“Síomón? Is that you, Síomón?”
Síomón twitched and spun around. He saw her as a stranger might, a fair young woman, so lean that her bones seemed visible through her skin, her hair a tumble of gold, her eyes like the bluest of summer skies. She took another few steps toward him and spoke again, but all Síomón could think was that her skin must be warm to the touch. He wanted, needed that warmth, more than he could express. With an inarticulate cry, he rushed toward the young woman and tore at her clothes. She fought back, tearing at his face with her nails, but he was stronger than she was.…
Gwen. Oh dear God and Mhuire and Gaia. What have I done?
When he came to, he was stumbling along a muddy path. Stars winked overhead between the budding trees, and a heavy watery scent filled the air. He was cold. Hungry. Terrified and bruised. Someone had attacked him. Síomón had fought off the man and snatched away his knife. What came next was unclear. He only remembered that he came across a different man, walking alone by the river. Memory flickered. He recognized Paul Keller. Must stop Paul. Must.
He blinked and saw a knife flashing through the darkness. He blinked again, and a woman’s shriek reverberated in his skull.
No!
He opened his eyes, the word still echoing in his ears. For a moment, he could not focus on his surroundings. Gradually he took in scattered details.
Crows taking flight overhead. The craggy trunks of the oak trees. The gamekeeper’s hut. The scent of wood smoke and approaching snow. Leaves crackled in the distance. Someone was coming.
“Síomón? Is that you, Síomón?”
Gwen.
Lines radiated from the point where he stood, shimmering in the cold clear winter light. He saw himself walking toward Gwen, in three, four, a dozen directions. One future to invent a new machine so that he and others might travel through time. One to …
“One to heal,” he whispered. He glanced up, and across the wavering lines of the future, he saw a solitary red balloon, gliding through the gray skies. Síomón’s fingers closed over the knife hilt. He set the blade against his throat.
“One,” he whispered. “Exponent one. Minus…” His hand shook. “Minus one.”
A quick strong movement.
A spray of blood.
0
* * *
Síomón. Where are you, Síomón?
Here. Oh, Gwen, I nearly lost you. I nearly lost myself.
Hush. It’s all right. I’m glad you came back from the university. I have some new equations to show you.
But Gwen, we have to be careful—
Yes, my love, I know that now. Come with me.
She took him by the hand and led him along the woodland path.
ARS MEMORIAE
APRIL 1904
Years ago, during his mathematical studies—studies broken off, or discarded, he no longer knew which—Aidrean Ó Deághaidh had proposed certain theories involving time and its equations. The modern scholars were wrong, he declared, when they talked about measuring time in discrete units. The ancient philosophers had touched closer to the truth when they described time as a continuous ether, its flow rising and falling like a river’s current.
Ah, but I was wrong, too, he thought. Time was like sunlight pouring in all directions, susceptible to prisms and mirrors, or even a child’s hand.
An automobile horn bleated in the streets below, penetrating the leaded windows of Doctor Loisg’s private study. Off in one corner, a grandfather clock ticked away the seconds, its muffled rhythm a counterpoint to Loisg, who spoke in hushed tones about trauma and its effect upon memory. It was an old topic—one they had often discussed over the past year.
“Commander Ó Deághaidh? Are you well?”
Loisg was studying Ó Deághaidh closely, a look of mild concern on his fair round face.
“My apologies,” Ó Deághaidh said with a smile. “My attention wandered. You were asking?”
“About your dreams, Commander. Specifically, the nightmares.”
You asked about them last week, Ó Deághaidh thought. And the week before.
He was being unreasonable, he knew. Loisg was an expert in disorders of the mind. More important, Loisg had treated Ó Deághaidh since the beginning of his illness, when nightmares had consumed his life, and they had needed restraints and strong sedatives to conduct these sessions. Loisg did not repeat these questions from mere curiosity.
And so Ó Deághaidh dutifully answered him. Yes, the nightmares had stopped entirely. No more violent, bloody images broke his sleep, and he was no longer plagued by a sense of vertigo, as though reality had shifted beneath his feet. Throughout, the clock ticked on, dividing time into miniscule bits that dropped away into the past.
The clock’s machinery whirred; chimes sounded the hour. Loisg finished off a last note and smiled. “Once more, we are at the end of our session, Commander Ó Deághaidh. Until next week?”
Ó Deághaidh stood and smoothed out his frock coat. “Until next week, certainly.”
There must have been something amiss in his tone, because Loisg glanced up sharply. “And yet you do not sound so certain yourself. Is something wrong, Commander?”
Careful, Ó Deághaidh thought. He is a clever man. “Nothing, Doctor Loisg. Why?”
The doctor’s pale eyes narrowed. He appeared about to ask him more, but then shook his head. “We can talk about it later,” he said, half to himself. Ó Deághaidh did not disabuse him of the idea.
Outside, it was a brisk, cold day, and gusts of wind carried along the scents of wet earth and melting snow. A tall hedge screened the house and its gardens from the boulevard. A walkway led off to one side to a private lane, also sheltered from view. It was all very discreet, but then Doctor Loisg treated many wealthy patients in Awveline City.
Ó Deághaidh glanced at his pocket watch—ten o’clock. Over an hour remained until his train departed. He decided to walk to the station. As he emerged from the lane onto Tulach Mhór Street, his eye caught on Aonach Sanitarium, a high, handsome building, which stood on a rise overlooking the boulevard. Ó Deághaidh shuddered, remembering its stark corridors, the terror no amount of drugs or electricity could banish.
That was one set of memories. He also remembered the sanitarium from a different perspective, as a representative of the Queen’s Constabulary seeking clues to a murder.
Both were true. Both were subject to time’s distortions.
Why did I lie to Loisg? he wondered.
A profitless question. One might as well ask why he remembered a past that did not exist.
He crossed the boulevard, threading his way between the automobiles and horse-drawn carriages, to a pathway that led through a pleasant green park and down to the Blackwater River. It was against Loisg’s warnings about indulging in false memories—it was against his own instincts—to walk beside that river.
I’ve changed, he thought, as he turned into the park.
* * *
Once more, he stood in the examining room. Once more, all the details were wrong. He clearly remembered the telegraph had come shortly after sunrise. He could not have arrived in Awveline City before midmorning, and yet before him lay a room washed in moonlight, all colors faded to black and gray.
A stark, silent room, bereft of scent and movement and life.
In the center of this emptiness stood a single, raised pallet, draped in a coarse white sheet. Ó Deághaidh drew the cloth back and felt an involuntary shock, like a fist thrust into his gut, even though he had known what to expect. The assailant had strangled his victim first, then slashed her face with a knife. The indentation of the man’s fingers around her throat stood out livid against the young woman’s gray skin.
“Her name was Maeve Ní Cadhla,” the medical examiner said. “Lord Ó Cadhla’s youngest daughter.”
* * *
The concierge knocked on the compartment door. “Ten minutes to Osraighe Station, sir.”
Ó Deághaidh drank down the last of his tea
and glanced over the papers in his lap—reports from the Queen’s Constabulary, which had arrived by royal courier the day before. They were incomplete, which piqued his curiosity. Or rather, they were carefully edited summaries of what had to be longer, more detailed accounts from agents in the field. Still, they proved a good introduction to the current situation throughout Europe, western Asia, and the Mediterranean colonies.
… Frankonia’s king facing opposition within his council from those who favor a partnership with the Prussian Alliance …
… sources from the Turkish States confirm the official heir’s recent death was the latest in a series of assassinations conducted between Koptic and Muslim factions …
… Serbia appears to be maneuvering to take control over the Balkan States. Austria still maintains its sovereignty over Hungary, Slovakia, and portions of Croatia, but we have reports of Serbian militia units engaging with Austrian troops in the eastern provinces, while Montenegro’s Prince Danilo II continues to press for kingship …
Delicate times, Ó Deághaidh thought. Especially for a prominent nation like Éire, which had to negotiate a careful path between these many conflicts. He stowed the reports in the case at his feet, then touched a hand to his coat to reassure himself, once more, that the envelope was there. The queen’s personal courier had delivered the packet and letter to Ó Deághaidh late the night before.
Do not fail me, Aidrean, she had added at the end.
But I have failed you before, he thought. Or had he?
Doubts continued to pursue him for the next hour, as he made his way out of Osraighe’s busy train station and summoned a cab to the palace. It seemed, if he could trust his recollections, that more guards patrolled the grounds outside Cill Cannig, and the sentries examined his papers more closely. A pair of runners escorted him from the gates to a suite of rooms within the Royal Enclosure. He noted that they glanced him over as soldiers might, and that they carried weapons, some obvious and some hidden.
Servants had already fetched his trunks from the station and laid out his clothes. There was a valet assigned to him, but Ó Deághaidh dismissed the man. He wanted a few moments alone before he faced his queen and her ministers.
He washed his face, changed into a new gray suit, and brushed his hair smooth. The mirror showed him a thin brown face, made sharper and thinner still from the events of the past eighteen months. Well, he could not help that.
The same runners waited outside to escort Ó Deághaidh to the audience chamber. It was one of the smaller rooms in this wing of the Enclosure, long and narrow, with windows set high in the walls. Below, a series of portraits alternated with centuries-old tapestries depicting Éire’s rise from Roman colony to independent kingdom to empire. Ó Deághaidh recognized the queen’s coronation portrait among those of her ancestors.
One person had arrived already and sat at the far end of the table—a middle-aged man in a dark blue suit, with iron-gray hair swept back in waves. Lord Ó Cadhla.
Ó Deághaidh paused.
Lord Ó Cadhla’s eyes were like dark bruises against his paper-white skin. He had wept in private, of course. Like all the men of his generation, he would display his grief to no one outside his family. Perhaps not even to them.
They tell me a lunatic murdered my daughter, Commander Ó Deághaidh. Find him.
I promise, my lord.
Ó Deághaidh blew out a breath. There was no help for it. He would have to face these false memories as they came. “My Lord Ó Cadhla.”
Ó Cadhla glanced up. For a moment, his face went still. Surprise? Dismay? The change in expression was so brief Ó Deághaidh could almost believe he’d imagined it, because the next moment, Ó Cadhla was on his feet. “Commander Ó Deághaidh. I had not heard you would be present at this meeting. I am … I am so very glad to see you.”
And he was glad. Ó Deághaidh could hear it in his voice. At the same time, there was that moment of unmistakable surprise.
You did not tell anyone about me, did you, Your Majesty?
Another clue, which did nothing to lessen Ó Deághaidh’s uneasiness.
Ó Cadhla was gesturing toward the chair next to him. “Come. Sit. The others should arrive momentarily—ah, and so they do. Mac Gioll, your watch runs in order these days.”
Lord Mac Gioll, a bent old man, limped into the room. He nodded at Ó Deághaidh in passing and lowered himself into a chair. “That jest was a weak jest twenty years ago, Ó Cadhla. And time does not improve its quality. Nor my humor.” He scowled. “I hope our beloved queen doesn’t have a mind to keep us here all afternoon.”
Mac Gioll’s entrance must have signaled the servants, because six liveried men appeared with silver tea carafes, crystal water pitchers, glasses etched with falling leaves, and delicate porcelain cups painted in the Oriental fashion. Lord Mac Gioll continued to grumble until he held a teacup in his trembling hands. “Much better. Can’t think when I’m soaked to the bones with cold.”
“It’s age,” Ó Cadhla offered. “Comes to us all.”
“Damn the age. I don’t like it. Neither do you.”
Ó Cadhla tilted his hand, as though to agree. “How does Lady Mhic Gioll?”
Ó Deághaidh took a seat several chairs down from the two men, grateful to be ignored as they chatted about family, their respective estates, the likelihood of good hunting come autumn. Two episodes within the day. Two moments revisiting a past that had never existed. Willing his hands to remain steady, he poured himself a cup of tea and drank, while Ó Cadhla went on to speak complacently about his daughter Maeve, who had just received a second degree with honors in mathematics.
“To what purpose?” Mac Gioll asked. “Damned fine accomplishment, to be sure, but what does she mean to do?”
Ó Cadhla for once appeared uncertain. “She hasn’t said definitely. She’s spending the summer with the family, naturally. After that, she mentioned taking a position in some new institute, run by that Síomón Madóc fellow and his sister. There’s talk about a new physics. New everything. I could not follow the subject, though it pains me to admit it.”
More names from the past. Ó Deághaidh closed his eyes against the vertigo. Maeve Ní Cadhla had lived—lived and prospered. Why should that be such a terrible thought?
An influx of voices recalled him. Servants and pages swept into the room, followed immediately by three more lords, their secretaries and aides. Then the chaos subsided as the Queen of Éire entered and everyone rose to their feet.
Áine Lasairíona Devereaux.
Ó Deághaidh drew a sharp breath and felt his pulse beat fast and strong. She was unchanged from when he last saw her. And yet the years had transformed her entirely.
He remembered a young woman dressed in silks and jewels, her finery a symbol of her office, she had once told him. The woman today wore no gems except a narrow gold circlet for her crown. Her gown swept in straight lines to the floor; her blood-red hair was pulled back smooth and tight over her skull. She was not beautiful, not in the conventional sense—she had inherited her father’s strong jaw and arched nose—but Ó Deághaidh thought her so. He saw traces of anxiety in her face, and the way her mouth tensed as she spoke to her secretary, before she turned to face her ministers.
“My lords. Commander Ó Deághaidh.”
Lord Ó Cadhla bowed. “Your Majesty. We are at your service.”
“Then let us begin.”
She waited until the secretary had cleared the room and they were all settled. “You will have read the initial reports concerning the situation in Europe,” the queen said. “I have invited Commander Ó Deághaidh to join us because I believe the affair is more complicated than we first suspected. One where Commander Ó Deághaidh’s long and varied experience will prove useful to Éire.”
Ó Deághaidh observed the reactions around the table. Polite. Wary. Interested. Understandable if they knew his recent past, and as members of Éire’s Court and Council, they would. In turn he studied the men who now served as
ministers to the queen. Mac Gioll, Ó Cadhla, and Ó Breislin had been appointed by the old king. Ó Deághaidh remembered them well. They were solid, experienced men. Lord Alastar De Paor and Lord Greagoir Ó Luain were relative newcomers; he knew them only by name and reputation. There were other ministers, other advisers, but these five men occupied the innermost council.
“So you believe the crisis is greater than we first thought, Your Majesty?” Mac Gioll said.
The queen nodded. “The Balkan situation grows more troublesome. To be sure, the Balkans are nothing but troublesome, but I’ve lately received reports of certain events that appear to concern us directly.”
“How so?” said Lord De Paor. “And you say Commander Ó Deághaidh has experience in this region?”
“Indirectly,” Ó Deághaidh said. “I spent two years at the University of Vienna. My field was mathematics, but I also dabbled in languages and politics—or rather, political science. One does, abroad. Afterward, I traveled throughout the region, before I returned to Éire.”
“A most complete education,” De Paor said. “I had not realized it.”
There was the hint of a smile beneath the man’s polite expression. Ó Deághaidh turned to the queen, whose face was more difficult to read. “Your Majesty. You honor me by inviting me to your council, but if I might be blunt, I do not see the reason for it.”
“Nor do I,” Lord Ó Cadhla said. “Unless you have new information which you have not shared with us.”
The queen’s gaze skipped from one minister to another, the silence broken only by the scratch, scratch, scratch of the secretary’s pen. Did she trust no one? Ó Deághaidh wondered, as he studied her face. There were shadows beneath her eyes, clear signs of a sleepless night.
“I do,” she said at last. “Three very disturbing reports arrived here last Friday. It appears the Austrians have arranged a meeting between their own prince and Montenegro’s, as well as certain of his advisers.”
“What of it?” De Paor said. “A local matter.”
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