The Family Trade

Encounter

The snow was falling thickly when Miriam reached the wall of the orangery, and she was shivering despite her leather jacket. It was dark, too, in a way that no modern city ever was—No streetlights to reflect off the clouds, she realized, fumbling with her pocket torch. The gate was shut, and she had to tug hard to open it. Beyond the gate, the vast width of the palace loomed out of the snow, row upon row of shuttered windows at ground level.

“Shit,” Miriam muttered in the wind. No guards, she realized. Wasn’t this the east wing, under the Thorold tower, where Olga was living? She glanced up at the towering mass of stonework. The entrances were all round the front, but she’d attract unwelcome attention going in. Instead she trudged over to the nearest window casement. “Hey—”

It wasn’t a shuttered window: It was a doorway, designed to blend in with the building’s rear aspect. There was a handle and a discreet bell-pull beside it. Cursing the architectural pretensions of whoever had designed this pile, Miriam tugged the rope. Something clanged distantly, behind the door. She stepped sideways and steeled herself, raising her pistol with a sick sense of anticipation in her stomach.

Rattling and creaking. A slot in the door, near eye level, squeaked as it moved aside. “Wehr ish—” quavered a hoarse voice.

“Unlock the door and step back now,” Miriam said, aiming through the slot.

“Sisch!”

“Now.” A click. Two terrified eyes stared at her for a moment, then dropped from view. Miriam kicked the door hard, feeling the impact jar through her foot. For a miracle, the elderly caretaker had dropped the latch rather than shooting the bolt before he ran: Instead of falling flat on her ass with a sore ankle, Miriam found herself standing in a dark hallway facing a door opposite. Did he understand me? she wondered. No time for that now. She darted forward, pulling the door closed behind her as she headed for the other end of the short hall. Then she paused. There was a narrow staircase beside her, heading up into the recesses of the servants’ side of the wing, but the old guy who’d let her in—gardener or caretaker?—had vanished through the door into the reception room off to one side. Right. Miriam took the stairs two at a time, rushed past the shut doors on the first landing as lightly as she could and only paused on the second landing.

“Where is everybody?” she whispered aloud. There should be guards, bells ringing, whatever—she’d just barged in and instead of security all she’d encountered was a frightened groundskeeper. The butterflies in her stomach hadn’t gone away, if anything they were stronger. Either her imagination was working overtime or something was very wrong.

There were doors up here, doors onto cramped rooms used by the servants, but also a side door onto the main staircase that crawled around the walls of the tower’s core, linking the suites of the noble residents. It was chilly, and the oil lamp mounted in a wall bracket hardly lightened the shadows, but it was enough to show Miriam which way to go. She pushed the side door open and stepped out onto the staircase to get her bearings. It was no brighter in the main hall: The great chandelier was unlit and the oil lamps on each landing had been turned right down. Still, she was just one flight of stairs below the door to Olga’s chambers. She was halfway to the landing before she noticed something wrong with the shadows outside the entrance. The door was open. Which meant, if Brill had gotten through in time—

Miriam crept forward. The door was ajar, and something bulky lay motionless in the shadows behind it. The reception room it opened onto was completely dark, but something told her it wasn’t empty. She paused beside the entrance, her heart hammering as she waited for her eyes to adjust. If it’s another hit, that would explain the lack of guards, she thought. Memories of a stupid corporate junket—a “team building” paintball tournament in a deserted office building that someone in HR thought sounded like fun—welled up, threatening her with a sense of déjà vu. Very slowly, she looked round the edge of the door frame.

Something or someone clad in light-absorbing clothes was kneeling in front of the door at the far end of the room. Another figure stood to one side, the unmistakable outline of some kind of submachine gun raised to cover the door. They had their backs to her. Sloppy, very sloppy, she thought tensely. Unless they knew there was nobody else in this wing because they’d all been sent away.

The inner door creaked and the kneeling figure stood up and flowed to one side. Now there was another gun. This is so not good, Miriam realized sickly. She was going to have to do something. Visions of the assassin in the orangery raising his knife and moving toward her—the two before her were completely focused on the door, preparing to make their move.

Then one of them looked around.

Afterward, Miriam wasn’t completely sure what had happened. Certainly she remembered squeezing the trigger repeatedly. The evil sewing-machine chatter of automatic fire wasn’t hers, as it stitched a neat line of holes across the ceiling. She’d flinched, dazzled and deafened by the sudden noise, and there’d been more hammering and she’d fallen over, rolling aside as fast as she could, then what sounded like a different gun. And silence, once she discounted the ringing in her ears.

“Miriam?” called Olga, “is that you?”

I’m still alive, she realized, wondering. Taking stock: If she was still alive, that meant the intruders weren’t. “Yes,” she called faintly. “I’m out here. Where are you?”

“Get in here. Quickly.”

She took no second warning. Brill crouched beside the splintered wreckage of the door, a brilliant electric lamp held in one hand, while Olga stood to the other side. Her face cast sharp shadows that flickered across the walls as she scanned the room, gun raised. “I am going to have harsh words with the Baron,” she said calmly as Miriam scuttled toward them. “The guards he assigned me appear to have taken their leave for the evening. Perhaps if I a flog a few until the ivory shows, it will convince him of my displeasure.”

“They’re not to blame,” Miriam said hoarsely, feeling her stomach rise. The smell of burned cordite and blood hung in the air. “Brill?”

“I bought Kara hither, my lady. I did as you told me.”

“She did.” Olga nodded. “To be truthful, we did not need your help with such as these.” She jerked a thumb at the darkened corner of the room. “There’s an alarm that Oliver does not know of, the duke insisted I bring it.” The red eye of an infrared motion sensor winked at Miriam. “But I am grateful for the warning,” she added graciously.

“I—” Miriam shuddered. “In the orangery. An assassin.”

“What?” Olga looked at her sharply. “Who—”

“They killed Margit. Sent a note to lure me there, but I was expecting trouble.”

“That’s terrible!” Brill looked appalled: The light swayed. “What are we going to—”

“Inside,” Olga commanded. Brill retreated, and after a moment Miriam followed her. “Close the door, damn you!” Olga called, and after a moment a timid serving maid scurried forward and began to yank on it. “When it’s shut, bar it. Then get that chest braced across it,” Olga added, pointing to a wardrobe that looked to Miriam’s eyes to be built from most of an oak tree. She stopped and turned to Miriam. “This was aimed at you, not me,” she said calmly, lowering her machine pistol to point at the floor. “They’re getting overconfident. Margit—” she shook her head—“Brilliana told me of the note, you are lucky to have escaped.”

“What am I going to do?” Miriam asked. She felt dizzy and sick, the room spinning around her head. There was a stool near the fireplace: She stumbled toward it tiredly and sat down. “Who sent them?”

“I don’t know,” Olga said thoughtfully.

A door in the opposite wall opened and Kara rushed in. “My lady! You’re hurt?”

“Not yet,” Miriam said, waving her away tiredly. “The killer in the orangery was of the Clan, he had a locket,” she said.

“That could tell us which braid he came from,” Olga said. “Have you got it?”

“I think—yes.” Miriam pulled it out and opened it. “Shit.”

“What is it?” asked Olga, leaning close. “Oh my.”

Miriam stared at the locket. Inside it was a design like the knotwork pattern she was learning to loathe—but this one was subtly wrong. Different. A couplet with a different rhyme. One that she knew, instinctively, at a gut level, would take her somewhere else if she stared at it too long and hard. Not to mention making her blood pressure spike so high it would give her an aneurism—if she tried it in the next few hours.

She snapped it shut again and looked up at Olga. “Do you know what this means?” she asked.

Olga nodded very seriously. “It means you and Brilliana will have to disappear,” she said. “These two—” a sniff and a nod at the barricaded doorway—“are of no account, but this—” a glance at the locket—“might be the gravest threat to the Clan in living memory.” She frowned uncertainly. “I had not imagined that such a thing might exist. But if it does—”

“—They must stop at nothing to kill anyone who knows they exist,” said Brill, completing the thought for her. She looked at Miriam with bright eyes. “Will you take me with you wherever you go, mistress? You’ll need someone to guard your back …”

Two hours later.

Painkillers and beta-blockers are wonderful things, Miriam reflected as she glanced over her shoulder at Brill. She’d managed to relax slightly as Olga organized a cleanup, marshalling a barricade inside the doorway and chivvying Kara and the servants into making themselves useful. Then Olga had pointed out in words of one syllable what this meant: that two factions, at least one of them hitherto unknown, were after her and it would be a good idea to make herself scarce. Finally, still feeling fragile but now accommodating herself to the idea, Miriam had crossed over. With her passenger. Who wore a smart business suit and an expression of mild bemusement. “Where are we?” asked Brill.

“The doppelgänger warehouse.” Miriam frowned as she transferred her locket to her left hip pocket “Other side from my own chambers. Someone should have cleaned up by now.”

Fidgeting in her pocket, she pulled out some cartridges. She shuffled quietly closer to the edge of the mezzanine and looked over the side as she reloaded her pistol.

“This wasn’t what I expected,” the younger woman said in hushed tones, staring up at the dim warehouse lights.

“Stay quiet until I’ve checked it out.” She let a sharp note creep into her voice. “We may not be alone here.”

“Oh.”

Miriam crept to the edge of the platform and looked down. There was no sign of movement below, and the front door of the warehouse—past the dismounted trailer that served as a site office—was shut. “Wait here. I’ll call you down when it’s safe,” she said.

“Yes, Miriam.”

She took a deep breath, then darted down the stairs lightly, her gun raised. Nobody shot at her from concealment. She reached the bottom step and paused for a couple of seconds before stepping off the metal staircase onto dusty wooden floorboards, then duck-walked over to the side of the site office, out of sight from its windows and the door. Creeping again, she sidled around the wall of the trailer and crouched next to the short flight of steps leading in to it. She spent about a minute staring at the threshold, then stood up slowly, lowered her gun, and carefully returned it to her jacket pocket. She rubbed her forehead, then turned. “You can come down now, as long as you come right over here. Don’t touch anything with your hands!”

Brilliana stood up and dusted herself off, lips wrinkling in distaste as she tried to shake the warehouse cobwebs from the sleeve of her Chanel suit. Then she walked down the stairs slowly, not touching the guard rail. Her back was straight, as if she was making a grand entrance rather than a low-life departure.

Miriam pointed at the steps to the trailer. “Don’t, whatever you do, even think about going in there,” she warned. Her expression was drawn. Brill sniffed, conspicuously, then pulled a face in disgust.

“What happened there?”

“Someone was killed,” Miriam said quietly. Then she bent down and pointed to something in the threshold. “Look. See that wire? It’s hair-thin. Don’t touch it!”

“What wire—oh.”

A fine wire was stretched across the threshold, twelve inches above the floor.

“That wasn’t here when I came this way three hours ago,” Miriam said tonelessly. “And nobody’s been to clear up what’s inside. Going from what Roland was telling me, that means that first, this is a trap, and second, it’s not the kind where someone’s going to jump out and start shooting at us, and third, if you touch that wire, we probably both die. Wait here and don’t move or touch anything. I’m going to see if they’re belt-and-suspenders people.”

Miriam shuffled gingerly over toward the big wooden doors of the warehouse—there was a smaller access door set in the side of one of them—with her eyes focused on the ground in front of her, every step of the way. Brill stayed where she was obediently, but when Miriam glanced at her, she was staring up at the lights, an odd expression on her face. “I’m over here,” she said. “I’m really on the other side!”

Miriam reached the inner door, bent low, looked up, and made a hissing noise through her teeth. “Shit!”

“What is it?” called Brill, shaking herself.

“Another one,” Miriam replied. Her face was ghost-white. “You can come over here and look. This is the way out.”

“Oh.” Brill walked over to the door, stopping short at Miriam’s warning hand gesture. She followed Miriam’s pointing finger, up at something in the shadows above the door. “What’s that?” she asked.

“At a guess, it’s a bomb,” said Miriam. “Probably a … what do you call it? A Claymore mine.” The green package was securely fastened to two nails driven into the huge main warehouse door directly above the access door cut in it. Miriam’s compact flashlight cut through the twilight, tracing a fine wire as it looped around three or four nails. It came back to anchor to the access door at foot level, in such a way that any attempt to open the door would tug on it. Miriam whistled tunelessly. “Careless, very careless.”

Brill stared at the booby trap in horror. “Are you just going to leave it?” she asked.

Miriam glanced at her. “What do you expect me to do?” she asked. “I’m not a bomb disposal expert, I’m a journalist! I just learned a bit about this stuff doing a feature on Northern Ireland a couple of years ago.” For a moment, an expression of helpless anger flashed across her face. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “I know somewhere safe, but ‘safe’ is relative. We need to hole up where nobody is going to ask questions you can’t answer, assassins can’t find us, and I can do some thinking.” She glanced at the Claymore mine. “Once I figure out a way to open this door without killing us both.”

“That was another, in the office?” asked Brill.

“Yes.” Miriam shrugged. “I figure the idea was to kill anyone who comes sniffing. But the only people who know what’s in there are me and whoever … whoever murdered the night watchman.”

“What about Roland?”

“Oh, yes. I told Roland. And he could have told—” for a moment Miriam looked wistful. “Damn, this means I can’t trust anyone who works for Angbard, can I?” She glanced obliquely at Brill.

“I don’t work for Angbard,” Brill said slowly. “I work for you.”

“Well, that’s nice to know.” Miriam gave her a lopsided grin. “I hope it doesn’t get you into trouble. Worse trouble,” she corrected.

“What are we going to do?” asked Brill, frowning as only a twenty-something confronted by fate can frown.

“Hmm. Well, I’m going to open this door.” Miriam gestured. “Somehow or other. Then … there’s a lot you don’t know, isn’t there? The door opens on an alley in a place called New York. It’s a big city and it’s after dark. I’m going to call a car service, and you’re going to do what I do—get in after me, ride with me to where we’re going, wait while I pay the driver, and go inside. I’ll do all the talking. You should concentrate on taking in whatever you can without looking like a yokel. Once we’re in private, you can talk all you want. All right? Think you can do that?”

Brill nodded seriously. “It’ll be for me like when you first arrived? On the other side?” she asked.

“Good analogy.” Miriam nodded. “No, it’ll be worse, much worse.” She grinned again. “I had an introduction; the whole world didn’t all get thrown at me all at once. Just try not to get yourself killed crossing the road, okay?” Then she glanced around. “Look, over there below the mezzanine, see those crates? I want you to go and sit down on the other side of them. Shield your head with your arms, yes, like they’re about to fall on you. And keep your mouth open. I’m going to try and get this door open without blowing us to pieces. I figure it should be possible because they were expecting people to come in from outside, not to materialize right inside the warehouse.”

“We’re already supposed to be dead, aren’t we?”

Miriam nodded. “Go,” she said.

Brill headed off toward the stack of tea chests. Miriam bent down and followed the near-invisible wire off to one side. I really don’t like the look of this, she thought, her heart hammering at her ribs. She glanced up at the green casing, ominous as a hornet’s nest suspended overhead. “Let’s see,” she mumbled. “The door opens inward, pulls on the wire … or the warehouse door opens inward, also pulls on the wire. But if it’s spring-loaded, releasing it could also set the fucking thing off. Hmm.”

She examined the wire as it ran around a rusting nail pounded into the wall beside the door. “Right.” She stood up and walked back across to the trailer with its own booby trap and its cargo of death. Climbing the steps, she paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and stepped over the wire.

Nothing happened. I’m still here, she told herself. She took another deep breath, this time to avoid having to breathe in too close to the thing sprawled across the fallen office chair at the far side of the office. She’d called Roland, told him to send cleaners—instead, these booby traps had materialized. When the Clan wants you dead, you die, she realized bleakly. If indeed it is the Clan…

There, on a rusting tool chest propped against the other wall, was exactly what she was looking for. She picked up the heavy-duty staple gun and checked that it was loaded. “Yup.” She hefted it one-handed, then mustered up a smile and picked up a pair of rusty pliers and stepped back out of the trailer.

Two minutes later, she had the door open. The wire, firmly stapled to the door frame, was severed: The mine was still armed, but the trigger wire led nowhere. “Come on,” she called to Brilliana. “It’s safe now! We can leave!” Brill hurried over. As she did so, Miriam glanced up and shuddered once more. What if they’d heard of infrared motion detectors?

Well, that was the Clan all over.

It was snowing lightly, and Miriam phoned for a taxi when they reached the main road. Brill kept quiet, but her eyes grew wide when she saw Miriam talking into a small gray box—and wider still as she took in the cars that rumbled past in the gloom. She glanced from side to side like a caged cat in a strange, threatening environment. “I didn’t know it would be like this!” she whispered to Miriam. Then she shivered. “It’s really cold.”

“It’s winter, kid. Get used to it.” Miriam grinned, slightly manic from her success with the bomb.

“It’s colder on the other side, isn’t it?”

A cab pulled alongside, its light turned off. Miriam walked over. “Cab for Beckstein?” she asked. The driver nodded. She held open the rear door. “Get in and slide across,” she told Brill. Then she gave directions and got inside, shutting the door.

The cab moved off. Brill looked around in fascination, then reached down toward her ankles. “It’s heated!” she said quietly.

“Of course it’s heated,” said the driver in a Pakistani accent. “You think I let my passengers freeze to death before they pay me?”

“Excuse my friend,” Miriam told him, casting a warning glance at Brill. “She’s from Russia. Just arrived.”

“Oh,” said the driver, as if that explained everything. “Yes, very good, that.”

Brill kept her eyes wide but her mouth closed the rest of the way to the Marriott Marquis, but watched carefully as Miriam paid off the cabbie using pieces of green paper she pulled from a billfold. “Come on, follow me,” said Miriam.

Miriam felt Brill tense as the glass doors opened automatically ahead of them, but she kept up with her as she headed for the express elevator. “One moment,” Miriam muttered to her, pushing the button. “This is an elevator. It’s a room, suspended on wires, in a vertical shaft. We use it instead of the stairs.”

“Why?” Brill looked puzzled.

“Have you ever tried to climb forty flights of stairs?” Miriam shut up as another elevator arrived, disgorging a couple of septuagenarians. Then the express doors opened, and she waved Brill inside. “This is easier,” she said, hitting the second from top button. The younger woman lurched against the wall as the elevator began to rise. “We’ll be there in no time.”

The glass-walled elevator car began to track up the outer wall of the tower. “That’s—oh my!” Brill leaned back against the far wall from the window. “I’d rather walk, I think,” she said shakily.

A thought struck Miriam at the top. “We’d better be careful going in,” she commented before the doors opened. “I want you to wait behind me.”

“Why?” Brill followed her out of the lift into an empty landing. She looked slightly green, and Miriam realized she hadn’t said anything on the way up.

“Because,” Miriam frowned, “we’re safe from the other side, here. But Roland knows which room I’m using.” He won’t have told anybody, she reasoned. Even if he has, they can’t have booby-trapped it from the inside, like the warehouse. Not on the twenty-second floor. I hope.

“All right.” Brill swallowed. “Which way?” she asked, looking bewildered.

“Follow me.” Miriam pushed through the fire doors, strolled along a hotel corridor, trying to imagine what it might look like to someone who’d never seen a hotel—or an elevator—before. “Wait here.”

She swiped her card-key through the lock, then stood aside, right hand thrust in her jacket pocket as she pushed the door open to reveal an empty suite, freshly prepared beds, an open bathroom door. “Quick.” She waved Brill inside then followed her, shut and locked the door, and sagged against it in relief.

“Oh shit, oh shit…” Her hands felt cold and shook until she clasped them together. Delayed shock, the analytical observer in her brain commented. Tonight you killed an assassin in self-defence, defused a bomb, discovered a murder and a conspiracy, and rescued Brill and Olga. Isn’t it about time you collapsed in a gibbering heap?

“Where is—” Brilliana was looking around, eyes narrowed. “It’s so small! But it’s hot. The fireplace—”

“You don’t have fireplaces in tall buildings,” Miriam said automatically. “We’re twenty-two floors up. We’ve got air-conditioning—that box, under the curtains, it warms the air, keeps it at a comfortable temperature all year around.” She rubbed her forehead: The pounding headache was threatening to make a comeback. “Have a seat.”

Brill picked a chair in front of the television set. “What now?” she asked, yawning.

Miriam glanced at the bedside clock: It was about one o’clock in the morning. “It’s late,” said Miriam. “Tonight we sleep. In the morning I’m going to take you on a journey to another city, to meet someone I trust. A friend. Then—” she instinctively fingered the pocket with the two lockets in it, her own and the one she’d taken from the assassin—“we’ll work out what to do next.”

They spent a nervous night in the anonymous hotel room, high above any threat from world-walking pursuers. In the morning Miriam pointed Brill at the shower—she had to explain the controls—while she called room service, then went to check the wardrobe.

A big anonymous-looking suitcase nearly filled the luggage niche, right where she’d left it. While breakfast was on its way up, Miriam opened it and pulled out some fresh clothing. Have to take time to buy some more, she thought, looking at what was left. Most of the suitcase was occupied by items that wouldn’t exactly render her inconspicuous on this side. Later, she resolved. Her wallet itched, reproaching her. Inside it was the platinum card Duke Angbard had sent her. Two million dollars of other people’s blood money. Either it was her “Get Out of Jail Free” card, or a death trap, depending on whether whoever had sent the first bunch of assassins—her enemy within the Clan, rather than without—was able to follow its transactions. Probably they wouldn’t be able to, at least not fast enough to catch up with her if she kept moving. If they were, Miriam wasn’t the only family member who was at risk. It’s probably safe as long as it keeps working and I keep moving, she reasoned. If somebody puts a stop on it, I’m in trouble. And better not go buying any air tickets. Not that she was planning on doing that—the idea of introducing airline passenger etiquette to Brill left her shaking her head.

There was a discreet knock at the door. Miriam picked up her pistol and, hiding it in her pocket, approached. The peephole showed her a bored bellhop pushing a trolley. She opened the door. “Thanks,” she said, passing him a tip. “We’ll keep the trolley.”

Back inside the suite, Brill emerged from the bathroom looking pink and freshly scrubbed—and somewhat confused. “Where does all the water come from?” she asked, almost complaining. “It never stopped!”

“Welcome to New York, baby,” Miriam drawled, lifting the cover off a plate laden with a full-cooked breakfast. “Land of plenty, home of—sorry,” she finished lamely and waved Brill toward a chair. “Come on, there’s enough food for both of us.” Damn, she thought. I don’t want to go rubbing her nose in it. Not like that.

“Thank you,” Brill said, primly picking up a knife and fork and going to work. “Hmm. It tastes slightly … odd.”

“Yeah.” Miriam chewed thoughtfully, then poured a couple of cups of coffee from the thermal jug. “The eggs aren’t as good. Are they?”

“It’s all a little different.” Brill frowned, inspecting her plate minutely. “They’re all the same, aren’t they? Like identical twins?”

“It’s how we make things here.” Miriam shrugged. “You’ll see lots of things that are identical. But not people.” She began working on her toast before she noticed Brill surreptitiously following her example with the small wrapped parcels of butter. “First, I’m going to call my friend. If she’s all right, we’re going to go on a journey to another city and I’m going to leave you with her for a few days. The way we tell it is: You’re a relative from out of state who’s coming to stay. Your parents are weird backwoods types, which is why there’s a lot of stuff you haven’t seen. My friend will know the truth. Also, she’s got a contact number for Roland. If I—” she cleared her throat—“she’ll get you back in touch, so you can go home. To the other side, I mean, when you need to.”

“ ‘When I need to’,” Brill echoed doubtfully. She glanced around the room. “What’s that?”

“That?” Miriam blinked. “It’s a television set.”

“Oh. Like Ser Villem’s after-dinner entertainments. I remember that! The cat and the mouse, and the talking rabbit, Bugs.” Brill smiled. “They are everywhere, here?”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Kid, I prescribe a week as a dedicated couch potato before we let you go outdoors on your own, she resolved. “I’ve got a call to make,” she said, reaching for her mobile.

The first thing Miriam did was switch her phone off, open the back, and replace the SIM chip with one she took from her billfold. Then she reassembled it. The phone beeped as it came up with a new identity, but there was no voice mail waiting for her. Steeling herself, she dialled a number—one belonging to another mobile phone she’d sent via FedEx a couple of days before.

“Hello?” The voice at the end of the line sounded positively chirpy.

“Paulie! Are you okay?”

“Miriam! How’s it going, babe?”

“It’s going messy,” she admitted. “Look, remember the other day? Are you still home?”

“Yes. What’s come up?”

“I’m going to come pay you a visit,” said Miriam. “First, I’ve got a lot of things to discuss, stuff to get in order—and a down payment. Second, I’ve got a lodger. How’s your spare room?”

“Oh, you know it’s been empty since I kicked that bum Walter out? What’s up, you wanting him to stay with me?”

Miriam glanced at Brill. “It’s a she, and I think you’ll probably like her,” she said guardedly. “It’s part of that deal I’ve made. I need you to put her up for a few weeks, on the company—I mean, I’m paying. Trouble is, she’s from, uh, out of state, if you follow me. She doesn’t know her way around at all.”

“Does she, like, speak English?” Paulette sounded interested rather than perturbed, for which Miriam was immensely grateful. Brilliana was toying with her coffee and pretending not to realize Miriam was discussing her, on an intimate basis, with a talking box.

“Yeah, that’s not a problem. But this morning was the first time she’d ever met an electric shower, and that is a problem or me, because I’ve got a lot of travelling to do in the next few weeks and I need to put her where someone can keep an eye on her as she gets used to the way things are done over here. Can you do that?”

“Probably,” Paulette said briskly. “Depends if she hates my guts on first sight—or vice versa. I can’t promise more than that, can I?”

“Well—” Miriam took a deep breath. “Okay, we’re coming up today on the train. You going to be home in the afternoon?”

“For you, any day! You’ve got a lot to tell me about?”

“Everything,” Miriam said fervently. “It’s been crazy.”

“Bye, then.”

Miriam put the phone down and rubbed her eyes. Brill was watching her oddly. “Who was that?” she asked.

“Who—oh, on the phone?” Miriam glanced at it. So Brill had figured out that much? Bright girl. “A friend of mine. My, uh, business agent. On this side.” She grinned. “For the past few days, anyway. We’re going to see her this afternoon.”

“ ‘Her’?” Brill raised an eyebrow. “All the hot water you want, no need to feed the fire, and women running businesses? No wonder my mother didn’t want me coming here—she was afraid I’d never come back!”

“That seems to go with the territory,” Miriam agreed dryly.

After breakfast she chivvied Brill into getting dressed again. Her tailored suit and blouse would blend into the background just fine: another business traveller in the heart of New York. Miriam thought for a moment, then picked another jacket—this time a dressy one rather than one built for bad weather. She’d have to keep her pistol in her handbag, but she’d look more in keeping with Brill, and hopefully it would distract any killers hunting for a lone woman in her early thirties with thus-and-such features.

Miriam took the large suitcase when they left the room and headed downstairs. Brill’s eyes kept swivelling at everything from telephones to cigarette ads, but she kept her questions to herself as Miriam shepherded her into a nearby bank for ten minutes, then flagged down a taxi. “What was that about?” Brill murmured after Miriam told the driver where to go.

“Needed to take care of some money business,” Miriam replied. “Angbard gave me a line on some credit, but—” she stopped, shrugged. I’m talking Martian again, she realized.

“You’ll have to tell me how this credit thing works some time,” Brill commented. “I don’t think I’ve actually seen a coin since I came here. Do people use them?”

“Not much. Which makes some things easier—it’s harder to steal larger amounts—and other things more difficult—like transferring large quantities of money to someone else without it being noticed.”

“Huh.” Brill stared out of the window at the passing traffic, the pedestrians in their dark winter colours, and the bright advertisements. “It’s so noisy! How do you get any thinking done?”

“Sometimes it’s hard,” Miriam admitted.

She bought two tickets to Boston and shepherded Brill onto the express train without incident. They found a table a long way from anyone else without difficulty, which turned out to be a good thing, because Brill was unable to control her surprise when the train began to move. “It’s so different!” she squeaked, taken aback.

“It’s called a train.” Miriam pointed out of the window. “Like that one, only faster and newer and built for carrying passengers. Where we’re going is within a day’s walk of Angbard’s palace, but it’ll only take us three hours to get there.”

Brilliana stared at the passing freight train. “I’ve seen movies,” she said quietly. “You don’t need to assume I’m stupid, ignorant. But it’s not the same as being here.”

“I’m sorry.” Miriam shook her head, embarrassed. She looked at Brill thoughtfully. She was doing a good job of bluffing, even though the surprises the world kept throwing at her must sometimes have been overwhelming. A bright kid, well-educated for her place in time, but out of her depth here—How would I cope if someone gave me a ticket to the thirtieth century? Miriam wondered. At a guess, there’d be an outburst of anger soon, triggered by something trivial—the realization that this wasn’t fairyland but a real place, and she’d grown up among people who lived here and withheld everything in it from her. I wonder which way she’ll jump?

Opposite her, Brilliana’s face froze. “What is it?” Miriam asked quietly.

“The… the second row of thrones behind you—that’s interesting. I’ve seen that man before. Black hair, dark suit.”

“Where?” Miriam whispered, tensing. Feeling for her shoulder bag, the small pistol buried at the bottom of it. No, not on a train…

“At court. He is a corporal of honour in service to Angbard. Called Edger something. I’ve seen him a couple of times in escort to one or another of the duke’s generals. I don’t think he’s recognized me. He is reading one of those intelligence papers the tinkers were selling at the palace of trains.”

“Hmm.” Miriam frowned. “Did you see any luggage when he got onboard? Anything he carried? Describe him.”

“There is a trunk with a handle, like yours, only it looks like metal. He has it beside him and places one hand on it every short while.”

“Ah.” Miriam relaxed infinitesimally. “Okay, I think I’ve got a handle on it. Is the case about the same size as mine?”

Brill nodded slowly, her eyes focused past Miriam’s left shoulder.

“That means he’s probably a courier,” Miriam said quietly. “At a guess, Angbard has him carry documents daily between his palace and Manhattan. That explains why he spends so little time at court himself—he can keep his finger on the pulse far faster than the non-Clan courtiers realize. If I’m right, he’ll be carrying a report about last night, among other things.” She raised a finger to her lips. “Trouble is, if I’m right, he’s armed and certainly dangerous to approach. And if I’m wrong, he’s not a courier. He’s going to wait for the train to stop, then try to kill us.” Miriam closed her hand around the barrel of her pistol, then stopped. No, that’s the wrong way to solve this, she thought. Instead she pulled out her wallet and a piece of paper and began writing.

Brilliana leaned forward. “He’s doing it again,” she murmured. “I think there’s something in his jacket. Under his arm. He looks uncomfortable.”

“Right.” Miriam nodded, then shoved the piece of paper across the table at Brill. There was a pair of fifty-dollar bills and a train ticket concealed under it. “Here is what we’re going to do. In a minute, you’re going to stand up while he isn’t looking and walk to the other end of this carriage—behind you, over there, where the doors are. If—” she swallowed—“if things go wrong, don’t try anything heroic. Just get off the train as soon as it stops, hide in the crowd, make damn sure he doesn’t see you. There’ll be another train through in an hour. Your ticket is valid for travel on it, and you want to get off in Cambridge. Go out of the station, tell a cab driver you want to go to this address, and pay with one of these notes, the way you saw me do it. He’ll give you change. It’s a small house; the number is on the front of the door. Go up to it and tell the woman who lives there that I sent you and I’m in trouble. Then give her this.” Miriam pushed another piece of paper across the table at her. “After a day, tell Paulette to use the special number I gave her. That’s all. Think you can do that?”

Brill nodded mutely. “What are you going to do now?” she asked quietly.

Miriam took a deep breath. “I’m going to do what we in the trade refer to as a hostile interview,” she said. “What was his name, again?”

“Hello, Edsger. Don’t move. This would not be a good place to get help for a sucking chest wound.”

He tensed and she smiled, bright and feral, like a mongoose confronting a sleepy cobra.

“What—”

“Don’t move, I said. That includes your mouth. Not very good, is it, letting your mark turn on you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I think you do. And I think it’s slack of you, nodding off just because you’re on the iron road and no world-walkers can sneak up from behind.” She smiled wider, seeing his unnerved expression. “First, some ground rules. We are going to have a little conversation, then we will go our separate ways, and nobody will get hurt. But first, to make that possible, you will start by slowly bending forward and sliding that pistol of yours out into this shopping bag.”

The courier leaned forward. Miriam leaned with him, keeping her pistol jammed up against his ribs through her jacket. “Slowly,” she hissed.

“I’m slow.” He opened his jacket and slid a big Browning automatic out of the holster under his left armpit—two-fingered. Miriam tensed, but he followed through by dropping it into the open bag.

“And your mobile phone,” she said. “Now, kick it under the table. Gently.” He gave it a half-hearted shove with one foot.

“Put your hands between your knees and lean back slowly,” she ordered.

“Who are you?” he asked, complying.

“First, you’re going to tell me who you’re delivering that case to at the other end,” she said. “Ordinary postal service—or Angbard himself?”

“I can’t—”

She shoved the gun up against him, hard. “You fucking can,” she snarled quietly. “Because if you don’t tell me, you are going to read about the contents of that case on the front page of The New York Times, are you hearing me?”

“It goes to Matthias.”

“Angbard’s secretary, right.” She felt him tense again. “That was the correct answer,” she said quietly. “Now, I want you to do something else for me. I’ve got a message for Angbard, for his ears only, do you understand? It’s not for Matthias, it’s not for Roland, it’s not for any of the other lord-lieutenants he’s got hanging around. Remember, I’ve got your number. If anyone other than Angbard gets this message, I will find out and I will tell him and he will kill you. Got that? Good. What’s going to happen next is: The train’s stopping in a couple of minutes. You will stand up, take your case—not the bag with your phone—and get off the train, because I will be following you. You will then stand beside the train door where I can see you until it’s ready to move off, and you will stay there while it moves off because if you don’t stand that way I will shoot you. If you want to know why I’m so trigger-happy, you can ask Angbard yourself—after you’ve delivered his dispatches.”

“You must be—” his eyes widened.

“Don’t say my name.”

He nodded.

“You’re going to be an hour late into Boston—an hour later than you would have been, anyway. Don’t bother trying to organize a search for me because I won’t be there. Instead, go to the Fort Lofstrom doppelgänger house, make your delivery to Matthias as usual, say you missed the train or something, then ask to see the old man and tell him about meeting me here.”

“What?” He looked puzzled. “I thought you had a message.”

“You are the message.” She grinned humourlessly. “And you’ve got to be alive to deliver it. We’re slowing up: Do as I tell you and it’ll all be over soon.”

He shook his head very slowly. “They were right about you,” he said. But when she asked him who he meant, he just stared at her.