The Time Roads

“When I am nearly dead myself,” I muttered.

“That would be more convenient.”

His words brought a puff of laughter to my lips. “Speak,” I told him. “You will anyway.”

“So I will,” Ó Cadhla said. “First, you must have a more competent bodyguard. Lord Ultach and his staff have vetted all the members of the Queen’s Constabulary deemed fit to protect you. And they are fit. But they are not quite so … thorough as the man I would propose.”

“A bodyguard,” I repeated. “Who…”

“Commander Aidrean Ó Deághaidh,” Ó Cadhla said. “He served as a covert agent in Austria and that region for six years. More recently, at my recommendation, he enlisted in your father’s Constabulary to acquire experience at home. I have always found him reliable.”

“You mean he is one of yours.”

He nodded. “One of mine.”

Someone outside Court, but inside our circle of trust.

Though I disliked the necessity, I understood Lord Ó Cadhla’s reasoning.

“Very well,” I said. “Have him come tomorrow for an interview. Surely the Constabulary can protect me until then?”

They left me with a thick packet of reports, which I set aside for later. My shoulder ached, and I had little appetite for reading reams of bureaucratic paragraphs. It was easier to lie motionless, hoping that the drugs the physicians gave me would send me to sleep.

I spent a restless, fruitless hour in search of that sleep. Finally I abandoned the attempt and stared upward at the patterned ceiling, awash in moonlight. I briefly considered summoning the physicians for another sleeping draught, then abandoned the thought. It was not sleep I needed, but a sense of purpose.

He knew it, I thought, as I maneuvered myself painfully onto my good shoulder. He knew I would get bored.

Whatever their faults in predicting the assassination attempt, my Constabulary had worked quickly to discover those at fault. The attempt had been led by members of two key political groups with ties to certain influential members of Congress. With a sense of dread and irritation, I read the name of a cousin who had allowed himself to become the nominal leader of this movement.

You, I thought, have made a grave mistake.

More reports listed the names of lesser conspirators and the probable extent of their schemes. My difficulties would not end with one attack. Many in Éire’s government believed me too young to rule. Some wanted a regency. Some worked to shift power from the queen to Congress.

And there were the Anglians. Always the Anglians.

We shall never rid ourselves of the danger, my father once said, until we cut their chains and help them build a new nation of their own. Several new nations. They are not a monolith, after all. He had meant to accomplish that in his own reign.…

The tears burned in my eyes. I swiped them away and read past the further details of plots and political maneuvers, to the details about this man, Ó Deághaidh.

Commander Aidrean Conaill Ó Deághaidh. He had taken an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Awveline University, then begun his graduate studies in Austria. Those same studies were broken off within the year, for reasons unknown. Fluent in German, French, Russian, and Czech, with smatterings of others. He had spent two years wandering through Europe and the Near East, during which time he’d come to the notice of Lord Ó Cadhla’s people, who recruited him for his ability with languages and his understanding of political matters. I saw nothing to suggest he would make a good bodyguard, but I knew Lord Ó Cadhla. My father had trusted him. I began to think I might as well.

* * *

“Commander Ó Deághaidh.”

“Your Majesty.”

It was three days after my near assassination. I chose for this meeting the smallest of my parlors, an intimate room with knotted silk rugs and cloth chairs gathering around the fireplace.

Commander Ó Deághaidh, however, remained as formal as if we were met in Cill Cannig’s grandest audience chamber. He stood at attention, his hands clasped behind his back: a tall man, as lean as a shadow and nearly as dark. Warm brown eyes. Dark hair cut short and swept back in the newest fashion. The reports said he was thirty-four. He appeared younger, except for the faint lines around his eyes.

“Why did you quit your studies?” I asked.

“Let us say I allowed myself to be distracted by the larger world.”

A reply that had a practiced quality, as if he had often had to answer this same question.

“Is that the truth?” I said.