Brill helped steer Kara upstairs, and Miriam ensured that she was sat upright on a chaise longue, awake and complaining with a cup of tea, before she retreated to her bedroom. She started to remove her cloak then remembered the hand-warmer, and the message Kara had passed her. She unrolled it and read.

I have urgent news concerning the assassin who has been stalking you. Meet me in the orangery at midnight.

Your obedient servant,

Earl Roland Lofstrom

“Shit,” she mumbled under her breath. “Brill!”

“Yes, Miriam?”

“Help me undress, will you?”

“What, right now? Are you going to bed?”

“Not immediately,” Miriam said grimly. “Our assassin seems to have gotten tired of trying to sneak up on me and is trying to reel me in like a fish. Only he’s made a big mistake.” She turned to present her back. “Unlace me. I’ve got places to go, and it’d be a shame to get blood on this gown.”

Black jeans, combat boots, turtleneck, and leather jacket: a gun in her pocket and a locket in her left hand. Miriam breathed deeply, feeling naked despite everything. She felt as if the only thing she was wearing was a target between her shoulder blades.

Across the room Brilliana looked worried. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” she asked again. “Do you want me to come? I am trained using a pistol—”

“I’ll be fine. But I may have to world-walk in a hurry.” I won’t be fine, Miriam corrected herself silently: But if I don’t deal with this trouble sooner or later, they’ll kill me. Won’t they? And the one thing an assassin wouldn’t be expecting would be for her—not one of the Clan-raised hot-heads born with her hands on a pistol, but a reasonable, civilized journalist from a world where that sort of thing just didn’t happen—to turn on them. She hoped.