“I believe we now have evidence enough to confirm the identity of the parties behind the attacks on Patricia and Alfredo, and on Patricia’s daughter, Helge. These same parties are accused of fomenting the civil war that split this Clan into opposing factions fifty-seven years ago—” Uproar. Angbard sat back and waited for almost a minute, then brought his gavel down again—“Silence, please! I intend to present the witnesses that Clan Security has uncovered before you in due course. The floor will then be opened for motions bearing on the matter at hand.” He turned to his neighbor, an elderly gentleman who until this point appeared to have been half asleep on his throne. “Julius, if you please?…”
“Aha!” The old scarecrow bolted upright, raised a wobbling hand, and declaimed: “calling the first witness—” He peered at a paper that Angbard slid before him, and muttered—“can’t call her, she’s dead, dammit!”
“No, she isn’t,” retorted Angbard.
“Oh, alright then. Think I’m senile, do you?” Julius stood up. “Calling Patricia Thorold-Hjorth.”
Half the room were on their feet shouting as the side door behind the table opened. Miriam had to stand, too, to see over heads to where Brilliana was entering the room, pushing a wheelchair containing her mother. Who looked bemused and rather nervous at being the focus of such uproarious attention.
“Did they take her motorized chair away to stop her running?” Miriam asked Olga.
“Oh, no—”
“Order! Order or I shall have the guards—order I say!”
Slowly order was restored. “That’s odd,” quavered Julius, “I was sure she was dead.” A ripple of laughter spread.
“So was I,” Iris—Patricia—called from her chair. Brill steered her over to one side of the table.
“Why did you run away?” asked Oliver Hjorth, leaning sideways so he could see her, an unpleasant expression of impatience on his face.
“What, uns gefen mine mudder en geleg’hat Gelegenheit, mish’su ’em annudern frau-clapper weg tu heiraten?” Iris asked dryly. There was a shocked titter from somewhere in the audience: “obviously not. And if you have to ask that question I also doubt very much that you’ve ever had a gang of assassins trying to murder you. A pity, that. You could benefit from the experience.”
“What’s she saying?” Miriam nudged Olga. I really must try to learn the language, she thought despairingly.
“Your mother is convincingly rude,” Olga replied, sotto voce.
“This is an imposter!” someone called from the floor. Miriam craned her neck; it might be the dowager duchess, but she couldn’t be certain. “I demand to see—”
“Order!” Angbard whacked his hammer down again. “You will be polite, madam, or I will have you escorted out of this room.”
“I apologize to the chair,” Iris responded. “However, I assure you I’m no imposter. Mother dearest, by way of proof of my identity, would you like me to repeat what I overheard you telling Erich Wu in the maze at the summer palace gardens at Kvaern when I was six?”
“You—you!” The old dowager stumbled to her feet, shaking with rage.
“I believe I can prove my case adequately, with or without blood tests,” Iris said dryly, addressing the gallery. “As any of you who have consulted the register of proxies must be aware, my mother has a strong motive for refusing to acknowledge me. Unfortunately, as in so many other circumstances, I must disobey her wishes.”
“Nonsense!” blurted the duchess, an expression of profound horror settling on her face. She sat down quickly.
“I can attest that she is no imposter,” said Angbard. “If anyone requests independent verification, this can be arranged. Does any party to this meeting so desire?” He glanced around the room, but no hands went up. “Very well.” He rapped on the table again with his gavel. “I intend to bring up the issue of Lady Thorold-Hjorth’s absence again, but not at this session. Suffice to say, I am convinced of her authenticity. As you have just seen, her mother appears to be convinced, too.” Spluttering from the vicinity of the dowager failed to break his poise. “Now, we have more urgent matters to consider. My reason for reintroducing Lady Patricia to this body was to, ah, make it clear where the next matter is coming from.”
“Clear as mud,” the elderly Julius remarked to nobody in particular.
“I’d like to call the next witness before the committee,” Angbard continued, unperturbed. “Lady Olga Thorold has been the subject of outrageous attempts upon her person, and has had her lady-in-waiting murdered, very recently—while traveling in the company of Lady Helge. All of this has occurred in the past six months. Please approach the table.”
Olga rose and walked to the front of the table. The room was silent.
“In your own words, would you please tell us about the series of attacks on your person, when and where they began, and why they were unsuccessful?”
Olga cleared her throat. “Last December I was summoned to spend time with Duke Lofstrom at his castle. I had for a year before then been petitioning him for an active role, in the hope that he could find a use for me in the trade. He asked me to escort Helge Thorold-Hjorth, newly arrived and ignorant of our ways, both to educate her and to ensure that no harm came to her. I do not believe he anticipated subsequent events when we arrived at this house—” She continued to enumerate intrusion after intrusion, outrage by outrage, pausing only when interrupted from the floor by a burst of voices demanding further explanation.
Miriam watched in near-astonishment. “Is everyone here something to do with Clan Security?” she asked Kara quietly.
“Not me, milady!” Kara’s eyes were wide.
Olga finished by recounting how Miriam had brought her to a new world, and how they had been assaulted there, too, by strangers. A voice from the floor called out. “Wait! How do you know it was another world? Can’t it possibly have been another region of ’Merica?”
“No, it can’t,” Olga said dismissively. “I’ve seen America, and I’ve seen this other place, and the differences are glaringly obvious. They both sprang from the same roots, but clearly they have diverged—in America, the monarchy is not hereditary, is it?” She frowned for a moment. “Did I say something wrong?”
Uproar. “What’s all this nonsense about?” demanded Earl Hjorth, red-faced. “It’s clear as day that this can’t be true! If it was, there might be a whole new world out there!”
“I believe there is,” Olga replied calmly.
The gavel rose and fell on the resulting babble. “Silence! I now call Helge Thorold-Hjorth, alias Miriam Beckstein. Please approach the table.”
Miriam swallowed as she stood up and walked over.
“Please describe for the Clan how you come to be here. From the day you first learned of your heritage.”
“We’ll be here all day—”
“Nevertheless, if you please.”
“Certainly.” Miriam took a deep breath. “It started the day I lost my job with a business magazine in Cambridge. I went to visit my mother—” a nod to Iris “—who asked me to fetch down a box from her attic. The box was full of old papers…”
She kept going until she reached her patent filing in New Britain, the enterprise she was setting up, and Olga’s shooting. Her throat was dry and the room was silent. She shook her head. “Can I have a glass of water, please?” she asked. A tumbler appeared next to her.
“Thank you. By this time I had some ideas. The people who kept trying to murder Iris—sorry, Patricia—and who kept going after me, or getting at Olga by mistake—they had to be relatives. But apart from one attempt, there was never any sign of them on the other side, in America that is. I remembered being told about a long-lost brother who headed west in the earliest days of the Clan. You know—we learned—that they, too, use a pattern to let them world-walk, however they can travel only from here to New Britain, to the place I’ve just been telling you about.