I saw the nightgown sag petulantly back into the pillows. “Corporal Mallory.” Her voice was not as surprised as I would have liked it to be, but it had a pleasingly tense undercurrent. “I feel bound to inform you that you will not get away with this, whatever it is.”
I had an inappropriate urge to laugh. I was filled with a reckless, fey delight, born from the knowledge that I had, for the first time in any of my lives, stepped off the path that had been laid out for me.
I cleared my throat. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?” From a woman who had lied to me more or less continuously since the day we met, it was a weak effort. I waited, not particularly patiently, until she clucked her tongue. “It’s under my pillow. Don’t you read the papers?”
“Remove it, please, and place it on the floor between us.”
She did so, moving with an exaggerated show of caution. She perched on the edge of her bed with hands raised mockingly high.
I kept the revolver dead level as I retrieved the book and opened it across my lap. The smell of woodsmoke and winter rose from the pages like cold hands, beckoning.
I brought my left knuckles to my teeth and bit down hard, stopping only when I tasted blood. Then I held my hand over the page, palm hovering just above the paper.
I could make out the wet shine of Vivian’s eyes as she watched the blood well, not quite dripping. “Ah,” she said, without any emotion at all. “You’ve remembered.”
“I have.” It was unexpectedly difficult to keep my hand still. The centuries between you and I had been reduced to a bare inch, a single gesture, and my arm shook slightly with the effort of restraint. “And yet, I neither intend nor desire to kill you.” I hoped, fervently and with all my heart, that I would never again wipe anyone else’s blood from my hands. “However, if you lie to me, or attack me, or scream for help, I will instantly overcome my personal preferences and pull the trigger. I have three shots, but I assure you I will only need one.”
Her hands returned to her sides. She inclined her head, very slightly, and I saw the dull gleam of gray hairs among the brass. I wonder if she ever let it go wholly white, or if she constantly traveled back to her own youth, making herself whatever age she pleased.
“Now. The queens that came after Yvanne—Tilda the Younger, Lysabet I and II, et cetera—they were all you, weren’t they? At different ages, perhaps?”
She tilted her chin, considering me. The gas lamps on the street below cast a ghoulish green-gold light across her face. “The queen is dead,” she said, and spread her hands. “Long live the queen.”
“Answer the—”
“Yes,they were me.” Her lips twisted. “I knew I should have burned the archives somewhere along the way, but it’s a delicate balance. You want a robust national history, but you also want to cover your tracks.”
“And Lazamon and de Meulan, and the others. You gave them this book, the book I wrote, in different iterations?”
“Yes.”
“And then you spirited it away until you needed a new version. At which time you returned to the present, mailed the book to me again, and sent me back to her.”
“Yes.” Vivian was perfectly calm, even a little proud. “You could never refuse me, and Una could never refuse you.”
“Do not,” I advised her, with a little flick of the barrel, “ever speak her name again.” My temper—which had been absent since the day Professor Sawbridge put the cigarette butt in my hand, lost in a tide of urgent hope—was simmering once more in my chest, licking up my throat. “What I don’t understand is why you had to make it real. Why not just rewrite the book yourself, however you wanted? Why make me—why make us—”
“I tried that, obviously.” Vivian shook her head, much in the manner of a master craftsman reflecting on the quality of his early-career work. “But—to my lasting dismay—the truth matters. It matters what the court of Cavallon sees on the day she dies. It matters what the villagers of Dominion whisper to one another, and what stories they tell their children and grandchildren about the time the Red Knight rode past. Without them, without that germ of actual memory, her story is just a story, and your book is just a book. Also,” she added, wryly, “I could never quite capture the tone. You bring a real pathos to the project, Corporal.”
I found my finger had tightened on the trigger. I loosened it, fractionally. “But I wasn’t the first person you sent back, was I?”
“You were not.” For the first time, I detected a note of genuine surprise in her voice. “It was a bit like holding auditions, for a while. I needed someone who was clever enough to play the part, but not so clever that he would realize he was reading from a script. Someone who loved her legend enough to let her die but lovedherenough to write a hell of a eulogy. It’s a—”
“Delicate balance.” My lips felt numb, separate from myself.
“But of course, what I needed most was the person she was willing to diefor.I was that person, once, at the beginning.” A look of such longing crossed her face that I understood, against my will, that she really had lovedyou, and perhaps still did. But the look passed, and I understood, too, that it did not matter. She had killed what she loved, over and over, and would do it again, and would not lose a single moment’s sleep. “None of my other candidates even came close. The Harrison boy—what a disaster. That fucking horse killed him, the first time around. Make a note—if you’re trying to engineer the perfect warhorse, you can only send them back in time about twenty times before they get absolutelydemented.” Oh, Hen, you poor bastard. “Anyway, I tried Harrison a few more times. He never even got her to the dragon. But you…” Another shake of her head, indulgent this time. “It was like you already knew each other, even that first time.”
The scent of flowers seemed to thicken the air, pooling at the back of my tongue like bile. It was a moment or two before I could ask my final question. “Why?”
“Why does anyone fall in love? Brain chemistry and proximity. Although I always wonder how it works between you two. Do you take turns giving the orders? I hope you listen to her better than you did to poor Colonel Drayton—”
“Stop.” I caught the shine of a jagged gray tooth, the curve of a pleased smile. I thought a little nauseously of that night when you’d wrapped me in your cloak. If you had moved your hand half an inch farther down—if you had begged or demanded, shouted or whispered—
But you hadn’t. Perhaps some wary, battle-tried part of you knew bait when you saw it. You’d wanted me—I’d felt it, smelled it—but perhaps you wanted your free will more.
It was a moment before I could retrieve my line of questioning. “I meant—why did you do it? What could possibly be worth it?” My voice was fraying. My shoulders ached from holding my arms so still. “Did you want to be on the radio that badly?”
