“When I gave you the locket I didn’t expect you to jump straight in and get caught up in the Clan so rapidly. I was going to warn you off. But once you got picked up, there wasn’t much else I could do. So I called up Angbard and came back in. I figure I’m not good for many more years, even with the drugs, but while I’m around I can watch your back. Do you see?”
“That was a mistake, it would seem.”
“Oh yes.” Iris was silent for almost a minute. “Because there are no grandchildren, and in the terms of the game that means I’m not a full player. I thought for a while your business plans on the other side would serve instead, but there’s the glass ceiling again: you’re a woman. You’ve set yourself up to do something that just isn’t in the rules, so lots of people want to take you down. They want to make you play the game, to conform to expectations, because that reinforces their own role. If you don’t conform, you threaten them, so they’ll use that as an excuse to destroy you. And now they’ve got me as a hostage to use against you.”
“Oh. Oh shit.”
“You can say that again.” Iris reached out and tugged a bellpull. There was a distant chime. “Do you want some lunch? I wouldn’t blame you if all this has put you off your appetite . . .”
Miriam succumbed to depression on the way back to her prison. The sedan chair felt like a microcosm for her life right now, boxed in and darkly claustrophobic, the walls pressing tighter on every side, forcing her into a coerced and unwilling conformity. When she was very young she’d sometimes fantasized about having a long-lost family, played the I’m really a princess but I was swapped at birth for a commoner make-believe game. Somehow it had never involved being locked inside a swaying leather-lined box that smelled of old sweat and potpourri, her freedom restricted and her independence denied. The idea that once people decided you were going to be a princess, or a countess, your life stopped being your own, your body stopped being private, had never occurred to her back when she was a kid. I need to talk to someone, Miriam realized. Someone other than Iris, who right now was in as much of a mess as she was. Otherwise I am going to go crazy.
It had not escaped her attention that there were no sharp-edged implements in any of the rooms she had access to.
When they let her out in the walled courtyard, Miriam looked up at the sky above the gatehouse. The air was close and humid, and the clouds had a distinct yellowish tinge: the threat of thunder hung like a blanket across the city. “You’d better go in,” said the ferret, in a rare sign of solicitude. Or maybe he just wanted to get her under cover and call a guard so that he could catch some rest.
“Right.” Miriam climbed the staircase back to her rooms tiredly, drained of both energy and optimism.
“Milady!” Miriam looked up as the doors closed behind her with a thud. “Oh! You look sad! Are you unwell? What’s wrong?”
It was Kara, her young, naive lady-in-waiting. Miriam managed a tired smile. “It’s a long story,” she said. Gradually she realized there was something odd about Kara. “Hey, what happened to your hair?” Kara had worn it long, down her back: now it was bundled up in an intricate coil atop her head. And she was wearing traditional dress. Kara loved to try imported American fashions.
“Do you like it? It’s for a wedding.”
“Oh? Whose?”
“Mine. I’m to be married tomorrow.” Kara began to cry—not happily, but the quiet sobbing of desperation.
“What!” The next thing Miriam knew, she was hugging Kara while the younger woman shuddered, sniffling, her face pressed against Miriam’s shoulder. “Come on, relax, you can let it all out. Tell me about it.” She gently steered Kara toward the bench seat under the window. Glancing around, she realized that the servants had made themselves scarce. “You’re going to have to tell me how you convinced them to let you in here. Hell, you’re going to have to tell me how you found me. But not right now. Calm down. What’s this about a wedding?”
That set Kara off again. Miriam gritted her teeth. Why me? Why now? The first was easy: Miriam had unwittingly designated herself as adult role model when she first met Kara. The second question, though—
“My father—after you disappeared last week—he summoned me urgently. I know the match was not his idea, for last we spoke he said I should perhaps wait another summer, but now he said his mind was made up and that a week hence I should be married into a braid alliance. He seemed quite pleased until I protested, but he said you had written that you no longer wanted me and that I should best find a new home for myself! I, I could not believe that! Tell me, milady, it isn’t true, is it?”
“It’s not true,” Miriam confirmed, stroking her hair. “Be still. I didn’t write to your father.” I’ll bet someone else did, though. “Isn’t this a bit sudden? I mean, don’t these things take time to arrange? Who’s the lucky man, anyway?” You haven’t been sneaking a boyfriend, have you? she wanted to ask, but that seemed a little blunt given Kara’s delicate state of mind.
“It’s sudden.” Kara sniffled against her shoulder for a while. “I’ve never met the man,” she wailed quietly.
“What, never?”
“Ouch! No, never!” Miriam forced herself to relax her grip as Kara continued. “He’s called Raph ven Wu, second son of Paulus ven Wu, and he’s ten years older than me and I’ve never met him and what if I hate him? It’s all about money. Granma says not to worry and it will all work out—”
“Your grandmother talked to you?”
“Yes, Granma Elise is really kind and she says he’s a well-mannered knight who she has known since he was a babe and who is honorable and will see to my welfare—but he’s terribly old! He’s almost thirty. And I’m afraid, I’m afraid—” Her lower lip was quivering again. “Granma says it will be all right but I just don’t know. And the wedding’s to be tomorrow, in the Halle Temple of Our Lady of the Dead, and I want you to come. Will you be there?” She held on to Miriam like a drowning woman clutching at a life raft.
“You didn’t say how you found me,” Miriam prodded gently.
“Oh, I petitioned Baron Henryk! He said you were staying here and I could see you if I wanted. He even said I should invite you to witness at my wedding. Will you come? Please?”
Oh, so that’s what it’s about. To Miriam the message couldn’t have been clearer. And she had no doubt at all that it was a message, and that she was the intended recipient. She looked out of the window, turning her head so that Kara wouldn’t see her expression. “I’ll come if they let me,” she said, surprising herself with the mildness of her tone.
“Of course they’ll let you!” Kara said fiercely. “Why wouldn’t they? Are you in trouble, milady?”
“You could say that.” Miriam thought about it for a moment. “But probably no worse than yours.”
Afterward, Erasmus Burgeson always wondered why he hadn’t seen it coming.
It was a humid evening, and he’d sat on the open top deck of the streetcar as it rattled toward the hotel downtown where he was to meet his contact. He breathed deeply, relishing the faint smoky tang of the air now that his sore old lungs had stopped troubling him: I wonder where Miriam is? he idly thought, opening and refolding his morning news sheet. She’d changed his life with that last visit and those jars of wonder pills. Probably off somewhere engaging in strange new ventures in exotic worlds far more advanced than this one, he told himself. Democracies, places ruled by the will of the people rather than the whim of a nearsighted tyrant. He sighed and focused on the foreign affairs pages.