She waited for Brill to say something, but the silence dragged out. After a few seconds, she cleared her throat and continued. "So, I upset a bunch of applecarts, and the fallout included Matthias going over the wall. I expect someone's been trying to negotiate with the feds, buying time, patching things up. And I expect everyone's been scrambling to secure a workable Plan B for their particular faction. I'm not going to ask what the hell ClanSec or the Council or whoever thought they were doing, messing around with stolen nukes, it's immaterial; I just want to note that it was a really bad idea, because from the feds' point of view it turned the Clan from a minor irritant into a serious menace. You can negotiate with a nuisance, but you shoot menaces-isn't that right?" She put her glass down and looked at Brill. After a minute, she asked: "Well?"

Brilliana looked uncomfortable. "I can't talk about… certain… matters without getting permission first. But broadly speaking"-she looked at Miriam appraisingly-"you are speculating along the right lines." She coughed. "But please, refrain from airing your speculation in public? Lest other factions conclude that you know more than you do, and attempt to silence you."

Miriam's left eyelid twitched. "I've had enough of that, thank you. Since even my dear mother is prone to, to…" It was too painful to continue. She rested one hand on her lap. "And what that bastard yen Hjalmar tried to do. Did." A long pause. "It's only been about six weeks. I could get an abortion. If I'm pregnant."

Brill looked at her oddly. "If you did that, you'd be throwing away your best leverage." She took another sip of brandy. "Because it's Creon's get, and you've got a fistful of witnesses to the betrothal, even-by implication-the pretender. That's the throne to the Gruinmarkt, Miriam."

"And it's my body." Miriam looked at her half-empty glass and twitched, then she picked it up again and swallowed it in a single mouthful. "Not that that seems to mean much to you people."

Brilliana reached out and grabbed her hand. "Helge!"

"What?" Miriam glared at her across the breakfast bar. "This world is not fair or just. But I swore I would look after you-"

"-Who to?"

"To you, and to your uncle: but that is not important. I swore an oath to protect you. I must tell you that as long as you carry the heir to the throne of Niejwein, nobody in the six families will dare to lift a finger against you. And if, if we are still alive in eight months, things will be different. The pretender will be dead and Angbard will need a regent's council and at a minimum you will be on it. He told me, if necessary"-her voice cracked-"tell her that if she does this thing, all debts are canceled."

"And if I don't?" Miriam made as if to pull her arm back, but paused. "You know there are no guarantees. I'm old for this. Miscarriages aren't that unusual in older pregnancies. And there's only a fifty-fifty chance it's a boy, anyway. What if it doesn't work?"

"Then at least you tried." Brill moderated her voice. "You came back willingly: That weighs in your favor. The more you do for us, the harder it becomes for your enemies to belittle or ignore you. Thus has it ever been."

"You make it sound as if the Clan runs on honor."

"But it does!" Brill's expression of surprise took her aback. "How else do you control an aristocracy?"

"I don't think I'll ever understand you guys." Miriam watched while Brill refilled both their glasses. "Hey. Suppose I'm pregnant? You want to go easy with that."

"What's that got to do with it?" She looked perplexed.

"The Surgeon-General's-no, fuck it." Miriam picked up the glass. "Next time you send someone out for a pizza, try and get them to buy me a pregnancy test kit… hell, make that two of them, just in case." She sipped at her brandy defiantly. "So anyway, I kicked over an anthill. And Henryk's faction try to tie me down, to control the damage, and it backfires spectacularly and sets Egon off. Is that how I'm reading it? While at the same time, I set Matthias off, which set the feds on us. Right?"

"Wrong." Brill raised her glass and stared at it pensively. "It was a powder keg, Helge. Even before you returned, it was balanced on a sword's edge. You unleashed chaos, but without you-you strengthened Angbard's hand immensely, did you not notice that? And you have unleashed Huw. Don't underestimate him. He has connections. You can be at the center of things if you play the hand you have been dealt."

"There won't be any center to be at, if the feds figure out a way of getting over here in force," Miriam said darkly.

"They won't."

"Huh. But anyway. Is it alright to bring him back in?"

"What? You've finished spilling our innermost secrets?"

"Innermost secrets, feh: It's just uninformed speculation. No, I need to talk to Huw. We need to talk, that is."

"Oh. Alright." Brill stood up and walked to the door. "Huw!" A moment's silence, then feet pounded down the staircase. "Yes? What's-oh."

"Come in, sit down," Miriam called over. "We've got to head back to Boston tomorrow, or as soon as possible." "But-" Brill stopped. "Why?"

"No politics, remember?" Miriam twitched. "If Angbard's ill, we can't risk being too far away. But what's really important Huw, I want you to tell me all about how you went about probing that new world. Because I think once everyone gets past running around and being worried about the pretender, we are really going to need to work out how to open up new worlds."

"Eh?" Brilliana stared at her. "I don't see why that's a priority right now."

Miriam sighed heavily and pushed her glass away. "It wouldn't be, if we were just up against another bunch of upstart aristocrats, or if the US government were entirely reliant on captured couriers. Huw, why don't you tell her about what we were discussing earlier?"

"The, uh, wild speculation?"

"Yes, that. I'm tired, I don't want to repeat myself, and I think she needs to know." She stood up and stretched. "I'm going to catch a nap. Call me if anything happens."

Despite the summer heat, the sky was overcast and gray; it was threatening to rain as Dr. James led Colonel Smith around the side of the big top. Two minders followed at a discreet distance. "How certain are you that the bad guys are on the other side of that siege tower?"

Eric gave it scant seconds of consideration. "Very. They wouldn't have come out here and stuck a couple of hundred assets in a field for us to see without an extremely urgent motivation. These people aren't into cat and mouse games-they've been staying under cover very carefully until now. This has got all the signs of an emergency operation, and we disturbed them in the middle of it. That map alone, that's dynamite. And it checks out: The scaffolding is right in the middle of what looks like a major fortification in their world."

Dr. James halted-so fast that Eric nearly stumbled. "Good!" A curious half-smile played around his lips. "Then I've got a solution for you, son."

"A-" Eric did a double take. "Excuse me?"

"It's a political problem." James began walking again, more slowly this time. "We want to send them a message. They think they can play with us. They stole six nukes from the inactive inventory. The message we want to send is, 'if you play with us we will mess you up.' If I wasn't a man of faith I'd be using the f-word, Colonel. We want to send them a message and we want to underline don't f- with us in blood."

"In my experience," Eric commented, feeling light-headed, "messages signed in blood ought to be delivered in a way that ensures the recipients don't live long enough to read them. Anything else is asking for trouble."

"Spoken like a flyboy at heart. You're absolutely right. Nuke 'em 'til they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark." Eric stared at him until he nodded. "That's a direct quote from the vice president, son. Although he probably lifted it from someone else."