It was a Friday morning late in January. The briefing room in the police fortress was already full as the inspector entered, and there was a rattle of chairs as a dozen constables came to their feet. Smith paused for a moment, savoring their attentive expressions. “At ease, men,” he said, and continued to the front of the room. “I see you’re all bright and eager this morning. Sit down and rest your feet for a while. We’ve got a long day ahead, and I don’t want you whining about blisters until every last one of our pigeons is in the pokey.”
A wave of approving nods and one or two coughs swept the room. Sergeant Stone stayed on his feet, off to one side, keeping an eye on his men.
“You’ll all be wondering what this is all about, then,” began Smith. “Some of you’ll ’ave heard rumors.” He glanced around the room, trying to see if anyone looked surprised. Rumors were a constable’s stock in trade, after all. “If any of ’em turns out to be true, I want to know about it, because if you’ve heard any rumors about what I’m telling you now, odds are the pigeons’ve heard it too. An’ today we’re going to smash a nest of rotten eggs.”
He scanned his audience for signs of unease: Here and there a head nodded soberly, but nobody was jumping up and down. “The name of the game is smuggling,” he said dryly. “In case you was wondering why it’s our game, and not the Excise’s, it turns out that these smugglers have a second name, too: Godwinite scum. The illegal press we cracked last week was bankrolled from here, in my manor, by a Leveler quartermaster. We ain’t sure where the gold’s coming from, but my money is on a woman who’s lately moved into town and who smells like a Frog agent to me. At least, if she ain’t French she’s got some serious explaining to do.”
Smith clapped his hands together briskly to warm them up.
“You men, your job is to help me give our little lady an incentive to sing like a bird. We are going to run this by shifts and you are going to stick to her like glue. Two tailing if she goes out, two on the manor, four hours on, four off, but the off team ready to go in if I says so. We are going to keep this up until she makes contact with a known seditionist or otherwise slips up, or until we get word that more gold is coming. Then we’re going to get our hands on her and find out who her accomplices are. When that happens we are going to get them back here, make them talk, and cut out the disease that has infected Boston for the past few years. A lot of traitors to the crown are going to go for a long walk to Hudson Bay, a bunch more are going to climb the nevergreen tree, and you are going to be the toast of the town.” Smith grinned humor-lessly. “Now, sergeant. If you’d like to run through the work details, we can get started …”
A few hours later, a woman stepped out from behind a hedge, kicked the snow from her boots, and glanced around the dilapidated kitchen garden.
“Hmm.” She looked at the slowly collapsing greenhouse, where holes in the white curtain revealed the glass panes that had fallen in. Then she saw the house, most of its windows dark and gloomy. “Hah!”
She strode up the garden path boldly, a huge pack on her shoulders: When she came to the side door she banged on it with a confident fist. “Anyone at home?” she called out.
“Just a minute there!” The door scraped ajar. “Who be you, and what d’you want, barging into our garden—”
“That’s enough, Jane, she’s expected.” The door opened wide. “Olga, come in!”
The maid retreated, looking suspiciously at the new arrival as she stepped inside and shut the door. Miriam called: “Wait!”
“Yes’m?”
“Jane, this is Olga, my young cousin. She’ll be staying here from time to time and you’re to treat her as a guest. Even if she has an, uh, unusual way of announcing her arrival. Is that understood?”
“Yes’m.” The kitchen maid bobbed and cast a sullen glance at Olga. Olga didn’t react. She was used to servants.
“Come on in and get out of the cold,” Miriam told her, retreating through the scullery and kitchen into a short corridor that led to the huge wooden entrance hall. “Did you have a good trip? Let’s get that pack stowed away. Come on, I’ll show you upstairs.” There was only one staircase in this house, with a huge window in front of it giving a panoramic view of the short drive and the front garden. Miriam climbed it confidently and gestured Olga toward a door beside the top step. “Take the main guest bedroom. Sorry if it looks a bit underfurnished right now—I’m still getting myself moved in.”
The bedroom was huge, uncarpeted, and occupied by a single wardrobe and a high-canopied bed. It could have come straight out of House Hjorth, except for the gurgling brass radiators under the large-paned windows, and the dim electric candles glowing overhead. “This is wonderful,” Olga said with feeling. She smiled at Miriam. “You’re looking good.”
“Huh.” Miriam shrugged. “I’m taking a day out from the office, slobbing around here to catch up on the patent paperwork.” She was in trousers and a baggy sweater. “I’m afraid I scandalized Jane. Had to tell her I was into dress reform.”
“Well, what does the help’s opinion matter? I say you look fine.” Olga slid out from under her pack and began to unbutton her overcoat. “Do you have anything I can take for a headache?”
“Sure, in the bathroom. I’ll show you.” Miriam paused. “How would you like a guided tour of the town?” she asked.
“I’d love it, when the headache is sorted.” Olga rubbed her forehead. “This cargo had better be worth it,” she said as Miriam knelt and began to work on the pack. “I feel like a pack mule.”
“It’s worth it, believe me.” Miriam worked the big, flattish box loose from the top of Olga’s pack. “A decent flat-panel monitor will make all the difference to running AutoCAD, believe me. And the medicine and clothes and, uh, other stuff.” Other stuff came in a velvet bag and was denser than lead, almost ten kilograms of gold in a block the size of a pint of milk. “Once I’ve stored this safely and changed, we can go out. We’ll need to buy you another set of clothes while you’re over here.”
“It can wait.” Olga reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a pistol, held it out to Miriam. “I brought this along, by the way. Lady Brilliana is waiting on the other side.”
“She is, is she?” Miriam pulled a mirthless smile. “Good. Did she bring that cannon of hers?”
“Yes.” Olga nodded.
“You’d better put that away,” Miriam warned. “People don’t go armed here, except the police. You don’t want to attract attention.”
“Yes. I noticed that in your world, as well.” Olga found an inner pocket in her coat and slid the gun into it carefully. “Who’s to defend you?”
“The thief-takers and constables, in theory. Ordinary thief-takers are mostly safe, but the police constabulary are somewhat different here—their job is to defend the state against its own subjects.” Miriam picked up the dense velvet bag with both hands and carried it to the doorway, glanced either way, then ducked through into the next room.
“This is your bedroom?” asked Olga.
“Yes.” Miriam grunted. “Here, help me move the bed.” There was a loose panel in the skirting board behind the bed. Miriam worried it loose, to reveal a small safe which she unlocked. The bag of bullion was a tight fit because the safe was already nearly full, but she worked it closed eventually and put the wooden slat back before shoving the bed up against it. “That’s about ten thousand pounds,” Miriam commented—”enough to buy this house nine times over.”
Olga whistled appreciatively. “You’re doing it in style.”
“Yeah, well, as soon as I can liquidate it, I’m going to invest it.” Miriam shrugged. “You’re sure Brill is alright?” she asked.
“Brilliana is fine,” Olga said dismissively. “I don’t believe you have anything to worry about on her part.”
“I don’t believe she’s a threat.” Miriam shook her head. “A snoop planted by Angbard is another matter.”
“Hmm.” Olga looked skeptical. “I see.”
“Give me ten minutes? I need to get decent.”
“Certainly.” Olga retreated to the bathroom—opposite the guestroom—to play with the exotic fixtures. They weren’t as efficient as those in Miriam’s office or Fort Lofstrom, but they’d do.
Miriam met her on the landing, dressed for a walk in public and wearing a ridiculous-looking bonnet. “Let’s head to the tram stop,” she suggested. “I’ll take you by the office and introduce you to people. Then there’s a friend I want you to meet.”
Miriam couldn’t help but notice the way Olga kept turning her head like a yokel out in the big city for the first time. “Not like Boston, is it?” she said, as the tram whined around the corner of Broad Street and narrowly avoided a coster-monger’s cart with a screech of brakes and an exchange of curses.
“It’s—” Olga took a deep breath: “smellier,” she declared. She glanced around. “Smaller. More people out and about. Colder. Everyone wears heavier clothing, like home, but well cut, machine-made. Dark fabrics.”
“Yes,” Miriam agreed. “Clothing here costs much more than in world two because the whole industrial mass-production thing hasn’t taken off. People wear hand-me-downs, insist on thicker, darker fabrics that wear harder, and fashion changes much more slowly. It used to be like that back home; in 1900 a pair of trousers would have cost me about four hundred bucks in 2000 money, but clothing factories were already changing that. One of the things on my to-do list is introducing new types of cloth-handling machines and new types of fabric. Once I’ve got a toe-hold chiseled out. But don’t assume this place is wholly primitive—it isn’t. I got some nasty surprises when I arrived.”
Something caught her eye. “Look.” She pointed up into the air, where a distant lozenge shape bearing post from exotic Europe was maneuvering toward an airfield on the far side of town.
“Wow. That must be huge! Why don’t your people have such things?”
Miriam pulled a wry face. “We tried them, long ago. They’re slow and they don’t carry much, but what really killed them was politics. Over here they’ve developed them properly—if you want to compare airships here with airships back home, they’ve got the U.S. beat hands-down. They sure look impressive, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
Miriam stood up and pulled on the bell cord, and the tram slid to a halt. “Come on,” she urged. They stepped off the platform into shallow slush outside a street of warehouses with a few people bustling back and forth. “This way.”
Olga followed Miriam—who waited for her to catch up—toward an open doorway. Miriam entered, and promptly turned right into a second doorway. “Behold, the office,” Miriam said. “Declan? This is Miss Hjorth. Olga, meet Declan McHugh.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Declan was a pale-faced draftsman somewhere in his late twenties, his face spotted badly by acne. He regarded Olga gravely from beside bis board: Olga smiled prettily and batted her eyelashes, hamming it up. Behind Declan two other youths kept focused on their blueprints. “Will you be in later, ma’am?” he asked Miriam. “Had a call from O’Reilly’s works regarding the wood cement.”
“I’ll be in tomorrow,” Miriam replied thoughtfully. “I’m showing Olga around because she will be in and out over the next few months. She’s carrying documents for me and talking to people I need to see on my behalf. Is that clear?”
“Er, yes.” Declan bobbed bis head. “You’ll be wanting the shoe-grip blueprints tomorrow?”
“Yes. If you could run off two copies and see that one gets to Mr. Soames, that would be good. We’ll need the first castings by Friday.”
“I will do that.” He turned back to his drawing board and Miriam withdrew.
“That,” she explained quietly, “is the office. There is the lab, where Roger and Martin work: They’re the chemistry team. Around that corner is going to be the metal shop. Soames and Oswald are putting it together right now, and the carpenter’s busy on the kitchen. But it’ll be a while before everything is in shape. The floor above us is still half derelict, and I’m going to convert a couple of rooms into paper storage and more drafting offices before we move the office work to new premises. Currently I’ve got eight men working here full-time. We’d better introduce you to all of them.”
She guided Olga into a variety of rooms, rooms full of furnaces, rows of glass jars, a lathe and drill press, gas burners. Men in suits, men in shirts and vests, red-faced or pale, whiskered or clean-shaven: men who stood when she entered, men who deferred to Miriam as if she was royalty or management or something of both.
Olga shook her head as they came out of the building. “I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said quietly. “You’ve done it. All of them, followers, all doing your bidding respectfully. How did you manage it?”
Miriam’s cheek twitched. “Money,” she murmured. “And being right, but mostly it was the money. As long as I can keep the money coming and seem to know what I’m talking about, they’re mine. I say, cab! Cab!” She waved an arm up and down and a cabbie reined his nag in and pulled over.
“Greek Street, if you please,” Miriam said, settling into the cab beside Olga.
Olga glanced at her, amused. “I remember the first time you met a carriage,” she said.
“So do I.” Miriam pulled a face. “These have a better suspension. And there are trains for long journeys, and steam cars if you can afford the expense and put up with the unreliability and noise.”
The cab dropped them off at Greek Street, busy with shoppers at this time of day. Miriam pulled her bonnet down on her head, hiding her hair. “Come on, my dear,” she said, in a higher voice than normal, tucking Olga’s hand under her arm. “Oh, cab! Cab, I say!” A second cab swooped in and picked them up. “To Holmes Alley, if you please.”
Miriam checked over her shoulder along the way. “No sign of a tail,” she murmured as the cab pulled up. “Let’s go.” They were in the door of the pawn shop before Olga could blink, and Miriam whipped the bonnet off and shook her hair out. “Erasmus?”
“Coming, coming—” A burst of loud wet coughing punctuated his complaint. “Excuse me, please. Ah, Miriam, my friend. How nice of you to visit. And who is this?”
“Olga, meet Erasmus Burgeson.” Miriam indicated the back curtain, which billowed slightly as Erasmus tried to stifle his coughing before entering. “Erasmus, meet my friend Olga.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” he said, and stepped out from behind the curtain. “Yes, indeed I am charmed, I’m absolutely certain, my dear.” He bowed stifly. “To what do I owe the honor of this occasion?”
Miriam turned around and flipped the sign in the door to 4, then shot the bolt. She moved deeper into the shop. “You got my letter?”
“It was most welcome.” Burgeson nodded. “The fact of its existence, if not its content, I should say. But thank you, anyway.”
“I don’t think we were observed,” Miriam stated, “but I think we’d better leave by the cellar.”
“You trust her?” Burgeson raised an eyebrow.
“Implicitly.” Miriam met his eyes. “Olga is one of my business associates. And my bodyguard. Show him, Olga.”
Olga made her pistol appear. Burgeson’s other eyebrow rose. She made it disappear again. “Hmm,” said Burgeson. “A fine pair of Amazon women!” He smiled faintly. “Nevertheless, I hope you don’t need to use that. It’s my experience that however many guns you bring to a fight, the Crown can always bring more. The trick is to avoid needing them in the first place.”
“This is your agent?” Olga asked Miriam, with interest.
“Yes, exactly.” Miriam turned to Burgeson. “I brought her here because I think it may be impossible for me to visit in person in the future. In particular, I wanted to introduce her to you as an alternative contact against the time when we need to be publicly seen in different places at the same time. If you follow.”
“I see.” Burgeson nodded. “Most prudent. Was there anything else?”
“Yes. The consignment we discussed has arrived. If you let us know where and how you want it, I’ll see it gets to you.”
“It’s rather, ah, large.” Burgeson looked grim. “You know we have a lot of use for it, but it’s hard to make the money flow so freely without being overseen.”
“That would be bad,” Miriam agreed. Olga looked away, then drifted toward the other side of the shop and began rooting through the hanging clothes, keeping one ear on the conversation. “But I can give you a discount for bulk: say, another fifteen percent. Think of it as a contribution to the cause, if you want.”
“If I want.” Burgeson chuckled humorlessly: It tailed off in a hoarse croak. “They hanged Oscar yesterday, did you hear?”
“Oscar?”
“The free librarian who fenced me the Marx you purchased. Two days before Inspector Smith searched my domicile.”
“Oh dear.” Miriam was silent for a moment. Olga pulled an outfit out to examine it more closely.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if Russell hadn’t shot Lord Dalgleish last year,” Burgeson mused. “You wouldn’t know about that. But the revolution, in that history book you gave me, the one in the Kingdom of Russ, the description all sounds exceedingly familiar, and most uncomfortably close to the bone. In particular, the minister named Stolypin, and the unfortunate end he came to.” He coughed damply.
Olga cleared her throat. “Is there somewhere I can try this on?” she asked.
“In the back,” said Burgeson. “Mind the stove on your way through.” He paused for breath as Olga squeezed past.
“Is she serious?” he asked Miriam quietly.
“Serious about me, and my faction.” Miriam frowned. “She’s not politicized, if that’s what you’re asking about. Sheltered upbringing, too. But she’s loyal to her friends and she has nothing to gain from the Emergency here. And she knows how to shoot.”
“Good.” Erasmus nodded gravely. “I wouldn’t want you to be placing your life in the hands of a dizzy child.”
“Placing my—what?”
“Two strangers. Not constabulary or plainclothes thief-takers, one of them looking like a Chinee-man. They’ve been drinking in the wrong establishments this past week, asking questions. Some idiots, the kind who work the wrong side of the law—not politicals—these idiots have taken their money. Someone has talked, I’m sure of it. A name, Blackstones, was mentioned, and something about tonight. I wrote to you but obviously it hasn’t arrived.” He stared at her. “It’s a very deep pond you’re swimming in.”
“Erasmus.” She stared right back. “I am going to make this world fit to live in by every means at my disposal. Believe me, a couple of gangsters playing at cracksman won’t stop me.”
The curtain rustled. Olga stepped out, wearing a green two-piece outfit. “How do I look?” she asked, doing a twirl.
“Alright,” said Miriam. “I think. I’m not the right person to ask for fashion tips.”
“You look marvelous, my dear,” Erasmus volunteered gallantly. “With just a little work, a seamstress will have the jacket fitting perfectly. And with some additional effort, the patching can be made invisible.”
“That’s about what I thought.” Olga nodded. “I’d rather not, though.” She grinned impishly. “What do you say?”
“It’s fine,” said Miriam. She turned back to Burgeson. “Who leaked the news?” she asked.
“I want to find out.” He looked grim.
“Write to me, as I did to you, care of this man.” She wrote down Roger’s address on a scrap of card. “He works for me and he’s trustworthy.”
“Good.” Erasmus stared at the card for a moment, lips working, then thrust it into the elderly cast-iron stove that struggled to heat the shop. “Fifty pounds weight. That’s an awful lot.”
“We can move it in chunks, if necessary.”
“It won’t be,” he said absent-mindedly, as if considering other things.
“Miriam, dear, you really ought to try this on,” called Olga.
“Oh, really.” Miriam rolled her eyes. “Can’t you—”
“Did you ever play at avoiding your chaperone as a child?” Olga asked quietly. “If not, do as I say. The same man has walked past the outside window three times while we’ve been inside. We have perhaps five minutes at the outside. Maybe less.”
“Oh.” She looked at Olga in surprise. “Okay, give it to me.” She turned to Burgeson. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to abuse your hospitality. I hope you don’t have anything illegal on the premises?”
“No, not me. Not now.” He smiled a sallow smile. “My lungs are giving me trouble again, that’s why I locked up shop, yes? You’d better go into the back.”
Olga threw a heavy pinafore at Miriam. “Quick, take off your jacket, put this on over your dress. That’s right. Lose the bonnet.” She passed Miriam a straw hat, utterly unsuited to the weather and somewhat tattered. “Come on, take this overcoat. You don’t mind?” She appealed to Burgeson.
“My dear, it’s an education to see two different women so suddenly.” He smiled grimly. “You’d better put your old outfit in this.” He passed Miriam a Gladstone bag.
“But we haven’t paid—”
“The devil will pay if you don’t leave through the cellar as fast as you can,” Burgeson hissed urgently, then broke up in a fit of racking coughs. Miriam blinked. He needs antibiotics, she thought absent-mindedly.
“Good-bye!” she said, then she led Olga—still stuffing her expensive jacket into the leather case—down the rickety steps into the cellar, just as the doorbell began to ring insistently.
“Come on,” she hissed. Glancing round she saw Olga shift the bag to her left hand. Shadows masked her right. “Come on, this way.”
She led Olga along a narrow tunnel walled with mildewed books, past a row of pigeonholes, and then an upright piano that had seen better days. She stopped, gestured Olga behind her, then levered the piano away from the wall. A dank hole a yard in diameter gaped in the exposed brickwork behind it, dimly lit from the other side. “Get in,” she ordered.
“But—”
“Do it!” She could already hear footsteps overhead.
Olga crawled into the hole. “Keep going,” Miriam told her, then knelt down and hurried after her. She paused to drag the piano back into position, grunting with effort, then stood up.
“Where are we?” Olga whispered.
“Not safe yet. Come on.” The room was freezing cold, and smelled of damp and old coal. She led Olga up the steps at the end and out through the gaping door into a larger cellar, then immediately doubled back. Next to the doorway there was another one, this time closed. Another two stood opposite. Miriam opened her chosen door and beckoned Olga inside, then shut it.
“Where—”
“Follow me.” The room was dark until Miriam pulled out a compact electric flashlight. It was half full of lumber, but there was an empty patch in the wall opposite, leading back parallel to Burgeson’s cellar. She ducked into it and found the next tunnel, set in the wall below the level of the stacked firewood. “You see where we’re going? Come on.”
The tunnel went on and on, twisting right at one point. Miriam held the flashlight in her mouth, proceeding on hands and knees and trying not to tear her clothes. She was going to look like a particularly grubby housemaid when she surfaced, she decided. She really hoped Olga was wrong about the visitor, but she had a nasty hunch that she wouldn’t be seeing Burgeson again for some time.
The tunnel opened up into another cellar, hidden behind a decaying rocking horse, a broken wardrobe, and a burned bed frame with bare metal springs like skeletal ribs. Miriam stood up and dusted herself off as best she could, then made room for Olga. Olga pulled a face. “Ugh! That was filthy. Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Miriam said quietly.
“It was the same man,” Olga added. “About six and a half feet tall, a big bull with a bushy moustache. And two more behind him dressed identically in blue. King’s men?”
“Probably. Sounds like Inspector Smith to me. Hmm. Hold this.” Miriam passed her the flashlight and continued to brush dirt and cobwebs out of the pinafore: It had started out white, and at best it would be gray by the time she surfaced. “Right, I think we’re just about ready to surface.”
“Where?”
“The next street over, in a backyard.” Miriam pulled the door open to reveal wooden steps leading up toward daylight. “Come on. Put the flashlight away and for God’s sake hide the gun.”
They surfaced between brick walls, a sky the color of a slate roof above them. Miriam unlatched the gate and they slipped out, two hard-faced women, one in a maid’s uniform and the other in a green much-patched suit that had seen better days. They were a far cry from the dignified widow and her young companion who had called on Burgeson’s emporium twenty minutes earlier.
“Quick.” Miriam guided Olga onto the first tram to pass. It would go sufficiently close to home to do. “Two fourpenny tickets, please.” She paid the conductor and sat down, feeling faint. She glanced round the tram, but nobody was within earshot. “That was too close for comfort,” she whispered.
“What was it?” Olga asked quietly, sitting next to her.
“We weren’t there. They can’t prove anything. There’s no bullion on Erasmus’s premises, and he’s a sick man. Unless we were followed from the works to his shop…” Miriam stopped. “He said some housebreakers were going to hit on us tonight,” she said slowly. “This is not good news.”
“Housebreakers.” Olga’s face was a mask of grim anticipation. “Do you mean what I think you intend to say? Blackguards with knives?”
“Not necessarily. He said two men were asking around a drinking house for bravos who’d like to take their coin. One of them looked Oriental.”
Olga tensed. “I see,” she said quietly.
“Indeed.” Miriam nodded. “I think tonight we’re going to see some questions answered. Oriental, huh?” She grinned angrily. “Time to play host for the long-lost relatives …”
The big stone house was set well back from the curving road, behind a thick hedge and a low stone wall. Its nearest neighbors were fifty yards away, also set back and sheltered behind stone walls and hedges. Smoke boiled from two chimneys, and the lights in the central hall burned bright in the darkness, but there were no servants. On arriving home Miriam had packed Jane and her husband Ronald the gardener off to a cheap hotel with a silver guinea in hand and the promise of a second to come against their silence. “I want no questions asked or answered,” Miriam said firmly. “D’you understand?”
“Yes’m,” said Jane, bobbing her head skeptically. It was clear that she harbored dark suspicions about Olga, and was wondering if her mistress was perhaps prone to unspeakable habits: a suspicion that Miriam was happy to encourage as a decoy from the truth.
“That’ll do,” Miriam said quietly, watching from the landing as they trudged down the road toward the tram stop and the six-fifteen service into town. “No servants, no witnesses. Right?”
“Right,” Olga echoed. “Are you sure you want me to go through with this?”
“Yes, I want you to do it. But do it fast, I don’t want to be alone longer than necessary. How are your temporary tattoos?”
“They’re fine. Look, what you told me about Matthias. If Brill’s working for—”
“She isn’t,” Miriam said firmly. “If she wanted me dead I’d be dead, okay? Get over it. If she’s hiding anything, it’s something else—Angbard, probably. Bring her over here and if the bad guys don’t show we’ll just dig out a bottle of wine and have a late-morning lie-in tomorrow, alright?”
“Right,” Olga said dubiously. Then she headed downstairs, for the kitchen door and the walk to the spot beside the greenhouse where Miriam had cleared the snow away.
Miriam watched her go, more apprehensive than she cared to admit. Alone in the house in winter, every creak and rustle seemed like a warning of a thief in the night. The heating gurgled ominously. Miriam retired to her bedroom and changed into an outfit she’d brought over on her last trip. The Velcro straps under her arms gave her some trouble, but the boots fitted well and she felt better for the bulletproof vest. With her ski mask on hand, revolver loaded and sitting on her hip, and night vision goggles strapped to her forehead, she felt even more like an imposter than she did when she was dressed up to the nines to meet the nobs. Just as long as they take me as seriously, she thought tensely. Then she picked up her dictaphone and checked the batteries and tape one last time—fully charged, fully rewound, ready for action. I hope this works.
The house felt dreadfully empty without either the servants or Olga about. I’ve gotten used to having other people around, Miriam realized. When did that happen!
She walked downstairs slowly, pausing on the landing to listen for signs of anything amiss. At the bottom she opened the door under the staircase and ducked inside. The silent alarm system was armed. Ronald the gardener had grumbled when she told him to bury the induction wire a foot underground, just inside the walls, but he’d done as she’d told him to when she reminded him who was paying. The control panel—utterly alien to this world—was concealed behind a false panel in the downstairs hall. She turned her walkie-talkie on, clipped the hands-free earphone into place, and continued her lonely patrol.
It all depended on Brill, of course. And on Roland, assuming Roland was on the level and wasn’t one of them playing a fiendishly deep inside game against her. Whoever they were. She was reasonably sure he wasn’t—if he was, he’d had several opportunities to dispose of her without getting caught, and hadn’t taken any of them—but there was still a question mark hanging over Brill. But whatever game she was playing wasn’t necessarily hostile, which was why Olga had gone back over to the hunting hide to fetch her. The idea of not being able to trust Olga just made Miriam’s head hurt. You have to start somewhere, haven’t you? she asked herself. If she assumed Olga was on her side and she was wrong, nothing she did would make any difference. And Olga vouched for Brill. And three of them would be a damn sight more use than two when the shit hit the fan, as it surely would, sometime in the small hours.
The big clock on the landing ticked the seconds away slowly. Miriam wandered into the kitchen, opened the door on the big cast-iron cooking range set against the interior wall, and shoveled coal into it. Then she turned the airflow up. It was going to be an extremely cold night, and even though she was warm inside her outdoor gear and flak jacket, Miriam felt the chill in her bones.
Two men, one of them Chinese-looking, in the wrong pubs. She shook her head, remembering a flowering of blood and a long, curved knife in the darkness. The feel of Roland’s hands on her bare skin, making her go hot and cold simultaneously. Iris looking at her with a guarded, startled expression, as unmotherly as Angbard’s supercillious crustiness. These are some of my favorite things, butter-pat sized lumps of soft metal glowing luminous in the twilight of a revolutionary quartermaster’s shop: Glock automatics and diamond rings …
Miriam shook herself. “Damn, if I wait here I’ll doze off for sure.” She stood up, raised the insulating lid on the range, and pushed the kettle onto the hot plate. A cup of coffee would get her going. She picked up her dictaphone and rewound, listening to notes she’d recorded earlier in the day.
“The family founder had six sons. Five of them had families and the Clan is the result. The sixth—what happened to him? Angbard said he went west and vanished. Suppose—suppose he did. Reached the western empire, that is, but did so poor, destitute, out of luck. Along the way he lost his talisman, the locket with the knotwork. If he had to re-create it from memory, so he could world-walk, would be succeed? Would I? I know what happens when I look at the knot, but can I remember exactly what shape it is, well enough to draw it? Let’s try.”
Whirr. Click. New memo. “Nope. I just spent ten minutes and what I’ve drawn does nothing for me. Hmm. So we know that it’s not that easy to re-create from memory, and I know that if you look at the other symbol you go here, not home. Hmm again.”
Whirr. Click. New memo. “I just looked at both lockets. Should have done it earlier, but it’s hard to see them without zoning out and crossing over to the other world. The knots—in the other one, there’s an arc near the top left that threads over the outer loop, not under it, like in the one Iris gave me. So it looks like the assassin’s one is, yeah, a corruption of the original design. So maybe the lost family hypothesis is correct.”
Whirr. Click. New memo. “Why didn’t they keep trying different knots until they found one that worked? One that let them make the rendezvous with the other families?”
Whirr. Click. New memo. “It’s a bloodline thing. If you know of only one other universe, and if you know the ability to go there runs in the family, would you necessarily think in terms of multiple worlds? Would you realize you’d mis-remembered the design of the talisman? Or would you just assume—the West Coast must have looked pretty much the same in both versions, this world and my own back then—that you’d been abandoned by your elder brothers? Scumbags.”
Whirr. Click. New memo. “Why me? Why Patricia? What was it about her ancestry that threatened them? As opposed to anyone else in the Clan? Did they just want to kill her to restart the blood feuds, or was there something else?”
Whirr. Click. New memo. “What do they want? And can I use them as a lever to get the Clan to give me what I want?”
The door around the back of the scullery creaked as it opened.
Miriam was on her feet instantly, back to the wall beside the cooker, pistol in her right hand. Shit, shit—she froze, breath still, listening.
“Miriam?” called a familiar voice, “are you there?”
She lowered her gun. “Yes!”
Olga shuffled inside, looking about a thousand years older than she had an hour before. “Oh, my head,” she moaned. “Give me drugs, give me strong medicine, give me a bone saw!” She drew a finger across her throat, then looked at Miriam. “What is that you’re wearing?” she asked.
“Hello.” Brilliana piped up behind her. “Can I come in?” She looked around dubiously. “Are you sure this is another world?” she asked.
“Yes,” Miriam said tersely. “Here. Take two of these now. I’ll give you the next two when it’s time.” She passed the capsules to Olga, who dry-swallowed them and pulled a face. “Get a glass of water.” Miriam looked at Brill. “Did you bring—”
Brill grinned. “This?” she asked, hefting a stubby looking riot gun.
“Uh, yeah.” Miriam froze inside for a moment, then relaxed. She fixed Brill with a beady eye. “You realize an explanation is a bit overdue?”
“An explan—oh.”
“It doesn’t wash, Brill,” she said evenly. “I know you’re working for someone in Clan security. Or were you going to tell me you found that cannon in a cupboard somewhere?”
Olga had taken a step back. Miriam could see her right hand flexing. “Why don’t you go upstairs and get dressed for the party?” Miriam suggested.
“Ah, if you think so.” Olga looked at her dubiously.
“I do.” Miriam kept her eyes on Brill, who stared back unwavering as Olga swept past toward the staircase. “Well?”
“I got word to expect you two days before you arrived in Niejwein,” Brill admitted. “You didn’t really expect Angbard to hang you out to dry, did you? He said, and I quote, ‘Stick to her like glue, don’t let her out of your sight on family territory, and especially don’t give Baron Hjorth an opportunity to push her down a stairwell.’ So I did as he said,” she added, her self-satisfaction evident.
“Who else was in on it?” Miriam asked.
“Olga.” Brill shrugged. “But not as explicitly. She’s not an agent, but… you didn’t think she was an accident, did you? The duke sent you down to Niejwein with her because he thought you’d be safer that way. And to add to the confusion. Conspirators and murderers tend to underestimate her because of the giggling airhead act.” She shrugged.
“So who do you report to?” said Miriam.
“Angbard. In person.”
“Not Roland?”
“Roland?” Brill snorted. “Roland’s useless at this sort of thing—”
“So you world-walk? Why did you conceal it from me?”
“Because Angbard told me to, of course. It wasn’t hard: You don’t know enough about the Clan structure to know who’s likely to be outer family and who’s going to have the talent.” She took a deep breath. “I used to be a bit of a tear-away. When I was eighteen I tried to join the Marine Corps.” She frowned. “I didn’t make the physical, though, and my mother had a screaming fit when she heard about it. She told Angbard to beat some sense into me and he paid for the bodyguard training and karate while I made up my mind what to do next. Back at court, my job—” she swallowed—”if we ever had to bring the hammer down on Alexis, I was tasked with that. Outside the Clan, nobody thinks a lady-in-waiting is a threat, did you know that? But outside the Clan, noble ladies aren’t expected to be able to fight. Anyway, that’s why Angbard stuck me on you as a nursemaid. If you ran into anything you couldn’t handle …”
“Er.” The kettle began to hiss. Miriam shook her head, suffering from information overload. My lady-in-waiting wants to be a marine? “Want some coffee?”
“Yes. Please. Hey, did you know you look just like your Iris when you frown?”
Miriam stopped dead. “You’ve seen her?” she demanded.
“Calm down!” Brilliana held up her hands in surrender. “Yes, I’ve seen her in the past couple of days, and she’s fine. She just needed to go underground for a bit. Same as you, do you understand? I met up with her when you left me in Boston with Paulie and nothing to do. After you shot your mouth off at Angbard, I figured he needed to know what had you so wound up. He takes a keen interest in her well-being, and not just because you threatened to kill him if he didn’t. So of course I went over to see her. In fact, I visited every couple of days, to keep an eye on her. I was there when—” Brill fell silent.
“It was you with the shotgun,” Miriam pushed.
“Actually, no.” Brill looked a little green. “She kept it taped under her chair, the high-backed one in the living room. I just called the Clan cleaners for her afterwards. It was during your first trip over here when she, she had the incident. She phoned your office line, and I was in the office, so I picked up the phone. As you were over here I went around to sort everything out. I found—” She shuddered. “It took a lot of cleaning up. They were Clan security, from the New York office, you know. She was so calm about it.”
“Let me get this straight.” Miriam poured the kettle’s contents into a cafetiere. Her hand was shaking, she noticed distantly. “You’re telling me that Iris gunned down a couple of intruders?”
“Huh?” Brill looked puzzled. “Oh, Iris. That’s right. Like ‘Miriam.’ Listen, she said, ‘it gets to be a habit after the third assassination attempt. Like killing cockroaches.’”
“Urk.” Miriam sat down hard and waited for the conceptual earthquake to stop. She fixed Brill with the stare she kept in reserve for skewering captains of industry she was getting ready to accuse of malfeasance or embezzlement. “Okay, let me get this straight. You are telling me that my mother just happens to keep a sawn-off shotgun under her wheelchair for blowing away SWAT teams, a habit which she somehow concealed from me during my childhood and upbringing while she was a political activist and then the wife of a radical bookstore manager—”
“No!” Brill looked increasingly annoyed. “Don’t you get it? This was the first attempt on her life in over thirty years—”
Miriam’s walkie-talkie bleeped at her urgently.
“We’ve got company.” Miriam eyed the walkie-talkie as if it might explode. My mother is an alien, she thought. Must have been in the Weather Underground or something. But there was no time to worry about that now. “Is that thing loaded?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Then wait here. If anyone comes through the garden door, shoot them. If anyone comes through the other door, it’ll be either me and Olga, or the bad guys. I’ll knock first. Back in a second.”
Miriam dashed for the hall and took the stairs two at a time. “Zone two breach,” the burglar alarm chirped in her ear. Zone two was the east wall of the garden. “Olga?” she called.
“Here.” Olga stepped out onto the landing. Her goggles made her look like a tall, angular insect—a mantis, perhaps.
“Come on. We’ve got visitors.”
“Where do you want to hold out?”
“In the scullery passage and kitchen—the only direct way in is via the front window, and there are fun surprises waiting for them in the morning room and dining room.”
“Right.” Olga hurried downstairs, a machine pistol clutched in one hand.
“Brill,” Miriam called, “we’re coming in.” She remembered to knock.
Once in the kitchen she passed Brill a walkie-talkie with hands-free kit. “Put this in a pocket and stick the headphone in. Good. Olga? You too.” She hit the transmit button. “Can you both hear me?”
Two nods. “Great. We’ve—”
“Attention. Zone four breach.”
“—That’s the living room. Wait for it, dammit!”
“Attention. Zone five breach.”
“Dining room,” Miriam whispered. “Right. Let’s go.”
“Let’s—what?”
She switched her set to a different channel and pressed the transmit button.
“Attention. Zone four smoke release. Attention. Zone five smoke release. Attention. Zone six smoke release.”
“What—”
“Smoke bombs. Come on, the doors are locked on the hall side and I had the frames reinforced. We’ve got them bottled up, unless they’ve got demolition charges. Here.” Miriam passed Brill a pair of handcuffs. “Let’s go. Remember, we want to get the ringleader alive—but I don’t want either of you to take any risks.”
Miriam led them into the octagonal hallway. There was a muffled thump from the day room door, and a sound of coughing. She waved Olga to one side, then prepared to open the door. “Switch your goggles on,” she said, and killed the lights.
Through the goggles the room was a dark and confusing jumble of shapes. Miriam saw two luminous green shadows moving around her—Brill and Olga. One of them gave her a thumbs-up, while the other of them raised something gun-shaped. “On my mark. I’m going to open the door. Three, two, one, mark.” Miriam unlocked the door and shoved it open. Smoke billowed out, and a coughing figure stumbled into the darkened hall. Olga’s arm rose and fell, resulting in a groan and a crash. “I’m in.” Miriam stepped over the prone figure and into the smoke-filled room. It was chilly inside, and her feet crackled on broken glass. Bastards, she thought angrily. Something vague and greenish glowed in the smoke at the far corner, caught between the grand piano and the curtains. “Drop your gun and lie down!” Miriam shouted, then ducked.
Bang-bang: The thud of bullets hitting masonry behind her was unmistakable. Miriam spat, then knelt and aimed deliberately at the shooter. Can I do this—rage filled her. You tried to kill my mother! She pulled the trigger. There was a cry, and the green patch stretched up then collapsed. She froze, about to shoot again, then straightened up.
“Stop! Police!” Whistles shrilled in the garden. “Attention. Zone three breach.”
“That’s the south wall! What the fuck?” Miriam whispered. She keyed her walkie-talkie. “Status!”
“One down.” Brill, panting heavily. “Olga’s got the guy in the hall on the floor. They tried to shoot me.”
“Listen.” Whistles loud in the garden, flashlight beams just visible through the smoke. “Into the hall! Brill, can you drag the fucker? Get him upright? You take him and I’ll carry Olga.”
The sound of breaking glass came from the kitchen. Miriam darted back through the doorway and nearly ran straight into Olga.
“Quick!” Olga cried. “I can’t do it, my head’s still splitting. You’d better—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Miriam pushed her goggles up, grabbed Olga around the waist, and mashed a hand against the light switch. She fumbled with her left sleeve, saw the blurry outline clearly for a moment, tried to focus on it, and tightened her grip on Olga painfully. “Brill?”
“Do it!” Brill’s voice was edgy with tension and fear. More police whistles then a cry and more gunshots, muffled by the wall.
Miriam tensed and lifted, felt Olga grab her shoulders, and stared at her wrist. Her knees began to buckle under the weight: Can’t keep this up for long, she thought desperately. There was a splintering sound behind her, and the endless knotwork snake that ate its own tail coiling in the darkness as it reached out to bite her between the eyes. She fell forward into snow and darkness, Olga a dead weight in her arms.
Miriam was freezing. She had vague impressions of ice, snow, and a wind coming in off the bay that would chill a furnace in seconds. She stumbled to her feet and whimpered as pain spiked through her forehead. “Ow.” Olga sat up. “Miriam, are you alright?” Miriam blinked back afterimages of green shapes moving at the far end of the room. She remembered her hot determination, followed by a cry of pain. She doubled over abruptly and vomited into the snow, moaning.
“Where’s the hut?” Olga demanded in a panicky voice. “Where’s the—”
“Goggles,” Miriam gasped. Another spasm grabbed her stomach. This cold could kill us, she thought through the hot and cold shudders of a really bad world-walk. “Use your goggles.”
“Oh.” Olga pulled them down across her eyes. “Oh!”
“Miriam?” Brill’s voice came from behind a tree. “Help!”
“Aaarh, aarh—”
Miriam stumbled over, twigs tearing at her face. It was snowing heavily, huge flakes the size of fingernails twisting in front of her face and stinging when they touched her skin. Brill was kneeling on top of something that thrashed around. “Help me!” she called.
“Right.” Miriam crashed to her knees in front of Brill, her stomach still protesting, and fumbled at her belt for another set of restraints. Brill had handcuffed the prisoner but he’d begun kicking and she was forced to sit on his legs, which was not a good position for either of them. “Here.”
“Lay still, damn you—”
“We’re going to have to make him walk. It’s that or we carry him,” Olga commented. “How big is he?”
“Just a kid. Just a goddamn kid.”
“Watch out, he may have friends out here!”
Miriam stood up and pulled her night-vision goggles back down. Brill and the prisoner showed up as brilliant green flames, Olga a hunched figure a few feet away. “Come on. To the cabin.” Together with Brill she lifted the prisoner to his feet—still moaning incoherently in what sounded like blind panic—and half-dragged him toward the hunting blind, which was still emitting a dingy green glow. The heat from the kerosene heater was enough to show it up like a street light against the frigid background.
It took almost ten minutes to get there, during which time the snow began to fall heavily, settling over their tracks. The prisoner, apparently realizing that the alternative was freezing to death slowly, shut up and began to move his feet. Miriam’s head felt as if someone was whacking on it with a hammer, and her stomach was still rebelling from its earlier mistreatment. Olga crept forward and hunted around in the dark, looking for signs of disturbance, but as far as Miriam could see they were alone in the night and darkness.
The hut was empty but warm as Brill and Miriam lifted the youth through the door. With one last effort they heaved him onto a sleeping mat and pulled the door shut behind them to keep the warmth in. “Right,” said Miriam, her voice shaking with exhaustion, “let’s see what we’ve got here.” She stood up and switched on the battery-powered lantern hanging from the roof beam.
“Please don’t—” He lay there shaking and shivering, trying to burrow away into the corner between the wall and the mattress.
“It speaks,” Brill observed.
“It does indeed,” said Miriam. He was shorter than she was, lightly built with straight dark hair and a fold to his eyes that made him look slightly Asian. And he didn’t look more than eighteen years of age.
“Check him for an amulet,” said Miriam.
“Right, you—got it!” A moment of struggle and Brill straightened up, holding out a fist from which dangled a chain. “Which version is it?”
Miriam glanced in it, then looked away. “The second variation. For world three.” She stuffed it into a pocket along with the other. “You.” She looked down at the prisoner. “What’s your name?”
“Lin—Lin.”
“Uh-huh. Do you have any friends out in this storm, Mr. Lin Lin?” Miriam glanced at the door. “Before you answer that, you might want to think about what they’ll do to you if they found us here. Probably shoot first and ask questions later.”
“No.” He lay back. “It’s Lee.”
“Lin, or Lee?”
“I’m Lin. I’m a Lee.”
“Good start,” said Brill. She stared malevolently at him. “What were you doing breaking into our house?”
Lin stared back at her without saying anything.
“Allow me,” Miriam murmured. Her headache was beginning to recede. She fumbled in her jacket, pulled out a worryingly depleted strip of tablets, punched one of them out, and swallowed it dry. It stuck in her throat, bitter and unwanted.
“Listen, Lin. You invaded my house. That wasn’t very clever, and it got at least one of your friends shot. Now, I have some other friends who’d like to ask you some questions, and they won’t be as nice about it as I am. In about an hour we’re going to walk to another world, and we’re going to take you with us. It’s a world your family can’t get to, because they don’t even know it exists. Once you’re there, you are going to be stuck. My friends there will take you to pieces to get the answers they want, and they will probably kill you afterwards, because they’re like that.”
Miriam stood up. “You have an hour to make up your mind whether you’re going to talk to me, or whether you’re going to talk to the Clan’s interrogators. If you talk to me, I won’t need to hurt you. I may even be able to keep you alive. The choice is yours.”
She glanced at Brill. “Keep an eye on him. I’m going to check on Olga.”
As she opened the door she heard the prisoner begin to weep quietly. She closed it behind herself hastily.
Miriam keyed her walkie-talkie. “Anyone out there? Over.”
“Just me,” replied Olga. “Hey, this wireless talkie thing is great, isn’t it?”
“See anyone?”
“Not a thing. I’m circling about fifty yards out. I can see you on the doorstep.”
“Right.” Miriam waved. “I just read our little housebreaker the riot act.”
“Want me to help hang him?”
“No.” Miriam could still feel the hot wash of rage at the intruder in her sights, and the sense of release as she pulled the trigger. Now that the anger had cooled, it made her feel queasy. The first time she’d shot someone, the killer in the orangery, she’d barely felt it. It had just been something she had to do, like stepping out of the path of an onrushing juggernaut: He’d killed Margit and was coming at her with a knife. But this, the lying in wait and the hot rush of righteous anger, left her with a growing sense of appalled guilt the longer she thought about it. It was avoidable, wasn’t it? “Our little housebreaker is just a chick. He’s crying for momma already. I think he’s going to sing like a bird as soon as we get him to the other side.”
“How are you doing?” asked Olga. “You came through badly.”
“Tell me about it.” Miriam shuddered. “The cold seems to be helping my head. I’ll be ready to go again in about an hour. Yourself?”
“I wish.” Olga hummed to herself. “I never had that headache pill.”
“Come over here, then,” said Miriam. “I’ve got the stuff.”
“Right.”
They converged on a tree about five yards from the hut. Miriam stripped off a glove and fumbled in her pocket for the strip of beta blockers and the bottle of ibuprofen. “Here. One of each. Wash it down with something, huh?”
“Surely.” Miriam waited in companionable silence while Olga swallowed, then pulled out a small hip flask and took a shot.
“What’s that?”
“Spiced hunter’s vodka. Fights the cold. Want some?”
“Better not, thanks.” Miriam glanced over her shoulder at the hut. “I’m giving him an hour. The poor bastard thinks I’m going to give him to Angbard to torture to death if he doesn’t tell me everything I want to know immediately.”
“You aren’t going to do that?” Olga’s expression was unreadable behind her bulky headset.
“Depends how angry he makes me. There’s been too much killing already, and it’s been going on for far too long. We’re going to have to stop sooner or later, or we’ll run out of relatives.”
“What do you mean, relatives? He’s the enemy—”
“Don’t you get it yet?” Miriam said impatiently. “These guys, the strangers who pop out of nowhere and kill—they’ve got to be blood relatives somewhere down the line. They’re world-walkers too, and the only reason they go between this world and New Britain, instead of this world and the USA, is because that’s the pattern they use. I’m thinking they’re descended from that missing branch of the first family, the brother who went west and disappeared, right after the founder died.”
Olga looked puzzled. “You think they’re the sixth family?” she asked.
“I’m not sure, and I don’t yet know why they’re trying to start up the civil war again. But don’t you think we owe it to ourselves to find out what’s going on before we hand him over to the thief-takers for hanging?”
Olga rubbed her head. “This is going to be the most fascinating Clan council in living memory,” she said.
“Come on.” Miriam waved at the hut. “Let’s get moving. I think it’s time we dragged Roland into this.”
One o’clock in the morning. Ring ring … “Hello?” Roland’s voice was furred with sleep.
“Roland? It’s me.”
“Miriam, you do pick your times—”
“Not now. Got a family emergency.”
“Emergency? What kind?” She could hear him waking up by the second.
“Get a couple of soldiers who you trust, and a safe house. Not Fort Lofstrom or its doppelgänger, it needs to be somewhere anonymous but secure on this side. It must be on this side. We’ve got a prisoner to debrief.”
“A prisoner? What kind—”
“One of the assassins. He’s alive, terrified, and spilling his guts to Olga right this moment.” Olga was in the back office with Lin and Miriam’s dictaphone, playing Good Cop. Lin was chattering, positively manic, desperate to tell her everything she wanted. Lin wasn’t even eighteen. Miram felt ashamed of herself until she thought about what he’d been involved in. Boy soldiers, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, recruited to defend their family’s honor against the children of the hostile elder brothers—elder brothers who had stolen their birthright many generations ago, abandoning them to the nonexistent mercy of the western empire.
“He needs to be kept alive, and that means keeping him away from the security leak in Angbard’s operation. And, uh, your little friend, assuming they’re not one and the same person. Someone there is working with this guy’s people. And here’s another thing: I want a full DQ Alpha typing run on a blood sample, and I want it compared to as many members of the Clan—full members—as you can get. I want to know if he’s related, and if so, how far back it goes.”
And I want him out of here before Paulette shows up in the morning, Miriam thought. Paulie was a good friend and true, but some things weren’t appropriate for her to be involved in. Like kidnapping.
“Okay, I’ll sort it. Where do I go?”
“You come here.” Miriam rattled off directions, mentally crossing her fingers. “I’ve got a new amulet for you, one that takes you from the other side to world three, my hideaway. Watch out, it is very different, as different from this world as you can imagine.”
“Okay—but you’d better be able to explain why if the duke starts asking questions. I’ll roust Xavier and Mort out of bed and be round in an hour. They’ll keep their mouths shut. Is there anything else you need?”
“Yeah.” Miriam licked her lips. “Is Angbard over here?”
“I think so.”
“I’ve got to call him right away. Then I’m probably going to be gone before you get here. Got to go back to the far side to clean up the mess when the little prick broke into my house.”
“He broke in—hey! Are you alright?”
“I’m alive. Olga and Brill can fill you in. Got to go. Stay safe.” She rang off before she could break down and tell him how much she wanted to see him. Cruel fate… the next number was preprogrammed as well.
“Hello?” A politely curious voice.
“This is Helge Lofstrom-Hjorth. Get me Angbard. This is an emergency.”
“Please hold.” No messing around this time, Miriam noted. Someone was awake at the switchboard.
“Angbard here.” He sounded amused rather than tired. “What is it, Miriam? Having trouble sleeping?”
“Perhaps. Listen, the Clan summit on Beltaigne is three months away. Is there a procedure for bringing it forward, calling an extraordinary general meeting?”
“There is, but it’s most unusual—nobody has done it in forty years. Are you sure you want me to do this for you? Without a good reason, there are people who would take it as a perfect opportunity to accuse you of anything they can think of.”
“Yes.” Miriam took a deep breath. “Listen. I know you’ve got my mother.” Dead silence on the phone. She continued: “I don’t know why you’re holding her, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt—for now. But I need that meeting, and she needs to be there. If she isn’t, you’re going to be in deep shit. I’m going to be there, too, and it has to be now, in a couple of days’ time, not in two months, because we’ve got a prisoner and if you’ve not found your leak yet the prisoner will probably be dead before Beltaigne.”
“A prisoner—” he hissed.
“You told me about a child of the founder who went west,” Miriam said, very deliberately. “I’ve found his descendants. They’re the ones who tried to kill Patricia and who’ve been after Olga and me. And I figure they may be messed up with the mole in your security staff. You want to call this emergency meeting, Angbard, you really want to do this.”
“I believe you,” he said after a momentary pause, in a tone that said he wished he didn’t. “How extraordinary.”
“When is it going to be ready?”
“Hmm.” A pause. “Count on it in four days’ time, at the Palace Hjorth. Any sooner is out of the question. I’ll have to clear down all nonessential mail to get the announcement out in time—this will cost us a lot of goodwill and money. Can you guarantee you’ll be there? If not, then I can’t speak for what resolutions will be put forward and voted through by the assembled partners. You have enemies.”
“I will be there.” She hesitated for a moment. “If I don’t make it, it means I’m dead or incapacitated.”
“But you’re not, now.”
“Thank Brilliana and Olga,” she said. “They were good choices.”
“My Valkyries.” He sounded amused.
“I’ll see you in four days’ time,” Miriam said tersely. “If you need to know more, ask Olga, she knows what I’m doing.” Then she hung up on him.
Two days later, Miriam looked up from her office ledger and a stack of official forms in response to a knock on the office window. “Carry on,” she told Declan, who looked up inquiringly from his drafting board. “Who is it?” she demanded.
“Police, ma’am.”
Miriam stood up to open the door. “You’d better come in.” She paused. “Ah, Inspector Smith of the Homeland Defense Bureau. Come to tell me my burglars are a matter of national security?” She smiled brightly at him.
“Ah, well.” Smith squeezed into the room and stood with his back to the cupboard beside the door where she kept the spare stationery. The constable behind him waited in the hall outside. “It was a most peculiar burglary, wasn’t it?”
“Did you catch any of the thieves?” she asked sharply.
“You were in New London all along,” he said, accusingly. “Staying in the Grange Mouth Hotel. Into which you checked in at four o’clock in the morning the day after the incident.”
“Yes, well, as I told the thief-taker’s sergeant, I dined in town then caught the last train, and my carriage threw a wheel on its way from the railway station. And I stayed with it because cabs are thin on the ground at two o’clock.”
“Humph.” Smith looked disappointed, to her delight. Gotcha! she thought. She’d set off from her office in Cambridge at midnight, floored the accelerator all the way down the near-empty interstate, and somehow managed not to pick up any speeding tickets. There were no red-eye flights in New Britain, nor highways you could drive along at a hundred five miles an hour with one hand on the wheel and the other clutching an insulated mug of coffee. In fact, the fastest form of land travel was the train—and as she’d be happy to point out to the inspector, the last train she could have caught from Boston to arrive in New London before 4 a.m. had left at eight o’clock the night before.
It had been a rush. She’d parked illegally in New York—her New York, not the New London the inspector knew—and changed into her rich widow’s weeds in the cramped confines of the car. Then she’d crossed over and banged on a hotel door in the predawn light. She’d been able to establish an alibi by the skin of her teeth, but only by breaking the New Britain land speed record on a type of highway that didn’t exist in King John the Fourth’s empire …
“We haven’t identified the Chinee-man who was asking after you,” Smith agreed. “Nor the unknown assailant who fled—who we are investigating with an eye for murder,” he added with relish.
Miriam sagged slightly. “Horrible, horrible,” she said quietly. “Why me?”
“If you turn up in town flashing money around, you must expect to pick up unsavory customers,” Smith said sarcastically. “Especially if you willingly mix with low-lifes and Levelers.”
“Levelers?” Miriam glared at him. “Who do you have in mind?”
“I couldn’t possibly say.” Smith looked smug. “But we’ll get them all in the end, you’ll see. I’ll be going now, but first I’d like to introduce you to Officer Fitch from the thief-taker’s office. I believe he has some more questions to ask about your burglar.”
Fitch’s questions were tiresome, but not as tiresome as those of the city’s press—two of whose representatives had already called. Miriam had pointedly referred them to her law firm, then refused to say anything until Declan and Roger had escorted them from the premises with dire threats about the law of trespass. “We will call you if we arrest anyone,” Fitch said pompously, “or if we recover any stolen property.” He closed his notebook with a snap. “Good day to you, Miss.” And with that he clumped out of her office.
Miriam turned to Declan and rolled her eyes. “I can live without these interruptions. How’s the self-tightening mechanism coming along?”
Declan looked a trifle startled, but pointed to a sketch on his drafting board. “I’m working on it…”
Miriam left the office in late afternoon, earlier than usual but still hours after she’d ceased being productive. She caught a cab home, feeling most peculiar about the whole business—indignant and angry, and sick to her stomach at what she’d done—but not guilty. The morning room was a freezing mess, the glaziers still busily working on the shattered window frames. The elderly one tugged his forelock at her as she politely looked over his shoulder and tut-tutted, trying to project the image of a house-proud lady bearing up under one of life’s little indignities.
She found Jane in the kitchen. “Is the dining room going to be ready by this evening?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.” Jane shrugged. “It is a mess. They broke two chairs and scratched the dining table!”
“Well, at least nobody was hurt. Piece of luck, sending you away, wasn’t it?” Miriam shook her head. She’d forgotten about the dining room. The windows were boarded up, but the furniture—“I think I’m going to have to hire a butler, Jane.”
“Oh good,” Jane said, startling Miriam.
“Well, indeed.” Miriam left the kitchen and was about to climb the staircase when a bell began to jangle from the hall. It was the household telephone. She stalked over and picked up the earpiece, then leaned close to the condenser and said, “Hello?”
“Fletcher residence?” The switchboard operator’s voice was tinny but audible. “Call from 87492, do you want to accept?”
“Yes,” said Miriam. Who can it be? she wondered.
“Hello?” asked a laid back, slightly jovial man’s voice. “Is Mrs. Fletcher available?”
“Speaking.”
“Oh I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Durant here. Are you well, I hope? I read about your little unpleasantness.”
“I’m quite alright,” Miriam managed through gritted teeth. Suddenly her heart was right up at the base of her throat, threatening to fly away. “The burglars damaged some furniture, then they appear to have fallen out among themselves. It is all most extraordinarily distressing, and a very good thing for me that I was visiting my sister up in New London at the weekend. But I’m bearing up.”
“Oh, good for you. I trust the thief-takers are offering you all possible assistance? If you have any trouble at all I can put in a word with the magistrate-in-chief—”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, but I’m very grateful,” Miriam said warmly. “But can we talk about something else, please?”
“Certainly, certainly. I was telephoning to say—ah, this is such a spontaneous, erratic medium!—that I’ve been reviewing your proposal carefully. And I’d like to proceed.”
Miriam blinked, then carefully sat down on the stool next to the telephone. Her head was swimming.
“You want to go ahead?” she said.
“Yes, yes. That’s what I said. My chaps have been looking at the brake assembly you sent them and they say it’s quite remarkable. When the other three are available we’ll fit them to a Mark IV carriage for testing, but they say they’re in no doubt that it’s a vast step forward. However did you come up with it, may I ask?”
“Feminine intuition,” Miriam stonewalled. Oh wow, she thought. So close to success… “How do you want to proceed?”
“Well,” said Durant, and paused.
“Royalty basis or outright purchase of rights? Exclusive or nonexclusive?”
He whistled quietly past the condenser. “I believe a royalty basis would do the job,” he said. “I’ll want exclusive rights for the first few years. But I’ll tell you what else. I should like to invest in your business if you’re open to the idea. What do you say to that?”
“I say—” she bit the tip of her tongue carefully, considering: “I think we ought to discuss this later. I will not say yes, definitely, but in principle I am receptive to the idea. How large an investment were you thinking of?”
“Oh, a hundred thousand pounds or so,” Sir Durant said airily. Miriam did the conversion in her head, came up with a figure, double-checked it in disbelief. That’s thirty million dollars in real money!
“I want to retain control of my company,” she said.
“That can be arranged.” He sounded amused. “May I invite you to dine with me at, let’s say, the Brighton’s Hanover Room, a week on Friday? We can exchange letters of interest in the meantime.”
“That would be perfect,” Miriam said with feeling.
They made small talk for a minute, then Durant politely excused himself. Miriam sat on the telephone stool for several minutes in stunned surprise, before she managed to get a grip on herself. “He really said it,” she realized. “He’s really going to buy it!” Back home, in another life, this was the kind of story she’d have covered for The Weatherman. Bright new three-month-old start-up gets multimillion-dollar cash injection, signs rights deal with major corporation. I’m not covering the news anymore, I’m making it. She stood up and slowly climbed the stairs to her bedroom. Two more days to go, she remembered. I wonder how Olga and Brill are doing?
The next morning Miriam telephoned her lawyer. “I’m going to be away for a week from tomorrow,” she warned Bates. “In the meantime, I need someone to handle the payroll and necessary expenditures. Can you recommend a clerk who I can leave things with?”
“Certainly.” Bates muttered something, then added, “I can have my man Williams sit in for you if you want. Will that do?”
“Yes, as long as he’s reliable.” They haggled over a price, then agreed that Williams would show up on that afternoon for her to hand him the reins.
Later in the morning, a post boy knocked on the door. “Parcel for Fletcher?” he piped to Jane, who accepted it and carried it to Miriam, then waited for her to open the thing.
“Curiosity,” Miriam said pointedly, “is not what I pay you for.” Jane left, and Miriam stared at her retreating back before she reached for a paper knife from her desk and slit the string. If I’ve got to have servants around, I need ones who can keep their mouths shut, she thought gloomily. It wasn’t like this with Brill and Kara. The parcel opened up before her to reveal a leatherbound and clearly very old book. Miriam opened the flyleaf. A True and Accurate History of the Settlement of New Britain, it said, by some author whose name didn’t ring any bells. A card was slipped into the pages. She pulled it out and saw the name on it, blinked back sudden tears of relief. “You’re alright,” she mumbled. “They couldn’t pin anything on you.” Suddenly it was immensely important to her to know that Burgeson was safe and out of the claws of the political police. A sense of warm relief filled her. For a moment, all was right with the world.
The doorbell rang yet again at lunchtime. “Oh, ma’am, it’ll be a salesman,” said Jane, hurrying from the kitchen to pass Miriam, who sat alone in the dining room, toying with a bowl of soup and reading the book Erasmus had sent, her thoughts miles away. “I’ll send him—”
Footsteps. “Miriam?”
Miriam dropped her spoon in the soup and stood up. “Olga?”
It was indeed Olga, wearing the green outfit she’d bought from Burgeson by way of disguise. She smiled broadly as she entered the dining room and Miriam met her halfway in a hug. “Are you alright?” Olga asked.
“Yes. Have you eaten?”
“No.” Olga rubbed her forehead.
“Jane, another place setting for my cousin! How good of you to call.” As Jane hurried to the kitchen, Miriam added, “We can talk upstairs while she’s washing up.” Louder, “I was just preparing for my trip to New London tomorrow. Are you tied down here, or do you fancy the ride?”
“That’s why I came,” said Olga, sitting down and leaning back as the harried maid planted a place setting before her. “You didn’t think I’d let you go there all on your own, did you, cuz?” Jane rushed out, and Olga winked at Miriam. “You’re not getting out of it so easily! What did you say to put the Iron Duke in such a mood?”
“It’s going to be such a party tomorrow night!” Miriam said enthusiastically, then waited for Jane to place a bowl before Olga and withdraw to the scullery. Quietly, “I told him his little shell game was up. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” Olga paused, blowing on a spoon full of hot broth.
“That Angbard had planted you on me. As a bodyguard.”
“A what?” Olga shook her head. “This is intelligence of a rare and fantastic nature. Not me, Helge, not me.” She grinned. “Who’s been spinning you these tales?”
“Angbard,” said Miriam. She shook her head. “Are you certain you don’t work for him?”
“Certain?” Olga frowned. “About as certain as I am that the sun rises in the east. Unless—” She looked annoyed. “—you are telling me that he has been using me?”
“I couldn’t possibly comment,” Miriam said, then changed the subject as fast as possible. Let’s just say Angbard’s definition of someone who works for him doesn’t necessarily match up to the definition of an employee in federal employment law. “I suppose you know about the extraordinary meeting?”
“I know he’s called one.” Olga looked at Miriam suspiciously. “That’s most unusual. Is it your fault?”
“Yup. Did you bring the dictaphone?”
“The what? Oh, your recording angel? Yes, it is in my bag. Paulie gave it to me, along with these battery things that it eats. Such a sweet child he is,” she added. “A shame we’ll have to hang him.”
“We—” Miriam caught herself. “Who, the Clan? Lin, or Lee, or whatever he’s called? I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“He knows too much about us,” Olga pointed out calmly. “Like the fact that we’re operating here. Even if he’s from the lost family, that’s not enough to save his life. They’ve been trying to kill you, Miriam, they’ve picking away at us for decades. They did kill Margit, and I have not forgiven them for that.”
“Lin isn’t guilty of that. He’s a kid who was drafted into his family’s politics at too early an age, and did what they told him to. The one who killed Margit is dead, and if anyone else deserves to get it in the neck it’s the old men who sent a boy to do a man’s job. If you think the Clan should execute him, then by the same yardstick his family had a perfect right to try to murder you. True?”
“Hunh.” Miriam watched a momentary expression of uncertainty cross Olga’s face. “This merciful mood ill becomes you. Where does it come from?”
“I told you the other day, there’s been too much killing,” Miriam repeated. “Family A kills a member of Family B, so Family B kills a Family A member straight back. The last killing is a justification for the next, and so it goes on, round and about. It’s got to stop somewhere, and I’d rather it didn’t stop with the extinction of all the families. Hasn’t it occurred to anyone that the utility of world-walking, if you want to gain wealth and power, is proportional to the square of the number of people who can do it? Network externalities—”
Olga looked at her blankly. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
Miriam sighed. “The mobile phones everyone carries in Cambridge. You’ve seen me using one, haven’t you?”
“Oh yes!” Olga’s eyes sparkled. “Anything that can get Angbard out of bed in the middle of the night—”
“Imagine I have a mobile phone with me right now, here on the table.” She pointed to the salt shaker. “How useful is it?”
“Why, you could call—oh.” She looked crestfallen. “It doesn’t work?”
“You can only call someone else who has a phone,” Miriam told her. “If you have the only phone in the world, it might as well be a salt shaker. If I have a phone and you have a phone we can talk to each other, but nobody else. Now, if everyone has a phone, all sorts of things are possible. You can’t do business without one, you can’t even live without one. Lock yourself out of your home? You call a locksmith round to let you in. Want to go to a restaurant? Call your friends and tell them where to meet you. And so on. The usefulness of a phone relates not to how many people have got them, but to how many lines you can draw between those people. And the Clan’s one real talent is—” she shrugged—”forget cargo, we can’t shift as much in a day as a single ox-drawn wagon. The real edge the Clan has got is its ability to transmit messages.”
“Like phones.”
Miriam could almost see the light bulb switch on over her head. “Yes. If we can just break out of this loop of killing, even if it costs us, if we can just start trading … think about it. No more messing around with the two of us running errands. No more worries about the amount we can carry. And nobody trying to kill us, which I’d call a not-insignificant benefit—wouldn’t you?”
“Nice idea,” said Olga. “It’s surely a shame the other side will kill you rather than listen.”
“Isn’t that a rather defeatist attitude?”
“They’ve been trying to keep the civil war going,” Olga pointed out. “Are you sure they did not intrigue it in the first place? A lie here and a cut throat there, and their fearsome rivals—we families—will kill each other happily. Isn’t that how it started?”
“It probably did.” Miriam agreed. “So? What’s your point? The people who did that are long since dead. How long are you going to keep slaughtering their descendants?”
“But—” Olga stopped. “You really do want him alive,” she said slowly.
“Not exactly. What I don’t want is him dead, adding to the bad blood between the families. As a corpse he’s no use to anyone. Alive, he could be a go-between, or an information source, or a hostage, or something.”
Miriam finished with her soup. “Listen, I have to go to the office, but tomorrow evening I need to be in Niejwein. At the Castle Hjorth. Lin, whoever he is, was from out of town. Chances are we can get there from here without being noticed by anyone in this world, at least anyone but Inspector Smith. This afternoon I’m going to the office. I suggest that tomorrow morning we catch the train to New London. That’s New York in my world. When we get there—how well do you know Niejwein? Outside of the palaces and houses?”
“Not so well,” Olga admitted. “But it’s nothing like as large as these huge metropoli.”
“Fine. We’ll go to the railway terminal, cross over, and walk in bold as brass. There are two of us and we can look after each other. Right?”
Olga nodded. “We’ll be back in my apartment by afternoon. It will be a small adventure.” She put her spoon down. “The council will meet on the morrow, won’t it? I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad.”
“It’ll have to be good,” Miriam assured her. “It can’t be anything else.”
Two women sat alone in a first-class compartment as the morning train steamed through the wintry New England countryside. Puffs of smoke coughed past from the engine, stained dirty orange by the sun that hung low over icy woods and snow-capped farmland. The older woman kept her nose buried in the business pages of The London Intelligencer, immune to the rattle of track joints passing underneath the carriage. The younger woman in contrast started at every strange noise and stared out at the landscape with eyes eager to squeeze every detail from each passing town and village. Church steeples in particular seemed to fascinate her. “There are so many people!” Olga exclaimed quietly. “The countryside, it’s so packed!”
“Like home.” Miriam stifled a yawn as she read about the outrageous attempts of a consortium of robber barons from Carolingia to extract a royal monopoly on bituminous path-making, and the trial of a whaler’s captain accused of barratry. “Like home, ninety years ago.” She unbuttoned her jacket; the heating in the carriage was efficient but difficult to control.
“But this place is so rich!”
Miriam folded her paper. “Gruinmarkt will be this rich too, and within our lifetimes, if I have my way.”
“But how does it happen? How do you make wealth? Nobody here knows how the other world got so rich. Where does it come from?”
Miriam muttered to herself, “Teach a mercantilist dog new tricks …” She put the paper aside and sat up to face Olga. “Look. It’s a truism that in any land there is so much gold, and so much iron, and so much timber, and so many farmers, isn’t it? So that if you trade with a country, anything you take away isn’t there anymore. Your gain is their loss. Right?”
“Yes.” Olga nodded thoughtfully.
“Well, that’s just plain wrong,” said Miriam. “That idea used to be called mercantilism. Discarding it was one of the key steps that distinguishes my world from yours. The essential insight is that human beings create value. A lump of iron ore isn’t as valuable as a handful of nails, because it takes human labor to turn it into nails and nails are more useful. Now, if you have iron ore but no labor, and I have labor but no iron ore, both of us can profit by trade, can’t we? I can take your iron ore, make nails, give you some of them in payment, and we’re both better off, because before we had no nails at all. Isn’t that right?”
“I think I see.” Olga wrinkled her brow. “You’re telling me that we don’t trade? That the Clan has the wrong idea about how to make money—”
“Yes, but that’s only part of it. The Clan doesn’t add value, it simply moves it around. But another important factor is that a peasant farmer is less good at creating value than, say, a farmer who knows about crop rotation and soil maintenance and how to fertilize his fields effectively. And a man who can sit down all day and make nails is less productive than an engineer who can make a machine that takes in wire feedstock at one end and spits out nails at the other. It’s more productive to make a machine to make nails, and then run it, than to make the nails yourself. Educated people can think of ways to make such machines or provide valuable services—but to get to the wealth, you’ve got to have an educated population. Do you see that?”
“What you’re doing, you’re taking ideas where they’re needed, and teaching people with iron ore to make nails and, and do other things, aren’t you?”
“Yes. And while I can’t easily take the fruits of that trade home with me, I can make myself rich over here. Which in turn should serve to give me some leverage with the Clan, shouldn’t it? And there’s another thing.” She looked pensive. “If the goal is to modernize the Gruinmarkt, the land where the Clan holds so much power, it’s going to be necessary to import technologies and ideas from a world that isn’t as far ahead as the United States. There’s less of a gap to jump between New Britain and the eastern kingdoms. What I want to do is to develop riches in this realm, and use them to finance seed investments in the kingdoms. If the Clan won’t let me live away from them, at least I can try to make my life more comfortable. No more drafty medieval castles!”
“Castles.” Olga looked wistful for a moment. “You’d build a house like your own near Niejwein? Bandits, the southern kingdoms—”
“No bandits,” said Miriam, firmly. “First, we need to improve the efficiency of farming. What I saw looked—no offense—like the way things were done five or six hundred years ago in Europe. Strip cultivation, communal grazing, no reaping or sowing machines. By making farming more efficient, we can free up hands for industry. By providing jobs, we can begin to produce more goods—fabric, fuel, housing, ships—and see to the policing of the roads and waterways along which trade flows. By making trade safer we make it cheaper, and increase the profits, and by increasing the profits we can free up money to invest in education and production.”
Olga shook her head. “I’m dizzy! I’m dizzy!”
“That’s how it happened in England around the industrial revolution,” Miriam emphasized. “That’s how it happened here, from 1890 onwards, a century later than in my world. The interesting thing is that it didn’t happen in the Gruinmarkt, or in Europe, over there. I’ve got this nagging feeling that knowing why it failed is important… still. Given half a chance we’ll make it happen.” She leaned toward Olga. “Roland tried to run away and they dragged him back.” She took a deep breath. “If they’re going to try to drag me away from civilization, I’m going to try to bring civilization with me, middle class morality and all. And then they’ll be sorry.”
The train began to slow its headlong charge between rows of red-brick houses.
“If you go down this path, you’ll make enemies,” Olga predicted. “Some of them close to home, but others … Do you really think the outer families will accept an erosion of their relative status? Or the king? Or the court? Or the council of lords? Someone will think they can only lose by it, and they’ll fight you for it.”
“They’ll accept it if it makes them rich,” Miriam said. She glanced at the window, sniffed, and buttoned her jacket up. “Damn, it’s cold out there.” A thought struck her. “Will we be alright on the other side?”
“We’re always at risk,” Olga remarked. She paused for a moment. “But, on second thoughts, I think we are at no more risk than usual.” She nudged the bag at her feet. “As long as we don’t linger.”
The train sneaked along a suburban platform and stopped with a hissing of steam; doors slammed and people shouted, distant whistles shrilling counterpoint. “Next stop?” Miriam suggested tensely. She pulled out a strip of tablets, took one, and offered another to Olga.
“Thanking you—yes.”
The train pulled away into a deep cutting, its whistle hooting. Buildings on either side cast deep shadows across the windows, then Miriam found herself watching the darkness of a tunnel. “I’m worried about the congress,” Miriam admitted.
“Hah. Leave that to the duke. Do you think he would have called for it if he didn’t trust you?”
“If anything goes wrong, if we don’t get there, if Brill was lying about my mother being safe—”
The train began to slow again. “Our stop!” Olga stood up and reached for her coat.
They waited at one end of the platform while the huge black and green behemoth rumbled away from the station. A handful of tired travelers swirled around them, making for the footbridge that led over the tracks to the main concourse. Miriam nodded at a door. “Into the waiting room.” Olga followed her. The room was empty and cold. “Are you ready?” Miriam asked. “I’ll go across first. If I run into trouble, I’ll come right back. If I’m not back inside five minutes, you come over too.”
Olga discreetly checked her gun. “I’ve got a better idea. You’re too important to risk first.” She pulled out her locket and picked up her bag: “See you shortly!”
“Wait—” It was too late. Miriam squinted at the fading outline. Funny, she thought, irritated, I’ve never seen someone else do that. “Damn,” she said quietly, pulling out her own compact and opening it up so that she could join Olga. “You’d better not have run into anything you can’t handle—”
Ouch. Miriam took a step back and a branch whacked her on the back of the head.
“Are you alright?” Olga asked anxiously.
“Ouch. And again, ouch. How about you?”
“I’m fine, except for my head.” Olga looked none the worse for wear. “Where are we?”
“I should say we’re still some way outside the city limits.” Miriam put her bag down and concentrated on breathing, trying to get the throbbing in her head under control. “Are you ready for a nice bracing morning constitutional?”
“Ugh. Mornings should be abolished!”
“You will hear no arguments from this quarter.” Miriam bent down, opened her bag, and removed a cloak from it to cover her alien clothes. “That looks like clear ground over there. How about we try to pick up a road?”
“Lead on,” sighed Olga.
They’d come out in deciduous woodland, snow lying thick on the ground between the stark, skeletal trees; it took them the best part of an hour to find their way to a road, and even that was mostly dumb luck. But, once they’d found it, Niejwein was already in sight. And what a sight it was.
Miriam hadn’t appreciated before just how crude, small, and just plain smelly the city was. It stood on a low bluff overlooking what might, in a few hundred years, mutate into the Port Authority. Stone walls twenty feet high followed the contours of the ground for miles, bascules sprouting ominously every hundred yards. Long before they reached the walls, she found herself walking beside Olga in a cloud of smelly dust, passing rows of windowless tumbledown shacks. Scores of poor-looking countryfolk—many in clothes little better than layered rags—drove heavily laden donkeys or small herds of sheep toward the city gates. Miriam noticed that they were picking up a few odd looks, especially from the ragged mothers of the barefoot urchins who cast stones across the icy cobbles, but she avoided eye contact and nobody seemed interested in approaching two women who knew where they were going. Especially after Olga pointedly allowed the barrel of her gun to slip from under her cloak, in response to an importuning rascal who attempted to get too close. “Hmm, I see why you always travel by—” Miriam stopped and squinted at the gatehouse. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is, on the wall,” she said.
“Not what—oh, that.” Olga looked at her oddly. “What else would you have them do with bandits?”
“Um.” Miriam swallowed. “Not that.” The city gates were wide open and nobody seemed to be guarding them. “Is there meant to be anyone on watch?”
“Invasion comes from the sea, most often.”
“Um.” I’ve got to stop saying that, Miriam told herself. Her feet were beginning to hurt with all the walking, she was picking up dust and dirt, and she was profoundly regretting not making use of the dining carriage for breakfast. Or crossing all the way over, phoning for Paulie to pick them up, and driving all the way in the back of an air-conditioned car. “Which way to the castle?”
“Oh, that’s a way yet.” Olga beamed as a wagon laden with bales of hay clattered past. “Isn’t it grand? The largest city in the Gruinmarkt!”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Miriam said hollowly. She’d seen somediing like this before, she realized. Some of the museum reconstructions of medieval life back home were quite accurate, but nothing quite captured the reek—no, the overwhelming stench—of open sewers, of people who bathed twice a year and wore a single set of clotiies all the time, of houses where the owners bedded down with their livestock to share warmth. Did I really say I was going to modernize this? she asked herself, aghast at her own hubris. Why yes, I think I did. Talk about jumping in with both feet …
Olga steered her into a wide boulevard without warning. “Look,” she said. Huge stone buildings fronted the road at intervals, all the way up to an imposing hill at the far end, upon which squatted a massive stone carbuncle, turretted and brooding. “You see? There is civilization in Niejwein after all!”
“That’s the palace, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed. And we’ll be much better off once we are inside its walls.” A hundred yards more and Olga waved Miriam into what at first she mistook for an alleyway—before she worked out that it was the drive leading to the Hjorth Palace.
“I didn’t realize this—” Miriam stopped, coming to a halt behind Olga. Two men at arms were walking toward them, hands close to their sword hilts.
“Chein bet hen! Gehen’sh veg!”
“Ver she mishtanken shind?” said Olga, drawing herself up and glaring at them icily.
“Ish interesher’ish nish, when sheshint the Herzogin von Praha—” said one, sneering contemptuously.
“Stop right there,” Miriam said evenly, pulling her right hand inside her cloak. “Is Duke Lofstrom in residence?”
The sneering one stopped and gaped at her. “You … say, the duke?” he said slowly in broken English. “I’ll teach you—”
His colleague laid a hand on his arm and muttered something urgent in his ear.
“Fetch the duke, or one of his aides,” Miriam snapped. “I will wait here.”
Olga glanced at her sidelong, then turned her cloak back to reveal her gun and her costume. What she wore would be considered respectable in New London: Over here it was as exotic as the American outfits the Clan members wore in private.
“I take you inside,” said the more prudent guard, trying to look inoffensive. “Gregor, gefen she jemand shnaill’len, als iffoor leifensdauer abhngtfon ihm,” he told his companion.
Olga grinned humorlessly. “It does,” she said.
A carriage rattled up the drive behind them; meanwhile, booted feet hurried across the hall. A man, vaguely familiar from Angbard’s retinue, glanced curiously at Miriam. “Oh great Sky Father, it’s her,” he muttered in a despairing tone. “Please, come in, come in! You came to see the duke?”
“Yes, but I think we should freshen up first,” said Miriam. “Please send him my compliments, tell these two idiots to let us in, and we will be with him in half an hour.”
“Certainly, certainly—”
Olga took Miriam’s hand and led her up the steps while the duke’s man was still warming up on the hapless guards. A couple more guards, these ones far more alert-looking, fell in behind them. “Your apartment,” said Olga. “I took the liberty of moving some of my stuff in. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Not at all.” Miriam shrugged, then winced. “I’ll need more than half an hour to freshen up.”
“Well, you’ll have to do it fast.” Olga rapped on the huge double doors by the top of the main stairs. “The duke detests being kept waiting.”
“Indeed—Kara!—oof!”
“My lady!”
Miriam pushed her back to arm’s length. “You’ve been alright?” she asked anxiously. “No murderers lurking in your bedroom?”
“None, milady!” Kara flushed and let go of her. “Milady! What is that you’re wearing? It’s so frumpy! And you, lady Olga? Is this some horrid new fashion from Paris that we’ll all be wearing in a month? Has somebody been biting your neck, that you’ve got to hide it?”
“I hope not,” Miriam said dryly. “Listen.” She towed Kara into the empty outer audience chamber. “We’re going to see Angbard in half an hour. Half an hour. Get something for me to wear. And warn Olga’s maids. We’ve been on the road half a day.”
“I shall!” She bounced away toward the bedchamber.
Miriam rubbed her forehead. “Youth and enthusiasm.” She made a wry curse of it.
Her bedroom was as she’d left it four months ago—Olga had taken the Queen’s Room, for there were four royal rooms in this apartment—and for once Miriam didn’t drive Kara out. “Help me undress,” she ordered. “Aah, that’s better. Um. Fetch the pot. Then would you mind getting me a basin of hot water? I need to scrub my face.”
Kara, for a wonder, left Miriam alone to wash herself—then doubled the miracle by laying out one of Miriam’s trouser suits and retiring to the outer chamber. “She’s learning,” Miriam noted. “Hmm.” It felt strange to be dressing for an ordinary day in the office world, doubly strange to be doing so with medieval squalor held at bay outside by guards with swords. “What the hell.” She looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was past shoulder length, there were worry lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there six months ago, and her jacket was loose at the waist. “Not bad.” Then she spotted a couple of white hairs. “Damn. Bad.” She combed it back hard, held it in place with a couple of pins, and turned her back on the mirror. “Hostile takeover time, kid. Go kill ’em.”
There were no simple chambers for the duke. He’d taken over the royal apartment in the west wing, occupying half of the top floor, and his guards had staked out the entire floor below as a security measure. Nor was it possible for Miriam to pay a quiet visit on him. Not without first picking up a retinue of a palace majordomo, a bunch of guards led by a nervous young officer, and an overexcited teenager. Kara fussed around behind Miriam as she climbed the stairs. “Isn’t it exciting?” she squealed.
“Hush.” Miriam cast her eye over the guards with a jaundiced eye. Their camouflage jackets and submachine guns sounded a jarring note. Strip them from the scene and this might merely be some English stately home, taken over for the duration of a rich multinational’s general meeting. “Am I always supposed to travel with this much protection?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Kara said artlessly.
“Make a point of finding out, then,” Miriam said sharply as she climbed the last few steps toward the separate guard detachment outside Angbard’s residence.
Two soldiers came to attention on either side of the door to the royal apartment. Their sergeant strode forward. “Introduce me,” Miriam hissed at the majordomo.
“Ahem! May I present my lady, her excellency the countess Helge Thorold-Hjorth, niece of the duke Angbard of that family, who comes to pay her attendance on the duke?” The man ended on a strangled squeak.
The sergeant checked his clipboard. “Everything is as expected.” He saluted, and Miriam nodded acknowledgment at him. “Ma’am. If you’d like to come this way.” His eyes lingered on Kara. “Your lady-in-waiting may attend. The guards—”
“Very well,” said Miriam. She glanced over her shoulder: “Wait here, I’m not expecting my uncle to try to kill me,” she told her retinue. Yet, she added silently. The doors swung open and she stepped through into a nearly empty audience chamber. The doors slammed shut behind her with a solid thud of latches, and she would have paused to look around but for the sergeant, who was already halfway across the huge expanse of hand-woven carpet.
He paused at the inner door and knocked twice: “Visitor six-two,” he muttered to a peephole, then stood aside. The inner door opened just wide enough to admit Miriam and Kara. “If you please, ma’am.”
“Hmm.” Miriam entered the room, then stopped dead. “Mother!”
“Miriam!” Iris smiled at her from her wheelchair, which stood beside the pair of thrones mounted at one end of the audience room. A pair of crutches leaned against one of them.
Miriam crossed the room quickly and leaned down to hug her mother. “I’ve missed you,” she said quietly, mind whirling with shock. “I was so worried—”
“There, there.” Iris kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I’m alright, as you can see.” Miriam straightened up. “You look as if you’re keeping well!” Then she noticed Kara’s head in the doorway, jaw agape. “Oh dear, another one come to stare at me,” she sighed. “I suppose it can’t be helped. It’ll all be over by this time tomorrow, anyway, isn’t that the case, Angbard?”
“I would not make any assumptions,” said the duke, turning away from the window. His expression was distant. “Helge, Miriam.”
“So, it is true,” said Miriam. She glanced at Iris. “He brought you here?” She rounded on Angbard: “You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“Nonsense.” He looked offended.
“Don’t blame him, Miriam.” Iris looked at her strangely. “Drag up a seat, dear. It’s a long story.”
Miriam sat down beside her. “Why?” she asked, her thoughts whirling so that she couldn’t make her mind up what word to put next. “What is she doing here then, if you didn’t kidnap her?” she asked, looking at Angbard. “I thought it was against all your policies to take people from—”
“Policies?” Angbard asked, raising his nose. He shrugged dismissively then looked at Iris. “Tell her.”
“Nobody kidnapped me,” said Iris. “But after a party or parties unknown tried to kill me, I phoned Angbard and asked for help.”
“Uh.” Miriam blinked. “You phoned him?”
“Yes.” Iris nodded encouragingly. “Isn’t that how you normally get in touch with someone?”
“Well yes, but, but…” Miriam paused. “You had his number,” she said accusingly. “How?”
Iris glanced at the duke, as if asking for moral support. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and half-turned away from Miriam.
“Um.” Iris froze up, looking embarrassed.
Miriam stared at her mother. “Oh no. Tell me it isn’t true.”
Iris coughed. “I expected you to look at the papers, use the locket or not, then do the sensible thing and ask me to tell you all about it. I figured you’d be fairly safe, your house being in the middle of open woodland on this side, and it would make explaining everything a lot easier once you’d had a chance to see for yourself. Otherwise—” She shrugged. “If I’d broken it to you cold you’d have thought I was crazy. I didn’t expect you to go running off and getting yourself shot at!” For a moment she looked angry. “I was so worried!”
“Ma.” She had difficulty swallowing. “You’re telling me you knew about. The Clan. All along.”
A patient sigh from the window bay. “She appears to be having some difficulty. If you would allow me—”
“No!” Iris snapped, then stopped.
“If you can’t, I will,” the duke said firmly. He turned back to face Miriam. “Your mother has had my number all along,” he explained, scrutinizing her face. “The Clan has maintained emergency telephone numbers—a nine-eleven service, if you like—for the past fifty years. She only saw fit to call me when you went missing.”
“Ma—” Miriam stopped. Glanced at Angbard again. “My mother,” she said thoughtfully. “Not, um, foster-mother, is it?”
Angbard shook his head slightly, studying her beneath half-hooded eyes.
Miriam glared at Iris. “Why all the lies, then?” she demanded.
Iris looked defensive. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, is all I can say.” She shuffled deeper into her chair. “Miriam?”
“Yeah?”
“I know I brought you up not to tell lies. All I can say is, I wish I could have lived up to that myself. I’m sorry.”
Angbard took a step forward, then moved to stand behind Iris’s wheelchair.
“Don’t go too hard on her,” he said warningly. “You have no idea what she’s—” He stopped, and shook his head. “No idea,” he echoed grimly.
“So explain,” said Miriam. Her gaze slid past Iris to focus on Kara, who was doing her best imitation of a sheet of wallpaper—wallpaper with a fascinated expression. “Whoa. Kara, please wait outside. Now.”
Kara skidded across the floor as if her feet were on fire: “I’m going, I’m going!” she squeaked.
Miriam stared at Iris. “So why did you do it?”
Iris sighed. “They’d shot Alfredo, you know.”
She fell silent for a moment.
“Alfredo?”
“Your father.”
“Shot him, you said.”
“Yes. And Joan, my maid, they killed her too. I got across but they’d done a good job on me, too—I nearly bled to death before the ambulance got me to a hospital. And then, and then …” She trailed off. “I was in Cambridge, unidentified, in a hospital, with no chaperone and no guards. Can you understand the temptation?”
Miriam looked sideways: Angbard was watching Iris like a hawk, something like admiration in his eyes. Or maybe it was the bitterness of the dutiful brother who stuck to his post? It was hard to tell.
“How did you meet Morris?” she asked her mother, after a momentary pause.
“He was a hospital visitor.” Iris smiled at the recollection. “Actually he was writing for an underground newspaper at the time and came to see if I’d been beaten up by the pigs. Later he sorted out our birth certificates—mine and yours, that is, including my fake backstory leading out of the country, and the false adoption papers—when we moved around. Me being a naturalized foreigner was useful cover. There was a whole underground railroad going on in those days, left over from when the SDS and the Weather Underground turned bad, and it served our purpose to use it. Especially as the FBI wasn’t actually looking for us.”
“So I—I—” Miriam stopped. “I’m not adopted.”
“Does it make any difference to you?” Iris asked, sounding slightly puzzled. “You always said it didn’t. That’s what you told me.”
“I’m confused,” Miriam admitted. Her head was spinning. “You were rich and powerful. You gave it all up—brought your daughter up to think she was adopted, went underground, lived like a political radical—just to get away from the in-laws?”
Angbard spoke. “It’s her mother’s fault,” he said grimly. “You met the dowager duchess, I believe. She has always taken a, ah, utilitarian view of her offspring. She played Patty like a card in a game of poker, for the highest stakes. The treaty process, re-establishing the braid between the warring factions. I think she did so partially out of spite, to get your mother out of the way, but she is not a simple woman. Nothing she does serves only a single purpose.” His expression was stony. “But she is untouchable. Unlike whoever tried to ruin her hand by murdering my cousin and her husband.”
Iris shifted around, trying to make herself more comfortable. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account. If you ever find Alfredo’s body, you’d best not tell me where it’s buried—I’d have a terrible time getting back into my wheelchair after I pissed on it.”
“Patricia,” his smile was razor-thin, “I usually find that death settles all scores to my complete satisfaction. Just as long as they stay dead.”
“Well, I don’t agree. And you weren’t married to Alfredo.”
“Mother!” Miriam stared at both of them in shock: Just as she was certain Angbard was serious, she was more than half afraid that her mother was, too.
“Don’t you ‘mother’ me!” Iris chided her. “I was mooning at the national guard before you were out of diapers. I’m just not very mobile these days.” She frowned and turned to Angbard. “We were speaking of mother,” she bit out.
“I can’t keep her out forever,” said Angbard, his frightening smile vanishing as rapidly as it had appeared. “You two clearly need more time together, but I have an audience with his majesty in an hour. Miriam, can you fill me in quickly?”
Miriam took a deep breath. “First, I need to know where Roland is.”
“Roland—” Angbard looked at his watch, his face intent. Then back at Miriam. “He’s been looking after Patty for the past month,” he said, his tone neutral. “Right now he’s in Boston, minding the shop. You don’t need to worry about his reliability.”
For a moment Miriam felt so dizzy that she had to shut her eyes. She opened them again when she heard her mother’s voice. “Such a suitable young man.” She glared at Iris, who smiled lazily at her. “Don’t let them get together, Angbard, or they’ll be over the horizon before you have time to blink.”
“It’s not. That.” Miriam was having difficulty breathing. “There’s a hole in your security,” she said as calmly as she could. “It’s at a very high level. I told Roland to do something about a corpse in an inconvenient place and instead a bunch of high explosives showed up. It turns out that Matthias has been blackmailing him.” She felt dizzy with the significance of the moment.
“Roland? Are you sure?” Angbard leaned forward. His face was expressionless.
“Yes. He told me everything.” She felt as if she were floating. “Listen, it was on the specific understanding that I would intercede with you to clean it up. Your secretary has been running his own little game and seems to have decided that getting a handle on Roland would help him cover his traces.”
“That was a mistake,” Angbard said, his voice deceptively casual. His expression was immobile, except for his scarred left cheek, which twitched slightly. “How did you find out?”
“It happened in the warehouse my chamber is doppelgängered onto here. Most of this pile is colocated with a bonded warehouse, but one wing sticks out into a real hole-in-the-wall shipping operation.” She swallowed, then forced herself to speak. “There was a night watchman. Emphasis on the was.” She explained what had happened when she’d first carried Brill through to New York.
“Roland, you say,” said Angbard. “He’s been blackmailed?”
“I want your word,” Miriam insisted. “No consequences.”
A sharp intake of breath. “Well—” Angbard started to pace. “Did he betray any secrets?”
Miriam stood up. “Not as far as I know,” she said.
“And did anyone die as a result of his actions?”
Miriam paused for a moment before answering: “Again, not as far as I know. Certainly not directly. And certainly not as a result of anything he knew he was doing.”
“Well, well. Maybe I will not have to kill him.” Angbard stopped again, behind Iris’s chair. “What do you think I should do?” he asked, visibly tense.
“I think—” Miriam chewed her lower lip. “Matthias has tapes. I think you should hand the tapes over to me, unwatched. I’ll burn them. In front of you both, if you want.” She paused. “You’ll want to remove all his responsibilities for security operations, I guess.”
“This blackmail material,” Iris prodded. “These tapes—is it something personal? Or has he been abusing his position in any way?”
“It’s absolutely personal. I can swear to it. Matthias just got the drop on Roland’s private life. Nothing illegal; just, uh, sensitive.”
Iris—Patricia, the long-lost countess—stared at her knowingly for a moment, then turned to look at her half-brother. “Do as she says,” she said firmly.
Angbard nodded, then cast her a sharp look. “We’ll see,” he said.
“No, we won’t!” Iris snapped. She continued quietly but with emphasis: “If your secretary has been building up private dossiers on nobles, you’re in big trouble. You need all the friends you can get, bro. Starting by pardoning anyone who isn’t an active enemy will clear the field. And make damn sure you burn those tapes without watching them, because for all you know some of them are fabrications that Matthias concocted just in case you ever stumbled across them. It’s untrustworthy evidence, all of it.” She turned to Miriam. “What else have you dug up?” she demanded.
“Well.” Miriam leaned against a priceless lacquered wooden cabinet and managed to muster up a tired smile to conceal her gut-deep sense of relief. “I’m pretty sure Matthias is in league with whoever was running the prisoner.”
“The prisoner,” Angbard echoed distantly. By his expression, he was already wrapped up in calculating the requirements of the coming purge.
“What prisoner?” asked Iris.
“Something your daughter’s friends dragged in a couple of days ago,” Angbard dropped offhandedly. To Miriam he added, “He’s downstairs.”
“Have you worked out who he is, yet?” Miriam interrupted.
“What, that he’s a long-lost cousin? And so are the rest of his family, stranded with a corrupt icon that takes them to this new world you have opened up for our trade? Of course. Your suggestion that we do DNA fingerprinting made it abundantly clear.”
“Cousins? New world?” Iris echoed. “Would one of you please back up a bit and explain, before I have to beat it out of you with my crutches?”
Angbard stood up. “No, I don’t think so.” He grinned mirthlessly. “You kept Miriam in the dark for nearly a third of a century, I think it’s only fair that we keep you in suspense for a third of a day.”
“So nobody else knows?” Miriam asked Angbard.
“That’s correct.” He nodded. “And I’m going to keep it that way, for now.”
“I want to talk to the prisoner,” Miriam said hastily.
“You do?” Angbard turned the full force of his icy stare on her. “Whatever for?”
“Because—” Miriam struggled for words—”I don’t have old grudges. I mean, his relatives tried to kill me, but… I have an idea I want to test. I need to see if he’ll talk to me. May I?”
“Hmm.” Angbard looked thoughtful. “You’ll have to be quick, if you want to collect your pound of flesh before we execute him.”
Miriam swallowed bile. “That’s not what I have in mind.”
“Oh, really?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Give me a chance?” she asked. “Please?”
“If you insist.” Angbard waved lazily. “But don’t lose the plot.” He stared at her, and for a moment Miriam felt her bones turn to water. “Remember not all your relatives are as liberal-minded as I am, or believe that death heals all wounds.”
“I won’t,” Miriam said automatically. Then she looked at Iris again, a long, appraising inspection. Her mother met her gaze head-on, without blinking. “It’s alright,” she said distantly. “I’m not going to stop being your daughter. Just as long as you don’t stop being my ma. Deal?”
“Deal.” Iris dropped her gaze. “I don’t deserve you, kid.”
“Yes, you do.” Angbard looked Miriam up and down. “Like mother, like daughter, don’t you know what kind of combination that makes?” He chuckled humorlessly. “Now, if you will excuse me, Helge, you have made much work for this old man to attend to …”
I should have realized all castles had dungeons, Miriam thought apprehensively. If not for keeping prisoners, then for supplies, ammunition, food, wine cellars—ice. It was freezing cold below ground, and even the crude coal-gas pipes nailed to the brickwork and the lamps hissing and fizzing at irregular intervals couldn’t warm it up much. Miriam followed the guard down a surprisingly wide staircase into a cellar, then up to a barred iron door behind which a guard waited patiently. Finally he led her into a well-lit room containing nothing but a table and two chairs.
“What is this?” she asked.
“I’ll bring the prisoner to you, ma’am,” the sergeant said patiently. “With another guard. The gate at the front won’t be unlocked again until he’s back in his cell.”
“Oh.” Miriam sat down, feeling stupid, and waited nervously as the guard disappeared into the basement tunnels beneath the castle. The dungeon. I put him here, she thought apprehensively. What must it be like?
A clattering outside brought her back to herself, and she turned around to watch the door as it opened. The sergeant came in, followed by another soldier, and, a hunched, thin figure with his arms behind his back and a hood over his head. He’s manacled, Miriam realized.
“One moment.” The guards positioned the prisoner against the wall opposite Miriam’s table. The guard knelt, and Miriam heard something click into place—padlocks. “That’s it,” said the sergeant. He pulled off the prisoner’s hood, then he and the other guard withdrew to stand beside the door.
“Hello, Lin,” Miriam said as evenly as she could. “Recognize me?”
He flinched, clearly terrified, and was brought up short by his chains. Shit, Miriam thought, a sense of horror stealing over her. She peered at him in the dim light. “They’ve been beating you,” she said quietly. The things on the gatehouse walls—no, she didn’t want to be involved in this. It was all a horrible mistake. Multiple contusions, some bleeding and inflammation around the left eye. He stared past her left shoulder, shivering fearfully, but didn’t say anything. Miriam resisted the urge to turn around and yell at the guards. She had a hopeless feeling that all it would do was earn the kid another beating when she was safely out of the way.
Her medical training wouldn’t let her look away. Up until this moment she’d have sworn she was angry with him: But she hadn’t expected them to treat him like this. Breaking into her house on the orders of someone placed in authority over him—sure she was angry. But the real guilty parties were a long way away, and if she didn’t do something fast, this half-starved kid was going to join the grisly carcasses displayed on the gatehouse wall, for the crime of following orders. And where was the justice in that?
“I’m not going to hit you,” she said.
He didn’t reply. His posture said he didn’t believe her.
“Fuck!” She pulled one of the chairs out from the table, turned it around, and sat down on it, her arms folded across the back. “I just want some answers. That’s all. Lin of, what did you call yourself?”
“Lin. Lin Lee. My family is called Lee.” He kept glancing past her, as if trying to conceal his fear: I’m not going to hit you, but my guards—
“That’s good. How old are you?”
“Fifteen.” Fifteen! Holy shit, they’re running the children’s crusade! A thought struck her. “Have they been feeding you? Giving you water? Somewhere to sleep?”
He managed a brief, painful croak: Maybe it was meant to be laughter.
Miriam looked around. “Well? Have you been feeding him?”
The sergeant shook himself. “Ma’am?”
“What food, drink, and medical attention has this child had?”
He shook his head. “I really couldn’t say, ma’am.”
“I see.” Miriam’s hands tensed on the back of the chair. She turned back to Lin. “I didn’t order this,” she said. “Will you tell me who sent you to my house?”
She saw him swallow. “If I do that you’ll kill me,” he said.
“No, that’s not what I’ve got in mind.”
“Yes you will.” He looked at her with bitter certainty in his eyes. “They’ll do it.”
“Like you were going to kill me?” she asked quietly.
He didn’t say anything.
“You were supposed to find out if I was from the Clan,” she said. “Weren’t you? A strange new woman showing up in town and making waves. Is that it? And if I was from the Clan, you were supposed to kill me. What was it to be? A bomb in my bedroom? Or a knife in the dark?”
“Not me,” he whispered. “One of the warriors.”
“So why were you there? To spy on me? Are they that short-handed?”
He looked down at the table, but not before she saw shame in his eyes.
“Ah.” She glanced away for a moment, trying desperately to think of a way out of the impasse. She was hopelessly aware of the guards standing behind her, waiting patiently for her to finish with the prisoner. If I leave him here, the Clan will kill him, she realized, with a kind of hollow dread she hadn’t expected to be able to summon up for a housebreaker. Housebreaker? What his actions said about his family, that was something she could get angry about. “Hell.” She made up her mind.
“Lin, you’re probably right about the Clan. Most of them would see you dead as soon as look at you. There’ve been too many years of their parents and grandparents cutting each other’s throats. They’re suspicious of anything they don’t understand, and you’re going to be high on any list of mysteries. But I’ll tell you something else.”
She stood up. “You know how to world-walk, don’t you?”
Silence.
“I said—” She stopped. “You ought to know when you can stop holding it in,” she said tiredly. Thinking back to Angbard, and how she’d managed to face him down over Roland: Don’t look too deep. Everything on the surface. The familes all worked that way, didn’t they? “Nothing you say to me can make your position worse. It might make it better, though.”
Silence.
“World-walking,” she said. “We know you can do it, we got the locket you carried. So why lie?”
Silence.
“The Clan can world-walk too, you know,” she said quietly. “It isn’t a coincidence. Your family are relatives, aren’t they? Lost for a long time, and this shit—the killing, the feuding, the attempts to reopen old wounds—isn’t in anyone’s interests.”
Silence.
“Why do they want me dead?” she asked. “Why are you people killing your own blood relatives?”
Maybe it was something in her expression—frank curiosity, perhaps—but the youth looked away at last. The silence stretched out for a long moment, lengthened toward a minute, punctuated only by the sound of one of the guards shifting position.
“You betrayed us,” he whispered.
“Uh?” Miriam shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“In the time of the loyal sons,” said Lin. “All the others. They abandoned my ancestor. The promise of a meeting in the world of the Americans. Reduced to poverty, he took years to gain his freedom, then he spent his entire life searching for them. But never did they come.”
“This is all news to me,” Miriam said quietly. “He was reduced to poverty?”
Lin nodded convulsively. “This is the tale of our family,” he said, in sing-song tones. “That of the brothers, it was agreed that Lee would go west, to set up a trading post. And he did, but the way was hard and he was reduced to penury, his caravan scattered, his goods stolen by savages, abandoned by his servants. For seven years he labored as a bond servant, before buying his freedom: He lost everything, from his wife to the first talisman of the family. Finally he forged a new talisman, working from memory, earned his price, and bought himself liberty. He was a very determined man. But when he walked to the place assigned for meeting, nobody was there to wait for him. Every year, at the appointed day and hour, he would go there; and never did anyone come. His brothers had abandoned him, and over the years his descendants learned much of the eastern Clan. The betrayers, who profited from his estate.”
“Ah,” said Miriam, faintly. Oops, a betrayal-for-a-legacy myth. So he accidentally mangled the knotwork and ended up going to New Britain instead of—she blinked.
“You’ve seen my world,” she said. “Do you know, that’s where the Clan have been going all along? Where you go when you world-walk, it’s all set up by the, uh, talisman. Your illustrious ancestor re-created it wrong. Sending himself over to, to, New Britain. For all you know, the other brothers thought that your ancestor had abandoned them.”
Lin shrugged. “When are you going to kill me?” he asked.
“In about ten seconds if you don’t shut up about it!” She glared at him. “Don’t you see? Your family’s reasons for feuding with the Clan are bogus. They’ve been bogus all along!”
“So?” He made a movement that might have been a shrug if he hadn’t been wearing fetters. “Our elders, now dead, laid these duties upon our shoulders. We must obey, or dishonor their memory. Only our eldest can change our course. Do you expect me to betray my family and plead for mercy?”
“No.” Miriam stood up. “But you may not need to beg, Lin. There is a Clan meeting coming up tomorrow. Some—most—of them will want your head. But I think it might be possible to convince them to let you go free, if you agree to do something.”
“No!”
She rolled her eyes. “Really? You don’t want to go home and deliver a letter to this elder of yours? I knew you were young and silly, but this is ridiculous.”
“What kind of letter?” he asked hesitantly.
“An offer of terms.” She paused. “You need it more than we do, I hasten to add. Now we can get into your world—” He flinched—”and there are many more of us, and there’s the other world you saw, the one the Clan’s power is based in. Did you see much of America?” His eyes went wide: He’d seen enough. “From now on, in any struggle, we can win. There is no ‘maybe’ in that statement. If the eldest orders your family to fight it out, they can only lose. But I happen to have a use for your family—I want to keep them alive. And you. I’m willing to settle this thing between us, the generations of blood and murder, if your eldest is willing to accept that declaring war on the Clan was wrong, that his ancestor was not deliberately abandoned, and that ending the war is necessary. So I’m going to do everything I can to convince the committee to send you home with a cease-fire proposal.”
He stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head.
“Will you carry that message?” she asked.
He nodded, slowly, watching her with wide eyes.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” she warned. She turned to the door. “Take this one back to his cell,” she said. “I want you to make sure he’s given food and water. And take good care of him.” She leaned toward the sergeant. “There is a chance that he is going to run an errand for us. I do not want him damaged. Do you understand?”
Something in her eyes made the soldier tense. “Yes, ma’am,” he grunted warily. “Food and water.” His companion pulled the door open, staring at the wall behind her, trying to avoid her gaze.
“See that you do.”
She came out of the cellars shivering into the evening twilight, and headed upstairs as fast as she could, to get back to a warm fireplace and good company. But it was going to take more than that to get the chill of the dungeon out of her bones, and out of her dreams.