The Clan Corporate

A lightning discharge always seeks the shortest path to ground. Two days after she discovered Duke Angbard's location to be so secret that nobody would even tell her how to send him a letter, Miriam's wrath ran to ground through the person of Baron Henryk, her mother's favorite uncle and the nearest body to Angbard in age, position, and temperament that she could find.

Later on, it was clear to all concerned that something like this had been bound to happen sooner or later. The dowager Hildegarde was already presumed guilty without benefit of trial, the Queen Mother was out of reach, and Patricia voh Hjorth d'Wu ab Thorold-her mother-was above question. But the consequences of Miriam's anger were something else again. And the trigger that set it off was so seemingly trivial that after the event, nobody could even recall the cause of the quarrel: a torn envelope.

At mid-morning Miriam, fresh from yet another fit of obsessive GANTT-chart filing, emerged from her bedroom to find Kara scolding one of the maidservants. The poor girl was almost in tears. "What's going on here?" Miriam demanded.

"Milady!" Kara turned, eyes wide. "She's been deliberately slow, is all. If you'd have Bernaard take a switch to her-"

"No." Miriam was blunt. "You: go lose yourself for a few minutes. Kara, let's talk."

The maid scurried away defensively, eager to be gone before the mistress changed her mind. Kara sniffed, offended, but followed Miriam over toward the chairs positioned in a circle around the cold fireplace. "What troubles you, milady?" asked Kara, apprehensively.

"What day is it?" Miriam leaned casually on the back of a priceless antique.

"Why, it's, I'd need to check a calendar. Milady?"

"It's the fourteenth." Miriam glanced out the window. "I'm sick, Kara."

"Sick?" Her eyes widened. "Shall I call an apothecary-"

"I'm sick, as in pissed off, not sick as in ill." Miriam's smile didn't reach her eyes. "I'm being given the runaround. Look." She held up an envelope bearing the crest of the Clan post. Its wax seal was broken. "They're returning my letters. 'Addressee unknown.'-"

"Well, maybe they don't know who-"

"Letters to Duke Angbard, Kara."

"Oh." For a moment the teenager looked guilty.

"Know anything about it?" Miriam asked sweetly.

"Oh, but nobody writes to the duke! You write to his secretary." Kara looked confused for a moment. "Then he arranges an appointment," she added hesitantly.

"The duke's last secretary, in case you've forgotten, was Matthias. He isn't answering his correspondence any more, fu

"Oh." A look of profound puzzlement crept over Kara's face.

"I can't get anywhere!" Miriam burst out. "Ma-Patricia-holds formal audiences. Olga's away on urgent business most of the time and on the firing range the rest. I haven't even seen Brill since the-the accident. And Angbard won't answer his mail. What the hell am I meant to do?"

Kara looked faintly guilty. "Weren't you supposed to be going riding this afternoon?" she asked.

"I want to talk to someone," Miriam said grimly. "Who, of the Clan council, is in town? Who can I get to?"

"There's Baron Henryk, he stays at the Royal Exchange when he's working, but he-"

"He's my great-uncle, he'll have to listen to me. Excellent. He'll do."

"But, mistress! You can't just-"

Miriam smiled. There was no humor in her expression. "It has been three weeks since anyone even deigned to tell me how my company is doing, much less answered my queries about when I can go back over and resume managing it. I've been stuck in this oh-so-efficiently doppelgangered suite-secured against world-walking by a couple of hundred tons of concrete piled on the other side-for two months, cooling my heels. If Angbard doesn't want to talk to me, he'll sure as hell listen to Henryk. Right?"

Kara was clearly agitated, bouncing up and down and flapping her hands like a bird. In her green-and-brown camouflage-pattern minidress-like many of the Clan youngsters, she liked to wear imported western fashions at home-she resembled a thrush with one foot caught in a snare. "But mistress! I can arrange a meeting, if you give me time, but you can't just go barging in-"

"Want to bet?" Miriam stood up. "Get a carriage sorted, Kara. One hour. We're going round to the Royal Exchange and I'm not leaving until I've spoken to him, and that's an end to the matter."

Kara protested some more, but Miriam wasn't having it. If Lady Brill had been around she'd have been able to set Miriam straight, but Kara was too young, inexperienced, and unsure of herself to naysay her mistress. Therefore, an hour later, Miriam-with an apprehensive Kara sucked along in her undertow, not to mention a couple of maids and a gaggle of guards-boarded a closed carriage for the journey to the exchange buildings. Miriam had changed for the meeting, putting on her black interview suit and a cream blouse. She looked like an attorney or a serious business journalist, sniffing after blood in the corporate watercooler. Kara, ineffectual and lightweight, drifted along passively in the undertow, like the armed guards on the carriage roof.

The Royal Exchange was a forbidding stone pile fronted by Romanesque columns, half a mile up the road from Thorold Palace. Built a century ago to house the lumber exchange (and the tax inspectors who took the royal cut of every consignment making its way down the coast), it had long since passed into the hands of the government and now housed a number of offices. The Gruinmarkt was not long on bureaucracy-it was still very much a marcher kingdom, its focus on the wilderness beyond the mountains to the west-but even a small, primitive country had desks for scores or hundreds of secretaries of this and superintendents of that. Miriam wasn't entirely clear on why the elderly baron might live there, but she was clear on one thing: he'd talk to her.

"Which way?" Miriam asked briskly as she strode across the polished wooden floor of the main entrance.

"I think his offices are in the west wing, mistress, but please-"

Miriam found a uniformed footman in her way. "You. Which way to Baron Henryk's office?" she demanded.

"Er, ah, your business, milady?"

"None of yours." Miriam stared at him until he wilted. "Where do I find the baron?"

"On the second floor, west wing, Winter Passage, if it pleases you-"

"Come on." She turned and marched briskly toward the stairs, scattering a gaggle of robed clerks who stared at her in perplexity. "Come on, Kara! I haven't got all day."

"But mistress-"

The second-floor landing featured wallpaper-an expensive luxury, printed on linen-and portraits of dignitaries to either side. Corridors diverged in the pattern of an H. "West wing," Miriam muttered. "Right." One arm of the H featured tapestries depicting a white, snowbound landscape and scenes of industry and revelry. Miriam nearly walked right into another robed clerk. "Baron Henryk's office. Which way?" she snapped.

The frightened clerk pointed one ink-blackened fingertip. "Yonder," he quavered, then ducked and ran for cover.

Kara hurried to catch up. "Mistress, if you go shoving in you will upset the order of things."

"Then it's about time someone upset them," Miriam retorted, pausing outside a substantial door. "They've been giving me the runaround, I'm going to give them the bull in a china shop. This the place?"

"What's a Chinese shop?" Kara was even more confused than usual.

"Never mind. He's in here, isn't he?" Not waiting for a reply, Miriam rapped hard on the door.

A twenty-something fellow in knee breeches and an elaborate shirt opened it. "Yes?"

"I'm here to see Baron Henryk, at his earliest convenience," Miriam said firmly. "I assume he's in?"