“Yes.” Olga nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, that’s just plain wrong,” said Miriam. “That idea used to be called mercantilism. Discarding it was one of the key steps that distinguishes my world from yours. The essential insight is that human beings create value. A lump of iron ore isn’t as valuable as a handful of nails, because it takes human labor to turn it into nails and nails are more useful. Now, if you have iron ore but no labor, and I have labor but no iron ore, both of us can profit by trade, can’t we? I can take your iron ore, make nails, give you some of them in payment, and we’re both better off, because before we had no nails at all. Isn’t that right?”

“I think I see.” Olga wrinkled her brow. “You’re telling me that we don’t trade? That the Clan has the wrong idea about how to make money—”

“Yes, but that’s only part of it. The Clan doesn’t add value, it simply moves it around. But another important factor is that a peasant farmer is less good at creating value than, say, a farmer who knows about crop rotation and soil maintenance and how to fertilize his fields effectively. And a man who can sit down all day and make nails is less productive than an engineer who can make a machine that takes in wire feedstock at one end and spits out nails at the other. It’s more productive to make a machine to make nails, and then run it, than to make the nails yourself. Educated people can think of ways to make such machines or provide valuable services—but to get to the wealth, you’ve got to have an educated population. Do you see that?”

“What you’re doing, you’re taking ideas where they’re needed, and teaching people with iron ore to make nails and, and do other things, aren’t you?”

“Yes. And while I can’t easily take the fruits of that trade home with me, I can make myself rich over here. Which in turn should serve to give me some leverage with the Clan, shouldn’t it? And there’s another thing.” She looked pensive. “If the goal is to modernize the Gruinmarkt, the land where the Clan holds so much power, it’s going to be necessary to import technologies and ideas from a world that isn’t as far ahead as the United States. There’s less of a gap to jump between New Britain and the eastern kingdoms. What I want to do is to develop riches in this realm, and use them to finance seed investments in the kingdoms. If the Clan won’t let me live away from them, at least I can try to make my life more comfortable. No more drafty medieval castles!”

“Castles.” Olga looked wistful for a moment. “You’d build a house like your own near Niejwein? Bandits, the southern kingdoms—”

“No bandits,” said Miriam, firmly. “First, we need to improve the efficiency of farming. What I saw looked—no offense—like the way things were done five or six hundred years ago in Europe. Strip cultivation, communal grazing, no reaping or sowing machines. By making farming more efficient, we can free up hands for industry. By providing jobs, we can begin to produce more goods—fabric, fuel, housing, ships—and see to the policing of the roads and waterways along which trade flows. By making trade safer we make it cheaper, and increase the profits, and by increasing the profits we can free up money to invest in education and production.”

Olga shook her head. “I’m dizzy! I’m dizzy!”

“That’s how it happened in England around the industrial revolution,” Miriam emphasized. “That’s how it happened here, from 1890 onwards, a century later than in my world. The interesting thing is that it didn’t happen in the Gruinmarkt, or in Europe, over there. I’ve got this nagging feeling that knowing why it failed is important… still. Given half a chance we’ll make it happen.” She leaned toward Olga. “Roland tried to run away and they dragged him back.” She took a deep breath. “If they’re going to try to drag me away from civilization, I’m going to try to bring civilization with me, middle class morality and all. And then they’ll be sorry.”

The train began to slow its headlong charge between rows of red-brick houses.

“If you go down this path, you’ll make enemies,” Olga predicted. “Some of them close to home, but others … Do you really think the outer families will accept an erosion of their relative status? Or the king? Or the court? Or the council of lords? Someone will think they can only lose by it, and they’ll fight you for it.”

“They’ll accept it if it makes them rich,” Miriam said. She glanced at the window, sniffed, and buttoned her jacket up. “Damn, it’s cold out there.” A thought struck her. “Will we be alright on the other side?”

“We’re always at risk,” Olga remarked. She paused for a moment. “But, on second thoughts, I think we are at no more risk than usual.” She nudged the bag at her feet. “As long as we don’t linger.”

The train sneaked along a suburban platform and stopped with a hissing of steam; doors slammed and people shouted, distant whistles shrilling counterpoint. “Next stop?” Miriam suggested tensely. She pulled out a strip of tablets, took one, and offered another to Olga.

“Thanking you—yes.”

The train pulled away into a deep cutting, its whistle hooting. Buildings on either side cast deep shadows across the windows, then Miriam found herself watching the darkness of a tunnel. “I’m worried about the congress,” Miriam admitted.

“Hah. Leave that to the duke. Do you think he would have called for it if he didn’t trust you?”

“If anything goes wrong, if we don’t get there, if Brill was lying about my mother being safe—”

The train began to slow again. “Our stop!” Olga stood up and reached for her coat.

They waited at one end of the platform while the huge black and green behemoth rumbled away from the station. A handful of tired travelers swirled around them, making for the footbridge that led over the tracks to the main concourse. Miriam nodded at a door. “Into the waiting room.” Olga followed her. The room was empty and cold. “Are you ready?” Miriam asked. “I’ll go across first. If I run into trouble, I’ll come right back. If I’m not back inside five minutes, you come over too.”

Olga discreetly checked her gun. “I’ve got a better idea. You’re too important to risk first.” She pulled out her locket and picked up her bag: “See you shortly!”

“Wait—” It was too late. Miriam squinted at the fading outline. Funny, she thought, irritated, I’ve never seen someone else do that. “Damn,” she said quietly, pulling out her own compact and opening it up so that she could join Olga. “You’d better not have run into anything you can’t handle—”

Ouch. Miriam took a step back and a branch whacked her on the back of the head.

“Are you alright?” Olga asked anxiously.

“Ouch. And again, ouch. How about you?”

“I’m fine, except for my head.” Olga looked none the worse for wear. “Where are we?”

“I should say we’re still some way outside the city limits.” Miriam put her bag down and concentrated on breathing, trying to get the throbbing in her head under control. “Are you ready for a nice bracing morning constitutional?”

“Ugh. Mornings should be abolished!”

“You will hear no arguments from this quarter.” Miriam bent down, opened her bag, and removed a cloak from it to cover her alien clothes. “That looks like clear ground over there. How about we try to pick up a road?”

“Lead on,” sighed Olga.

They’d come out in deciduous woodland, snow lying thick on the ground between the stark, skeletal trees; it took them the best part of an hour to find their way to a road, and even that was mostly dumb luck. But, once they’d found it, Niejwein was already in sight. And what a sight it was.

Miriam hadn’t appreciated before just how crude, small, and just plain smelly the city was. It stood on a low bluff overlooking what might, in a few hundred years, mutate into the Port Authority. Stone walls twenty feet high followed the contours of the ground for miles, bascules sprouting ominously every hundred yards. Long before they reached the walls, she found herself walking beside Olga in a cloud of smelly dust, passing rows of windowless tumbledown shacks. Scores of poor-looking countryfolk—many in clothes little better than layered rags—drove heavily laden donkeys or small herds of sheep toward the city gates. Miriam noticed that they were picking up a few odd looks, especially from the ragged mothers of the barefoot urchins who cast stones across the icy cobbles, but she avoided eye contact and nobody seemed interested in approaching two women who knew where they were going. Especially after Olga pointedly allowed the barrel of her gun to slip from under her cloak, in response to an importuning rascal who attempted to get too close. “Hmm, I see why you always travel by—” Miriam stopped and squinted at the gatehouse. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is, on the wall,” she said.