The Family Trade

Hotel Mafiosi

They came for her in the early hours, long after Paulette had called a taxi and Miriam had slunk into bed with a stomach full of lemon chicken and a head full of schemes. They came with stealth, black vans, and Mac-10s: They didn’t know or care about her plans. They were soldiers. They had their orders; this was the house the damp brown chair was collocated with, and so this was the target. That was all they needed.

Miriam slept through the breaking of the french window in her den because the two men on entry detail crowbarred the screens open, then rolled transparent sticky polyurethane film across the glass before they struck it with rubber mallets, then peeled the starred sheets right out of the frame. The phone line had been cut minutes before; there was a cell-phone jammer in the back garden.

The two break-and-enter men took point, rolling into the den and taking up positions at either side of the room. The light shed by the LEDs on her stereo and computer glinted dimly off their night-vision goggles and the optics of their guns as they waited tensely, listening for any sign of activity.

Hand signals relayed the news from outside, that Control hadn’t seen any signs of motion through the bedroom curtains. His short-wavelength radar imager let him see what the snatch crew’s night-vision gear missed: It could pinpoint the telltale pulse of warm blood right through a dry wall siding. Two more soldiers in goggles, helmets, and flak jackets darted through the opening and into the hall, cautiously extending small mirrors on telescoping arms past open doorways to see if anyone was inside. Within thirty seconds they had the entire ground floor swept clean. Now they moved the thermal imager inside: Control swept each ceiling carefully before pausing in the living room and circling his index finger under the light fitting for the others to see. One body, sleeping, right overhead.

Four figures in black body armour ghosted up the staircase, two with guns, and two behind them with specialist equipment. The master bedroom opened off the small landing at the top of the stairs—the plan was to charge straight through and neutralize the occupant directly.

However, they hadn’t counted on Miriam’s domestic untidiness. Living alone and working a sixty-hour week, she had precious little time for homemaking: All her neat-freakery got left behind at work each evening. The landing was crowded, an overflowing basket of dirty clothing waiting for a trip down to the basement beside a couple of bookcases that narrowed the upstairs hall so that they had to go in single-file. But there were worse obstacles to come. Miriam’s house was full of books. Right now, a dog-eared copy of The Cluetrain Manifesto lay facedown at one side of the step immediately below the landing. It was precisely as cold as the carpet it lay on, so to the night-vision goggles it was almost invisible. The first three intruders stepped over it without noticing, but the fourth placed his right boot on it, and the effect was as dramatic as if it had been a banana skin.

Miriam jolted awake in terror, hearing a horrible clattering noise on the landing. Her mind was a blank, the word intruder running through it in neon letters the size of headlines—she sat bolt upright and fumbled on the dressing table for the pistol, which she’d placed there when she found she could feel it through the pillow. The noise of the bedroom door shoving open was infinitely frightening and as she brought the gun around, trying to get it untangled from the pillowcase—Brilliant light lanced through her eyelids, a flashlight: “Drop it, lady!”

Miriam fumbled her finger into the trigger guard—

“Drop it!” The light came closer, right in her face. “Now!”

Something like a freight locomotive came out of the darkness and slammed into the side of her right arm.

Someone said, “Shee-it” with heartfelt feeling, and a huge weight landed on her belly. Miriam gathered breath to scream, but she couldn’t feel her right arm and something was pressing on her face. She was choking: The air was acrid and sweet-smelling and thick, a cloying flowery laboratory stink. She kicked out hard, legs tangled in the comforter, gasping and screaming deep in her throat, but they were muffling her with the stench and everything was fuzzy at the edges.

She couldn’t move. “Not funny,” someone a long way away at the end of a black tunnel tried to say. The lights were on now, but everything was dark. Figures moved around her and her arm hurt—distantly. She couldn’t move. Tired. There was something in her mouth. Is this an ambulance? she wondered. Lights out.

The dogpile on the bed slowly shifted, standing up. Specialist A worked on the subject with tongue depressor and tubes, readying her for assisted ventilation. The chloroform pad sitting on the pillow was an acrid nuisance: For the journey ahead, something safer and more reliable was necessary. Specialist B worked on her at the same time, sliding the collapsible gurney under her and strapping her to it at legs, hips, wrists, and shoulders.

“That was a fucking mess,” snarled Control, picking up the little snub-nosed revolver in one black-gloved hand. “Safety catch was on, luckily. Who screwed up on the landing?”

“Sir.” It was Point B. “There was a book. On the stairs.”

“Bitchin’. Okay, get little Miss Lethal here loaded and ready to move. Bravo, start the cleanup. I want her personal files, wherever she keeps them. And her computer, and all the disks. Whoever the hell was with her this evening, I want to know who they are too. And everything else. Charlie, pack her bags like she’s going on vacation—a long vacation. Clothing, bathroom stuff. Don’t make a mess of it. I want to be ready to evacuate in twenty minutes.”

“Sir. Yes, sir.” Control nodded. Point B was going to pull a shitwork detail when they got home, but you didn’t discipline people in the field unless they’d fucked up bad enough to pull a nine-millimetre discharge. And Point B hadn’t. A month cleaning the latrines would give him time to think on how close he’d come to getting plugged by a sleepy woman with a thirty-eight revolver.

Spec A was nearly done; he and Spec B grunted as they lifted the coffin-shaped framework off the bed. Miriam was unconscious and trussed like a turkey inside it. “Is she going to be okay?” Control asked idly.

“I think so,” said Spec A. “Bad bruising on her right arm, and probably concussed, but I don’t expect anything major. Worst risk is she pukes in her sleep and chokes on her own vomit, and we can deal with that.” He spoke confidently. He’d done paramedic training and Van Two was equipped like an ambulance.

“Then take her away. We’ll be along in half an hour when we’re through sanitizing.”

“Yeah, boss. We’ll get her home.”

Control looked at the dressing table, strewn with underwear, month-old magazines, and half-used toiletries. His expression turned to disgust at the thought of searching through piles of dirty clothing. “Sky father, what a mess.”

There was an office not far from Miriam’s cell. The office was quiet, and its dark oak panelling and rich Persian carpets gave it something of the ambiance of a very exclusive Victorian gentleman’s club. A wide walnut desk occupied the floor next to the window bay. The top of the desk was inlaid with a Moroccan leather blotter, upon which lay a banker’s box full of papers and other evidence.

The occupant of the office sat at the desk, reading the mess of photocopies and memos from the file box. He was in his early fifties, thickset with the stomach of middle age, but tall enough to carry it well. His suit was conservative: He might have been a retired general or a corporate chairman. Neither guess would be wrong, but neither would be the full truth, either. Right now he looked as if he had a headache; his expression was sour as he read a yellowing newspaper clipping. “What a mess,” he murmured. “What a blessed mess…”

A buzzer sounded above the left-hand door.

The officeholder glanced at the door with wintry gray eyes. “Enter,” he called sharply. Then he looked back at the papers.

Footsteps, the sound of male dress shoes—leather-soled—on parquet, were abruptly silenced as the visitor reached the carpeted inner sanctum.

“You summoned me, uncle? Is there any movement on my proposal? If anyone wants me to—”

Angbard Lofstrom looked up again and fixed his nephew with a long icy stare. His nephew shuffled, discomfited: a tall, blond fellow whose suit would not have been out of place in an advertising agency’s offices. “Patience,” he said in English.

“But I—”

“I said patience.” Angbard laid the newspaper clipping flat on his blotter and stared at his nephew. “This is not the time to discuss your proposal. About which there is no news, by the way. Don’t expect anything to happen soon; you need to learn timing if you want to make progress, and the changes you are suggesting we make are politically difficult.”

“How much longer?” The young man sounded tense.

“As long as I deem necessary.” Angbard’s stare hardened. “Remember why you are here.”

“I—yes, my lord. If it pleases you to accept my apologies …”

“How is the prisoner?” Angbard asked abruptly.

“Oh. Last time I checked—fifteen minutes ago—she was unconscious but sleeping normally. She is in one of the doppelgänger cells. I removed the mnemonic she was wearing on her person and had one of the maids search her for tattoos. Her cell has no mirror, no shaving apparatus. I left instructions that I am to be called when she awakens.”

“Hmm.” Angbard chewed on his upper lip with an expression of deep disapproval. “What does the doctor say?”

“The doctor says that he might have to splint her arm, later—there is bruising—but she sustained no serious harm in the course of the pickup.”

“Well.” Angbard waved one hand in the direction of the chairs positioned before his desk. “Sit down.” His nephew sat with alacrity, his back stiff. “Do we have any known loose ends, Earl Roland?”

“Yes, sir, but nothing critical. We have retrieved the documents, camera, recorder, personal computer, and all the other effects that we could find. Her house was untidy, but we are fairly sure we were able to locate everything—her office was well-organized. The windows have been repaired, and the neighbours informed indirectly that she is on assignment away from home. She is unmarried and has few attachments.” Roland looked faintly disapproving. “There is reference to an elderly mother who lives alone. The only possible problem is referred to in the contractor’s report. Evidently on her last excursion a woman, identity unknown, arrived, collected her car, then her person, and drove her home. Presumably a friend. The problem is that she left the stakeout by taxi without any notice—I assume she summoned it by means of a mobile telephone—and our contractor team was too short-staffed to dispatch a tail. I have therefore instructed them to continue surveillance and reinstate the line tap, in the hope that the friend reappears. Once she does so—”

Roland shrugged.

“See that you do—I want them in custody as soon as possible.” Angbard harrumphed. “As to the prisoner’s disposition …” He paused, head cocked slightly to one side.

“Sir?” Roland was a picture of polite attentiveness.

“The prisoner is to be treated with all the courtesy due to one of your own station, indeed, as a senior Clan member, I say. As a respected guest, detained for her own protection.”

“Sir!” Roland couldn’t contain his shock.

Angbard stared at him. “You have something to say, my earl?” he asked coldly.

Roland swallowed. “I hear and… and will of course obey,” he said. “Just, please permit me to say, this is a surprise—”

“Your surprise is noted,” Angbard stated coldly. “Nevertheless, I will keep my reasons to myself for the time being. All you need to know at present is that the prisoner must be treated with, as they say, kidskin gloves.” He stared at the young officer intently, but he showed no sign of defiance: and after a moment Angbard relented slightly. “This—” he gestured at the box before him—“raises some most disturbing possibilities.” He tapped one finger on the topmost sheet. “Or had you noticed any strangers out with the Clan who are gifted with the family talent?”

“Mm, no, sir, I had not.” Roland looked suddenly thoughtful. “What are you thinking?”

“Later,” Angbard said tersely. “Just see she’s transferred to a comfortable—but securely doppelgängered—suite. Be polite and hospitable, win her trust, and treat her person with the utmost respect. And notify me when she is ready to answer my questions.”

“I hear and obey,” Roland acknowledged, less puzzled, but clearly thoughtful.

“See that you do,” Angbard rumbled. “You are dismissed.”

His nephew rose, straightened his suit jacket, and strode toward the door, a rapier banging at his side. Angbard stared at the door in silence for a minute after he had gone, then turned his eye back to the items in the file box. Which included a locket that he had seen before—almost a third of a century ago.

“Patricia,” he whispered under his breath, “what has become of you?”

Daylight. That was the first thing that Miriam noticed. That—and she had the mother of all hangovers. Her head felt as if it was wrapped in cotton wool, her right arm hurt like hell, and everything around her was somehow wrong. She blinked experimentally. Her head was wrapped in cotton wool—or bandages. And she was wearing something unfamiliar. She’d gone to bed in her usual T-shirt, but now she was wearing a nightgown—but she didn’t own one! What’s going on?

Daylight. She felt muzzy and stupid and her head was pounding. She was thirsty, too. She rolled over and blinked at where the nightstand should have been. There was a whitewashed wall six inches from her nose. The bed she was lying in was jammed up against a rough cinder-block wall that had been painted white. It was as weird as that confused nightmare about the light and the chemical stink—

Nightmare?

She rolled the other way, her legs tangling up in the nightgown. She nearly fell out of the bed, which was far too narrow. It wasn’t her own bed, and for a moment of panic she wondered what could possibly have happened. Then it all clicked into place. “Gangsters or feds? Must be the feds,” she mumbled to herself. They must have followed me. Or Paulie. Or something.

A vast, hollow terror seemed to have replaced her stomach. They’ll ‘bury you so deep,’ she remembered. ‘So deep’ that—

Her throat felt sore, as if she’d spent the entire night screaming. Odd, that. Maybe it was anticipation.

Somehow she swung her legs over the side of the strange bed. They touched the floor much too soon, and she sat up, pushing the thin comforter aside. The far wall was too close, and the window was set high up; in fact, the whole room was about the size of a closet. There was no other furniture except for a small stainless-steel sink bolted to the wall opposite the door. The door itself was a featureless slab of wood with a peephole implanted in it at eye level. She noted with a dull sense of recognition that the door was perfectly smooth, with no handle or lock mechanism to mar its surface: It was probably wood veneer over metal.

Her hand went to her throat. The locket was gone.

Miriam stood, then abruptly found that she had to lean against the wall to keep upright. Her head throbbed and her right arm was extremely sore. She turned and looked up at the window, but it was above the top of her head, even if she had the energy to stand on the bed. High and small and without curtains, it looked horribly like the skylight of a prison cell. Am I in prison? she wondered.

With that thought, Miriam lost what calm she had. She leaned against the door and pounded it with her left hand, setting up a hollow racket, but stopped when her hand began to throb and the fear swept back in a suffocating wave, driving a storm surge of rage before it. She sat down and buried her face in her hands and began to sob quietly. She was still in this position a few minutes later when the door frame gave a quiet click and opened outward.

Miriam looked up suddenly as the door opened. “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.

The man standing in the doorway was perfectly turned out, from his black loafers to the ends of his artfully styled blond hair: He was young (late twenties or early thirties), formally dressed in a fashionable suit, clean-shaven, and his face was set in neutral lines. He could have been a Mormon missionary or an FBI agent. “Miss Beckstein, if you’d be so good as to come with me, please?”

“Who are you?” She repeated. “Aren’t you guys supposed to read me my rights or something?” There was something odd about him, but she couldn’t quite get her head around it.

Past his shoulder she could see a corridor, blurry right now—then she realized what it was that she was having trouble with. He’s wearing a sword, she told herself, hardly believing her eyes.

“You seem to be labouring under a misapprehension.” He smiled, not unpleasantly. “We don’t have to read you your rights. However, if you’ll come with me, we can go somewhere more comfortable to discuss the situation. Unless you’re entirely happy with the sanitary facilities here?”

Miriam glanced behind her, suddenly acutely aware that her bladder was full and her stomach was queasy. “Who are you?” she asked uncertainly.

“If you come with me, you’ll get your answers,” he said soothingly. He took a step back and something made Miriam suspect there was an implicit or else left dangling at the end of his last sentence. She lurched to her feet unsteadily and he reached out for her elbow. She shuffled backward instinctively to avoid contact, but lost her balance against the edge of the bed: She sat down hard and went over backward, cracking her head against the wall.

“Oh dear,” he said. She stared up at him through a haze of pain. “I’ll bring a wheelchair for you. Please don’t try to move.”

The ceiling pancaked lazily above her head. Miriam felt sick and a little bit drowsy. Her head was splitting. Migraine or anaesthesia hangover? she wondered. The well-dressed man with the sword sticking incongruously out from under his suit coat was back, with a wheelchair and another man wearing a green medical smock. Together they picked her up and planted her in the chair, loose as a sack of potatoes. “Oww,” she moaned softly.

“That was a nasty bash,” said her visitor. He walked beside the chair. Lighting strips rolled by overhead, closed doorways to either side. “How do you feel?”

“Lousy,” she managed. Her right arm had come out in sympathy with her skull. “Who’re you?”

“You don’t give up, do you?” he observed. The chair turned a corner: More corridor stretched ahead. “I’m Roland, Earl Lofstrom. Your welfare is my responsibility for now.” The chair stopped in front of burnished stainless-steel panels—an elevator. Mechanisms grumbled behind the door. “You shouldn’t have awakened in that isolation cell. You were only there due to an administrative error. The individual responsible has been disciplined.”

A cold chill washed down Miriam’s spine, cutting through the haze of pain. “Don’t want your name,” she muttered. “Want to know who you people are. My rights, dammit.”

The elevator doors opened and the attendant pushed her inside. Roland stepped in beside her, then waved the attendant away. Then he pushed a button out of sight behind her head. The doors closed and the elevator began to rise, but stopped only a few seconds later. “You appear to be under a misapprehension,” he repeated. “You’re asking for your rights. The, uh, Miranda declaration, yes?”

She tried to look up at him. “Huh?”

“That doesn’t apply here. Different jurisdiction, you know.” His accompanying smile left Miriam deeply unnerved.

The elevator doors opened and he wheeled her into a silent, carpeted corridor with no windows—just widely spaced doors to either side, like an expensive hotel. He stopped at the third door along on the left and pushed it open, then turned her chair and rolled it forward into the room within. “There. Isn’t this an improvement over the other room?”

Miriam pushed down on the wheelchair arms with both hands, wincing at a stab of pain in her right forearm. “Shit.” She looked around. “This isn’t federal.”

“If you don’t mind.” He took her elbow, and this time she couldn’t dodge. His grip was firm but not painful. “This is the main reception room of your suite. You’ll note the windows don’t actually open, and they’re made of toughened glass for your safety. The bathroom is through that door, and the bedroom is over there.” He pointed. “If you want anything, lift the white courtesy phone. If you need a doctor, there is one on call. I suggest you take an hour to recover, then freshen up and get dressed. There will be an interview in due course.”

“What is this place? Who are you people?” Finally Roland frowned at her. “You can stop pretending you don’t know,” he said. “You aren’t going to convince anyone.” Pausing in the doorway, he added, “The war’s over, you know. We won twenty years ago.” The door closed behind him with a solid-sounding click, and Miriam was unsurprised to discover that the door handle flopped limply in her hand when she tried it. She was locked in.

Miriam shuffled into the white-tiled bathroom, blinked in the lights, then sat down heavily on the toilet. “Holy shit,” she mumbled in disbelief. It was like an expensive hotel—a fiendishly expensive one, aimed at sheikhs and diplomats and billionaires. The floor was smooth, a very high grade of Italian marble if she was any judge of stonework. The sink was a moulded slab of thick green glass and the taps glowed with a deep lustre that went deeper than mere gilding could reach. The bath was a huge scalloped shell sunk into the floor, white and polished, with blue and green lights set into it amid the chromed water jets. An acre of fluffy white towels and a matching bathrobe awaited her, hanging above a basket of toiletries. She knew some of those brand names; she’d even tried their samplers when she was feeling extravagant. The shampoo alone was a hundred dollars a bottle.

This definitely isn’t anything to do with the government, she realized. I know people who’d pay good money to be locked up in here!

She sat down on the edge of the bathtub, slid into one of the seats around its rim, and spent a couple of minutes puzzling out the control panel. Eventually she managed to coax half a dozen jets of aerated water into life. This is a prison, she kept reminding herself. Roland’s words haunted her: ‘Different jurisdiction, you know.’ Where was she? They’d taken the locket. That implied that they knew about it—and about her. But there was absolutely no way to square this experience with what she’d seen in the forest: the pristine wilderness, the peasant village.

The bedroom was as utterly over the top as the bathroom, dominated by a huge oak sleigh-bed in a traditional Scandinavian style, with masses of down comforters and pillows. Rather than fitted furniture there were a pair of huge oak wardrobes and a chest of drawers and other, smaller, furniture—a dressing table with mirror, an armchair, something that looked like an old linen press. Every piece of furniture in the bedroom looked to be an antique. The combined effect was overwhelming, like being expected to sleep in an auction house’s display room.

“Oh wow.” She looked around and spotted the windows, then walked over to them. A balcony outside blocked the view of whatever was immediately below. Beyond it she had a breathtaking view of a sweep of forested land dropping away toward a shallow valley with a rocky crag, standing proud and bald on the other side. It was as untainted by civilization as the site of her camping expedition. She turned away, disquieted. Something about this whole picture screamed: Wrong! at her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

The chest of drawers held an unpleasant surprise. She pulled the top drawer open, half-expecting it to be empty. Instead, it contained underwear. Her underwear. She recognized the holes in one or two socks that she hadn’t gotten around to throwing away.

“Bastards.” She focused on the clothing, mind spinning furiously. They’re thorough, whoever they are. She looked closer at the furniture. The writing desk appeared to be an original Georgian piece, or even older, a monstrously valuable antique. And the chairs, Queen Anne or a good replica—disturbingly expensive. A hotel would be content with reproductions, she reasoned. The emphasis would be on utility and comfort, not authenticity. If there were originals anywhere, they’d be on display in the foyer. It reminded her of something that she’d seen somewhere, something that nagged at the back of her mind but stubbornly refused to come to the foreground.

She stood up and confirmed her suspicion that the wardrobes held her entire range of clothing. More words came back to haunt her: ‘There will be an interview in due course.’ “I’m not in a cell,” she told herself, “but I could be. They showed me that much. So they’re playing head games. They want to play the stick-and-carrot game. That means I’ve got some kind of leverage. Doesn’t it?” Find out what they want, then get out of here fast, she decided.

Half an hour later she was ready. She’d chosen a blouse the colour of fresh blood, her black interview suit, lip gloss to match, and heels. Miriam didn’t normally hold with makeup, but this time she went the whole hog. She didn’t normally hold with power dressing either, but something about Roland and this setup suggested that his people were much more obsessed with appearances than the dot-com entrepreneurs and Masspike corridor startup monkeys she usually dealt with. Any edge she could get…

A bell chimed discreetly. She straightened up and turned to look at the door as it opened. Here it comes, she thought nervously.

It was Roland, who’d brought her up here from the cell. Now that she saw him in the daylight from the windows with a clear head, her confusion deepened. He looks like a secret service agent, she thought. Something about that indefinably military posture and the short hair suggested he’d been ordered into that suit in place of combat fatigues.

“Ah. You’ve found the facilities.” He nodded. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she said. “I see you ransacked my house.”

“You will find that everything has been accounted for,” he said, slightly defensively. “Would you rather we’d given you a prison uniform? No?” He sized her up with a glance. “Well, there’s someone I have to take you to see now.”

“Oh, good.” It slipped out before she could clamp down on the sarcasm. “The chief of secret police, I assume?”

His eyes widened slightly. “Don’t joke about it,” he muttered.

“Oh.” Miriam dry-swallowed. “Right, well, we wouldn’t want to keep him waiting, would we?”

“Absolutely not,” Roland said seriously. He held the door open, then paused for a moment. “By the way, I really wouldn’t want you to embarrass yourself trying to escape. This is a secure facility.”

“I see,” said Miriam, who didn’t—but had made her mind up already that it would be a mistake to simply cut and run. These people had snatched her from her own bed. That suggested a frightening level of—competence.

She approached the door warily, keeping as far away from Roland as she could. “Which way?”

“Along the passage.”

He headed off at a brisk march and she followed him, heels sinking into the sound-deadening carpet. She had to hurry to keep up. When I get out of this mess, I’m buying a new interview outfit—one I can run in, she promised herself.

“Wait one moment, please.”

She found herself fetched up behind Roland’s broad back, before a pair of double doors that were exquisitely panelled and polished. Odd, she wondered. Where is everybody? She glanced over her shoulder, and spotted a discreet video camera watching her back. They’d come around two corners, as if the corridor followed a rectangle: They’d passed a broad staircase leading down, and the elevator—there ought to be more people about, surely?

“Who am I—”

Roland turned around. “Look, just wait,” he said. “Security calls.” She noticed for the first time that he had the inside of his wrist pressed against an unobtrusive box in the wall.

“Security?”

“Biometrics, I think it’s called,” he said. There was a click from the door and he opened it slowly. “Matthias? Ish hafe gefauft des’usher des Angbard.”

Miriam blinked—she didn’t recognize the language. It sounded a bit like German, but not enough to make anything out; and her high school German was rusty, anyway.

“Innen gekomm’, denn.”

The door opened and Roland caught her right arm, tugged her into the room after him, and let the door close. She pulled her arm back and rubbed the sore spot as she glanced around.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” she said. Thick draped curtains surrounded the window. The walls were panelled richly in dark wood: The main piece of furniture was a desk beside an inner office door. A broad-shouldered man in a black suit, white shirt, and red tie waited behind the desk. The only thing to distinguish the scene from a high-class legal practice was the submachine gun resting by his right hand.

“Spresh’she de hoh’sprashe?”

“No,” said Roland. “Use English, please.”

“Okay,” said the man with the gun. He looked at Miriam, and she had the disquieting sense that he was photographing her, storing her face in his memory. He had frizzy black hair, swept back from high temples, combined with a nose like a hatchet and a glare like a caged hawk. “I am Matthias. I am the Boss’s secretary, which is, his keeper of secrets. That is his office door. You go in there without permission over my dead body. This is not an, um, how would you say it?” He glanced at Roland.

“Metaphor,” Roland offered.

“Metaphor.” Matthias looked at her again. He wasn’t smiling. “The Boss is expecting you. You may enter now.”

Miriam looked sidelong at him as Roland marched over to the door and opened it, then waved her forward. Matthias kept his eyes on her—and one hand close to the gun. She found herself involuntarily giving him a wide berth, as she would a rattlesnake. Not that he looked particularly venomous—a polite, clean-shaven man in a pin-striped suit—but there was something about his manner… she’d seen it before, in a young DEA agent she had dated for a couple of months before learning better. Mike Fleming had been quietly, calmly, crazy, in a way that made her cut and run before she got dragged too far in with him. He’d been quite prepared to give his life for the cause he believed in—or to make any other sacrifice for that matter: He was utterly unable to see the walls of the box he’d locked himself in. The kind of guy who’d arrest a cripple with multiple sclerosis for smoking a joint to deaden the pain. She suppressed a shudder as she entered the inner office.

The inner office was as excessive as the suite they’d given her, the Mafia special with the locked door and the auction house’s ransom in antiques. The floor was tiled in hand-polished hardwood, partially covered by a carpet that was probably worth as much as her house. The walls were panelled in wood blackened with age. There were a couple of discreet oil paintings of big red-faced men in medieval-looking armour or classical robes posed before a castle, and a pair of swords rested on pegs in the wall above the desk. There was a huge walnut desk positioned beside the window bay and two chairs were drawn up before it, positioned so that the owner of the office would be all but invisible from the window.

Roland stopped before the desk, drew himself up to attention, and saluted. “My lord, I have the pleasure of presenting to you… Miriam Beckstein.”

The presence in the chair inclined his head in acknowledgment. “That is not her real name, but her presence is sufficient. You may be at ease.” Miriam squinted, trying to make out his features against the glare. He must have taken her expression for hostility, for he waved a hand: “Please be seated, the both of you. I have no argument with you, ah, Miriam, if that is the name you wish to be known by.”

Roland surprised her by pulling a chair out and offering it to her. She startled herself in turn by sitting down, albeit nervously, knees clenched together and back stiffly erect “Who are you people?” she whispered.

Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the light: She could see the man in the high-backed chair smile faintly. He was in late middle age, possibly as old as Morris Beckstein would have been, had he lived. His suit was sober—these people dressed like a company of undertakers—but so well cut that it had to be hand-tailored. His hair was graying, and his face was undistinguished, except for a long scar running up his left cheek.

“I might ask the same question,” he murmured. “Roland, be seated, I say!” His tone of voice said he was used to being obeyed. “I am the high Duke Angbard of house Lofstrom, third of that name, trustee of the crown of guilds, defender of the king’s honour, freeman of the city of Niejwein, head of security of the Clan Reunified, prince of merchant-princes, owner of this demesne, and holder of many more titles than that—but those are the principal ones.” His eyes were the colour of lead, a blue so pale she found them hard to see, even when they were focused directly on her. “Also, if I am not very much mistaken, I am your uncle.”

Miriam recoiled in shock. “What?” Another voice echoed her. She glanced sideways to see Roland staring at her in astonishment. His cool exterior began to crack.

“My father would never—” Roland began.

“Shut up,” said Angbard, cold steel in his voice. “I was not referring to your father, young man, but to your aunt once removed: Patricia.”

“Would you mind explaining just what you’re talking about?” Miriam demanded, anger finally getting the better of her. She leaned forward. “Your people have abducted me, ransacked my house, and kidnapped me, just because you think I’m some kind of long-lost relative?”

Angbard nodded thoughtfully. “No. We are absolutely certain you’re a long-lost relative.” He glanced at his nephew. “There is solid evidence.”

Roland leaned back in his chair, whistled tunelessly, all military pretence fled. He stared at her out of wide eyes, as if he was seeing a ghost.

“What have you got to whistle about?” she demanded.

“You asked for an explanation,” Angbard reminded her. “The arrival of an unknown world-walker is always grounds for concern. Since the war… suffice to say, your appearance would have been treated drastically in those days. When you stumbled across the old coast trail a week ago, and the patrol shot at you, they had no way of knowing who you were. That became evident only later—I believe you left a pair of pink house-shoes behind?—and triggered an extensive manhunt. However, you are clearly not connected to a traitorous faction, and closer research revealed some interesting facts about you. I believe you were adopted?”

“That’s right.” Miriam’s heart was fluttering in her ribs, shock and unpleasant realization merging. “Are you saying you’re my long-lost relatives?”

“Yes.” Angbard waited a moment, then slid open one of the drawers in his desk. “This is yours, I believe.”

Miriam reached out and picked up the locket. Tarnished with age, slightly battered—an island of familiarity. “Yes.”

“But not this.” Angbard palmed something else, then pushed it across the desk toward her.

“Oh my.” Miriam was lost for words. It was the identical twin to her locket, only brightly shining and lacking some scratches. She took it and sprang the catch—

“Ouch!” She glared at Roland, who had knocked it out of her hand. But he was bending down, and after a moment she realized that he was picking it up, very carefully, keeping the open halves facedown until it was upon the duke’s blotter.

“We will have to teach you how to handle these things safely,” Angbard said mildly. “In the meantime, my sister’s is yours to keep.”

“Your sister’s,” she echoed stupidly, wrapping her fingers around the locket.

“My sister went missing thirty-two years ago,” Angbard said with careful lack of emphasis. “Her caravan was attacked, her husband slain, and her guard massacred, but her body was never found. Nor was that of her six-week-old daughter. She was on her way to pay attendance to the court of the high king, taking her turn as the Clan’s hostage. The wilds around Chesapeake Bay, as it is called on your side, are not heavily populated in this world. We searched for months, but obviously to little effect.”

“You found the box of documents,” Miriam said. The effort of speaking was vast: She could hear her heart pounding in her ears.

“Yes. They provide impressive supporting evidence—circumstantial but significant. While you were unconscious, blood samples were taken for, ah, DNA profiling. The results will be back tomorrow, but I am in no doubt. You have the family face and the family talent—or did you think world-walking was commonplace?—and your age and the documentary evidence fits perfectly. You are the daughter Helge, born to my elder sister, Patricia Thorold Hjorth, by her husband the western magistrate-prince, Alfredo Wu, and word of your survival is going to set the fox among the Clan chickens with a vengeance when it emerges.” He smiled thinly. “Which is why I took the precaution of sending away the junior members of the distaff side, and almost all the servants, before bidding you welcome. It would not have done for the younger members of the Clan to find out about your existence before I looked to your defence. Some of them will be feeling quite anxious about the disruption of the braid succession, your highness.”

“Highness? What are you talking about?” Miriam could hear her voice rising, out of control, but she couldn’t get it under control. “What are you on? Look, I’m a business journalist covering the Masspike corridor, not some kind of feudal noble! I don’t know about any of this stuff!” She was on her feet in front of the desk. “What’s world-walking, and what does it have to do—”

“Your highness,” Angbard said firmly, “you were a business journalist, on the other side of the wall of worlds. But world-walking is how you came here. It is the defining talent of our Clan, of the families who constitute the Clan. It is in the blood, and you are one of us, whether you will it or no. Over here, you are the eldest heir to a countess and a magistrate-prince of the outer kingdom, both senior members of their families, and however much you might wish to walk away from that fact, it will follow you around. Even if you go back over there.”

He turned to Roland, ignoring her stunned silence. “Earl Roland, you will please escort your first cousin to her chambers. I charge you with her safety and protection until further notice. Your highness, we will dine in my chambers this evening, with one or two trustworthy guests, and I will have more words for you then. Roland will assign servants to see to your comfort and wardrobe. I expect him to deal with your questions. In the meantime, you are both dismissed.”

Miriam glared at him, speechless. “I have only your best interests at heart,” the duke said mildly. “Roland.”

“Sir.” Roland took her arm.

“Proceed.”

Roland turned and marched from the office, and Miriam hurried to keep up, angry and embarrassed and trying not to show it. You bastard! she thought. Out in the corridor: “You’re hurting me,” she hissed, trying not to trip. “Slow down.”

Roland slowed and—mercy of mercies—let go of her arm. He glanced behind, and an invisible tension left his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’re sorry?” she replied, disbelievingly. “You nearly twisted my arm out of its socket!” She rubbed her elbow and winced.

“I said I’m sorry. Angbard isn’t used to being disobeyed. I’ve never seen anyone take such liberties with him and escape punishment!”

“Punishment—” she stopped. “You weren’t kidding about him being the head of secret police, were you?”

“He’s got many more titles than he told you about. He’s responsible for the security of the entire Clan. If you like, think of him as the head of the FBI here. There was a civil war before you or I were born. He’s probably ordered more hangings than you or I have had hot dinners.”

Miriam stumbled. “Ow, shit!” She leaned against the wall. “That’ll teach me to keep my eye on where I’m going.” She glanced at him. “So you’re telling me I wasn’t paying enough attention?”

“You’ll be all right,” Roland said slowly, “if you can adapt to it. I imagine it must be a great shock, coming into your inheritance so suddenly.”

“Is that so?” She looked him up and down carefully, unsure how to interpret the raised eyebrow—Is he trying to tell me something or just having a joke at my expense?—then a second thought struck her. “I think I’m missing something here,” she said, deliberately casually.

“Nothing around here is what it seems,” Roland said with a little shrug. His expression was guarded. “But if the duke is right, if you really are Patricia’s long-lost heir—”

Miriam recognized the expression in his eyes: It was belief. He really believes I’m some kind of fairy-tale princess, she realized with dawning horror. What have I got myself into?

“You’ll have to tell me all about it. In my chambers.”

Cinderella 2.0

Roland led her back to her suite and followed her into the huge reception room at its heart. He wandered over to the windows and stood there with his hands clasped behind his back. Miriam kicked her heels off and sat down in the huge, enveloping leather sofa opposite the window.

“When did you discover the locket?” he asked.

She watched him curiously. “Less than a week ago.”

“And until then you’d grown up in ignorance of your family,” he said. “Amazing!” He turned around. His face was set in a faintly wistful expression.

“Are you going to just stand there?” she asked.

“It would be impertinent to sit down without an invitation,” he replied. “I know it’s the case on the other side, but here, the elders tend to stand on points of etiquette.”

“Well—” her eyes narrowed. “Sit down if you want to. You’re making me nervous. You look as if you’re afraid I’ll bite.”

“Um.” He sat down uneasily on the arm of the big chair opposite her. “Well, it’s irregular, to say the least, to be here. You being unwed, that is.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” she snapped. “I’m divorced. Is that another of the things you people are touchy about?”

“ ‘Divorced?’ “ He stared at her hand, as if looking for a ring. “I don’t know.” Suddenly he looked thoughtful. “Customs here are distinctly different from the other side. This is not a Christ-worshiping land.” Another thought struck him. “Are you, uh … ?”

“Does Miriam Beckstein sound Christian to you?”

“It’s sometimes hard to tell with people from the other side. Christ worship isn’t a religion here,” he said seriously. “But you are divorced. And a world-walker.” He leaned forward. “What that means is you are automatically a Clan shareholder of the first rank, eligible, unwed, and liable to displace a dozen minor distant relatives from their Clan shares, which they thought safe. Your children will displace theirs, too. Do you know, you are probably a great-aunt already?”

To Miriam this was insupportable. “I don’t want a huge bunch of feuding cousins and ancestors and children! I’m quite happy on my own.”

“It’s not as simple as that.” A momentary flash of irritation surfaced: “Our personal happiness has nothing to do with the Clan’s view of our position in life. I don’t like it either, but you’ve got to understand that there are people out there whose plans will be disrupted by the mere knowledge of your existence, and other people who will make plans for you, regardless of your wishes!”

“I—” she stopped. “Look, I don’t think we’ve got this straight. I may be related to your family by genetics, but I’m not one of you. I don’t know how the hell you think or what your etiquette is like and I don’t care about being the orphan of a countess. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” She sighed. “There’s been some huge mistake. The sooner we get it over with and I can go back to being a journalist, the better.”

“If you want it that way.” For almost a minute he brooded, staring at the floor in front of her. Miriam hooked one foot over the other and tried to relax enough to force her shoulders back into the sofa. “You might last six weeks,” he said finally.

“Huh?”

He frowned at a parquet tile. “You can ignore your relatives, but they can’t ignore you. To them you’re an unknown quantity. The Clan shareholders all have the ability to walk the worlds, to cross over and follow you. Over here they’re rich and powerful—but your current situation makes them insecure because you’re unpredictable. If you do what’s expected of you, you merely disrupt several inheritances worth a baron’s estate. If you try to leave, they will think you are trying to form a new schismatic family, maybe even lure away family splinters to set up your own Clan to rival ours. How do you think the rich and powerful deal with threats to their existence?” He looked grave. “I’d rather not measure you for a coffin so soon after discovering you. It’s not every day I find a new second cousin, especially one who’s as educated and intelligent as you seem to be. There’s a shortage of good conversation here, you know.”

“Oh.” Miriam felt deflated, frightened. What happens to business life when there’s no limit to liability and the only people you can work with are your blood relatives? Instinctively she changed the subject. “What did your uncle mean about tonight? And servants, I mean, servants?”

“Ah, that.” Roland slipped down into the seat at last, relaxing a little. “We are invited to dine with the head of one of the families in private. The most powerful family in the Clan, at that. It’s a formal affair. As for the servants, you’re entitled to half a dozen or so ladies-in-waiting, your own guard of honour, and various others. My uncle the duke sent the minor family members away, but in the meantime there are maids from below stairs who will see to you. Really I would have sent them earlier, when I brought you up here, but he stressed the urgent need for secrecy and I thought—” He paused. “You really did grow up over there, didn’t you? In the middle classes.”

She nodded, unsure just how to deal with his sudden attack of snobbery. Some of the time he seemed open and friendly, then she hit a blind spot and he was Sir Medieval Aristocrat writ large and charmless. “I don’t do upper class,” she said. “Well, business class, maybe.”

“Well, you aren’t in America any more. You’ll have get used to the way we do things here eventually.” He paused. “Did I say something wrong?”

He had, but she didn’t know how to explain. Which was why a couple of hours later she was sitting naked in the bathroom, talking to her dictaphone, trying to make sense of the insanity outside—without succumbing to hysteria—by treating it as a work assignment and reporting on it.

“Now I know how Alice felt in looking-glass land,” she muttered, holding her dictaphone close to her lips. “They’re mad. I don’t mean schizophrenic or psychotic or anything like that. They’re just not in the same universe as anyone else I know.” The same universe was a slip: She could feel the hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her. She bit her lower lip, painfully hard. “They’re nuts. And they insist I join in and play their game by their rules.”

There was some bumping and thumping going on in the main room of the suite. That would be the maidservants moving stuff around. Miriam paused the tape for a moment, considering her next words. “Dear Diary. Forty-eight hours ago I was hanging out in the forest, happy as a clam with my photographs of a peasant village that looked like something out of the middle ages. I was exploring, discovering something new, and it was great, I had this puzzle-box reality to crack open, a whole new story. Now I discover that I own that village, and a hundred more like it, and I literally have the power of life and death over its inhabitants. I can order soldiers to go in and kill every last one of them, on a whim. Once the Clans recognize me officially, at an annual session, that is. And assuming—as Roland says—nobody assassinates me. Princess Beckstein, signing off for The Weatherman, or maybe Business 2.0. Jesus, who’d have thought I’d end up starring in some kind of twisted remake of Cinderella? Or that it would turn out so weird?”

And I called Craig Venter and Larry Ellison robber barons in print, she thought mordantly, keying the “pause” button again.

“Put that way it sounds funny, but it isn’t. First I thought it was the feds who broke in and grabbed me, and that’s pretty damn scary to begin with. FEMA, secret security courts with hearings held in camera. Then, it could have been the mob, if the mob looked like FBI agents. But this could actually be worse. These guys wear business suits, but it’s only skin-deep. They’re like sheikhs from one of the rich Gulf Emirates. They don’t dress up medieval, they think medieval and buy their clothes from Saks or Savile Row in England.”

A thought occurred to her. I hope Paulette’s keeping the video camera safe. And her head down. She had an ugly, frightened feeling that Duke Angbard had seen right through her. He scared her: She’d met his type before, and they played hardball—hard enough to make a Mafia don’s eyes water. She was half-terrified she’d wake up tomorrow and see Paulie’s head impaled on a pike outside her bedroom window. If only Ma hadn’t given me the damned locket—

A tentative knock on the door. “Mistress? Are you ready to come out?”

“Ten minutes,” Miriam called. She clutched her recorder and shook her head. Four servants had shown up an hour ago, and she’d retreated into the bathroom. One of them, called something like Iona, had tried to follow her. Apparently countesses weren’t allowed to use a bathroom without servants in attendance. That was when Miriam had locked the door and braced the linen chest against it.

“Damn,” she muttered and took a deep breath. Then she surrendered to the inevitable.

They were waiting for her when she came out. Four women in severe black dresses and white aprons, their hair covered by blue scarves. They curtseyed before her as she looked around, confused. “I’m Meg, if it please you, your highness. We is to dress you,” the oldest of them said in a soft, vaguely Germanic accent: Middle-aged and motherly, she looked as if she would be more at home in an Amish farm kitchen than a castle.

“Uh, it’s only four o’clock,” Miriam pointed out.

Meg looked slightly shocked. “But you are to be received at seven!” She pointed out. “How’re we to dress you in time?”

“Well.” Miriam looked at the other three: All of them stood with downcast eyes. I don’t like this, she thought. “How about I take something from my wardrobe—yes, they kindly brought all my clothes along—and put it on?”

“M-ma’am,” the second oldest ventured: “I’ve seen your clothes. Begging your pardon, but them’s not court clothes. Them’s not suitable.”

‘Court clothes’? More crazy formal shit. “What would you suggest, then?” Miriam asked exasperatedly.

“Old Ma’am Rosein can fit you up with something to measure,” said the old one, “should I but give her your sizes.” She held up a very modern-looking tape measure. “Your highness?”

“This had better be good,” Miriam said, raising her arms. Why do I never get this kind of service at the Gap? she wondered.

Three hours later Miriam was readied for dinner, and knew exactly why she never got this kind of service in any chain store—and why Angbard had so many servants. She was hungry, and if the bodice they’d squeezed her into allowed her to eat when she got there she might consider forgiving Angbard for his invitation.

The youngest maidservant was still fussing over her hair—and the feathers and string of pearls she had woven into it, while lamenting its shortness—when the door opened. It was, of course, Roland, accompanied now by a younger fellow, and Miriam began to get an inkling of what a formal dinner involved.

“Dear cousin!” Roland saluted her. Miriam carefully met his eyes and inclined her head as far as she could. “May I present you with your nephew twice removed: Vincenze?” The younger man bowed deeply, his red embroidered jacket tightening across broad shoulders. “You look splendid, my dear.”

“Do I?” Miriam shook her head. “I feel like an ornamental flower arrangement,” she said with some feeling.

“Charmed, ma’am,” said Vincenze with the beginning of a stutter.

“If you would like to accompany me?” Roland offered her his arm, and she took it with alacrity.

“Keep the speed down,” she hissed, glancing past him at his younger relative, who appeared to be too young to need to shave regularly.

“By all means, keep the speed down.” Roland nodded.

Miriam stepped forward experimentally. Her maidservants had taken over an hour to install her in this outfit: I feel like I’ve fallen into a medieval costume drama, she thought. Roland’s high linen collar and pantaloons didn’t look too comfortable, either, come to think of it. “What sort of occasion is this outfit customary for?” she asked.

“Oh, any formal event where one of our class might be seen,” Roland observed: “except that in public you would have a head covering and an escort. You would normally have much more jewellery, but your inheritance—” he essayed a shrug. “Is mostly in the treasury in Niejwein.” Miriam fingered the pearl choker around her neck uncomfortably.

“You wore, um, American clothing today,” she reminded him.

“Oh, but so is this, isn’t it? But of another period. It reminds us whence our wealth comes.”

“Right.” She nodded minutely. Business suits are informal dress for medieval aristocrats? And formal dress that was like something that belonged in a movie about the Renaissance. Everything goes into the exterior, she added to her mental file of notes on family manners.

Roland escorted her up the wide stairs, then at the tall doors at the top a pair of guards in dark suits and dark glasses announced them and ushered them in.

A long oak table awaited them in a surprisingly small dining room that opened off the duke’s reception room. Antique glass globes rising from brass stems in the wall cast a pale light over a table glistening with silver and crystal. A servant in black waited behind each chair. Duke Angbard was already waiting for them, in similarly archaic costume: Miriam recognized a sword hanging at his belt. Do swords go with male formal dress here? she wondered. “My dear niece,” he intoned, “you look marvellous! Welcome to my table.” He waved her to a seat at the right of the head, black wood with a high back and an amazingly intricate design carved into it.

‘The pleasure’s mine,” Miriam summoned up a dry smile, trying to strike the right note. These goons can kill you as soon as look at you, she reminded herself. Medieval squalor waited at the gate, and police cells down in the basement: Maybe this wasn’t so unusual outside the western world, but it was new to her. She picked up her skirts and sat down gingerly as a servant slid a chair in behind her. The delicacy of its carving said nothing about its comfort—the seat was flat and extremely hard.

“Roland, and young Vincenze! You next, by the Sky Father.”

“P-pleased to accept,” Vincenze quavered.

The outer door opened again, sparing him further risk of embarrassment, and a footman called out in a low voice: “The Lady Margit, Chatelaine of Praha, and her Excellency the Baroness Olga Thorold.”

Six women came in, and now Miriam realized that she was probably underdressed, for the two high-born each wore the most voluminous gowns she’d ever seen, with trains that required two maids to carry them and hair so entangled in knots of gold and rubies that they resembled birds’ nests. They looked like divas from a Wagner opera: the fat lady and the slim virgin. Margit of Praha was perhaps forty, her hair beginning to turn white and her cheeks sagging slightly. She looked as if she might be merry under other circumstances, but now her expression was grimly set. Olga Thorold, in contrast, was barely out of adolescence, a coltish young girl with a gown of gold and crimson and a neck swathed in gemstones that sparked fire whenever she moved. Olga looked half-amused by Miriam’s cool assessing glance.

“Please be seated,” said Angbard. Olga smiled demurely and bowed her neck to him. Margit, her chaperone, merely nodded and took a seat. “I believe you have heard tell of the arrival of our returning prodigal,” he commented. “Pitr, fetch wine if you please. The Medoc.”

“I have heard quite a few strangenesses today,” Margit commented in English that bore a strangely cupped accent. “This songbird in your left hand, she is the daughter of your sister, long-lost. Is this true?”

“It is so,” Angbard confirmed. A servant placed a cut-crystal glass of wine in front of Miriam. She began to reach toward it, then stopped, noticing that none of the others made such a gesture. “She has proven her heritage—the family trait—and the blood tests received barely an hour ago affirm her. She is of our bloodstock, and we have information substantiating, sadly, the death of her dam, Patricia Thorold Hjorth. I present to you Helge, also known as Miriam, of Thorold Hjorth, eldest heir surviving.”

“So charmed!” Olga simpered at Miriam, who managed a wordless nod in reply.

Plates garnished with a starter materialized in front of everybody—roasted fowl of some kind, tiny enough to fit in Miriam’s gloved hand. Nobody moved, but Angbard raised his hands. “In the name of the sky father—”

Miriam froze, so utterly startled that she missed the murmured continuation of his prayer, the flick of wine from glass across the tabletop, the answering murmur from Roland and Olga and Margit and the stuttered response from Vincenze. He said this wasn’t a Christian country, she reminded herself, in time to move her lips as if saying something—anything, any response—just to fit in. Completing his brief prayer, Angbard raised his glass. “Eat, drink, and be safe under my roof,” he told them, then took a mouthful of wine. After which it appeared to be open season.

Miriam’s stomach grumbled. She picked up knife and fork and attacked her plate discreetly.

“One hears the strangest stories, dear.” Miriam froze and glanced across the table: Margit was smiling at her sympathetically. “You were lost for so long, it must have been terrible!”

“Probably.” Miriam nodded absentmindedly and put her fork down. “And then again, maybe not.” She thought for a moment. “What have you heard?”

“Lots,” Olga began breathlessly. “You were orphaned by savages and raised in a workhouse as a scrub, isn’t that so, nana? Forced to sleep in the fireplace ashes at night! Then Cousin Roland found you and—”

“That’s enough, dear,” Margit said indulgently, raising a gloved hand. “It’s her story, to tell in her own way.” She raised an eyebrow at Miriam. Miriam blinked in return, more in startlement at the girl’s artlessness than her chaperone’s bluntness.

“I would not mind hearing for myself how your upbringing proceeded,” Angbard rumbled.

“Oh. Indeed.” Miriam glanced down, realizing that her appetizer had been replaced by a bowl of soup—some kind of broth, anyway—while they spoke. “Well. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you—” she smiled at Olga—“but I had a perfectly normal upbringing. You know my birth-mother disappeared? When she was found in, uh, the other side, I was taken to a hospital and subsequently adopted by a young childless couple.” Of stone-throwing student radicals who grew up to be academics, she didn’t say. Olga was hanging on her every word, as if she was describing some kind of adventure with pirates and exploits in far-off lands. Either the girl was an idiot or she was so sheltered that all of this sounded exotic to her. Probably the latter.

“A university professor and his wife, a critic and reviewer. I think there was some issue with my—with Patricia’s murder, so the adoption agency gave my adoptive parents her personal effects to pass on, but blocked inquiries about me from anywhere else, it being a matter for the police: unsolved murder, unidentified victim, and so on.”

“There’s only so much you can do to prevent a suicide bomber,” Angbard said with deceptive mildness. “But we’re not at immediate risk here,” he added, smiling at Miriam, an expression clearly intended to reassure her. “I’ve taken special measures to ensure our safety.”

“Your schooling,” Olga said. “Did you have a personal tutor?”

Miriam frowned, wondering just what she meant. “No, I went to college, like everybody else,” she said. “Premed and history of economics, then med school. Then, well, instead of continuing with med school, I went back to college again to study something else. Medicine didn’t get on with me.”

“You double-majored?” Roland interrupted.

“Yes, sort of.” Miriam put her fork down. She couldn’t eat any more, her stomach felt too full and her back ached. She leaned her shoulders against the chair but couldn’t relax. “I switched to journalism. Did an MA in it.” Her gloved hands felt hot and damp. They reminded her of a long shift on a geriatric ward, a different type of glove she’d ended up wearing for hours on end, cleaning up blockages. Corn starch, she thought absentmindedly. Must get some dusting powder. “I began on the biotech sector beat but found the IT industry shysters more interesting.” She paused. Olga’s expression was one of polite incomprehension, as if she’d suddenly begun speaking fluent Japanese. “Yourself?”

“Oh, I had a personal tutor!” Olga enthused. “But Daddy didn’t want to send me away to school on the other side. We were having a spot of bother and he thought I’d need too many bodyguards.”

Angbard smiled again, in a manner that Miriam found disquietingly avuncular. “There has been a threat of rebellion in Hel these past two years,” he explained with a nod in Miriam’s direction. “Your father needed the troops. Perhaps next year we can send you to Switzer-Land?”

“Oh, yes!” Olga clapped her hands together discreetly. “I’d like that.”

“What would you like to study?” Miriam asked politely.

“Oh, everything! Deportment, and etiquette, and management of domestic events—balls and banquets. It’s so important to get the little things right, and how are you to supervise everything if you don’t know what your steward is doing?” She gave a little squeal. “I do hope they’ll let me continue with the violin, though.”

Miriam forced herself to keep a straight face. “I can see you’re going to make a very good marriage,” she said, voice neutral. It all added up to a horribly consistent picture: the older woman as chaperone, the total eagerness for the description of her own upbringing and education, the wistfulness for a place at an expensive finishing school. This could be a problem, she thought dispassionately. If they expect me to behave like this, someone is going to be very disappointed. And it won’t be me…

“I’m sure she’ll marry well,” said Margit, venturing an opinion for the first time. Vincenze whispered something to Roland, who forced a knowing chuckle. “She’s of the right age.” Margit looked at Miriam dubiously. “I expect you’ll—” she trailed off.

“Discussions of Countess Helge’s eventual disposition are premature,” Angbard said coolly. “Doubtless she will want to make a strong alliance to protect herself. I’m sure she has a solid head on her shoulders, and will want to keep it there.” He smiled: a thin, humourless expression.

Miriam swallowed. You old bastard! You’re threatening me! Servants removed her plate and refilled her wine glass. Growing anger threatened to overwhelm her. She took an overhasty mouthful to conceal her expression, leaving a bleeding ring of lip gloss on the crystal. Her heart was pounding and she couldn’t seem to get enough air.

“To set your mind at ease, my dear, you are quite safe for the time being,” said Angbard. “This is a doppelgängered house, with a secured installation on the other side, as strongly defended there as here—but if you were to venture outside of it you would be in jeopardy. I am concerned about your other relatives, such as the family Axl, and your late father’s heirs of family Wu, in the far west. A strong alliance would go a long way toward protecting you.”

“An alliance,” she said thickly. It seemed to be hot in the dining room. She finished her glass, to buy some time. “Y’-know, it seems to me that you’re taking a lot for granted. That I’ll fit in and adapt to your ways.”

“Isn’t that how it always works?” asked Olga, confused. A dessert appeared, individual plates of chocolate truffles drizzled in syrup, but Miriam had no room for food. Her meal sat heavily on the top of her stomach.

“Not always, no,” Miriam said tightly. She picked up her full wineglass, then frowned, remembering two—three?—refills before it, and put it down again, a little harder than she’d intended. Roland smiled at her indulgently. They all seemed to be smiling at her too much this evening, she noticed. As if they expected her to break down in tears and thank them for rescuing her from a life of drudgery. She forced herself to straighten her shoulders, sipped sparingly from her glass, and tried to ignore the growing pains in the small of her back. If she could just get through the remainder of the meal she’d be all right. “But we’ll worry about that when we get to it, won’t we?” She mustered a pained smile and everyone pretended she hadn’t said anything. The strange cousin’s faux pas, she thought, as Vincenze asked Roland something about cavalry manoeuvres.

A few minutes later, Angbard rapped a silver dessert spoon on his glass. “If you have finished eating, by all means let the after-dinner entertainment commence,” he said.

Servants wheeled a tall trolley in and Miriam blinked in surprise. A huge thirty-inch Sony flat-panel television faced them, glassy-eyed, blocking the doorway. A black video recorder sat on a shelf below it, trailing cables. A white-gloved footman handed the remote to the duke on a silver plate. He bowed himself out as Angbard picked it up and pointed it at the set.

It was all Miriam could do to keep her jaw from dropping when a familiar signature tune came welling out of concealed speakers around the dining chamber. A helicopter descended onto a rooftop pad outside a penthouse suite: The famous Stetson-wearing villain stepped out into a sea of family intrigue. Miriam gulped down her wine without choking and reached for the inevitable—invisible—refill, barely tasting it. Her nose was going numb, a warning sign that she normally ignored at her peril, but this was just too bizarre to take while remaining sober. Dallas! she thought, making it a curse. As a choice of after-dinner videos, it was perfect. She’d been wrong about the ordeal being nearly over: The meal was only the beginning.

Roland tried to say something as they left Angbard’s rooms. “Hush,” she said, leaning on his arm as they descended the grand staircase. Her back ached and she was wobbling on her heels. “Just get me back to my room.”

“I think we need to talk,” he said urgently.

“Later.” She winced as they reached the corridor. Take lots of little steps, she thought. The ache in her back was worst in the region of her kidneys. She felt drunk. “Tomorrow.”

He held the door open for her. “Please—”

She looked into his eyes. They were wide and appealing: He was a transparently gallant, well-meaning young man—Young? He’s only a couple of years younger than I am—with a great ass, and she instinctively distrusted that. “Tomorrow,” she said firmly, then winced. “I’m tired. Maybe after breakfast?”

“By all means.” He stepped back and Miriam turned to close the door, only to find the head maidservant, Meg, standing ahead of her.

“Ah. Meg.” Miriam smiled experimentally. Glanced at the bathroom. “I’ve had a long day and I’m going to bed shortly. Would you mind leaving?”

“But how is you to undress?” Meg asked, confused. “What if you want something in the night?”

“What’s the usual arrangement?” Miriam asked.

“Why, we sleep inside the door here, against your needs.” She dipped her head.

“Oh my.” Miriam sighed, and would have slumped but for her dress, which seemed to be holding her upright. “Oh god.” She took a stride toward the bathroom, then caught herself on the door frame with one arm. “Well. You can start by undressing me.” It took the combined efforts of two maids ten minutes to strip Miriam down to her underwear. Eventually something gave way and her ribs could move again. “Oh. Oh!” Miriam took a breath, then gulped. “’Scuse me.” She fled dizzily into the bathroom, skidding on the tiled floor, and locked the door. “Shit, shit…” she planted herself firmly on the toilet.

After a moment, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her gaze fell on the dictaphone and she picked it up. “Memo to self,” she muttered. “At a formal banquet the pain in the small of your back might be the chair, but on the other hand it might be your kidneys backing up.” Four, no five, glasses of wine. She shook her head, still wobbly, and took another deep breath. “And the breathing trouble. Fuck ’em, next time—if they want formal, they can put up with whatever I can buy off the rack in Boston. I’m not turning myself into an orthopaedic basket case in the name of local fashion.”

Miriam took another deep breath. “Right. More notes. Margit of Praha, middle-aged, looks to be a chaperone for Olga Thorold, who seems to be senior to her. Olga is a ditz. Thinks a Swiss finishing school is higher education. Main ambition is to make a good marriage. I think Angbard may have been showing her to me as a role model, fuck knows why—maybe that’s what high-born women do around here. I think Vincenze is just horribly shy. May be some sort of all-male schooling for menfolk here. Their English is better than the women’s. I wonder if that means they get out more.”

She hit the “pause” button, then finished with the toilet. Standing up, she stripped off, then luxuriated in the sensation of having nothing at all in contact with her skin.

A thought struck her. “I’m going to have a bath,” she called through the door. “Don’t wait up for me. I don’t need any help.”

It was Miriam’s third bath of the day, but it didn’t strike her as excessive. Her skin itched. She poured expensive bath salts and perfumed oil into the water without remorse, then slid down into the sea of foam. “Memo: The bath obviously came over from the other side. That means they must have some way of moving heavy items. I need to find out how. If some asshole cousin is going to try killing me because of my name, I’d like to know whether they’re likely to use a pistol or a B-52.” A thought struck her. “It looks like they’re stuck in a development trap, like the Gulf Emirates. The upper class is fabulously rich and can import luxury items to their heart’s content, and send their kids for education overseas, but they can’t import enough, uh—stuff—to develop their population base. Start an industrial revolution. Whatever.” She leaned back, feeling her spine unkink. “I wish I knew more about developing world economics. Because if that’s what this all boils down to, I’ll have to change things.”

She put the recorder down and soaped herself all over, trying to scrub away the sweat and stress.

“Personal File: Roland. He’s too damn smooth.” She paused, biting her upper lip. “Reminds me of the college jocks, same kind of clean-cut hunky outdoors thing, except he’s painfully polite and doesn’t smell of beer or cigarettes. And he’s trying to hide something. Second cousin, which means, um. I have no idea what that means in the context of this extended Clan-family structure thing, except he treats me like I’m made of eggshells and soap bubbles. Great class, behaves like a real gentleman, then again, he’s probably a gold-plated bastard under the smooth exterior. That, or Uncle Angbard is trying to throw us together for some reason. And he is a tough cookie. Right out of The Godfather. Trust him as far as you can throw him.”

She leaned back farther. “Next Memo: sexual politics. These people are basically medievals in suits. Olga is the giveaway, but the rest of it is pretty hard to miss. Better not talk about Ben or the divorce, or the kid, they might get weird. Maybe I can qualify as an aged spinster aunt who’s too important to mess with, and they’ll leave me alone. But if they expect me to lie back and act like a, a countess, someone’s going to be in trouble.” And it could be me, she admitted. Stuck in a strange land with weird and stifling customs, under guard the whole time—

“Memo: The locket is not unique. Duke Angbard owns its twin. He gave it to me to keep and talked about a doppelgängered house. And the family trait. Which means they know all about it—and about how it works and how you use them. Hmm. Find out what they know before you start messing.”

There was a lot to think about. “Most kids sometimes play make-believe, that they’re actually the long-lost prince or princess of a magical kingdom. Not fucking Ruritania with poison-tasters, armed guards, and Dallas reruns as the height of sophisticated after-dinner entertainment.” She hummed tunelessly. “I wonder where they get the money to pay for the toys?” Something Paulette had said was trying to surface, but she couldn’t quite remember what.

The bathtub drained and Miriam caught herself yawning as she towelled herself dry. “Maybe it’ll all go away in the morning,” she told herself.

Economics Lesson

Miriam jolted awake with her eyes open and a strong sense of panic. Incoherent but un—pleasant dreams dogged her: goggled soldiers looming over her bed, limbs moving through molasses, too slow, too slow …

The bed was too big, much too big. She groped for the side of it, floundering across cold white sheets like an arctic explorer.

“Aagh.” She reached open air, found herself looking down at the floor from an unaccustomed height. Her arm hurt, her mouth tasted horrible—something had obviously died in it the night before, and she ached everywhere but especially in a tight band across her forehead. “Mornings!” The air was distinctly cold. Shivering, she threw the comforter off and sat up, then jumped.

“What are you doing in here!” she squeaked, grabbing the covers.

“Excuse, ma’am—we required to attend?” The maid’s accent was thick and hard to make out: English clearly wasn’t her first language, and she looked shocked, though whether it was at Miriam’s nakedness or her reaction to her presence wasn’t clear.

“Well.” Miriam held her breath for a moment, trying to get her heart under control. “You can just wait outside the door. I’ll be up in a minute.”

“But how is you to be dress?” asked the woman, a rising note of unhappiness in her voice.

“I’ll take care of that myself.” Miriam sat up again, this time holding the bedding around her. “Out. I mean, right out of my chambers, all of you, completely out! You can come back in half an hour. And shut the door.”

She stood up as the door clicked shut, her heart still pounding. “How the hell do they manage?” she wondered aloud. “Jesus. Royalty!” It came out as a curse. It had never occurred to her to sympathize with the Queen of England before, but the idea of being surrounded by flunkies monitoring her every breath gave her a sinking feeling in her stomach.

I’ve got to get away from this for a while, she realized. Even if I can’t avoid them in the long term, they’ll drive me mad if I don’t get some privacy. Domestic servants were something that had passed out of the American middle-class lifestyle generations ago. Just the idea of having to deal with them made Miriam feel as if she was about to break out in hives.

Right. I’ve got to get away for a bit. How? Where? Miriam glanced at the bedside table and saw temporary escape sitting there, next to her dictaphone. Ah. A plan! She approached the huge chest of drawers and rummaged through it, hunting clothes. Ten minutes later she was dressed in urban casual—jeans, sneakers, sweater, leather jacket. Someone had helpfully installed some of her bags in the bottom of a cavernous wardrobe, and her small reporter’s briefcase was among them, preloaded with a yellow pad, pens, and some spare tapes and batteries.

She poked her nose around the bedroom door cautiously. No, there was nobody lurking in ambush. It worked! she told herself. A quick dash to the bathroom and she was ready to activate her plan. Ready, apart from a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, anyway. “Damn. I’ll need money.” She ransacked the reception room in haste, hunting for her personal effects, and found them in a closed bureau of exquisite workmanship—her wallet, driving license, credit cards, and house keys. Either the servants didn’t dare tamper with the private possessions of a relative of the duke—or they didn’t know what they were. She found some other items in the bureau that shook her—her snub-nosed pistol and a box of ammunition that she didn’t remember buying. “What is this?” she asked herself before putting the gun in her jacket pocket. She kept her hand around it. If what she was planning didn’t work … well, she’d jump that hurdle when she reached it.

They’re treating me as family, she realized. Adult, mature, sensible family, not like Olga the ditz. Servants and assassins crawling out of the woodwork, it’s a whole different world. Oh my.

Carefully not thinking too hard about the likely consequences of her actions, Miriam walked to the centre of the reception room between sofa and fireplace, snapped open her locket with her left hand, and focused on the design inside.

“Owww!” She stumbled slightly and cradled her forehead. Vision blurred, and everything throbbed. “Shit!” She blinked furiously through the pounding of her abruptly upgraded headache. The room was still there: bureau, chairs, fireplace—

“I wondered how long you’d take,” Roland said from behind her.

She whirled, bringing her gun to bear, then stopped. “Jesus, don’t do that!”

Roland watched her from the sofa, one hand holding a pocket watch, the other stretched out along the cushioned back. He was wearing a sports jacket and chinos with an open-necked shirt, like a stockbroker on casual Friday.

The sofa was identical to the unoccupied one in the suite she’d just left—or so close as to be its twin. But Roland wasn’t the only different feature of the room. The quality of light coming in through the window was subtly altered, and some items had appeared on the side table, and the bedroom door was shut. “This isn’t the same apartment,” she said slowly, past the fog of headache. “It’s a doppelgänger, right? And we’re on the other side. My side.”

Roland nodded. “Are you going to shoot me or not?” he asked. “Because if you aren’t, you ought to put that away.”

“Oops. Sorry.” She lowered the pistol carefully and pointed it at the floor. “You startled me.”

Roland relaxed visibly. “I think it’s safe to say that you startled me, too. Do you always carry a gun when you explore your house?”

“I hope you’ll excuse me,” she said carefully, “but after waking up in bed with a stranger leaning over me for the second time in as many days, I tend to overreact a little. And I wasn’t sure how the duke would respond to me going walkabout.”

“Really?” He raised an eyebrow.

“No shit.” She glanced around. The bathroom door was closed—she needed some Tylenol or some other painkiller bad. “Do you keep hot and cold running servants on this side, too?”

“Not many; there’s a cook and some occasional cleaning staff, but mostly this is reserved for Covert Operations, and we pay much more attention to secrecy. Over here it’s a … a safe house, I guess you’d call it, not a palace. I take it you haven’t eaten—can I invite you to join me downstairs for breakfast?”

“As long as I don’t have to dress for it,” she said, checking then pocketing her gun. She picked up her briefcase. “I dug the lecture about not being able to hide, I don’t want you to misunderstand me. But there are some things I really need to do around town today. Assuming I’m not under house arrest?”

Roland shrugged. “I don’t see why not,” he said. “I can answer for your security, in any case. Will you be able to do your stuff if I come along?”

Miriam looked out of the window and took a deep breath. “Well.” She looked at him again. “I guess so.” Damn, there goes my chance to warn Paulie. “Is it really that risky?”

“Breakfast first.” He was already heading for the door. He added, over his shoulder, “By now news of your arrival will have leaked out and junior members of at least two of the other families will be desperate, absolutely desperate. But they don’t know what you look like so you probably don’t need a permanent bodyguard yet. And once your position is secure, they won’t be able to touch you.”

“ ‘Breakfast,’” she said, “ ‘first.’”

There was a kitchen on the ground floor, but there was nothing medieval about it. With its stainless-steel surfaces, huge chest freezer, microwave ovens, and gas range, it could have been the back of a restaurant. The dining room attached to it didn’t look anything like Angbard’s private apartment, either. It reminded Miriam more of a staff room at an upmarket consultant’s office. A couple of guys in dark suits nodded at Roland from a table, but they were finishing up cups of coffee and they cleared out as soon as he offered her a seat. “Tell me, what did you think of, uh, Olga?”

While she tried to puzzle out what he meant by that question, a waitress appeared, notepad poised. “What’s on the menu this morning?” Miriam asked.

“Oh, anything you’d like.” She smiled breezily. “Coffee, we have a whole range of different types at present. Eggs, bacon, sausages, granola, breakfast cereal, juice—whatever.”

“Double espresso for me,” said Roland. “Rye sourdough toast, extra-mature thick-peel marmalade, unsalted butter. Two fried eggs, sunny-side up.”

“Hmm. A large cappuccino for me, I think,” said Miriam. “Can you manage a Spanish omelette?”

“Sure!” Miss Breezy grinned at her. “With you in five minutes.”

Miriam blinked at her receding back. “Now that is what I call service.”

“We take it seriously around here,” Roland said dryly. “That’s why we go through a Human Resources department.”

“You run this household like a company.” Miriam frowned. “In fact, this is a family business, isn’t it? That’s what you’re in.” She paused. “Interuniversal import/export. Right?”

“Right.” He nodded.

“And you’ve been doing it for hundreds of years.”

“Right you are,” he said encouragingly. “You’re figuring it out for yourself.”

“It’s not that hard.” The distinctive noise of a coffee percolator made her raise her head. “How do you think last night went?”

“I think—” he watched her examining him. “Do you know you’ve got a very disquieting stare?”

“Yes.” She grinned at him. “I practice in the mirror before I go in to an interview. Sometimes it makes my victims give away more than they intended to. And sometimes it just gives them bad dreams afterward.”

“Eeh. I can see you’d be a bad enemy, Miss Beckstein.”

“Miz, to you.” She paused.

The waitress was back, bearing a tray laden with coffee, milk, and a sugar bowl. “Call if you need anything more,” she reassured them, then disappeared again.

Roland’s eyes narrowed at he looked at her. “You remind me of when I was at college,” he said.

“You were at college?” she asked. “Over here, I mean?”

“Oh, yes.” He picked up his espresso and spooned a small quantity of brown sugar crystals into it.

“The girls don’t seem to get that treatment,” she pointed out sharply.

“Oh, but some of them do,” he replied, blowing on his coffee. “At least, these days, this generation. Olga is a throwback—or, rather, her father is. I’m not sure quite what the duke was trying to prove, inviting you to dine with us, but he said something about culture shock earlier. He’s a perceptive old coot, gets hold of some very unexpected ideas and refuses to let them go. I’m half-wondering if he was testing you. Seeing if you’d break cover under stress or how you’d hold up in public by using an audience he could silence if the need arose.”

“A-ha.” She took a first sip of her coffee. “So what did you study?”

“As an undergrad, economics and history. Before Harvard, my parents sent me to Dartmouth,” he said quietly. “I think I went a bit crazy in my first couple of years there. It’s very different over here. Most of the older generation don’t trust the way everything has changed since 1910 or so. Before then, they could kid themselves that the other side, this America, was just different, not better. Like the way things were when our first ancestor accidentally stumbled upon a way to visit a town in New England in 1720 or so. But now they’re afraid that if we grew up here or spent too much time we’d never want to come home.”

“Sort of like defecting diplomats and athletes from the old Communist Bloc,” Miriam prodded.

“Approximately.” He nodded. “The Clan’s strength is based on manpower. When we go back, you and me, we’ll have to carry some bags. Every time we cross over, we carry stuff to and fro. It’s the law, and you need a good reason to flout it. There’s a post room: You’re welcome to come and go at will as long as you visit it each time to carry post bags back and forth.”

“A post room,” she said.

“Yes, it’s in the basement. I’ll show you it after—ah, food.”

For a few minutes they were both too busy to talk. Miriam had to admit that the omelette she’d ordered was exceptionally good. As she was draining her coffee, Roland took up the conversation again. “I’m over here to run some business errands for the Boss today. I hope you don’t mind if I take a few minutes out while you’re doing whatever it is you were planning to do?”

“No, I mean, be my guest—” Miriam was nonplussed. “I’m not sure,” she added slowly. “There are a few things I needed to do, starting with, well, just seeing that I’m allowed out and about, know what I mean?”

“Did you have any concrete plans?” Roland looked interested.

“Well,” she leaned back and thought. “I have—had, before all this landed on me—a commission to write a feature for a magazine. Nothing hard, but I’ll need my iMac to write it on. And I must write it, if I don’t want to vanish off the face of the earth, career wise.” She tried a smile. “Got to keep my options open. I’m a working girl.”

Roland nodded. “Okay. And after that?”

“Well. I was thinking about going home. Check my answering machine, make sure everything’s okay, reassure the neighbours that I’m all right, that kind of thing.” Make sure they haven’t found Paulie’s CD-ROM. Try to get a message to her to keep her head down. “I don’t have to stay for long,” she added hastily. “I’m not thinking about running away, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Roland frowned thoughtfully. “Listen, is it just your mail and phone that you need? Because if so, it would be a lot safer just to divert everything. We’ve got a telephone switch in the subbasement and we can slam your domestic subscriber lines right over. But it would be a good thing if you avoided your home for the next few days. I can send someone around if there’s anything you need, but—” he shrugged.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because.” He put his butter knife down. “We, uh, when there’s a succession crisis or a war within the Clan, things can get very messy, very fast.” He paused for a moment, then rushed on: “I wouldn’t want to risk anyone getting a clean shot at you.”

Miriam sat very still, blood pounding in her ears. “Does that mean what I think it means?” she asked.

“Yes—your house is a target. We have it under surveillance, but accidents can happen, someone can miss something, and you might be walking into a booby trap. Tripwires inside the front door. It won’t be secure until we’ve doppelgängered it, which might take some time because it’s way out in the sticks on this side, and we’d need to fortify the area to stop anyone crossing over inside your living room. It took days for us to find you, even with the office chair in the forest as a marker. But you might not be so lucky next time.”

“Oh.” Miriam nodded to herself, absorbing this new and unwelcome fact. So you found me by the chair? “What about my mother?”

Roland looked puzzled. “But your mother’s—”

“No, I mean my adoptive mother.” Miriam gritted her teeth. “You know, the woman who raised me from a baby as her own? Who is now all alone and wheelchair-bound? Is she at risk? Because if so—” she realized that her voice was rising.

“I’ll see to it at once,” Roland said decisively and pulled out his mobile phone. It obviously hadn’t occurred to him that Iris was of any importance.

“Do so,” Miriam said tersely. “Or I’ll never speak to you again.”

“That’s uncalled for.” Roland looked serious. “Is there anyone else I should know about?” he asked after a moment.

Miriam took a deep breath. Here goes, she thought. “My ex-husband is remarried and has a wife and child,” she said. “Is he at risk?”

Roland mulled it over for a minute. “He’s a commoner,” he said finally. ‘There were no children and you’re divorced. So I guess he’s out of the frame.”

No children. Miriam shook her head. “You’ll have to tell me about your inheritance laws,” she said carefully. Oh, what complications! Someone out there in America was a twelve-year-old girl—Miriam didn’t know where, she only knew general details about her adoptive family—who might have inherited Miriam’s current problem. She’s too young, Miriam thought instinctively. And she has no locket. But the adoption records were sealed and nobody but Ben and Iris knew about the pregnancy. If the family hadn’t found her, then—

“Oh, they’re simple enough,” said Roland, a slightly bitter note in his voice. “The, um, family talent? It only breeds true among the pure-blooded line. They found that out pretty early. It’s what the biologists call a recessive trait. On the other side, um, marriage customs are different—cousin marriages are allowed, for one thing—and for another, children who don’t have the talent aren’t part of the Clan. But they’re kept in the families. They form the outer, nonshareholding part of the Clan, but if two of them marry some of their children may inherit the talent.”

Good news mixed with bad news. On the one hand, her daughter—who she hadn’t seen since two days after her birth—was safe from the attentions of the family, safe to lead a normal life unless Miriam drew attention to her. As long as the family dug no deeper than they had so far. On the other hand—“You’re telling me that my parents were cousins?”

“Second cousins once removed, I think,” Roland replied. “Yes. By family law and custom marrying out is forbidden. You might want to bear that in mind, by the way, it’s the one big taboo.” He glanced aside nervously. “But you’re probably safe because you did it over here and divorced him before anyone knew.” He was staring at the wall, she realized, staring at something that wasn’t there in an attempt to avoid her gaze. Unpleasant memories? “Otherwise there would be repercussions. Bad ones.”

“You’re telling me.” She noticed her fingers turning white around the rim of her coffee cup. “So presumably Uncle Angbard will make life hard for me if I try to take off and he wants me to marry someone who’s a not-too-close family member.”

“That’s an understatement.” Roland’s cheek twitched. “It’s not as if the council would give him any other options,” he muttered.

“What else?” Miriam asked as the silence grew uncomfortable.

“Well!” Roland shook himself and sat up. He began ticking off points on his fingers, his movements precise and economical and tense. “We are expected to abide by the rules. First, when you come over here, you stop by the post room in each direction and carry whatever’s waiting there. You get a free pass this time, but not in the future. Second, you check with Security before you go anywhere. They’ll probably want you to carry a mobile phone or a pager, or a bodyguard if the security condition is anything but blue—blue for cold. Oh, and third—” he reached into an inner pocket—“the duke anticipated that you might want to go shopping, so he asked me to give you this.” He passed her an envelope, the hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

“Hmm.” Miriam opened it. There was an unsigned silvery-coloured Visa card inside with her name on it “Hey, what’s this?”

“Sign it.” He offered her a pen, looking pleased with himself, then watched while she scribbled on the back. “Your estate is in escrow for now, but you should consider this an advance against your assets, which are reasonably large.” His grin widened. “There may be problems with the family, but spending money isn’t one of them.”

“Oh.” She slid it into her purse. “Any other messages from the duke?”

“Yes.” Roland managed a straight face. “He said, ‘Tell her she’s got a two-million-dollar credit limit and to try not to spend it all at once.’”

Miriam swore in a distinctly unladylike manner.

He laughed briefly. “It’s your money, Miriam—Countess Helge. The import/export trade your ancestors pioneered is lucrative, and you can certainly earn your keep through it. Now how about we visit the post room so I can do my business, and then maybe you can do whatever it is that you need to do?”

The post room was a concrete-lined subbasement, with pigeonholes sized to accommodate the big wheeled aluminium suitcases that the family used for “mail.” Roland picked a clipboard from the wall and read through it. “Hmm. Just two cases to FedEx today and that’s it.”

“Suitcases.” She looked at them dubiously, imagining all sorts of illegal contraband.

“Yes. Help me. Take that one. Yes, the handle locks into place as the wheels come out.”

Struggling slightly, Miriam tugged the big suitcase out of the post room and into the stark cargo elevator next to it. Roland hit the button for the basement, and they lurched upward.

“What’s in these things?” she asked after a moment. “Tell me if it’s none of my business.” I’m not sure I want to know, she thought, unable to avoid a flashback to the meeting in Joe’s office, the threats on her phone.

“Oh, it’s perfectly legal,” Roland assured her. “This is all stuff that is cheap enough in Gruinmarkt and Soffmarkt or the other kingdoms of the coast and wants shipping to the Outer Kingdom—that would be California and Oregon—on this side. On the other side, there are no railroads or airports and cargo has to go by mule train across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. Which are full of nomad tribes, so it takes months and is pretty risky. We bring our goods across to this side, heavily padded, and ship them by FedEx. The most valuable items in here are the sealed letters sent by the family post—we charge several times their weight in gold in return for a postal service that crosses the continent in a week. We also move intelligence. Our western Clan members—the Wu family, formerly known as Arnesen, and braided with the eastern families—exchange information with us. By coordinating our efforts, we can protect our traditional shipping on the other side from large bandit tribes like the Apache. It also helps us exert political leverage beyond our numbers. For example, if the Emperor Outside dies and there is a succession struggle, we can loan the Wu family funds with which to ensure a favourable outcome and do so long before news would otherwise reach us across the continental divide.”

Miriam’s eyes were nearly bulging as she tried to make sense of this. “You mean there’s no telegraph?” she asked.

“We are the telegraph,” he told her. “As for the rest of what’s in these suitcases, it’s mostly stuff that only comes from the east and is expensive in the west. Like, for example, diamonds from India. They’re expensive enough in the Grainmarkt and almost impossible to get in the Outer Kingdom—it’s much cheaper to ship them across the Boreal Ocean by barque than the western ocean by junk, especially since the Mongols refuse to trade with the east. Or penicillin. The ability to guarantee that a prince’s wife will not die of childbed fever is worth more than any amount of precious stones.”

“And going the other way …”

“More messages. More diplomatic intelligence. Spices and garnets and rubies and gold from the Outer Kingdom’s mines.”

Miriam nodded. The elevator doors opened onto the underground garage, and she followed him out into the concrete maze.

Several vehicles were parked there, including a long black Mercedes limousine—and her own slightly battered Saturn. Roland headed for the Merc. “Once we’ve fitted your car with some extras, you can use it—if you want,” he said. “But you can use any of the other cars here, too.”

Miriam shook her head, taking in a sleek Jaguar coupe parked behind a concrete column. “I’m not sure about that,” she murmured. What would it do for my independence? she wondered, watching as Roland opened the Mercedes’s trunk and lifted the suitcases into it. The two-million-dollar card in her purse was much more intoxicating than the wine last night, but didn’t feel as real. I’ll have to try it, she realized. But what if I get addicted?

The Mercedes was huge, black, and carried almost a ton of armour built into its smoothly gleaming bodywork. Miriam only realized this when she tried to open the passenger side door—it was heavy, and as it swung open she saw that the window was almost two inches thick and had a faint greenish tint. She sat down, pulled her seatbelt on, and tugged the door shut. It thudded into position as solidly as a bank vault.

“You’re serious about being attacked,” she said soberly.

“I don’t want to alarm you,” said Roland, “but the contents of those two suitcases are worth the equivalent of twenty million dollars each on the other side. And there are several hundred active family members that we know of—and possibly ones we don’t in hidden cells established by their family elders to gain a competitive edge over their rivals in the Clan. You’re unusual in that you’re a hidden one who was never intended to be hidden. The families in camera could raid us, and unless we took precautions we’d be sitting ducks. A young man like Vincenze—” he shrugged—“maybe a bit more mature. Waiting on a street corner. Can set off a bomb or walk up behind someone and shoot him, then just vanish into thin air. Unless there’s a doppelgänger on the other side or maybe a hill where over here there’s a cleared area, there’s no way of stopping that.”

“Twenty million.”

“At a very approximate exchange rate,” Roland offered, starting the engine. Bright daylight appeared from an electrically operated door at the top of the exit ramp. He put the Mercedes in gear and gently slid forward. “We’re fairly safe, though. This car has been customized by the same people that made Eduard Shevardnadze’s car. The President of the Republic of Georgia.”

“Should that mean something?” asked Miriam.

“Two RPG-7s, an antitank mine, and eighty rounds from a heavy machine gun. The passengers survived.”

“I hope we’re not going to encounter that sort of treatment,” she said with feeling, reaching sideways to squeeze his fingers.

“We aren’t.” He squeezed back briefly, then accelerated up the ramp. “But there’s no harm in taking precautions.”

They came up out of the ground near Belmont, and Roland chauffeured them smoothly onto the Cambridge turnpike and then 1-95 and the tunnel. They exited the highway near Logan International, and Roland drove toward the freight terminal. Miriam relaxed against the black leather and propped her feet up against the wooden dashboard. It smelled like a very expensive private club, redolent of the stink of money. She’d been in rooms with billionaires before and any number of sharkish venture capitalists, but somehow this was different. Most of the billionaires she knew were manipulative jerks or workaholics, obsessive and insecure about something or other. Roland, in contrast, was “old money”—old and unselfconscious, mature as a vintage wine. So old that he’d never known what it was like to be poor—or even upper-middle class. For a moment, she felt a flash of green-eyed envy—then remembered the two-million-dollar ballast in her purse.

“Roland, how rich am I?” she asked nervously.

“Oh, very,” he said casually. He swung the Mercedes into the entrance to a parking lot, where an automatic barrier lifted—also automatically—and then brought them to a halt in front of an anonymous-looking office with a FedEx sign above it. “I don’t know for sure,” he added, “but I think your share may run to almost one percent of the Clan’s net worth. Certainly many millions.”

“Oh, how marvellous,” she said sarcastically. Then more thoughtfully, “I could pay all Iris’s medical bills out of the petty cash. Couldn’t I?”

“Yes. Help me with the suitcases?”

“If you help me sort out Iris’s medical bills. Seriously.”

“‘Seriously’? Yes, I’ll do that.” She stood up and stretched, then waited while Roland lifted the heavy cases out of the trunk. She took one and followed him as he rolled the other up to the door, swiped a magnetic card, and entered under the watchful eye of a security camera.

They came to a small office where a middle-aged man in a white shirt and black tie was waiting. ‘Today’s consignment,” said Roland. “I’d like to introduce you to Miriam. She might be making runs on her own in future—if things work out. Miriam, this is Jack. He handles dispatch and customs at this end.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Jack, handing Roland a board with a three-part form ready to sign. “This is just a formality to confirm I’ve received everything,” he added for her benefit. Balding, overweight, and red-faced, Jack was about as homely as anyone she’d seen since she’d been pitched headfirst into this nightmare of aristocracy. Miriam smiled at him.

“There, that’s it, then,” he said, taking the papers back from Roland. “Have a nice day, now!”

“My best to your wife,” Roland replied. “Come on, Miriam. Time to go.”

“Okay.” She followed him back to the car. He started the engine and eased them back out into the local traffic around the light industrial area. “Where next?”

“Oh, we pick up the cases for the return leg, then we’re at liberty,” he said. “I thought you wanted to do some shopping? And some other things to see to? How about a couple of hours at Copley Place and messing around Back Bay, then lunch?”

“Sounds good,” she agreed.

“Okay.” He pulled over, into another parking lot. “Give me a hand again?”

“Sure.”

They got out and Miriam followed him into yet another office. The procedure was the same in reverse: Roland signed a couple of forms and this time collected two identical, ribbed aluminium suitcases, each so heavy that Miriam could barely carry hers. “Right, now into town,” he said after he lifted them both into the car’s trunk. “It’s almost ten o’clock. Think you’ve got time to hit the shops and be back by five?”

“I’m sure I have.” She smiled at him. “There’s some stuff I could do with your help for, actually. Want to hang around?”

“Delighted to oblige.”

The Copley Place shops weren’t exactly ideal, but it was totally covered and had enough stuff in it to keep Miriam occupied for a couple of hours. The platinum card didn’t catch fire—it didn’t even show signs of overheating when she hit Niemann Marcus and some less obvious shops for a couple of evening outfits and an expensive piece of rolling luggage.

After the first half hour, Roland did what many polite heterosexual men did: zoned out and smiled or nodded whenever she asked him for an opinion. Which was exactly what Miriam was hoping for, because her real goal wasn’t to fill her wardrobe with evening dresses and expensive lingerie (although that was an acceptable side effect) but to pull out a bundle of cash and use some of it to buy certain accessories. Such as a prepaid mobile phone and a very small Sony laptop with a bundle of software (“If I can’t go back home, I’ll need something to write my articles on,” she pointed out to Roland, hoping he wouldn’t figure out how big a loss-leader that would make it). She finished her spree in a sports shop, buying some outdoors tools, a pocket GPS compass, and a really neat folding solar panel, guaranteed to charge her laptop up—which she picked up while he was poking around a display of expensive hunting tackle.

She wasn’t totally sure what she was going to do with this stuff, but she had some ideas. In particular, the CD-ROMs full of detailed maps of the continental United States and the other bits of software she’d slipped in under his nose ought to come in handy. Even if they didn’t, she figured that if Angbard expected her to shop like a dizzy teenager, then she ought to get him used to her shopping like a dizzy teenager. That way he’ll have one less handle on me when I stop, she thought, a trifle smugly.

Twelve thousand dollars went really fast when she was buying Sony notebooks, and even faster when she switched to Hermes and Escada and less well-known couture. But it felt unreal, like play money. Some of the clothes would have %> be altered to fit, and delivered: She took them anyway. ‘I figure it can be altered on the other side,” she murmured to Roland by way of explanation. He nodded enthusiastically and she managed to park him for a few minutes in a bookshop next door to her real target, a second hand theatrical clothing shop for an old-fashioned long skirt and shirtwaist that could pass for one of the servants. Theatrical supplier, my ass, she thought. The escape committee is in!

Around two o’clock she took mercy on Roland, who by this time was flagging, checking his watch every ten minutes and following her around like a slightly dejected dog. “It’s okay,” she said, “I’m about done. How about we catch that lunch you were talking about, then head back to the house? I’ve got to get some of these clothes altered, which means looking up Ma’am Rosein, and then I need to spend a couple of hours on the computer.”

“That’s great,” Roland said with unconcealed sincerity. “How about some clam chowder for lunch?”

Miriam really didn’t go for seafood, but if it kept him happy that was fine by her. “Okay,” she said, towing along her designer escape kit. “Let’s go eat!”

They ate. Over lunch she watched Roland carefully. He’s about twenty-eight, she thought. Dartmouth. Harvard. Real Ivy League territory and then some. Classic profile. She sized him up carefully. Shaves well. Looks great. No visible bad habits, painfully good manners. If there wasn’t clearly something going on, I’d be drooling. Wouldn’t I? she thought. In fact, maybe there’s something in that? Maybe that’s why Angbard is shoving us together. Or not. I need to find out more about the skeletons in the Clan closet and the strange fruit rotting on the family tree. And there were worse ways of doing that than chatting with Roland over lunch.

“Why is your uncle putting you on my case?” she finally asked over dessert, an exquisite crème brûlée. “I mean, what’s your background? You said he was thinking one step ahead. Why you?”

“Hrrm.” Roland stirred sugar into his coffee, then looked at her with frank blue eyes. “I think your guess is as good as mine.”

“You’re unmarried.” She kicked herself immediately afterward. Very perceptive, Ms. Holmes.

“As if that matters.” He smiled humourlessly. “I have an attitude problem.”

“Oh?” She leaned forward.

“Let’s just say, Angbard wants me where he can keep an eye on me. They sent me to college when I was eighteen,” he said morosely. “It was—well, it was an eye-opener. I stayed for four years, then applied to Harvard immediately. Economics and history. I thought I might be able to change things back home. Then I decided I didn’t want to go back. After my first year or so, I’d figured out that I couldn’t stay over here just on the basis of my name—I’d have to work. So I did. I wasn’t much of one for the girls during that first degree—” he caught her speculative look—“or the boys.”

“So?” Personal Memo: Find out what they think of sex, as opposed to marriage. The two are not always interchangeable. “What next?”

“Well.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “I wanted to stay over here. I got into a postgrad research, program, studying the history of economic development in the Netherlands. Met a girl named Janice along the way. One thing led to another.”

“You wanted to marry her?” asked Miriam.

“Sky father, no!” He looked shocked. “The Clan council would never have stood for it! Even if it was just over here. But I could buy us both a house over here, make believe that—” He stopped, took a sip of coffee, then put his cup down again. All through the process, he avoided Miriam’s gaze.

“You didn’t want to go back,” she stated.

“You can cross over twice in a day, in an hour, if you take beta-blockers,” he said quietly. “Speaking of which.” He extracted a blisterpack of pills from his inner pocket and passed it across to her. “They do something about the headaches. You can discharge your duty to Clan and family that way, keep the post moving, and live nine-tenths of your life free of… of… of…”

Miriam waited for him to sort his tongue out.

“Jan and I had two years together,” he finally said quietly. “Then they broke us up.”

“The Clan.” Her mouth was dry. She turned the pack of pills over and over, reading the label. “Did they—”

“Indirectly.” He interrupted her deliberately, then finished his coffee cup. “Look, she kept asking questions. Questions that I couldn’t answer. Wasn’t allowed to answer. I’d have been required to go home and marry someone of high rank within the Clan sooner or later, just to continue the bloodline, but I’m a man. I’m allowed to spend some time settling down. But eventually … if we marry out we go extinct in two, maybe three generations. And the money goes down faster, because our power base is built on positive market externalities—have you—”

“Yes,” she said, mouth dry despite the coffee she’d just swallowed without tasting. “The more of you there are, the more nodes you’ve got to trade between and the more effectively you can run your import/export system, right?”

“Right. We’re in a population trap, and it takes special dispensation to marry out. Our position is especially tenuous because of the traditional nobility; a lot of them see us as vile upstarts, illegitimate and crude, because we can’t trace our ancestry back to one of the hetmen of the Norge fleet that conquered the Gruinmarkt away from the Auslaand tribes about four, five hundred years ago. We find favour with the crown, because we’re rich—but even there we are in a cleft stick: It does not do well to become so powerful that the crown itself is threatened. If you get the chance to marry into the royal family—of Gruinmarkt or of one of our neighbours—but that’s the only way you could marry out without the council coming down on you.”

“Huh. Other kingdoms? Where did they come from, anyway? It’s, I’d have said medieval—”

“Nearly.” Roland nodded. “I did some digging into it. You are aware that in your world the feudal order of western Europe emerged from the wreckage of the Roman Empire, imposed largely by Norse—Viking—settlers who had assimilated many of the local ways? I am not sure, but I believe much the same origin explains our situation here. On this coast, there are several kingdoms up and down the seaboard. Successive waves of emigration from the old countries of the Holy Empire conquered earlier kingdoms up and down the coast, forced into a militarized hierarchy to defend themselves against the indigenous tribes. Vikings, but Vikings who had assimilated the Roman church—the worship of the divine company of gods—and such learning as the broken wreckage of Europe had to offer. We sent agents across the Atlantic to explore the Rome of this world thirty years or so ago: It lies unquiet beneath the spurs of the Great Khan, but the churches still make burned offerings before the gods. Maybe when there are more of us we will open up trade routes in Europe … but not yet.”

“Um. Okay.” Miriam nodded, reduced to silence by a sudden sense of cultural indigestion. This is so alien! “So what about you? The Clan, I mean. Where do you—we—fit into the picture?”

“The Clan families are mostly based in Gruinmarkt, which is roughly where Massachusetts and New York and Maine are over here. But we, the Clan families, were ennobled only in the past six generations or so—the old landholders won’t ever let you forget it. The Clan council voted to make children of any royal union full members—that way, the third generation will be royalty, or at least nobility, and have the talent. But nobody’s married into one of the royal families yet—either in the Gruinmarkt, or north or south for that matter.

“In the Outer Kingdom, to the west, things are different again—-there are civil service exams. Again, we’ve got an edge there. We have schools over here and ways to cheat. But I was talking about the population trap, wasn’t I? The council has a long arm. They won’t let you go. And it’ll take more than just one person on the inside, pushing, to make them change. I’ve tried. I got a whole huge reform program mapped out that’d break their dependency, begin developing the Gruinmarkt—but the council tore it up and threw it out without even reading it. Only Duke Angbard kept them from going further and declaring me a traitor.”

“Let me get this straight,” Miriam said, leaning forward. “You lived with Janice until she couldn’t put up with you not telling her what you were doing for two hours a day, couldn’t put up with not knowing about your background, and until your elders began leaning on you to get married. Right?”

“Wrong,” he said. “I told Uncle Angbard where he could shove his ultimatum.” He hunched over, a picture of misery. “But she moved out, anyway. She’d managed to convince herself that I was some kind of gangster, drug smuggler, whatever, up to my ears in no good. I was trying, trying, to get permission to go over for good, to try to make it up to her, to make everything all right. But she was killed by a car. A hit-and-run accident, the police said.”

He fell silent, story run down.

Well, she thought. Words failed her for a minute. “Were the two things connected? Causally, that is?”

“You mean, did the council have her killed?” he asked harshly. “I don’t know. I’ve refused to investigate the possibility. Thousands of pedestrians are killed by hit-and-run drivers every year. She’d walked out on me, and we might never have got back together. And if I did discover that one of my relatives was responsible, I’d have to kill them, wouldn’t I? You didn’t live through the war. Trust me, you don’t want to go there, to having assassins stepping out of thin air behind people and garrotting them. Far better to let it lie.”

“That doesn’t sound like the same man speaking,” she speculated.

“Oh, but it does.” He smiled lopsidedly. “The half of me that is a cold-blooded import/export consultant, not the half of me that’s a misguided romantic reformer who thinks the Gruinmarkt could industrialize and develop in less than half a century if the Clan threw its weight behind the project. I’m hoping the duke is listening …”

“Well, he has you where he can keep an eye on you.” Miriam paused. “For your own good, to his way of thinking.”

“Politics.” Roland made it sound like a curse. “I don’t care about who gets the credit as long as the job gets done!” He shook his head distractedly. “That’s the problem. Too many vested interests, too many frightened little people who think any progress that breaks the pattern of Clan business activities is a personal attack on them. And that’s before we even get started talking about the old aristocracy, the ones who aren’t part of us.”

“He’s keeping you under his thumb until he can figure out a way to get a hold on you,” Miriam suggested. “Some way of tying you down, maybe?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He looked around, trying to catch the waiter’s eye. “I figured you’d understand,” he said.

“Yes, I guess I do,” she said regretfully. “And if that’s what he’s got in mind for you, what about me?”

They drove back to the house in the suburbs in companionable silence. From the outside, the doppelgängered mansion looked like a sedate business unit, possibly a software company or an accounting firm. As they rolled onto the down ramp, Roland cued the door remote, and the barrier rolled up into the ceiling. For the first time Miriam realized how thick it was. “That’s bombproof, isn’t it?”

“Yup.” He drove down the ramp without stopping and the shutters were already descending behind them. “We don’t have the luxury of a beaten fire zone on this side.”

“Oh.” She felt a chill. “The threats. It’s all real.”

“What were you expecting, lies?” He slid them nose-first into a parking spot next to the Jaguar, killed the engine, then systematically looked around before opening the door.

“I don’t know.” She got out and stretched, looking around. ‘The garage door. That’s what brought it home.”

“The only home for the likes of us is a fortress,” he said, not without bitterness. “Remember the Lindbergh baby? We’ve got it a hundred times worse. Never forget. Never relax. Never be normal.”

“I don’t—” she took a deep breath. “I don’t think I can learn to live like that.”

“Helge—Miriam—” he stopped and looked at her closely, concerned. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

She shook her head wordlessly.

“Really.” He walked around the car to her. “Because you’re not alone. You’re not the only one going through this.”

“It’s—” She paused. “Claustrophobic.” He was standing close to her. She stepped close to him and he opened his arms and embraced her stiffly.

“I’ll help, any way I can,” he murmured. “Any way you want. Just ask, whatever you need.” She could feel his back muscles tense.

She hugged him. Wordless thoughts bubbled and seethed in her mind, seeking expression. “Thank you,” she whispered, “I needed that.” Letting go.

Roland stepped back promptly and turned to the car’s trunk as if nothing had happened. “It’ll all work out; we’ll make sure of it.” He opened the car’s trunk. “Meanwhile, can you help me with these? My, you’ve been busy.”

“I assume we can get it all back?”

“Whatever you can carry,” he said. “Even if it’s just for a minute.”

“Whatever,” she said, bending to take the strain of another of the ubiquitous silvery aluminium wheeled suitcases and her own big case stuffed with shopping.

“Downstairs and across?” he asked.

“Hmm.” She shrugged. “Does the duke expect us to dine with him tonight?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

Well, okay, she mused. “Then we don’t need to go back immediately.”

“Mm.” He opened the lift gates. “I’m afraid we do; we’ve got to keep the post moving, you see. Two trips a day, five days on and five days off. It’s the rules.” He waved her into the lift and they stood together as it began to descend.

“Oh, well.” She nodded. “I suppose …”

“Would you mind very much if I invited you to dine with me?” he asked in a sudden rush. “Not a formal affair, not at all. If you want someone else around, I’m sure Vincenze is at a loose end …”

She smiled at him uncertainly, surprised at her own reaction. She bit her lip, trying not to seem overeager. “I’d love to dine with you,” she said. “But tonight I’m working. Tomorrow?”

“Okay. If you say so.”

At the bottom of the shaft he led her into the post room. “What’s here?” she asked.

“Well.” He pointed to a yellow square marked on the floor, about three feet by three feet. “Stand there, facing that wall.”

“Okay. What now?” she asked.

“Pick up the two cases—yes, I know they’re heavy, you only need to hold them clear of the floor for a minute. Do you think you can do that? And focus on that cupboard on the wall. I’ll look away and hit this button, and you do what comes natural, then step out of the square—fast. I’ll be through in a couple of minutes; got an errand to run first.”

“And—oh.”

She saw the motorized screen roll up; behind it was a backlit knot like symbol that made her eyes swim. It was just like the locket In fact, it was the same as the locket, and she felt as if she was falling into it. Then her head began to ache, viciously, and she slumped under the weight of the suitcases. Remembering Roland’s instructions, she rolled them forward, noting that the post room looked superficially the same but the screened cupboard on this side was closed and there were some scrapes on the wall.

“Hmm.” She glanced around. No Roland, as yet. Well, well, well, she thought.

She glanced down at the case she’d carried over, blinked thoughtfully, then walked over to the wall with the pigeonholes, where another case was waiting. One that hadn’t been prepared for her. She bent down and sprang the catch on it, laid it flat on its side and lifted the lid. Her breath caught in her throat. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. She’d been hoping for gold, jewels, scrolls, or maybe antibiotics and computers. This was what she’d been afraid of. She shut the case and stood it upright again, then walked back to the ones she’d brought over and concentrated on quieting her racing heartbeat and smoothing her face into a welcoming, slightly coy smile before Roland the brilliant reformer, Roland the sympathetic friend, Roland the lying bastard scumbag could bring his own suitcase through.

Who did you think you were kidding? she wondered bitterly. You knew it was too good to be true. And indeed it had been clear from the start that there had to be a catch somewhere.

The nature of the catch was obvious and ironic with twenty-twenty hindsight, and when she thought about it she realized that Roland hadn’t actually lied to her. She just hadn’t asked the right questions.

What supplied the family’s vast wealth on her own, the other, the American side of the border? It sure wasn’t a fast postal service, not when it took six weeks to cross an untamed wilderness on pack mules beset by savage tribes. No, it was a different type of service—one intended for commodities of high value, low weight, and likely to be interrupted in transit through urban America. Something that the family could ship reliably through their own kingdoms and move back and forth to American soil at their leisure. In America they made their money by shipping goods across the Gruinmarkt fast; in the Gruinmarkt they made their money by moving goods across America slowly but reliably. The suitcase contained almost twenty kilograms of sealed polythene bags, and it didn’t take a genius with degrees in journalism and medicine to figure out that they’d be full of Bolivian nose candy.

She thought about the investigation she’d been running with Paulie, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead she began whistling a song by Brecht—Supply and Demand—as she picked up her own suitcase and headed for the elevator to her suite.

My long-lost medievalist world-walking family are drug import/export barons, she realized. What the hell does that make me?

In The Family Way

Alone in her apartment with the door locked, Miriam began to unpack her suitcase full of purchases. She’d arrived to find the maids in a state of near panic: “Mistress, the duke, he wants to see you tomorrow lunchtime!” In the end she’d dismissed them all except for Meg, the oldest, who she sat down with for a quiet talk.

“I’m not used to having you around all the time,” she said bluntly. “I know you’re not going to go away, but I want you to make yourselves scarce. Ask one of the electricians to put a bell in, so I can call you when I need you. I don’t mind people coming in to tidy up when I’m out of my rooms, but I don’t want to be surrounded all the time. Can you do that?” Meg had nodded, but looked puzzled. “Any questions?” Miriam asked. “No, ma’am,” Meg had replied. But her expression said that she thought Miriam’s behavior was distinctly strange.

Miriam sighed and pointed at the door. Maybe if I act like they’re hotel staff… “I’ll want someone to come up in about three hours with some food—a tray of cold stuff will do—and a pot of tea. Apart from that, I don’t expect to see anyone tonight and I don’t want to be disturbed. Is that okay?”

“Yes’m.” Meg ducked her head and fled. “Okay, so that works,” Miriam said thoughtfully. Which was good because now she had some space to work in, unobserved.

Fifteen minutes later the luggage was stowed where Miriam wanted it. Her new laptop was sitting on the dresser, plugged in to charge next to a stack of unopened software boxes. Her new wardrobe was hung up, awaiting the attentions of a seamstress whenever Miriam had time for a fitting. And the escape kit, as she was already thinking of it, was stashed in the suitcase at the back of the wardrobe.

“Memo.” She picked up her dictaphone and strolled through into the bathroom. It was the place she found it easiest to think. Cool white tiles, fine marble, nothing to aggravate the pounding headache she’d been plagued by for so much of the past week. Plus, it had a shower—which she turned on, just for the noise. “Need to look for a bug-sweeping kit next time I get time on the other side. Must try the beta-blockers too, once I’ve looked up their side effects. Wonder if they’ve got a trained doctor over here? Or a clinic of some kind? Anyway.”

She swallowed. “New memo. Must get the dictation software installed on the laptop, so I can transcribe this diary. Um. Roland and the family business bear some thought.” That’s the understatement of the century, she told herself. “They’re… oh hell. They’re not the Medelin cartel, but they probably ship a good quantity of their produce. It’s a family business, or rather a whole bunch of families who intermarry because of the hereditary factor, with the Clan as a business arrangement that organizes everything. I suppose they probably smuggled jewels or gold or something before the drugs thing. The whole nine yards about not marrying out—whether the ability is a recessive gene or not doesn’t matter—they’ve got omerta, the law of silence, as a side effect of their social setup. In this world, they’re upwardly mobile nobles, merchant-princes trying to marry into the royal family. In my world, they’re gangsters. Mafia families without the Sicilian in-laws.”

She hit the “pause” button for a moment.

“So I’m a Mafia princess. Talk about not getting involved with goodfellas! What do I make of it?”

She paused again and noticed that she was pacing back and forth distractedly. “It’s blood money. Or is it? If these people are the government here, and they say it’s legal to smuggle cocaine or heroin, does that make it okay? This is one huge can of worms. Even if you leave ethics out of the question, even if you think the whole war on drugs is a bad idea like prohibition in the twenties, it’s still a huge headache.” She massaged her throbbing forehead. “I really need to talk to Iris. She’d set me straight.”

She leaned her forehead against the cool tiles beside the mirror over the sink. “Problem is, I can’t walk away from them. I can’t just leave, walk out, and go back to life in Cambridge. It’s not just the government who’d want to bury me so deep the sun would never find me. The Clan can’t risk me talking. Now that I think about it, it’s weird that they let Roland get as far as he did. Only. If he’s telling the truth, Angbard is keeping him on a short leash. What does that suggest they’ve got in mind for me? A short leash and a choke collar?”

She could see it in her mind’s eye, the chain of events that would unfold if she were to walk into an FBI office and prove what she could do—maybe with the aid of a sack of cocaine, maybe not. Maybe with Paulie’s CD full of research, too, she realized, sitting up. “Shit.” A dawning supposition: Drug-smuggling rings needed to sanitize their revenue stream, didn’t they? And the business with Biphase and Proteome was in the right part of the world, and the Clan was certainly sophisticated enough… if her hunch was right, then it was, in fact, her long-lost family’s investments that Paulie was holding the key to.

In the FBI office first there’d be disbelief. Then the growing realization that a journalist was handing them the drugs case of the century. Followed by the hasty escalation, the witness protection program offers—then their reaction to her demonstrated ability to walk through walls. The secondary scenarios as the FBI realize that they can’t protect her, can’t even protect themselves against assassins from another world. Then blind panic and bad decisions.

“If the families decided to attack the United States at home, they could make al Qaida look like amateurs,” she muttered into her dictaphone, stricken. “They have the resources of a government at their disposal, because over here they’re running things. Does that make them a government? Or so close it makes no difference? They’re rich and powerful on the other side, too. Another generation and they’ll probably be getting their fingers into the pie in D.C. I wonder. They make their money from smuggling, and they’re personally immune to attempts to imprison them. The only thing that could hurt them would be if Congress decriminalized all drugs, so the price crashed and they could be shipped legally. Maybe the families are actually pushing the war on drugs? Paying politicians to call for tougher sanctions, border patrols against ordinary smugglers? Breaking the competition and driving the price up because of the law of supply and demand. Damn.”

She flicked the “stop” button on her dictaphone and put it down, shuddering. It made a frightening amount of sense. I am sitting on a news story that makes the attack on the World Trade Centre look like a five-minute wonder, she realized with a sinking feeling. No, I am sitting in the middle of the story. What am I going to do?

At that exact moment the telephone out in her reception room rang.

Old habits died hard, and Miriam was out of the bathroom in seconds with the finely honed reflexes of a journalist with an editor on the line. She picked the phone up before she realized there were no buttons, nothing to indicate it could dial an outside line. “Yes?”

“Miriam?”

She froze, heart sinking. “Roland,” she said distantly.

“You locked your door and sent your maids away. I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

“ ‘All right.’” She considered her next words carefully. “I’m not all right, Roland. I looked in the suitcase. The other one, the one waiting in the post room.” Her chest felt tight. He’d lied to her: but on the other hand, she’d been holding more than a little back herself—

A pause. “I know. It was a test. The only question was which one you’d open. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but I was ordered to give you the opportunity. To figure it all out for yourself. ‘Give her enough rope’ were his exact words. So now you know.”

“Know what?” she said flatly. “That he’s an extremely devious conspirator or about the family’s dirty little secret?”

“Both.” Roland waited for her to reply.

“I feel used,” she said calmly. “I am also extremely pissed off. In fact, I’m still working out how I feel about everything. It’s not the drugs, exactly: I don’t think I’ve got any illusions about that side of things. I studied enough pharmacology to know the difference between propaganda and reality, and I saw enough shit in med school from ODs and drunk drivers and people coughing up lung cancers to know you get the same results whether the drug’s illegal or not. But the manipulative side of it—there’s a movie on the other side called The Godfather. Have you ever seen it?”

“Yes. That’s it, exactly.” He sounded dryly amused. “By the way, Don Corleone asked me to tell you that he expects to see you in his office tomorrow at ten o’clock sharp.” His voice changed, abruptly serious. “Please don’t shout at him. I think it’s another test, but I’m not sure what kind—whichever, it could be very dangerous. I don’t want to see you get hurt, Miriam. Or Helge, as he’ll call you. But you’re Miriam to me. Listen, for your own good, whatever he says, don’t refuse a direct order. He is much more dangerous than he looks, and if he thinks you’ll bite him, he may put family loyalty aside, because his real loyalty is to the Clan as a whole. You’re a close family member, but the Clan, by the law of families, comes first. Just sit tight and remember that you’ve got more leverage than you realize. He will want you to make a secure alliance, both to keep you safe—for the memory of his stepsister—and to shore up his own position. Failing that, he’ll be able to pretend to ignore you as long as you don’t disobey a direct order. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“Yes.” Her heart pounded. “So it’s going to happen.”

“What?”

“Fucking Cinderella. Never mind. Roland, I am not stupid. I need some time to myself to think, that’s all. I’m angry with you in the abstract, not the particular. I don’t like being made to jump through hoops. I hear what you’re saying. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.” A pause. “I think I do. I’m angry too.”

“Oh, really?” she asked, half-sarcastically.

“Yes.” This time, a longer pause. “I like your sense of humour, but it’s going to get you into deep trouble if you don’t keep it under control. There are people here who will respond to sarcasm with a garrotte. Trying to change the way the Clan works from the inside is hard.”

“Good-bye.” She hung up hastily and stood next to the phone for a long minute, heart thudding at her ribs, head throbbing in time to it. The smell of leather car seats was strong in her nose, the echo of his smile over lunch fixed in her mind’s eye. Duke’s orders, she thought. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

She managed to pull herself away from the telephone and walked back into her bedroom, to the dresser with the tiny Picture book computer perched next to the stack of disks and the external DVD-ROM drive. She had software to install. She riffled through disks containing relief maps of North America, an electronic pharmacopoeia, and a multimedia history of the Medici families. She put them down next to the encyclopaedia of medieval history and other textbooks that had seemed relevant.

Once she’d made her first notes for the article Steve had commissioned, she’d start installing the software. Then she had a long night of cramming ahead, reading up on the great medieval merchant princes and their dynasties. The sooner she got a handle on this situation, the better …

Another morning dawned—a Sunday, bright and cold. Miriam blinked tiredly and threw back her bed clothes to let the cold air in. I may be getting used to this, she thought blearily. Oh dear. She looked at her watch and saw that the ten o’clock interview with Duke Angbard was worryingly close. “Shit,” she said aloud, but was gratified to note that the word brought no maidservants scurrying out of the woodwork. Even better, the outer suite was empty except for a steaming jug of strong coffee and a tray piled with croissants, just as she’d requested. “I could get used to this level of room service,” she muttered under her breath as she dashed into the bathroom. The computer was still running from last night, a Screensaver showing.

She laid out her clothes for the meeting with the duke. After a moment’s thought, she dressed conservatively, choosing a suit with a collarless jacket that buttoned to her throat. “Think medieval,” she told herself. “Think demure, feminine, unprovocative.” For a touch of colour, she tied a bright silk scarf round her throat. “Think camouflage.” And remember what Roland said about not defying the old bastard openly. At least, not yet. How and where to get the leverage was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, of course, to be followed by the bonus question of when and how to use it to shaft him, but she doubted she’d find such tools conveniently lying around while she lived as a guest—or valued prisoner—in his house. This whole business of being beholden to a powerful man left a nasty taste in her mouth.

However, there was one thing she could carry to even up the odds—a very potent equalizer. To complete her ensemble, Miriam chose a small black makeup bag, clearly too small to hold a gun or anything threatening. She didn’t load it down with much: just a tube of lipstick, some tissues, and a running dictaphone.

The door to her suite was cooperating today, she noted as she pushed into the corridor outside. She remembered the way to the duke’s suite and made her way quietly past a pair of diligent maidservants who were busy polishing the brass-work on one of the doors and a footman who appeared to be replacing the flowers on one of the ornamental side tables. They bowed out of her way and she nodded, passing them hastily. The whole palace appeared to be coming awake, as if occupants who had been sleeping were coming out of the woodwork to resume their life.

She reached the duke’s outer office door and paused. Big double doors, closed, with a room on the other side. She took a deep breath and pushed the button set beside the door.

“Wer ish?” His voice crackled tinnily: a loose wire somewhere.

“It’s Miriam—Helge. I believe the duke wanted to talk to me,” she replied to the speaker.

“Enter.” The lock clicked discreetly and Miriam pushed the door inward. It was astonishingly heavy, as if lined with steel, and it drifted shut behind her.

Matthias, the frightening secretary, was waiting behind the big desk in shirtsleeves, his jacket slung over the back of his chair. This time she noted the pile of papers in front of him. Some of them looked like FedEx waybills, and some of them looked like letters.

“Helge. Miriam.” Matthias nodded to her, almost friendly.

“Yes.” Why does he make me so nervous? she wondered. Was it just the shoulder holster he wore so conspicuously? Or the way he avoided eye contact but scanned across and around her all the while?

“You have an appointment,” he said. “But you should call first, before setting out. So that we can send an escort for you.”

“ ‘An escort’ ?” She asked. “Why would I want an escort?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t you? You are a lady of status, you deserve an escort. To be seen without one is a slight to your honour. Besides, someone might seek to take advantage of the deficiency in order to approach you.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll think about it.” She nodded at the inner door. “Is he ready?”

“One moment.” Matthias stood, then knocked on the door. A muttered exchange followed. Matthias pulled the door ajar, then held it for her. “You may enter,” he said, his expression unreadable. As she passed his desk, he moved to place his body in front of the papers there.

Miriam pretended not to notice as she entered the lion’s den. As before, Duke Angbard was seated at his writing desk, back to the window, so that she had to squint into the light to see him. But this time there was nobody else present, and he rose to welcome her into his study.

“Ah, Miriam, my dear niece. Please come in.”

He was trying for the kindly uncle role, she decided, so she smiled warmly in return as she approached the desk. “Uncle. Uh, I’m unfamiliar with the proper form of address. I hope you don’t mind if I call you Angbard?”

“Not in private.” He smiled benevolently down at her. “In public, it would be best to call me ‘your Excellency’ or ‘uncle,’ depending on context—official or familial. Please have a seat.”

“Thanks.” She sat down opposite him, and he sat down in turn. He was wearing another exquisitely tailored suit of conservative cut with, she couldn’t help noticing, a sword. It was curved: a sabre, perhaps, but she couldn’t be sure—the blades with which she was most familiar were scalpels. “Is there anything in particular you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Oh, many things.” His broad wave took in half the world. “It isn’t customary here to introduce conversations with business, but I gather you are accustomed to a life conducted at a brisker pace.” He leaned back in his chair, face shadowed. “Roland tells me you opened the second case,” he said briskly. “What have you to say for yourself?”

Ah, the moment of truth. Miriam leaned back, consciously mirroring his posture. “Well, I’d have to say that only an idiot lets themselves be sucked into any business arrangement without a full awareness of what it involves,” she said slowly. “And nobody had ordered me not to peek. You should also note that I’m here to discuss it with you, and the only other person who knows about it is Roland. What do you think?”

“I think that shows a necessary level of discretion,” he replied after a moment. “Now. What is your opinion of the business? And of your own relationship to it?”

“It makes a lot of sense for a group of families in the position that ours so clearly occupies,” she said, carefully trying to avoid giving the wrong impression. “I can see why you might want to test a new, ah, family member. As businesses go it is neatly orchestrated and appears to be efficiently ran.” She shrugged, biting back the urge to add: for an eighteenth-century family concern. As business organizations go, it’s still in the dark ages… “And it’s hardly appropriate for me to comment on where that platinum credit card came from, is it?”

“Indeed not,” he said acerbically. “But you seem to be clear on your position.” A sudden tightening of the skin around his eyes. “Are you a drug user?” he asked.

“Me?” She laughed, mentally crossing her fingers. “No! Never.” At least, not heroin or crack. Please don’t let him ask about anything else. Like many students, she’d acquired a passing familiarity with marijuana, but had mostly given it up some time ago. And she didn’t think he was the type to count coffee, cigars, or whiskey as drugs.

“That’s good,” he said seriously. “Most users are indiscreet. Can’t keep secrets. Bad for business.”

“Sobriety is next to godliness,” she agreed, nodding enthusiastically, then wondered if she’d overdone it when he fixed her with a slightly jaundiced stare. Oops, five glasses of wine, she remembered—and shrugged self-deprecatingly. His glare slowly faded.

“You have your mother’s sly tongue,” he commented. “But I didn’t call you here to ask you questions about your opinion of our business. I gather that Roland has been filling in a few of the gaps in your education—some of them, like a working knowledge of high tongue, will take a long time to remedy—but I dare say he has not been forthcoming in full with the details of your position in the Clan. Is that the case?”

Miriam could feel her forehead wrinkle. “He said I was rich and of very high position. But he didn’t explain in detail, no. Why?”

“Well, then,” said the duke, “perhaps I had better hasten to explain. You see, you are in a unique position—two unique positions.”

“Really? What kind?” she asked brightly. Missionary or…

“You know that there are five families in the Clan,” Angbard began. “These are Lofstrom—the senior family—Thorold, Hjorth, Wu, Arnesen, and Hjalmar. Yes, I know that’s six. The familial name does not necessarily correspond to a lineage. Our families are the descendants of the children of the founder, Angmar Lofstrom. He had many children, but the blood ran thin—only when their children married and the great-grandchildren showed the family trait were we able to come together to form the Clan.”

He cleared his throat. “Wu is not the name of one of our original ancestors; it is a name that the second son of line Arnesen took upon emigrating to the Outer Kingdom, two thousand miles to the west, perhaps a hundred and twenty years ago. The idea was that family Wu would become our western arm, trading with us by way of the Union Pacific Railroad, to mutual benefit. That wasn’t the first attempt, by the way. Angmar the elder’s youngest son, Marc, tried to cross the wilderness far earlier, but the attempt came to nothing and Marc was lost. So, we have branches on both sides of the Continental Divide. And a history of other families. Once there were seven lineages—but I digress.”

“But how does it all work?” Miriam asked. “How does the Clan come out of all this?”

“The Clan is not what you’d call a limited liability company—it is a partnership. A family firm, if you like. You see, we hold our lands and riches and titles in common trust for the Clan, which operates in concert and receives the profits from all our ventures. The Clan makes use of all who have the world-walking talent—the members of the inner families—and arranges or authorizes marriages that braid the families together across generations, avoiding both out-breeding and too many close kin marriages. It also controls the outer family—those who lack the talent, but whose children might possess it if they marry like with like—and finds jobs for them over here. For example, Matthias cannot ever visit Boston on his own—but he has a talent for security, and makes a most excellent mailed fist. We number almost five hundred world-walkers now, and with two thousand in the outer families the pickings at the lower ranks are slim.”

He coughed. “One iron rule is that family members are required to marry into another family lineage—otherwise the blood runs thin within a generation. The only exceptions are by prior dispensation of the council, to permit an alliance outside the Clan, such as adoption into the nobility. The second iron rule is that inheritance follows Clan shareholdings, not lineage or family. If you die, your children inherit whatever the Clan allocates to them—you hold your estates from the Clan, they don’t belong to you because without the Clan you would be nothing. The system is supposed to encourage cooperation and it usually succeeds, but there are exceptions. Sixty years ago, a war broke out within the Clan, between families—Wu and Hjorth on one side, Thorold, Lofstrom, Arnesen, and Hjalmar on the other. Nobody is certain what started it any more—those who knew died early on—but my personal supposition is that the Wu family, in their ambition to climb into the eternal palace itself, exposed themselves to court intrigue and were turned into a weapon against us by the palace of the Outer Kingdom, which considered the Wu lineage to be a threat. In any event, it was a bloody period in our history. During the war years, our numbers fell from perhaps a thousand of the true blood to fewer than two hundred. The war ended thirty-five years ago with a treaty, solemnized by the marriage of Patricia Lofstrom Thorold to Alfredo Wu. Patricia was my half-sister, and I inherited custody of the Lofstrom estates.”

He paused to clear his throat. “Your mother’s death is now confirmed, although neither her nor Alfredo’s body was recovered. Since then, there has been no pretender to the estates of the Thorold-Hjorth shareholding, which were therefore administered as a trusteeship under the order of the high crown.”

“ ‘The high crown?’”

“Yes, the royal family,” he said irritably. “You don’t have one, I know. We have to put up with them, and they can be a blithering nuisance!”

“Ah, I think I begin to see.” She crossed her ankles. “So. There’s a big shareholding in the Clan enterprise, under the control of an external party who knows who and what you are. Then I come along and offer you a lever to take it back under the family’s control. Is that right?”

“Yes. As long as nobody kills you first,” he said.

“Now, wait a minute!” She leaned forward. “Who would do that? And why?”

“Oh, several parties,” Angbard said with what Miriam found a distinctly unnerving tone of relish. “The crown, to maintain their grip on almost a tenth of our properties and revenues without forcing an outright war with their most powerful nobles. Whoever killed Patricia, for the same reason. Any of the younger generations of lineages Hjorth and Thorold, who must be hoping that the shares will escheat to them in due course should no pretender emerge and should those families re-create the braid of inheritance. And finally, the Drug Enforcement Agency.”

“What are they doing here?”

“They aren’t, I merely name them as another party who would take an instant dislike to you were they to become appraised of your existence.” He smiled humourlessly. “Think of it as a test, if you like.”

“Ri-i-ight,” she drawled. I already figured that much out for myself, thanks. “I believe I see where you’re coming from, Uncle. One question?”

“Ask away, by all means.”

“Roland. Does he have a motive?”

Angbard startled her by laughing loudly. “Roland the dreaming runaway?” He leaned back in his chair. “Roland, who tried to convince us all to sign away our lands to the peasantry and set up a banking system to loan them money? Roland the rebel? He’s squandered all the credibility he might have built by refusing to play the game over here. I think Roland Lofstrom will make a suitable husband for Olga Thorold. And she should make him an excellent wife—she’ll slow him down and that’s necessary, he has disruptive tendencies. Once he’s yoked to the Clan, it might be time to revisit some of his ideas, but as things stand the council can’t afford to be seen taking him seriously—by rebelling in his youth he has automatically tainted any valid reformist ideas he may present. Which is a shame. Meanwhile, you are my direct niece. Patricia, your mother, was the daughter of my father’s first wife. Roland, in contrast, is the son of my half-brother, by my father’s third wife. He’s not a blood relative of yours—at least, not within four generations. Three wives, three children, three scandals! My father lent our affairs much complexity …

“Anyway, Roland will create another Thorold-Lofstrom braid, which will be of considerable use to my successor, whoever he is. But he’s not important and he has no stake in your disarray. In fact, that is why it was safe for him to know of your existence so early.”

Miriam shook her head. The family intricacies confused her, and she was left with nothing but a vague impression of plaited families and arranged marriages. “Have you asked Olga’s opinion about this?” she asked.

“Why would I? She’ll do as she’s told for the good of the Clan. She’s a sweet child.”

“Oh, that’s all right then,” Miriam said, nodding slightly and biting her cheek to keep a straight face.

“Which brings me to you, again,” Angbard nodded. “Obviously, you are not a sweet child. You’re an experienced dowager, I would say, and sharp as a razor. I approve of that. But I hope I have made it clear to you that your future is inextricably tied to the Clan. You can’t possibly go back into obscurity on the other side—your enemies would seek you out, whether you will it or no. Nor can you afford not to take sides and find a protector.”

“I see,” she stated, biting the words out sharply.

“I think it would be best for you to see something of the other families before we discuss this further,” Angbard continued, ignoring her coolness. “As it happens, Olga is summoned to pay attendance upon the person of the king for the next three months, who as it also happens is not one of us—it would be a good thing at this juncture for you to make your debut before the royal court and that part of the Clan that is in residence in the capital in her company. Your presence should lure certain lice out of the bedding in, ah, a controlled manner. Meanwhile you will not entirely be at a loose end, or without support, when you make the rounds of the eligible nobility before the annual grand meeting at Beltaigne, seven months hence. Olga can advise you on bloodlines and shareholdings and etiquette, and begin language lessons. I place no obligation upon you to make a hasty alliance, just so long as you understand your situation.”

“Right. So I’m to go looking for an alliance—a husband who meets with your approval—at court. When do you expect me to do this?” Miriam asked, with a forced brightness that concealed her slowly gathering anger. “I assume you’re planning on exhibiting me widely?”

“Olga departs tomorrow morning by stage,” Angbard announced. “You shall travel with her, and on arrival at court in Niejwein she will help you select your ladies-in-waiting—of low but family rank, not base servants such as you have had here. Your maids are already packing your bags, by the way.” He fixed her with a coldly unamused smile. “Think of it as a test, if you like. You do see this is for your own long-term good, don’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, I see, all right,” Miriam said and smiled at him, as sweet as cyanide-laced marzipan. “Yes, I see everything very clearly indeed.”

Miriam politely declined the duke’s invitation to lunch and returned to her apartment in a state of barely controlled fury. Her temper was not made better by the discovery that her maids had packed most of her clothes in heavy wooden trunks.

“Fuck!” She spat at the bathroom mirror. “You will be good, won’t you,” she muttered under her breath. “Patronizing bastard, my dear.”

Murderous bastard, a still small voice reminded her from inside. Duke Angbard was quite capable of killing people, Roland had said. Paulie’s words came back to haunt her: ‘If you back down, they own you; it’s as simple as that.’ And what the hell was that crack about luring lice out of the bedding meant to mean? She sobered up fast. I need advice, she decided. And then a thought struck her—a thought simultaneously wicked and so delicious that it brought a smile to her lips. A perfect scheme, really, one that would gain her exactly what she needed, while simultaneously sending an unequivocal message to the duke, if she went all the way through with it. She raised one middle digit: “Sit and swivel!” she whispered triumphantly. Yeah, that will work!

She headed back into the suite, chased her maids out, shut the door, and picked up the phone. “Put me through to Earl Roland,” she demanded in her most imperious voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” the operator confirmed. “One moment.”

“Roland?” she said, suddenly much less confident. ‘Roland the dreamer,’ his uncle called him. Roland the disruptive influence, who looked too good to be true. Did she go through with this? Just picking up the phone made her feel obscurely guilty. It also gave her a thrill of illicit anticipation.

“Miriam! What can I do for you?”

“Listen,” she said, licking her suddenly dry lower lip. “About yesterday. You invited me to … dinner? Does that invitation still stand?”

“You’ve seen the old man?” he asked.

“Yes.” She waited.

“Oh. Well, yes, the invitation still stands. Would you like to come?”

“As long as it’s just you and me. No servants, no company, no nothing.”

“Oh!” He sounded amused. “Miriam, have you any idea how fast word of that would get around, now that the palace is fully staffed again? That sort of thing just doesn’t happen you know. Not with servants.”

“It’s not like that: I need confidential advice,” she said. Lowering her voice, “They must know I’ve spent over thirty years on the other side. Can I catch a couple of hours with you, without anyone snooping?”

“Hmm.” He paused for a bit. “Only if you can manage to become invisible. Listen, I am in the suite on the floor above you, second along. I’ll have dinner laid out at six, then send the servants away. Still, it’ll be best if nobody sees you. It would cause tongues to wag—and give your enemies words to throw back at you.”

“I’ll think of a way,” she promised. “Lay on the wine and dress for dinner. I’ll be seeing you.”