“Depends how angry he makes me. There’s been too much killing already, and it’s been going on for far too long. We’re going to have to stop sooner or later, or we’ll run out of relatives.”

“What do you mean, relatives? He’s the enemy—”

“Don’t you get it yet?” Miriam said impatiently. “These guys, the strangers who pop out of nowhere and kill—they’ve got to be blood relatives somewhere down the line. They’re world-walkers too, and the only reason they go between this world and New Britain, instead of this world and the USA, is because that’s the pattern they use. I’m thinking they’re descended from that missing branch of the first family, the brother who went west and disappeared, right after the founder died.”

Olga looked puzzled. “You think they’re the sixth family?” she asked.

“I’m not sure, and I don’t yet know why they’re trying to start up the civil war again. But don’t you think we owe it to ourselves to find out what’s going on before we hand him over to the thief-takers for hanging?”

Olga rubbed her head. “This is going to be the most fascinating Clan council in living memory,” she said.

“Come on.” Miriam waved at the hut. “Let’s get moving. I think it’s time we dragged Roland into this.”

One o’clock in the morning. Ring ring…“Hello?” Roland’s voice was furred with sleep.

“Roland? It’s me.”

“Miriam, you do pick your times—”

“Not now. Got a family emergency.”

“Emergency? What kind?” She could hear him waking up by the second.

“Get a couple of soldiers who you trust, and a safe house. Not Fort Lofstrom or its doppelgänger, it needs to be somewhere anonymous but secure on this side. It must be on this side. We’ve got a prisoner to debrief.”

“A prisoner? What kind—”

“One of the assassins. He’s alive, terrified, and spilling his guts to Olga right this moment.” Olga was in the back office with Lin and Miriam’s dictaphone, playing Good Cop. Lin was chattering, positively manic, desperate to tell her everything she wanted. Lin wasn’t even eighteen. Miram felt ashamed of herself until she thought about what he’d been involved in. Boy soldiers, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, recruited to defend their family’s honor against the children of the hostile elder brothers—elder brothers who had stolen their birthright many generations ago, abandoning them to the nonexistent mercy of the western empire.