The Prince's Wedding (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 3)

Chapter 8

While I had not seen a single security eye since we had arrived, I was willing to bet there was nowhere in the palace, apart from possibly the royal family's apartments, where you could have a truly private conversation. Thor and I ended up stepping out into the corridor to the teleportation suite and letting the doors close behind us.

"Fire away," I said. With any luck, he had found or noticed something that Mirabi and I had missed.

"This is both good and bad timing, detective," said Thor. "If it hadn't been for the wedding, I would have been trying to contact you this week anyway. I have something you need to know about. It's important you try not to panic."

I raised one eyebrow.

"That's a good way to start," I said.

Thor nodded without smiling.

"I know," he said. "But I mean it. This may not necessarily be what it seems."

"What is it?" I said.

"The time stream gives us many gifts," said Thor. "One particular one that it gave to the founders of my brotherhood was a way to actually watch it as it flows. And sometimes, to see things that what will occur upstream."

I raised my other eyebrow. While Thor had been fully cooperative since the day he'd told me he was a hierophant, he had also been careful not to reveal anything more than necessary about the cult. But I knew what he was talking about. There had been rumours for centuries that the hierophants had temporal technology of their own invention – or divinely inspired, as they believed – that allowed them to see glimpses of the future.

Most of ChronOps's temporal science division wrote this off as impossible. But there were some who argued that it was the most plausible explanation for why the hierophants had survived for so long when so many of the other cults had died out. ChronOps's system-wide satellite network could detect every time jump, to the past or future, made in the Solar System, and we could chase down the unauthorised ones very quickly. But we had never once caught any members of the hierophants doing it, and the proponents of the theory insisted this was proof. The hierophants evaded capture because they always knew we were coming.

"We call it the stream viewer," said Thor. "I spent some time meditating before one this weekend after I agreed to come here."

"You saw what's going to happen at the wedding?" I said.

For a split second, I was intrigued, but then sanity returned. I knew, from long and painful personal experience, that knowing the future was not a blessing. I should have guessed it would be something like this, but I was not stupid to enough to ask what he'd seen, or try to make use of it.

"No," said Thor, before I could tell him not to go on. "I saw Detective Arjuna."

My skeleton locked in place. Every muscle in my body stiffed, apart from my heart, which did a fast and heavy double-beat. My eyes shot to Thor's.

"What did you see?" I said.

"I have to make this clear. We have no way to control what we see when we use it," said Thor. "The time stream shows us whatever it chooses to. Sometimes we see things that will happen in mere minutes. Other times not for years, possibly centuries. This time, there was nothing to give any indication of when. Detective Arjuna looked as she does now; no older or younger. But she was wearing her dress uniform."

"What did you see?" I said, again.

"I saw her getting shot," said Thor. "In the upper chest. From above at a reasonably steep angle. I didn't see the shooter. It was a wide-diameter laser bolt. But it looked like a lethal one."