Pawnbroker

“It’s no good,” said Miriam, rubbing her forehead. “All I get is crossed eyes, blurred vision, and a headache. It doesn’t work.” She snapped the assassin’s locket closed in frustration.

“Maybe it doesn’t work here,” Brill suggested. “If it’s a different design?”

“Maybe.” Miriam nodded. “Or then again, it’s a different design and it came through on the other side. How do I know where I’d end up if I did get it to work here?” She paused, then looked at the locket. “Maybe it wasn’t real clever of me to try that here,” she said slowly. “I really ought to cross over before I try it again. If there’s really a third world out there, how do we know there isn’t a fourth? Or more? How do we know that using it twice in succession brings you back to the place you departed from—that travel using it is commutative? It raises more questions than it answers, doesn’t it?”

“Yes—” Brill fell silent.

“Do you know anything about this?” Miriam asked.

“No.” She shook her head slowly. “I don’t—they never spoke about the possibility. Why should they? It was as much as anyone could do to travel between this world and the other, without invoking phantoms. Would testing a new sigil not be dangerous? If it by some chance carried you to another world where wild animals or storms waited …”

“Someone must have tried it.” Miriam frowned. “Mustn’t they?”

“You would have to ask the elders,” Brill offered. “All I can tell is what I was told.”

“Well, anyway,” Miriam rubbed her forehead again, “if it works, it’ll be one hell of a lever to use with Angbard. I’ll just have to take this one and cross over to the other side before I try to go wherever its original owner came from. Then try from there.”

“Can you do that?” Brill asked.

“Yes. But just one crossing gives me a cracking headache if I don’t take my pills. I figure I can make two an hour apart. But if I run into something nasty on the far side-—wherever this one takes me—I’ll be in deep trouble if I need to get away from it in a hurry.”

Malignant hypertension wasn’t a term she could use with Brill, but she’d seen what it could do to people. In particular she’d seen a middle-aged man who’d not bothered to follow the dietary guidelines after his HMO doctor prescribed him an ancient and dubious monoamine oxidase inhibitor. He’d flatlined over the cheese board at a birthday party, the glass of sparkling white wine still at hand. She’d been in the emergency room when the ambulance brought him in, bleeding from nose and eyes. She’d been there when they turned the ventilator off and filled out the death certificate. She shook her head. “It’ll take careful planning.”

Miriam glanced at the window. Snow drifted down from a sky the color of shattered dreams. It was bitterly cold outside. “What I should do is go across, hole up somewhere and catch some sleep, then try to cross over the next day so I can run away if anything goes wrong. Trouble is, it’s going to be just as cold on the other side as it is here. And if I have to run away, I get to spend two nights camping in the woods, in winter, with a splitting headache. I don’t think that’s a really great idea. And I’m limited to what I can carry.”

When’s Paulie due back? she wondered. She’ll be able to help.

“What about a coaching-house?” Brill asked, practical-minded as ever.

“A coaching—” Miriam stopped dead. “But I can’t—”

“There’s one about two miles down the road from Fort Lofstrom.” Brill looked thoughtful. “We dress you as a, an oracle’s wife, summoned to a village down the coast to join your husband in his new parish. Your trap broke a wheel and—” She ran down. “Oh. You don’t speak hoh’sprashe.”

“Yup.” Miriam nodded. “Doesn’t work well, does it?”

“No.” Brill wrinkled her nose. “What a nuisance! We could go together,” she added tentatively.

“I think we’ll have to do that,” said Miriam. “Probably I play the mute mother and you play the daughter—I try to look older, you to look younger. Think it would work?”

From Brilliana’s slow nod she realized that Brill did—and wasn’t enthusiastic about it. “It might.”

“It would also leave you stranded in the back of beyond up near, where was it, Hasleholm, if I don’t come back, wouldn’t it?” Miriam pointed out. “On the other hand, you’d be in the right place. You could make your way to Fort Lofstrom and tell Angbard what happened. He’d take care of you,” she added. “Just tell him I ordered you to come along with me. He’ll swallow that.”

“I don’t want to go back,” Brilliana said evenly. “Not until I’ve seen more of this wonderful world.”

Miriam nodded soberly at her. “Me too, kid. So we’re not going to plan on me not coming back, are we? Instead, we’re going to plan on us both going over, spending the night at a coach-house, and then walking down the road to the next one. They’re only about twenty miles apart—it’s a fair hike, but not impossible. Along the way, I disappear, and catch up with you later. We spend the night there, then we turn back—and cross back here. How does that sound?”

“Three days?” Brill looked thoughtful. “And you’ll bring me back here?”

“Of course.” Miriam brooded for a moment. “I think I want some more tea,” she decided. “Want some?”

“Oh yes!” Brilliana sat up eagerly. “Is there any of Earl Grey’s own blend?”

“I’ll just check.” Miriam wandered into Paulette’s kitchen, her mind spinning gears like a car in neutral. She filled the kettle, set it on the hob to boil, began searching for tea bags. There’s got to be a way to make this work better, she thought. The real problem was mobility. If she could just arrange how to meet up with Brill fifteen miles down the road without having to walk the distance herself—“Oh,” she said, as the kettle began to boil.

“What is it?” asked Brill, behind her.

“It’s so obvious!” Miriam said as she picked the kettle up. “I should have figured it out before.”

“Figured? What ails you?”

She poured boiling water into the teapot. “A form of speech. I meant, I’ve worked out what I need to do.” She put the lid on the pot, moved it onto a tray, and picked it up to carry back into the living room. “Go on.”

“You’ve hatched a plan?”

“Yes.” Miriam kicked the kitchen door shut behind her. “It’s quite simple. I’ve been worrying about having to camp in the woods in winter, or make myself understood, or keep up appearances with you. That’s wrong. What I should have been thinking about is how I can move myself about, over there, to somewhere where there’s shelter, without involving anyone else. Right?”

“That makes sense.” Brilliana looked dubious. “But how are you going to do that, unless you walk? You couldn’t take a horse through. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any horses here—”

Miriam took a deep breath. “Brill, when Paulie gets back I think we’re going to go shopping. For an all-terrain bicycle, a pair of night-vision goggles, a sewing machine, and some fabric…”

The devil was in the details. In the end it took Miriam two days to buy her bicycle. She spent the first day holed up with cycle magazines, spokehead Web sites, and the TV blaring extreme sports at her. The second day consisted of being patronized in successive shops by men in skintight neon Lycra bodysuits, to Brill’s quietly scandalized amusement. In the end, the vehicle of Miriam’s desire turned out to be a Dahon folding mountain bike, built out of chromed aluminium tubes. It wasn’t very light, but at thirty pounds—including carrying case and toolset—she could carry it across easily enough, and it wasn’t a toy. It was a real mountain bike that folded down into something she could haul in a backpack and, more importantly, something that could carry herself and a full load over dirt trails as fast as a horse.