“Indirectly.” He interrupted her deliberately, then finished his coffee cup. “Look, she kept asking questions. Questions that I couldn’t answer. Wasn’t allowed to answer. I’d have been required to go home and marry someone of high rank within the Clan sooner or later, just to continue the bloodline, but I’m a man. I’m allowed to spend some time settling down. But eventually…if we marry out we go extinct in two, maybe three generations. And the money goes down faster, because our power base is built on positive market externalities—have you—”

“Yes,” she said, mouth dry despite the coffee she’d just swallowed without tasting. “The more of you there are, the more nodes you’ve got to trade between and the more effectively you can run your import/export system, right?”

“Right. We’re in a population trap, and it takes special dispensation to marry out. Our position is especially tenuous because of the traditional nobility; a lot of them see us as vile upstarts, illegitimate and crude, because we can’t trace our ancestry back to one of the hetmen of the Norge fleet that conquered the Gruinmarkt away from the Auslaand tribes about four, five hundred years ago. We find favor with the crown, because we’re rich—but even there we are in a cleft stick: It does not do well to become so powerful that the crown itself is threatened. If you get the chance to marry into the royal family—of Gruinmarkt or of one of our neighbors—but that’s the only way you could marry out without the council coming down on you.”

“Huh. Other kingdoms? Where did they come from, anyway? It’s, I’d have said medieval—”

“Nearly.” Roland nodded. “I did some digging into it. You are aware that in your world the feudal order of western Europe emerged from the wreckage of the Roman Empire, imposed largely by Norse—Viking—settlers who had assimilated many of the local ways? I am not sure, but I believe much the same origin explains our situation here. On this coast, there are several kingdoms up and down the seaboard. Successive waves of emigration from the old countries of the Holy Empire conquered earlier kingdoms up and down the coast, forced into a militarized hierarchy to defend themselves against the indigenous tribes. Vikings, but Vikings who had assimilated the Roman church—the worship of the divine company of gods—and such learning as the broken wreckage of Europe had to offer. We sent agents across the Atlantic to explore the Rome of this world thirty years or so ago: It lies unquiet beneath the spurs of the Great Khan, but the churches still make burned offerings before the gods. Maybe when there are more of us we will open up trade routes in Europe…but not yet.”