“Why did you run away?” asked Oliver Hjorth, leaning sideways so he could see her, an unpleasant expression of impatience on his face.

“What, uns gefen mine mudder en geleg ’hat Gelegenheit, mish’su ’em annudern frau-clapper weg tu heiraten?” Iris asked dryly. There was a shocked titter from somewhere in the audience. “Obviously not. And if you have to ask that question I also doubt very much that you’ve ever had a gang of assassins trying to murder you. A pity, that. You could benefit from the experience.”

“What’s she saying?” Miriam nudged Olga. I really must try to learn the language, she thought despairingly.

“Your mother is convincingly rude,” Olga replied, sotto voce.

“This is an imposter!” someone called from the floor. Miriam craned her neck; it might be the dowager duchess, but she couldn’t be certain. “I demand to see—”

“Order!” Angbard whacked his hammer down again. “You will be polite, madam, or I will have you escorted out of this room.”

“I apologize to the chair,” Iris responded. “However, I assure you I’m no imposter. Mother dearest, by way of proof of my identity, would you like me to repeat what I overheard you telling Erich Wu in the maze at the summer palace gardens at Kvaern when I was six?”

“You—you!” The old dowager stumbled to her feet, shaking with rage.

“I believe I can prove my case adequately, with or without blood tests,” Iris said dryly, addressing the gallery. “As any of you who have consulted the register of proxies must be aware, my mother has a strong motive for refusing to acknowledge me. Unfortunately, as in so many other circumstances, I must disobey her wishes.”

“Nonsense!” blurted the duchess, an expression of profound horror settling on her face. She sat down quickly.

“I can attest that she is no imposter,” said Angbard. “If anyone requests independent verification, this can be arranged. Does any party to this meeting so desire?” He glanced around the room, but no hands went up. “Very well.” He rapped on the table again with his gavel. “I intend to bring up the issue of Lady Thorold-Hjorth’s absence again, but not at this session. Suffice to say, I am convinced of her authenticity. As you have just seen, her mother appears to be convinced, too.” Spluttering from the vicinity of the dowager failed to break his poise. “Now, we have more urgent matters to consider. My reason for reintroducing Lady Patricia to this body was to, ah, make it clear where the next matter is coming from.”

“Clear as mud,” the elderly Julius remarked to nobody in particular.

“I’d like to call the next witness before the committee,” Angbard continued, unperturbed. “Lady Olga Thorold has been the subject of outrageous attempts upon her person, and has had her lady-in-waiting murdered, very recently—while traveling in the company of Lady Helge. All of this has occurred in the past six months. Please approach the table.”

Olga rose and walked to the front of the table. The room was silent.

“In your own words, would you please tell us about the series of attacks on your person, when and where they began, and why they were unsuccessful?”

Olga cleared her throat. “Last December I was summoned to spend time with Duke Lofstrom at his castle. I had for a year before then been petitioning him for an active role, in the hope that he could find a use for me in the trade. He asked me to escort Helge Thorold-Hjorth, newly arrived and ignorant of our ways, both to educate her and to ensure that no harm came to her. I do not believe he anticipated subsequent events when we arrived at this house—” She continued to enumerate intrusion after intrusion, outrage by outrage, pausing only when interrupted from the floor by a burst of voices demanding further explanation.

Miriam watched in near-astonishment. “Is everyone here something to do with Clan Security?” she asked Kara quietiy.

“Not me, milady!” Kara’s eyes were wide.

Olga finished by recounting how Miriam had brought her to a new world, and how they had been assaulted there, too, by strangers. A voice from the floor called out. “Wait! How do you know it was another world? Can’t it possibly have been another region of ’Merica?”

“No, it can’t,” Olga said dismissively. “I’ve seen America, and I’ve seen this other place, and the differences are glaringly obvious. They both sprang from the same roots, but clearly they have diverged—in America, the monarchy is not hereditary, is it?” She frowned for a moment. “Did I say something wrong?”

Uproar. “What’s all this nonsense about?” demanded Earl Hjorth, red-faced. “It’s clear as day that this can’t be true! If it was, there might be a whole new world out there!”

“I believe there is,” Olga replied calmly.

The gavel rose and fell on the resulting babble. “Silence! I now call Helge Thorold-Hjorth, alias Miriam Beckstein. Please approach the table.”

Miriam swallowed as she stood up and walked over.

“Please describe for the Clan how you come to be here. From the day you first learned of your heritage.”

“We’ll be here all day—”

“Nevertheless, if you please.”

“Certainly.” Miriam took a deep breath. “It started the day I lost my job with a business magazine in Cambridge. I went to visit my mother—” a nod to Iris “—who asked me to fetch down a box from her attic. The box was full of old papers …”

She kept going until she reached her patent filing in New Britain, the enterprise she was setting up, and Olga’s shooting. Her throat was dry and the room was silent. She shook her head. “Can I have a glass of water, please?” she asked. A tumbler appeared next to her.

“Thank you. By this time I had some ideas. The people who kept trying to murder Iris—sorry, Patricia—and who kept going after me, or getting at Olga by mistake—they had to be relatives. But apart from one attempt, there was never any sign of them on the other side, in America that is. I remembered being told about a long-lost brother who headed west in the earliest days of the Clan. You know—we learned—that they, too, use a pattern to let them world-walk, however they can travel only from here to New Britain, to the place I’ve just been telling you about.

“What I’ve pieced together is something like this. A very long time ago one of the brothers headed west. He fell on hard times and lost his amulet. In fact, he ended up as an indentured slave and took nearly ten years to save the cash to buy his freedom. Once free, he had to reconstruct the knot design from memory. Either that, or his was deliberately sabotaged by a sibling. Whichever, the knot he painted was different. I can’t emphasize that strongly enough; where you go when you world-walk depends on the design you use as a key. We now know of two keys, but there’s another fact—the other one, this lost brother’s knot, doesn’t work in America. Our America. The one we go to.

“Anyway, he crossed over repeatedly, because it had been arranged that at regular intervals he should check for his brothers. They evidently intended to send a trade caravan to meet him, somewhere in Northern California perhaps. But he never found his business partners waiting for him, because they were elsewhere, traveling to another world where, presumably, they interpreted his absence as a sign that he’d died. He was cut off completely, and put it down to betrayal.”

“Preposterous!” Someone in the front row snorted, prompting Angbard to bring down the gavel again. Miriam took the opportunity to help herself to a glass of water.

“This brother, Lee, had a family. His family was less numerous, less able to provide for themselves, than the Clan. Just as the ability was lost to your ancestors for a generation or two, so it was with his descendants—and it took longer before some first cousins or cousins married and had an infant with renewed ability. They prospered much as you have, but more slowly. The New British don’t have a lot of time for Chinese merchants, and as a smaller family they had far fewer active world-walkers to rely on.