“Shut up.” She glared at Roland. He’d been holding out on her. For what sounded like good reasons, she admitted—but the thought made her blood run cold. Roland was no knight in shining armor. The Clan had broken him. Now all it took was Matthias pushing his buttons to make him do whatever they wanted. She wanted to hate him for it, but found that she couldn’t. The idea of going up against an organization with billions of dollars and hundreds of hands was daunting. Roland had done it once already, and paid the price. Okay, so he’s not brave, she thought. Where does that leave me? Am I brave, or crazy? “Are you holding out anything else on me?” she asked.

Roland took a deep breath. “No,” he said. “Honest. The only person who’s got anything on me is Matthias.” He chuckled bitterly, ending in a cough. “Nobody else. No other girlfriends. No boyfriends, either. Just you.”

“If Matthias has primed you for blackmail, he must want something you can do for him,” she pointed out. “He knows he could get rid of both of us by just giving us a shitload of money and covering our trail. And if he was behind these attempts to kill me, I’d be dead, wouldn’t I? So what does he want to do that involves me and needs you—and that he figures he needs a blackmail lever for?”

“I—don’t know.” Roland pulled himself together, visibly struggling to focus on the problem. “I feel so stupid. I haven’t been thinking rationally about this.”

“Yeah, well, you’d better start, then.” Miriam took a mouthful of coffee and looked at him. “What does Matthias want?”

“Advancement. Recognition. Power.” Roland answered immediately.

“Which he can’t get, because…?”

“He’s outer family.”

“Right.” Miriam stared at him. “Do you see a pattern here?” she asked.

“He can’t get it, from the Clan. Not as long as it’s run the way it is right now.”

“So.” Miriam stood up. “We’ve been stupid, Roland. Shortsighted.”

“Huh?” He looked at her uncomprehendingly, lost in his private self-hatred.

“I’m not the target. You’re not the target. Angbard is the target.”

“Oh shit.” He straightened up. “You mean Matthias wants to take over the whole Clan security service. Don’t you?”

Miriam nodded, grimly. “With whoever his mystery accomplices are. The faction who murdered my mother and kept the family feuds going with judicious assassinations over a thirty-year period. The faction from world three. Leave aside Oliver and that poisonous dowager granny and the others who’d like me dead, Matthias is in league with those assassins. And before he makes his move—”