The Hidden Family

“In about ten seconds if you don’t shut up about it!” She glared at him. “Don’t you see? Your family’s reasons for feuding with the Clan are bogus. They’ve been bogus all along!”

“So?” He made a movement that might have been a shrug if he hadn’t been wearing fetters. “Our elders, now dead, laid these duties upon our shoulders. We must obey, or dishonor their memory. Only our eldest can change our course. Do you expect me to betray my family and plead for mercy?”

“No.” Miriam stood up. “But you may not need to beg, Lin. There is a Clan meeting coming up tomorrow. Some—most—of them will want your head. But I think it might be possible to convince them to let you go free, if you agree to do something.”

“No!”

She rolled her eyes. “Really? You don’t want to go home and deliver a letter to this elder of yours? I knew you were young and silly, but this is ridiculous.”

“What kind of letter?” he asked hesitantly.

“An offer of terms.” She paused. “You need it more than we do, I hasten to add. Now we can get into your world—” He flinched—“and there are many more of us, and there’s the other world you saw, the one the Clan’s power is based in. Did you see much of America?” His eyes went wide: He’d seen enough. “From now on, in any struggle, we can win. There is no ‘maybe’ in that statement. If the eldest orders your family to fight it out, they can only lose. But I happen to have a use for your family—I want to keep them alive. And you. I’m willing to settle this thing between us, the generations of blood and murder, if your eldest is willing to accept that declaring war on the Clan was wrong, that his ancestor was not deliberately abandoned, and that ending the war is necessary. So I’m going to do everything I can to convince the committee to send you home with a cease-fire proposal.”

He stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head.

“Will you carry that message?” she asked.

He nodded, slowly, watching her with wide eyes.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she warned. She turned to the door. “Take this one back to his cell,” she said. “I want you to make sure he’s given food and water. And take good care of him.” She leaned toward the sergeant. “There is a chance that he is going to run an errand for us. I do not want him damaged. Do you understand?”

Something in her eyes made the soldier tense: “Yes, ma’am,” he grunted warily. “Food and water.” His companion pulled the door open, staring at the wall behind her, trying to avoid her gaze.

“See that you do.”

She came out of the cellars shivering into the evening twilight, and headed upstairs as fast as she could, to get back to a warm fireplace and good company. But it was going to take more than that to get the chill of the dungeon out of her bones, and out of her dreams.

Part 5

Meltdown

Escape Plans

He’s done what?” demanded Matthias, in a tone of rising disbelief.

The duke’s outer office in Fort Lofstrom was home to the duke’s secretary, and during Angbard’s lengthy absence it served as a headquarters from which the Clan’s operations in Massachusetts were coordinated. One of a chain of nine such castles up and down the eastern seaboard (in the Gruinmarkt, but also in the free kingdoms to the north and south), it coordinated the transshipment of Clan cargo along the entire eastern continental coast. Half a dozen junior Clan members were stationed there at any time, each shuttling back and forth at eight-hour intervals. Every three hours a message packet would arrive from Cambridge, and Matthias would be the first to open it and read any confidential dispatches.

This packet had contained a couple of letters, and a terse coded message. It was the latter that had whetted Matthias’s curiosity, then raised his ire.

The youth standing in front of his desk looked very frightened, but held his ground. “It came over the wireless just now, sir, an order to shut down. A blanket order, for the duration of the extraordinary general meeting, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Isn’t that unusual?”

“Hmm.” Matthias looked at him hard. “Well, Poul.” The lad was barely out of his teens, still afflicted by acne and a bad case of deference to authority—especially the kind of deadly, self-confident authority that Matthias exuded—but for all that he was brave. “We’ll just have to shut down the postal service, won’t we?” He allowed his expression to relax infinitesimally, determined not to give the youth any hint of the turmoil he felt.

“Are those your orders, sir?” Poul asked eagerly.

“No.” Matthias cocked his head. A Clan extraordinary meeting, held without warning…it didn’t smell good. In fact, it smelled extraordinarily bad to him. Ever since Esau’s asshole relatives had started trying to rub out the long-lost countess and another bunch of interlopers had joined in, things had looked distinctly unstable. “It sounds to me as if there’s something very big going on,” Matthias said slowly. “On that basis, I don’t think suspending the post is sufficient. We have assets on the other side who may not have got the warning. I’ll need you to make one more crossing to deliver a message, as soon as possible. Then we shut down. Meanwhile, it will be necessary to secure the fort.”

“Secure the—sir? Do you know what’s going on?”

Matthias fixed the young man with a grim stare. “I have a notion that it’s no good. The civil war, lad, that’s what this is about. Pigeons are coming home to roost and promises made thirty years ago are about to be delivered on.” He snorted. “Idiots,” he muttered bitterly. “Wait here. I have to go and get the special dispatches out of the duke’s office. Then I’ll go over what you have to do to deliver them.”

Matthias rose and let himself through the door into the duke’s inner study. Everything was as it had been when Angbard departed, a week ago. Matthias closed the door, then leaned his head against the wall and cursed silently. So close, so damned close! But he couldn’t just sit here. Not with that bitch about to spill her guts at the meeting. Esau’s confession—that the eldest had authorized repeated attempts on Helge’s life—had shaken him. He’d had Helge, Miriam, in his sights: She was a natural fellow traveler for his plans. He’d been getting positioned to bring her into his orbit until the idiot fanatics started trying to kill her, making her suspicious of everyone and everything. With no friends but that weakling Roland, she’d been easy meat before. But now—

He read through his illicit decrypt one more time. The original message wasn’t addressed to him, but that had never stopped Matthias in the past; as Angbard’s secretary he was used to reading the duke’s mail—and also mail for other people on station that passed through the mail room. People such as Sir Huw Thoms, lieutenant of the guard, who right now was over on the other side, making a delivery run. And he had access to the code books, too.

ACTION THIS DAY STOP ARREST MATTHIAS VAN HJORTH ANY MEANS NECESSARY STOP CHARGES OF TREASON TO FOLLOW STOP

Shit. Matthias crumpled the letter in his fist, his face a tight mask of anger. Bitch, he thought. Either his hold on Roland wasn’t as strong as he’d believed, or she was more ruthless than he’d thought. But the old man has made a mistake. Poul, the callow messenger, was in the next room. That gave him an edge, if he could only work out how to use it.