The Hidden Family

Gold Bugs

The following morning, Miriam awakened early. It was still semi-dark outside. She yawned at her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her hair. “Hmm. They wear it long here, don’t they?” It would just have to do, she thought, as she dressed in yesterday’s clothes once more. She carefully sorted through her shoulder bag to make sure there was nothing too obtrusively alien in it, then pulled her boots on.

She paused at the foot of the main staircase, poised above the polished marble floor next to the front desk. “Can I help you, ma’am?” a bellhop offered eagerly.

She smiled wanly. “Breakfast. Where is it?” The realization that she’d missed both lunch and dinner crashed down on her. Abruptly she felt almost weak from hunger.

“This way, please!” He guided her toward two huge mahogany-and-glass doors set at one side of the foyer, then ushered her to a seat at a small table, topped in spotless linen. “I shall just fetch the waiter.”

Miriam angled her chair around to take in the other diners as discreetly as possible. It’s like a historical movie! she thought. One set in a really exclusive Victorian hotel, except the Victorians hadn’t had a thing for vivid turquoise and purple wallpaper and the costumes were messed up beyond recognition. Men in Nehru suits with cutaway waists, women in long skirts or trousers and wing-collared shirts. Waiters with white aprons bearing plates of—fish? And bread rolls? The one familiar aspect was the newspaper. “Can you fetch me a paper?” she asked after the bellhop.

“Surely, ma’am!” he answered, and was off like a shot. He was back in a second and Miriam fumbled for a tip, before starting methodically on the front page.

The headlines in The London Intelligencer were bizarrely familiar, simultaneously tainted with the exotic. “Speaker: House May Impeach Crown for Adultery”—but no, there was no King Clinton in here, just unfamiliar names and a proposal to amend the Basic Law to add a collection of additional charges for which the Crown could be impeached—Adultery, Capitative Fraud, and Irreconsilience, whatever that was. They can impeach the king? Miriam shook her head, moved on to the next story. “Morris and Stokes to hang,” about a pair of jewel thieves who had killed a shopkeeper. Farther down the page was more weirdness, a list of captains of merchantmen to whom had been granted letters of marque and reprise against “the forces and agents of the continental enemy,” and a list of etheric resonances assigned for experimentation by the Teloptic Wireless Company of New Britain.

A waiter appeared at her shoulder as she was about to turn the page. “May I be of service, ma’am?”

“Sure. What’s good, today?”

He smiled broadly. “The kippers are most piquant, and if I may recommend Mrs. Wilson’s strawberry jam for after? Does ma’am prefer tea or coffee?”

“Coffee. Strong, with milk.” She nodded. “I’ll take your recommendations, please. That’ll be all.”

He rustled away from her, leaving her puzzling over the meaning of a story about taxation powers being granted by The-King-In-Parliament to the Grand Estates, and enforcement of the powers of printing rights by the Royal Excise. Even the addition of a powerful dose of coffee and a plate of smoked fish—not her customary start to the day, but nevertheless remarkably edible on an empty stomach—didn’t make it any clearer. This place is so complex! Am I ever going to understand it? She wondered.

She was almost to the bottom of her coffee when a different bellhop arrived, bearing a silver platter. “Message for the Widow Fletcher?” he asked, using the pseudonym Miriam had checked in under.

“That’s me.” Miriam took the note atop the platter—a piece of card with strips of printed tape gummed to it. MEET ME AT 54 GRT MAURICE ST AT 10 SEE BATES STOP EB ENDS. “Ah, good.” She glanced at the clock above the ornate entrance. “Can you arrange a cab for me, please? To Great Maurice Street, leaving in twenty minutes.”

Folding her paper she rose and returned to her room to retrieve her hat and topcoat. The game’s afoot, she thought excitedly.

By the time the cab found its way to Great Maurice Street she’d cooled off a little, taking time to collect her thoughts and begin to work out what she needed to do and say. She also made sure her right glove was pulled down around her wrist, and the sleeve of her blouse was bunched up toward the elbow. Not that it was the ideal way to make an exit—indeed, it would wreck her plans completely if she had to escape by means of the temporary tattoo of a certain intricate knot—but if Erasmus had decided to sell her out to the constabulary, he’d be sorry.

Great Maurice Street was a curving cobblestoned boulevard hemmed in on either side by expensive stone town houses. Little stone bridges leapt from sidewalk to broad front doors across a trench which held two levels of subterranean windows. The street and sidewalks had been swept free of snow, although huge piles stood at regular intervals in the road to await collection. Miriam stepped down from the cab, paid the driver, and marched along the sidewalk until she identified number 54. “Charteris, Bates and Charteris,” she muttered to herself. “Sounds legal.” She advanced on the door and pulled the bell-rope.

A short, irritated-looking clerk opened the door. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Miriam stared down her nose at him. “I’m here to see Mr. Bates,” she said.

“Who did you say you were?” He raised a hand to cup his ear and Miriam realized he was half-deaf.

“Mrs. Fletcher, to see Mr. Bates,” she replied loudly.

“Oh. Come in, then, I’ll tell someone you’re here.”

Lawyers’ offices didn’t differ much between here and her own world, Miriam realized. There was a big, black, ancient-looking electric typewriter with a keyboard like a church organ that had shrunk in the wash, and there was an archaic telephone with a separate speaking horn, but otherwise the only differences were the clothes. Which, for a legal secretary in this place and time—male, thin, harried-looking—included a powdered wig, knee breeches, and a cutaway coat. “Please be seated—ah, no,” said the secretary, looking bemused as a tall fellow dressed entirely in black opened the door of an inner office and waggled a finger at Miriam: “This is His Honor Mr. Bates,” he explained. “You are…?”

“I’m Mrs. Fletcher,” Miriam repeated patiently. “I’m supposed to be seeing Mr. Bates. Is that right?”

“Ah, yes.” Bates nodded congenially at her. “If you’d like to come this way, please?”

The differences from her own world became vanishingly small inside his office, perhaps because so many lawyers back home aimed for a traditional feel to their furnishings. Miriam glanced round. “Burgeson isn’t here yet,” she observed disapprovingly.

“He’s been detained,” said Bates. “If you’d care to take a seat?”

“Yes.” Miriam sat down. “How much has Erasmus told you?”

Bates picked up a pair of half-moon spectacles and balanced them on the bridge of his nose. His whiskers twitched, walruslike. “He has told me enough, I think,” he intoned in a plummy voice. “A woman fallen upon hard times, husband dead after years abroad, papers lost in an unfortunate pursuit—I believe he referred to the foundering of the Greenbaum Lamplight, a most unpleasant experience for you, I am sure—and therefore in need of the emolient reaffirmation of her identity, is that right? He vouched for you most plaintively. And he also mentioned something about a fortune overseas, held in trust, to which you have limited access.”

“Yes, that’s all correct,” Miriam said fervently. “I am indeed in need of new papers—and a few other services best rendered by a man of the law.”

“Well. I can see at a glance that you are no Frenchie,” he said, nodding at her. “And so I can see nothing wrong with your party, ft will take but an hour to draw up the correct deeds and post them with the inns of court, to declare your identity fair and square. Erasmus said you were born at Shreveport on, ah, if I may be so indelicate, the seventh of September, in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and sixty nine. Is that correct?”

Miriam nodded. Near enough, she thought. “Uh, yes.”

“Very well. If you would examine and sign this—” he passed a large and imposing sheet of parchment to her—“and this—” he passed her another, “we will set the wheels of justice in motion.”

Miriam examined the documents rapidly. One of them was a declaration of some sort; asserting her name, age, place of birth, and identity and petitioning for a replacement birth certificate for the one lost at sea on behalf of the vacant authorities of—“Why are the authorities of Shreveport not directly involved?” she asked.

Bates looked at her oddly. “After what happened during the war there isn’t enough left of Shreveport to have any authorities,” he muttered darkly.

“Oh.” She read on. The next paper petitioned for a passport in her name, with a peculiar status—competent adult. “I see I am considered a competent adult here. Can you just explain precisely what that entails?”

“Certainly.” Bates leaned back in his chair. “You are an adult, aged over thirty, and a widow; there is no man under whose mantle your rights and autonomy are exercised, and you are deemed old enough in law to be self-sufficient. So you may enter into contracts at your own peril, as an adult, until such time as you choose to remarry, and any such contracts as you make will then be binding upon your future husband.”

“Oh,” she said faintly, and signed in the space provided. Better not marry anyone, then. She put the papers back on his desk then cleared her throat. “There are some other matters I will want you to see to,” she added.

“And what might those be?” He smiled politely. After all, the clock was ticking at her expense.

“Firstly.” She held up a finger. “There is a house that takes my fancy; it is located at number 46, Bridge Park Lane, and it appears to be empty. Am I right in thinking you can make inquiries on my behalf about its availability? If it’s open for lease or purchase I’d be extremely interested in acquiring it, and I’ll want to move in as soon as possible.”

Bates sat up straight and nodded, almost enthusiastically. “Of course, of course,” he said, scribbling in a crabbed hand on a yellow pad. “And is there anything else?” he asked.

“Secondly.” She held up a second finger. “Over the next month I will be wanting to create or purchase a limited liability company. It will need setting up. In addition, I will have a number of applications for patents that must be processed through the royal patent office—I need to locate and retain a patent agent on behalf of my company.”

“A company, and a patents agent.” He raised an eyebrow but kept writing. “Is there anything else?” he asked politely.

“Indeed. Thirdly, I have a quantity, held overseas, I should add, of bullion. Can you advise me on the issues surrounding its legal sale here?”

“Oh, that’s easy.” He put his pen down. “I can’t, because it’s illegal for anyone but the crown to own bullion.” He pointed at the signet ring he wore on his left hand. “No rule against jewelry, of course, so long as it weighs less than a pound. But bullion?” He sniffed. “You can perhaps approach the mint about an import license, and sell it to the crown yourself—they’ll give you a terrible rate, not worth your while, only ten pounds for an ounce. But that’s the war, for you. The mint is chronically short. If I were you I’d sell it overseas and repatriate the proceeds as bearer bonds.”

“Thank you.” Miriam beamed at him ingratiatingly to cover up the sound of her teeth grinding together. Ten pounds for an ounce? Erasmus, you and I are going to have strong words, she thought. Scratch finding an alternative, though. “How long will this take?” she asked.

“To file the papers? I’ll have the boy run over with them right now. Your passport and birth certificate will be ready tomorrow if you send for them from my office. The company—” he rubbed his chin. “We would have to pay a parliamentarian to get the act of formation passed as a private member’s bill in this sitting, and I believe the going rate has been driven up by the demands of the military upon the legislature in the current session. It would be cheaper to buy an existing company with no debts. I can ask around, but I believe it will be difficult to find one for less than seventy pounds.”

“Ouch.” Miriam pulled a face. “There’s no automatic process to go through to set one up?”

“Sadly, no.” Bates shook his head. “Every company requires an act of parliament; rubber-stamping them is bread and butter for most MPs, for they can easily charge fifty pounds or more to put forward an early day motion for a five-minute bill in the Commons. Every so often someone proposes a registry of companies and a regulator to create them, but the backbenches won’t ever approve that—it would take a large bite out of their living.”

“Humph.” Miriam nodded. “Alright, we’ll do it your way. The patent agent?”

Bates nodded. “Our junior clerk, Hinchliffe, is just the fellow for such a job. He has dealt with patents before, and will doubtless do so again. When will you need him?”

Miriam met Bates’s eye. “Not until I have a company to employ him, a company that I will capitalize by entirely legal means that need not concern you.” The lawyer nodded again, eyes knowing. “Then—let’s just say, I have encountered some ingenious innovations overseas that I believe may best be exploited by patenting them, and farming out me rights to the patents to local factory owners. Do you follow?”

“Yes, I think I do.” Bates nodded to himself, and smiled like a crocodile. “I look forward to your future custom, Mrs. Fletcher. It has been a pleasure to do business with such a perceptive member of the frail sex. Even if I don’t believe a word of it.”

Miriam spent the rest of the morning shopping for clothes. It was a disorienting experience. There were no department or chain stores: Each type of garment needed purchasing from a separate supplier, and the vast majority needed alterations to fit. Nor was she filled with enthusiasm by what she found. “Why are fashion items invariably designed to make people look ugly or feel uncomfortable?” she muttered into her microphone, after experiencing a milliner’s and a corsetiere’s in rapid succession. “I’m going to stick to sports bras and briefs, even if I have to carry everything across myself,” she grumbled. Nevertheless, she managed to find a couple of presentable walking suits and an evening outfit.

At six that evening, she walked through the gathering gloom to Burgeson’s shop and slipped inside. The shop was open, but empty. She spent a good minute tapping her toes and whistling tunelessly before Erasmus emerged from the back.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said distractedly. “Here.” He held out an envelope.

Miriam took it and opened it—then stopped whistling. “What brought this on?” she asked, holding it tightly.

His cheek twitched. “I got a better price than I could be sure of,” he said. “It seemed best to cut you in on the profits, in the hope of a prosperous future trade.”

Miriam relaxed slightly. “I see.” She slid the envelope into a jacket pocket carefully. The five ten-pound notes in it were more than she’d expected to browbeat out of him. “Is your dealer able to take larger quantities of bullion?” she asked, abruptly updating her plans.

“I believe so.” His face was drawn and tired. “I’ve had some thinking to do.”

“I can see that,” she said quietly. Fifty pounds here was equivalent to something between three and seven thousand dollars, back home. Gold was expensive, a sign of demand, and what did that tell her? Nothing good. “What’s the situation? Do you trust Bates?”

“About as far as I can throw him,” Erasmus admitted. “He isn’t a fellow traveler.”

“Fellow traveler.” She nodded to herself. “You’re a Marxist?”

“He was the greatest exponent of my faith, yes.” He said it quietly and fervently. “I believe in natural rights, to which all men and women are born equal; in democracy: and in freedom. Freedom of action, freedom of commerce, freedom of faith, just like old Karl. For which they hanged him.”

“He came to somewhat different conclusions where I come from,” Miriam said dryly, “although his starting conditions were dissimilar. Are you going to shut up shop and tell me what’s troubling you?”

“Yes.” He strode over and turned the sign in the door, then shot the bolt. “In the back, if you please.”

“After you.” Miriam followed him down a narrow corridor walled in pigeon holes. Parcels wrapped in brown paper gathered dust in them, each one sprouting a plaintive ticket against the date of its redemption—graveyard markers in the catacombs of usury. She kept her hand in her right pocket, tightening her grip on the small pistol, heart pounding halfway out of her chest with tension.

“You can’t be a police provocateur,” he commented over his shoulder.

“For one thing, you didn’t bargain hard enough over the bullion. For another, you slipped up in too many ways, all of them wrong. But I wasn’t sure you weren’t simply a madwoman until you showed me that intricate engine and left the book.” He stepped sideways into a niche with a flight of wooden steps in it, leading down. “It’s far too incredible a story to be a flight-of-the mind concoction, and far too…expensive. Even the publisher’s notes! The quality of the paper. And the typeface.” He stopped at the foot of the stairs and stared up at her owlishly, one hand clutching at a load-bearing beam for support.

“And the pocket kinomagraph. I think either you’re real or I’m going mad,” he said, his voice hollow.

“You’re not mad.” Miriam took the steep flight of steps carefully.

“So?”

“So it behooves me to study this fascinating world you come from, and ask how it came to pass.” Erasmus was moving again. The cellar was walled from floor to ceiling in boxes and packing cases. “It’s fascinating. The principles of enlightenment that your republic was founded on—you realize they were smothered in the cradle, in the history I know of? Yes, by all means, the Parliamentary Settlement and the exile were great innovations for their time—but the idea of a republic! Separation of Church and State, a bill of rights, a universal franchise! After the second Leveler revolt, demands for such rights became something of a dead issue here, emphasis on the dead if you follow me…hmm.” He stopped in a cleared space between three walls of crates, a paraffin lamp hanging from a beam overhead.

“This is a rather big shop,” Miriam commented, tightening her grip on the gun.

“So it should be.” He glanced at her, saw the hand in her pocket. “Are you going to shoot me?”

“Why should I?” She tensed.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “You’ve obviously got some scheme in mind, one that means someone no good, whatever else you’re doing here. And I might know too much.”

Miriam came to a decision and took her hand out of her pocket—empty.

“And I’m not an innocent either,” Erasmus added, gesturing at the crates. “I’m glad you decided not to shoot. Niter of glycerol takes very badly to sudden shocks.”

Miriam took a deep breath and paused, trying to get a grip on herself. She felt a sudden stab of apprehension: The stakes in his game were much higher than she’d realized. This was a police state, and Erasmus wasn’t just a harmless dealer in illegal publications. “Listen, I have no intention of shooting anyone if I can avoid it. And I don’t care about you being a Leveler quartermaster with a basement full of explosives—at least, as long as I don’t live next door to you. It’s none of my damn business, and whatever you think, I didn’t come here to get involved in your politics. Even if it sounds better than, than what’s out there right now. On the other hand, I have my own, uh, political problems.”

Erasmus raised an eyebrow. “So who are your enemies?”

Miriam bit her lip. Can I trust him this far? She couldn’t see any choices at this point but, even so, taking him into her confidence was a big step. “I don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “They’re probably well-off. Like me, they can travel between worlds—not to the one in the book I gave you, which is my own, but to a much poorer, medieval one. One in which Christianity never got established as the religion in Rome, the dark ages lasted longer, and the Norse migration reached and settled this coast, as far inland as the Appalachians, and the Chinese empire holds the west. These people will be involved in trading, from here to there—I’m not sure what, but I believe ownership of gold is something to investigate. They’ll probably be a large and prosperous family, possibly ennobled in the past century or two, and they’ll be rich and conservative. Not exactly fellow travelers.”

“And what is your problem with them?”

“They keep trying to kill me.” Now she’d said it, confiding in him felt easier. “They come from over here. This is their power base, Erasmus. I believe they consider me a threat to them. I want to find them before they find me, and order things in a more satisfactory manner.”

“I think I see.” He made a steeple of his fingers. “Do you want them to die?”

“Not necessarily,” she said hesitantly. “But I want to know who they are, and where they came here from, and to stop their agents trying to kill me. I’ve got a couple of suspicions about who they are that I need to confirm. If I’m correct I might be able to stop the killing.”

“I suggest you tell me your story then,” said Erasmus. “And we’ll see if there’s anything we can do about it.” He raised his voice, causing her to start. “Aubrey! You can cease your lurking. If you’d be so good as to fetch the open bottle of port and three glasses, you may count yourself in for a long story.” He smiled humorlessly. “You’ve got our undivided attention, ma’am. I suggest you use it wisely…”

Back at the hotel a couple of hours later, Miriam changed into her evening dress and went downstairs, unaccompanied, for a late buffet supper. The waiter was unaccountably short with her, but found her a solitary small table in a dark corner of the dining room. The soup was passable, albeit slightly cool, and a cold roast with vegetables filled the empty corners of her stomach. She watched the well-dressed men and few women in the hotel from her isolated vantage point, and felt abruptly lonely. Is it just ordinary homesickness? she wondered, or culture shock? One or two hooded glances came her way, but she avoided eye contact and in any event nobody attempted to engage her in conversation. It’s as if I’m invisible, she thought.

She didn’t stay for dessert. Instead she retreated to her room and sought sollace with a long bath and an early night.

The next morning she warned the concierge that she would be away for a few days and would not need her room, but would like her luggage stored. Then she took a cab to the lawyer’s office. “Your papers are here, ma’am,” said Bates’s secretary.

“Is Mr. Bates free?” she asked. “Just a minute of his time.”

“I’ll just check.” A minute of finger twiddling passed. “Yes, come in, please.”

“Ah, Mr. Bates?” She smiled. “Have you made progress with your inquiries?”

He nodded. “I am hoping to hear about, the house tomorrow,” he said. “Its occupant, a Mr. Soames, apparently passed away three months ago and it is lying vacant as part of his estate. As his son lives in El Dorado, I suspect an offer for it may be received with gratitude. As to the company—” He shrugged. “What business shall I put on it?”

Miriam thought for a moment. “Call it a design bureau,” she said. “Or an engineering company.”

“That will be fine.” Bates nodded. “Is there anything else?”

“I’m going to be away for a week or so,” she said. “Shall I leave a deposit behind for the house?”

“I’m sure your word would be sufficient,” he said graciously. “Up to what level may I offer?”

“If it goes over a thousand pounds I’ll have to make special arrangements to transfer the funds.”

“Very well.” He stood up. “By your leave?”

Miriam’s last port of call was the central library. She spent two hours there, quizzing a helpful librarian about books on patent law. In the end, she took three away with her, giving her room at the hotel as an address. Carefully putting them in her shoulder bag she walked to the nearest main road and waved down a cab. “Roundgate Interchange,” she said. I’m going home, she thought. At last! A steam car puttered past them, overtaking on the right hand side. Back to clean air, fast cars, and electricity everywhere.

She gazed out of the cab’s window as the open field came into view through the haze of acrid fog that seemed to be everywhere today. I wonder how Brill and Paulie have been? She thought. It’ll be good to see them again.

It was dusk, and nobody seemed to have noticed the way that Miriam had damaged the side door of the estate. She slunk into the garden, paced past the hedge and the dilapidated greenhouse, then located the spot where she’d blazed a mark on the wall. A fine snow was falling as she pulled out the second locket and, with the aid of a pocket flashlight, fell headfirst into it.

She staggered slightly as the familiar headache returned with a vengeance, but a quick glance told her that nobody had come anywhere near this spot for days. A fresh snowfall had turned her hide into an anonymous hump in the gloom a couple of trees away. She waded toward it—then a dark shadow detatched itself from a tree and pointed a pistol at her.

“Brill?” she asked, uncertainly.

“Miriam!” The barrel dropped as Brill lurched forward and embraced her. “I’ve been so worried! How have you been?”

“Not so bad!” Miriam laughed, breathlessly. “Let’s get under cover and I’ll tell you about it.”

Brill had been busy; the snowbank concealed not only the hunting hide, but a fully assembled hut, six feet by eight, somewhat insecurely pegged to the iron-hard ground beneath the snow. “Come in, come in,” she said. Miriam stepped inside and she shut the door and bolted it. Two bunks occupied one wall, and a paraffin heater threw off enough warmth to keep the hut from freezing. “It’s been terribly cold by night, and I fear I’ve used up all the oil,” Brill told her. “You really must buy a wood stove!”

“I believe I will,” Miriam said thoughtfully, thinking about the coal smoke and yellow sulfurous smog that had made the air feel as if she was breathing broken glass. “It’s been, hmm, three days. Have you had any trouble?”

“Boredom,” Brilliana said instantly. “But sometimes boredom is a good thing. I have not been so alone in many years!” She looked slightly wistful. “Would you like some cocoa? I’d love to hear what adventures you’ve been having!”

That night Miriam slept fitfully, awakening once to a distant howling noise that raised the hair on her neck. Wolves? she wondered, before rolling over and dozing off again. Although the paraffin heater kept the worst of the chill at bay, there was frost inside the walls by morning.

Miriam woke first, sat up and turned the heat up as high as it would go, then—still cocooned in the sleeping bag—hung her jeans and hiking jacket from a hook in the roof right over the heater. Then she dozed off again. When she awakened, she saw Brill sitting beside the heater reading a book. “What is it?” she asked sleepily.

“Something Paulie lent me.” Brill looked slightly guilty. Miriam peered at the spine: The Female Eunuch. Sitting on a shelf next to the door she spotted a popular history book. Brill had been busy expanding her horizons.

“Hmm.” Miriam sat up and unzipped her bag, used the chamber pot, then hastily pulled on the now-defrosted jeans and a hiking sweater. Her boots were freezing cold—she’d left them too close to the door—so she moved them closer to the heater. “You’ve been thinking a lot.”

“Yes.” Brilliana put the book down. “I grew up with books; my father’s library had five in hoh’sprashe, and almost thirty in English. But this—the style is so strange! And what it says!”

Miriam shook her head. Too much to assimilate. “We’ll have to go across soon,” she said, shelving the questions that sat at the tip of her tongue—poisonous questions, questions about trust and belief. Brill seemed to be going through a phase of questioning everything, and that was fine by Miriam. It meant she was less likely to obey if Angbard or whoever was behind her told her to point a gun at Miriam. Searching her bag Miriam came up with her tablets, dry-swallowed them, then glanced around. “Anything to drink?”

“Surely.” Brill passed her a water bottle. It crackled slightly, but most of the contents were still liquid. “I didn’t realize a world could be so large,” Brill added quietly.

“I know how you feel,” Miriam said with feeling, running fingers through her hair—it needed a good wash and, now she thought about it, at least a trim—she’s spent the past four weeks so preoccupied in other things that it was growing wild and uncontrolled. “The far side is pretty strange to me, too. I think I’ve got it under control, but—” she shrugged uncomfortably. Private ownership of gold is so illegal there’s a black market in it, but opium and cocaine are sold openly in apothecary shops. Setting up a company takes an act of Parliament, but they can impeach the king. “Let’s just say, it isn’t quite what I was expecting. Let’s go home.”

“Alright.”

Miriam and Brill pulled their boots and coats on. Brill turned off the heater and folded the sleeping bags neatly then went outside to empty the chamber pot. Miriam picked up her shoulder bag, and then went outside to join Brill on the spot she’d marked on her last trip. She took a deep breath, pulled out the locket with her left hand, took all of Brill’s weight on her right hip for a wobbly, staggering moment that threatened to pull her over, and focused—

On a splitting headache and a concrete wall as her grip slipped and Brill skidded on the icy yard floor. “Ow!” Brill stood up, rubbing her backside. “That was most indelicately done.”

“Could be worse.” Miriam winced at the pain in her temples, glanced around, and shook her head to clear the black patches from the edge of her vision. There was no sign of any intrusion, but judging by the boxes stacked under the metal fire escape—covered with polythene sheeting against the weather—Paulette had been busy. “Come on inside, let’s fix some coffee and catch up on the news.”

The office door opened to Miriam’s key and she hastily punched in the code to disable the burglar alarm. Then she felt the heat, a stifling warmth that wrapped itself around her like a hot bath towel. “Wow,” she said, “come get a load of this.”

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” Brill shut and locked the door behind her and looked around. “Ooh, I haven’t been this warm in days.” She hastily opened her jacket and untied her boots, the better to let the amazing warmth from the under-floor heating get closer to her skin.

“You’ll want to use the shower next,” Miriam said, amused. “I could do with it too, so don’t be too long.” The shower in the office bathroom was cramped and cheap, but better than the antique plumbing arrangements on the far side. “I’ll make coffee.”

Miriam found her mobile phone in the front room. Its battery had run down while she’d been gone, so she plugged it in to recharge. She also found a bunch of useful items—Paulette had installed a brand new desk telephone and modem line while she’d been away—and a bunch of paperwork from the city government.

She was drinking her coffee in the kitchen when the front door opened. Miriam ducked out into the corridor, hand going to her empty jacket pocket before she realized what the reaction meant. “Paulie!” she called.

“Miriam! Good to see you!” Paulette had nearly jumped right out of her skin when she saw Miriam, but now she smiled broadly. “Oh wow. You look like you’ve spent a week on the wild side!”

“That’s exactly what I’ve done. Coffee?”

“I’d love some, thanks.” There was someone behind her. “In the front office, Mike, it needs to come through under the window,” she said over her shoulder. “We’re putting a DSL line in here,” she told Miriam. “Hope you don’t mind?”

“No, no, that’s great.” She retreated back into the small kitchenette, mind blanking on what to do next. She’d been thinking about a debriefing session with Paulie and Brill, then a provisioning trip to the universe next door, then a good filling lunch—but not with a phone company installer drilling holes in the wall.

Paulette obviously had things well in hand here, and there was no way Miriam was going to get into the shower for a while. She stared at the coffee machine blackly for a while. Maybe I should go and see Iris, she decided. Or…hmm. Is it time to call Roland again?

“Miriam. You’ve going to have to tell me how it’s going.” Paulette waited in the kitchen doorway.

“In due course.” Miriam managed a smile. “Success, but not so total.” Miriam sobered up fast. “At your end?”

“Running low on money—the burn rate on this operation is like a goddamn start-up,” Paulette complained. “I’ll need another hundred thousand to secure all the stuff you left on the shopping list.”

“And don’t forget the paycheck.” Miriam nodded. “Listen, I found one good thing out about the far side. Gold is about as legal there as heroin is here, and vice versa. I’m getting about two hundred pounds on the black market for a brick weighing sixteen Troy ounces, worth about three thousand, three five, dollars here. A pound goes a lot further than a dollar, it’s like, about two hundred bucks. So three and a half thousand here buys me the equivalent of forty thousand over there. Real estate prices are low, too. The place I need to buy on the far side is huge, but it should go for about a thousand pounds, call it equivalent to two hundred grand here. In our own Boston it’d be going for upwards of a million, easily. But gold is worth so much that I can pay for it with five bars of the stuff—about eighteen thousand dollars on this side. I’ve found an, uh, black-market outlet who seems reasonably trustworthy at handling the gold—he’s got his angles, but I know what they are. And it is amazingly easy to set up a new identity! Anyway, if I play this right I can build a front as a rich widow returning home from the empire with a fortune and then get the far side money pump running.”

“What are you going to carry the other way?” Paulette asked, sharply.

“Not sure yet.” Miriam rubbed her temples. “It’s weird. They sell cocaine and morphine in drugstores, over the counter, and they fly Zeppelins, and New Britain is at war with the French Empire, and their version of Karl Marx was executed for Ranting—preaching democracy and equal rights. With no industrial revolution he turned into a leveler ideologue instead of a socialist economist. I’m just surprised he was born in the first place—most of the names in the history books are unfamiliar after about eighteen hundred. It’s like a different branch in the same infinite tree of history; I wonder where Niejwein fits in it…let’s not go there now. I need to think of something we can import.” She brooded. “I’ll have to think fast. If the Clan realizes their drug-money pump could run this efficiently they’ll flood the place with cheap gold and drop the price of crack in half as soon as they learn about it. There’s got to be some other commodity that’s valuable over here that we can use to repatriate our profits.”

“Old masters,” Paulette said promptly.

“Huh?”

“Old masters.” She put her mug down. “Listen, they haven’t had a world war, have they?”

“Nope, I’m afraid they have,” Miriam said, checking her watch to see if she could take another pain killer yet. “In fact, they’ve had two. One in the eighteen-nineties that cost them India. The second in the nineteen-fifties that, well, basically New Britain got kicked out of Africa. Africa is a mess of French and Spanish colonies. But they got a strong alliance with Japan and the Netherlands, which also rule most of northwest Germany. And they rule South America and Australia and most of East Asia.”

“No tanks? No H-bombs? No strategic bombers?”

“No.” Miriam paused. “Are you saying—”

“Museum catalogues!” Paulie said excitedly. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot while you’ve been gone. What we do is, we look for works of art dating to before things went, uh, differently. In the other place. Works that were in museums in Europe that got bombed during World War Two, works that disappeared and have never been seen since. You get the picture? Just one lost sketch by Leonardo…”

“Won’t they be able to tell the difference?” Miriam frowned. “I’d have thought the experts would—” she trailed off.

“They’ll be exactly the same age!” Paulette said excitedly. “They’d be the real thing, right? Not a hoax. What you do is, you go over with some art catalogues from here and when you’ve got the money you find a specialist buyer and you buy the paintings or marbles or whatever for your personal collection. Then bring them over here. It’s about the only thing that weighs so little you can carry it, but is worth millions and is legal to own.”

“It’ll be harder to sell,” Miriam pointed out. “A lot harder to sell.”

“Yeah, but it’s legal,” said Paulie. She hesitated momentarily: “unless you want to go into the Bolivian marching powder business like your long-lost relatives?”

“Um.” Miriam refilled her coffee mug. “Okay, I’ll look at it.” Miriam Beckstein, dealer in fine arts, she thought. It had a peculiar ring to it, but it was better than Miriam Beckstein, drug smuggler. “Hmm. How’s this for a cover story? I fly over to Europe next year, spend weeks trolling around out there in France and Germany and wherever the paintings went missing. Right? I act secretive and just tell people I’m investigating something. That covers my absence. What I’ll really be doing is crossing to the far side then flying right back to New Britain by airship. Maybe I’ll come home in the meantime, maybe I can work over there, whatever. Whichever I do, it builds up a record of me being out of the country, investigating lost art, and I use the travel time to read up on art history. When I go public over here, it’s a career change. I’ve gone into unearthing lost works of art and auctioning them. Sort of a capitalist version of Indiana Jones, right?”

“Love it.” Paulie winked at her. “Wait till I patent the business practice, ‘a method of making money by smuggling gold to another world and exchanging it for lost masterpieces’!”

“You dare—” Miriam chuckled. “Although I’m not sure we’ll be able to extract anything like the full value of our profits that way. I’m not even sure we want to—having a world to live in where we’re affluent and haven’t spent the past few decades developing a reputation as organized criminals would be no bad thing. Anyway, back to business. How’s the patent search going?”

“I’ve got about a dozen candidates for you,” Paulie said briskly. “A couple of different types of electric motor that they may or may not have come up with. Flash boilers for steam cars, assuming they don’t already have them. They didn’t sound too sophisticated but you never know. The desk stapler—did you see any? Good. I looked into the proportional font stuff you asked for, but the Varityper mechanism is just amazingly complicated, it wouldn’t just hatch out of nowhere. And the alkaline battery will take a big factory and supplies of unusual metals to start making. The most promising option is still the disk brake and the asbestos/resin brake shoe. But I came up with another for you: the parachute.”

“Parachute—” Miriam’s eyes widened. “I’ll need to go check if they’ve invented them. I know Leonardo drew one, but it wouldn’t have been stable. Okay!” She emptied the coffeepot into her and Paulette’s mugs, stirred in some sugar. “That’s great. How long until the cable guy is done?”

“Oh, he’s already gone,” Paulette said. “I get to plug the box in myself, don’t you know?”

“Excellent.” Miriam picked up her mug. “Then I can check my voice mail in peace.”

She wandered into the front office as Brill was leaving the shower, wrapped in towels and steaming slightly. A new socket clung rawly to the wall just under the window. Miriam dropped heavily into the chair behind the desk, noticing the aches of sleeping on a hard surface for the first time. She picked up her phone and punched in her code. Paulette intercepted Brill, asking her something as she led her into the large back office they’d begun converting into a living room.

“You have two messages,” said the phone.

“Yeah, yeah.” Miriam punched a couple more buttons.

“First message, received yesterday at eleven-forty two: Miriam? Oh, Sky Father! Listen, are you alright? Phone me, please.” It was Roland, and he didn’t sound happy. Anguish rose in her chest. Roland—she didn’t let the thought reach her tongue. “It’s urgent,” he added, before the click of the call ending.

“Second message, received yesterday at nine-twelve: Miriam, dear? It’s me.” Iris, she realized. There was a pause. “I know I haven’t been entirely candid with you, and I want you to know that I bitterly regret it.” Another, much longer pause and the sound of labored breathing. Miriam clutched the phone to her ear like a drowning woman. “I’ve…something unexpected has come up. I’ve got to go on a long journey. Miriam, I want you to understand that I am going to be alright. I know exactly what I’m doing, and it’s something I should have done years ago. But it’s not fair to burden you with it. I’ll try to call you or leave messages, but you are not to come around or try to follow me. I love you.” Click.

“Shit!” Miriam threw the mobile phone across the room in a combination of blind rage and panic. She burst out of her chair and ran for the back room, grabbed her jacket and was halfway into her shoes by the time Paulette stuck a curious head out of the day room door. “What’s going on?”

“Something’s happened to Iris. I’m going to check on her.”

“You can’t!” Paulette stood up, alarmed.

“Watch me,” Miriam warned.

“But it’s under—”

“Fuck the surveillance!” She fumbled in her bag for the revolver. “If the Clan has decided to go after my mother I am going to kill someone.”

“Miriam—” it was Brill—“Paulie and I can’t get away the way you can.”

“So you’d better be discreet about the murder business,” said Paulette. She fixed Miriam with a worried stare. “Can you wait two minutes? I’ll drive.”

“I—yes.” Miriam forced herself to unclench her fists and take deep, steady breaths.

“Good. Because if it is the Clan, rushing in is exactly what they’ll expect you to do. And if it isn’t, if it’s the other guys, that’s what they’ll want you to do, too.” She swallowed. “Bombs and all. Which is why I’m going with you. Got it?”

“I—” Miriam forced herself to think. “Okay.” She stood up. “Let’s go.”

They went.

Paulette cruised down Iris’s residential street twice, leaving a good five-minute interval before turning the rental car into the parking space at the side of her house. “Nothing obvious,” she murmured. “You see anything, kid?”

“Nothing,” said Miriam.

Brill shook her head. “Autos all look alike to me,” she admitted.

“Great…Miriam, if you want to take the front door, I’m going to sit here with the engine running until you give the all-clear. Brill—”

“I’ll be good.” She clutched a borrowed handbag to her chest, right hand buried in it, looking like a furtive sorority girl about to drop an unexpected present on a friend.

Miriam bailed out of the car and walked swiftly to Iris’s front door, noticing nothing wrong. There was no damage around the lock, no broken windows, nothing at all out of the usual for the area. No lurking Dodge vans, either, when she glanced over her shoulder as she slipped the key into the front door and turned it left-handed, her other hand full.

The door bounced open and Miriam ducked inside rapidly, with Brill right behind her. The house was empty and cold—not freezing with the chill of a dead furnace, but as if the thermostat had been turned down. Miriam’s feet scuffed on the carpet as she rapidly scanned each ground floor room through their open doors, finishing in Iris’s living room—

No wheelchair. The side table neatly folded and put away. Dead flowers on the mantlepiece.

Back in the hall Miriam held up a finger, then dashed up the stairs, kicking open door after door—the master bedroom, spare bedroom, box room, and bathroom.

“Nothing,” she snarled, panting. In the spare bedroom she pulled down the hatch into the attic, yanked the ladder down—but there was no way Iris could have gotten up there under her own power. She scrambled up the ladder all the same, casting about desperately in the dusty twilight. “She’s not here.”

Down in the ground floor hallway she caught up with Paulette, looking grave. “Brill said Iris is gone?”

Miriam nodded, unable to speak. It felt like an act of desecration, too monstrous to talk about. She leaned against the side of the staircase, taking shallow breaths. “I’ve lost her.” She shut her eyes.

“Over here!” It was Brill, in the kitchen.

“What is it—”

They found Brill inspecting a patch of floor, just inside the back door.

“Look,” she said, pointing.

The floor was wooden, varnished and worn smooth in places. The stains, however, were new. Something dark had spilled across the back doorstep. Someone had mopped it up but they hadn’t done a very good job, and the stain had worked into the grain of the wood.

“Outside. Check the garbage.” Miriam fumbled with the lock then got the door open. “Come on!” She threw herself at the Dumpsters in the backyard, terrified of what she might find in them. The bins were huge, shared with the houses to either side, and probably not emptied since the last snowfall. The snow was almost a foot deep on top of the nearest Dumpster. It took her half a minute to clear enough away to lift the lid and look inside.

A dead man stared back at her, his face blue and his eyes frozen in an expression of surprise. She dropped the lid.

“What is it?” asked Paulette.

“Not Iris.” Miriam leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths, her head spinning. Who can he be? “Check. The other bins.”

“Other bins, okay.” Paulette gingerly lifted the lids, one by one—but none of them contained anything worse than a pile of full garbage bags which, when torn, proved to contain kitchen refuse. “She’s not here, Miriam.”

“Oh thank god.”

“What now?” asked Paulie, head cocked as if listening for the sound of sirens.

“I take another look while you and Brill keep an eye open for strangers.” Steeling herself, Miriam lifted the lid on the bin’s gruesome contents. “Hmm.” She reached out and touched her hand to an icy cold cheek. “He’s been dead for at least twelve hours, more likely over twenty-four.” A mass of icy black stuff in front of the body proved to be Iris’s dish towels, bulked up by more frozen blood than Miriam could have imagined. She gingerly shoved them aside, until she saw where the blood had come from. “There’s massive trauma to the upper thorax, about six inches below the neck. Jesus, it looks like a shotgun wound. Saw a couple in the ER, way back when. Um…sawed-off, by the size of the entry wound, either that or he was shot from more than twenty yards away, which would have had to happen outdoors, meaning witnesses. His chest is really torn up, he’d have died instantly.” She dropped the wadding back in front of the body. He was, she noted distantly, wearing black overalls and a black ski mask pulled up over his scalp like a cap. Clean-shaven, about twenty years old, of military appearance. Like a cop or a soldier—or a Clan enforcer.

She turned around and looked at the back door. Something was wrong with it; it took almost a minute of staring before she realized—

“They replaced the door,” she said. “They replaced the fucking door!”

“Let’s go,” Paulette said nervously. “Like right now? Anywhere, as long as it’s away? This is giving me the creeps.”

“Just a minute.” Miriam dropped the Dumpster lid shut and went back inside the house. Iris phoned me when the shit hit the fan, she realized distantly. She was still alive and free, but she had to leave. To go underground, like in the sixties. When the FBI bugged her phone. Miriam leaned over Iris’s favorite chair, in the morning room. She swept her hand around the crack behind the cushion; nothing. “No messages?” She looked up, scanning the room. The mantlepiece: dead flowers, some cards…birthday cards. One of them said 32 TODAY. She walked toward it slowly, then picked it up, unbelieving. Her eyes clouded with tears as she opened it. The inscription inside it was written in Iris’s jagged, half-illiterate scrawl. Thanks for the memories of treasure hunts, and the green party shoes, it said. “Green party shoes?”

Miriam dashed upstairs, into Iris’s bedroom. Opening her mother’s wardrobe she smelled mothballs, saw row upon row of clothes hanging over a vast mound of shoes—a pair of green high-heeled pumps near the front, pushed together. She picked them up, probed inside, and felt a wad of paper filling the toes of the right shoe.

She pulled it out, feeling it crackle—elderly paper, damaged by the passage of time. A tabloid newspaper page, folded tight. She ran downstairs to where Brill was waiting impatiently in the hall. “I got it,” she called.

“Got what?” Brill asked, her voice incurious.

“I don’t know.” Miriam frowned as she locked the door, then they were in the back of the car and Paulie was pulling away hastily, fishtailing slightly on the icy road.

“When your mother phoned you,” Paulie said edgily, “what did she say? Daughter, I’ve killed someone? Or, your wicked family has come to kidnap me, oh la! What is to become of me?”

“She said.” Miriam shut her eyes. “She hadn’t been entirely honest with me. Something had come up, and she had to go on a journey.”

“Someone died,” said Brill. “Someone standing either just outside the back door or just inside it, in the doorway. Someone shot them with a blunderbuss.” She was making a sing-song out of it, in a way that really got on Miriam’s nerves. Stress, she thought. Brill had never seen a murder before last week. Now she’s seen a couple in one go, hasn’t she? “So someone stuffed the victim in a barrel for Iris, went out and ordered a new door. Angbard’s men will have been watching her departure. Probably followed her. Why don’t you call him and ask about it?”

“I will. Once we’ve returned this car and rented a replacement from another hire shop.” She glanced at Brill. “Keep a lookout and tell me if you see any cars that seem to be following us.”

Miriam unfolded the paper carefully. It was, she saw, about the same fateful day as the first Xeroxed news report in the green and pink shoebox. But this was genuine newsprint, not a copy, a snapshot from the time itself. Most of it was inconsequential, but there was a story buried halfway down page two that made her stare, about a young mother and baby found in a city park, the mother suffering a stab wound in the lower back. She’d been wearing hippy-style clothes and was unable to explain her condition, apparently confused or intoxicated. The police escorted her to a hospital with the child, and the subeditor proceeded to editorialize on the evils of unconventional lifestyles and the effects of domestic violence in a positively Hogarthian manner. No, Miriam thought, they must have gotten it wrong. She was murdered, Ma told me! Not taken into hospital with a stab wound! She shook her head, bewildered and hurting. “I’ll do that. But first I need some stuff from my house,” she said, “but I’m not sure I dare go there.”

“What stuff?” asked Paulie. Miriam could see her fingers white against the rim of the steering wheel.

“Papers.” She paused, weighing up the relative merits of peace of mind and a shotgun wound to the chest. “Fuck it,” she said shortly. “I need to go home. I need five minutes there. Paulie, take me home.”

“Whoa! Is that really smart?” asked Paulette, knuckles tightening on the steering wheel.

“No.” Miriam grimaced. “It’s really not smart. But I need to grab some stuff, the goddamn disk with all your research on it. I’ll be about thirty seconds. We can ditch the car immediately afterwards. You willing to wait?”

“Didn’t you say they’d staked you out?”

“What does that mean?” Brill asked, confused. “What are you talking about?”

Miriam sighed. “My house,” she said. “I haven’t been back to it since my fun-loving uncle had me kidnapped. Roland said it was under surveillance so I figured it would be risky. Now—”

“It’s even more risky,” Paulette said vehemently. “In fact I think it’s stupid.”

“Yes.” Miriam bared her teeth, worry and growing anger eating at her:

“But I need that disk, Paulie, it may be the best leverage I’ve got. We don’t have time for me to make millions in world three.”

“Oh shit. You think it may come to that?”

“Yeah, ’oh shit’ indeed.”

“What kind of disk?” Brill asked plaintively.

“Don’t worry. Just wait with the car.” Miriam focused on Paulette’s driving. The answer will be somewhere in the shoebox, she thought, desperately. And if Angbard had my ma snatched, I’ll make him pay!

Familiar scenery rolled past, and a couple of minutes later they turned into a residential street that Miriam knew well enough to navigate blindfolded. A miserable wave of homesickness managed to penetrate her anger and worry: This was where she belonged, and she should never have left. It was her home, dammit! And it slid past to the left as Paulette kept on driving.

“Paulie?” Miriam asked anxiously.

“Looking for suspicious-acting vehicles,” Paulie said tersely.

“Oh.” Miriam glanced around. “Ma said there was a truck full of guys watching her.”

“Uh-huh. Your mother spotted the truck. What did she miss?”

“Right.” Miriam spared a sideways glance: Brill’s head was swiveling like a ceiling fan, but her expression was more vacant than anything else. Almost as if she was bored. “Want to drive round the block once more? When you get back to the house stop just long enough for me to get out, then carry on. Come back and pick me up in three minutes. Don’t park.”

“Um. You sure that you want to do this?”

“No, I’m not sure, I just know that I have to.”

Paulie turned the corner then pulled over. Miriam was out of the car in a second and Paulette pulled away. There was virtually nobody about—no parked occupied vans, no joggers. She crossed the road briskly, walked up to her front door, and remembered two things, in a single moment of icy clarity. Firstly, that she had no idea where her house keys might be, and secondly, that if there were no watchers this might be because—Uh-oh, she thought, and backed away from the front step, watching where her feet were about to go with exaggerated caution. A cold sweat broke out in the small of her back, and she shuddered violently. But fear of trip wires didn’t stop her carefully opening the yard gate, slipping around the side of the house, and up to the shed with the concealed key to the French doors at the back.

When she had the key, Miriam paused for almost a minute at the glass doors, trying to get her hammering heart under control. She peered through the curtains, thoughtfully. They’ll expect me to go in the front, she realized. But even so… She unlocked the door and eased it open a finger’s width. Then she reached as high as she could, and ran her index finger slowly down the opening, feeling for the faint tug of a lethal obstruction. Finding nothing, she opened the door farther, then repeated the exercise on the curtains. Again: nothing. And so, Miriam returned to her home.

Her study had been efficiently and brutally strip-searched. The iMac was gone, as were the boxes of CD-ROMs and the zip drive and disks from her desk. More obviously, every book in the bookcase had been taken down, the pages riffled, and dumped in a pile on the floor. It was a big pile. “Bastards,” she said quietly. The pink shoebox was gone, of course. Fearing the worst she tiptoed into her own hallway like a timid burglar, her heart in her mouth.

It was much the same in the front hall. They’d even searched the phone books. A blizzard of loose papers lay everywhere, some of them clearly trampled underfoot Drawers lay open, their contents strewn everywhere. Furniture had been pulled out from the walls and shoved back haphazardly, and one of the hall bookcases leaned drunkenly against the opposite wall. At first sight she thought that the living room had gotten off lightly, but the damage turned out to be even more extensive—her entire music collection had been turned out onto the floor, disks piled on a loose stack.

“Fuck.” Her mouth tasted of ashes. The sense of violation was almost unbearable, but so was the fear that they’d taken her mother and found Paulie’s research disk as well. The money-laundering leads were in the hands of whoever had done this to her. Whoever they were, they had to know about the Clan, which meant they’d know what the disk’s contents meant. They were a smoking gun, one that was almost certainly pointing at the Clan’s east coast operations. She knelt by the discarded CD cases and rummaged for a minute—found The Beggar’s Opera empty, the CD-ROM purloined.

She went back into the front hall. Somehow she slithered past the fallen bookcase, just to confirm her worst fear. They’d strung the wire behind the front door, connecting one end of it to the handle. If she hadn’t been in such a desperate hurry that she’d forgotten her keys, the green box taped crudely to the wall would have turned her into a messy stain on the sidewalk. Assassin number two is the one who likes Claymore mines, she reminded herself edgily. The cold fear was unbearable and Miriam couldn’t take any more. She blundered out through the French doors at the back without pausing to lock them, round the side of the house, and onto the sidewalk to wait for Paulie.

Seconds later she was in the back of the car, hunched and shivering. “I don’t see any signs of anything going on,” Paulie said quietly. She seemed to have calmed down from her state at Iris’s house. “What do you want to do now? Why don’t we find a Starbucks, get some coffee, then you tell us what you found?”

“I don’t think so.” Miriam closed her eyes.

“Are you alright?” Brill asked, concern in her voice.

“No, I’m not alright,” Miriam said quietly. “We’ve got to ditch the car, now. They trashed the place and left a trip-wire surprise behind the front door. Paulie, the box of stuff my mother gave me was gone. And so was the disk.”

“Oh—shit. What are we going to do?”

“I—” Miriam stopped, speechless. “I’m going to talk to Angbard. But not until I’ve had a few words with Roland.” She pulled an expression that someone who didn’t know her might have mistaken for a smile. “He’s the one who told me about the surveillance. It’s time to clear the air between us.”