The Clan Corporate

"Do you have an appointment?"

The youngster didn't get it. Miriam took a deep breath. "I have, now. At his earliest convenience, do you hear?"

"Ah-ahem. Whom should I say…?"

"His great-niece Helge." Miriam resisted for a moment the urge to tap her toe impatiently, then gave in.

The lad vanished into a large and hideously overdecorated room, and she heard a mutter of conversation. Then: "Show her in! Show her in by all means, Walther, then make yourself scarce."

The door opened wider. "Please come in, the baron will be with you momentarily." The young secretary stood aside as Miriam walked in, Kara tiptoeing at her heels, then vanished into the corridor. The door closed behind him, and for the first moment Miriam began to wonder if she'd made a mistake.

The room was built to the same vast proportions as most imperial dwellings hereabouts, so that the enormous desk in the middle of it looked dwarfishly short, like a gilded black-topped coffee table covered in red leather boxes. Bookcases lined one wall, filled with dusty ledgers, while the other walls-paneled in oak-were occupied by age-blackened oil paintings or a high window casement looking out over the high street. The plasterwork hanging from the ceiling resembled a cubist grotto, cluttered with gilded cherubim and inedible fruit. Baron Henryk hunched behind the desk, his head bent slightly to one side. His long white hair glowed in the early afternoon light from the window and his face was in shadow; he wore local court dress, hand-embroidered with gold thread, but his fingertips were dark with ink from the array of pens that fronted his desk in carved stone inkwells. "Ah, great-niece Helge! How charming to see you at such short notice." He rose slowly and gestured toward a seat. "This would be your lady-in-waiting, Lady…?"

"Kara," Miriam supplied.

Kara cringed slightly and smiled ingratiatingly at the baron. "I tried to explain-"

"Hush, it's perfectly all right, child." The baron smiled at her. "Why don't you join Walther outside? Keep the servants out, why don't you. Perhaps you should take tea together in the long hall, I gather that's the custom these days among the young people."

"But I-" Kara swallowed, dipped a quick curtsey, and fled.

Henryk waited until the door closed behind her, then turned to Miriam with a faint smile on his face. "Well, well, well. To what emergency do I owe the honor of your presence?"

Miriam pulled the envelope out of her shoulder bag. "This. Addressee unknown. I was hoping you might be able to explain what's going on." She took a deep breath. "I am being given the runaround-nobody's talking to me! I'm sorry I had to barge in on you like this, at short notice. But it's reached the point where any attempt I make to go through cha

"I see." Henryk gestured vaguely at a chair. "Please, have a seat. White or red?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Wine?" He walked over to a sideboard that Miriam had barely noticed, beside one of the bookcases. "An early-afternoon digestif, perhaps."

"White, if you don't mind. Just a little." It was one of the things that had taken Miriam by surprise when she first stumbled into the Clan's affairs, the way people hereabouts drank like fishes. Not just the hard liquor, but wine and beer-tea and coffee were expensive imports, she supposed, and the water sanitation was straight out of the dark ages. Diluting it with alcohol killed most parasites.

Henryk fiddled with a decanter, then carried two lead crystal glasses over to his desk. "Here. Make free with the bottle, you are my guest."

Miriam raised her glass. "Your health."

"Ah." Henryk sat back down with a sigh. "Now, where were we?"

"I was trying to reach people."

"Yes, I can see that," Henryk nodded to himself. "Not having much luck," he suggested.

"Right. Angbard isn't answering his mail. In fact, I can't even get a letter through to him. Same goes for everyone I know in his security operation. Which isn't to say that stuff doesn't come in the other direction, but… I've got a company to run, in New Britain, haven't I? They pulled me out two months ago, saying it wasn't safe, and I've been cooling my heels ever since. When is it going to be safe? They don't seem to realize business doesn't stop just because they're worried about Matthias having left some surprises behind, or the Lees are still thinking about signing the papers. I could be going bankrupt over there!"

"Absolutely true." Henryk took a sip of wine. "It's incontrovertible. Yes, I think I see what the problem is. You were absolutely right to come to me." He put his glass down. "Although next time I would appreciate a little bit more notice."

"Um, I'm sorry about that." For the first time Miriam noticed that the top of the desk wasn't leather, it was a black velvet cloth, hastily laid over whatever papers Henryk didn't want her intruding upon. "I'd exhausted all the regular cha

"Yes, well, I'll be having words with Walther." A brief flicker of smile: "He needs to learn to be firmer."

"But you were free to see me at short notice."

"Not completely free, as you can see." His languid wave took in the cluttered desk. "Never mind. If in future you need to see me, have your secretary make an appointment and flag it for my eyes-it will make everything run much more smoothly. In particular, if you attach an agenda it will be dealt with before things reach this state. Your secretary should-"

"You keep saying, have your secretary do this. I don't have a secretary, uncle!"

Henryk raised an eyebrow. "Then who was the young lady who came with you?"

"That's Kara, she's-oh. You mean she's supposed to be able to handle appointments?" Miriam covered her mouth.

Baron Henryk frowned. "No, not her. You were supposed to be assigned an assistant. Who was, ahem, ah-oh yes." He jerked his chin in an abrupt nod. "That would be the Lady Brilliana, would it not? And I presume you haven't seen her for some weeks?"

"She's meant to be a secretary?" Miriam boggled at the thought. "Well, yes, but…" Brill probably would make a decent administrative assistant, now that she thought about it. Anyone who didn't take her bullet points seriously would find themselves facing real ones, sure enough. Brill was mature, competent, sensible-in the way that Kara was not-and missing, unlike Kara. "I haven't seen her since I arrived here."

"That will almost certainly be because of the security flap," Henryk agreed. "I'll try to do something about that. Lady Brilliana is your right hand, Helge. Perhaps her earlier duties-yes, you need her watching your back while you're here more than Angbard needs another sergeant at arms."

"Another what-oh. Okay." Miriam nodded. That Angbard had planted Brill in her household as a spy (and bodyguard) wasn't exactly a secret anymore, but it hadn't occurred to her that it was meant to be permanent, or that Brilliana had other duties, as Henryk put it. Sergeant at arms! Well. "That would help."

"She knows what strings to pull," Henryk said. "She can teach you what to do when she's not there to pull them for you. But as a matter of general guidance, it's usually best to tug gently. You never know what might be on the other end," he added.

Miriam's ears flushed. "I didn't mean to kick the anthill over," she said defensively, "but my business wasn't designed to run on autopilot. I've been given the cold shoulder so comprehensively that it feels like I'm being cut out of things deliberately."

"How do you know you aren't?" asked Henryk.

"But, if I'm-" She stopped. "Okay, back to basics. Why would anyone cut me out of ru