“You’re grown up now and there’s not a lot I can teach you. Just as well really, one day I won’t be around to do the teaching and it’d be kind of embarrassing if—”

“—Mother!”

“Don’t you ‘mother’ me! Listen, I raised you to face facts and deal with the world as it really is, not to pretend that if you stick your head in the sand problems will go away. I’m in late middle age and I’m damned if I’m not going to inflict my hard-earned wisdom on my only daughter.” She looked mildly disgusted. “Come to think of it, I wish someone had beaten it into me when I was a child. Pah. But anyway. You’re playing with fire, and I would really hate it if you got burned. You’re going to try and track down these assassins from another universe, aren’t you? What do you think they are?”

“I think—” Miriam paused. “They’re like the Clan and the families,” she said finally. “Only they travel between world one and world three, while the Clan travel between world one and world two, our world. I figure they decided the Clan were a threat a long time ago and that’s probably something to do with, with why they tried to nail my mother. All those years ago. And they’re smaller and weaker than the Clan, that much seems obvious, so I can maybe set up in world three, their stronghold, before they notice me. I think.”

“Ambitious.” Iris didn’t crack a smile. “What did I tell you when you were young, about not jumping to conclusions?”

“Um. You know better? Is there something you haven’t been telling me?”

Iris nodded sharply. “Can you permit your mother to keep one or two things to herself?”

“Guess so.” Miriam shrugged uncomfortably. “Can you give your daughter any hints?”

“Only this.” Iris met her gaze unflinchingly. “Firstly, do you really think you’d have been hidden from the families for all these years without someone over there covering your trail?”

“Ma—”

“I can’t tell you for sure,” she added, “but I think someone may have been watching over you. Someone who didn’t want you dragged into all this—at least not until you were good and ready to look out for yourself.”

Miriam shook her head. “Is that all? You think I’ve got a fairy godmother?”

“Not exactly.” Ms finished her coffee. “But here’s a ‘secondly’ for you to think about. Shortly after you surfaced, the strangers, these assassins, started hunting for you. To say nothing of the second bunch who tried to wipe out this Olga person. Doesn’t that suggest something? What about that civil war among the families that you told me about?”

“Are you trying to suggest it’s part of some sixty-year-old feud?” Miriam demanded. “Or that it isn’t over?”