There was a knock on the door. Miriam paused while one of the guards came in and deposited a tray on the table where Lady Bishop had been working on her papers. The coffee pot was silver, and the smell drifting from it was delicious. “May I…?”
“Certainly.” Margaret Bishop poured coffee into two china mugs. “Help yourself to the biscotti.” The guard departed quietly. “Tell me about your world.”
“It’s—” Miriam frowned. “It’s a lot less different from yours than the Clan’s world is, but it’s still very different. As far as I can tell, they were the same until, um, 1745. There was an uprising in Scotland? A Prince Charles Stuart? In my world he marched on London and his uprising was defeated. Savagely. A few years later a smoldering war between Britain and France started—and while France eventually won a paper victory, there was no invasion of England. The wars between France and Britain continued for nearly eighty years, ending with the complete defeat of France and the British dominating the oceans.”
Lady Bishop shook her head. “What is the state of the Americas in this world of yours?” she asked.
“There was a revolution…Why, is it important?”
“No, just fascinating. So, continue. Your world is very different, it seems, but from a more recent point of change?”
“Yes.” Miriam took a mouthful of coffee. “Something went wrong here. I think it was something to do with the French administration of England after the invasion, in the eighteenth century. In my world, a lot of the industrialization you’ve had here in the past hundred years happened in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in England. Over in this world it started late and it’s still happening here, in New Britain. Things are further ahead in the United States, the nation on this continent where I come from. And in other countries in the other world. That doesn’t mean things are necessarily better—they’ve got big problems, too. But no kings, at least not many: most countries got rid of them over the past century. And better science and technology. Cures for tuberculosis.”
“How do your relatives, this Clan, account for their power? I’d have thought that if they live in a backward society it would be difficult to rise.”
Miriam put her mug down. “They’re smugglers,” she said bluntly. “In their own world, they are the only people who can get messages across the continent in anything less than weeks. They use the U.S. postal service to accomplish miracles, in the terms of their own world. And they’ve got modern firearms and lots of toys, because in my world they smuggle illegal drugs: they can guarantee to get them past the Coast Guard and police and border patrols. They’re immensely rich merchant princes. But they’re trapped by the society they live in. The old nobility don’t accept them, the peasants resent them, and the crown—” She shook her head, unable to continue.
“You said someone tried to kill you today. Which world did this happen in?”
“The Clan’s,” Miriam said automatically. She picked her mug up, took a sip, rolled it nervously between her palms. “I, when they discovered me, I needed to figure out a way to make some space for myself. I’m not used to having a big extended family who expect me to fit in. And there aren’t enough of them. They wanted me to marry for political reasons. I tried to—hell, I made a big mistake. Tried to get political leverage, to make them leave me alone. Instead I nearly got myself killed. They left the, the political marriage as a compromise, a way out. Tonight was meant to be the official betrothal. Instead…”
She put the mug down. “The groom is dead,” she said. “No, no need for condolences—I barely knew him. There was an attack on the betrothal party, and I only just managed to escape. And the United States government has found out about the Clan and discovered a way to get at the Clan’s world.”
Her eyes widened. “Hey, I wonder if Angbard knows?”
Mike’s first hint that something had gone badly wrong was the scent of burning gunpowder on the night air.
He hunkered down behind a large, gnarled oak tree at the edge of the tree line and squinted into the darkness. Hastert and his men had night vision goggles, but they hadn’t brought a spare pair for Mike and the moon wasn’t an adequate substitute. The stone wall across the clear-cut lawn was a looming black silhouette against a slightly lighter darkness. The sounds drifting over the wall told their own story of pain and confusion and anger: it sounded like there was a riot going on in the distance, still punctuated with the flat bangs of black powder weapons and the bellowing of men like cattle funneled into the killing floor of an abattoir.
A shadowy figure moved across the empty space. Someone tapped Mike lightly on the shoulder, and he jerked half-upright. “Let’s move,” whispered Hastert. “After me.” He rose lightly, and before Mike could say anything he faded into the gloom.
Mike forced himself to stand up. He’d been crouching for so long that his knees ached—and the nervous apprehension wasn’t helping, either. What have I gotten myself into? It seemed to be the story of his life, these days. He shifted his weight from side to side, restoring the circulation in his legs, then took a step through the undergrowth around the big oak tree.
There was a sharp cracking noise, a moment’s vibration as if a bowstring the size of a suspension bridge had just been released, and an excruciating pain lanced through his left leg, halfway between ankle and knee. He gasped with agony, too shocked to scream, and began to topple sideways. The serrated steel jaws buried in his leg were brought up sharply by the chain anchoring them to the oak tree, and dug their teeth into his shattered leg. Everything went black.
An indeterminate time later, Mike felt an urgent need to spit. His mouth hurt; he’d bitten his tongue and the sharp taste of blood filled his mouth. Why am I lying down? he wondered vaguely. Bad thought: In his mind’s inner eye his leg lit up like a torch, broken and burning. He drew breath to scream, and a hand covered his mouth.
“O’Neil, get me a splint. Lower leg fracture, looks like tibia and fibula both. Fleming, I’m going to stick a morphine syrette in you. Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here. Fuck me, that’s a nasty piece of work.” The hand moved away from his mouth. “Here, bite this if it helps.” Something leathery pushed at his lips. Mike gritted his teeth and tried not to scream as the bones grated. “I’m going to have to get this fucker off you before we can splint your leg and get you out of here.” A tiny sharpness bit into his leg near the searing agony. “How does it…eh. Got it. This is going to hurt—”
A sudden flare of pain arrived, worse than anything that had come before. Mike blacked out again.
The next time he woke up, the pain had subsided. That’s better, he thought drowsily. It was comfortable, lying down on the ground: must be the morphine. Someone was tugging at his leg, lifting and moving it and tying stuff tightly around it. That was uncomfortable. Something told him he ought to be screaming his head off, but it was too much effort right now. “What is it?” he tried to ask aloud, but what came out was a drunken-sounding mumble.