"It's a safe house," Brill explained as she pushed buttons on an alarm system that was far fancier-and newer-than the building it was attached to. "We own a bunch of them, lease them out for short stays via a local Realtor, so there's a lot of turnover. There's always one free when we need it, and it doesn't look suspicious. We actually make money on the deaclass="underline" We can buy the properties with spare capital and they're mostly going up."
Miriam glanced around as they entered the front hall. Dust tickled her nostrils; the husk of a dead beetle lay, legs upturned, in the middle of the floor. She wrinkled her nose. "What's the plan?"
"Oh, I just phoned the Realtor and told them I was a friend of the owner and we were taking it for two weeks." She held up a key. "There's some emergency gear stashed in the cellar, behind a false wall. Other than that, it's clean-the emergency gear's the kind of stuff a survival nut would have, nothing to attract special attention. The only real trouble we've ever had with these safe houses was when one of them was accidentally let to a meth dealer. We cleared them out good. The Sheriff's department like us." She said it with such evident satisfaction that Miriam shivered. For a meth dealer, setting up a clandestine lab in a Clan safe house was a bit like a fox setting up house in a grizzly's den. "You may want to take the front bedroom, milady. I'll get the air and hot water working and everyone else settled in, then we can talk."
Three hours later, Miriam felt a lot more human. Air conditioning! Proper showers! Toilets with lids and a handle you turned to flush, rather than yanking on a chain! It was almost like being home again. Brill had even, somehow, managed to find the time to scare up some clothes that fit her, so she didn't look totally weird. Well, Brill had been her lady-in-waiting for some months; as one of the odd jobs she did for the thin white duke-Miriam's uncle-knowing her measurements wasn't that odd. It was a shame she'd bleached her hair blond while she'd been on the run, Miriam told herself; the colors Brill had picked didn't match her new look, and besides, her roots were starting to show.
But I'm home. So, what now?
She sat on the edge of the bed, one leg of a very new pair of jeans dangling, and stared at the window. So unlike the stony castle casement she'd spent weeks staring at in a state of desperation, under house arrest and facing a forced political marriage as a lesser evil to paying the price of her earlier mistakes, but it was still a window in a house guarded by the Clan's traditions and rules. The formal betrothal had gone adrift in a sea of flame and gunfire, as crown prince Egon took exception to the idea of a Clan heiress marrying his younger (and retarded) brother; then she'd been running through the confusing political underworld of New Britain, too fast to think. But now-
It all depends on what else has been going on since I left. She sighed and began to work her other foot down the pants leg. Is Mom okay? She paused again. Brill said something about being under attack over here. Is Paulie okay? Paulette, her sometime PA, was an outsider to all this-but stuck in Cambridge, if the Clan was being attacked from outside, she could be in big trouble. Guilt by association: Some within the Clan would see her as a tool tainted by Miriam's low stock, while whatever agency was going after the Clan would assume the worst. I've got to find out, Miriam decided, and stood up just as there was a tentative knock at the door.
"Come in," she called, hastily buttoning up.
The door opened and Brilliana looked in. "Milady?"
"I'm nearly done here." Miriam glanced around. "Where did I put my shoes?" Handmade leather ankle-boots from New Britain wouldn't look too out of place, and shoes were the one thing Brill hadn't been able to buy for her. "Eh." They were hiding under the dressing table.
"I think we need to talk," Brilliana observed.
"Yes." Miriam bent over and began working on her left foot. "What exactly has been going on since the, the banquet?" Her brain began to catch up with her earlier thoughts: "My mother-is she alright? What about the duke? My grandmother-"
"It's a mess," Brill said wryly. She perched on the stool by the table. "We're not sure exactly how long Egon had been planning it for, but he used Henryk's scheme"-the plan to forcibly marry Miriam into the Gruinmarkt's royal dynasty-"as leverage to get a bunch of the backwood peers behind him. He's declared the entire Clan outlaw and placed a price on our heads, and is promising half our estates to those nobles who back him. It's turned into a messy civil war and Angbard's had his hands tied trying to defend individual holdings instead of going after the pretender's army. While all that was going on, we've had some disturbing-well, a couple of couriers have gone missing over the past six months. Missing with no explanation, no hint of trouble. Not only did the bastard Matthias rat us out to the Drug Enforcement Agency, now there's some sort of secret government cross-agency committee trying to hunt us down. Everyone on this side has had to activate their emergency cover plans. And the really bad news is that this agency managed to sneak a couple of agents into the Gruinmarkt, which means it's serious."
"Yes, I know." Miriam sat up and took a deep breath. "I told you about meeting Mike, didn't I?" She'd once had a thing going with Mike Fleming. Odd, it seemed an awfully long time ago. "He got me out of the palace alive." She shrugged. "He was unexpectedly honest." Another deep breath. "Told me that if I wanted to join the federal witness protection program…"
The words hung in the air for a few seconds. Finally, Brilliana nodded. "We know. And it will count for much when it comes to the Council's attention, I think," she said slowly. A longer pause. "Olga and your mother have been talking to him. Trying to negotiate a, a temporary cease-fire. But things are really bad. They believe we've stolen a nuclear weapon, and they want it back."
"Jesus." Miriam shook her head. "Why would they think that?" She looked at Brill, aghast. "Hang on. They believe the Clan has stolen a nuke? Why? Why would they believe that? Has Angbard- He'd have to be mad! Tell me he hasn't?"
Brill looked uncomfortable. "Angbard hasn't stolen a nuke. But they leave them in undoppelgangered bunkers; is that not a temptation?"
"Tell me." Miriam shoved her hair back from her face. "Has someone in the Clan actually gone and stolen a nuclear weapon? How? I mean, I thought they were too big to carry-"
"Not one," Brill said, then bit her lip. "Six, we think. Maybe more. They're backpack devices, part of the inactive inventory-the CIA asked for them, originally."
Aghast, Miriam stared at her. "Is that why they're all over us?"
Brill nodded.
"Then who-"
"Oliver, Earl Hjorth, is the key-holder designated by the Clan committee."
"Jesus, why him?" The thought of what might happen if the feds discovered the Clan had haunted Miriam ever since she'd learned about her own ancestry; what they might do if they thought the extradimensional narcoterrorists had nuclear weapons didn't bear thinking about. And Baron Oliver was about the worst person she could think of to be holding them-an unregenerate backwoodsman and dyed-in-the-wool conservative faction member. "And they can get their own people into the Gruinmarkt, can't they."
"There's more bad news," Brill added after a moment.
"Why don't you come downstairs? Then Huw can deliver it himself."
Elena sprawled across the sofa in the living room, pulling an oiled cleaning cloth through the breech of her P90. "Find another channel, minion," she drawled without looking up. "I can't stand Friends."