The duchess chuckled. “I should know better than to argue with you, dear!” She looked serious. “The wrong message in a nutshell. Miriam can’t go home, Helge. Not now, maybe not ever. Thanks to that scum-sucking rat-bastard defector the entire Clan network in Massachusetts is blown wide open and if you even think about going—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, there’ll be an FBI SWAT team staking out my back yard and I’ll vanish into a supermax prison so fast my feet don’t touch the ground. If I’m lucky,” she added bitterly. “So everything’s locked down like a code red terrorist alert, the only way I’m allowed to go back to our world is on a closely supervised courier run to an underground railway station buried so deep I don’t even see daylight, if I want anything—even a box of tampons—I have to requisition it and someone in the Security Directorate has to fill out a risk assessment to see if it’s safe to obtain, and, and…” Her shoulders heaved with indignation.

“This is what it was like the whole time, during the civil war,” the duchess pointed out.

“So people keep telling me, as if I’m supposed to be grateful! But it’s not as if this is my only option. I’ve got another identity over in world three and—”

“Do they have tampons there?”

“Ah.” Helge paused for a moment. “No, I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “But they’ve got cotton wool.” She fumbled for a moment, then pulled out a pen-sized voice recorder. “Memo: business plans. Investigate early patent filings covering tampons and applicators. Also sterilization methods—dry heat?” She clicked the recorder off and replaced it. “Thanks.” A lightning smile that was purely Miriam flashed across her face and was gone. “I should be over there,” she added earnestly. “World three is my project. I set up the company and I ought to be managing it.”

“Firstly, our dear long-lost relatives are over there,” the duchess pointed out. “Truce or not, if they haven’t got the message yet, you could show your nose over there and get it chopped off. And secondly.”

“Ah, yes. Secondly.”

“You know what I’m going to say,” the duchess said quietly. “So please don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Okay.” Helge turned her head to stare moodily out of the nearest window. “You’re going to tell me that the political situation is messy. That if I go over there right now some of the more jumpy first citizens of the Clan will get the idea that I’m abandoning the sinking ship, aided and abetted by my delightful grandmother’s whispering campaign—”

“Leave the rudeness to me. She’s my cross to bear.”

“Yes, but.” Helge stopped.