The Hidden Family

“It is?”

“Too many rooms.”

“What do you mean?”

She squirmed backwards slightly until she felt his crotch behind her.

“We managed the living room, the bathroom, and the bedroom. But you’ve got a kitchen, haven’t you? And what about the back passage?”

“I, uh.” He yawned, loudly. She could feel him stiffening. “Need the toilet,” he mumbled.

“Oh shit.” She rolled over and watched him stand up, fondly. Aren’t they funny in the morning? she thought. If only… Then the numb misery was back. It was tomorrow, already. Damn, she thought. Can’t keep it together for even a night! What’s wrong with me?

“Would you like some coffee?” he called through the open doorway.

“Yeah, please.” She yawned. Waking up in bed with him should feel momentous, like the first day of the rest of her life. But it didn’t, it just filled her with angst—and a strong desire to spit in the faces of the anonymous sons of bitches who’d made it so. She wanted Roland. She wanted to wake up this way forever. She’d even think about the marriage thing, and children, if it was just about him. But it wasn’t, and there was no way she’d sacrifice a child on the altar of the Clan’s dynastic propositions. Romeo and Juliet were just stupid dizzy teenagers, she thought morosely. I know better. Don’t I?

She stood up and pulled her dress on. Then she padded into Roland’s small kitchen. He smiled at her. “Breakfast?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She smiled back at him, brain spinning furiously. Okay, so why don’t you give him a chance? she asked herself. If he is hiding something, let’s see if he’ll get it off his chest. Now. She knew full well why she didn’t want to ask, but not knowing scared her. Especially while Iris remained missing. On the other hand, a plausible bluff might make him tell her whatever it was, and if it was about Iris, that mattered. Didn’t it? So what can I use—oh. It was obvious. “Listen,” she said quietly. “I know you’re holding out on me. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. You haven’t told Angbard. So who knows about us?”

She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting: denial, maybe, or laughter; but his face crumpling up like a car wreck wasn’t on the list. “Damn,” he said quietly. “Shit.”

Her mouth went dry. “Who?” she asked.

Roland looked away from her. “He showed me pictures,” he said quietly. “Pictures of us. Can you believe it?”

“Who? Who are you talking about?” Miriam took a step back, suddenly feeling naked. Ask and ye shall learn.

Roland sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. “Matthias.”

“Jesus, Roland, you could have told me!” Anger lent her words the force of bullets: He winced before them. “What—”

“Cameras. All the cameras in Fort Lofstrom. Not just the ordinary security ones— he’s got bugs in some of the rooms, hidden and wired into the surveillance net. You can’t sweep for them, they don’t show up, and they’re not supposed to be there. He’s a spider, Miriam. We were in his web.” Roland’s face was turned toward her, white and tortured. “If he tells the old man—”

“Damn.” Miriam shook her head in disgust. “When?”

“After you disappeared, I swear it. Miriam, he’s blackmailing me. Not you, you might survive. Angbard’d kill me. He’d be honor-bound to, if it came out.”

Miriam glared at him. “What. What did he ask. You to do?”

“Nothing!” Roland cried out. He was right on the edge. I’m scaring him, she realized, an echo of grim satisfaction cutting through the numbness around her. Good. “At least, nothing yet. He says he wants you out of the picture. Not dead, just out of the Clan politics. Invisible. What you’re doing now—he thinks I’m behind it.”

“Give me that coffee,” Miriam demanded.

“When you called about the body in the warehouse, I told Matthias because he’s in charge of internal security,” Roland explained as he poured a mug from the filter machine. “Then when you told me there was a bomb, I couldn’t figure it out. Because if he wants to blackmail me he needs you to be alive, don’t you see? So I can’t see why he’d plant it, but at the same time—”

“Roland.”

“Yes?”

“Shut up. I’m trying to think.”

Shit. Matthias. Cameras everywhere. She remembered the servant’s staircase. Roland’s bedroom. So Matthias wants us out of the way? It was tempting. “Two million dollars.”

“Huh?”

“We could go a long way on two million bucks,” she heard herself say.

“But not far enough to outrun the Clan.”

“You want to—”

“Shut up.” She glared at Roland. He’d been holding out on her. For what sounded like good reasons, she admitted—but the thought made her blood run cold. Roland was no knight in shining armor. The Clan had broken him. Now all it took was Matthias pushing his buttons to make him do whatever they wanted. She wanted to hate him for it, but found that she couldn’t. The idea of going up against an organization with billions of dollars and hundreds of hands was daunting. Roland had done it once already, and paid the price. Okay, so he’s not brave, she thought. Where does that leave me? Am I brave, or crazy? “Are you holding out anything else on me?” she asked.

Roland took a deep breath. “No,” he said. “Honest. The only person who’s got anything on me is Matthias.” He chuckled bitterly, ending in a cough. “Nobody else. No other girlfriends. No boyfriends, either. Just you.”

“If Matthias has primed you for blackmail, he must want something you can do for him,” she pointed out. “He knows he could get rid of both of us by just giving us a shitload of money and covering our trail. And if he was behind these attempts to kill me, I’d be dead, wouldn’t I? So what does he want to do that involves me and needs you—and that he figures he needs a blackmail lever for?”

“I—don’t know.” Roland pulled himself together, visibly struggling to focus on the problem. “I feel so stupid. I haven’t been thinking rationally about this.”

“Yeah, well, you’d better start, then.” Miriam took a mouthful of coffee and looked at him. “What does Matthias want?”

“Advancement. Recognition. Power.” Roland answered immediately.

“Which he can’t get, because…?”

“He’s outer family.”

“Right.” Miriam stared at him. “Do you see a pattern here?” she asked.

“He can’t get it, from the Clan. Not as long as it’s run the way it is right now.”

“So.” Miriam stood up. “We’ve been stupid, Roland. Shortsighted.”

“Huh?” He looked at her uncomprehendingly, lost in his private self-hatred.

“I’m not the target. You’re not the target. Angbard is the target.”

“Oh shit.” He straightened up. “You mean Matthias wants to take over the whole Clan security service. Don’t you?”

Miriam nodded, grimly. “With whoever his mystery accomplices are. The faction who murdered my mother and kept the family feuds going with judicious assassinations over a thirty-year period. The faction from world three. Leave aside Oliver and that poisonous dowager granny and the others who’d like me dead, Matthias is in league with those assassins. And before he makes his move—”

“He’ll tell Angbard about us, whatever we do. To get us out of the frame before he rolls the duke up. Miriam, I’ve been a fool. But we can’t go to Angbard with it—we’d be openly admitting past disloyalty, hiding things from him. What are we going to do?”