The Time Roads

“Finding the guilty will be your responsibility,” I told the chief of the Queen’s Constabulary. “Commander Ó Deághaidh will serve as your liaison and adviser. Consider this affair as one of extreme political delicacy, but do not hesitate to act if you must. I want no accidents at my conference this summer. Meanwhile, I shall conduct an investigation of my own.”

* * *

Twelve hours later, I waited anxiously in the smallest and most richly appointed of my audience chambers. My father and grandfather had preferred this chamber for highly honored guests, or the most delicate negotiations. Both terms applied to today’s interview, I thought. Gwen and Síomón Madóc had become famous in academia for their theories involving mathematics and time. Twelve years ago, they had founded a research institute to investigate the practical and arcane applications of their discoveries. They were ambitious, though not in the usual fashion—that much I knew from my reports from the Queen’s Constabulary.

But I had other memories to draw upon. A series of murders in Awveline City, involving graduate students in the mathematics department. A past erased and rewritten, with those dead come alive and other events altered beyond recognition.

While I waited, I adjusted the curtains, examined the rows of carafes with water and tea. A late winter snowfall hushed against the windowpanes. The new mechanical clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly and incessantly. Time, time, time, it said. Time was not the immutable property you once thought it to be.

A discreet knock sounded at my door. I spun around, the skirts of my gown hissing.

“Doctor Síomón Madóc.”

The photographs provided by the Constabulary proved misleading, I thought, as I clasped his hand and gestured toward the chairs. The gray and white image had shown a long bony face, the hair cut close except for a few curling wisps over his black doctoral robes. They had revealed nothing of his height, or how his gaze alternated between distracted and keenly observant. Today, he wore a gray suit of an elegant cut.

He bowed over my hand and took the designated seat.

“Doctor Gwen Madóc.”

Gwen Madóc had the same spare features as her brother, the same pale blonde hair. But here the photographs were true, perhaps because these had been obtained when the subject was unaware. Her blue eyes met mine in an unflinching gaze, before she sank into a curtsy. Like her brother, she wore the kind of clothing one expected from a member of a wealthy, privileged family.

“Your Majesty. You have a problem with time fractures,” she said in a low voice.

My breath stilled. Not a question. A direct statement.

“Yes. How did you know?”

She shrugged. “It’s a question of probability and our specialized knowledge.”

Indeed. Yet she had spoken with more certainty than a simple guess would have indicated. I would have to take care with these two. To my secretary, who hovered in the background, I said, “You may go, Coilín. I shall ring when I need you.”

My steward poured tea, and retired. Brother and sister sipped politely while I considered once more how to explain the matter. But it was Gwen Madóc who broke the silence first. “You wished for a consultation, Your Majesty. We are willing to offer whatever assistance we can, but I must warn you that we are scientists, not magicians. We cannot scribble an equation and undo the past.”

“I would not expect it,” I said. “I was hoping to undo the future.”

That arrested her attention, and her brother’s, too.

“What has happened?” she demanded.

I told them, giving as much details as I dared. The explosions. The confusion. The contradiction between my memories and the later reports of those who had survived. The even more unsettling reports from those who had seemingly died, yet nevertheless reappeared alive and untouched.

Síomón closed his eyes and listened, his mouth drawn into a thin line. Gwen let her gaze drift upward to the ceiling with its patterns etched in plaster and paint. When I mentioned the discrepancies between one report and the next, her brother twitched, but she did not.

“You believe they have achieved mastery of time?” Gwen asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I only know they threaten us all—Éire, Anglia, and everyone throughout the world—with chaos.”

“And what do you wish from us?”

I had spent much of the past day considering how to phrase the request. What I wanted, after all, was such a nebulous thing. “I want the opportunity for peace,” I said softly. “Not just for myself and my queendom, but for the world. I told you I wanted to change the future, but not with weapons or armies. For that I must know which decisions are the right ones. The best ones. That is my wish.”

Wish. A word chosen from dreams and intentions both, but Gwen Madóc did not smile at my words. “You need us to investigate the future,” she said. “To see where the time roads lead.”

“Yes,” I said. “But all of them, you understand.”

She held out a hand. I clasped hers in mine, wondering at her strong grip, the chilled flesh, the strange intent gaze she lifted to mine.

“I understand,” she said. “More than most.”