While she was trying to work it out, Huw reached across the breakfast bar and laid a finger on the back of her hand. “You’ve been bottling that up for a long time, haven’t you?”
“How old are you?” she asked.
“I’m twenty-seven,” he said calmly, taking her by surprise: He had five years on her estimate. “And I hear what you’re not saying. You’re what, thirty? Thirty-one? And—”
“Thirty-four,” she heard herself saying.
“—Thirty-four is a hard age to be finding out about the Clan for the first time, and even harder if you’re a woman. It’s a shame you’re not ten or fifteen years older,” he continued, tilting his head to one side as he stared at her, “because they understand old maids; they wouldn’t bother trying to marry you off.” He shook his head abruptly. “I’m sorry, I’m treating your life like a puzzle, but it’s . . .”
“No, that’s okay.”
“Ah, thank you.” He paused for a few seconds. “I shall forget whatever you wish me to, of course.”
“Um?” Miriam blinked.
“I assume you don’t want your confidences written up and mailed to every gossip and scandalmonger in the Gruinmarkt?” He raised a wicked eyebrow.
“Of course not!” Catching the gleam in his eye: “You wouldn’t. Right?”
“I’m not suicidal.” He calmly reached out and took the final wedge of her pizza. “I bribe easily.”
“Here’s to wine and pizza!” She raised her glass, trying to cover her rattled nerves with a veneer of flippancy. Damn, he’s not that unsophisticated at all. Why do I keep getting these people wrong?
“Wine and pizza.” Huw let her off the hook gracefully.
“You wanted to know what my life’s ambitions were,” she said slowly. “May I ask why?”
Huw stopped chewing, then swallowed. “I’d like to know what motivates the leader I’m betting my life on.” He looked at her quizzically. “That heavy enough for you?”
“Whoa!” She put her glass down slightly too hard. “I’m not leading anyone!” But Brill’s words, earlier, returned to her memory. Your mother intends to put you on the throne; and we intend to make sure you’re not just there for show. “I’m—” She stopped, at a loss for words.
“You’re going to end up leading us whether you like it or not,” Huw said mildly. “I’m not going to shove you into it, or anything like that. You’re just in the right position at the right time, and if you don’t, we’ll all hang. Or worse.”
“What do you mean?” She leaned forward.
Huw turned his head and looked at the window, his expression shuttered. “The duke has been holding the Clan together, through ClanSec, for a generation. He’s, he’s a modernizer, in his own way. But there aren’t enough of us, and he’s aging. He’s also a fascist.” Huw held up a finger: “I say that in the strict technical sense of the word—he’s what you get when you take the principle of aristocratic exceptionalism and push it down a level onto the bourgeoisie, and throw in a big dose of the subordination of the will of the individual to the needs of the collective. Ahem.”
He took a sip of wine. “Sorry, Political Econ 301, back before I ended up in MIT. The Clan—we’re only five generations removed from folks who remember being itinerant tinkers. We are the nearest thing that the Gruinmarkt has thrown up to a middle class, and it’s the lack of any effective alternative that had our great-grandparents buying titles of nobility and living it up. Anyway, the duke has taken a bunch of warring, feuding extended families and given them a security organization that guards them all. He’s kicked butt and taken names, and secured a truce, and virtually everyone now agrees it’s a good thing. But he’s a single point of failure. When he goes, who’s going to be the next generalissimo? Your trouble is that you’re his niece, by his red-headed wildcat stepsister. More importantly, you’re the only surviving one in the direct line of succession—the attrition rate forty years ago was fearsome. So if you decide not to play your cards you’d better be ready to run like hell. Whichever of the conservative hard-liners comes out on top will figure you’re a mortal threat.”
“Hang on, whichever? Conservatives? Aren’t you jumping the gun—”
“No, because we’re not ready. Give us another few years and maybe Earl Riordan could do it. Or Olga, Baroness Thorold, although she’s even younger. There are others: Kennard Heilbrunner ven Arnesen, Albericht Hjalmar-Hjorth. But they’re not in position. You’re in an unusual spot: You’re young but not too young, you’ve got different experience, you demonstrated a remarkable ability to innovate under pressure, and—the icing on the cake—assuming you’re pregnant, you’re carrying a legitimate heir to the throne. Or at least one who everyone who survived the betrothal will swear is legitimate, and that’s what counts. And they’ll swear to it because, while the old nobility wouldn’t know a DNA paternity test from a hole in the ground, the Clan nobility have heard of it, and even the old folks have a near-superstitious respect for the products of science.”
“But I’m not”—Miriam stopped. She picked up her glass again, rolling it between her palms. “Did Brill tell you the details of Dr. ven Hjalmar’s creepy plan?” Huw nodded. “Good. But you know something? I’m old, and not all pregnancies come to term, and I am really not fucking happy about being turned into a brood mare. And I completed enough of pre-med that if—that’s an if—I decide to lose it, you—that’s a collective you—are going to have to keep me in a straitjacket for the next nine months if you want your precious heir. Assuming it exists and it’s a boy. And I haven’t made my mind up yet. And as for what ven Hjalmar’s got coming, if he isn’t dead, if I ever see him again . . .”
Silence. Then Huw spoke, in a low voice, as if talking to himself: “Miriam, if you are pregnant and you decide you don’t want to go through with it, I would consider it a matter of my personal honor to help you end it. Just as long as you keep it quiet . . . the old folks, they wouldn’t understand. But I won’t be party to keeping you in a straitjacket.”
“Uh. I. Er.” Miriam drained her wineglass, trying to cover her confusion. “What you just offered. You know what you just said?”
“Yes.” Huw nodded. “I will either get you the appropriate medication, or, if it’s too late for that, help you get to an abortion clinic.” He paused. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve helped a girl out that way.”
“Uh.” Miriam stared at him. Just when I think I’m getting to understand them . . . “No offense, but you made it sound like organizing a shopping trip. . . .”
“I may be an MIT graduate student, but I’m from the Gruinmarkt.” Huw visibly searched for words. “We don’t place much stock in a babe ‘til it’s born, usually. Which is perhaps a good thing. You wouldn’t want it to be born if it would trigger a blood feud that would claim its own—and its parents’—lives, would you?”
“But—you said it was leverage—”
“Yes, I did.” He looked back at her. “But it’s not the only lever you’ve got. The duke’s accident elevates your rank in the game. You might still have a chance, even if you throw it away.” He slid off his bar stool and picked up the dirty plates. “Just try to give the rest of us some warning when you make your mind up, huh?”