“Well.” She leaned her chin against the hollow of his neck, licked his pulse spot slowly. “It may have escaped your attention, but I am an expert in one particular field—I’ve spent years studying it, and I think I probably know more about it than anyone else in the family. The Clan is an old-fashioned unlimited-liability partnership, with a dose of family politics thrown in. The business structure itself is a classic variation on import/export trade, but it’s cash-rich enough to support a transition to some other model. All I need is a lever and an appropriate fulcrum and then a direction to make them move in. Business restructuring, baby, that’s where it’s at. A whole new business model. The lever we need is one that will convince them that they have more to lose by not changing than by sticking with the status quo. Once we’re in the driver’s seat, nobody is going to tell us we can’t shack up on this side and live the way we want to.”

He lifted her off her feet and lay down beside her. “What leverage do you need?” he asked alertly. “I spent years looking and didn’t find anything that powerful…”

“It’s going to be something convincing.” She smiled hungrily up at him. “And they’ll never know what hit them. We need to establish a power base by Beltaigne. A pilot project that demonstrates massive potential for making money in some way that relies on the Clan talent without falling into the classic mercantilist traps. It’ll make me worth much more to them alive than dead, and it’ll give us the beginning of a platform to recruit like-minded people and start building.” She looked pensive. “A skunk works within an established corporation, designed to introduce new ways of thinking and pioneer new business opportunities. I’ve written up enough stories about them—I just never thought I’d be setting one up myself.”

She stopped talking. There’d be time to work out the details later.

Business Plan

Business Plan

Miriam dozed fitfully, unable to relax her grip on consciousness. She kept turning events over in her mind, wondering what she could have done differently. If there was anything in the past two weeks that she could have changed, what might have come of it? She might not have accepted the pink and green shoebox. She wouldn’t be in this mess at all.

But she wouldn’t have met Brill, or Roland, or Angbard, or Olga, or the rest of the menagerie of Clan connections who were so insistently cluttering up her hitherto-straightforward family life with politics and feuds and grudges and everything else that went with the Clan. Her life would be simpler, emptier, more predictable, and safer, she thought sleepily. With nobody trying to exploit me because of who I am.