The Clan Corporate

FORCED

ACCULTURATION

The ferret was waiting outside with two men-at-arms. They handcuffed her wrists behind her back, then marched her back down the narrow staircase and out to a walled courtyard at the rear of the building where a carriage was waiting. The windows were shuttered, screens secured with padlocks. Miriam didn’t resist as they loaded her in and bolted the door. What would be the point? Henryk was right about one thing—she’d screwed up completely, and before she tried to dig her way out of this mess it would be a good idea to think the consequences of her actions through very carefully indeed.

The carriage was small and stuffy and threw her around as it wandered interminably along. The noise of a busy street market reached her, muffled by the shutters. Then there was shouting, the clangor of hammers on metal. Smith Alley, she thought. Every time the carriage swayed across a rut in the cobblestone road surface it lurched from side to side, throwing her against the walls. It stank of leather, and stale sweat, and fear.

After a brief eternity the carriage lurched to a halt, and someone unlocked the door. The light was harsh: blinking, Miriam tried to stretch the kinks out of her back and legs. “This way,” said the ferret.

It was another of those goddamn mansions with closed courtyards and separate servants’ quarters. Miriam panted as she tried to keep up, half-dazzled by the glare of daylight. The ferret’s two minions seized her by the elbows and half-dragged her to a small door. They propelled her up four flights of stairs—passing two servants who stood rigidly still, their faces turned to the wall so that they might not see her disgrace—then paused in front of a door. At least it’s not the cellar, Miriam thought bleakly. She’d already seen what the Clan’s dungeons looked like. The ferret paused and stared at her, then nodded minutely.

“These will be your quarters.” He glanced at the door. “You may consider yourself under house arrest. Your belongings will be moved here, once we have searched them. Your maidservants likewise, and you may continue your activities as before, with reservations. I will pay attendance in the outer chamber. You will not leave your quarters without my approval, and I will accompany you wherever you go. Any messages you wish to send you will give to me for approval. You will not invite anyone to visit you without my approval. If you attempt to disobey these terms, then”—he shrugged—“I stand ready to do my duty.”

Miriam swallowed. “Where are we?” she asked.

“Doppelgangered.” The ferret’s cheek twitched. Abruptly, he turned and pushed the door open. He stepped behind her and unlocked the cuffs. “Go on in.”

Miriam shuffled through the door to her new home, staring at the floor. It was rough-cut stone, with an intricate handwoven carpet laid across it. Behind her, the door scraped shut: there was a rattle of bolts. She looked up, across a waiting room—perhaps a little smaller than her chambers in Thorold Palace had been—at a window casement overlooking the walled courtyard they’d brought her in through.

So I’m under house arrest. “It could have been worse,” she told herself quietly. The place was furnished—expensively, by local standards—although there was no electric lighting in evidence. Doors led off to other rooms. The fireplace was about the size of her living room back in Cambridge, but right now it was unlit. “Where are the servants?” She was beginning to feel hungry: it was the stomach-stuck-to-ribs haven’t-eaten-for-days kind of hunger that sometimes came on after extreme stress. She walked over to the nearest door, opened it. A housemaid jumped to her feet from a stool just inside the doorway and ducked a deep curtsey.

“Do you know who I am?” Miriam asked.

The woman looked confused. “Myn’demme?”

Of course. “I am Countess Helge,” Miriam began in her halting hochsprache. “Where—what—is food here?” The woman looked even more confused. “I am—to eat—” she tried again, a sinking feeling in her heart. It was, she realized, going to be very hard to get anything done.

It took Miriam only an evening to appreciate how far her universe had shrunk. She had four rooms: a bedroom dominated by a huge curtained bed, the reception room, a waiting room that doubled as a dining area, and the outer vestibule. The ferret lived in the vestibule, so she avoided it. What lay beyond its external door, which was formidably barred, she had no idea. The only window with a view, in the reception room, overlooked the courtyard but was not high enough to see over the crenellated walls. This wasn’t a show house in the style of Thorold Palace, but a converted castle from an older, grimmer age. A window with a scenic view would have been an invitation to a crossbow bolt. The sanitary facilities were, predictably, primitive.

Three maidservants came when she tugged the bellpulls in the bedroom or the reception room. None of them spoke English, and they all seemed terrified of her. Or perhaps they were afraid of being seen talking to her by the ferret. She was forced to communicate in her halting hochsprache, but they weren’t much use when it came to getting language practice.

On the evening of her first day, after she’d picked over a supper of cold cuts and boiled Jerusalem artichokes, the ferret came and ordered her into the vestibule. “Wait here,” he said, and went back into the reception room, locking the door. Miriam worked her way into an anxious frenzy while he was gone, terrified that Baron Henryk had revisited his decision to leave her alive; a distant thumping on the other side of the door suggested structural changes in progress. When the ferret opened the door again and returned to his seat by the barred door, Miriam looked at him in disbelief. “Go on,” he said impatiently; “I told you your possessions would be moved in, didn’t I?”

There was a huge wardrobe in her bedroom now, and a dresser. Relieved, Miriam hurried to look through them—but there was nothing in the drawers or on the chest but the garments Mistress Tanzig had laboriously assembled for her. No laptop, no books, no Advil, no CD Walkman, nothing remotely reminiscent of American life. “Damn,” Miriam complained. She sat on the embroidered backless bench that served for a chair. “Now what?” Obviously Henryk’s security people considered anything that hinted of her original home to be suspect, and after a moment she couldn’t fault them. The laptop—if she’d had a digital camera she might have loaded a picture of the Clan sigil into it, then made her escape. Or she might have slid a Polaroid between the pages of a book. They’d made a clean sweep of her possessions, taking everything except that which a noblewoman of the Gruinmarkt might have owned—even her battered reporter’s notebook and automatic pencil were gone. Which left her with a wardrobe full of native costumes and a jewel box with enough ropes of pearls to hang herself with, but nothing that might facilitate her flight. Henryk really does expect me to revert to being Helge, she thought. She looked around in mild desperation. There was a strange book on the dresser. She reached for it, opened the leather cover: Notes towards a Hochsprache-Anglaische Grammarion it said, printed in an old-fashioned type. “Shit.” Succumbing to the inevitable, Miriam started reading her homework.

The next morning she wore a local outfit. Better get used to it, she thought resignedly. No more jeans and tees for slobbing about in. She was sitting on the bench by the window casement, staring out at the courtyard to relieve her eyes from studying the grammarion, when the door to the vestibule opened without warning. It was the ferret, with two unfamiliar maidservants standing behind him, and another man: avuncular-looking, with receding hair and spectacles and a beer gut. He was holding a large leather briefcase. “Milady voh Thorold d’Hjorth?” he said in a slightly creepy way that made Miriam take an instant dislike to him.

“Yes?” She frowned at the ferret.

“If you will permit me to introduce myself? I am Dr. Robard ven Hjalmar. Your great-uncle the baron asked me to pay a house call.”

“What kind of doctor are you?”

“The medical kind.” He managed a smile that was halfway between a simper and a smirk.

“A medical—” Miriam paused. “I don’t need a doctor,” she said automatically. “I’m fine.” Which wasn’t strictly true—her ribs ached from the punch, and she was feeling unnaturally torpid and depressed—but something about ven Hjalmar made her mistrust him instinctively.

“You don’t need a doctor now,” he said fussily, and planted his case on the floor. “However, I have been asked to take you on as one of my patients.”

The ferret cleared his throat. “Dr. ven Hjalmar ministers to the royal family.”

“Oh, I see.” Miriam put the book down, carefully positioning the bookmark. “What does that entail?” Why me?

“I am required to testify to your health and fitness.” Ven Hjalmar’s gaze slid around the room nervously, avoiding her. “You are, I am sure you are aware, of a certain age—not too old for a first confinement, but certainly in need of care and attention. And I understand you may have other medical needs. If you would be so good as to retire to your bedchamber, your maids will relieve you of your outerwear so that I may prepare my report. You need not be afraid, you will be chaperoned and your guardian will be right outside the door.”

Miriam glared at the ferret. “Do I get an opportunity to say no?”

The ferret was stony-faced. “Remember your instructions.” The two unfamiliar maids stepped forward and took Miriam by the arms. She tensed, on the edge of panic: but the ferret was watching her.

What happened next was one of the most unintrusive but oddly unpleasant medical examinations Miriam had ever undergone. The servants led her into the bedroom; then, with the door closed, one of them (a beefy blond woman with rosy cheeks and the look of an amateur boxer to her) held Miriam’s wrists together while the other unlaced her bodice. Neither of them spoke. “Let me—go,” Miriam tried, but boxer-woman just stared at her dumbly.

“Stand still, please.” It was ven Hjalmar. Boxer-woman refused to let go, holding her pinioned. “Open your mouth. Ah—hah. Very good.” He stepped around her and she felt a stethoscope through her chemise. “Breathe in—and out. Ah, good.” He worked fast, giving her a basic examination. Then: “I gather you were given a pap smear on the other side. I’ll have the results of that back in a day or so. Meanwhile, I’d like to ask you some questions about your medical history.”

Pap smear? Miriam blinked. “Make them let me go,” she said stubbornly, flexing her wrists.

“Not yet.” Ven Hjalmar looked down his nose at her, standing there in her underwear with her wrists immobilized by boxer-woman. “When, exactly, did you lose your maidenhood?”

“None of your business.” She tried not to snarl. If you do not obey your orders I will hurt you, the ferret had said: she didn’t dare forget.

“I assure you, it is very much my business.” Ven Hjalmar shrugged. “And it will be the worse for you if you don’t answer.”

“Why do you want to know?” she demanded. Boxer-woman tugged on her left wrist, hard enough to make her wince. “What is this?”

“I am attempting to compile a report for the Crown,” Ven Hjalmar said primly. “You are thirty-three years old, I understand? You are in good health and disease-free, and I am informed already that you are not a virgin, but this is old for a first pregnancy, such as you will be attempting within the next year. I need to know everything about your reproductive history. If you will not tell me, I will have to examine you intimately, and then guess as to the rest. Which would you prefer?”

“It won’t be a first pregnancy,” Miriam admitted through gritted teeth. Damn, why couldn’t I have gotten my tubes tied? She knew why: she’d never gotten around to it. She even knew why she’d never gotten around to it—the sneaking suspicion that one day there might be a right time and a right man to start a family with. The huge irony being that as a direct result she was now being lined up to start a family with absolutely the wrong man at the wrong time. “I was twenty-one.” She tried to pull away again. “Make her let go of me.”

“Keep talking,” said ven Hjalmar.

Miriam tensed, but boxer-woman was developing an evil Nurse Ratched glare. “One child. Girl, the father was my ex-husband, I was still studying—a contraceptive accident. I didn’t want an abortion but we couldn’t afford to bring her up so Mom suggested we adopt out—”

Scribble scribble. Ven Hjalmar’s pen was busy. Miriam kept talking, her mind blank; she managed one barefaced lie (that she didn’t know anything about the adopters), but that was it. Abject surrender. She felt dirty. What business was it of this quack to pick over her sexual history? He wanted to know everything: had she suffered from morning sickness, what medicines had they prescribed, had she ever had bladder problems—only when your hired thugs punch me in the gut—and more. He went on for hours. Miriam made another stab at resistance when he started asking for names of every man she’d slept with, but at that point he dropped the matter and switched to asking about her hearing. But the interrogation left her feeling unaccountably dirty, like shop-soiled linen on display for all to see.

Finally, ven Hjalmar muttered something to Nurse Ratched, who let go of Miriam. Miriam took a step back, then sat down on the padded bench. “Yes?” she asked wearily.

“You have something of an attitude problem, young lady.”

“No shit.” Miriam drew her knees up beneath her shift and crossed her arms defensively around them. “You’re the one giving me the third degree in front of an audience.”

“They won’t say anything.” Ven Hjalmar smiled and said something to the other servant woman. She made a gabbling noise, incoherent and liquid, and turned to face Miriam. “As you can see.”

Miriam looked away the moment she saw the tongueless ruin inside the woman’s mouth. Oh shit, I’m going to have bad dreams tonight. “I see,” she said weakly, trying to recover what was left of her shredded dignity. “What did she do to deserve that?”

“She discussed her mistress’s intimate details.” Ven Hjalmar shook his head lugubriously. “The royal family takes medical confidentiality very seriously.”

Unaccountably, Miriam felt slightly less disheartened. So even you’re afraid, huh? We’ll see what we can do with that. “So what happens next?”

“I think we can skip the virginity test. It isn’t as if you are being considered for the crown prince, after all.” Ven Hjalmar stood up. “I believe you are a perfectly fit young woman, of sound body, perhaps a little disturbed by your circumstances but that will pass. If you would like something to help your mood, I am sure we can do something about that—have you considered Prozac? Guaranteed to cure all black humors, so I’m assured by the manufacturer. I shall take my leave now, and your own maidservants will help return you to your usual peak of feminine beauty.” He produced the odd, simpering smile once again. “Incidentally,” he added sotto voce, “I understand and commiserate with the difficult circumstances of your marriage. If it’s any consolation, you may not have to lie with the, ah, afflicted one if you do not wish to. A sample can be obtained and a douche prepared, if you prefer.”

“What if I don’t want to become pregnant?”

Ven Hjalmar paused with his hand on the door handle. “I really don’t think you ought to trouble yourself with such unrealistic fantasies,” he said.

“But, what if?” Miriam called to him. Her fingernails bit into her palms hard enough to draw blood.

“Prozac,” said ven Hjalmar, as he opened the door.

Three days after Dr. ven Hjalmar’s humiliating interrogation, Miriam was beginning to wish she’d taken him up on the offer of antidepressants when the ferret knocked on the door.

“What is it?” she asked, looking up from her book.

“You have an invitation,” he said in hochsprache. He’d taken to using it almost all the time, except when she was obviously floundering. As ever, her jailer’s expression was unreadable. “The baron says you may accept it if you wish.” He repeated himself in English, just in case she hadn’t got the message.

“An invitation.” Where to? Her imagination whirled like a hamster on a wheel: Not the royal court, obviously, or it would be compulsory . . .

“From the honorable Duchess Patricia voh Hjorth d’Wu ab Thorold. Your mother. She begs your forgiveness for not writing and invites the honorable Countess Helge voh Thorold d’Hjorth to visit with her for lunch tomorrow.”

“Tell her I’d, I’d—” Miriam licked her lips. “Of course I’ll go.”

“I shall tell her.” The ferret began to withdraw. “I shall make arrangements. You will be ready to travel by eleven and you will be back here no later than five of the afternoon.”

“Wait!” Miriam stood up. “Can I see Olga Thorold Arnesen?”

“No.” He began to close the door.

“Or Lady Brilliana d’Ost?”

The ferret stopped and stared at her. “If you continue to pester me I will hurt you.” Then he shut the door.

Miriam paced back and forth across the reception room in a blind panic, stir-crazy from confinement but apprehensive about whatever Iris would say to her. Of course Henryk will have told her, she thought. But blood was thicker than water, and surely Iris wouldn’t side with him against her—or would she? She’s been so distant and cold since she rejoined the Clan. The change in her mood had been like a safety curtain dropping across the stage at the end of a play, locking in the warmth and the light. Mom’s got her own problems. She said so. Like her own mother, the poisonous dowager Hildegarde. The old women’s plot. She crossed her arms. Henryk must have told her, or she wouldn’t have known where to send the invitation, she thought. If I can persuade her to give me a locket I could make a clean break for it—

But a cold, cynical thought still nagged at her. What if Mom wants me to marry Prince Stupid? She wouldn’t do that . . . would she?

The ruthless reproductive realpolitik within the Clan had made an early victim of Patricia voh Hjorth: her own mother had forced her into marriage to a violent sociopath. The scars had taken a long time to scab over, even after Patricia had made her run to the other world and settled down to life as Iris Beckstein for nearly a third of a century. Iris wouldn’t have dreamed of forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage of convenience. But now she was back in the suffocating bosom of the Clan, which way would Patricia jump—especially if her own skin was at stake?

Back home in Cambridge, Miriam’s mother had never made a big thing about wanting grandchildren. But that was then.

They took Miriam to visit her mother for lunch in a sealed sedan chair carried by two strapping porters. It was a hot day, but there were no windows, just a wooden grille behind her head. It was impossible to see out of. She protested when she saw it, but the ferret just stared at her. “Do you want to attend the duchess, or not?” he asked. Miriam gave in, willing to accept one more indignity if it gave her a chance to talk to Iris. Maybe she’ll be able to get me out of this, she told herself grimly.

The box swayed like a ship on choppy water. It seemed to take forever to make its way across town. By the time the porters planted it with a bone-jarring thump, Miriam had gone from being off her appetite to the first green-cheeked anticipation of full-blown nausea: she welcomed the rattle of chains and the opening of the door like a galley slave released from belowdecks, blinking and gasping. “Are we there?”

“Momentarily.” The ferret was as imperturbable as ever. “This way.” Another closed courtyard with barred windows. Miriam’s spirit fell. They’re just shuffling me between prisons, she realized. I’m surprised he didn’t handcuff me to the chair.

Now the nerves took over. “Where is—she isn’t under arrest too, is she?”

Unexpectedly, the ferret chuckled. “No, not exactly.”

“Oh.” Miriam followed him, two paces ahead of the guards he’d brought along. She glanced at the walls to either side, half-wishing she could make a break for freedom. A couple of gulls squawked raucous abuse from the roofline. She envied them their insolent disdain for terrestrial boundaries.

They came to a solid door in one wall, where a liveried servant exchanged words with the ferret, then produced a key. The door opened on a walled garden. There was a gazebo against the far wall, glass windows—expensively imported, a hallmark of a Clan property—propped open to allow the breeze in. “Go right in,” said the ferret. “I believe you are expected. I will collect you later.”

“What? Aren’t you coming in with me? I thought you were supposed to be watching me at all times?”

The ferret snorted. “Not here.” Then he stepped back through the gate and closed it with a solid click.

Wow. Miriam narrowed her eyes as she looked at the gazebo. Mom’s got clout, then? She marched up to the door. “Hello?” she asked.

“Come right in, dear.”

Her mother watched her from a nest of cushions piled on top of a broad-winged armchair. She looked more frail than ever, wearing a black velvet gown with more ruffles and bows than a lace factory. “Has someone died?” Miriam asked, stepping into the shadow of the gazebo.

“Sit down, make yourself comfortable. No one’s died yet, but I’m told it was a close-run thing.”

Miriam sat in the only other chair, next to the circular cast-iron table. Iris watched her: she returned her mother’s gaze nervously. After a while she cleared her throat. “How much has Henryk told you?”

“Enough.”

Another silence.

“I know I shouldn’t have done it,” Miriam said, when she couldn’t take it anymore. “But I was being deliberately cut out of my own affairs. And they’ve been trying to set me up—”

“It’s too late for excuses, kid.” Miriam stared. Her mother didn’t look angry. She didn’t look sad, but she didn’t look pleased to see her, either. The silence stretched out until finally Iris sighed and shuffled against her cushions, sitting up. “I wanted to look at you.”

“What?”

“I wanted to look at you again,” said Iris. “One last time. You know they’re going to try to break you?”

“I don’t break easily.” Miriam knew it was false bravado even as the words left her mouth. The great hollow fear congealing inside her gave the lie away. But what else could she say?

Her mother glanced away evasively. “We don’t bend.” She shook her head. “None of us does—not me, not you, not even your grandmother. But sooner or later we break. Thirty-three years is what it took, kid, but look at me now. One of the old bitches already.”

“What do you mean?” Miriam tensed.

“I mean I’m about to sell you down the river.” Iris looked at her sharply. “At least, that’s how it’s going to seem at first. I’m not going to lie to you: I don’t see any alternatives. We’re stuck playing the long game, kid, and I’m still learning the rules.”

“Suppose you explain what you just said.” There was an acid taste in her mouth. Miriam forced herself to unclench her fingers from the arms of her chair. “About selling me down the river.”

Iris coughed, wheezing. Miriam waited her out. Presently her mother regained control. “I don’t like this any more than you do. It’s just the way things work around here. I don’t have any alternatives, I’m locked up here and you managed to get caught breaking the unwritten rules.” She sighed. “I thought you had more sense than to do that—to get caught, I mean. Anyway, we’re both out of alternatives. If I don’t play the game, neither of us is going to live very long.”

“I don’t need this!” Miriam finally let go of her tightly controlled frustration. “I have been locked up and policed and poked and pried at and subjected to humiliating medical examinations, and it’s all just some game you’re playing for status points? What did you do, promise the Queen Mother you’d marry me off to her grandson if she beat you at poker?”

Iris reached out and grabbed her wrist. Startled, Miriam froze. Her mother’s hand felt hot, bony, as weak as a sparrow: “No, never that! But if you knew what it was like to grow up here, fifty years ago . . .”

Miriam surprised herself: “Suppose you tell me?” Go on, justify yourself, she willed. There were butterflies in her stomach. Whatever was coming, it was bound to be bad.

Her mother nodded thoughtfully. Then her lips quirked in the first sign of a smile Miriam had seen since she’d arrived.

“You know how the Clan braids its families, one arranged marriage after another to keep the bloodline strong.” Miriam nodded. “And you know what this means: the meddling old grannies.”

“But Mom, Henryk and Angbard—”

“Hush. I know about the breeding program.” Miriam’s jaw dropped. “Angbard told me about it. He’s not stupid enough to think he can push it through without . . . without allies. In another ten years the first of the babies will be coming up for adoption. He needs to convince the meddling old grannies to accept them, or we’ll be finished as a trading network within another couple of generations. So he asked me for advice. I’m his consultant, I guess. I don’t think most of the families realize just how close to the edge we are, how badly the civil war damaged us. Small gene pool, insufficient numbers—it’s not good. I’ve seen the numbers. If we don’t do something about it, the Clan could be extinct within two centuries.” Her voice hardened. “But then you barged right in, doing what you do—snooping. Yes, I know it’s what you did for a living for all those years, but you’ve got to understand, you can’t do that right now. Not here, it’s much too dangerous. People here who really want to keep secrets tend to react violently to intrusion. And there’s a flip side to the coin. I know you and the-bitch-my-mother don’t get on well”—a twinkle in her eye as she said this: Miriam bit her tongue—“but Hildegarde is just doing what she’s always done, playing the long game, defending her status. Which is tenuous here because we are, let’s face it, women. Here in the Gruinmarkt—hell, everywhere in the whole wide world—power comes from a big swinging dick. We, you and me, we’re the badly adjusted misfits here: you’ve got the illusion that you’re anybody’s social equal and I, I’ve been outside . . .”

She fell silent. Miriam shook her head. “This isn’t like you, Mom.”

“This place isn’t like me, kid. No, listen: what happens to the Clan if Angbard, or his successor, starts introducing farmed baby world-walkers in, oh, ten years time? Without tying them in to the existing great families, without getting the old bitches to take them in and adopt them as their own? And what happens a generation down the line when they become adults?”

Miriam frowned. “Um. We have lots more world-walkers?”

“Nuts. You’re not thinking like a politician: it shifts the balance of power, kid, that’s what happens. And it shifts it away from the braids, away from the meddling old grannies—away from us. It’s ugly out there, Miriam, I don’t think you’ve seen enough of the Gruinmarkt to realize just how nasty this world is if you’re a woman. We’re insulated by wealth and privilege, we have a role in the society of the Clan. But if you take that all away we are, well . . . it’s not as bad as Afghanistan under those Taliban maniacs, but it’s not far off. This is what I’m getting at when I talk about the long game. It’s the game the old women of the Clan have been playing for a century and a half now, and the name of the game is preserving the status of their granddaughters. Do you want a measure of control over your own life? Because if so, you’ve got to match the old bitches at their own game. And that’s”—Iris’s voice wavered—“difficult. I’ve been trying to help you, but then you kicked the foundations out from underneath my position . . .”

“I—” Miriam paused. “What is your position? Is it the medicines?”

“I take it you’ve met Dr. ven Hjalmar?”

“Yes.” Miriam tensed.

“Who do you think he works for? And who do you think I get my meds from? Copaxone and prednisone, by the grace of Hildegarde. If there’s an accident in the supply chain, a courier gets caught out and I go short—well, that’s all she wrote.” Iris made a sharp cutting gesture.

“Mom!” Miriam stared, aghast.

“Blackmail is just business as usual,” Iris said with heavy irony. “I’ve been trying to tell you it’s not pretty, but would you get the message?”

“But—” Miriam was half out of her chair with anger. “Can’t you get Angbard to help you out? Surely they can’t stop you crossing over and visiting a doctor—”

“Shush, Miriam. Sit down, you’re making me itch.” Miriam forced herself to untense: she sat down again on the edge of her chair, leaning forward. “If I bring Angbard into this, I lose. Because then I owe him, and I’ve dragged him into the game, do you see? Look, the rules are really very simple. You grow up hating and fearing your grandmother. Then she marries you off to some near-stranger. A generation later, you have your own grandchildren and you realize you’ve got to hurt them just the way your own great-aunts and grandmother hurt you, or you’ll be doing them an even worse disservice; if you don’t, then instead of a legacy of some degree of power all they’ll inherit is the status of elderly has-been chattel. That is what the braid system means, Miriam. You’re—you’re old enough and mature enough to understand this. I wasn’t, I was about sixteen when my great-aunt—my grandmother was dead by then—leaned on the-bitch-my-mother and twisted her arm and made her give me reason to hate her.”

“Um. It sounds like—” Miriam winced and rubbed her forehead. “There’s something about this in game theory, isn’t there?”

“Yes.” Iris looked distant. “I told Morris about it, years ago. He called it an iterated cross-generational prisoner’s dilemma. That haunted me, you know. Your father was a very smart man. And kind.”

Miriam nodded; she missed him. Not that he was her real father. Her real father had been killed in an ambush by assassins shortly after Miriam’s birth, the incident that had prompted Iris to run away and go to ground in Boston, where she’d met and lived with Morris and brought Miriam up in ignorance of her background. But Morris had died years ago, and now . . .

“When I gave you the locket I didn’t expect you to jump straight in and get caught up in the Clan so rapidly. I was going to warn you off. But once you got picked up, there wasn’t much else I could do. So I called up Angbard and came back in. I figure I’m not good for many more years, even with the drugs, but while I’m around I can watch your back. Do you see?”

“That was a mistake, it would seem.”

“Oh yes.” Iris was silent for almost a minute. “Because there are no grandchildren, and in the terms of the game that means I’m not a full player. I thought for a while your business plans on the other side would serve instead, but there’s the glass ceiling again: you’re a woman. You’ve set yourself up to do something that just isn’t in the rules, so lots of people want to take you down. They want to make you play the game, to conform to expectations, because that reinforces their own role. If you don’t conform, you threaten them, so they’ll use that as an excuse to destroy you. And now they’ve got me as a hostage to use against you.”

“Oh. Oh shit.”

“You can say that again.” Iris reached out and tugged a bellpull. There was a distant chime. “Do you want some lunch? I wouldn’t blame you if all this has put you off your appetite . . .”

Miriam succumbed to depression on the way back to her prison. The sedan chair felt like a microcosm for her life right now, boxed in and darkly claustrophobic, the walls pressing tighter on every side, forcing her into a coerced and unwilling conformity. When she was very young she’d sometimes fantasized about having a long-lost family, played the I’m really a princess but I was swapped at birth for a commoner make-believe game. Somehow it had never involved being locked inside a swaying leather-lined box that smelled of old sweat and potpourri, her freedom restricted and her independence denied. The idea that once people decided you were going to be a princess, or a countess, your life stopped being your own, your body stopped being private, had never occurred to her back when she was a kid. I need to talk to someone, Miriam realized. Someone other than Iris, who right now was in as much of a mess as she was. Otherwise I am going to go crazy.

It had not escaped her attention that there were no sharp-edged implements in any of the rooms she had access to.

When they let her out in the walled courtyard, Miriam looked up at the sky above the gatehouse. The air was close and humid, and the clouds had a distinct yellowish tinge: the threat of thunder hung like a blanket across the city. “You’d better go in,” said the ferret, in a rare sign of solicitude. Or maybe he just wanted to get her under cover and call a guard so that he could catch some rest.

“Right.” Miriam climbed the staircase back to her rooms tiredly, drained of both energy and optimism.

“Milady!” Miriam looked up as the doors closed behind her with a thud. “Oh! You look sad! Are you unwell? What’s wrong?”

It was Kara, her young, naive lady-in-waiting. Miriam managed a tired smile. “It’s a long story,” she said. Gradually she realized there was something odd about Kara. “Hey, what happened to your hair?” Kara had worn it long, down her back: now it was bundled up in an intricate coil atop her head. And she was wearing traditional dress. Kara loved to try imported American fashions.

“Do you like it? It’s for a wedding.”

“Oh? Whose?”

“Mine. I’m to be married tomorrow.” Kara began to cry—not happily, but the quiet sobbing of desperation.

“What!” The next thing Miriam knew, she was hugging Kara while the younger woman shuddered, sniffling, her face pressed against Miriam’s shoulder. “Come on, relax, you can let it all out. Tell me about it.” She gently steered Kara toward the bench seat under the window. Glancing around, she realized that the servants had made themselves scarce. “You’re going to have to tell me how you convinced them to let you in here. Hell, you’re going to have to tell me how you found me. But not right now. Calm down. What’s this about a wedding?”

That set Kara off again. Miriam gritted her teeth. Why me? Why now? The first was easy: Miriam had unwittingly designated herself as adult role model when she first met Kara. The second question, though—

“My father—after you disappeared last week—he summoned me urgently. I know the match was not his idea, for last we spoke he said I should perhaps wait another summer, but now he said his mind was made up and that a week hence I should be married into a braid alliance. He seemed quite pleased until I protested, but he said you had written that you no longer wanted me and that I should best find a new home for myself! I, I could not believe that! Tell me, milady, it isn’t true, is it?”

“It’s not true,” Miriam confirmed, stroking her hair. “Be still. I didn’t write to your father.” I’ll bet someone else did, though. “Isn’t this a bit sudden? I mean, don’t these things take time to arrange? Who’s the lucky man, anyway?” You haven’t been sneaking a boyfriend, have you? she wanted to ask, but that seemed a little blunt given Kara’s delicate state of mind.

“It’s sudden.” Kara sniffled against her shoulder for a while. “I’ve never met the man,” she wailed quietly.

“What, never?”

“Ouch! No, never!” Miriam forced herself to relax her grip as Kara continued. “He’s called Raph ven Wu, second son of Paulus ven Wu, and he’s ten years older than me and I’ve never met him and what if I hate him? It’s all about money. Granma says not to worry and it will all work out—”

“Your grandmother talked to you?”

“Yes, Granma Elise is really kind and she says he’s a well-mannered knight who she has known since he was a babe and who is honorable and will see to my welfare—but he’s terribly old! He’s almost thirty. And I’m afraid, I’m afraid—” Her lower lip was quivering again. “Granma says it will be all right but I just don’t know. And the wedding’s to be tomorrow, in the Halle Temple of Our Lady of the Dead, and I want you to come. Will you be there?” She held on to Miriam like a drowning woman clutching at a life raft.

“You didn’t say how you found me,” Miriam prodded gently.

“Oh, I petitioned Baron Henryk! He said you were staying here and I could see you if I wanted. He even said I should invite you to witness at my wedding. Will you come? Please?”

Oh, so that’s what it’s about. To Miriam the message couldn’t have been clearer. And she had no doubt at all that it was a message, and that she was the intended recipient. She looked out of the window, turning her head so that Kara wouldn’t see her expression. “I’ll come if they let me,” she said, surprising herself with the mildness of her tone.

“Of course they’ll let you!” Kara said fiercely. “Why wouldn’t they? Are you in trouble, milady?”

“You could say that.” Miriam thought about it for a moment. “But probably no worse than yours.”

Afterward, Erasmus Burgeson always wondered why he hadn’t seen it coming.

It was a humid evening, and he’d sat on the open top deck of the streetcar as it rattled toward the hotel downtown where he was to meet his contact. He breathed deeply, relishing the faint smoky tang of the air now that his sore old lungs had stopped troubling him: I wonder where Miriam is? he idly thought, opening and refolding his morning news sheet. She’d changed his life with that last visit and those jars of wonder pills. Probably off somewhere engaging in strange new ventures in exotic worlds far more advanced than this one, he told himself. Democracies, places ruled by the will of the people rather than the whim of a nearsighted tyrant. He sighed and focused on the foreign affairs pages.

Nader Demands Rights to Peshawar Province. The Persian situation was clearly deteriorating, with the Shah’s greedy eyes fastened on the southern provinces of French Indoostan. Of course, the idiot in New London wouldn’t be able to let something like that slip past him: Government Offers to Intercede with Court of St. Peter. As if the French would listen to British representations on behalf of a megalomaniac widely seen as one of John Frederick’s cat’s-paws . . . Prussian Ambassador Wins Duel. Well, yes—diplomatic immunity meant never having to back out of a fight if you could portray it as an affair of honor. Burgeson sniffed. Bloody-handed aristocrats. The streetcar bell dinged as it rattled across a set of points and turned a wide corner.

Erasmus folded the paper neatly and stood up. Nothing to do with the price of bread, he thought cynically as he descended the tight circular staircase at the rear of the car. The price of bread was up almost four-twelfths over its price at this time last year, and there had been food riots in Texico when the corn flour handed out by the poor boards had proven to be moldy. Fourteen dead, nearly sixty injured when the cavalry went in after the magistrates read the riot act. The streetcar stopped and Erasmus followed a couple of hopeful hedonists out onto the crowded pavement outside. The place was normally busy, but tonight it was positively fizzing. There was something unusual in the air. He took another deep breath. Not having his chest rattle painfully was like being young again: he felt lively and full of energy. And the night was also young.

The Cardiff Hotel—named for Lord Cardiff of Virginia, not the French provincial capital of Wales—was brightly lit with electricals, broad float-glass doors open to the world. A green-and-white-striped canopy overhung the pavement, and a pianist was busy banging both keyboards on his upright instrument for all he was worth, the brass-capped hammers setting up a pounding military beat. Burgeson stepped inside and made his way to the back of the bar, searching for the right booth. A hand waved, just visible above the crowd: he nodded and joined his fellow conspirator.

“Nice evening,” Farnsworth said nervously.

“Indeed.” Erasmus eyed the other man’s mug: clearly he was in need of the Dutch courage. “Can I get you something?”

“I’m sure—ah.” A table-runner appeared. “Have you any of the hemp porter?” Farnsworth enquired. “And a drop of laudanum.”

“I’ll have the house ale,” said Erasmus, trying not to raise an eyebrow. Surely it’s a bit early for laudanum? Unless Farnsworth really was upset about something.

When the table-runner had left, Farnsworth raised his tankard and drained it. “That’s better. I’m sorry, Rudolf.”

Burgeson leaned forward, tensely. “What for?”

“The news—” Farnsworth waved his hand helplessly. “I have no images, you understand.”

Burgeson tried to calm his racing heart. He felt light-headed, slightly breathless: “Is that all? There’s no reason to apologize for that, my friend.”

Farnsworth shook his head. “Bad news,” he croaked.

The table-runner returned with their drinks. Farnsworth buried his snout in his mug. Erasmus, trying to rein in his impatience, scanned the throng. It was loud, too loud for even their neighbors in the next booth to overhear them, and there were no obvious signs of informers. “What is it, then?”

“Prince James is—it’s not good.”

“Ah.” Erasmus relaxed a little. Not that he was pleased by news of the crown prince’s suffering—no matter that the eight-year-old was due to grow up to be tyrant of New Britain, he was still just a bairn and could not be held responsible for his parents’ misdeeds—but if it was just more trivial court gossip it meant the sky hadn’t fallen in yet. “So how is he?”

“The announcement will be made in about two hours’ time. I have to be back at the palace by midnight to plan his majesty’s wardrobe for the funeral.”

“The—” Erasmus stopped. “What?”

“Oh yes.” Farnsworth nodded lugubriously. “It will mean war, you mark my words.”

War? Erasmus blinked rapidly. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you know?” Farnsworth seemed startled.

“I’ve been on a train all afternoon,” said Erasmus. “Has something happened?” Something more than a sick little boy dying?

“They caught one of the assassins,” Farnsworth said tensely. “An Ottoman subject.” He peered blearily at Burgeson’s uncomprehending face. “Prince James was murdered just after lunchtime today; shot in the chest from a building overlooking the Franciscan palace. It was a conspiracy! Bomb-throwing foreigners on our soil, spreading terror and fomenting fear. Naval intelligence says it’s a message for his majesty. The crisis in the Persian Gulf. Sir Roderick is recommending a bill of attainder to his majesty that will seize all Ottoman assets held by institutions here until they back down.”

Burgeson stared at him. “You. Have got to be kidding.”

Farnsworth shook his head. “All hell’s broken loose, the seventh seal has sounded, and I very much fear that we are about to be bathed in the blood of ten million lambs—conscripted into a war started as a distraction from the empty larders of the provinces, a matter which has most exercised the prime minister these past weeks.” He grabbed Burgeson’s hand. “You’ve got to do something! Make your friends listen! It’s the outside threat to distract and befuddle us, the oldest trick in the library. A brief successful war to wrap themselves in the glory of the flag and justify calls for austerity and belt-tightening, and to distract attention from the empty coffers and supply a pretext to issue war bonds. Only this time, we know the Frogs have got corpses. And so have we. So it’s going to be an unusually violent war. And of course they’ll clamp down on dissenters and Ranters. They’ll implement French rule here, if you give them the chance.” French rule—summary justice, the martial law of the Duc du Muscovy. The Stolypin necktie as an answer to all arguments, as that strange otherworld history book Miriam had given him had put it. Erasmus felt cold sweat spring out at the back of his neck.

“I’ll tell them immediately,” he said, rising.

“Your drink—”

“You finish it. You look as if you need it more than I do. I’ve got a job to do.”

“Good luck.”

Erasmus dived into the throng of agitated, wildly speculating men filling the bar and worked his way outside. A street hawker was selling the last of the evening edition: he snagged a copy and stared at the headlines. ARAB TERROR screamed the masthead in dripping red letters above an engravature of the boy prince lying on the ground, his eyes open. “Shit.” Erasmus looked around, searching for a cab. I’ll have to notify Lady Bishop, he thought, and Iron John. Find out what the Central Committees want to do about the situation. Another thought struck him. I must talk to Miriam; she knows of other worlds more advanced than this. They’re ruled by republics, they must have corpuscular weapons—I wonder what she knows about them? A cab pulled up and he climbed in. Perhaps we could achieve a better negotiating position if the movement had some . . .