“The Clan is not what you’d call a limited liability company—it is a partnership. A family firm, if you like. You see, we hold our lands and riches and titles in common trust for the Clan, which operates in concert and receives the profits from all our ventures. The Clan makes use of all who have the world-walking talent—the members of the inner families—and arranges or authorizes marriages that braid the families together across generations, avoiding both out-breeding and too many close kin marriages. It also controls the outer family—those who lack the talent, but whose children might possess it if they marry like with like—and finds jobs for them over here. For example, Matthias cannot ever visit Boston on his own—but he has a talent for security, and makes a most excellent mailed fist. We number almost five hundred world-walkers now, and with two thousand in the outer families the pickings at the lower ranks are slim.”

He coughed. “One iron rule is that family members are required to marry into another family lineage—otherwise the blood runs thin within a generation. The only exceptions are by prior dispensation of the council, to permit an alliance outside the Clan, such as adoption into the nobility. The second iron rule is that inheritance follows Clan shareholdings, not lineage or family. If you die, your children inherit whatever the Clan allocates to them—you hold your estates from the Clan, they don’t belong to you because without the Clan you would be nothing. The system is supposed to encourage cooperation and it usually succeeds, but there are exceptions. Sixty years ago, a war broke out within the Clan, between families—Wu and Hjorth on one side, Thorold, Lofstrom, Arnesen, and Hjalmar on the other. Nobody is certain what started it any more—those who knew died early on—but my personal supposition is that the Wu family, in their ambition to climb into the eternal palace itself, exposed themselves to court intrigue and were turned into a weapon against us by the palace of the Outer Kingdom, which considered the Wu lineage to be a threat. In any event, it was a bloody period in our history. During the war years, our numbers fell from perhaps a thousand of the true blood to fewer than two hundred. The war ended thirty-five years ago with a treaty, solemnized by the marriage of Patricia Lofstrom Thorold to Alfredo Wu. Patricia was my half-sister, and I inherited custody of the Lofstrom estates.”

He paused to clear his throat. “Your mother’s death is now confirmed, although neither her nor Alfredo’s body was recovered. Since then, there has been no pretender to the estates of the Thorold–Hjorth shareholding, which were therefore administered as a trusteeship under the order of the high crown.”

“‘The high crown?’”