"No." She realized she was shaking slightly. "No to both questions. I don't know anything. I might not be welcome. But it's important." She'd left a small notebook PC locked in a drawer in her office, and a portable printer, and a bunch of CD-ROMs with a complete archive of U.S. Patent Office filings going up to the 1960s. In this world, that was worth more than diamonds. But there was something on the computer that was even more valuable to her. In a moment of spare time, she'd scanned her locket using the computer's web cam, meaning to mess around with it later. If it was still there, if she could get her hands on it, and if it worked-
"Would it be-" He licked his lips nervously. "It's not safe, Miriam. If they're looking for you, they'll look there."
"I know, I just need-" she stopped, balling her hands into fists from frustration. "Sorry. It's not your fault. You're right, it's risky. But it's also important. If I can get my things, I can also world-walk home. To the United Slates, that is. I can-"
"Miriam." He waited almost a minute before continuing, his voice gentle. "Your relatives know where you'd go. They might have established a trap there. Can you think of another way to get what you need?"
"Huh?" She took a deep breath. "Yes. Roger!"
"Roger?"
She leaned across the table and took Burgeson's hand: "I need to write him a letter. If the business is still running, he'll be working there. He's reliable-he's the one I used to send you messages-I can ask him to take the items whenever it's safe for him, and have a cousin deliver them to your shop when we get back." Erasmus pulled back slightly: she realized she was gripping his hand too hard. "Can I do that?"
He smiled ruefully as he shook some life back into his lingers. "Are they small and concealable?"
"About so big-" she indicated "-and about ten pounds in weight. They're delicate instruments, they need to be kept dry and handled carefully."
"Then we'll gel you some writing paper and a pen before we board the train." He nodded thoughtfully. "And you'll tell him not to take the items for at least a week, and to have his cousin deliver them to somewhere else, a different address I can give you. A sympathizer. In the very worst possible circumstances they will know that you've visited Boston, my Boston, in the past week."
"Thank you." The knot of anxiety in her chest relaxed.
He stood up, pushing his chair back. "It's getting on. Would you care to accompany me to dinner? No need to change-the carvery downstairs has no code."
"Food would be good, once I get my shoes back on," she said ruefully. "If we've got that much travel ahead of us I'm going to have to break them in-what are you going to Fort Petrograd for?"
"I have to see a man about a rare book," he said flippantly, offering Miriam her jacket. "And then I think I should like to take a stroll along a beach and dip my toes in the Pacific Ocean..."
More wrecked buildings, another foggy morning.
Otto, Baron Neuhalle, had seen these sights twice already in the past week. His majesty had been most explicit: "We desire you to employ no more than a single battalion in any location. The witches have uncanny means of communication, as well as better guns than anything our artificers can make, and if the entire army is concentrated to take a single keep, it will be ambushed. To defeat this pestilence, it will first be necessary to force them to defend their lands. So you will avoid the castles and strong places, and instead fall upon their weaker houses and holdings. You will grant no quarter and take no prisoners of the witches, save that you put out their eyes as soon as you take them into captivity, that they may work no magic. Some of the witches make their peasants grow weeds and herbs in their fields, instead of food. You will fire these fields and slay the witches, but you will not kill their peasants-it is our wish that they be fed from the stores of their former lords and masters. The witches seem to value these crops, so they are as much a target as their owners."
His horse snorted, pawing the ground nervously at the smells and shouts from the house ahead. Neuhalle glanced at the two hand-men waiting behind him, their heavy horse-pistols resting across their saddles. "Follow," he ordered, then nudged his mount forward.
