—“
“I haven’t made my confession yet, Mother.” Patricia looked at the dowager oddly. “It would have been good to have had this heart-to-heart a little earlier—perhaps a year ago. I’m afraid we’re both too late.…”
* * *
An hour after Miriam and her guards and allies arrived at the farmstead, the place was abuzz with Clan Security. There were several safe transfer locations in the state forest, and one of Earl-Major Riordan’s first orders had been to summon every available soldier—not already committed to point defense or the pursuit of the renegade elements of the Postal Service and the Conservative Club—to establish a security cordon.
Miriam, sick at heart, sat in one corner of the command post, listening—the fast, military hochsprache was hard to follow, and she was catching perhaps one word in three, but she could follow the general sense of the discussion—and watching as Riordan took reports and consulted with Olga and issued orders, as often as not by radio to outlying sites. The headquarters troops had set up a whole bunch of card indexes and a large corkboard, startlingly prosaic in a field headquarters in a fire-damaged farmhouse, and were keeping a written log of every decision Riordan handed down. A hanging list of index cards had gone up on one wall, each card bearing a name: Baron Henryk, Baron Oliver, Dowager Duchess Thorold-Hjorth. Miriam carefully avoided trying to read the handwritten annotations whenever a clerk updated one of them. Ringleaders they might be, and in some cases bitter enemies, but they were all people she knew, or had known, at court. A similar list hung on the opposite wall, and it was both longer and less frequently updated—known allies and their disposition.
“Why not computerize?” she’d asked Brill, in a quiet moment when the latter had sat down on the bench beside her with a mug of coffee.
“Where are we going to get the electricity to run the computer from?” Brill replied, shrugging. “Batteries need charging, generators need fuel. Best not to make hostages to fate. Besides,” she glanced sidelong at the communications specialist bent over the radio, “computers come with their own problems. They make treachery easier. And it’s a small enough squabble that we don’t need them.”
“But the Clan—” Miriam stopped.
“We know all the main players. By name and by face. We know most of our associates, too.” The world- walkers, children of latent, outer-family lines, not yet fully integrated into the Clan of which they were branches. “We are few enough that this will be over—” Brill stopped. The communications specialist had stood up, hunching over his set. Suddenly he swore, and waved urgently at Olga. Olga hurried over; a moment later Riordan joined her.
“What’s going on?” Miriam stood up.
“I don’t know.” Brill’s face was expressionless. “Nothing good by the look of it.”
Olga turned towards them, mouthed something. She looked appalled.
“Tell me,” Miriam demanded, raising her voice against the general hubbub of urgent questions and answers.
Olga took two steps towards her. “I am very sorry, my lady,” she said woodenly.
“It’s Plan Blue?”
Olga nodded. “It is all over the television channels,” she added softly. “Two nuclear explosions. In Washington.”
For a moment everything in Miriam’s vision was as gray as ash. She must have staggered, for Brilliana caught her elbow. “What.” She swallowed. “How bad?”
“We do not know yet, my lady. That news is still in the pipeline. We have”—she gestured at the radio bench —“other urgent priorities right now. But there are reports of many casualties.”
Miriam swallowed again. Her stomach clenched. “Was this definitely the work of, of the conservative faction?”
“It is reasonable to suppose so, but we can’t be certain yet.” Olga was peering at her, worried. “My lady, what do you—”
“Because if it was their doing, if it was anything to do with the Clan, then we are
“Even if it was not Baron Hjorth’s doing, even if we had nothing to do with it, we would not be secure,” Brilliana pointed out. “We know that the vice president has reason to want us dead. This could be some other’s work, and he would still send his minions to hunt us.”
“Shit.” Miriam swallowed again, feeling the acid tang of bile at the back of her mouth. “Think I’m going to throw up.”
“This way, milady”—everyone was solicitous towards the mother-to-be, Miriam noted absentmindedly, up to and including making decisions on her behalf, as if she were a passive object with no will of her own—
It was raining outside, and the stench from the latrines round the side of the house completed the job that the news and the anxiety and the morning sickness had started. Her stomach cramped as she doubled over, spitting bile, and waited for the shooting pain in her gut to subside. Brill waited outside, leaving her a token space.
“Milady?” It was Brill.
“I’m better. For now.” Miriam waved off her offered hand and took a deep breath of rain-cleansed air. “I’m going to lie down. But. I need to know how bad it is, what the bastards have done. And as soon as Riordan and Olga have a free minute I need to talk to them.”
“But they’re going to be—” Brill stopped. “What do you need to distract them with?”
“The evacuation plan,” Miriam said bluntly.
“What plan—”
“The one we need to draw up
* * *
A steady stream of couriers, security staff, and refugees trickled into the farmstead over the hours following Miriam’s evacuation. By midafternoon, Earl Riordan had sent out levies to round up labor from the nearest villages, and by sunset a large temporary camp was taking shape, patrolled by guards with assault rifles. The farm itself was receiving a makeover in the shape of a temporary royal residence: However humble it might be by comparison with the palaces of Niejwein, it was far better than the tents and improvised bivouacs of the soldiers.
Despite her ongoing nausea, Miriam followed Riordan and Olga and their staff when they moved into a pavilion beside the farmhouse. “You should be lying down, taking things easy,” Brilliana said, halfheartedly trying to divert her.
