Ties Between Time and Space

✦13✦

Chapter Thirteen
Finally Getting A Knighthood

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The library was filled with voices as everyone except for Queen Victoria searched the bookshelves for something of use. Reynolds flipped through a book on the desk, Sir Robert picked ones at random, the Doctor sat on the ladder reading, and Emma leaned her back against the wooden pillar with an enormous book in her arms.

"Biology. Zoology. Maybe there's something about wolves in here," Emma murmured to herself.

"Hold on, what about this?" the Doctor asked. "A book on mistletoe."

"A book on magic," Emma said when the Doctor dropped a book down to her.

"Some form of explosive," Reynolds read.

"Hmm, that's the sort of thing," the Doctor hummed.

"And what of wolf's bane?" Sir Robert questioned.

"It could work," Emma guessed.

"Ohhh. . . " the Doctor muttered and jumped down from the ladder with a book in his hands. "Look what your old dad found. Something fell to Earth." He set the book down on the desk with it opened on an illustrated drawing.

"A spaceship?" Emma asked coming to his side.

"Shooting star," Sir Robert corrected from the Doctor's other side. "In the year of our Lord 1540, under the reign of King James the Fifth, an almighty fire did burn in the pit," he read out loud before realization hit. "That's the Glenn of Saint Catherine just by the monastery."

"Except that was over three hundred years ago. So, what's it been waiting for?" Emma asked.

"Maybe just a single cell survived," the Doctor proposed. "Adapting slowly down the generations, it survived through the humans, host after host after host."

"But why does it want the throne?" Reynolds questioned.

"Exactly," Emma pointed at him and nodded. "That's what it said. It wants the throne. Something like the. . . The Empire of the Wolf."

"Imagine it," the Doctor said. "The Victorian Age accelerated. Starships and missiles fueled by coal and driven by steam, leaving history devastated in its wake."

"Captain Reynolds," Queen Victoria breathed out heavily as she stood up. "If I am to die here-- "

"Your Majesty, please may I ask you to refrain yourself from such talk," Reynolds begged.

"I would-I would destroy myself rather than let that creature infect me," Victoria told him firmly. "But that's no matter," she dismissed. "I ask only that you find some place of safekeeping for something far older and more precious than myself."

"Hardly the time to worry about your valuables," the Doctor remarked.

"Thank you for your opinion," Victoria said, looking at him. Her hand then disappeared into the bag she was carrying with her. "But there is nothing more valuable than this." When it reappeared she was holding the largest white diamond Emma had ever seen.

The Doctor and Emma straightened up from their hunched positions over the desk, their eyes wide in amazement as Sir Robert's mouth dropped.

"Tell me that's not the Koh-I-Noor?" Emma asked.

"Oh, yes," the Doctor murmured as he moved himself and Emma closer to the Queen. "The greatest diamond in the world.

"Given to me as the spoils of war," Victoria explained. "Perhaps its legend is now coming true. It is said that whoever owns it must surely die."