“Yes, but they’ve already got the big national laboratories. And if they’ve got captive Clan members they’re starting from where the Clan stood, as of forty-eight hours ago. And they could have started months ago! It all depends on whether the problem they’re trying to crack is a hard one or an easy one. If we’ve got some kind of mechanism that lets us do this, then it’s designed to replicate, and there’s got to be some sort of control system wired into our brains—are you telling me nobody has put bits of a Clan member under an electron microscope before to look for anomalies?”
“You’ve met enough of your cousins by now. How many brain surgeons did you spot?” Huw looked defensive. “It wasn’t a high priority.”
“Well it is, now. Because if they can figure out what makes us world-walk, they’re probably halfway to mass-producing it. Given they’ve got scouts in the Gruinmarkt—”
“They’ve got what?” Huw sat bolt-upright.
“Eh.” Miriam cocked her head to one side. “Forget I said that?”
“Sure . . . can I finish your sentence?”
“Um . . .”
“Right now, any scouts they can send our way are going to be riding piggyback. Lightning Child knows how they’re making the couriers cooperate, but nothing would surprise me: The current administration are so Machiavellian they make Prince Egon look like a White House intern. But what you’re speculating about is how long we’ve got until there’s a large-scale incursion.” Her expression made him look for other words. “Invasion. Is that what you’re thinking?”
Miriam nodded. “I—No, we—have got to talk to Angbard, and fast. Whatever the prince has been up to back, uh, home”—he spotted the moment’s deliberation before she chose the word—“it’s a sideshow compared to what’s coming. I don’t know how long we’ve got, but I’d guess it’s going to be weeks to months, not months to years.” She pushed her empty mug away. “Do you have Google on that laptop of yours?”
“What are you thinking of trawling for?”
“News items. Foreign stuff, not more shit about Paris Hilton’s funeral; I want to hear about anything that suggests that State is planning a hasty exit from Iraq. They’re not going to try and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and invade the Gruinmarkt simultaneously, are they?” She slid off her bar stool, visibly jittery. Iraq had been a ghastly object lesson in what the current administration could do to people they didn’t like: the increasingly desperate pleas of the coup plotters after they deposed Saddam, the cringing threats of gas attacks in event of invasion—and in response, the huge B52 raids on Baghdad. All of it had been calculated to send a message, this is what you get if you mess with us.
“Depends.” Huw reached over and switched off the coffee maker. “Don’t they have some kind of doctrine about being able to fight two wars simultaneously, anywhere on the planet? And the supply lines to the Gruinmarkt are real short, if they can build a world-walking machine. Or gate.”
“And mostly they’d be up against irregulars with muskets. They could roll over in their sleep and crush us, if—”
A door slammed in the passage. Moments later, Brill darted into the kitchen. “Oh. There you are!” Visibly agitated, she focused on the coffee pot. “Ah, you emptied it. Huw. Have you brought the e-mail service to life?”
“Not yet, I was going to—”
“Scheisse.” Brill glanced aside. “I’m sorry, milady. The news is bad. I must get in touch right away. Huw, if you would be so good—”
“What’s happened?” demanded Miriam.
“My pager ordered me to call in, in the clear—maximum urgency. It’s the duke, my lady. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”
There was a room on one of the upper floors of the Hjalmar Palace with a huge canopied bed in it, and the bed stank of death and uncontrolled bowels. Lady Olga sat on the edge of the bed and spoke to its occupant, as a medic cleaned him and a soldier stood by waiting to replace the fouled sheets.
He’d been strong once, and clever and ruthless, a bulwark for his allies and a terror to his faction’s foes, during the years of madness when the Clan’s member families had engaged in a bloody succession of mortal feuds. Then, as the madness receded, he’d helped broker a series of treaties—some on paper, others cemented by blood in marriage—to disarm the worst of the remaining hostilities. He’d risen to dominate the Clan’s external security apparat, modernizing it and turning it into the glue that bound the new settlement together. The hammer of the council, his combination of force and guile had cowed the hotheads and brought the wily to his table. But he was just one man—now paralyzed on one side and barely conscious, lonely and adrift in what might be his deathbed.
“We’re holding out,” she said quietly, touching his immobile left hand, hoping against hope for a reaction. “Earl Fredryck’s observers report that the federal presence at the doppelganger site is continuing, but all our people made it across ahead of the siege. We have plenty of ammunition. The monarchists dropped the culvert from the river, and attempted to poison the well, but the osmotic purifier is working. Earl Riordan reports that the pretender’s army is encamped athwart the valley just downriver of the bend, ‘tween here and Wergatsfurt. The scouts are already preparing a route for us through New Britain, once Riordan’s men have manufactured a sufficiency of knotwork badges.”
The duke made an odd noise in the back of his throat, something between a cluck and a gurgle. Olga leaned close, trying to discern words. His eyes rolled, agitated: “Guh-uh . . .”
“Fear not, we have prepared for you.” A fireman’s carry and a hike in the dark—then, if he survived the one kilometer haul, a stealthy transit back to the American side, land of neurological wards and intensive care facilities, where a private ambulance would be waiting to whisk him to a hospital bed. “The body of the force will return, taking the Pervert’s army in the rear if he’s still encamped. And should he occupy the palace, we have a warm welcome prepared for him.”
Olga was of the opinion that it was better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission; and in any event, the warm welcome in question was one with a short expiry date—shorter than ever, now that she’d learned what that thrice-cursed bastard idiot Matthias had told the DEA, or whoever they were. And what Otto had been doing was the icing on a very unpalatable cake. To his credit, he’d actually volunteered the information. “Baron Henryk never put his faith in intangibles,” he’d explained. “He wanted to see these mythical nuclear weapons. He wanted to own them. He argued about it with the duke, but then the duke changed his mind—one suspects Matthias forged his signature on the letter—and so the baron set me to oversee Matthias on organizing the theft. It was meant to be a harmless shell game, and additional leverage in council. Nobody had looked at them for more than eight years! How were we to know Matthias would sell his story to the outlanders?”
“Guh. Uh. Pa. Pat. Uh.” He was clearly trying to say something. Alerted, Olga leaned closer.
“Please, I ask you, try to speak slowly. Is it a person?”
“Uh!”
“Patricia?” It was the obvious name: his half sister, mother of Helge, the wayward wildcat orphan and loose cannon who called herself Miriam.
“Yuh.”
“Oh! Good. Do you want to see her?” That could be difficult. Like most of the Clan’s elders who were familiar with American culture, she’d vanished into a deep cover identity when the shit hit the fan, and trying to bring her over could draw attention to her.
“Nuh.”
“Alright.” Olga racked her mind for options. “Do you have a message for her? Or about her? Hang on, if it’s a message for her, blink once? About her, twice?”
One blink.
Olga sat up, heart hammering. He’s still inside there. A hot flush of relief washed over her: The idea that Angbard, Duke Lofstrom, had lost his mind had been too terrible to voice, or even think. Paralyzed, deathly sick, but still the will to control went on. . . . “Can you spell it out? One for no, two for yes?”
Blink-blink.
“Milady, he looks very weak to me—” The first-aider sounded worried.
“He’s the best judge of his condition,” she said sharply. “And if he has a message of such import, he must give it. Have you pen and paper?”
“Uh, yes, milady.”
“Then take a note.”
It took half an hour, but they extracted two sentences from the duke before the corpsman’s entreaties began to sway Olga. False starts and mistakes made it a frustrating process—but his words dispelled any remaining fear she had for his mind. Finally, she sighed and stood up. “I’ll see it gets to her,” she reassured the duke. “Tomorrow, we’ll get you to a proper hospital bed. I must go now.” She bowed and stepped back, then took the sheet of paper from the corps-man’s pad. “You heard nothing,” she warned him. “This must go no further. And the duke needs to rest now.”
“Milady.” He bowed as she left the room and hurried towards the improvised communications center downstairs.
Carl, Earl of Wu by Hjorth—and the commander of the small army currently encamped in the castle—looked up as she entered. By a miracle, Oliver, Earl Hjorth, was absent. “What news?”
“Nothing bad.” She hurried to his side at the map table. “He’s sleeping now,” she continued quietly, “but he’s very weak. The good news is, he has his senses. He gave me a message to relay to Patricia Thorold-Hjorth by any means necessary.”
“He’s talking? . . .” Carl’s fist clenched.
“Do not hope for too much. It took much work to say this much.” She passed him the note. “Please, send this by way of Earl Riordan. There is no way of knowing how long it will take to reach her, and I fear it may be urgent. I’d advise keeping it from Earl Oliver.”
“Alright.” Carl took the piece of paper and stared at it. “What does it mean?”
“You’ll find out,” Olga assured him. “In good time.”
TELL PATRICIA GIVE CLINIC RECORDS TO HELGE. GET HELGE IN FRONT OF COUNCIL. MY WORD, HER PLAN B ONLY WAY FORWARD NOW.