Rogues

A BETTER WAY TO DIE

Paul Cornell

Cliveden is one of the great houses of Greater Britain. It stands beside the Thames in Buckinghamshire, at the end of the sort of grand avenue that such places kept and made carriages fly up, when carriages were the done thing. In the extensive forests, a Grand Charles tree from the Columbian colonies has been grown into the shape of a guesthouse. The yew-tree walk leads down to a boathouse that has, painted on its ramp, dated, descending notches of where the water once rose, taken at the flood. The ramp has twice now been extended to reach the river. From the house itself, one can look out over the parterre to a 180-degree horizon of what were once flood meadows, now seamless farmland. The view of the other half of the world is that which one would expect of a hunting estate. There is a smooth, plunging hill, kept clear to present targets on the horizon, with trees either side, towards which the game can break. There are hides for beaters. There is a balcony that looks down on the yard, from which favors can be thrown and bloods scored. At certain times of the year you will hear the reports of guns, the calling of the hounds, and the sohos of those on the chase, unimpeded by fence or ditch. The gutters of the forecourt are there to catch the blood.

Hamilton often worked out of uniform, so he knew the great estates. They were where royalty risked a social life outside of their palaces, still requiring careful eyes beside them. They were where those individuals who had lost so much of their souls in the great game that they had actually changed sides were hauled. Houses like this were where such wretched people would be allowed to unburden themselves, their words helping to reset the balance that their actions had set swinging. Houses like this were also where officers like himself were interviewed following injury or failure. And finally, always finally, they were places from where such as he sometimes did not return. They were the index that ran alongside the London and abroad half of an out-of-uniform man’s life, the margin in which damning notes were made. Such buildings were the physical manifestation of how these things had always been done, the plans of them a noble motto across the English countryside. Those words could be read even if your face was in the mud. Especially then. In the circumstances in which Hamilton now found himself, that thought reassured him. But still, he could not make himself ready to die.

He’d found the invitation on his breakfast table: the name of the estate and a date which was that same day. The handwriting was in the new style, which meant that no hand had been near it, that it had been spoken onto the card as if by God. He could not decide anything based upon it. Except that the confidence of this gesture indicated that, despite everything, those who had power over him still did not doubt who they were and what they could do.

He had picked it up with none of the anticipation he might once have felt, just a dull, resigned dread. This was the answer to a question he hadn’t put into words. He had started to feel a deeper anger, nameless, useless, than any he had felt before. He knew what he was owed but had become increasingly sure he wouldn’t receive it. The fact of his being owed it would be seen now as an impertinent gesture on his part, a burden on those who had invested elsewhere. He had one request now, he’d decided, looking at the card in his numb fingers: he would ask to be sent to contribute to some hopeless cause. But perhaps those were only to be found in the blockade now, and if they didn’t want him, they especially wouldn’t want him there. Still, he’d held on to that thought through dressing appropriately and packing for the country. But then even that hope had started to feel like treachery and cowardice. The condemned man must not have anything to ask of the executioner. That was the beginning of pleading.

And yet hope stayed with him. It played on him. His own balance ate at him as he prepared. A fool, he told himself, would assume he was on his way to Cliveden to be given what he was owed. To at least be thanked for all these years and given a fond farewell. He made sure he was not hoping for that.

Now he watched from the carriage as it swung down towards the avenue that led to Cliveden. He saw nobody in the grounds, not a single worker on the fields. That was extraordinary. Normally, they would be out there in numbers, waving to any carriage from their enormous harvesters and beaters and propulsion horses. Hamilton had no idea how many servants it took to maintain an estate like Cliveden, but it must be numbered in the hundreds. There would traditionally be too many, in fact, “a job for every man and several of those jobs are lounging about just in case” as some wag had put it. On the two occasions when he’d seen an officer die in such places, it had been done (in one case like an accident, in another, and that was a scene he’d take to his grave, like a suicide) in the grounds, away from the eyes of the help. You didn’t need to clear them all out. But no, he stopped himself: surely this was just the larger version of what he’d seen at Keble? He was making new horrors for himself with no new evidence.

The carriage settled onto the end of the drive, and Hamilton stepped down onto the gravel. His knee spasmed and he nearly fell. Getting old. He wondered if they were watching this, and killed a thought that he didn’t care. He did. He must. It had been an affectation to take a carriage, he realized, when, in moments, these days, he could have walked down a tunnel from his rooms in London. And he’d brought a valise, as if he were unwilling, should he need to dress for dinner, to return there in the same way to do so. He was silently making statements with these actions. Stubborn statements. Like he’d made, as if with the intention of ending his service, that night at Keble. This new realization angered him more than anything else had. Only fools and criminals didn’t know why they did things. It seemed that he was no longer strong enough to hold that fate at bay. To arrive here as someone who bowed to the command of those other voices within one, to pain or desire or selfishness, to have allowed those threats to the balance to have grown within oneself, and to only realize it on this threshold … it was an invitation to the powers in this house to strike him down. And they would be right to do so.

He allowed himself to smile at the relief of that thought. They would be right to do so. If he could accept that, all would be well. He had brought the valise. He would not balk and desperately fly to return it, like a panicked undergraduate. If he suddenly did or said or hinted at anything not of his own volition, but that had come out of the other half of him that should be under his control, then the balance could still be restored at the cost of his life. He didn’t have to worry about that.

But the thought still came to him: those with his life in their hands didn’t seem to value the balance so much these days, did they?

That thought was like a far greater death that lay in wait.

If the world was tempting him into plucking at his own house of cards, it was because that was all everyone seemed to be doing now. He was hesitating on this drive, actually hesitating. He had seen his life as a house of cards.

Perhaps the world was dying too.

Perhaps everyone his age felt that.

But surely nobody had ever felt it in circumstances like these?

The carriage finally moved off. He made himself step forward, looking down at the valise now inescapably in his hand.

He found he had orders in his eyes. He wasn’t to go into the house but into the forest.

He made his way down a winding path to the edge of the woods. It was overcast, but the shadows from inside the forest were slanting at impossible angles, as if somewhere in there someone was lighting a stage.

He walked into the forest.

The path took him past fallen trees, not long ago cut down, by a logger who was now absent. He stopped to listen. The sounds of nature. But no sawing, no distant echo of metal on wood, no great machines. Strange that the effect could be so complete.

He came to the edge of a clearing. Here was where the strange light was coming from. It seemed to be summer here because the light was from overhead. The air was warmer. Hamilton kept his expression steady. He walked slowly into the center, and saw the trees that shouldn’t be here. He wanted to follow etiquette, but that was difficult when those one was addressing had abandoned propriety. It was as if they had grabbed the ribbon of his duty and then leapt down a well. He felt like bellowing at them. He felt awful that he felt like bellowing at them.

He addressed the tallest of the trees. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

It had been just a few weeks ago that he’d been invited to meet Turpin at Keble. His commanding officer had been a guest of the Warden, and had asked Hamilton to join him at High Table. This had seemed at the time the most natural thing in the world, Keble being where Hamilton himself had been an undergraduate. He’d driven down to Oxford as always, had the Porters fuss over the Morgan as always. He’d stopped for a moment outside the chapel, thinking about Annie, the terrible lack of her. But he could still look at the chapel and take pleasure in it. He’d been satisfied with his composure, then. At that time he’d already been on leave for several weeks. He should have realized that had been suspiciously long. And before that he’d been used for penny-ante jobs, sent on them by junior officers, not even allowed to return to the Dragoons, who were themselves on endless exercises in Scotland. He really should have understood, before it had been revealed to him, that he was being kept away from something.

It had been in the Warden’s rooms at Keble that Turpin had first appeared in his life, all those years ago, had first asked him about working out of uniform. To some people, he’d said, the balance, the necessary moment-by-moment weighing and shifting of everything from military strength to personal ethics that kept war from erupting between the great nations and their colonies right across the solar system, was something felt, something in the body. This had been a couple of years before the medical theologians had got to work on how the balance actually was present in the mind. Hamilton had recognized that in himself. Turpin had already been then as Hamilton had always known him, his face a patchwork of grown skin, from where he’d had the corners knocked off him in the side streets of Kiev and the muck-filled trenches of Zimbabwe.

But on entering the Warden’s rooms on this later occasion, after decades of service, Hamilton had found himself saluting a different Turpin. His features were smooth, all trace of his experience removed. Hamilton had carefully not reacted. Turpin hadn’t offered any comment. “Interesting crowd this evening, Major,” he’d said, nodding to indicate those assembled under the Warden’s roof. Hamilton had looked. And that had been, now he looked back to it, the moment his own balance had started to slide dangerously towards collapse.

Standing beside the dress uniforms and the evening suits and the clerical collars had been a small deer.

It was not some sort of extraordinary pet. Its gaze had been following the movements of a conversation, and then it was taking part in it, its mouth forming words in a horribly human way. Hamilton had looked quickly over to where a swirl of translucent drapery had been chatting with the chaplain. Nearby, a circling pillar of … they had actually been continuously falling birds, or not quite birds, but the faux heraldic devices often displayed by the Foreigners whose forces were now encircling the solar system. He’d guessed that the falling was the point, rather than the … he’d wanted to call it a dress … being a celebration of the idea that the Foreigners might flock together and make their plans in great wheeling masses. The pillar held a glass of wine, supported somehow by all those shapes dropping past it. These creatures were all ladies, Hamilton had assumed. Or rather, hoped.

“It’s all the rage at the Palace,” said Turpin. “It’s all relative this, and relative that.”

Hamilton hadn’t found it in him to make any sensible comment. He’d heard about such things, obviously. Enough to disdain them and move on to some other subject. That the new King had allowed, even encouraged this sort of thing, presumably to the continuing shame of Elizabeth … he’d stopped himself. He was thinking of the Queen, and he could not allow himself to feel so intimate with what she might or might not think of her husband.

“Not your sort of thing?” asked Turpin.

“No, sir.”

Turpin paused a moment, considering, and offered a new tack. “The Bodlean is, I believe, now infinite.”

“Good for it.”

Turpin had nodded towards the corner. “So. What about him?”

He was indicating a young man, talking to a beautiful woman. Hamilton’s first thought had been that he was familiar. Then he had realized. And had first found the anger that hadn’t left him since. This was what downed Foreigner vessels had brought here. Of course it wouldn’t all be used for frippery. Or perhaps now frippery had invaded war.

It had been like looking at the son he’d never had, at his own face without everything time had written on it. There was for a moment a ghost of a thought that they’d taken away from him that moment of seeing a son. That had been the first of the many ghosts.

The hair was darker. The body was thinner, more hips than shoulders. The boy had worn not uniform, but black tie, so they hadn’t managed, or perhaps even wished, to get him into the regiment. The young woman the boy was talking to had nudged him, and he had looked towards Hamilton. It was the shock of running into a mirror. The eyes were the same. He hadn’t known what his own expression had been in that instant, but the younger version of him had worn a smile as he made eye contact. It hadn’t been in the slightest bit deferential. It wasn’t attractive, either. But Hamilton had recognized it. He contained his anger, knowing that this boy would be able to read him like a book. Hamilton had had no idea that such things were now possible. This must be a very secure gathering, for the two of them to be seen together. The boy had expected this. He had been allowed that.

He had turned back to his superior officer with a raised eyebrow. “Who’s the girl?”

Turpin had paused for a moment, pleasingly, taken aback by Hamilton’s lack of comment about the boy. “Her name is Precious Nothing.”

“Parents who like a challenge?”

“Perhaps it was a memento mori. She’s—”

“With the College of Heralds, yes.” Hamilton had seen the colors on her silk scarf, which was one hell of a place to put them.

“Well, only just about, these days. She’s a senior Herald, but she’s been put on probation.”

“Because of him.” Hamilton found the idea of a Herald being linked to such a peculiar creature as the boy utterly startling. Heralds decided what breeding was, what families and nations were. The College held the records of every family line, decided upon the details of coats of arms, were the authority on every matter of grand ceremony and inheritance. Of course, every other week now one heard rumors that the College was on the verge of dissolution or denunciation, as they tried and failed to find some new way to protest at the new manners. They seemed continually astonished that His Majesty was being advised this badly. Some of this conflict had even reached the morning plates. But it had always gone by the evening editions. To Hamilton, the idea of parts of the body public fighting each other was like the idea of a man’s punching himself in the face. It was a physical blasphemy that suited this era as an index of how far it had all gone.

“You really haven’t another word to say about him?” Turpin had asked, interrupting his woolgathering.

Hamilton had feigned a moment’s thought. “How is he on the range?”

“Reasonable. You were only ever reasonable.” He hadn’t emphasized the you.

Then the Warden had clinked his glass with a spoon, and the ladies and the gentlemen and the trompe l’oeil and the small deer had gone in to dinner.

Hamilton had been relieved to find that the younger version of himself had gone to the far end of the dining table that stood on a rise at the end of the hall. In any other circumstances, it would have been comforting to be back in this place, with the smell of polish and the candlelight, but as he looked out at the tables of undergraduates, he realized that something was missing. There would normally be numerous servants moving between the rows, delivering plates of food and refilling glasses. Suddenly, he saw just such a meal appearing beside one chattering youth, something that caused the lad no surprise whatsoever. Hamilton had been seated opposite Turpin, and now he looked back to him.

“Hidden service,” the senior man said. “Happens in a lot of places now. The servants move through an infinite fold, in effect an empty optional world, beside the real one. One more use for the new engines. And neater, you must admit.”

Hamilton didn’t feel the need to agree with such young opinions from his old mentor. He was now wondering if the man’s new smoothness of face was because this was also a younger version. But no, surely not, here was still the experience, the tone of voice he was used to. Turpin had seen that look. “One of the out-of-uniform men found it for me,” he said, as if he was talking about a carriage. “As soon as the great powers recognized that various of the engines that had fallen into our hands gave us access to optional worlds, outside the balance, the Palace felt it was our lot’s duty to start mapping them, to find out where all these open-fold tunnels lead. Our regimental hunting parties have been going all over.”

Hamilton thought he understood now why he hadn’t been included in that effort. “Including another one of you?”

“Several. The original owner of this was only a Newton or so different to the original. Well, in physical terms. Where he came from, a lot of our conflicts didn’t happen, hence the smoothness of face. Our lads put him in the bag, and when they got back, connected his mind to an infinite tunnel. Like using a terrier to root out a fox. Once he was out, I moved in, using the same method. Should keep me going for a bit longer.”

Hamilton had found himself wondering at that statement. His balance had been thrown by the boy, and so he’d allowed himself the seditious thought because it had felt not so dangerous then, that Turpin was seeking not, as he said, an extension of his service but actually tactical advantage at Court. He was now more like those he served were. And never mind the distance that took him from his officers. “What if optional worlds start raiding us in the same way?”

“First thing we thought of. We seem to be unique, at least in all those options nearby. We’re the only ones who’ve encountered the Foreigners. Or they may even only exist in this world. If they do start popping over, we may have to start making treaties with optional Britains rather than raiding them.”

“And extending the balance into them?”

Turpin had raised his hands. Perhaps he felt this was beyond his duty or understanding.

“How can there be younger versions of people? How is there an optional world where … I’m … his age?”

“These worlds form in waves, I’m told.”

“Like the waves that interfere with each other in this world to create the heights and depths of the balance?”

“Presumably.” There had been that impatience with the matter of the balance once more. “Some waves are a bit behind us in time, some a bit forward.”

“And there are some options where there are chatty deer and pillars of birds? Or are those just fashions anticipating such stuff?”

“A little bit of both. There’s a rather large selection box, all told.” Turpin had leaned forward, as if wishing Hamilton would get to the meat of it. And Hamilton had been pleased that it hadn’t been him that had taken them there. “Listen, that younger you, he’s the first of his kind to be brought over. He’s got nobody’s mind but his own. He’s a whole chap, a volunteer from a world so like ours that there wasn’t an iota of difference.”

“Except no Foreigners?”

“Exactly.”

“And no balance?”

“Yes, yes!”

Hamilton had wondered if Turpin was planning on putting his mind in the boy’s skull. But he’d hardly have invited them both to a social occasion first. “If we can do all this now, and I didn’t know we could—”

“I’m telling you now under a seal. You’ll find, if you look, that your covers have already reacted to my tone of voice. You won’t be able to tell anyone any of this.” He looked suddenly chagrined at Hamilton’s startled look. “Not that you would, of course!”

Turpin’s manners seemed to have changed with his new body. That had been shocking too, a shock like one felt sometimes at things one had heard were said and done at Court. “If we can do all this now we’ve got their engines, why can’t the Foreigners open a tunnel at the blockade, pop up in Whitehall and have at us?”

“Good question. The great powers have been pondering that. Together.” Enough had been made public for Hamilton to understand that there was now a significantly greater degree of cooperation between the courts of the great powers of Europe. The arrival of the Foreigners had forced that, when the haphazard capture of the new engines in various parts of the solar system might otherwise have set the balance rocking. There, he suspected, was the hand of the deity in this. If it was anywhere. “The leading theory at the moment is that, for some reason, the Foreigners forbid, among themselves, the use of optional worlds. That it’s a principle of whatever mistaken religion they practice. Optionalism is perhaps just a side effect of what they use as propulsion, but so far we’ve only made sense of the side effect, and none at all of the propulsion.”

“Can we use it to surprise them?”

“Working on just that.”

This was far more the sort of conversation Hamilton had been used to with his commanding officer. He had found himself regretting his earlier reactions, understanding them, regaining control of himself. Tonight, whatever else it was, was surely planned as a test of his character, and so far he had just about stumbled through. What he felt about anything was as beside the point now as it had always been.

Turpin had spent the rest of dinner sounding him out about the myriad aspects of the shared defense strategies being adopted by the “grand alliance” of great powers. There was some new addition to their ranks every day. Savoy, most recently. There were even rumors the Turks were going to join. Hamilton had wanted to ask where the balance was in all this. What was going to happen to it if every nation was on the same side? Was the arrival of the Foreigners and their engines, at the same time, the fatal shock, the final moment when the balance would collapse and resolve into some new social or actual reality, as experts in the matter had often hypothesized? Was that what was happening all around them now? He had always conceived of that moment as being grand, somehow, and not a matter of finding wild animals in the Warden’s rooms. Or was this just some particularly ferocious swinging of the pendulum, which would resolve itself, as it always had, into a gentler motion?

But Turpin, true to his new form, hadn’t mentioned the balance at all, apart from when he’d joined in the grace before the meal. Hamilton had half hoped one of the divines would strike up a debate on the subject. He had known, through the gossip of his maid, Alexandria, that all was not well among the clergy, that the next synod at York was going to be rough on His Majesty and his terrifying commonwealth of nations, but there was no sign of that here. These particular clerics were as content to swim among this stuff as that Herald had been.

All through the conversation, Hamilton had kept his gaze on his superior. He hadn’t wanted to be seen craning his neck to get a look at the younger version of himself. He had continued to affect nonchalance. And hoped he was not projecting affectation. The bell had rung, the students had started to exit, and the Warden had invited his guests back to his rooms for brandy. Turpin had announced that he wanted to talk to someone and gone ahead.

As Hamilton had entered, the younger man had stepped straight to intercept him. Precious was with him. She had had an interested look on her face. Turpin had already got to the other side of the room, thank God, so there had been nobody to attempt some sort of crass introduction. But Hamilton had known his superior officer’s gaze would be upon him now. He still hadn’t known what was expected of him. But if this was a game, he was going to win it.

“Major,” said the youth. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this moment.”

“I wish I could say the same.” That had come out like an insult. So he had kept his jaw firm and damn well let it stand. “Where did they find you?”

The youth had seemed unperturbed. “Oh, in some dusty corridor of what one might still call reality.”

“This year’s model.” Hamilton couldn’t help but look at Precious rather than at his younger self. She was looking back at him too. He wondered in how many ways she was comparing them.

“Most people would be full of questions,” said the youth.

“It’s the nature of innocence to question, the nature of duty to accept.”

“And it’s the nature of age to be too sure of itself.” The boy had been ready to get angry if he felt he had to. He seemed very conscious of his honor. Sure he was being looked at too. Which was why Hamilton had poked him on the nose just then, to see his control, or lack of it. That rationalization, horribly, had come to Hamilton only after the fact.

Perhaps that was the point of this, to see which of them displayed the most grace? Had the boy been told what fate might await him if he failed whatever test this was? Could it be that Hamilton was, after all, being allowed to inspect his new … vehicle? Or was this his replacement? He couldn’t let himself dwell on that possibility. Hamilton had instead turned politely to Precious. She was petite, with long red hair set off by a green evening dress that … yes, the influence of the optional was here too, the dress had been, or still was, a sunlit meadow. To be in her presence wasn’t so much to see it as to be in the presence of it. She was used to being looked at and sought it. Her freckles didn’t look girlish on her, but somehow added to the passionate seriousness of those eyes, which held an expression of tremendous interest, a challenge to the world that equaled that of her dress. She had a welcoming mouth. “So,” he’d said, “where did you meet me?”

She’d smiled, but she hadn’t laughed. “We were introduced at the College of Heralds. Colonel Turpin brought him to visit. But I note that we haven’t been.”

“You’ll have to forgive me. I assumed we had already shared … a degree … of intimacy.”

He’d wondered if she would bristle at that. But she had smiled instead of being offended. Still, it had been a forced smile. She wasn’t quite on board for the anything goes of the new manners, then. Still a Herald at heart. Hamilton had found something he liked in her. Which should have come, he supposed, as no surprise.

“Why do you think,” the boy asked, “that Turpin wanted us to meet?”

“Perhaps he’s deciding on a suit, and wants to see both tried on.” He had looked back to Precious, as if suggesting she might be doing the same thing. She’d just inclined a fine eyebrow.

The boy had stepped between them then. He had decided on both a need to bring this intangible contest into the physical world and a way to do it. “Tell me, Major,” he said, “do you play cards?”

The Warden, no doubt encouraged by Turpin, had quickly warmed to the notion of a game. The select crowd, who had doubtless now realized what they were looking at when they looked between Hamilton and his younger self, had been intrigued, had talked at the top of their voices about it. He supposed, as the cards were prepared and he’d looked again at the throng, that there were clusters of people like this across Greater Britain now, in the most fashionable salons, changing their shapes and their ages and their appearances and the balance be hanged, and from now on they would all be grabbing at the novel and the extreme like they were bloody Icelandic. Perhaps the blockade had done this. Perhaps they were all starting to dance as the ship went down.

The game, someone had decided, should be clock seconds. Neither he nor the boy knew it. Which again, Hamilton supposed, was no accident. They had each taken a hand of ten from a new deck, one of a series being placed on the table. Hamilton took a glass of comfort while he was at it, a Knappogue Castle, from the Tullamore distillery, a pure pot still whiskey. Nothing served here or at High Table would be the kind of thing that the covers in his head could shrug off. That was the whole point of evenings like this. To get at the reality, that had been the thought, he supposed, back when those invited here had been interested in that. So now he was accepting a disadvantage. The boy, of course, had had to do the same, and, despite Precious’s warning glance, had taken the same measure.

The idea was to form tricks of differing value by discarding cards and picking new ones from another pack. But the nature of what constituted a legal trick changed depending on the time, each ten-minute arc on the Warden’s gilt bronze clock deciding the rules at that given moment. There was also a time limit of a few seconds on how long they could take to play a hand, so one couldn’t just sit there waiting until the terrain became favorable. So, Hamilton had realized as they waited for nine o’clock to chime on the chapel bell, one could either hold on to cards for long-term advantage, or keep burning one’s fuel steadily, playing the averages instead of waiting for some huge coup. Time and meaning in this game were freakishly interconnected. A somewhat garish intelligent projection of the rules was thrown onto the wall behind them, startling the deer. The projection had all the washes of color and blurred lines that suggested a courtier who was paying too much attention to His Majesty’s aesthetic tastes. It was said that the look of the ballroom at Hampton Court now changed depending on where you were in it, often just a blur of movement, as if it were seen from a carriage. Several ladies had already fallen as a result during one of the new dances, which had all struck Hamilton as being graceless gallops where the tempo was continually changing, people might collide at any moment, and it would be hard to tell where anyone was. They had been quick to blame their own shortcomings rather than question he whose perspective made all this. And well they should, of course that was the way they had to behave, what was Hamilton thinking? He had chided himself again.

They had taken up their initial hands. The boy had made eye contact with him again. No smile now. The obvious thing would be for Hamilton to underestimate him. He would not do that. That would be to lie about himself. He had let his eyes move upwards from his seated opponent, and linger, for a moment, where they should not.

“What are you looking at?” asked the boy, without turning to look.

“Nothing,” Hamilton had said, and had glanced back to his cards with a precisely calculated raise of his eyebrow.

* * *

In the first ten-minute round, Hamilton had surged ahead, his opponent failing to score while he put down some obvious, simple tricks. The boy seemed to always be waiting for something that was just one card away. Hamilton had recognized that in himself. That had been something that the service had beaten out of him.

A cheer and the Warden chiming spoon on glass had marked the end of the round, and the boy had immediately thrown down what he’d had but couldn’t previously score from, putting him in the lead and generating another cheer with the flourish of it. Hamilton had wondered if there were any in this crowd who were favoring him, or if to those who came to a party dressed as a mirage, the older version of an individual would be automatically the less interesting. He’d looked again to Precious and thought he caught something in her expression. Why did he feel she wasn’t quite of that opinion? She was biting her bottom lip, her eyes large with the excitement of the game. He’d turned back to the boy. “You know your fables?” he said, to conceal something that was brewing in his cards. “Slow and steady wins the race.”

“Yes, the Greeks would be keen on this game.” And he’d thrown down the first of a series of quick payoffs, building up a steady lead, trying to force Hamilton to bet on something that might never happen. “It’s full of transformations.”

“Yet hardly classical.”

“What’s seen as classical changes with time, just like anything else.”

So he seemed to share the opinions that had made his arrival here possible. Or to be willing to join in the chorus, at least. But surely he might feel as if he were still a slave, a chattel taken by a raiding party from an invaded province? There was, after all, something of that in Hamilton himself. Hamilton had risked a glance at Turpin and decided to raise the temperature. “Shall we make it interesting?” Having heard how finely cut the boy’s accent was, he had let a little Irish back into his own.

“How much?”

Hamilton had tried to remember what would have broken his bank in his twenties. Not that much less than what would now. Or was that his memory distorting time again? He didn’t want to quote something that the boy would consider a trifle. Still, the value of money hadn’t changed much over the years, just his concept of what sufficed. “A thousand guineas?” The onlookers made shocked noises. Hamilton had realized his mistake immediately. It looked like he was bullying the boy. Precious was shaking her head at the young man, urging him to throw in his cards. “Or, no, perhaps not, let’s say—”

“A thousand guineas.” The boy had been roused by that. Of course he had. Hamilton had baited him in front of his girl.

He’d have done the same at that age if Annie were here, might have done the same now. He wouldn’t humiliate his younger self by backtracking now. “All right, then.”

The next three rounds seemed to go by in a flash. Hamilton and the boy had barely looked up as they drew, considered, threw in, the Warden calling the scores as they did so. Aces were high or low. The order of the court cards, to gasps from a few of those assembled who under pressure revealed a more traditional turn of mind, changed too. And the Ambassador, the Horse and the Devil could sometimes raise or lower the values of the numerals in Cups, Swords, Staves, and Coins.

With eleven minutes to go, everyone had surrounded the table where Hamilton and the boy were sweating, looking to their hands and then to each other, grabbing and throwing down, faster and faster. Hamilton was considering how hard it would be for him to take a loss of a thousand. It would mean selling something, perhaps the Morgan. He could deal with that pressure because of his experience, his training. The boy would have the surety and indestructibility of youth, but he had more to lose. His life, even, if he couldn’t pay, or if whatever he had here instead of a family or a regiment decided his existence wasn’t worth the expenditure. Perhaps his life, at least as a mind in his own body, was dependent, even, on the larger game they were playing tonight, whatever it might be. Hamilton had put aside a twinge of conscience. That was why he’d done this, wasn’t it? Not to harm the boy but to put him off his game. Or was that the whole of it? Then he cursed himself for losing his concentration in that second, as he saw, as he threw his hand down, that he could have kept some of those cards a moment more for much greater reward. The crowd cheered at the arrival of the last round and the last rule change. The boy was ahead, marginally. He was barely considering each hand before he threw it in, and now he didn’t have to think about what might be round the corner. They had turned the last bend and were sprinting for the finish line. Hamilton decided that the only way to go was to match him for speed, glimpsing the best hand, throwing in, hoping for better, hoping to push the boy that way too. The Warden shouted the score more and more swiftly. Fumbling fingers on cards became an issue. Hamilton drew level, and had found that all he had in the final seconds was luck. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d thrown himself on her mercy. He saw that he had tens of each suit, not the best hand and not the worst, and threw it down with just a moment left to play. The boy had looked at his own hand … and seemed to freeze. Hamilton could see his fingers trembling. Was he waiting, deliberately prolonging the misery? He himself had often been cruel, when a job had given him license to. The clock hand had thumped round the final three seconds … two … Hamilton was just a point ahead, surely the boy must have something? The boy fumbled with the cards and threw down his whole hand with a shout and the chimes of the chapel bell rang out across the room and the Warden rang his glass in unison and everyone had immediately leaned forward to see—

The boy had had nothing. He could have made nothing. And now he was staring at Hamilton, and Precious had stepped forward to defend him, her face furious, never mind that all tradition called for her to move in the opposite direction. And now, like a father, Hamilton had suddenly found he agreed.

“I’m satisfied,” Hamilton had begun, “I’ll just take one good bottle of—”

“Don’t you dare!” bellowed the boy. “Don’t you dare! I will pay what I owe!” And his voice had been fully Irish now, the sound that Hamilton heard often in his own thoughts and rarely in his speech. And with that the lad had leapt to his feet and marched out, without properly taking his leave or thanking his host. Precious had stared after him, outraged with the world. But she had not had the indecency in her to follow.

There had been only a brief silence before chatter had filled it.

Hamilton had looked over to the Warden, who was awkwardly closing the plate he’d used to keep the score. He didn’t meet Hamilton’s glance. There didn’t seem to be much joy in the room at what had happened. It wasn’t that this crowd had been on the younger man’s side, as such. But there was a sense of something broken. It was as if these people had suddenly discovered, upon being shaken, that a lot had changed, within them and without, and they didn’t know what to cheer for anymore.

Hamilton had got to his feet and taken a last sip from his glass. He had been pleased, despite everything, to find, a moment later, that Precious had joined him.

“He didn’t deserve it,” she said.

“No, he didn’t. But deserve is very rarely in it.”

Around them, the party had been breaking up. Farewells were being said. And now Turpin had chosen his moment to wander over. He had placed his hand on Hamilton’s shoulder. Hamilton wasn’t sure if he remembered his superior officer’s ever touching him before. Precious had stepped quickly away.

“Bad show,” Turpin had said very quietly.

“I’m sorry, sir. I assumed this was a contest.”

“You didn’t have to force him into a choice between bankruptcy and disgrace. I was hoping our young Herald here might be led, through her closeness to the lad, to begin a new trend in her College, to bring more of them towards His Majesty’s point of view. Win or lose, she’d have felt more taken with him, having seen him prove his mettle. But now she’ll be unable to see him and retain her position.” Turpin had looked over to where Precious stood, her face, now she thought she was unobserved, betraying a sort of calculation, as if she was working out propriety against length of time waited before she went after the boy. Then he had looked again to Hamilton, shook his head, and gone to take leave of his host.

And, until that card on his breakfast table, that was the last Hamilton had heard from him. Hamilton had said good night to his host, left the Warden’s rooms, and gone to the door of the Chapel. And he had found, in the despair that was already sinking into his stomach, that that building was now a horror to him after all.

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 …

But Turpin had said the boy’s world was like ours in almost every detail if set a few years back along the wave. And yet they didn’t have the balance. The idea that they could get along without it, that their great powers had, presumably through mere accident, in his world still preserved the status quo enough for consciousness and society … well, there was a subversive tidbit. No wonder Turpin felt a little vulnerable at having opened that door. No wonder he himself seemed to be leaning less and less on the balance.

Hamilton chided himself. These musings were not appropriate when in the field. He found his bearings in the forest as it stood, if anything could be said to stand on its own now. He quartered it and, moving as silently as he could, explored the territory down to the river, all the angles of the estate. He found nobody.

He used the covers in his eyes to move to the next nearest option after the servants’ world. This would be one of those chosen for His Majesty’s sport.

The house was much the same, with a few minor architectural differences. A flag with some sort of meaningless symbol flew over it. Hamilton didn’t want to know what it meant. He quartered the ground again, and found only some old men in a uniform he didn’t recognize and some young women in entertainingly little. Presumably that situation would get more extraordinary as the season arrived. He wondered if ladies would be brought here, or if they would be offered their own options of tea and mazes.

He changed his eyes again, and this time when he searched he found Columbians walking the paths, that quaint accent that reminded him of watching Shakespeare. These people, as he crouched nearby and listened to them pass, spoke with a horrid lack of care, as if there was nobody to judge them, no enemy opposing them. Some of them would know of the interest of a King in their world, some would surely not. For His Majesty to venture into any of even these carefully chosen worlds should be for him to go on safari, into territory that was not his own. And yet the choice was everything, wasn’t it? These worlds must be utterly safe. Unless one of them had the boy in it.

He searched through several worlds. He kept all their meanings at bay. He considered where he would go if he were in the boy’s shoes, and in so considering realized there must be something he was missing … because he couldn’t imagine coming here at all. He finally found, among the dozen or so options, somewhere empty. There was no house visible through the trees, the river was in a different place, the height of where he stood above sea level was different, and yet, according to the bare information about where he was on the globe that his covers insisted upon, he was in the same place. He looked around slowly, made sure he was hidden from all angles. Not only was the house gone, there were no houses on the plain, as far as he could see. And there was something … something extraordinary about—

“So they did send you.” The voice was his own. It came from up the hillside.

Hamilton couldn’t see its source. He stepped to put the trunk of a tree between it and himself. He took the Webley Collapsar from its holster.

“Where’s the Herald?” he called.

“You won’t find her—”

That told Hamilton she wasn’t right there beside him. He dropped to his knee as he swung out from the tree, his left hand on his pistol wrist, and fired at the voice. The report and the whump of the round going off made one sound. And then there was another, a crash of branches as the boy broke cover. Hamilton leapt out and fired twice more at the sound, foliage and undergrowth compacting in instants, momentary pulses of gravity sucking at his clothes, newly focused light dazzling him like a line of new stars blossoming and then gone in a moment.

Without looking for a result, he swung back behind the tree. Then he listened.

The movement had stopped. Of course it had. He wouldn’t have kept moving. He’d have lain there for a few moments, then lain there a bit longer.

He heard small movements from up the hill. With these rounds, it was likely that if the boy was still alive, he was also unwounded. He began to slowly make his way through the trees, making sure he also wasn’t going to be where the boy had last placed him. As he walked, he started to wonder about his surroundings. There was indeed something very strange about this empty world. He’d sometimes heard, at parties, at Court, back when he’d been invited, the sort of people who had nothing better to do talking about the glories of nature, about some mysterious poetic energy that looking at the simplicity of it could inspire in them. Hamilton thought, and had once ill-advisedly said, that nature wasn’t simple at all, that the billions of edges and details and angled surfaces in any view of it were the essence of complexity, much more so than any of the artifacts of civilization. To him, nature was cover, and all the better for its detail. Liz … Her Royal Highness … had made some joke on that occasion to cover the fact that he’d just bluntly contradicted the French ambassador.

But here was some strange feeling of glory. The trees all around him, the undergrowth he was paying such attention to as he stepped through it, it all seemed to be shouting at him. The colors seemed too bright. Was this some flaw in his covers? No. This was too complete. But it wasn’t about simplicity. The objects he saw nearby, even the river glimpsed down there, they were all … there was more detail than he was used to. He recalled a time when he’d injured one of his corneas, the fuzziness of view in one eye, until they’d grown and fitted a new one. It was like he’d suffered from something like that all his life, and now he could see better. God, it would be good to be able to stay here. Such relief and rest would be his.

No. These were dangerous thoughts.

There was a noise ahead of him and he brought the gun up. But he swiftly saw what it was. A fox was staring at him from between two bushes. Of course, he’d been downwind of it, and it had turned to face him in that instant. Better luck than he’d ever had on the hunt. But the eyes on this thing, the sheen of its fur, the intensity of every strand, that he could see from here …

The fox broke the instant and ran.

Something in the world broke with it and Hamilton hit the ground hard, realizing in that moment that his eardrums were resounding and being glad they were resounding because that meant he was still alive, and he threw himself aside as the soil and leaves still fell around him and were sucked suddenly sideways, and he was rolling down the hill, crashing into cover and grabbing the soil to stop himself before the noise had died.

The boy had nearly had him. The boy had the same gun. Of course he had.

He lay there, panting. Then he lay there some more. The boy couldn’t be sure he was here or he’d have fired by now. He wondered, ridiculously, for a moment, about the life of the fox. He killed the thought and started to push himself forward on his elbows. He realized, as he did so, that he wasn’t injured. This might come down to a lucky shot. It was a contest of blunderbusses and balloons.

He felt, oddly, that it was apt his life should come to this. Then he killed that thought too. It would be more bloody apt if his life came to this then continued after the death of the other fellow.

“You could just stay here.” That was the boy again, hard to trace where it was coming from beyond the general direction. He’d placed himself somewhere that the sound was broken, some trees close together, a rock wall.

Hamilton kept looking. “Why do you say that?”

“Don’t you know where you are?”

“An optional Britain.”

“Hardly, old man.” The affectations he’d lost along the way. “It’s not a country at all if there’s nobody in it.”

“I presume His Majesty has been in it. And probably found good hunting.”

“As well he might. In heaven.”

Hamilton grinned at the oddness of that. “How do you make that out?” It felt like the boy wanted to debate with his father. Wanted to test the bars of his cage. Perhaps he’d felt like that, at that age, but his own father’s failure had meant he never felt able to, or perhaps had never felt the need. A place where there was no identity for him and no reason to do anything? More like the hell with no balance that the boy came from.

“It’s more … real … than where either of us are from. And I say it’s obviously heaven, because nobody got here.”

Hamilton had heard the smile in his voice. “Except us. Are you sure it’s not the other place?” A curious thought came to him. “Is that why you want me to stay?”

“I mean that if I went back, they wouldn’t search in here. You could wait a few days, go anywhere you want.”

Hamilton grimaced at that lack of meaning in the boy’s life. “You think I’d abandon my duty?” He had a vision for a moment of being replaced in his life by the younger man. It felt like an invasion of himself. But also there was the frightening feel of temptation to it.

“I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that, old man.” He meant it too. “I mean you could take advantage of this game. They need one of us to die, so …”

Where had he got that idea? Turpin would have liked to see the boy hauled back as a trophy, but the Palace was decidedly lukewarm on the matter, and Hamilton couldn’t see any way in which any of the interested parties would be satisfied with the boy, rather than himself, emerging from the forest. “Who told you that?”

A pause. “Are you trying to lie to me?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it … old man. I’m just here to bring you back.” The boy might assume that Hamilton had been given covers he had not, lies that could fool ears that could detect lies. Or he might know whatever he had in his head was in advance of anything Hamilton had as standard issue. But they knew each other’s voices too well.

There was a sound from a direction Hamilton didn’t expect. He turned, but he made himself do it with his gun lowered. There stood the boy. He had his gun lowered too. Hamilton stepped towards him. He allowed himself to make the first honest eye contact he’d had with his younger self. To see that face looking open to him was truly extraordinary, a joy that needed to be held down, a kindness worth crossing the waves that held worlds apart. He took a deep breath of an air that was indeed better than any he’d tasted. Whether or not this was heaven, he could imagine His Majesty walking in it and its giving him ideas of what should belong to him, of hunting endlessly here, with new youth for himself whenever he wished, and younger versions of every courtier and courtesan at his command. There would be, thanks to this boy, if some sort of misunderstanding could be proved, new manners forever. But that was hardly the boy’s fault. And in that moment, Hamilton decided to lead him back to the clearing, and to another thing often denied to their kind: explanations.

“I was told,” began the boy, “that I could only secure my place in society, in your world, by killing you. That that was why we had been brought together in … different contests.”

Hamilton realized this was exactly what he had once himself imagined. “Who—?”

A shot exactly like his or the boy’s rang out across the absolute clarity of the sky. The boy’s face bloated, in a moment, his body deformed by the impact, blood and the elements of a name bursting from his mouth. The collapsar shell sucked in again and the body dropped to the ground, emptied.

She stepped forward, lowering her gun. At least she had the grace to look sad. “Miss Nothing,” she said.

She was still wearing that bloody dress. She slipped her gun back inside it, hiding it again. She and Hamilton stood looking at each other for a while, until Hamilton understood that if he wanted to shoot her, she was going to let him, and angrily holstered his gun.

She immediately started back towards the house. He considered the idea of burying the boy. The absurdity of it made something catch in his throat. He marched after her and caught up. “Damn you. Damn both of us for not seeing you coming.” He grabbed her by the arm to stop her. “I take it you were never truly out of favor with the College?”

She looked calmly at him. “We don’t mind the idea of raiding optional worlds. We don’t mind stealing new bodies for old minds. Up to a point. But we draw the line at them replacing us. We’re the bloody College of Heralds, Major. Without family trees, we’d be out of business.”

“And by setting up the boy to look like he was capable of theft, kidnapping, and treachery, to the point of even being a threat to His Majesty—”

“We’ve proven such replacements to be unreliable. They never had the balance, you see.”

“And you’re telling me this because—?”

She looked truly sad for him in that moment. She understood him. “Because you’re going to let me get away with it.”

They emerged into the clearing. As they did so, Precious immediately became the model of a trembling, rescued victim. “He was a monster!” she cried out, supporting herself on Hamilton’s arm.

“Was?” asked the voice of Turpin from the trees.

Hamilton kept his expression calm. “The boy is dead now,” he said.