The Family Trade (32 page)

“Hello?” The voice at the end of the line sounded positively chirpy.

“Paulie! Are you okay?”

“Miriam! How’s it going, babe?”

“It’s going messy,” she admitted. “Look, remember the other day? Are you still home?”

“Yes. What’s come up?”

“I’m going to come pay you a visit,” said Miriam. “First, I’ve got a lot of things to discuss, stuff to get in order—and a down payment. Second, I’ve got a lodger. How’s your spare room?”

“Oh, you know it’s been empty since I kicked that bum Walter out? What’s up, you wanting him to stay with me?”

Miriam glanced at Brill. “It’s a she, and I think you’ll probably like her,” she said guardedly. “It’s part of that deal I’ve made. I need you to put her up for a few weeks, on the company—I mean, I’m paying. Trouble is, she’s from, uh, out of state, if you follow me. She doesn’t know her way around
at all
.”

“Does she, like, speak English?” Paulette sounded interested rather than perturbed, for which Miriam was immensely grateful. Brilliana was toying with her coffee and pretending not to realize Miriam was discussing her, on an intimate basis, with a talking box.

“Yeah, that’s not a problem. But this morning was the first time she’d ever met an electric shower, and
that
is a problem or me, because I’ve got a lot of travelling to do in the next few weeks and I need to put her where someone can keep an eye on her as she gets used to the way things are done over here. Can you do that?”

“Probably,” Paulette said briskly. “Depends if she hates my guts on first sight—or vice versa. I can’t promise more than that, can I?”

“Well—” Miriam took a deep breath. “Okay, we’re coming up today on the train. You going to be home in the afternoon?”

“For you, any day! You’ve got a lot to tell me about?”

“Everything,” Miriam said fervently. “It’s been crazy.”

“Bye, then.”

Miriam put the phone down and rubbed her eyes. Brill was watching her oddly. “Who was that?” she asked.

“Who—oh, on the phone?” Miriam glanced at it. So Brill had figured out that much? Bright girl. “A friend of mine. My, uh, business agent. On this side.” She grinned. “For the past few days, anyway. We’re going to see her this afternoon.”

“ ‘Her’?” Brill raised an eyebrow. “All the hot water you want, no need to feed the fire, and women running businesses? No wonder my mother didn’t want me coming here—she was afraid I’d never come back!”

“That seems to go with the territory,” Miriam agreed dryly.

After breakfast she chivvied Brill into getting dressed again. Her tailored suit and blouse would blend into the background just fine: another business traveller in the heart of New York. Miriam thought for a moment, then picked another jacket—this time a dressy one rather than one built for bad weather. She’d have to keep her pistol in her handbag, but she’d look more in keeping with Brill, and hopefully it would distract any killers hunting for a lone woman in her early thirties with thus-and-such features.

Miriam took the large suitcase when they left the room and headed downstairs. Brill’s eyes kept swivelling at everything from telephones to cigarette ads, but she kept her questions to herself as Miriam shepherded her into a nearby bank for ten minutes, then flagged down a taxi. “What was that about?” Brill murmured after Miriam told the driver where to go.

“Needed to take care of some money business,” Miriam replied. “Angbard gave me a line on some credit, but—” she stopped, shrugged.
I’m talking Martian again,
she realized.

“You’ll have to tell me how this credit thing works some time,” Brill commented. “I don’t think I’ve actually seen a coin since I came here. Do people use them?”

“Not much. Which makes some things easier—it’s harder to steal larger amounts—and other things more difficult—like transferring large quantities of money to someone else without it being noticed.”

“Huh.” Brill stared out of the window at the passing traffic, the pedestrians in their dark winter colours, and the bright advertisements. “It’s so
noisy!
How do you get any thinking done?”

“Sometimes it’s hard,” Miriam admitted.

She bought two tickets to Boston and shepherded Brill onto the express train without incident. They found a table a long way from anyone else without difficulty, which turned out to be a good thing, because Brill was unable to control her surprise when the train began to move. “It’s so different!” she squeaked, taken aback.

“It’s called a train.” Miriam pointed out of the window. “Like that one, only faster and newer and built for carrying passengers. Where we’re going is within a day’s walk of Angbard’s palace, but it’ll only take us three hours to get there.”

Brilliana stared at the passing freight train. “I’ve seen movies,” she said quietly. “You don’t need to assume I’m stupid, ignorant. But it’s not the same as being here.”

“I’m sorry.” Miriam shook her head, embarrassed. She looked at Brill thoughtfully. She was doing a good job of bluffing, even though the surprises the world kept throwing at her must sometimes have been overwhelming. A bright kid, well-educated for her place in time, but out of her depth here—
How would I cope if someone gave me a ticket to the thirtieth century?
Miriam wondered. At a guess, there’d be an outburst of anger soon, triggered by something trivial—the realization that this wasn’t fairyland but a real place, and she’d grown up among people who lived here and withheld everything in it from her.
I wonder which way she’ll jump?

Opposite her, Brilliana’s face froze. “What is it?” Miriam asked quietly.

“The… the second row of thrones behind you—that’s interesting. I’ve seen that man before. Black hair, dark suit.”

“Where?” Miriam whispered, tensing. Feeling for her shoulder bag, the small pistol buried at the bottom of it.
No, not on a train…

“At court. He is a corporal of honour in service to Angbard. Called Edger something. I’ve seen him a couple of times in escort to one or another of the duke’s generals. I don’t think he’s recognized me. He is reading one of those intelligence papers the tinkers were selling at the palace of trains.”

“Hmm.” Miriam frowned. “Did you see any luggage when he got onboard? Anything he carried? Describe him.”

“There is a trunk with a handle, like yours, only it looks like metal. He has it beside him and places one hand on it every short while.”

“Ah.” Miriam relaxed infinitesimally. “Okay, I think I’ve got a handle on it. Is the case about the same size as mine?”

Brill nodded slowly, her eyes focused past Miriam’s left shoulder.

“That means he’s probably a courier,” Miriam said quietly. “At a guess, Angbard has him carry documents daily between his palace and Manhattan. That explains why he spends so little time at court himself—he can keep his finger on the pulse far faster than the non-Clan courtiers realize. If I’m right, he’ll be carrying a report about last night, among other things.” She raised a finger to her lips. “Trouble is, if I’m right, he’s armed and certainly dangerous to approach. And if I’m wrong, he’s not a courier. He’s going to wait for the train to stop, then try to kill us.” Miriam closed her hand around the barrel of her pistol, then stopped.
No, that’s the wrong way to solve this,
she thought. Instead she pulled out her wallet and a piece of paper and began writing.

Brilliana leaned forward. “He’s doing it again,” she murmured. “I think there’s something in his jacket. Under his arm. He looks uncomfortable.”

“Right.” Miriam nodded, then shoved the piece of paper across the table at Brill. There was a pair of fifty-dollar bills and a train ticket concealed under it. “Here is what we’re going to do. In a minute, you’re going to stand up while he isn’t looking and walk to the other end of this carriage—behind you, over there, where the doors are. If—” she swallowed—“if things go wrong, don’t try anything heroic. Just get off the train as soon as it stops, hide in the crowd, make damn sure he doesn’t see you. There’ll be another train through in an hour. Your ticket is valid for travel on it, and you want to get off in Cambridge. Go out of the station, tell a cab driver you want to go to
this
address, and pay with one of these notes, the way you saw me do it. He’ll give you change. It’s a small house; the number is on the front of the door. Go up to it and tell the woman who lives there that I sent you and I’m in trouble. Then give her this.” Miriam pushed another piece of paper across the table at her. “After a day, tell Paulette to use the special number I gave her. That’s all. Think you can do that?”

Brill nodded mutely. “What are you going to do now?” she asked quietly.

Miriam took a deep breath. “I’m going to do what we in the trade refer to as a hostile interview,” she said. “What was his name, again?”

* * *

“Hello, Edsger. Don’t move. This would not be a good place to get help for a sucking chest wound.”

He tensed and she smiled, bright and feral, like a mongoose confronting a sleepy cobra.

“What—”

“Don’t move, I said. That includes your mouth. Not very good, is it, letting your mark turn on you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I think you do. And I think it’s slack of you, nodding off just because you’re on the iron road and no world-walkers can sneak up from behind.” She smiled wider, seeing his unnerved expression. “First, some ground rules. We are going to have a little conversation, then we will go our separate ways, and nobody will get hurt. But first, to make that possible, you will start by
slowly
bending forward and sliding that pistol of yours out into this shopping bag.”

The courier leaned forward. Miriam leaned with him, keeping her pistol jammed up against his ribs through her jacket. “Slowly,” she hissed.

“I’m slow.” He opened his jacket and slid a big Browning automatic out of the holster under his left armpit—two-fingered. Miriam tensed, but he followed through by dropping it into the open bag.

“And your mobile phone,” she said. “Now, kick it under the table. Gently.” He gave it a half-hearted shove with one foot.

“Put your hands between your knees and lean back slowly,” she ordered.

“Who
are
you?” he asked, complying.

“First, you’re going to tell me who you’re delivering that case to at the other end,” she said. “Ordinary postal service—or Angbard himself?”

“I can’t—”

She shoved the gun up against him, hard. “You fucking
can
,” she snarled quietly. “Because if you don’t tell me, you are going to read about the contents of that case on the front page of
The New York Times,
are you hearing me?”

“It goes to Matthias.”

“Angbard’s secretary, right.” She felt him tense again. “That was the correct answer,” she said quietly. “Now, I want you to do something else for me. I’ve got a message for Angbard, for his ears
only
, do you understand? It’s not for Matthias, it’s not for Roland, it’s not for any of the other lord-lieutenants he’s got hanging around. Remember, I’ve got your number. If anyone other than Angbard gets this message, I will find out and I will tell him and he will kill you. Got that? Good. What’s going to happen next is: The train’s stopping in a couple of minutes. You will stand up, take your case—
not
the bag with your phone—and get off the train, because I will be following you. You will then stand beside the train door where I can see you until it’s ready to move off, and you will stay there while it moves off because if you
don’t
stand that way I will shoot you. If you want to know why I’m so trigger-happy, you can ask Angbard yourself—after you’ve delivered his dispatches.”

“You must be—” his eyes widened.

“Don’t say my name.”

He nodded.

“You’re going to be an hour late into Boston—an hour later than you would have been, anyway. Don’t bother trying to organize a search for me because I won’t be there. Instead, go to the Fort Lofstrom doppelgänger house, make your delivery to Matthias as usual, say you missed the train or something, then ask to see the old man and tell him about meeting me here.”

“What?” He looked puzzled. “I thought you had a message.”

“
You
are the message.” She grinned humourlessly. “And you’ve got to be alive to deliver it. We’re slowing up: Do as I tell you and it’ll all be over soon.”

He shook his head very slowly. “They were right about you,” he said. But when she asked him who he meant, he just stared at her.

Epilogue

There was an old building on Central Avenue, with windows soundproofed against the roar of turbo-fans. Whenever the wind was from the southwest and inbound flights were diverted across the city, the airliners would rattle the panes. But perhaps there were other reasons for the soundproofing.

Two men sat in a second-floor office, Matthias leaning back behind a desk and Roland perched uncomfortably close to the edge of a sofa in front of it.

“Consignment F-12 is on schedule,” said Matthias. “It says so right here on the manifest. Isn’t that right?”

He fixed Roland with a cold stare.

“I inspected it myself,” said Roland. Despite his stiff posture and the superficial appearance of unease, he sounded self-confident. “Contractor Wolfe has the right attitude: businesslike attention to detail. They vet their workers thoroughly.”

“Well.” Matthias leaned across his desk. “It’s a pity the cargo is laid over in Svarlberg while a storm blows itself out, isn’t it?”

“Damn.” Roland looked annoyed. “That’s recent, I take it?”

‘Two days ago. I did a spot inspection myself. Impressed Vincenze to carry me across for the past week. I think you’d better warn Wolfe that F-12 is going to be at least four days late, possibly as much as seven.”

“Damn.” A nod. “Okay, I’ll do that. Usual disclaimers?”

“It’s in the warranty small-print.”

Neither of them cracked a smile. The Clan provided its own underwriting service—one that more than made up for the usurious transport charges it levied. The customer code-named Wolfe would damn well swallow the four- to seven-day delay and smile, because the cargo
would
arrive, one way or another, which was more than could be said for most of the Clan’s competitors. If it didn’t, the Clan would pay up in full, at face value, no question. “We have a reputation to guard.”

“I’ll get onto it.” Roland pulled out a small notebook and scribbled a cryptic entry in it. He caught Matthias staring. “No names, no pack drill.” He tucked the notebook away carefully.

“It’s good to know you can keep a secret.”

“Huh?”

‘There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.” He didn’t smile. “Look at this.” Reaching into a desk drawer, Matthias pulled out a slim file binder and slid it across the desk. Roland rose and collected it, sat down, opened it, and tensed, frowning.

“Page one. Our prodigal dresses for dinner. Nice ass, by the way.”

A glare from the sofa. If looks could kill, Matthias would be ashes blowing on the wind.

“Turn over. That’s her, leaving her room, shot from behind. Someone ought to tell her she oughtn’t to leave security camera footage lying around like that, someone might steal it. Turn over.” Reluctantly, he turned over. “That’s her, in the passageway to a room in—” Matthias coughed discreetly into his fist. “And over, and oh dear, there seems to be a camera behind the bathroom mirror, doesn’t there? I wonder how that got there. And now if you turn over, you’ll see that—”

Roland slammed the folder shut with an inarticulate growl, then slapped it down on the desk. “What’s your point?” he demanded, shaking with anger. “What the fuck do you
want?
Spying on me—”

“Sit down,” snapped Matthias.

Roland sat, shoulders hunched.

“You’ve put me on the spot, did you know that? I could show this to Angbard, you realize. In fact, I
should
show it to him. I’ve got a
duty
to show it to him. But I haven’t—yet. I could show it to Lady Olga, too, but I think neither you nor she would care about that unless I embarrassed her publicly. Which would raise too many questions. What in Lightning Child’s name were you
thinking
of, Roland?”

“Don’t.” Roland hunched forward, eyes narrowed in pain.

“If Angbard sees this, he will rip you a new asshole. To be fair, he might rip
her
a new asshole too, but she’s better positioned to survive the experience. You—” he shook his head. “I see a long future for you as Clan ambassador to the Iroquois. Or maybe the Apache nation. For as long as any Clan ambassador lasts in one of those posts.”

“You haven’t told him, though.” Roland stared at the floor in front of the desk, trying to hide his suspicions. Surely Matthias wouldn’t be telling him this if he was just going to go straight to the duke?

“Well, no.” His interrogator fell silent for a while. “I’m not a
robot
, you know. Loyal servant, yes—but I have my own ambitions.”

“ ‘Ambitions’ ?” Roland looked up, his expression strained.

“The Clan doesn’t offer an ideal career track for such as I.” He shrugged. “I expect you to understand that better than most of them.”

Roland licked his lips. “What do you want?” he asked quietly. “What are you after?”

“I’m after the status quo ante.” He picked up the file and slid it into a desk drawer. “Your little … servant… made waves where she shouldn’t have. I want her out of the picture: I hasten to add, this doesn’t mean dead, it just means
invisible
.”

“You want her to disappear.” For an instant, an expression of hope flickered across Roland’s face.

“Possibly.” He nodded. “I think you’d like that—if you went with her. Wouldn’t you?”

“Damn you, three years was all I had … !”

“If you do as I say, then the folder and its contents—and all the other copies—will vanish. And the Clan won’t be able to touch you ever again. Either of you. What do you say?”

Roland licked his lips. “I thought this was blackmail.”

“What makes you think it isn’t?”

* * *