“Very well,” said Miriam. She glanced over her shoulder: “Wait here, I’m not expecting my uncle to try to kill me,” she told her retinue. Yet, she added silently. The doors swung open and she stepped through into a nearly empty audience chamber. The doors slammed shut behind her with a solid thud of latches, and she would have paused to look around but for the sergeant, who was already halfway across the huge expanse of hand-woven carpet.

He paused at the inner door and knocked twice: “Visitor six-two,” he muttered to a peephole, then stood aside. The inner door opened just wide enough to admit Miriam and Kara. “If you please, ma’am.”

“Hmm.” Miriam entered the room, then stopped dead. “Mother!”

“Miriam!” Iris smiled at her from her wheelchair, which stood beside the pair of thrones mounted at one end of the audience room. A pair of crutches leaned against one of them.

Miriam crossed the room quickly and leaned down to hug her mother. “I’ve missed you,” she said quietly, mind whirling with shock. “I was so worried—”

“There, there.” Iris kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I’m alright, as you can see.” Miriam straightened up. “You look as if you’re keeping well!” Then she noticed Kara’s head in the doorway, jaw agape. “Oh dear, another one come to stare at me,” she sighed. “I suppose it can’t be helped. It’ll all be over by this time tomorrow, anyway, isn’t that the case, Angbard?”

“I would not make any assumptions,” said the duke, turning away from the window. His expression was distant. “Helge, Miriam.”

“So, it is true,” said Miriam. She glanced at Iris. “He brought you here?” She rounded on Angbard: “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“Nonsense.” He looked offended.

“Don’t blame him, Miriam.” Iris looked at her strangely. “Drag up a seat, dear. It’s a long story.”

Miriam sat down beside her. “Why?” she asked, her thoughts whirling so that she couldn’t make her mind up what word to put next. “What is she doing here then, if you didn’t kidnap her?” she asked, looking at Angbard. “I thought it was against all your policies to take people from—”

“Policies?” Angbard asked, raising his nose. He shrugged dismissively then looked at Iris. “Tell her.”

“Nobody kidnapped me,” said Iris. “But after a party or parties unknown tried to kill me, I phoned Angbard and asked for help.”

“Uh.” Miriam blinked. “You phoned him?”

“Yes.” Iris nodded encouragingly. “Isn’t that how you normally get in touch with someone?”

“Well yes, but, but…” Miriam paused. “You had his number,” she said accusingly. “How?”

Iris glanced at the duke, as if asking for moral support. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and half-turned away from Miriam.

“Um.” Iris froze up, looking embarrassed.

Miriam stared at her mother. “Oh no. Tell me it isn’t true.”

Iris coughed. “I expected you to look at the papers, use the locket or not, then do the sensible thing and ask me to tell you all about it. I figured you’d be fairly safe, your house being in the middle of open woodland on this side, and it would make explaining everything a lot easier once you’d had a chance to see for yourself. Otherwise—” She shrugged. “If I’d broken it to you cold you’d have thought I was crazy. I didn’t expect you to go running off and getting yourself shot at!” For a moment she looked angry. “I was so worried!”

“Ma.” She had difficulty swallowing. “You’re telling me you knew about. The Clan. All along.”

A patient sigh from the window bay. “She appears to be having some difficulty. If you would allow me—”

“No!” Iris snapped, then stopped.

“If you can’t, I will,” the duke said firmly. He turned back to face Miriam. “Your mother has had my number all along,” he explained, scrutinizing her face. “The Clan has maintained emergency telephone numbers—a nine-eleven service, if you like—for the past fifty years. She only saw fit to call me when you went missing.”

“Ma—” Miriam stopped. Glanced at Angbard again. “My mother,” she said thoughtfully. “Not, um, foster-mother, is it?”

Angbard shook his head slightly, studying her beneath half-hooded eyes.

Miriam glared at Iris. “Why all the lies, then?” she demanded.

Iris looked defensive. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, is all I can say.” She shuffled deeper into her chair. “Miriam?”

“Yeah?”

“I know I brought you up not to tell lies. All I can say is, I wish I could have lived up to that myself. I’m sorry.”

Angbard took a step forward, then moved to stand behind Iris’s wheelchair.

“Don’t go too hard on her,” he said warningly. “You have no idea what she’s—” He stopped, and shook his head. “No idea,” he echoed grimly.

“So explain,” said Miriam. Her gaze slid past Iris to focus on Kara, who was doing her best imitation of a sheet of wallpaper—wallpaper with a fascinated expression. “Whoa. Kara, please wait outside. Now.”

Kara skidded across the floor as if her feet were on fire: “I’m going, I’m going!” she squeaked.

Miriam stared at Iris. “So why did you do it?”

Iris sighed. “They’d shot Alfredo, you know.”

She fell silent for a moment.

“Alfredo?”

“Your father.”

“Shot him, you said.”

“Yes. And Joan, my maid, they killed her too. I got across but they’d done a good job on me, too—I nearly bled to death before the ambulance got me to a hospital. And then, and then …” She trailed off. “I was in Cambridge, unidentified, in a hospital, with no chaperone and no guards. Can you understand the temptation?”

Miriam looked sideways: Angbard was watching Iris like a hawk, something like admiration in his eyes. Or maybe it was the bitterness of the dutiful brother who stuck to his post? It was hard to tell.

“How did you meet Morris?” she asked her mother, after a momentary pause.

“He was a hospital visitor.” Iris smiled at the recollection. “Actually he was writing for an underground newspaper at the time and came to see if I’d been beaten up by the pigs. Later he sorted out our birth certificates—mine and yours, that is, including my fake backstory leading out of the country, and the false adoption papers—when we moved around. Me being a naturalized foreigner was useful cover. There was a whole underground railroad going on in those days, left over from when the SDS and the Weather Underground turned bad, and it served our purpose to use it. Especially as the FBI wasn’t actually looking for us.”

“So I—I—” Miriam stopped. “I’m not adopted.”

“Does it make any difference to you?” Iris asked, sounding slightly puzzled. “You always said it didn’t. That’s what you told me.”

“I’m confused,” Miriam admitted. Her head was spinning. “You were rich and powerful. You gave it all up—brought your daughter up to think she was adopted, went underground, lived like a political radical—just to get away from the in-laws?”

Angbard spoke. “It’s her mother’s fault,” he said grimly. “You met the dowager duchess, I believe. She has always taken a, ah, utilitarian view of her offspring. She played Patty like a card in a game of poker, for the highest stakes. The treaty process, re-establishing the braid between the warring factions. I think she did so partially out of spite, to get your mother out of the way, but she is not a simple woman. Nothing she does serves only a single purpose.” His expression was stony. “But she is untouchable. Unlike whoever tried to ruin her hand by murdering my cousin and her husband.”

Iris shifted around, trying to make herself more comfortable. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account. If you ever find Alfredo’s body, you’d best not tell me where it’s buried—I’d have a terrible time getting back into my wheelchair after I pissed on it.”

“Patricia,” his smile was razor-thin, “I usually find that death settles all scores to my complete satisfaction. Just as long as they stay dead.”