Her study had been efficiently and brutally strip-searched. The iMac was gone, as were the boxes of CD-ROMs and the zip drive and disks from her desk. More obviously, every book in the bookcase had been taken down, the pages riffled, and dumped in a pile on the floor. It was a big pile. “Bastards,” she said quietly. The pink shoebox was gone, of course. Fearing the worst she tiptoed into her own hallway like a timid burglar, her heart in her mouth.

It was much the same in the front hall. They’d even searched the phone books. A blizzard of loose papers, lay everywhere, some of them clearly trampled underfoot. Drawers lay open, their contents strewn everywhere. Furniture had been pulled out from the walls and shoved back haphazardly, and one of the hall bookcases leaned drunkenly against the opposite wall. At first sight she thought that the living room had gotten off lightly, but the damage turned out to be even more extensive—her entire music collection had been turned out onto the floor, disks piled on a loose stack.

“Fuck.” Her mouth tasted of ashes. The sense of violation was almost unbearable, but so was the fear that they’d taken her mother and found Paulie’s research disk as well. The money-laundering leads were in the hands of whoever had done this to her. Whoever they were, they had to know about the Clan, which meant they’d know what the disk’s contents meant. They were a smoking gun, one that was almost certainly pointing at the Clan’s east coast operations. She knelt by the discarded CD cases and rummaged for a minute—found The Beggar’s Opera empty, the CD-ROM purloined.

She went back into the front hall. Somehow she slithered past the fallen bookcase, just to confirm her worst fear. They’d strung the wire behind the front door, connecting one end of it to the handle. If she hadn’t been in such a desperate hurry that she’d forgotten her keys, the green box taped crudely to the wall would have turned her into a messy stain on the sidewalk. Assassin number two is the one who likes Claymore mines, she reminded herself edgily. The cold fear was unbearable and Miriam couldn’t take any more. She blundered out through the French doors at the back without pausing to lock them, round the side of the house, and onto the sidewalk to wait for Paulie.

Seconds later she was in the back of the car, hunched and shivering. “I don’t see any signs of anything going on,” Paulie said quietly. She seemed to have calmed down from her state at Iris’s house. “What do you want to do now? Why don’t we find a Starbucks, get some coffee, then you tell us what you found?”

“I don’t think so.” Miriam closed her eyes.

“Are you alright?” Brill asked, concern in her voice.

“No, I’m not alright,” Miriam said quietly. “We’ve got to ditch the car, now. They trashed the place and left a trip-wire surprise behind the front door. Paulie, the box of stuff my mother gave me was gone. And so was the disk.”

“Oh—shit. What are we going to do?”

“I—” Miriam stopped, speechless. “I’m going to talk to Angbard. But not until I’ve had a few words with Roland.” She pulled an expression that someone who didn’t know her might have mistaken for a smile. “He’s the one who told me about the surveillance. It’s time to clear the air between us.”

The city of Irongate nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians, soot-stained and smoky by day, capped at night by a sky that reflected the red glow of the blast furnaces down by the shpping canal. From the center of town, the Great North-East Railway spur led off toward the coastline and the branches for Boston and New London. West of the yards and north of the banked ramparts of the Vauban pattern fortress sloped a gentle rise populated by the houses of the gentry, while at the foot of the slope clustered tight rows of worker’s estates.

Irongate had started as a transport nexus at the crossing of the canal and the railways, but it had grown into a sprawling industrial city. The canal and its attendant lock system brought cargos from as far as the Great Lakes—and, in another time, another world, it was the site of a trading post with the great Iroquis Nation, who dominated the untamed continental interior between the Gruinmarkt and the empire of the West.

There was a neighborhood down in the valley, rubbing shoulders with the slums of the poor and the business districts, that was uncomfortable with its own identity. Some people had money but no standing in polite society, no title or prospects for social advancement. They congregated here, Chinese merchants and Jewish brokers and wealthy owners of bawdy houses alike, and they took pains to be discreet, for while New Britain’s laws applied equally to all men, the enforcers of those laws were only too human.

Esau walked slowly along Hanover Street, his cane tapping the cobblestones with every other stride. It was early evening and bitterly cold with it, but the street sweepers had been at work and the electric street lamps cast a warm glow across the pavement. Esau walked slowly, foregoing the easy convenience of a cab, because he wanted time to think. It was vital to prepare himself for the meeting that lay ahead, both emotionally and intellectually.

The street was almost empty, the few pedestrians hurrying with hands thrust deep in coat pockets and hats pulled down. Esau passed a pub, a blare of brassy noise and a stench of tobacco smoke squirting from the doorway as it opened to emit a couple of staggering drunks. “Heya, slant-eye!” one of them bellowed after him. Esau kept on walking steadily, but his pulse raced and he carefully grasped the butt of the small pistol in his pocket. Don’t react, he told himself. You can kill him if he attacks you. Not before. Not that Esau looked particularly Oriental, but to the Orange louts of Iron-gate anyone who didn’t look like themselves was an alien. And reports of a white man killed by a Chinee would inflame the popular mood—building on the back of a cold winter and word of defeats in the Kingdom of Siam. The last thing Esau’s superiors needed right now was a pogrom on the doorstep of their East Coast headquarters.

The betting shops were closed and the pawnbrokers shut, but between two such shops Esau paused. The tenement door was utterly plain, but well painted and solidly fitted. A row of bellpulls ran beside a set of brass plaques bearing the names of families who hadn’t lived here in decades. Esau pulled the bottom-most bellpull, then the second from the top, the next one down, and the first from the bottom, in practiced series. There was a click from the door frame and he pushed through, into the darkened vestibule within. He shut the door carefully behind him, then looked up at the ceiling.

“Esh’sh icht,” he said.

“Come on in,” a man’s voice replied in accented English. The inner door opened on light and finery—a stairwell furnished with rich hand-woven carpets, banisters of mahogany, illuminated by gilt-edged lamps in the shape of naked maidens. A ceramic lucky cat sat at one side of the staircase, opposite a guard. The guard bowed stiffly as soon as he saw Esau’s face. “You are expected, lord,” he said.

Esau ignored him and ascended the staircase. The tenement block above the two shops had been cunningly gutted and rebuilt as a palace. The rooms behind the front windows—visible from the street as ordinary bedrooms or kitchens—were Ames rooms barely three feet deep, their floors and walls and furniture slanted to preserve the semblance of depth when seen from outside. The family had learned the need for discretion long ago. Fabulous wealth was no social antidote for epicanthic folds and dark skins in New Britain and if there was one thing the mob disliked more than Chinee-men, it was rich and secretive criminal families of Chinee-men.