The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (13 page)

The frightened clerk pointed one ink-blackened fingertip. ‘Yonder,’ he quavered, then ducked and ran for cover.

Kara hurried to catch up. ‘Mistress, if you go shoving in you will upset the order of things.’

‘Then it’s about time someone upset them,’ Miriam retorted, pausing outside a substantial door. ‘They’ve been giving me the runaround, I’m going to give them
the bull in a china shop. This the place?’

‘What’s a Chinese shop?’ Kara was even more confused than usual.

‘Never mind. He’s in here, isn’t he?’ Not waiting for a reply, Miriam rapped hard on the door.

A twenty-something fellow in knee breeches and an elaborate shirt opened it. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m here to see Baron Henryk, at his earliest convenience,’ Miriam said firmly. ‘I assume he’s in?’

‘Do you have an appointment?’

The youngster didn’t get it. Miriam took a deep breath. ‘I have,
now
. At his earliest convenience, do you hear?’

‘Ah-ahem. Whom should I say . . . ?’

‘His great-niece Helge.’ Miriam resisted for a moment the urge to tap her toe impatiently, then gave in.

The lad vanished into a large and hideously overdecorated room, and she heard a mutter of conversation. Then: ‘Show her in! Show her in by all means, Walther, then make yourself
scarce.’

The door opened wider. ‘Please come in, the baron will be with you momentarily.’ The young secretary stood aside as Miriam walked in, Kara tiptoeing at her heels, then vanished into
the corridor. The door closed behind him, and for the first moment Miriam began to wonder if she’d made a mistake.

The room was built to the same vast proportions as most imperial dwellings hereabouts, so that the enormous desk in the middle of it looked dwarfishly short, like a gilded black-topped coffee
table covered in red leather boxes. Bookcases lined one wall, filled with dusty ledgers, while the other walls – paneled in oak – were occupied by age-blackened oil paintings or a high
window casement looking out over the high street. The plasterwork hanging from the ceiling resembled a cubist grotto, cluttered with gilded cherubim and inedible fruit. Baron Henryk hunched behind
the desk, his head bent slightly to one side. His long white hair glowed in the early afternoon light from the window and his face was in shadow; he wore local court dress, hand-embroidered with
gold thread, but his fingertips were dark with ink from the array of pens that fronted his desk in carved stone inkwells. ‘Ah, great-niece Helge! How charming to see you at such short
notice.’ He rose slowly and gestured toward a seat. ‘This would be your lady-in-waiting, Lady . . . ?’

‘Kara,’ Miriam supplied.

Kara cringed slightly and smiled ingratiatingly at the baron. ‘I tried to explain – ’

‘Hush, it’s perfectly all right, child.’ The baron smiled at her. ‘Why don’t you join Walther outside? Keep the servants out, why don’t you. Perhaps you
should take tea together in the long hall, I gather that’s the custom these days among the young people.’

‘But I –’ Kara swallowed, dipped a quick curtsey, and fled.

Henryk waited until the door closed behind her, then turned to Miriam with a faint smile on his face. ‘Well, well, well. To what emergency do I owe the honor of your presence?’

Miriam pulled the envelope out of her shoulder bag. ‘This. Addressee unknown. I was hoping you might be able to explain what’s going on.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I am
being given the runaround – nobody’s talking to me! I’m sorry I had to barge in on you like this, at short notice. But it’s reached the point where any attempt I make to go
through channels and find out what’s going on is being thrown back in my face.’

‘I see.’ Henryk gestured vaguely at a chair. ‘Please, have a seat. White or red?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Wine?’ He walked over to a sideboard that Miriam had barely noticed, beside one of the bookcases. ‘An early-afternoon digestif, perhaps.’

‘White, if you don’t mind. Just a little.’ It was one of the things that had taken Miriam by surprise when she first stumbled into the Clan’s affairs, the way people
hereabouts drank like fishes. Not just the hard liquor, but wine and beer – tea and coffee were expensive imports, she supposed, and the water sanitation was straight out of the dark ages.
Diluting it with alcohol killed most parasites.

Henryk fiddled with a decanter, then carried two lead crystal glasses over to his desk. ‘Here. Make free with the bottle, you are my guest.’

Miriam raised her glass. ‘Your health.’

‘Ah.’ Henryk sat back down with a sigh. ‘Now, where were we?’

‘I was trying to reach people.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Henryk nodded. ‘Not having much luck,’ he suggested.

‘Right. Angbard isn’t answering his mail. In fact, I can’t even get a letter through to him. Same goes for everyone I know in his security operation. Which isn’t to say
that stuff doesn’t come in the other direction, but . . . I’ve got a company to run, in New Britain, haven’t I? They pulled me out two months ago, saying it wasn’t safe, and
I’ve been cooling my heels ever since. When
is
it going to be safe? They don’t seem to realize business doesn’t stop just because they’re worried about Matthias
having left some surprises behind, or the Lees are still thinking about signing the papers. I could be going bankrupt over there!’

‘Absolutely true.’ Henryk took a sip of wine. ‘It’s incontrovertible. Yes, I think I see what the problem is. You were absolutely right to come to me.’ He put his
glass down. ‘Although next time I would appreciate a little bit more notice.’

‘Um, I’m sorry about that.’ For the first time Miriam noticed that the top of the desk wasn’t leather, it was a black velvet cloth, hastily laid over whatever papers
Henryk didn’t want her intruding upon. ‘I’d exhausted all the regular channels.’

‘Yes, well, I’ll be having words with Walther.’ A brief flicker of smile: ‘He needs to learn to be firmer.’

‘But you were free to see me at short notice.’

‘Not completely free, as you can see.’ His languid wave took in the cluttered desk. ‘Never mind. If in future you need to see me, have your secretary make an appointment and
flag it for my eyes – it will make everything run much more smoothly. In particular, if you attach an agenda it will be dealt with before things reach this state. Your secretary should
– ’

‘You keep saying, have your secretary do this. I don’t
have
a secretary, uncle!’

Henryk raised an eyebrow. ‘Then who was the young lady who came with you?’

‘That’s Kara, she’s –
oh
. You mean she’s supposed to be able to handle appointments?’ Miriam covered her mouth.

Baron Henryk frowned. ‘No, not her. You were supposed to be assigned an assistant. Who was, ahem, ah – oh yes.’ He jerked his chin in an abrupt nod. ‘That would be the
Lady Brilliana, would it not? And I presume you haven’t seen her for some weeks?’

‘She’s meant to be a secretary?’ Miriam boggled at the thought. ‘Well, yes, but . . .’ Brill probably
would
make a decent administrative assistant, now
that she thought about it. Anyone who didn’t take her bullet points seriously would find themselves facing real ones, sure enough. Brill was mature, competent, sensible – in the way
that Kara was not – and missing, unlike Kara. ‘I haven’t seen her since I arrived here.’

‘That will almost certainly be because of the security flap,’ said Henryk. ‘I’ll try to do something about that. Lady Brilliana is your right hand, Helge. Perhaps her
earlier duties – yes, you need her watching your back while you’re here more than Angbard needs another sergeant at arms.’

‘Another what – oh. Okay.’ Miriam nodded. That Angbard had planted Brill in her household as a spy (and bodyguard) wasn’t exactly a secret anymore, but it hadn’t
occurred to her that it was meant to be permanent, or that Brilliana had other duties, as Henryk put it.
Sergeant at arms! Well
. ‘That would help.’

‘She knows what strings to pull,’ Henryk said. ‘She can teach you what to do when she’s not there to pull them for you. But as a matter of general guidance, it’s
usually best to tug gently. You never know what might be on the other end,’ he added.

Miriam’s ears flushed. ‘I didn’t mean to kick the anthill over,’ she said defensively, ‘but my business wasn’t designed to run on autopilot. I’ve been
given the cold shoulder so comprehensively that it feels like I’m being cut out of things deliberately.’

‘How do you know you aren’t?’ asked Henryk.

‘But, if I’m –’ She stopped. ‘
Why
would anyone cut me out of running the New Britain operation, when it won’t run without me? I’m not doing any
good here, I mean, apart from learning to ride a horse and not look a complete idiot on a dance floor. And basic grammar. All I’m asking for is an occasional update. Why is nobody
answering?’

‘Because they don’t trust you,’ Henryk replied. He put his glass down and stared at her. ‘Why do you think they should let you out where they can’t keep an eye on
you?’

‘I –’ Miriam stopped dead. ‘They
don’t
trust me?’ she asked, and even to herself she sounded slightly stupid. ‘Well, no shit. They’ve got
my
mother
as a hostage, there’s no way I can go back home until we know if Matt’s blown my original identity, Angbard knows just where I live on the New Britain side –
what do they think I’m going to do? Walk into a Royal Constabulary office and say, “Look, there’s a conspiracy of subversives from another world trying to invade you” or
something? Ask the DEA to stick me in a witness protection program?’ She realized she was getting agitated and tried to control her gestures. ‘I’m on side, Henryk! I had this
exact same argument with Angbard last year. I chewed it over with, with Roland. Think we didn’t discuss the possibility of quietly disappearing on you? Guess what: we didn’t! Because in
the final analysis, you’re family. And I’ve got no reason good enough to make me run away. It’s not like the old days when Patricia had to put up with an abusive husband for the
good of the Clan, is it? So yes, they should be able to trust me. About the only way they can expect me to be untrustworthy is if they treat me like this.’

She ran down, breathing heavily. Somewhere in the middle of things, she realized, she’d spilled a couple of drops of wine on the polished walnut top of Henryk’s desk. She leaned
forward and blotted them up with the cuff of her jacket.

‘You make a persuasive case,’ Henryk said thoughtfully.

Yes, but do you buy it?
Miriam froze inside.
What have I put my foot in here?

‘Personally, I believe you. But you see, I have met you. I can see that you are a lady of considerable personal integrity and completely honorable in all your dealings. But the Clan is
at this moment
battling for its very survival, and the people who make such decisions –
not
Angbard, he directs, his perch is very high up the tree indeed –
don’t know you from, from your lady-in-waiting out there. All they see is a dossier that says “feral infant, raised by runaway on other side, tendency toward erratic entrepreneurial
behavior, feminist, radical, unproven reliability”. They
know
you came back to the fold once, of your own accord, and that is marked down in your favor already, isn’t it?
You’re living in the lap of luxury, taking in the social season and pursuing the remedial studies you need in order to learn how to live among us. Expecting anything more, in the middle of a
crisis, is pushing things a little hard.’

‘You’re telling me I’m a prisoner,’ Miriam said evenly.

‘No!’ Henryk looked shocked. ‘You’re
not
a prisoner! You’re –’ He paused. ‘A probationer. Promising but unproven. If you keep to your
studies, cultivate the right people, go through channels, and show the right signs of trustworthiness, then sooner rather than later you’ll get exactly what you want. All you need to do is
convince the security adjutants charged with your safety that you are loyal and moderately predictable – that you will at least notify them
before
you engage in potentially dangerous
endeavors – and they will bow down before you.’ He frowned, then sniffed. ‘Your glass is empty, my dear. A refill, perhaps?’

‘Yes, please.’ Miriam sat very still while Henryk paced over to the sideboard and refilled both glasses, her mind whirling.
They see me as a probationer
. It wasn’t a
nice idea, but it explained a lot of things that had been happening lately. ‘If I’m on probation, then what about my mother? What about Patricia?’

‘Oh, she’s in terrible trouble,’ Henryk said reassuringly. ‘Absolutely
terrible
! Ghastly beyond belief!’ He said it with relish as he passed her the glass.
‘Go on, ask me why, you know you’re dying to.’

‘Um. Is it relevant?’

‘Absolutely.’ Henryk nodded. ‘You know how we normally deal with defectors around here.’

‘I –’ Miriam stopped. Defection was one of the unforgivable crimes. The Clan’s ability to function as an organization devoted to trade between worlds scaled as a function
of the number of couriers it could mobilize. Leaving, running away, didn’t merely remove the defector from the Clan’s control; it reduced the ability of the Clan as a whole to function.
Below a certain size, networks of world-walkers were vulnerable and weak, as the Lee family (stranded unknowingly in New Britain two centuries ago) had discovered. ‘Go on.’

‘Your mother has unusual extenuating circumstances to thank for her predicament. If not for which, she would probably be dead. Angbard swears blind that her disappearance was planned,
intended, to draw the faction of murderers out, and that she remained in contact with him at all times. A sleeper agent, in other words.’ Henryk’s cheek twitched. ‘Nobody is going
to tell the duke that he’s lying to his face. Besides which, if Patricia
hadn’t
disappeared when she did, the killing would have continued. When she returned to the fold’
– a minute shrug – ‘she brought you with her. A life for a life, if you like. Even her mother can see the value of not asking too many pointed questions at this time, of letting
sleeping secrets lie. And besides, the story might even be true. Stranger things happened during the war.’