She took a step forward, across inches that felt like miles: then another step, easier this time. The short passage at the top of the stairs ended in the back room. She crept round the door: everything was as empty as it should be. The archway leading to the main room-there was an observation mirror, tarnished and flyspecked. Relaxing, she stepped up to the archway and peered sidelong into the shop itself.
It was a bright day, and sunbeams slanted diagonally across the dusty window display shelves and the wooden floor boards. The shop was empty, but for a few letters and circulars piling up under the mail slot in the door. If it had been dark, she wouldn't have noticed anything out of the ordinary, and if she'd been coming in through the front door she wouldn't have seen it until it was too late. But coming out of the dimness of the shop... her breath caught as she saw the coppery gleam of the wire fastened to the door handle. The sense of d j vu was a choking imposition on her fragile self-confidence. She'd seen too many trip wires in the past year: Matt had made a bad habit of them, damn him, wherever he was. She turned and retraced her steps, gripping the banister rail tightly to keep her hands from shaking.
"The shop is empty, but someone's been inside it. There's a wire on the door handle." She shuddered, but Erasmus just smiled.
"This I must see for myself."
"It's too dangerous!"
"Obviously not," he replied mildly. "You're still alive, aren't you?"
"But I- " she stopped, unable to explain the dread that gripped her.
"You saw it in time. It won't be a petard, Miriam, not if it's the Polis, probably not if it's your relatives. Your b te noir, the mad bomber, is unlikely, isn't he? We'll take care not to trip over any other wires. I'll wager you it turns out to be a bell, wired to wake up a watcher next door. Someone wants to know when I return, that's all."
"That's
"I need the book." He was adamant.
She took a deep breath. "I don't like it."
"Neither do I, but..." He shrugged.
Paradoxically, Miriam felt herself begin to relax once they returned to the back room. Trip wires and claymore mines were Matthias's stock in trade, a nasty trick from the days of the Clan-on-Clan civil war. But Matthias wasn't a world-walker, and he couldn't be over here, could he? He'd gone missing in the United States six months earlier, a week before the first series of targeted raids had shut down the Clan's postal service. While she waited patiently, Erasmus sniffed around his shelves, the writing desk and dusty ledgers, the battered sink with the tin teapot and oil burner beside it, the cracked frosted-glass window pane with the bars on the outside. "Nobody's touched these," he said after a few minutes. "I'm going to look in the shop."
"But it's under observation! And there's the wire-"
"I don't think anyone outside will be able to see in, not while the sun's out. And I want to fetch some stuff. Come help me?"
Miriam tensed, then nodded.
Erasmus slowly walked into the front of the shop, staying well back from the windows. He paused between two rails of secondhand clothing. "That's interesting," he said quietly.
"What is it?"
He pointed at the door handle. "Look." The copper wire ran to the door frame, then round a nail and down to the floor where it disappeared into a small gray box, unobtrusively fastened to the skirting board. "What's that?"
Miriam peered at the box. It was in shadow, and it took her a few seconds to make sense of what she was seeing. "That's not a claymore-" She swallowed again.
"What is it?" he asked.
It was gray, with rounded edges-as alien to this world as a wooden automobile would be in her own. And the stubby antenna poking out of its top told another story. "I think it's a rad-a, uh, an electrograph." And it sure as hell wasn't manufactured over here. "It might be something else."
"How very interesting," Erasmus murmured, stooping further to retrieve the letters. "You were right, earlier," he added, glancing her way: "if this was planted by the men who followed us in New London, they're not looking for me. They're looking for you."
They hanged the servants beneath the warmth of the early afternoon sun, as Neuhalle's minstrel played a sprightly air on the hurdy-gurdy. It was hard work, and the men were drinking heavily during their frequent breaks. "It takes half the fun out of it, having to do all the heavy lifting yourself," Heidlor grumbled quietly as he filled his looted silver tankard from the cask of ale sitting on the cart.
