The Clan Corporate

ULTIMATUM

Miriam found it hard to believe that she’d never attended a wedding among the great families of the Gruinmarkt in the months she’d been living among them. After a sleepless night, she chivvied her maids into helping her into the outfit Kara had picked from her wardrobe, then waited impatiently, tapping her toes while the ferret rousted out the sedan chair crew.

Another tedious, uneven magical mystery tour: another bland mansion with walled grounds, somewhere else in the city. Miriam straightened her back as the ferret and his guards waited. “This way,” he indicated, nodding toward a narrow passageway. “You will wait at the back, behind the wooden screen. You will say nothing during the ceremony. Observe, do not interfere or it will be the worse for you. I will fetch you from the reception afterward.”

“Worse?” she asked—rhetorically, for she had a very good idea what he meant. “All right.” She stuck her nose in the air and marched down the corridor as though her guards didn’t exist, as if she were attending this function of her own accord, and the occasion were a happy one.

The passage led to a small chapel, located near the back of the building in the oldest construction. The walls were of undressed stone, woodwork blackened with age. Her first surprise was that it was tiny, barely larger than her reception room. Her second surprise was the altar, and the brightly painted statues behind it. She’d have taken them for saints, but the iconography was wrong—no trinity here, but a confusing family tree of bickering authorities, a heavenly bureaucracy with responsibility for everything from births, marriages, and deaths to law enforcement, tax returns, and the afterlife. The post-migration Norse-descended tribes who had eventually settled the eastern seaboard of North America in this world had adopted the Church of Rome, but the Church of Rome hadn’t adopted Christianity, or Judaism, or anything remotely monotheistic. The Church here was a formalization and outgrowth of the older Roman pantheon, echoes of which had survived in the Catholic hierarchy of saints, the names and roles of the gods updated for more recent usage with a smattering of Norse add-ons. But no blood-eagles, Miriam thought, as she walked past the pews of menfolk to take her place behind the wooden latticework screen at the back, behind the women of the two households.

There were only about ten women present, and about twice that number of men; they were mostly servants and bodyguards, as far as Miriam could tell. A couple of heads turned as she walked in, including one formidable-looking lady. “Wer ind’she?”

“Excuse me, I am Helge. Kara asks me to, to come,” she managed in her halting hochsprache.

“Ah.” The woman frowned. She wasn’t much older than Miriam, but her attitude and the deference the others showed her suggested she was important. And there was a family resemblance. Mother? Aunt? Miriam dipped her head. The frown vanished. “I am . . . please? You are here,” she said in heavily accented English. “I am Countess Frea. My daughter . . .” She shrugged, reaching the limits of her linguistic ability, and muttered something apologetic-sounding in hochsprache, too fast for Miriam to catch.

Miriam smiled and nodded. Some of the younger women were whispering, but then one of them moved aside and gestured to her. A seat at the back. Yes, well. Miriam accepted it silently, annoyed that her grasp of the language was insufficient to tell whether she was being snubbed or honored. I’ve been depending on Kara too much. And Brill, she told herself. Wherever she’s gotten to. Brilliana’s other duties made guessing at her whereabouts much less easy than dealing with Kara.

Another knot of women arrived, with much bowing and nodding and kissing of cheeks on both sides: an old lady with her daughters—both older than Kara’s mother, Frea—and their attendants. A brief introduction: Miriam bobbed her head and was happy enough to be ignored. At the front a couple of priests in odd vestments had begun chanting something in what might have been a mutant dialect of Latin, filtered through many generations of hochsprache-speaking colonials. A young lad swung an incense censer, spilling fumes across the altar as they continued. To Miriam’s uneducated eye (she’d been raised by her mother and her agnostic Jewish foster-father, and churchgoing hadn’t been on the agenda) it looked vaguely Catholic—until a third priest emerged from the not-a-vestry at the back, clutching an indignant white chicken and a silver knife. At which point Miriam was grateful for her place at the rear, which meant nobody was in a position to notice the way she closed her eyes until the squawking and gurgling stopped. It wasn’t that she was particularly squeamish herself, but she found the idea of killing an animal in cold blood as part of a religious ritual rather disturbing. I got the impression from Olga that they didn’t do that anymore, she pondered. What else did I get wrong?

Things speeded up after the sacrifice, which the priests dedicated to the Lady of Domestic Harmony, the Lord of the Household, and sundry other parties of the hearth who were contractually obliged to bless familial alliances, as far as Miriam could tell, or who at least had to be bought off in order for the whole enterprise not to end in a messy annulment some hours later. Two men walked up to the altar, neither of them particularly young: Frea’s eyes lingered on the older one, making Miriam suspect he might be a relative. Kara’s father? The priests asked him a whole bunch of questions, the answers to which seemed to boil down to “Yes, she’s my daughter to give away.” The other man waited patiently. Miriam couldn’t see him clearly because of the screen, but she had an impression that he was in his thirties, balding, and stockily built. And there was a sword at his belt. A sword? In church? I don’t understand these people . . . Now it was his turn to answer questions. They sounded a lot like “How much are you willing to pay for this guy’s daughter?” to Miriam, but she was barely catching one word in four. It could have been anything from “Will you take her as your wife and love her and cherish her?” to “That’ll be three pounds of silver and sixteen goats, and make sure you keep her away from the wine.” The questioning went on and on, until Miriam’s eyes began to glaze over with a curious mixture of boredom and anxiety.

Some sort of resolution seemed to be reached. One of the priests turned and marched into the back room. A few seconds later he reappeared, followed by a subdued-looking Kara. They didn’t go in for frothy white wedding dresses and veils, it seemed. Kara was wearing a rich gown, but nothing significantly different from what she might have worn for any other public event. The bald guy with the sword asked her something, and she nodded: and a moment later the other priest offered them both a cup containing some kind of fluid. I hope that’s wine, Miriam thought with a sinking feeling as they sipped from it. She couldn’t see the chicken anymore. Somehow I don’t think these guys hold with abstractions like transubstantiation.

Conversation started up on the bench ahead of her almost immediately. “It’s done,” or “That’s that,” if she understood it correctly. Two of the younger maids (daughters? nieces? servants?) stood up, and one of them giggled quietly. Up front, the men were already rising and filing out of the side door. “You will with us, come?” asked the old woman in front of Miriam, and it took her a moment to realize she was being spoken to.

“Yes,” she said uncertainly.

“Good.” The old lady reached out and grabbed Miriam’s wrist, leaning on it as she levered herself up off the wooden bench. “You’ve got strong bones,” she said, and cackled quietly.

“I have?”

“Your babies will need that.” She let go of Miriam’s arm, oblivious to her expression. “Come.”

There didn’t seem to be any alternative. They filed upstairs, into a chilly ballroom where servants with trays circulated, keeping everyone sufficiently lubricated with wine to ensure a smooth occasion. Miriam ended up with her back to a wall, observing the knots of chattering women, the puff-chested clump of young men, the elders circulating and talking to one another. The menfolk mostly had swords, which took her aback slightly. It wasn’t something she’d seen in a social setting before—but then, too many of her social encounters had been in the royal court, or with other senior members of the nobility present. Carrying ironwork in the presence of the monarch was a faux pas of the kind that could get you executed. I’ve been sheltered, she decided. Or I just had too small and too skewed a sample to see much of how things really work here.

Kara and the bald guy had been installed on two stools on a raised platform, and had much larger cups than anyone else. Miriam tried to establish eye contact, but the bride was so focused on the floorboards that it would probably take a two-by-four to get her attention. A happy occasion indeed, she thought ironically, and drained her glass. How long until I can get away from this?

A hand clutching a bottle appeared in front of her and tilted it over her glass. “A drop more, perhaps?”

“Um.” Startled, Miriam looked sideways. “Yes, please.” He was in his late twenties, as far as she could tell, and he looked as if he had southeast Asian ancestry, which made him stand out in this crowd as effectively as if he’d had green skin and eyes on stalks. He was dressed like most of the men hereabouts, in loose-cut trousers and a tunic, but unlike the others he didn’t have a sword, or even a dagger, on his belt. “Do I know you?”

“I think not.” His English was oddly accented, but it wasn’t a hochsprache accent—there was something familiar about it. “Allow me to introduce myself? I am James, second son of Ang, of family Lee.” He looked slightly amused at her reaction. “I see you have heard of me.”

“I met your brother,” she said before she could stop herself. “Do you know who I am?”

He nodded, and she tensed, scanning the room for the ferret, his guards, anyone—because the circumstances under which she’d met his brother were anything but friendly. Damn, where are they? Why now? Her pulse roared in her ears, and she took a deep breath, ready to yell for help: but then he chuckled and slopped a bolus of wine into her glass. “You convinced the thin white duke to send him back to us alive,” said Lee. He raised his own glass to her. “I would thank you for that.”

Miriam felt her knees go weak with relief. “It was the sensible thing to do,” she said. The roaring subsided. She took a sip of wine to cover her confusion, and after a moment she felt calm enough to ask, “Why are you here?”

“Here? At this happy occasion in particular, or this primitive city in general?” He seemed amused by her question. “I have the honor of being a hostage against my brother’s safe return and the blood treaty between our families.” Was it really amusement, or was it ironic detachment? Miriam blinked: she was finding James Lee remarkably difficult to read, but at least now she could place his accent. Lee’s family had struck out for the west coast two centuries ago. In the process they’d gotten lost, detached from the Clan, world-walking to the alien timeline of New Britain rather than the United States. His accent was New British—a form of American English, surely, but one that had evolved differently from the vernacular of her own home. “I cannot travel far.” He nodded toward a couple of unexceptional fellows standing near the door. “But they let me out to mingle with society. I know Leon.” Another nod at the balding middle-aged groom, now chatting animatedly to Kara’s father from his throne at the far end of the room. “We play cards regularly, whist and black knave and other games.” He raised his glass. “And so, to your very good health!”

Miriam raised her own glass: “And to yours.” She eyed him speculatively. He was, she began to realize, a bit of a hunk—and with brains, too. What that implied was interesting: he was a hostage, sure, but might he also be something more? A spy, perhaps?

“Are you here because of, of her?” asked Lee, glancing at the platform.

“Yes.” Miriam nodded. “She was my lady-in-waiting. Before this happened.”

“Hmph.” He studied her face closely. “You say that as if it came as a surprise to you, milady.”

“It did.” Damn, I shouldn’t be giving this much away! “I wasn’t asked my opinion, shall we say.” It was probably the wine, on an empty stomach, she realized. She was feeling wobbly enough as it was, and the sense of isolation was creeping up on her again.

“I’d heard a rumor that you were out of favor.”

He was fishing, but he sounded almost sympathetic. Miriam looked at him sharply. Handsome is as handsome does, she reminded herself. “A rumor?”

“There’s a, a grapevine.” He shrugged. “I’m not the only guest of the families who is gathered to their bosom with all the kind solicitude due an asp”—he snorted—“and people will talk, after all! One rumor made play of a scandal between you and a youngblood of the duke’s faction who, regrettably, died some months ago in an incident nobody will discuss: according to others, you kicked up a fuss sufficient to wake the dead, rattling skeletons in their closets until other parties felt the need to remove you from the game board to the toy box, if you will pardon the mixed metaphor.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure the truth is both less scandalous and more sympathetic than any of the rumors would have it.”

“Really.” She smiled tightly and took a full mouthful of wine. “As a matter of fact both the rumors are more or less true, in outline at least. I’m pleased you’re polite enough not to raise the third one: it would be interesting to compare notes on the climate in New Britain some day, but right now I suspect we’d only upset our minders.”

Now it was Lee’s turn to look unhappy. “I want you to know that I did not approve of the attempts on your life,” he said rapidly. “It was unnecessary and stupid and—”

“Purely traditional.” Miriam finished her wine and pushed her glass at him. “Right. And you’re young and sensible and know how your hidebound grandparents ought to be running the family if they weren’t stuck in the past?”

He gave her an ironic smile as he refilled both their glasses. “Exactly. Oh dear, this bottle appears to be empty, I wonder how that happened?” He made a minute gesture and a servant came sidling up to replace it: How does he do that? Miriam wondered.

“Let me guess.” Her nose was beginning to prickle, a sure sign that she’d had enough and that she needed to be watching her tongue, but right now she didn’t care about discretion. Right now she felt like letting her hair down, and damn the consequences for another day. Besides, Lee was handsome and smart and a good listener, a rare combination in this benighted backwater. “You’d been kicking shins a little too hard, so the honorable head of the family sent you here when he needed a hostage to exchange with Angbard. Right?”

James Lee sighed. “You have such an interesting idiom—and so forthright. To the bone. Yes, that is exactly it. And yourself . . . ?”

Miriam frowned. “I don’t fit in here,” she said quietly. “They want to shut me in a box. Y’know, where I come from, women don’t take that. Not second-class citizens, not at all. I grew up in Boston, the Boston of the United States. Able to look after myself. It’s different to the world you know: women have the vote, can own property, have legal equality, run businesses—” She took a deep breath, feeling the bleak depression poised, ready to come crashing down on her again. “You can guess how well I fit in here.”

“Hmm.” His glass was empty. Miriam watched as he refilled it. “It occurs to me that we shall both be drunk before this is over.”

“I can think of less appropriate company to get drunk in.” She shrugged, slightly unbalanced by everything. A discordance of strings sought their tune from a balcony set back above the doorway, musicians with acoustic instruments preparing to play something not unlike a baroque chamber piece. “And in the morning we’ll both be sober and Kara will still be married to some fellow she hadn’t even met yesterday.” She glanced around, wishing there was somewhere she could spit to get the nasty taste out of her mouth.

“This is a problem for you?”

“It’s not so much a problem as a warning.” She took a step backward and leaned against the wall. She felt tired. “The bastards are going to marry me off,” she heard herself explaining. “This is so embarrassing. Where I grew up you just don’t do that to people. Especially not to your daughter. But Mom’s got her—reasons—and I suppose the duke thinks he’s got his, and I, I made a couple of mistakes.” Fucking stupid ones, she thought despairingly. It could be worse; if I wasn’t lucky enough to be a privileged rich bitch and the duke’s niece to boot, they’d probably have killed me, but instead they’re just going to nail me down and use me as a pawn in their political chess game. Oops. She put a hand to her mouth. Did I say any of that aloud? Lee was watching her sympathetically.

“We could elope together,” he offered, his expression hinting that this suggestion was not intended to be taken entirely seriously.

“I don’t think so.” She forced a grin. You’re cute but you’re no Roland. Roland I’d have eloped with in a split second. Damn him for getting himself killed . . . “But thanks for the offer.”

“Oh, it was nothing. If there’s anything I can do, all you need is to ask.”

“Oh, a copy of the family knotwork would do fine,” she said, and hiccoughed.

“Is that all?” He shook his head. “They’d chase you down if you went anywhere in the three known worlds.”

“Three known worlds?” Her glass was empty again. Couples were whirling in slow stately circles around the dance floor, and she had a vague idea that she might be able to join them if she was just a bit more sober: her lessons had covered this one—

“Vary the knotwork, vary the destination.” James shrugged. “Once that much became clear, two of our youngsters tried it. The first couple of times, they got headaches and stayed where they were. On the second attempt one of them vanished, then came back a few hours later with a story about a desert of ice. On the third attempt, they both vanished, and stayed missing.”

Miriam’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding!”

He took her glass and placed it on the floor, alongside his own, by the skirting board. Then he straightened up again. “No.”

“What did they find?”

He offered her his hand. “Will you dance? People will gossip less . . .”

“Sure.” She took it. He led her onto the floor. In deference to the oldsters the tempo was slow, and she managed to follow him without too much stumbling. “I’m crap at this. Not enough practice when drunk.”

“I shouldn’t worry.” The room spun around her. “In answer to your question, we don’t know. Nobody knows. The elders forbade further experiments when they failed to return.”

“Oh.” She leaned her weight against him, feeling deflated, the elephantine weight of depression returning to her shoulders. For a moment she’d been able to smell the fresh air drifting through the bars of her cell—and then it turned out to be prison air-conditioning. The music spiraled to an end, leaving her washed up on the floor by the doorway. The ferret was waiting, looking bored. “I think this is my cue to say good-bye,” she told Lee.

“I’m sure we’ll meet again,” he said, smiling a lazy grin of intrigue.

As several days turned into a week and the evenings grew long and humid, Miriam grew resigned to her confinement. As prisons went, it was luxurious—multiple rooms, anxious servants, no shortage of basic amenities, even a walled courtyard she could go and walk in by prior arrangement—but it lacked two essentials that she’d taken for granted her entire life: freedom and the social contact of her equals.

After Kara’s marriage, she was left with only the carefully vetted maids and the ferret for company. The servants didn’t have a word of English between them, and the ferret had a very low tolerance for chitchat. After a while Miriam gritted her teeth and tried to speak hochsprache exclusively. While a couple of the servants regarded her as crack-brained, an imbecile to be humored, a couple of the younger maids responded, albeit cautiously. A noblewoman’s wrath was subject to few constraints: they would clam up rather than risk provoking her. And it didn’t take long for Miriam to discover another unwelcome truth: her servants had been chosen, it seemed, on the basis of their ignorance and tractability. They were all terrified of the ferret, frightened of her, and strangers to the city (or overgrown town) of Niejwein. They’d been brought in from villages and towns outside, knew nobody here outside the great house, and weren’t even able to go outside on their own.

About a week into the confinement, the boredom reached an excruciating peak. “I need something to read, or something to write,” she told the ferret. “I’ll go out of my head with boredom if I don’t have something to do!”

“Go practice your tapestry stitch, then.”

Miriam put her foot down. “I’m crap at sewing. I want a notepad and mechanical pencil. Why can’t I have a notepad? Are you afraid I’ll keep a diary, or something?”

The ferret looked at her. He’d been cleaning his fingernails with a wickedly sharp knife. “You can’t have a notepad,” he said calmly. “Stop pestering me or I’ll beat you.”

“Why not?”

Something in her expression gave him pause for thought: “You might try to draw an escape knot from memory,” he said.

“Ri-ight.” She scowled furiously. “And how likely do you think that is? Isn’t this place doppelgangered in New York?”

“You might get the knot wrong,” he pointed out.

“And kill myself by accident.” She shook her head. “Listen, do you really want me depressed to the point of suicide? Because this, this—” The phrase sensory deprivation sprung to mind, but that wasn’t quite right. “This emptiness is driving me crazy. I don’t know whose idea keeping me here was, but I’m not used to inactivity. And I’m rubbish at tapestry or needlepoint. And the staff aren’t exactly good for practicing conversational hochsprache.”

He stood up. “I will see what I can do,” he said. “Now go away.” And she did.

Two days later a leather-bound notebook and a pen materialized on her dresser. There was a note in the book: Remember you are thirty feet up, it said. The ferret insisted on holding it whenever she went downstairs to walk in the garden. But at least it was progress. Miriam drew a viciously complicated three-loop Möbius strip on the first page, just to deter the ferret from snooping inside, then found herself blocked, unable to write anything. I should have studied shorthand, she thought bitterly. Privacy, it seemed, was a phenomenon dependent on trust—and if there was one thing she didn’t have these days, it was the confidence of her relatives.

One foggy morning, almost two weeks after Kara’s arranged wedding, there was a knock at the door to her reception room. Miriam looked up: this usually meant the ferret wanted to see her. Today, though, the ferret tiptoed in and stood to one side as two tough-looking men in business suits and dark glasses—Secret Service chic—entered and rapidly searched the apartment. “What’s going on?” she asked, but the ferret ignored her.

One of the guards stepped outside. A moment later, the door opened again. It was Henryk, leaning heavily on a walking stick. The ferret scurried to fetch a padded stool for the baron, positioning it in front of Miriam’s seat in the window bay. Miriam stared at Henryk. Her heart pounded and she felt slightly sick, but she stayed seated. I’m not going to beg, she told herself uncertainly. What does the old bastard want?

“Good morning, my dear Helge. I hope you are keeping well?” He spoke in hochsprache, but the phrases were stock.

“I am well. I thank you,” she said haltingly, frowning. I’m not going to let him show me up—

“Good.” He turned to the ferret: “Clear the room. Now.”

Thirty seconds later they were alone. “What require—do you want?” she asked.

“Hmm.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Your accent is atrocious.” She must have looked blank: he repeated himself in English. “We can continue in this tongue if you’d rather.”

“Okay.” She nodded reluctantly.

“Tonight there will be another private family reception at the summer palace,” Henryk said without preamble. “A dinner, to be followed by dancing. Let me explain your role in it. Your mother will be there, as will her half-brother, the duke. His majesty, and the Queen Mother, and his youngest son, will also be there. There will be a number of other notables present as guests, but you are being given a signal honor as a personal guest of his majesty. You will be seated with them at the high table, and you will behave with the utmost circumspection. This means, basically, think before you open your mouth.” He smiled thinly. “And don’t talk out of turn.”

“Huh.” Miriam frowned. “What about the crown prince? Is he going to be there?”

“Egon?” Henryk looked bemused. “No, why should he be? He’s off on a hunting trip somewhere, I think.”

“Oh.” One less thing to worry about, Miriam thought. “Is that all?”

“Not quite.” Henryk paused, as if uncertain how to continue. “You know what our plans for you are,” he said slowly. “There are some facts you need to understand. The younger prince—you have met him.” Miriam nodded, suppressing a shudder. The prince belonged in a hospital ward with nursing attendants and a special restricted diet. Brain damage. “He’s a little slow, but he is not a vegetable, Helge. You should respect him. If he had not been poisoned—” A shadow crossed his face.

“What do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to marry him and bear his children.” Henryk looked pained at being made to spell it out. “Nothing more and nothing less, and it is not just what I expect of you—the Clan proposes and the Clan disposes. But you can do this the easy way, if you like. Go through the ceremony, then Dr. ven Hjalmar will sort you out. You don’t need to worry about bedding the imbecile, if that thought upsets you: the doctor has made a sufficient study of artificial insemination. You’ll be pregnant, but you’ll have the best antenatal care we can provide, and in an emergency the doctor will get you to a hospital on the other side within half an hour. The well-being of your child will be a matter of state security. Once you are mother to a child in the line of succession, a certain piece of paper can be discreetly buried. Two or more children would be better, but I shall leave that as a matter for you and your doctor to decide upon—your age, after all, is an issue.”

“Um.” Miriam swallowed her distaste. Spitting would send entirely the wrong message, she thought, her head spinning. And besides, she’d been angry about this for weeks already, to the point where the indignation and fury had lost their immediate edge. It wasn’t simply the thought of pregnancy—although she hadn’t enjoyed her one and only experience of it more than ten years ago—but the idea of compulsion. The idea that you could be compelled to bear a child was deeply repugnant. She’d never been one for getting too exercised over the abortion debate, but Henryk’s bald-faced orders brought it into tight focus. You will be pregnant. Huh. And how’d you like it if I told you that you were going to be anally probed by aliens? “And what’s your position on this?” she asked, hoping to distract herself.

“My position?” Henryk seemed puzzled. “I don’t have a position, my dear. I just want you to have a happy and fruitful marriage to the second heir to the throne—and to keep out of trouble. Which, thankfully, won’t be a problem for a while once you’re pregnant, and afterwards . . .” He looked at her penetratingly. “I think you’d make a very good mother,” he said, “once you come to terms with your situation.”

Not if you and everybody blackmail me into it, she thought. I don’t take well to being forced. “Is that the only option you see for me?”

“Truthfully, yes. It’s that or, well, we’re not unreasonable. You’d just go to sleep one night in your bed and not wake up in the morning. Case completed.”

Miriam stared at him despite the roaring in her ears. Everything was gray for a while; finally some atavistic reflex buried deep in her spine remembered she needed to breathe, and she inhaled explosively. “Okay,” she said. “I just want to make sure that I’ve got it straight. I go through with this—marry the imbecile, get pregnant, bear at least one child. Or I tell you to fuck off, and you kill me. Is that the whole picture?”

“No.” Henryk regarded her thoughtfully for a while. “I wish it were. Unfortunately, your history suggests that you don’t take well to being coerced. So additional pressure is needed. Either you go through with this, or we withdraw your mother’s medication. If you don’t cooperate, you will be responsible for her death. Because we need an heir to the royal blood who is one of us much more badly than we need you, or her, or indeed anyone else. Do you understand now?”

Miriam was halfway out of her chair before she knew it, and Henryk’s hands were raised protectively across his face. She managed to regain her control a split second short of striking him. That would be a mistake, she realized coldly, through a haze of outrage. She wanted to hurt him, so badly that it was almost a physical need. “You fucking bastard,” she spat in hochsprache. Henryk turned white. Olga had taught her those words: bastard was worse than cunt in English, much worse.

“If you were a man I’d demand satisfaction for that.” Henryk backhanded her across the face almost contemptuously. Miriam staggered backward until she fell across the window seat. Henryk leaned over her: “You are an adult—it’s time you behaved like one, not a spoiled brat,” he spat at her, quivering with rage. She licked her lips, tasting blood. “You have a family. You have responsibilities! This foolish pursuit of independence will hurt them—worse, it may kill them—if you continue to indulge it. You disgust me!”

He was breathing deeply, his hands twisted around the head of his cane. Miriam felt sticky dampness on her lip: her nose was bleeding. After a moment Henryk took a step back, breathing heavily.

“I hate you,” she said quietly. “I’m not going to forget this.”

“I don’t expect you to.” He straightened up, adjusting his short cape. “I’d be disappointed in you if you did. But I’m doing this for everyone’s good. Once the Queen Mother placed her youngest grandson in play . . . well, one day you’ll know enough to admit I was right, although I don’t ever expect you to thank me for it.” He glanced at the window. “You have enough time to get ready. A coach will be waiting for you at nine. It’s up to you whether you go willingly, or in leg irons.”

“Did Angbard approve this scheme?” she demanded. Would he really sacrifice Mom? His half-sister?

Henryk nodded. His cheek twitched. “It wasn’t his idea, and he doesn’t like it, but he believes it is essential to bring you to heel. And he agreed that this was the one threat that you would take seriously. Good day.” He turned and strode toward the door, leaving her to gape after him, slack-jawed with helpless fury.

TRANSLATED TRANSCRIPT BEGINS

CONSPIRATOR #1: “I am most unhappy about this latest development, Sudtmann.”

CONSPIRATOR #2: “As am I, your royal highness, as am I.”

(Metallic clink.)

CONSPIRATOR #3: (Unintelligible.) “—deeply worrying?”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “Not really. More wine, now.” (Pause.) “That’s better.”

(Pause.)

CONSPIRATOR #2: “Your highness?”

CONSPIRATOR #1: (Sighs.) “It may be better to be feared than to be loved, but there is a price attached to maintaining a bloody reputation. And it seems the bill must still be honored whether the debtor be prince or pauper.”

CONSPIRATOR #3: “Sir? I don’t, do not—”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “He’s weak. To be backed into the stocks like a goat! This is the plan of the tinkers, mark my word: the poison she-snake in our bosom intends to get an heir to the throne in her grasp soon enough. And he cannot gainsay her!”

CONSPIRATOR #2: “Sir? Your brother, surely he is unsuitable—”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “Yes, but any whelp of his would be another matter! And the libels continue apace.”

CONSPIRATOR #4: “The libels play into our hands, sire. For the bloodier they be, the more feared you become. And fear is currency to the wise prince.”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “Yes, but it wins me nothing should my accession not meet with the approval of the court of landholders. And the court of landholders is increasingly in the grip of the tinkers. A tithe of their rent would repay a quarter of the promissory notes my father and his father before him took from the west, but does he—”

(Pause.)

(Noises.)

(Unintelligible.) “—regularity of bowels.”

CONSPIRATOR #2: “I’ll see to it, sir.”

CONSPIRATOR #3: “A pessary of rowan. There are other subtleties to consider.”

CONSPIRATOR #4: “It will be suspicious. And remember, two may keep a secret—if one of them is dead.”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “Enough skulking!”

CONSPIRATOR #2: “Sir?”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “It is clearly treasonable intent that we confront in this instance. They’ve addled whatever is left of my father’s wits, turned him against me, and once they are sure of a succession I’ll doubtless meet with a convenient hunting accident. I cannot—will not—permit this. But once it becomes clear that the tinkers are not the force they once were, I’ll be seen as the savior of the realm. And feared without scruple of libel: honestly, as a prince should be.”

CONSPIRATOR #4: “There is a reinforced company of the Life Guards stationed across the river. We shall have to move fast.”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “On the contrary, they will do as I tell them—whose life did you think they were supposed to guard? Hah! But I am concerned about your alchemists and their expensive mud pie. Have they succeeded in killing themselves yet?”

CONSPIRATOR #4: “On the contrary. And they have enough fine powder stockpiled to blow down the wolf’s lair. Not much use for the artillery, but . . .”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “We have a use for it on the stage. Arrange to have a roundup of plotters, marked for dispatch afterward—I’m sure you can arrange some witnesses, Sudtmann, guards who will swear to our instructions at the question? More in sorrow than in anger, I shall dispatch the traitors in the name of the Crown. And the kingdom will be secure against the blasted tinkers for another generation, at least.”

CONSPIRATOR #3: “But your father—”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “He’ll fall in with me of necessity.” (Metallic noise.) “He may be weak, but he’s not stupid. Once the tinkers realize the dice are cast, they will declare blood feud against the Crown. He’ll have to do it. I stress, this is not a coup against the Crown, it is a coup for the Crown, to defend it from the enemies within.”

CONSPIRATOR #3: “And none shall call it by any other name.”

CONSPIRATOR #2: “And if the blast should fail to live up to expectations?”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “Then I shall lead the guards in an heroic attempt to rescue the palace from the rebels who appear to have seized it. Long live the king!”

CONSPIRATOR #4: “I should give the alchemists their final reward then, sir.”

CONSPIRATOR #1: “Make it so, and may Sky Father have mercy on them in the afterlife, for their services to the Crown.”

TRANSLATED TRANSCRIPT ENDS