The Clan Corporate

Miriam frowned. "Um. We have lots more world-walkers?"

"Nuts. You're not thinking like a politician: it shifts the balance of power, kid, that's what happens. And it shifts it away from the braids, away from the meddling old gra

"I-" Miriam paused. "What is your position? Is it the medicines?"

"I take it you've met Dr. ven Hjalmar?"

"Yes." Miriam tensed.

"Who do you think he works for? And who do you think I get my meds from? Copaxone and prednisone, by the grace of Hildegarde. If there's an accident in the supply chain, a courier gets caught out and I go short-well, that's all she wrote." Iris made a sharp cutting gesture.

"Mom!" Miriam stared, aghast.

"Blackmail is just business as usual," Iris said with heavy irony. "I've been trying to tell you it's not pretty, but would you get the message?"

"But-" Miriam was half out of her chair with anger. "Can't you get Angbard to help you out? Surely they can't stop you crossing over and visiting a doctor-"

"Shush, Miriam. Sit down, you're making me itch." Miriam forced herself to untense: she sat down again on the edge of her chair, leaning forward. "If I bring Angbard into this, I lose. Because then I owe him, and I've dragged him into the game, do you see? Look, the rules are really very simple. You grow up hating and fearing your grandmother. Then she marries you off to some near-stranger. A generation later, you have your own grandchildren and you realize you've got to hurt them just the way your own great-aunts and grandmother hurt you, or you'll be doing them an even worse disservice; if you don't, then instead of a legacy of some degree of power all they'll inherit is the status of elderly has-been chattel. That is what the braid system means, Miriam. You're-you're old enough and mature enough to understand this. I wasn't, I was about sixteen when my great-aunt-my grandmother was dead by then-leaned on the-bitch-my-mother and twisted her arm and made her give me reason to hate her."

"Um. It sounds like-" Miriam winced and rubbed her forehead. "There's something about this in game theory, isn't there?"

"Yes." Iris looked distant. "I told Morris about it, years ago. He called it an iterated cross-generational prisoner's dilemma. That haunted me, you know. Your father was a very smart man. And kind."

Miriam nodded; she missed him. Not that he was her real father. Her real father had been killed in an ambush by assassins shortly after Miriam's birth, the incident that had prompted Iris to run away and go to ground in Boston, where she'd met and lived with Morris and brought Miriam up in ignorance of her background. But Morris had died years ago, and now…

"When I gave you the locket I didn't expect you to jump straight in and get caught up in the Clan so rapidly. I was going to warn you off. But once you got picked up, there wasn't much else I could do. So I called up Angbard and came back in. I figure I'm not good for many more years, even with the drugs, but while I'm around I can watch your back. Do you see?"

"That was a mistake, it would seem."

"Oh yes." Iris was silent for almost a minute. "Because there are no grandchildren, and in the terms of the game that means I'm not a full player. I thought for a while your business plans on the other side would serve instead, but there's the glass ceiling again: you're a woman. You've set yourself up to do something that just isn't in the rules, so lots of people want to take you down. They want to make you play the game, to conform to expectations, because that reinforces their own role. If you don't conform, you threaten them, so they'll use that as an excuse to destroy you. And now they've got me as a hostage to use against you."

"Oh. Oh shit."

"You can say that again." Iris reached out and tugged a bellpull. There was a distant chime. "Do you want some lunch? I wouldn't blame you if all this has put you off your appetite…"

Miriam succumbed to depression on the way back to her prison. The sedan chair felt like a microcosm for her life right now, boxed in and darkly claustrophobic, the walls pressing tighter on every side, forcing her into a coerced and unwilling conformity. When she was very young she'd sometimes fantasized about having a long-lost family, played the I'm really a princess but I was swapped at birth for a commoner make-believe game. Somehow it had never involved being locked inside a swaying leather-lined box that smelled of old sweat and potpourri, her freedom restricted and her independence denied. The idea that once people decided you were going to be a princess, or a countess, your life stopped being your own, your body stopped being private, had never occurred to her back when she was a kid. I need to talk to someone, Miriam realized. Someone other than Iris, who right now was in as much of a mess as she was. Otherwise I am going to go crazy.

It had not escaped her attention that there were no sharp-edged implements in any of the rooms she had access to.

When they let her out in the walled courtyard, Miriam looked up at the sky above the gatehouse. The air was close and humid, and the clouds had a distinct yellowish tinge: the threat of thunder hung like a blanket across the city. "You'd better go in," said the ferret, in a rare sign of solicitude. Or maybe he just wanted to get her under cover and call a guard so that he could catch some rest.

"Right." Miriam climbed the staircase back to her rooms tiredly, drained of both energy and optimism.

"Milady!" Miriam looked up as the doors closed behind her with a thud. "Oh! You look sad! Are you unwell? What's wrong?"

It was Kara, her young, naive lady-in-waiting. Miriam managed a tired smile. "It's a long story," she said. Gradually she realized there was something odd about Kara. "Hey, what happened to your hair?" Kara had worn it long, down her back: now it was bundled up in an intricate coil atop her head. And she was wearing traditional dress. Kara loved to try imported American fashions.

"Do you like it? It's for a wedding."

"Oh? Whose?"

"Mine. I'm to be married tomorrow." Kara began to cry-not happily, but the quiet sobbing of desperation.

"What!" The next thing Miriam knew, she was hugging Kara while the younger woman shuddered, sniffling, her face pressed against Miriam's shoulder. "Come on, relax, you can let it all out. Tell me about it." She gently steered Kara toward the bench seat under the window. Glancing around, she realized that the servants had made themselves scarce. "You're going to have to tell me how you convinced them to let you in here. Hell, you're going to have to tell me how you found me. But not right now. Calm down. What's this about a wedding?"

That set Kara off again. Miriam gritted her teeth. Why me? Why now? The first was easy: Miriam had unwittingly designated herself as adult role model when she first met Kara. The second question, though-

"My father-after you disappeared last week-he summoned me urgently. I know the match was not his idea, for last we spoke he said I should perhaps wait another summer, but now he said his mind was made up and that a week hence I should be married into a braid alliance. He seemed quite pleased until I protested, but he said you had written that you no longer wanted me and that I should best find a new home for myself! I, I could not believe that! Tell me, milady, it isn't true, is it?"