And now he was here at Cliveden, addressing what he only knew were his superior officer, and an Equerry of the Court of Saint James’s, and the Crown Secretary of Powers, because the orders in his eyes told him so. They were presumably still back in London, in Turpin’s office off Horseguards Parade, or at least part of them was. They were wearing the trees, far across their nation, with no more thought than one might wear a coat.
“Good afternoon, Major.” Turpin’s voice came from the air around him. “I’m sorry to say … we have a job for you.”
The sheer relief made Hamilton unable to speak for a moment. “A … job, sir?”
“You seem, during your encounter with him, to have fathomed the character of your younger self. Just as His Majesty wished you to.” That was the Equerry. There would have been a time when the former Queen Mother would have seen to such matters herself, but now she never left her wing of the Palace, and was rumored to be … Hamilton found himself letting the thought breathe in his mind, his relief giving him license … people said she was mad now.
“I didn’t realize I was acting on His Majesty’s service, sir.” He hoped his tone didn’t convey the knowledge he was sure they both shared, that His Majesty had known as much about it as he had.
“That was of course as he wished. And he wishes to convey that you did well.”
“The younger man,” Turpin added, “should have dealt better with the pressure you put him under. It was the first sign of what was later revealed.” He had a sound in his voice that Hamilton hadn’t heard before. He was cornered, apologetic.
“The Palace offered to cover his debt to you,” said the tree that was the Crown Secretary, “but, in his pride, the boy refused. We took this as a noble gesture and tried again, made it clear the offer was serious.” Hamilton could imagine that whatever pressure he himself had subjected the youth to would be as nothing compared to the Palace’s “making something clear.”
“Then,” continued Turpin, “he suddenly declared he had the funds. I asked him where he had got them. He told me he’d won at cards. But he was clearly lying. Shortly afterwards I had the pleasure of receiving a surprise visit at my office from His Grace the Earl Marischal, the Duke of Norfolk, on official business as officer of arms at the College of Heralds. He told me that a thousand guineas had gone missing from the College’s account at Cuits.”
He had taken exactly the right amount of money. Hamilton felt perversely annoyed at the association between the boy’s amateurishness and himself. “Did Precious do that for him?” The Herald hadn’t seemed capable of such foolishness. Was his younger self really that alluring? It was too tempting a thought to be true.
“Perhaps it was done with information from her, but without her knowledge,” said Turpin. “His Grace also informed me that the Herald herself had gone missing. Our people inspected her rooms and found signs of a struggle, and a rather shoddy attempt to conceal those signs. The boy himself did not report when instructed.”
By now Hamilton had gone beyond feeling impugned by association, and was finding it difficult to conceal his satisfaction. So their golden boy had gone rogue. “Needless to say,” he said, “he hasn’t paid me.”
“I daresay Precious caught him with his hand in the till. An infinite fold had been opened up in her rooms some hours before our people arrived. We found traces of it. We’re able to some degree to keep track of where such tunnels end up. Our quarry has fled here, to Cliveden.”
“Why?”
“There is … a newly laid complex of fold tunnels on this estate,” said the Equerry, sounding almost apologetic about his Court’s fashions. “His Majesty was … is still … planning to summer here, among the optional worlds of his choosing. The College is … still … privy to such sensitive information. Your younger self, Major, is hiding in some optional version of these woods.”
The Crown Secretary cleared his throat and there was silence. “His Majesty,” he said, “remains intrigued by the concept of bringing optionals into our service. He is minded to wonder if their numbers might serve against the blockade. He would need good reasons to turn aside from this policy. But he is alive to the possibility that such good reasons might be provided.”
Hamilton inclined his head. He had been told all outcomes were still allowed. That if he was to bring an astonished youth out of the bushes, protesting a misunderstanding, the boy would be listened to, though possibly that conversation would take place in Cliveden’s cellars. Well, then. He had a job to do. He put down his valise and opened it, then wormed his hand quickly through the multiple folds to find his Webley Collapsar and shoulder holster.
“We’re keeping a watch on the boundaries,” said Turpin. “We’ve narrowed the realities around him so he can’t get out.” The quality of light in the clearing changed, and Hamilton was aware that something had been done to the covers in his eyes. “We were trying these out on the boy, soon to be standard issue. It’ll enable you to see all the optional worlds around you and move between them, just as he can.”
Hamilton finished strapping on his holster, slipped the gun into it, and replaced his jacket. He felt what he had to do to use the new covers and did so. Suddenly, there were people in the clearing, right beside him. He went back to the previous setting, and they vanished again. He’d seen some of the laborers and farmhands, those who kept the estate going. They were, presumably, the least entertaining option for His Majesty and his friends to explore.
“Enter the folds here,” said Turpin, “bring back the boy and the Herald, alive if you can.” And those last three words had been delivered in a tone that privately suggested to his covers that, as far as Turpin was concerned, all Hamilton’s options did indeed remain open. He hadn’t seen fit to replace Hamilton’s sidearm with any less deadly weapon, after all. These courtiers might not have the military knowledge to be aware of such a decision made through omission. Hamilton looked at the trees giving him orders. The question of what was owed to him because of his service had collapsed into the simplicity of that service continuing. They had all assumed, after all, that he would do his duty. His thoughts of death at their hands had become something from an optional world. He turned and headed into the forest.
“Godspeed, Major,” said the Equerry.
Hamilton didn’t look back. After a moment, he began to run.
He looked at the map of the estate in his head. He jogged from tree to tree, changed his eyes for a moment, was suddenly lost again. He made himself keep checking the options. He couldn’t afford to let the boy take him by surprise.
Had his younger self done this dishonorable thing because the balance wasn’t an idea that had been discovered in the optional worlds? That must be what His Majesty was considering, the idea that there was no army to be raised because his putative subjects from those worlds wouldn’t have the required ethical fiber. Perhaps in those worlds the balance simply didn’t exist, an indication that those places were less real than this world. Or perhaps the balance spread out somehow across all the worlds, perhaps that was how it endured so many shocks. Perhaps it was simply ambient and hard to fathom in his younger self’s existence. He wondered what the boy, therefore, had judged himself against, in his formative years. Did this lack excuse him? It was hard to say whether or not the same rules should apply. If everything was real, if value itself was relative, what did it mean here and now to be an arms dealer, to wear a tartan, to abuse the flag, if those doing so could easily go somewhere else, where different rules applied? That might have been the boy’s feeling on being made that miraculous offer of advancement, honor, the interest of a pretty woman, from somewhere aside from his own world. He had, presumably, been dragged from it in the night and had his new horizons made clear to him, over weeks, perhaps months. And if this new world included this strange custom, this desperate ideal about the preservation of order in the face of collapse, well, when in Rome …