“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.”