The Time Roads

* * *

I gave them the same suite of rooms that Breandan Ó Cuilinn had once occupied, twelve years ago. And like that previous, that once innocent time, I never questioned their demands. They brought truckloads of their own equipment. I supplied them with clerks, equipment, reams of paper, and the newest mechanical calculators for their research. Aidrean Ó Deághaidh did not approve of their presence—there was a curious tension between him and Síomón Madóc—but he never openly objected, and after a few days, even that first tension had vanished.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“You always know.”

His mouth flickered into an all-too-brief smile. The crease remained even after the humor had left his face. It made me think of shadows, and a time when I had once trusted, and loved, and laughed.

* * *

Three weeks passed in a strange and oppressive calm. Throughout the day, I conducted all my ordinary duties as queen. I continued with the plans for my Union of Nations, with over thirty countries to attend our first session in August, which was to be held in a new hall outside Osraighe. Over dinner and through the evening, I met with Commander Ábraham from the Queen’s Constabulary, or with Aidrean Ó Deághaidh and Lord Ó Duinn, whose investigations had proved frustrating.

“My agents have kept watch over the members of the delegation,” Ó Duinn replied when I asked. “Without exception, they have all returned to their ordinary lives. Merchants. Professors. Booksellers. Physicians. Unless they have constructed a series of secret tunnels underneath the streets of Londain, they conduct their daily affairs in public and remain at home during the night.”

“We’ve considered the possibility of their passing messages to each other,” Aidrean said. “Our people have intercepted all their letters, but the contents have proved annoyingly mundane. The Constabulary has assigned a cipher team to examine them, just in case.”

“What about our guest?” I said. “Has the great Peter Godwin resigned himself to his quarters?” In the days immediately after the disaster on the airfield, I had dismissed my so-called guest from my thoughts, but now I thought it curious

that Godwin had not inundated me with demands.

Ó Duinn glanced up from his sheaf of notes. “I thought I had mentioned in my reports—No, Godwin returned to the Dependencies along with the others. It is Michael Okoye who remained behind. He’s a quiet young man. He spends his days writing—letters, poetry, for the most part. They tell me he has a talent in that direction.”

I gave an exhalation of surprise. “Okoye. I would not have expected—Why did they choose him, do you suppose?”

“I suppose nothing, Your Majesty,” Aidrean said. “Not even that Godwin and his associates are guilty. We know of a dozen organizations outside the Districts who are addicted to violence.”

“Not to mention Thomas Austen’s more radical followers,” Ó Duinn added. “And they would have nothing to do with anything as diplomatic as petitions or delegations. The puzzling thing is that none have the funds or the connections to create such a device. Or so we believe.”

A complicated set of puzzles, I agreed. Letters that meant nothing. Dissidents who seem to have given over their activities. And a young man writing poetry while he waited for release from his richly appointed captivity.

* * *

My meetings with Síomón and Gwen Madóc were less fraught, but ultimately just as frustrating. They had mapped the time fractures around the airfield and discovered key differences between them and the ones Breandan Ó Cuilinn had described in his research.

Accidental is the word Síomón used to describe the older fractures. Just as there were faults in the Earth’s crust, there were natural cracks in the fabric of time. The causes for the original fractures were yet unknown, but Gwen had a theory connecting the fractures with upheavals in the far, far past. “As the universe expanded, worlds might have replicated themselves, much as cells do, but as they separated, they weakened the fabric of time.”

“But these are different,” I said.

“Very much so,” Gwen said. “The term I would apply here is deliberate.”

“How can you tell?”

“We’ve measured the patterns of activity. Electrical and radioactive readings generally signal the presence of time fractures. We compare those readings with ones from our own devices. Those around the airfield and the experiment your Constabulary conducted are far too regular, compared to the accidental ones.”

“But why?” I said.

I later said the same to Aidrean Ó Deághaidh.

“Perhaps it was meant to frighten us,” I said.

“Perhaps it was an experiment,” he replied.

* * *

The second attack came an hour past midnight, on a cold clear March night.