“Oh, any formal event where one of our class might be seen,” Roland observed: “except that in public you would have a head covering and an escort. You would normally have much more jewellery, but your inheritance—” he essayed a shrug. “Is mostly in the treasury in Niejwein.” Miriam fingered the pearl choker around her neck uncomfortably.

“You wore, um, American clothing today,” she reminded him.

“Oh, but so is this, isn’t it? But of another period. It reminds us whence our wealth comes.”

“Right.” She nodded minutely. Business suits are informal dress for medieval aristocrats? And formal dress that was like something that belonged in a movie about the Renaissance. Everything goes into the exterior, she added to her mental file of notes on family manners.

Roland escorted her up the wide stairs, then at the tall doors at the top a pair of guards in dark suits and dark glasses announced them and ushered them in.

A long oak table awaited them in a surprisingly small dining room that opened off the duke’s reception room. Antique glass globes rising from brass stems in the wall cast a pale light over a table glistening with silver and crystal. A servant in black waited behind each chair. Duke Angbard was already waiting for them, in similarly archaic costume: Miriam recognized a sword hanging at his belt. Do swords go with male formal dress here? she wondered. “My dear niece,” he intoned, “you look marvellous! Welcome to my table.” He waved her to a seat at the right of the head, black wood with a high back and an amazingly intricate design carved into it.

‘The pleasure’s mine,” Miriam summoned up a dry smile, trying to strike the right note. These goons can kill you as soon as look at you, she reminded herself. Medieval squalor waited at the gate, and police cells down in the basement: Maybe this wasn’t so unusual outside the western world, but it was new to her. She picked up her skirts and sat down gingerly as a servant slid a chair in behind her. The delicacy of its carving said nothing about its comfort—the seat was flat and extremely hard.

“Roland, and young Vincenze! You next, by the Sky Father.”

“P-pleased to accept,” Vincenze quavered.

The outer door opened again, sparing him further risk of embarrassment, and a footman called out in a low voice: “The Lady Margit, Chatelaine of Praha, and her Excellency the Baroness Olga Thorold.”

Six women came in, and now Miriam realized that she was probably underdressed, for the two high-born each wore the most voluminous gowns she’d ever seen, with trains that required two maids to carry them and hair so entangled in knots of gold and rubies that they resembled birds’ nests. They looked like divas from a Wagner opera: the fat lady and the slim virgin. Margit of Praha was perhaps forty, her hair beginning to turn white and her cheeks sagging slightly. She looked as if she might be merry under other circumstances, but now her expression was grimly set. Olga Thorold, in contrast, was barely out of adolescence, a coltish young girl with a gown of gold and crimson and a neck swathed in gemstones that sparked fire whenever she moved. Olga looked half-amused by Miriam’s cool assessing glance.

“Please be seated,” said Angbard. Olga smiled demurely and bowed her neck to him. Margit, her chaperone, merely nodded and took a seat. “I believe you have heard tell of the arrival of our returning prodigal,” he commented. “Pitr, fetch wine if you please. The Medoc.”

“I have heard quite a few strangenesses today,” Margit commented in English that bore a strangely cupped accent. “This songbird in your left hand, she is the daughter of your sister, long-lost. Is this true?”

“It is so,” Angbard confirmed. A servant placed a cut-crystal glass of wine in front of Miriam. She began to reach toward it, then stopped, noticing that none of the others made such a gesture. “She has proven her heritage—the family trait—and the blood tests received barely an hour ago affirm her. She is of our bloodstock, and we have information substantiating, sadly, the death of her dam, Patricia Thorold Hjorth. I present to you Helge, also known as Miriam, of Thorold Hjorth, eldest heir surviving.”

“So charmed!” Olga simpered at Miriam, who managed a wordless nod in reply.

Plates garnished with a starter materialized in front of everybody—roasted fowl of some kind, tiny enough to fit in Miriam’s gloved hand. Nobody moved, but Angbard raised his hands. “In the name of the sky father—”

Miriam froze, so utterly startled that she missed the murmured continuation of his prayer, the flick of wine from glass across the tabletop, the answering murmur from Roland and Olga and Margit and the stuttered response from Vincenze. He said this wasn’t a Christian country, she reminded herself, in time to move her lips as if saying something—anything, any response—just to fit in. Completing his brief prayer, Angbard raised his glass. “Eat, drink, and be safe under my roof,” he told them, then took a mouthful of wine. After which it appeared to be open season.

Miriam’s stomach grumbled. She picked up knife and fork and attacked her plate discreetly.

“One hears the strangest stories, dear.” Miriam froze and glanced across the table: Margit was smiling at her sympathetically. “You were lost for so long, it must have been terrible!”

“Probably.” Miriam nodded absentmindedly and put her fork down. “And then again, maybe not.” She thought for a moment. “What have you heard?”

“Lots,” Olga began breathlessly. “You were orphaned by savages and raised in a workhouse as a scrub, isn’t that so, nana? Forced to sleep in the fireplace ashes at night! Then Cousin Roland found you and—”

“That’s enough, dear,” Margit said indulgently, raising a gloved hand. “It’s her story, to tell in her own way.” She raised an eyebrow at Miriam. Miriam blinked in return, more in startlement at the girl’s artlessness than her chaperone’s bluntness.

“I would not mind hearing for myself how your upbringing proceeded,” Angbard rumbled.

“Oh. Indeed.” Miriam glanced down, realizing that her appetizer had been replaced by a bowl of soup—some kind of broth, anyway—while they spoke. “Well. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you—” she smiled at Olga—“but I had a perfectly normal upbringing. You know my birth-mother disappeared? When she was found in, uh, the other side, I was taken to a hospital and subsequently adopted by a young childless couple.” Of stone-throwing student radicals who grew up to be academics, she didn’t say. Olga was hanging on her every word, as if she was describing some kind of adventure with pirates and exploits in far-off lands. Either the girl was an idiot or she was so sheltered that all of this sounded exotic to her. Probably the latter.

“A university professor and his wife, a critic and reviewer. I think there was some issue with my—with Patricia’s murder, so the adoption agency gave my adoptive parents her personal effects to pass on, but blocked inquiries about me from anywhere else, it being a matter for the police: unsolved murder, unidentified victim, and so on.”

“There’s only so much you can do to prevent a suicide bomber,” Angbard said with deceptive mildness. “But we’re not at immediate risk here,” he added, smiling at Miriam, an expression clearly intended to reassure her. “I’ve taken special measures to ensure our safety.”

“Your schooling,” Olga said. “Did you have a personal tutor?”

Miriam frowned, wondering just what she meant. “No, I went to college, like everybody else,” she said. “Premed and history of economics, then med school. Then, well, instead of continuing with med school, I went back to college again to study something else. Medicine didn’t get on with me.”

“You double-majored?” Roland interrupted.

“Yes, sort of.” Miriam put her fork down. She couldn’t eat any more, her stomach felt too full and her back ached. She leaned her shoulders against the chair but couldn’t relax. “I switched to journalism. Did an MA in it.” Her gloved hands felt hot and damp. They reminded her of a long shift on a geriatric ward, a different type of glove she’d ended up wearing for hours on end, cleaning up blockages. Corn starch, she thought absentmindedly. Must get some dusting powder. “I began on the biotech sector beat but found the IT industry shysters more interesting.” She paused. Olga’s expression was one of polite incomprehension, as if she’d suddenly begun speaking fluent Japanese. “Yourself?”