“Now, the Lees only found the Clan again when the family Wu moved west, less than a century ago. The Lees reacted—well, I think it was out of fear, but they basically conducted the campaign of assassinations that kicked off the feud. Everyone in the Clan knew that the murders could only have been carried out by world-walkers, so the attacks on the western families were blamed—understandably—on their cousins back east.”

She paused. The level of conversation breaking out in the benches made continuing futile. Angbard raised his gavel but she held up a hand. “Any questions?” she asked.

“Yes! What’s this business—”

“—How did you travel—”

“—We going to put up with these lies?”

Bang. Miriam jumped as Angbard brought down the gavel. “One at a time,” he snapped. “Helge, if you please. You have the floor.”

“The new world, where the other family—the Lees—go, is like the one I grew up in, but less well developed. There are a number of reasons for this, but essentially it boils down to the apparent fact that it diverged historically from my own about two hundred and fifty years ago. If you want evidence of its existence I have witnesses, Lady Olga and Brilliana d’Ost, and video recordings. I can even take you over there, if you are willing to accept my directions—remember, it is a very different country from the United States, and if you don’t bear that in mind you can get into trouble very easily. But let me emphasize this. I believe anyone who is sitting in this room now can go there quite easily, by simply using a Lee family talisman instead of a Clan one. You can verify this for yourselves. I repeat: It appears that if you have the ability to world-walk, you can go to different worlds simply by using a different kind of talisman.

“New Britain only had an industrial revolution a century ago. I’ve established a toehold over there, by setting up an identity and filing some basic engineering patents on the automobile. They’ll be big in about five to ten years. My business plan was to leverage inventions from the U.S.A. that haven’t been developed over there, rather than trading in physical commodities or providing transportation. But by doing this, I attracted the Lee family’s attention. They worked out soon enough that I’d acquired one of their lockets and was setting up on their territory. As Olga told you, they attempted to black-bag my house and we were waiting for them.” She glanced at Angbard for approval. He nodded to her, so she went on. “We took a prisoner, alive. He was in possession of an amulet and he’s indisputably a world-walker, but he’s not of the Clan. I asked for some medical tests. Ah, my lord?”