“Want to bet?” Miriam stood up. “Get a carriage sorted, Kara. One hour. We’re going round to the Royal Exchange and I’m not leaving until I’ve spoken to him, and that’s an end to the matter.”
Kara protested some more, but Miriam wasn’t having it. If Lady Brill had been around she’d have been able to set Miriam straight, but Kara was too young, inexperienced, and unsure of herself to naysay her mistress. Therefore, an hour later, Miriam—with an apprehensive Kara sucked along in her undertow, not to mention a couple of maids and a gaggle of guards—boarded a closed carriage for the journey to the exchange buildings. Miriam had changed for the meeting, putting on her black interview suit and a cream blouse. She looked like an attorney or a serious business journalist, sniffing after blood in the corporate watercooler. Kara, ineffectual and lightweight, drifted along passively in the undertow, like the armed guards on the carriage roof.
The Royal Exchange was a forbidding stone pile fronted by Romanesque columns, half a mile up the road from Thorold Palace. Built a century ago to house the lumber exchange (and the tax inspectors who took the royal cut of every consignment making its way down the coast), it had long since passed into the hands of the government and now housed a number of offices. The Gruinmarkt was not long on bureaucracy—it was still very much a marcher kingdom, its focus on the wilderness beyond the mountains to the west—but even a small, primitive country had desks for scores or hundreds of secretaries of this and superintendents of that. Miriam wasn’t entirely clear on why the elderly baron might live there, but she was clear on one thing: he’d talk to her.
“Which way?” Miriam asked briskly as she strode across the polished wooden floor of the main entrance.
“I think his offices are in the west wing, mistress, but please—”
Miriam found a uniformed footman in her way. “You. Which way to Baron Henryk’s office?” she demanded.
“Er, ah, your business, milady?”
“None of yours.” Miriam stared at him until he wilted. “Where do I find the baron?”
“On the second floor, west wing, Winter Passage, if it pleases you—”
“Come on.” She turned and marched briskly toward the stairs, scattering a gaggle of robed clerks who stared at her in perplexity. “Come on, Kara! I haven’t got all day.”
“But mistress—”
The second-floor landing featured wallpaper—an expensive luxury, printed on linen—and portraits of dignitaries to either side. Corridors diverged in the pattern of an H. “West wing,” Miriam muttered. “Right.” One arm of the H featured tapestries depicting a white, snowbound landscape and scenes of industry and revelry. Miriam nearly walked right into another robed clerk. “Baron Henryk’s office. Which way?” she snapped.
The frightened clerk pointed one ink-blackened fingertip. “Yonder,” he quavered, then ducked and ran for cover.
Kara hurried to catch up. “Mistress, if you go shoving in you will upset the order of things.”
“Then it’s about time someone upset them,” Miriam retorted, pausing outside a substantial door. “They’ve been giving me the runaround, I’m going to give them the bull in a china shop. This the place?”
“What’s a Chinese shop?” Kara was even more confused than usual.
“Never mind. He’s in here, isn’t he?” Not waiting for a reply, Miriam rapped hard on the door.
A twenty-something fellow in knee breeches and an elaborate shirt opened it. “Yes?”
“I’m here to see Baron Henryk, at his earliest convenience,” Miriam said firmly. “I assume he’s in?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
The youngster didn’t get it. Miriam took a deep breath. “I have, now. At his earliest convenience, do you hear?”
“Ah-ahem. Whom should I say . . . ?”
“His great-niece Helge.” Miriam resisted for a moment the urge to tap her toe impatiently, then gave in.
The lad vanished into a large and hideously overdecorated room, and she heard a mutter of conversation. Then: “Show her in! Show her in by all means, Walther, then make yourself scarce.”
The door opened wider. “Please come in, the baron will be with you momentarily.” The young secretary stood aside as Miriam walked in, Kara tiptoeing at her heels, then vanished into the corridor. The door closed behind him, and for the first moment Miriam began to wonder if she’d made a mistake.
The room was built to the same vast proportions as most imperial dwellings hereabouts, so that the enormous desk in the middle of it looked dwarfishly short, like a gilded black-topped coffee table covered in red leather boxes. Bookcases lined one wall, filled with dusty ledgers, while the other walls—paneled in oak—were occupied by age-blackened oil paintings or a high window casement looking out over the high street. The plasterwork hanging from the ceiling resembled a cubist grotto, cluttered with gilded cherubim and inedible fruit. Baron Henryk hunched behind the desk, his head bent slightly to one side. His long white hair glowed in the early afternoon light from the window and his face was in shadow; he wore local court dress, hand-embroidered with gold thread, but his fingertips were dark with ink from the array of pens that fronted his desk in carved stone inkwells. “Ah, great-niece Helge! How charming to see you at such short notice.” He rose slowly and gestured toward a seat. “This would be your lady-in-waiting, Lady . . . ?”
“Kara,” Miriam supplied.
Kara cringed slightly and smiled ingratiatingly at the baron. “I tried to explain—”
“Hush, it’s perfectly all right, child.” The baron smiled at her. “Why don’t you join Walther outside? Keep the servants out, why don’t you. Perhaps you should take tea together in the long hall, I gather that’s the custom these days among the young people.”
“But I—” Kara swallowed, dipped a quick curtsey, and fled.
Henryk waited until the door closed behind her, then turned to Miriam with a faint smile on his face. “Well, well, well. To what emergency do I owe the honor of your presence?”
Miriam pulled the envelope out of her shoulder bag. “This. Addressee unknown. I was hoping you might be able to explain what’s going on.” She took a deep breath. “I am being given the runaround—nobody’s talking to me! I’m sorry I had to barge in on you like this, at short notice. But it’s reached the point where any attempt I make to go through channels and find out what’s going on is being thrown back in my face.”
“I see.” Henryk gestured vaguely at a chair. “Please, have a seat. White or red?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Wine?” He walked over to a sideboard that Miriam had barely noticed, beside one of the bookcases. “An early-afternoon digestif, perhaps.”
“White, if you don’t mind. Just a little.” It was one of the things that had taken Miriam by surprise when she first stumbled into the Clan’s affairs, the way people hereabouts drank like fishes. Not just the hard liquor, but wine and beer—tea and coffee were expensive imports, she supposed, and the water sanitation was straight out of the dark ages. Diluting it with alcohol killed most parasites.
Henryk fiddled with a decanter, then carried two lead crystal glasses over to his desk. “Here. Make free with the bottle, you are my guest.”
Miriam raised her glass. “Your health.”
“Ah.” Henryk sat back down with a sigh. “Now, where were we?”
“I was trying to reach people.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Henryk nodded to himself. “Not having much luck,” he suggested.
“Right. Angbard isn’t answering his mail. In fact, I can’t even get a letter through to him. Same goes for everyone I know in his security operation. Which isn’t to say that stuff doesn’t come in the other direction, but . . . I’ve got a company to run, in New Britain, haven’t I? They pulled me out two months ago, saying it wasn’t safe, and I’ve been cooling my heels ever since. When is it going to be safe? They don’t seem to realize business doesn’t stop just because they’re worried about Matthias having left some surprises behind, or the Lees are still thinking about signing the papers. I could be going bankrupt over there!”