Miriam took a shuffling step forward, then another, feeling for solid footing with her toes. It got easier to ignore the sensation of her heart trying to climb out through her mouth with practice, she noted absently.

"Disarm him," she heard Sir Alasdair tell the other guard, who glanced nervously over his shoulder at her-at her-then hastily pulled the gun and the sword from Gunnar's belt.

Miriam risked lengthening her stride. Her breath was coming hard. Amusement and hysteria vied for control. She stopped when she was about fifteen feet from her target. "Who sent you here?" she demanded.

"I'm not going to plead for mercy." The Ferret's eyes, staring at her over the iron sights of her pistol, seemed to drill right through her. "You're going to kill me anyway." He sounded curiously resigned.

He'd beaten her, once, to make a point: Obey me or I will hurt you. That he'd been following orders rather than giving rein to his own sadistic urge made no difference to Miriam. But-hold a trial. And accuse him of what, exactly? Of being her jailer after Henryk had violated Clan law and process by not executing her for what she'd done? If she gave him a trial, stuff better swept under the rug would come out. Kill him out of hand, and her enemies-the ones who'd tried to have her raped, or killed, or maimed several times over the past year-would find a way to make use of it, but at least he wouldn't be able to rat her out. Likely they'd use it as evidence of her instability or anger-anger was always a good one to pin on a threatening woman. But it was nothing like as damaging as what he could reveal.

She licked her lips. "Not necessarily." Don't tempt me struggled briefly with a moment of revulsion: Life is too damned cheap here as it is. "Restrain him." The other guard was already loosening the Ferret's belt. "Lower your arms. Slowly."

The room was very quiet. Miriam blinked back from her focus through the sights of the gun and realized all the servants had scurried for cover. Smart of them. "I hold him covered," Sir Alasdair said conversationally.

"Oh. Thanks." She blinked again, then lowered the gun and carefully unhooked her finger from the trigger guard, which seemed to have somehow shrunk to the gauge of a wedding ring. The guard worked the Ferret's arms behind his back and tied them together with his own belt. She glanced at Sir Alasdair. "Tell him what I told you to do with him. I don't think he'll believe it, coming from me."

Alasdair kept his sword raised. "Her highness ordered me to send you a very long way away from her and make sure she never set eyes on you again. Her exact words." His cheek twitched. "I don't have to kill you."

"Highness?" Gunnar's face slumped, defiance draining out of it to leave wan misery behind. "So it's true?"

"Is what true?" she asked.

"You're carrying. The heir."

She stared at Sir Gunnar. "You didn't know?"

"My lord did not see fit to tell me." He was pale, almost greenish. Miriam stared at the blue eyes set in a nondescript face, the balding head and wiry frame, trying to remember how scant seconds ago she'd looked at them and seen a monster. Who's the real monster here? she asked herself.

"It's true," she told him. "And what Sir Alasdair told you is true. You don't have to die; all you have to do is stay the hell away from me. And tell us how your name got on that list."

"What list?" He looked away, at Sir Alasdair. "What the hell is she talking about?"

"Why are you here? Look at me!" Miriam shifted her grip on her pistol.

The Ferret turned his head, reluctantly. "What list?" he asked again.

"The master roster of available bodyguards for council members," Sir Alasdair rumbled. "You were right at the top of it."

"As if I shouldn't be?" Gunnar snorted. "What do you take me for?"

"Wait," said Miriam. "What did you do for Henryk? Officially?"

There was a pause. "I was his chief of security. Officially.

" Ah. "And unofficially?"

Gunnar made a small shrug. Now that he wasn't staring down the barrel of a pistol held by an incandescently angry woman he seemed to be recovering his poise. "The same. I was his chief of security. Until the Pretender did for him."

"Right." She glanced at Sir Alasdair. "Maybe you'd like to tell him what I asked you first."

"Highness, I think he can guess." Alasdair's smile was humorless, and it wiped the nascent defiance right off Gunnar's face. "I am ordered, and empowered, to act with any necessary force in defense of your person. Do you consider this man a threat to your person?"

It was hard to look at the Ferret's frightened face and still want to see him swinging from a tree. It had been tempting in the abstract, but ven Hjalmar was the real villain of the piece, and beyond her reach if he was indeed dead; in the clarity of the moment she found the Ferret pathetic rather than threatening, an accomplice rather than a ringleader. "Right now… no. But he knows things. And I don't trust where he's been, why he's here. It stinks." She glanced at Sir Alasdair. "Escort him from the premises and make sure he doesn't come back, but don't kill him. I need to talk to you later, but first I have other work to do." Her cheek twitched as she looked back at the Ferret. "Payback can be a bitch, can't it? Have a nice day."

Gunnar's control finally cracked. "High-born cunt! The doctor was right about you!" he shouted after her. But she had already turned her back on him, and he could not possibly see her shock. The sound of her guards beating him followed her up the staircase.

BEGIN RECORDING:

"WELLSPRING?"

"MYRIAD?"

"No, I'm the fucking tooth fairy-who do you think? You've missed three calls in a row. This had better be good."

"Oh yes? Well, that stunt you pulled with the physics package could have killed me! What the hell were you thinking?"

"Hey, I didn't pull the trigger on that one. We're not a monolith; stovepipes melt and shit falls between the cracks. Did you just place this call so you could bitch at me or do you have something concrete?"

(Indignant snort.) "Certainly. Your message in a pipe bomb, up near Concord? It was received loud and clear."

"Really? Good-"

"No, bad. You know there was a pocket-sized civil war going on over there? Well, your timing was brilliant. You wiped out an entire army. Only trouble is, it was the wrong one. You handed the tinkers victory on a plate-they're busy mopping up right now, chasing down the last stragglers. They've even got some kind of half-cocked claim to the throne lined up, and you killed the only legitimate heir! Did you know that? You've just killed off all their enemies, and let them know into the bargain that it's war to the knife."

(Silence.)

"Hello? Are you still there?"

"Jesus."

"The phrase they use hereabouts is `God-on-a-stick'; but, yes, I echo the sentiment."

"Can you just confirm all that, please?"

"Certainly. When you blew up the Hjalmar Palace the royalist army that was fighting the tinkers had just occupied it. They had evacuated it a couple of hours earlier. Among the casualties was the crown prince-"

"Hang on. You said the Clan had evacuated the structure. Are you certain of that?"

(Snort.) "If they hadn't, then how come their soldiers are dispersed all around the capital? Oh, they're not stupid-they got the message, you won't catch them all concentrating in a strong-point again. Why?"

"But how? How did they withdraw?"

"The usual way-they world-walked. Or so I infer. They certainly didn't fight their way through the pretender's siege works: Individually they outgunned his army, but quantity's got a quality all of its own, as they say."