The Clan Corporate

The garage was pretty clearly part of a Clan transshipment station, just like the others she'd seen: carefully designed to look like corporate offices from the outside, but equipped as a transdimensional fortress / post office once you got past the discreetly armored doors. The Clan had an almost Roman approach to standardizing the design of their bases. As the ferret directed her toward the stairs at the back of the vehicle park Miriam looked around, sickly certain that she wouldn't be seeing its like again-not for a long, long time. They'd taken her locket, emphasizing the point by scrubbing her temporary tattoo. Escape was not an option they had in mind for her.

As it turned out, they weren't going to leave her any options at all. The ferret and his helpers rolled her out of the ambulance, still in the chair, and wheeled her over to an elevator at the back of the garage. She glanced over her shoulder: from the inside, the garage doors looked huge and intimidating, reinforced against the risk of a police raid. They rode in silence down to a sub-basement level, then the guards wheeled her down a short dusty passage to a room walled in pigeonholes. The room was dominated by an open area marked out with yellow tape on the floor, in front of what looked like a window bay covered by a green baize curtain. "When the curtain opens, use the sigil," said the ferret, wheeling her into position. "I'll be right behind you."

"But I'm in a chair-" Miriam began to rise, but a hand pushed down on her shoulder.

"You're electrically insulated. Rubber tires."

Miriam sat down again. Electrically insulated? she wondered. Her office chair, the one she'd first world-walked in while sitting at home, had plastic castors for feet-

The curtain opened on stomach-churning disorder. Miriam glanced round. The hound was waiting. She looked back and let her mind go blank. A moment later she was facing a closed red curtain, her head pounding as if someone were hammering a railroad spike through it. Her already-sore guts knotted in pain. She glanced round again.

"Don't even think it," the ferret murmured as he wheeled her out of the transfer zone. "Remember what I told you."

Another corridor rolled past, this time featuring a tiled floor and wooden panels on the walls. It was narrow and gloomy, illuminated by weak electric bulbs. A great Clan house, but which one? She shifted in the wheelchair, wincing against the headache that was clogging her thoughts. Whoever they were, just maintaining an electrical system was a sign of wealth and influence. And they were somewhere near New York, near the capital city Niejwein, in other words. Her guts were close to cramping with dread. Clan Security had its own infrastructure, separate from the Clan Trade Committee's postal service. Whoever she was being taken to see, they weren't low down the pecking order. Baron Henryk, perhaps-or possibly the duke himself. Or-

The ferret stopped beside a door and knocked twice. Someone unseen opened it from the inside. "Consignment delivered," the ferret told the worried-looking maidservant in the entrance, as he unlocked the handcuff securing her to the wheelchair with a flourish of a key ring she hadn't even noticed him holding. "Stand up," he told Miriam. To the servant: "You've got ten minutes. Then I want her back, ready or not."

Miriam pushed herself upright, wincing as she was assailed by various aches and pains. She took a stumbling step forward and the maid caught her arm. "This way, please you," she said haltingly, her accent thick enough to cut with a knife. Miriam nodded as the ferret disappeared and another servant closed the door behind her. "We are, please you, to disrobe-"

They had clothing waiting for her, a bodice and shift. Day wear for Niejwein. Miriam let them lace her up without speaking. Her hair was a mess, but they had a plain linen cap to cover it up. If they were just going to kill me out of hand they wouldn't bother with this, Miriam told herself, and desperately tried to believe it.

Ten minutes later there was another rap on the door. One of the maids went to answer it. There was a whispered exchange of hochsprache, then the ferret stepped inside and looked her up and down. "She'll do," he said tersely. "You. This way."

The ferret led her up the corridor to a narrow servant's staircase, then along a landing to a thick oak door. It opened without a knock. "Go through," said the ferret. "He's waiting for you." He gave her a light shove in the small of the back; unbalanced, Miriam lurched forward into the light.

The room was large, high-ceilinged, and cold in the way that only a room in a palace heated by open fires can be cold. High windows drizzled sunlight across about an acre of handwoven, richly embroidered carpet. There was no furniture except for a writing desk and a chair against one wall, situated directly beneath a dusty oil painting of a man in a leather coat standing beside a heavily laden pony.

Miriam took a couple of steps toward the middle of the room before she realized who was sitting behind the desk, poring over a note. She stopped dead, her heart flip-flopping in panic. "Great-uncle, I-"

"Shut up." It was Baron Henryk, the head of the royal secret police, not kindly, casual Uncle Henryk, who faced Miriam from behind the desk. Uncle Henryk was amusing and friendly. Baron Henryk looked anything but friendly. "Do you know what this is?" He brandished the sheet of paper at her.

Miriam shook her head.

"It's an execution warrant," said Henryk, pushing a pair of reading glasses up his nose. "Stand over here, where I can see you." He jotted something on the sheet of paper, then folded it once and moved it to an out-tray. "Not the full-dress public variety, more what the Americans' CIA would call a termination expedient order. Your uncle runs them past me as partly a courtesy to the Crown-as a duke he has the right of high justice, should he choose to use it-but also as a measure of prudence." Reflectively: "It's a little hard to undo afterward if it turns out you switched someone off by mistake."

"You, you approve execution warrants for the Clan?"

"Don't you tell me you didn't suspect something of the kind." Henryk stared at her for a moment, then looked at the next note on his in-tray and frowned. "Hmm." He picked up a different pen and scrawled a red slash across the page, folded it, and put it in the out-tray. "I don't think so." He put the pen down as carefully as if it were a loaded gun, then looked back at Miriam. "I'm not ready to give up on you yet."

Miriam took a deep breath. "What-who-was that?"

"It could have been you." His lips quirked. "We can't protect you forever, you know." He carefully drew a black velvet cloth across the papers and turned round to face her. "Especially if you keep putting your head through every snare you come across."

"Why am I here?" She wanted to ask, How much do you think I know? But right now that might be a very bad idea indeed. Possibly she knew more than Henryk realized, and if that was the case, admitting it could be a fatal mistake.

"You're here because you stuck your nose where it didn't belong. I'm here because I'm trying to control the damage." He took his reading glasses off and folded them carefully, then placed them on top of the black cloth. "Let's get this straight. We know you learned about something you aren't supposed to know about. That's… not good. Then you compounded it by getting involved-and getting involved personally! You could have been identified. The next step might have been full public disclosure, with who knows what consequences. Helge, that is not acceptable. Before, before all this started, you came to me complaining that you were being treated as if you were under arrest. This time, make no mistake, you are under arrest."

She tried to stay silent, but it was too hard. "What are you going to do with me?"