Miriam drifted toward the indicated position. Like a company’s annual general meeting, she noted. It was oddly familiar, but in no way comforting. She looked up at the front table and saw that three of the high seats had already been filled—one of them by Oliver Hjorth, who caught her watching and glared at her. The other two held dusty nonentities, elderly men who looked half-asleep already as they leaned heads together to talk. I wish Roland were here, she thought uneasily. Or—no, I just wish I wasn’t facing this alone. Roland would be supportive, but he wouldn’t be much use. Would he?

“May I join you?” Someone asked. Miriam glanced up.

“Olga? Yeah, sure! Did you have a good night?”

Olga sat down next to her. “No intruders,” she said smugly. “A pity. I was rather hoping.”

“Hoping?”

“To test my new M4-Super 90. Ah well. Oh, look, it’s Baron Gruinard.” She indicated one of the dried sticks at the board table.

“Is that good or bad?”

“Depends if he’s sitting for the Royal Assizes and you’re brought up in front of him. At most other times he’s rather harmless, but one hears the most frightful things when his court is in session.”

“Um.” Miriam noticed another familiar figure, an elderly dowager in a blue twin-set and pearls. Her stomach twisted. “I spy a grandmother.”

“Don’t make a habit of it.” Olga beamed in the direction of the elderly duchess, who spotted Miriam and frowned, horribly. “Isn’t she impressive?”

“Is that meant to be a compliment?”

The duchess cast Olga a hideous glare and then diverted her attention elsewhere, to a balding middle-aged man in a suit who fawned and led her toward the far side of the room.

“Where’s—”

“Hush,” said Olga. Angbard had produced a gavel from somewhere. He rapped it on the edge of the table peremptorily.

“We are gathered today for an extraordinary meeting,” Angbard announced conversationally. He frowned and tapped the elderly looking microphone. “We are gathered…state of emergency.” The sound system cut in properly and Miriam found that she no longer had to make an effort to hear him. “Thirty-two years ago, Patricia Thorold-Hjorth and Alfredo Wu were attacked on their way to this court. The bodies of Alfredo and his guards were found, but that of Patricia remained lost. Until very recently it was believed that she and her infant daughter had perished.”

A quiet ripple of conversation swept the hall. Angbard continued after a brief pause. “Four months ago an unknown woman appeared in the wilds of Nether Paarland. She was apprehended, and a variety of evidence—backed up by genetic fingerprinting, which my advisors tell me is infallible for this purpose—indicated that she was the long-lost infant, Helge Thorold-Hjorth, grown to majority in the United States.”