The Locksley Dagger, Part 4

The chair scraped across the floor, and the Doctor's bootsteps crossed the room. Water splashed, and then a damp cloth pressed itself to my forehead. The bed shifted as the Doctor sat on the edge.

"Any better?" he asked, wiping the wonderfully cool cloth across my face.

"Mmm..."

"Ayren," he whispered, leaning close, "I know who stole the dagger." I could hear the grin in his voice.

"Mmm?"

He was dramatically silent for a long moment. "I did."

My eyes flew open -- his face was just centimeters from mine. "What?"

"Well, I will." He shrugged. "You and I are going back to Souverane, to the night before we met Efass, I'm going to steal the dagger, and we're going to bring it back to Earth."

"Why?"

He jumped to his feet. "I've been thinking about it all morning," he explained, pacing to and fro. "This" -- he fingered his bandage -- "helped me make sense of it. The time rift is a big rip in the fabric of space-time, like a wound in flesh. The Time Lords sewed up that wound, but then they took an integral part of that wound away -- they took the time hook away. That's like trying to stitch this up with a huge hunk of flesh missing." He slapped his belly -- then winced and let out a gasp. "...With the time hook gone, instability built up over the eons, enough so that the rift snapped open."

Indisposed as I was, I still saw the flaw in his argument. "But you said the time rifts were natural and stable. How could something technological, something artificial, be integral to that?"

"We don't know anything about the time rifts before the hooks were created for them. What if the hooks actually imposed stability on unstable phenomena?"

"Okay." I tried to think through the thunder in my head. "But the time hook is here. Will Scarlett has it."

"Right. Will had it in 1991, when we first materialized. That's why the time rift seemed to be stable at that point. But the dagger won't always be here. At some point in the future, post 1195, perhaps even post 1991, the Time Lords will collect it, and it'll end up on Souverane. I can repair the time rift from the TARDIS, but the hook has to be in the vicinity for the rift to stay repaired."

Hadn't the Time Lords already collected the dagger? How could it be in Will's possession? Had the time rift here recently been ripped open, or was this before the Time Lords ever sewed it up? How could the Doctor tell the difference? "I can't think this through, Doctor -- it doesn't make sense. My brain wants to explode." I grasped my head, hoping to squeeze the throbbing out.

"Do you know anything about quantum temporal physics?"

I groaned and closed my eyes. "Oh, you know I don't."

He sat next to me on the bed again, his hand stroking tenderly through my hair. "The human brain has neither the ability nor the experience to understand more than four or five dimensions. To grasp quantum temporal physics, you'd need to visualize thousands. You'll have to take my word for it."

I looked up at him -- the illusion of the lovely, golden, human man I had seen by the firelight the night before could not hide the alien glimmer in her eyes. He'd said the human brain like I might say a cat's brain... or a dinosaur's brain. "You can visualize thousands of dimensions?"

"Yes."

I blinked at him.

"The fact that you can't doesn't mean I love you any less." He planted a firm kiss on my cheek, then went to get dressed.

Furling my body into a tight, fetal ball, I hid my face in my arms and tried to make the pain go away.

***

The morning meal at Nottingham Castle seemed a smaller version of the previous night's feast. Gathered at a round table in the center of the great hall were Robin and Marian and a few other faces I recognized from the night before, enjoying the cold remains of the evening meal.

"Lord Locksley, my lady." The Doctor bowed as we came before them. "We must take our leave of you." He collected his discarded surcoat and sword from a corner.

"You'll not break your fast with us?" Robin motioned for a serving boy to fetch another bench.

The thought of food made my stomach turn over -- I covered my mouth with my hand and felt the blood drain from my face.

"My lady is unwell?" Marian asked.

It was a moment before I felt it safe to open my mouth. "I fear I partook too heavily of your hospitality last night."

There was a commotion at the end of the hall, and Will Scarlett ran in, looking disheveled and out of breath.

One man at the table nudged another. "Young Master Will returns from his nightly inspection of the builders' camp."

"I hear he's interested in apprenticing to the Master Engineer," the second whispered with a grin.

"Nay, he's just interested in the apprentice," the first replied.

The Doctor smiled. "We must leave, my lord. Perhaps Will would show us the way back to the Nottingham road?"

"Aye," Robin said. "Fare well. You will always be welcome at Nottingham Castle -- indeed, at Locksley Castle."

Will wasn't happy with his appointed task. "I'd have thought my lord could have found the way back to the road by himself," he grumbled once we were outside.

"Actually, Will," the Doctor replied, "we need to return to where we met you yesterday. We need to use your dagger."

Will blanched and stepped away from us. "I'm not going back there."

"You won't have to," the Doctor said. "I promise."

I hadn't been looking forward to the long walk back to Locksley Castle and the time rift, but the exercise and the cold, bracing air made me feel a little better. And the thought of a hot bath and a pot of tea on the TARDIS egged me on. We reached the castle grounds just as the builders were leaving for a midday break -- there would be no witnesses, other than Will, for our disappearing act.

"Will," the Doctor said, "perhaps you should take the dagger out of the sheath. We don't want you taking any unexpected trips."

There was an anxious glare on Will's face, and he kept his distance from the Doctor and me, but he slid the knife from his belt and held it in his hand, his fingers thumping nervously against its hilt.

"This is about the spot," I said. There was the grave a few feet away, and that copse of trees I remembered.

The Doctor extended a hand to Will. "May we borrow the dagger?"

Will's smile was a little sheepish. "Forgive me, my lord, but this is the only thing I have of my father's--"

"We'll send it right back through. It won't be out of your sight for more than a moment." The Doctor was calm, reassuring, but Will shifted back and forth on his feet and showed no sign of relinquishing the time hook. With a sigh, the Doctor slid his sword out of his belt and handed it, hilt first, to Will. "Take my sword as a hostage. If I fail to return your dagger, you'll have this in exchange. But I will return your dagger, and you'll have both. Fair enough, no?"

Will bit his lip and gazed at the knife resting in his palm, and the Doctor stepped forward and whispered something in his ear. A dangerous grin oozed across the boy's face, his eyes narrowing to a squint, and he unbuckled the sheath from his belt and slapped it and the hilt of the dagger into the Doctor's hand. Will took the proffered sword, jabbed the end of it into the ground, and leaned against it.

I pretended disinterest as the Doctor, examining the time hook, rejoined me. "Now, Will," he said, "I'm going to fix things so that the dagger can no longer be used to... travel like this. When it comes back to you, it'll be just like any other knife."

Will looked massively relieved. "Good."

"Ready?" the Doctor whispered to me.

I nodded, closing my eyes in weariness. "This isn't going to help my head any."

"Brave heart, Ayren. Here we go."

Free-fall was no less terrifying for not being unexpected. I felt my throat ache with a scream, but I heard nothing until the thud of our bodies hitting the ground eight hundred years in the future.

"Travel by TARDIS," the Doctor grunted as he attempted to disentangle his limbs from his twisted surcoat, "really is so much more dignified."

It was night here, and no one else seemed to be around, so I lay on my back in the dewy grass for a moment, blinking at the stars overhead, and waited for the pounding in my head to subside.

The Doctor sat cross-legged next to me, lay the sheath on the ground in front of him and pushed the dagger into it with the tip of his finger, then let go. For a moment nothing happened -- then the dagger and sheath wavered, like we were looking at them through water, and they were gone.

By now, of course, I was consumed with curiosity. "What did you whisper to Will to make him grin like that?"

He leaned a cheek against his fists and gazed at me. "I said that though the dagger may have shed Nottingham blood, my sword had shed Locksley blood. That seemed to sweeten the deal for him."

"You don't think he'd hurt Robin, do you?" But then, I didn't think the Doctor would have given a deadly weapon to someone he thought inclined to use it without just cause.

"No. But I think he likes the idea that someone showed Robin Hood up." The Doctor grinned -- he was very pleased with himself. "Come on, let's go home."

***

I was back at the Renaissance festival two days later -- well, it was two days later from my perspective. In this time zone, it was later on the same day the Doctor and I were first here, a few hours after we left down the time rift with Will.

After our stay at Nottingham Castle, we'd spent a day on the TARDIS recovering. I recovered, at any rate, cured my hangover with lots of sleep and tea. The Doctor dallied in the TARDIS's medical lab for a while, mostly to please me, I suspected, but he refused to have anybody with any semblance of medical knowledge look at his sword wound. It was healing on its own, he insisted. I was torn between amusement and anger of his childishness.

The burgling of the Souverane Museum of Antiquities had been accomplished with minimal fuss. We arrived outside the museum late in the night before Kroulka interrupted our supper, saw the Klingon escorting the little curator into a groundcar, and watched them drive away.

The Doctor gazed at the darkened museum on the viewscreen and rubbed his hands together with glee. "Efass is going to be furious, of course," he said with a grin, then disappeared deep into the TARDIS to find the needed equipment. This he delighted in showing off to me.

"Gods, that's amazing!" I said with a gasp. "It's refracting the light around you, yes? Where did you get that thing?"

I was looking at the inner door of the TARDIS console room -- and seeing nothing... and then, an odd shimmer in the air, and the door wobbled a bit, as if a piece of leaded glass had passed before it.

"Oh, one picks up various and sundry objects here and there when one travels as much as I do." The Doctor's voice moved with the distortion toward the console -- and he snapped into view, his hand fiddling with a little device clipped to his belt. "It's terribly sneaky, but necessary in this case."

My eyes roamed over him in appreciation -- his jeans and sneakers and turtleneck, all black, offered a stark contrast to his blond hair and fair skin. "You really are quite the cat burglar, aren't you?"

He grinned, his blue eyes sparkling. "Well, the idea is to get in and get out without being seen. This small wonder" -- he patted the tiny box at his waist -- "will keep the securicams' eyes off me, and this" -- he drew a flat, square piece of metal from his back pocket -- here was the carte blanche Efass had mentioned -- "will tell the surface alarms that I have authorization to enter, walk around, open display cases, remove artifacts, and leave again... In short, that I should be allowed to go about my business unmolested."

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me," I said, biting my lip, "what mad caper earned you this privilege." No point in even phrasing it as a question.

"What a clever woman you are..." He was very careful not to meet my gaze. "Right, I'm off. Wish me luck."

"Good..." Quick, firm kiss to his mouth. "...luck."

"Mmm. Wait up for me," he whispered, a suggestive glint in his eyes.

I raised an eyebrow. "Sure you're up for it?" with a pat to his still-healing middle... his still-healing damp middle. "Oh, not again, Doctor! Why won't you get this properly fixed? You can't go out like this now."

"I have to -- Kroulka could be back at any minute... May I?" He was eyeing the scarf around my shoulders -- it was gauzy and soft, a perfect bandage. I shrugged, and he whipped it off me, pulled his shirt -- a dark bloodstain slowly spreading across its front -- out of the waist of his jeans, and tied the scarf around his middle. "There. I'll survive." And he was out of the TARDIS before I could argue.

And here was the dagger, back where it belonged, on Earth. The leather of the sheath was worn, had acquired more nicks and scratches, its color not quite as deep as it had been when Will Scarlett owned it. Robin's "Ro" was only faintly visible. The blade was as strong and lethal as ever. I smiled, enjoying the weight of it in my hand, imagining I could feel the years it had accumulated. It had to be at least thirteen hundred years old, to have gone from the Locksleys in the Middle Ages to Souverane in Earth's expansionary spacefaring age, hundreds of years from here, 1991. And who knew when the ancient time travelers had created the dagger...

I strolled around the festival, in no real hurry. The Doctor was back in the TARDIS, working his mathematical magic to repair the damaged time rift. My poor human brain failed to understand how mathematics -- just numbers -- could actually affect space-time, so I was assigned the task of depositing the dagger -- the time hook -- to act as the clasp on the "bandage" the Doctor was creating.

"Should I bury it under a tree or something?" I'd asked the Doctor, confused about how this plan of his was supposed to work.

He smiled. "No, that won't be necessary. As long as it's on Earth, it'll be close enough to the time rift to keep it sealed up."

I was trying now to decide which of the vendors I would attempt to sell the dagger to. It would be nice to have money to buy a little gift for the Doctor -- perhaps one of those floppy Renaissance hats, in royal blue to match his eyes. And then we could visit the seventeenth century... Verona, perhaps, or Amsterdam, or an evening at the Globe Theater near London...

My daydreams were interrupted by the sight of a familiar face at one of the craft booths. It was the redheaded woman we'd shared our lunch table with, the one who'd panted over Will Scarlett -- she was leaning over a display case, examining the jewelry inside. Her friend was nowhere in sight.

"Hello," I said.

She looked up at me with no recognition in her eyes. Of course. I wasn't wearing the medieval forester's clothing she had seen me in, but nondescript blue jeans and a white blouse. But after a moment she remembered me anyway. "Oh, hello. Did you ever find Will Scarlett?"

I smiled. "Yes, we did. Thank you." And then it struck me -- there was no question how I should get rid of the dagger. I held it out to the woman. "I'd like you to have this."

She looked down at it, then back to me, as stunned as if she'd been slapped in the face. "What? No, I couldn't..."

"Please. I insist. I was going to sell it, but I don't need the money. I'd like you to have it."

Hesitant and a little uneasy, she touched it, then took it and slid the dagger from the sheath. "God. Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. It belonged to Will Scarlett, by the way."

She grinned. "Yeah? Is he still around?"

"He, ah, went home."

"Damn. I should have gotten his phone number."

I shook my head and laughed, not unkindly. "He is a rogue and a scoundrel."

Playfully, she threw up her hands. "Oh, too bad he's gone. I need a scoundrel in my life." Then she cooed over the dagger again, caressing the blade. "You're really sure?"

"I'm really sure."

***

The Doctor and I had a quiet dinner on the TARDIS that evening, and it wasn't until we got to the apple pie for dessert that I gathered the courage to ask the question that had been haunting me since Nottingham.

"Doctor," I began casually, "do you think what happened to this time rift is likely to happen to the others as well?"

He considered this as he chewed. "Possibly. There may have been something special about this particular time rift to cause it to tear open again, but I think most likely all of them will have to be checked out and their status reevaluated."

I took a deep breath and steeled myself. "And is this a job you're planning to take on?"

"Good lord, no! Ayren, the time rifts are everywhere. Even if I wanted to do it, I wouldn't live long enough."

Sighing with relief, I said, "I didn't think so. So who is going to deal with this problem?"

"Oh, the Time Lords, no question. They're the only ones capable of it."

My heart quickened. "Are we going to Gallifrey?"

"No," he said, regret in his voice, "I don't think I'd be very welcome there right now. We'll let Efass deal with them."

"You're going to talk to him?" I sputtered. "By now Kroulka will have checked the security systems -- they'll know it was you who stole the dagger!" I shuddered to think of what Kroulka might do to the Doctor.

"Oh, I'm not going to talk to him. I've written him a letter." He drew a long white envelope from a pocket inside his morning coat. "I've explained how I... appropriated the dagger and why, I've explained my theory on the instability of the time rifts and the potential danger they pose, and I've asked him to contact the Time Lords with this information." He smiled sweetly at me. "Would you care to deliver it for me? You're less likely to be recognized."

And so I found myself on all fours, in front of the Souverane Museum of Antiquities, in the pouring spring rain, in the middle of the night after we dined with Efass. I was trying to slide the Doctor's letter under the glass doors and having no luck. There was no gap between the bottom of the doors and the walkway, the envelope was getting terribly crumpled, and Efass's name in blue ink was getting smudged and runny in the rain.

"Damn!"

I was so focused on forcing the letter under the door that by the time I sensed the presence behind me, it was much too late to escape. I froze, catching my breath, and then sat back on my heels and looked up.

Kroulka loomed over me, baring long, sharp, yellow teeth.

She was smiling.

"I believe this belongs to the Doctor. I found it in the time-technologies hall," she said, handing me a piece of cloth. It was my scarf, the one the Doctor had wrapped around his waist before he went burgling. It was stiff with dried blood. "The blood has been identified as Gallifreyan."

"You knew," I gasped as it struck me. Even without the security checks, Kroulka had known the Doctor had been in the museum. When she'd approached us that night in the bar and summoned us on Efass's behalf, she'd already known the Doctor had stolen the Locksley Dagger. And she hadn't let on. "Why?"

She was silent for a long moment, considering this. "Efass is, as a human might say, 'a pain in the ass.' I'm sure the Doctor would agree with me." She held her body stiffly straight. "And as undignified as this is for a Klingon to say, I enjoyed seeing Efass squirm."

I laughed. "I don't believe this!"

Kroulka was offended. "I assure you that it's quite true."

I waved away her misunderstanding, then realized I was waving the Doctor's letter. "This is for Efass."

"I'll see that he gets it." She took it from me. "Good evening." Opening the museum's front door with a cardkey, she stepped inside.

The Doctor was never going to believe this.

As I watched, Kroulka dropped the letter into the donation box inside the museum, then clasped her hands behind her back and strolled into the darkness.

*end*