EXTRAORDINARY MEETING

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. 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. 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 redbrick 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 all right 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. 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,’ she admitted.

‘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 locket 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 all right?’ 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,’ said 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, nailed to the wall,’ she said.

‘Not what – oh, that.’ Olga looked at her oddly. ‘What else would you have them do with bandits after they quarter them?’

‘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 the rest of 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 something 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 clothes 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, turreted 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 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 all right?’ 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. 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 him a quiet visit. 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 old 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. ‘I was so worried – ’

‘There, there.’ Iris kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘I’m all right, 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.’ Her mother 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.’

‘Um. 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 slowly. ‘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! 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 stared at Iris. ‘Why all the lies, then?’ she demanded.

Iris shuffled deeper into her chair. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time, is all I can say.’ A pause. ‘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 be too hard on her,’ he said warningly. ‘You have no idea what she’s been through – ’ He shook his head. ‘No idea.’

‘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. 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. ‘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 grandmother’s fault,’ he said. ‘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. ‘She is untouchable. Unlike whoever tried to ruin her hand by murdering my half-sister 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 reminded him.

‘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 clear 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 collocated 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.’

‘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. 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 for a long moment, then turned to look at her half-brother. ‘Do as she says,’ she said.

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 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 asked. ‘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. 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. 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?’

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?’

‘Give me a chance?’ she asked. ‘Please?’

‘If you insist. 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 all right,’ she said. ‘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, thought Miriam. If not for keeping prisoners, then for supplies, ammunition, food, wine cellars – even 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 dispel the chill. 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. What must he be thinking?

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. A sense of horror stole over Miriam as 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 chunks of meat 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.

‘Listen.’ 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! 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 families 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 murder – 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 they never came.’

‘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 ten 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.’

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 recreated 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. It seems to me that 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.