took one step forward, her pale blue eyes bright with fury. “No,” she whispered. “That’s not true. Not true. Not true. Not—”
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