Page 83 of The Time Roads

And then the night exploded in bright flames.

Moments later, a dull boom made the window glass shudder.

I fell back a dozen steps before the strength deserted me and I dropped to my knees. A second explosion, and second burst of light flared upward into the twilit sky. The glass rattled but held. I stared, breathless and trembling, at the blood-bright horizon. What have they done?

But I knew what they—whoever they were—had done. They had warned us clearly enough with Loch Garman.

I staggered to my feet and ran into the next room. “Send runners for my secretary and Commander Ó Deághaidh,” I ordered the maids. “Tell him I wish to hear the reports myself as they come.”

“At once, Your Majesty.”

My servants scattered to obey. I returned to my sitting room to drink down a glass of water. My throat had gone dry and I was shivering—from shock, I told myself. Shock and rage at this sense of being flung into chaos.

Word came back through my secretary that Commander Ó Deághaidh had not yet returned to Cill Cannig, but that Commander Ábraham had received the first reports from Osraighe, and did I wish to summon my advisers?

“Of course,” I replied sharply. “Send word to my cabinet and both Doctors Madóc. No, wait.” I reconsidered the urge to have my mathematical advisers present just yet. “If they are at work, do not disturb them, but give them notice we shall require their presence by morning.”

Within the hour, we had gathered in a small audience chamber, within the Royal Residence. Ó Duinn and I had arrived first, with my other ministers appearing soon after. Commander Ábraham was the last, accompanied by my secretary.

“Your Majesty,” he said. “I have a tragedy to report.”

“We are aware of the tragedy—”

“You are not—” He broke off. With obvious effort, he said, “Your Majesty, let me give my report and you will understand. Please.”

His face was pale, the color of the dead, I thought. Silently, I motioned him

to sit at the table. My steward had already poured a glass of water mixed with crush mint. I waited until Ábraham had drunk one tumbler before I spoke.

“You say we have a tragedy. What more have you learned?”

“More than I ever wished to,” he replied.

I listened, numb, as he recounted the main points. Three devices had exploded in Osraighe, Galway, and Belfast, each one twice as murderous as those that had destroyed Loch Garman’s harbor district. Two hundred instantly dead. Six hundred wounded. The Garda and hospitals were searching for others buried in the rubble. The count would rise before morning.

“And there is more,” Ábraham was saying. “The device in Osraighe destroyed the main Garda station. Commander Ó Deághaidh had left only moments before it exploded. We have not yet recovered his … we have not yet found him, Your Majesty.”

A silence, as cold as winter, fell in the room.

“He is dead?”

I heard my voice as something alien and unfamiliar, disconnected from myself.

“We do not know. I have set all the gardaí—all those who survived—to search the rubble. And, Your Majesty, there is more to report.”

No more, no more, I thought, but the part of me that still acted as queen motioned for him to continue. I listened with growing dread as Ábraham went on to tell of other explosions in Frankonia, Catalonia, Egypt, and Gujarat, which had taken place a few hours before the one in Osraighe. These were the act of a fascist network, he said, which his agents suspected had ties to certain rising factions in the Prussian government.

“And to our own rebels?” I asked.

“So we believe,” Ó Duinn said. “Commander Ó Deághaidh spoke with me by telephone from Osraighe. A witness had come forward to give evidence about a man named Daniel Strong. The man claimed Strong had boasted he would do what Thomas Austen could not.”

Thomas Austen had wanted me dead. This Daniel Strong aimed to destroy Éire.

“There is more,” Lord Ó Cadhla said. “The Papal States, Catalonia, Poland, and Russia have telegraphed to say they must withdraw from our Union of Nations, and both the Chinese and Japanese empires have expressed grave concerns. No doubt I will find more messages before the night ends.”

The implication was clear. Whoever had organized these attacks had chosen our oldest allies. Even such a tentative connection as my Union might prove too dangerous. I pressed my hands against my eyes. “I cannot. I cannot give up on my Union. Not yet.”

But a chill had settled over me as I recalled the vision I’d had in Osraighe. The rebels, or their allies, had planted their devices at different moments in the future. Tomorrow might bring news that the hall for my Union lay in ruins. Or that fire had gutted Éire’s Congress and banks. And what if they could not undo the future attacks, even if we acquiesced to their demands?

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