“Yes. But just one crossing gives me a cracking headache if I don’t take my pills. I figure I can make two an hour apart. But if I run into something nasty on the far side—wherever this one takes me—I’ll be in deep trouble if I need to get away from it in a hurry.”

Malignant hypertension wasn’t a term she could use with Brill, but she’d seen what it could do to people. In particular she’d seen a middle-aged man who’d not bothered to follow the dietary guidelines after his HMO doctor prescribed him an ancient and dubious monoamine oxidase inhibitor. He’d flatlined over the cheese board at a birthday party, the glass of sparkling white wine still at hand. She’d been in the emergency room when the ambulance brought him in, bleeding from nose and eyes. She’d been there when they turned the ventilator off and filled out the death certificate. She shook her head. “It’ll take careful planning.”

Miriam glanced at the window. Snow drifted down from a sky the color of shattered dreams. It was bitterly cold outside. “What I should do is go across, hole up somewhere and catch some sleep, then try to cross over the next day so I can run away if anything goes wrong. Trouble is, it’s going to be just as cold on the other side as it is here. And if I have to run away, I get to spend two nights camping in the woods, in winter, with a splitting headache. I don’t think that’s a really great idea. And I’m limited to what I can carry.”

When’s Paulie due back? she wondered. She’ll be able to help.

“What about a coaching-house?” Brill asked, practical-minded as ever.

“A coaching—” Miriam stopped dead. “But I can’t—”

“There’s one about two miles down the road from Fort Lofstrom.” Brill looked thoughtful. “We dress you as a, an oracle’s wife, summoned to a village down the coast to join your husband in his new parish. Your trap broke a wheel and—” She ran down. “Oh. You don’t speak hoh’sprashe.”

“Yup.” Miriam nodded. “Doesn’t work well, does it?”

“No.” Brill wrinkled her nose. “What a nuisance! We could go together,” she added tentatively.

“I think we’ll have to do that,” said Miriam. “Probably I play the mute mother and you play the daughter—I try to look older, you to look younger. Think it would work?”

From Brilliana’s slow nod she realized that Brill did—and wasn’t enthusiastic about it. “It might.”

“It would also leave you stranded in the back of beyond up near, where was it, Hasleholm, if I don’t come back, wouldn’t it?” Miriam pointed out.