The duke’s outer office in Fort Lofstrom was home to the duke’s secretary, and during Angbard’s lengthy absence it served as a headquarters from which the Clan’s operations in Massachusetts were coordinated. One of a chain of nine such castles up and down the eastern seaboard (in the Gruinmarkt, but also in the free kingdoms to the north and south), it coordinated the transshipment of Clan cargo along the entire eastern continental coast. Half a dozen junior Clan members were stationed there at any time, each shuttling back and forth at eight-hour intervals. Every three hours a message packet would arrive from Cambridge, and Matthias would be the first to open it and read any confidential dispatches.

This packet had contained a couple of letters, and a terse coded message. It was the latter that had whetted Matthias’s curiosity, then raised his ire.

The youth standing in front of his desk looked very frightened, but held his ground. “It came over the wireless just now, sir, an order to shut down. A blanket order, for the duration of the extraordinary general meeting, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Isn’t that unusual?”

“Hmm.” Matthias looked at him hard. “Well, Poul.” The lad was barely out of his teens, still afflicted by acne and a bad case of deference to authority—especially the kind of deadly, self-confident authority that Matthias exuded—but for all that he was brave. “We’ll just have to shut down the postal service, won’t we?” He allowed his expression to relax infinitesimally, determined not to give the youth any hint of the turmoil he felt.

“Are those your orders, sir?” Poul asked eagerly.

“No.” Matthias cocked his head. A Clan extraordinary meeting, held without warning…it didn’t smell good. In fact, it smelled extraordinarily bad to him. Ever since Esau’s asshole relatives had started trying to rub out the long-lost countess and another bunch of interlopers had joined in, things had looked distinctly unstable. “It sounds to me as if there’s something very big going on,” Matthias said slowly. “On that basis, I don’t think suspending the post is sufficient. We have assets on the other side who may not have got the warning. I’ll need you to make one more crossing to deliver a message, as soon as possible. Then we shut down. Meanwhile, it will be necessary to secure the fort.”

“Secure the—sir? Do you know what’s going on?”

Matthias fixed the young man with a grim stare. “I have a notion that it’s no good. The civil war, lad, that’s what this is about. Pigeons are coming home to roost and promises made thirty years ago are about to be delivered on.” He snorted. “Idiots,” he muttered bitterly. “Wait here. I have to go and get the special dispatches out of the duke’s office. Then I’ll go over what you have to do to deliver them.”