Riordan reached over to tap Sir Alasdair on the shoulder. "Do you know where your Plan Black site is?" he asked.

"Yes, my lord." Alasdair nodded, checking his side mirror as he floored the accelerator to merge with the traffic on the interstate. "I'm taking us there."

"What's Plan Black?" Miriam tried to make eye contact with Olga.

Riordan cleared his throat. "My lady, we need to get you to a place of safety. But it's not just you; in light of the current situation we

all

need to get clear. Plan Black is a defensive measure, put in place by his grace after the mess last year. It's a pull-out—everyone in this world is to proceed to a safe site, collect essential equipment, and cross over."

"But that's—" Miriam paused. "What about the conservative faction? Earl Hjorth, the duchess, whoever took the bombs and activated Plan Blue, will they—"

"No." Riordan bared his teeth. "And I'm counting on it. Because if they disobey a directive from the acting head of Clan Security in the middle of an emergency, that's all I need to shoot them."

"It's the civil war, my lady, all over again." Olga whistled tunelessly. "They've been begging for it—and now they're going to get it."

In another world, in a mansion overlooking a lawn that swept downhill to the banks of a small river, an elderly man sat at a writing desk in a room off to one side of the great hall. It was a small room, walled in bare stone and floored with planks, which the tapestries and rugs failed to conceal; the large window casements, built for light but featuring heavy oak shutters with peepholes and iron bolts, suggested the architect had been more concerned with security than comfort. Despite the summer heat he held his robes of office tight about his shoulders, shivering as he stared at the ledger before him with tired eyes. It was a balance sheet of sorts, but the items tallied in its columns were not quantities of coin but the living and the dead. And from time to time, with the slow, considered strokes of his pen, Baron Julius Arnesen moved names from one column to the other.