Vivian ran her tongue over her canine. “Of course. God knows we have nothing but time. Meet me here, when you’re ready.” She tucked the book under her arm and handed me a card printed on cheap, grayish paper. It bore no name, but only an address.
Professor Sawbridge was in her office, naturally, because she hadn’t been called away to discover the tomb of Una Everlasting, because there was no tomb to discover, this time. You had died anonymously, deep in the woods, and your body had been buried by rain and rot and small, scrounging animals.
Her office was less grand than I remembered—all of Dominion was—and much cleaner. There were no architecturally unsound towers of books, no bundles of political pamphlets. There were not even any cheaply bound editions of racy novels on her shelves.
She looked up as I entered—and beamed at me. “Mr. Mallory! What can I do for my favorite protégé?”
“I—pardon?” I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard her make use of an exclamation point.
Her smile was very wide, like the painted grin of a marionette. “How’s the manuscript? It’ll win you the endowed faculty spot if you ever finish it.”
I stared at her. “But you hate my book. You called it ‘Grade-A hog swill.’”
A flicker in her eyes, indecipherable. “Hate it? Why, I think it’s a fine piece of scholarship. Just what the country needs.”
I recalled suddenly that she’d expressed similar sentiments, many times, in this version of my life. Because this Gilda Sawbridge had undergone a sudden and thorough change of heart. She was no longer a known radical and thorn in the side of the Cantford Board of Fellows; instead, she was one of the most fervent academic voices behind the new Chancellor. She wrote editorials decrying the corruption of modern Dominion culture, and the lack of national spirit in our curriculum. She had even—and here I knew something had gone profoundly, hideously wrong—described my latest article as “something of a little triumph.”
I sank slowly into the chair across from her desk, where I’d spent so many hours being bullied and berated into becoming a better scholar than I was. “Oh, Gilda.” My head was aching fiercely. “What the hell did she do to you?”
“What? Who?” She blinked rapidly, as if confused. It was not an expression I’d ever seen her attempt.
I studied her soberly. “The last time we spoke—no, I know you don’t remember it, just take my word for it—you told me there was something wrong with the history of Dominion. I wanted you to know you were right. It’s been manufactured, all of it, in service to a woman named—”
“Is this some kind of test?” Sawbridge was chewing at her lips. They were dry and scabby, as if she did it often. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am proud to call myself a citizen of Dominion—”
“No, you don’t have to—”
“And proud to serve crown and country. What more”—her voice split, like an overworked seam—“could you possibly want from me?”
It would have been an entirely baffling speech, at odds with everything I knew about Gilda Sawbridge—except that I’d seen a familiar, weary agony in her eyes. As if her heart were buried somewhere far away, and her every word and gesture was an effort to keep it safe.
Gently, I said, “It’s the archivist, isn’t it?” I’d remembered, in a delayed rush of images from this new version of my life, that Mistress Shaw had abruptly quit her post during my third year of study. “How did it happen?”
Professor Sawbridge seemed to collapse inward, like a punctured rubberball. She looked, for the first time in all my lives, like what she was: an old woman. “I don’t know how you could possibly… Well, you were always bright, when you weren’t willfully stupid. Harrison caught us in the old observatory one night.” She added, sounding more like herself, “Sneaking little shit stain.”
“And he… reported you for indecency?”
“I wish he had. Sylvie and I would have lost our posts, of course, maybe spent a few months in the penitentiary, but then… we would’ve been free, wouldn’t we?”
There was wistfulness to the question, as if she wanted me to tell her there was some version of her life where she was happy and safe and unshackled. I felt nothing but sympathy; it was the same foolish, childish hope that had sent me running for nine long years, and which had brought me back, here, to try again.
Sawbridge made a sound of disgust, directed inward. “No. Harrison told someone, but not the authorities. And then—they took Sylvie away.”
“I’m sorry.” It was almost funny, in its predictability. In all her centuries of malice and manipulation, Vivian Rolfe had only ever found one lever to push, one string to pull, over and over.
“I get postcards from her. I’ve seen pictures—she’s well. She’s taken care of.” Sawbridge flashed me a guilty, resentful look. “So I’ll write a thousand craven little articles. I’ll dance like a goddamn bear if they ask me to. Because, for that, for her, it’s—”
“Worth it.” My voice cracked, falling to a jagged whisper. “Yes. I understand.” I thought there was probably no one on earth who understood better. “Love makes cowards of us all.”
Sawbridge flinched a little. She closed her eyes. “Yes.”
“Listen,” I said, “I don’t know if you’ll remember I said this, but things are going to get very bad, soon.” Vivian had the book again, and soon she would have the story inside it. “Dominion will have a queen again. You have to get out before she takes the throne.”
Sawbridge opened her eyes and propped her spectacles on top of her head. “It’s that Rolfe woman, isn’t it.”
“It is, yes. You might think you’re safe, but she’s locked you up before, and she’ll do it again. And the second she doesn’t need you, she’ll kill you.”
Sawbridge absorbed this calmly, without skepticism or alarm. “Thank you, Mallory. But I think I’ll stay put.”
