The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (10 page)

‘Kara? Where are –’ she began, sticking to Hochsprache, that particular phrase coming more easily than most, when she realized that a knot of courtiers standing nearby was
coming her way. They were mostly young, and all male, and their loud chatter and raucous laughter caught Miriam’s attention in a way that was at once naggingly familiar and unwelcome.
Shit, Kara, you pick your time to go missing beautifully
. She glanced round, ready to retreat, but there was no easy way out of the path of the gaggle of jocks –

One of whom was speaking to her. ‘What?’ she said blankly, all vestiges of Hochsprache vanishing from her memory like the morning dew.

He glanced over his shoulder and said something: more laughter, with an unfriendly edge to it. ‘You are – wrong, the wrong, place,’ he said, staring down his nose at her.
‘Go home, grovel, bitch.’ Someone behind him said something in Hochsprache.

Miriam glared at him. Rudeness needed no translation. And backing down wouldn’t guarantee safety. Her heart hammering, she fumbled for words: ‘What dog, are, belong you, do you
belong to? I am offense – ’

Almost too late she saw his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword.
A sword?
Surprise almost drowned her fear – swords were forbidden in the royal presence, except by the
bodyguard. But this wasn’t the king’s party. The arrogant young asshole began to turn to one side and she realized hazily that he wasn’t about to draw on her – not in public
– as she got a glimpse past his shoulder of a bored, half-amused golden-boy profile she’d seen once before, saying something to her assailant.
Oh shit, it’s him. Egon
.
The crown prince, handsome and perfect in form and a spoiled hothead by upbringing. The bottom threatened to drop out of her world: this perfect jock could actually get away with murder, if he was
so inclined.

‘He says, you bed him, maybe he not kill you when he king, bitch.’ Two other bravos, brilliantly dressed, managed to interpose themselves between the self-appointed translator and
his pack leader. ‘With the others.’

A black fury threatened to cut off Miriam’s vision. ‘Tell him to get lost,’ she said sharply, in English, dropping all pretense of politeness.
If you surrender
they’ll own you
, she thought bleakly, forcing her momentarily treacherous knees to hold her upright.
And if you won’t surrender they’ll try to break you
.
‘I’m not his – ’

‘You are the Countess Helge voh Thorold d’Hjorth?’ someone behind her shoulder asked in stilted English. She glanced round, her heart hammering in barely suppressed anger.
While the jocks made sport she’d completely missed the other group that appeared to want something of her: two gentlemen with the bearing of bodyguards, shepherding four maids who clustered
around a stooped figure, moving with exaggerated caution.

‘I –’ Trapped between the two factions she summoned up Helge, who racked her brain for the correct form of response. ‘I am that one,’ she managed, flustered.

‘Good. You are –’ Then she lost him. The guard spoke too fast for her to track his words, syllables sliding into one another.

She forced a smile, tense and ugly, then stole a glance back over her shoulder, lest one of Egon’s thugs was about to stick a knife in her back. But they were talking and joking about
something else, their attention no longer focused on her like hunting dogs. ‘I beg your pardon. Please to repeat this?’

The guard stepped around her. ‘I’ll take care of the boys,’ he said quietly. Louder: ‘This is her royal highness, the Queen Mother. She would have words with
you.’

‘I, ah –’
hope she’s not as rude as her eldest grandson
. Numb with surprise, Helge managed a curtsey. ‘Am it pleased by your presence, your royal high!
Highness,’ she managed before she completely lost her ability to stay in character.

The stooped figure reached out a hand to her. ‘Rise.’

Damn
, Helge swore to herself.
How much worse can it get? The
one
situation where I need backup
–
a royal audience
–
comes up
twice,
and what’s Kara doing?
‘Your majesty,’ she said, bending to kiss the offered hand.

The Queen Mother resembled Mother Theresa of Calcutta – if the latter had ever sported a huge Louis Quinze hairdo and about a hundred yards of black silk taffeta held together with ruby-
and sapphire-encrusted lumps of gold. Her eyes were sunken and watery with rheum, and her face was gaunt, the skin drawn tight over her beak of a nose. She looked to be eighty years old, but having
been presented before her son, Miriam reckoned she couldn’t be much over sixty. ‘Rise, I said,’ the Queen Mother croaked in Hochsprache. Then in English: ‘You shall call me
Angelin. And I shall call you Helge.’

‘I –’ Miriam blanked for a moment. It was just one shock too many. ‘Yes, Angelin.’
You’re the king’s mother
–
you can call me
anything you like and I’m not going to talk back
. (As Roland had put it, his majesty Alexis Nicholau III of the Kingdom of Gruinmarkt liked to collect jokes about his family – he
had two dungeons full of them.) ‘What can I – I’m at your service – I mean – ’

The Queen Mother’s face wrinkled. After a moment Miriam realized she was smiling.
At least she isn’t howling, ‘Off with her head!’
‘What you’re
wondering is, why do I speak this language?’ Miriam nodded mutely, still numb and shaken by the confrontation with Egon’s bravos. ‘It’s a long story.’ The older woman
wheezed. ‘Walk with me, please.’

Angelin was stooped, her back so bent that she had to crane her neck back to see the ground ahead of her. And she walked at a painful shuffle. Miriam matched her speed, feeling knuckles like
walnuts in an empty leather glove clutch at her arm.
I’m being honored
, she realized. Royalty didn’t stoop to using just anyone as a walking frame. After a moment a
long-dormant part of her memory kicked into life:
Ankylosing spondylitis?
she wondered. If so, it was a miracle Angelin was out of bed without painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs.

‘I knew your mother when she was a little girl,’ said the queen. ‘Delightful girl, very strong-willed.’
She said ‘I.’ That means she’s talking
personally, doesn’t it? Or is it only the reigning monarch who says ‘we’? If that applies here?
Miriam puzzled as the queen continued: ‘Glad to see they haven’t
drowned it out of her. Have they?’

That seemed to demand a reply. ‘I don’t think so, your royal highness.’ Shuffle.

‘Oh, they’ll try,’ Angelin added unreassuringly. ‘Just like last time.’

Like what?
Miriam bit her tongue. Her head was spinning with questions, fear and anger demanding attention, and the small of her back was slippery-cold with sweat. Angelin was steering
her toward a side door in the palace, and her ladies-in-waiting and guards were screening her most effectively. If Kara had noticed anything – but Kara wasn’t in sight and Miriam
didn’t dare create a scene by looking for her. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ Miriam asked, desperately looking for a tactful formula, something to help her steer the
conversation toward waters she was competent to navigate.

‘Perhaps.’ The door opened before them as if by magic, to reveal a small vestibule. Four more guards waited on either side of a thronelike chair. A padded stool sat before it.
‘Please be seated in our presence.’ Two of the guards stepped forward to cradle the old queen’s shoulders, while a third positioned the stool beneath her. ‘Take the chair; I
cannot use it.’

Definitely some kind of autoimmune
– Miriam forced herself to stop thinking. She sat down carefully, grateful for the support.

‘Leave us.’ Angelin’s gimlet stare sent all but two of the guards packing. The last two stood in front of the door, their faces turned to the woodwork but their hands on the
hilts of their swords. The Queen Mother looked back at Miriam. ‘It is seven years since Eloise died,’ said Angelin. ‘And Alexis is not inclined to remarry. He’s got his
heir, and for all his faults, lack of devotion to his wife’s memory is not one of them.’

‘Ah.’ Miriam realized her fingers were digging into her knees, and she forced herself to let go.

‘You can relax. This is not a job interview; nobody is going to offer you the throne,’ Angelin added, so abruptly that Miriam almost choked.

‘But I didn’t want – ’ She brought herself up fast. ‘I’m sorry. You, uh, speak English very well. The vernacular – ’

‘I grew up over there,’ said Angelin, then was silent for almost a minute.

She
grew up
there?
The statement was wholly outrageous, even though the individual words made sense.

Eventually, Angelin began to speak again. ‘The six families have aspired to become seven for almost a century now. I was only eighteen, you know. Back in 1942. Last time the council tried
to capture the throne. They didn’t want me siding with my braid lineage, so they had me brought up in secrecy, in America; it wouldn’t be the first time, or the last. They brought me
back and civilized me then farmed me out to the third son when I came of age. Both his elder brothers subsequently died, in a hunting accident and of a fever, respectively. The council of
landholders – the Landsknee – screamed blue murder and threatened to annul the marriage: but then the six started tearing each other’s guts out in civil war, and that was an end
to the matter, for a generation.’

The lamplight flickered and Miriam felt an icy certainty clutching at her guts. ‘You mean, the Clan?’ she asked. ‘You’re a world-walker?’

‘I
was
.’ Angelin’s eyes were dark hollows in the dim light. ‘Pregnancy changes you, you know. I doubt I’d survive if I tried it, today. My old bones are
not what they were. And I gather the other world has changed, too. But enough about me.’ A withered flicker of a smile: ‘I know your grandmother. She swears by you, you know. Well, she
swears
about
you, but that’s much the same: it means you’re in her thoughts. She’s pigheaded, too.’

‘I don’t see eye to eye with her,’ Helge said tightly. The Duchess Hildegarde had once sent agents to kill or rape her, thinking her an imposter; since proven wrong, she had
subsided into a resentful sulk broken only by expressions of disdain or contempt.
What a loving family we aren’t
.

‘She told me that herself,’ the Queen Mother said dismissively. Her eyes gleamed as she looked directly at Helge. ‘I wanted to see you myself before I made my mind up,’
she said.

‘Made your mind up?’ Miriam could hear her voice rising unpleasantly, even though everything she’d learned as Helge told her she must stick to a cultivated awe in the royal
personage. ‘About
what
? I’ve just been threatened by your grandson – ’

‘Don’t you worry about that.’ Angelin sounded almost amused. ‘I’ll deal with Egon later. You may leave now. I won’t stand on ceremony. Thurman, show the lady
out – ’

‘What
is
this?’ Miriam demanded plaintively.

‘Later,’ said the Queen Mother, as one of the guards – Thurman – urged Helge toward the door. ‘The trait is recessive,’ she added, slightly louder.
‘That means – ’

‘I know what it means,’ Miriam said sharply.

‘We’ll talk later. Go now.’ The Queen Mother looked away dismissively. The door closed behind Helge, stranding the younger woman at one side of a sprung dance floor where
couples paced in circles around each other in complex patterns that defied interpretation. Miriam – at this moment she felt herself to be entirely Miriam, not even an echo of the social
veneer that formed her alter ego Helge remaining to cover the yawning depths – took a ragged breath. She felt stifled by layers of artifice, suffocated by the social expectations of having to
live as a noble lady: and now she had to put up with threats, innuendo, and hints from the royal family? She felt hot and cold at once, and her stomach hurt.

The trait is recessive
. The king was a carrier. That meant that each of his sons had a one in four chance of being a carrier.
Have you thought about marriage? Obviously not from the
right angle, because you’ve been too successful, too fast
. Wasn’t Prince Egon – golden boy with a thousand-yard stare, watching her with something ugly in his eyes –
already engaged to some foreign princess?
Raised in secrecy
. Might
he
be a carrier?
I know your grandmother
.

‘Lady Helge!’ It was Kara, two maids in tow, looking angry and relieved simultaneously. ‘Where have you been? We were so worried!’

‘Hold this,’ said Miriam, thrusting the empty glass at her. Then she darted outside as fast as she could, in search of a bush to throw up behind.