“A rather extraordinary woman.” His expression hardened. “I want tissue samples, photographs, anything you can come up with. For the hit squad. Get them processed on the other side, run them across the FBI most-wanted database, pull whatever strings you can find, but I want to know who they were and who they thought they were working for. And how they got there. The palace was supposed to be securely doppelgängered. Why wasn’t it?”

“Ah. I have already looked into that.” Matthias waited.

“Well then?” The duke clenched his hands.

“About three years ago, Baroness Hildegarde ordered our agents on the other side—via the usual shell company—to let out one side of the doppelgänger facility to a secondary Clan-owned shipping company she was setting up. It was all aboveboard and conducted in public at Beltaigne, approved in full committee, but the shipping company moved away a year later to more suitable purpose-built facilities, and they in turn sub-let the premises. It was walled off from the original bonded store and converted into short-lease storage, leaving it wide open. Purely coincidentally, it covered the New Tower, and parts of the west wing of the palace were left undoppelgängered. Helge wouldn’t have known enough to recognize this as unusual, but it left most of her suite wide open to attack by world-walkers from the other side.”

“And where was Oliver, Baron Hjorth while this was going on?” the duke asked, deceptively mildly. A failure to doppelgänger the palace correctly—to ensure that it was physically collated with secure territory in the other universe to which the world-walking and occasionally squabbling members of the Clan had access—was not a trivial oversight, not after the blood feud or civil war that had killed three out of every four members of the six families only a handful of decades ago.

“He was worrying about roofing costs, I imagine.” Matthias shrugged again, almost imperceptibly. “If he even knew about it. After all, what does security matter if the building caves in?”

“If.” The duke frowned. “That slime-weasel Oliver is in Baroness Hildegarde’s pocket, you mark my words. An unfortunate coincidence that they can both deny responsibility for, and Helge, Miriam as she calls herself, is left facing assassins? It’s almost insultingly convenient. She’s getting slack—we shall have to teach her a lesson in manners.”

“What are your orders regarding your niece, my lord? Since she appears to have run away, like her mother before her, she could be found in breach of the compact—”

“No, no need for that just yet.” The duke walked slowly back to his desk, his expression showing little sign of the stiffness in his joints. “Let her move freely for now.” He lowered himself into his chair and stared at Matthias. “I expect to hear about her movements by and by. Has she made any attempt to get in touch?”