The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (20 page)

It was only later, lying awake in the stuffy darkness of her compartment, that Miriam’s worries caught up with her. And by then it was too late to take back the coin (W
hat if the Clan
counts the decoy cash?
) or to unopen the bag (
What if they’re testing me again?
) or unread the peculiar memoranda (
What’s a W* heterozygote?
) or even the samizdat
tract by the executed French dissident Jean-Paul Mavrides.

*

The remainder of her outbound trip went uneventfully. Miriam turned out of bed at seven in the morning, forced down as much of a light breakfast as she could manage in the
already oppressive heat, then alighted with her bag at Dunedin station. From there it was a brief cab ride to the safe house, an anonymous classical villa in the middle of a leafy suburb on the
edge of the city center. She knocked on the door, and her contact ushered her into a basement room. Then he waited outside while she opened one of the two lockets she wore on a fine gold chain
around her neck and focused on it.

The usual headache clamped around her head, making her feel breathless and sick. But she was back in the Gruinmarkt again – or rather, in an outpost in the middle of the Debatable Lands,
the great interior void unclaimed by the eastern marcher states or the empire on the west coast. Three bored-looking men sat around a log table in the middle of the room, one dressed to play Davy
Crockett and the other two in sharp suits and shades. It might have been a frontier cabin, except frontier cabins didn’t come with kerosene heaters, shortwave radio sets, and a rack of Steyr
assault rifles by the door.

‘Courier route blue four, parcel sixteen,’ Miriam said in her halting Hochsprache as she stepped off the taped transit area on the floor and planted her carpetbag on the table. Davy
Crockett passed her a clipboard wordlessly, boredom clear on his face. Miriam signed off.

Sharp Suit Number One picked up her bag. ‘Well, I’ll be going,’ he said, signing the board. Walking over to the far side of the room he pulled a gleaming metal suitcase off the
top of a chest, then stuffed the entire carpetbag inside it. Back on the transit area he picked up the case, nodded at Davy Crockett, then at Miriam, and clicked his heels together.
‘There’s no place like home,’ he intoned, staring into a niche in the wall that Miriam hadn’t noticed before. Then he wasn’t there anymore.
He didn’t make a
sound
, she realized, massaging her forehead: not that she’d ever paid much attention to other world-walkers in their comings and goings, but –
doesn’t teleportation imply
air displacement?

‘Would you like coffee? Or wine?’ asked Sharp Suit Number Two.

‘Uh, coffee is be good –’ Miriam’s Hochsprache broke down completely as she made it to the table. ‘And ibuprofen.’ She fanned herself with her hat. ‘Is
it always this hot here?’

‘Stupid question.’ At last Davy Crockett spoke. ‘I’ve had a requisition for a portable air conditioner and solar power pack in for, oh, two years.’

Two years?
Miriam quailed at the idea of being assigned to babysit a frontier safe house like this for any length of time.

‘Still not enough hands for a game of poker,’ Sharp Suit Number Two said regretfully. He blinked, slightly owlishly.

‘The clock is ticking,’ intoned Davy Crockett. ‘Two hours.’ He nodded at Miriam. ‘When’s your train?’

‘Um. The return leaves just after four, so allow an hour to get to the station – ’

‘No problem.’ He picked up his pack of cards, shuffled the deck, and began dealing some kind of a solitaire hand. ‘We’ll get you there.’

‘Is there anything to do here?’ Miriam asked.

‘Play cards. Seriously, you don’t go out that door unless the roof is on fire. Wouldn’t like the company hereabouts, anyways, and you’ve got a train to catch in five
hours.’

‘Oh.’ Miriam shifted uneasily on her chair.

‘I’ll tell them you’ve arrived,’ said the stationmaster. He stood up heavily and shambled over to the shortwave set.

Sharp Suit Number Two fussed over the kerosene stove; presently he turned it down and returned to the table bearing a metal espresso pot. ‘So,’ he said, hunching his shoulders
conspiratorially, ‘what’s it like, then?’

Miriam looked at him blankly. ‘What’s what like?’

‘Over
there
. You know.’ He waved at her, a gesture that took in everything she was wearing. ‘Different, isn’t it, to America? In Chicago you’d stand out
like, oh, obvious.’

‘Oh,
there
.’ It was clearly going to be a long wait. ‘Well, for starters, they don’t have air-conditioning . . .’

*

The return journey went smoothly, with no troublesome signs of recognition. There were no unwelcome traveling companions, no desperate Marissa to spark Miriam’s paranoia,
and no delays. Miriam managed to keep her nimble fingers away from the courier bag, having remembered to pause in the railway station kiosk before departure and pick up a selection of newspapers
and a cheap novel or two. The headlines, as always, perplexed and mystified her as she tried to make sense of them.
Comptroller-General Announces Four-Fifths per Gross Increase in Salt License
Fee
– what on earth did that mean? Licensing
salt
? And there was more inside.
Sky Navy to Impress Packets
just about made sense, but when she got to the sports pages
(
Chicxulub Aztecs versus Eton Barbarians: Goal Scored!
) it turned baffling. Not only did they not play football or baseball, they didn’t even play soccer or cricket: instead they had
other esoteric team games – like the Aztecs versus Barbarians wall ball match, in which the Aztecs had apparently just scored the first goal in a major league match for fourteen years.

A day on a train gave Miriam a lot of time for thought.
I need bargaining power
, she concluded.
Otherwise they’re going to keep me on a short leash forever. And sooner or
later they’ll get serious about marrying me off
. Serried ranks of W* heterozygote babies line-danced in her imagination when she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
How did I get
into this bind?

Asking herself that question was pointless: if she pursued the answer far enough, she came to the uncomfortable conclusion that it was her own fault: her dogged tendency to dig for the truth had
gotten her into the Clan’s business. (And behind that story lay Iris’s shady history, her mother’s attempt to escape from an unhappy Clan-decreed dynastic marriage – but
some subjects were best treated with kid gloves.)
If I want some personal space I’m going to have to manufacture it for myself
. But persuading her distant relatives to back off was
not easy: privacy seemed to be in scant supply outside the United States. Especially if you harbored valuable genes or looked like your mere presence might upset the established order. And as to
just
why
privacy was in short supply . . .

By the time she reached the safe house in the New London suburbs she was feeling tired, irritable, and increasingly itchy and dirty. She’d been in transit for three days, and the trains
didn’t have so much as a shower on board.
Next time I’ll take an extra change of clothes
, she resolved – this kind of issue obviously didn’t affect the Clan courier
operations in the United States.

When she signed off the courier bag, Miriam got her first surprise: a coach was waiting for her in the courtyard of Lord Brunvig’s town house, and Brill beside it, in an agony of
impatience. ‘Milady! It’s almost two o’clock! Quick, we must get you back to your rooms immediately, there’s barely time.’

‘Time? For what?’ Miriam asked, pausing on the bottom step of the boarding platform with a sense of exquisite dread.
Oh no –

‘The royal entertainment! It’s tonight! Oh, Miriam, if I had
realized
it would take you three days I would have yelled at his lordship – ’

‘Well, none of us thought of it, did we?’ Miriam said as she climbed into the carriage. ‘Everything happens more slowly over there.’ She gritted her teeth and settled
down into a corner, her nose wrinkling.
It’s unavoidable
, she thought to herself.
I really
am
going to have to answer him
. The question the king himself had asked
her, nearly six months ago. Brill, sitting opposite her, looked anxious. ‘Do I have time to clean up first?’ Miriam asked. ‘And a bite to eat?’

‘I hope so – ’

‘Well, then it’ll all work out.’ Miriam managed a tired smile. ‘So how about telling me what’s been going on while I’ve been away?’

Three hours later she was still hungry, even more tired, and back in the carriage with Brill. This time they were on their way to the summer palace with an escort of mounted guards, clutching
scented kerchiefs to their faces to keep the worst of the stench of the open sewers at bay.
A fortune in jewelry, the most expensive luxurious clothes they can afford to impress one another
with, but the drains are medieval: typical Clan priorities
. Miriam shrugged, trying to get comfortable against the hard seat back. Her maids had squeezed her into the most excessive gown
she’d ever set eyes on. It seemed to weigh half a ton even before they’d added a tiara and a few pounds of gold and pearls. It was uncomfortably tight, and the layered skirts had a
train that dragged along the ground behind her in a foam of lace and got in the way when she walked.
Romantic and feminine be damned, I’m going to be lucky to make it as far as the front
door without tripping
. Brill had been saying something. ‘What was that?’ she asked, distracted.

‘I was saying, did you want the high points again?’ Brill sniffed pointedly. ‘I know you’re tired, but it’s important.’

‘I know it’s important,’ Miriam said sharply. ‘Forgive me. Not your fault.’
These formal events always seem to bring out the worst in me, don’t they?
‘This gown needs adjusting. I’m uncomfortable – and a bit tired.’

‘I’ll arrange another session with Mistress Tanzig when we get back, milady. For tomorrow. I hope you won’t hold it against her – it’s hard to get the cut right
when your ladyship’s absent.’ Brill leaned forward to peer at her. ‘Hmm. You’re being Miriam, Miriam. A word of commendation?’

‘Uh, yes?’

‘Try to be Helge. For tonight, just for tonight.’

‘But I –’ She bit her tongue as she saw Brilliana’s expression.

‘You don’t like being Helge,’ Brill said. ‘It’s not as if you go out of your way to conceal it. But just this once –’ Her eyes narrowed, calculatingly,
as she fanned herself. ‘Milady, Miriam is too
American
. Prickly about the wrong things. But this isn’t a crowded garden party, this is an intimate informal household
entertainment, just us and fifty or sixty family members and courtiers and ministers. If Miriam offers offense . . .’

‘I . . . I’ll try.’ Helge fanned herself weakly in the warm, clammy air and tried to relax. ‘I’ll try to be me. For the evening.’

‘That’s perfect!’ Brilliana smiled. ‘Now, the high points. You’ve met his royal highness, the princes Egon and Creon, and the Queen Mother. But this evening
you’re also likely to encounter his grace the Prince of Eijnmyrk and his wife, Princess Ikarie – his majesty’s youngest sister – and the Duke du Tostvijk. Main thing to
remember is that his grace the prince’s marriage is what you would term morganatic. Then there are the high ministers and his holiness the Autonomé du Roma, high priest of Lightning
Child . . .’

*

An intimate informal household entertainment
– by the standards of the social world of the Niejwein aristocracy it was, indeed, uncomfortably small. Helge was
introduced to one smiling face after another, assessed like a prize brood mare, forced to make small talk in her halting Hochsprache, and stared at in mild disbelief, like a counting pig. At the
end of it all her head was spinning with the effort of trying to remember who everybody was and how she was meant to address them. And then the moment she’d been secretly dreading arrived:
‘Ah, how charmed we are to see you again,’ said the short, portly fellow with the rosy bloom of broken blood vessels around his nose and the dauntingly heavy gold chain draped around
his shoulders. He swayed slightly as if tired or slightly drunk. Helge managed to curtsey before him without saying anything. ‘Been what, half a year?’

Helge nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Last time they’d met he’d made her an offer which, in all probability, had been kindly meant.

‘Walk with us,’ said His Royal Highness Alexis Nicholau III, in a tone of such supreme self-confidence that refusal seemed inconceivable.

There was a state dining room beyond the doors at the end of the gallery, but Alexis drifted slowly toward a side door instead. Two lords or captains or bodyguards of rank followed discreetly,
while a third slipped ahead to open the door. ‘Haven’t seen much of you at court, these past six months,’ remarked the king. ‘Pressure of
work
, we
understand.’ He rubbed the side of his nose morosely, then glanced at the nearest guard. ‘Glass of sack for the lady, Hildt.’ The guard vanished. ‘We hear a bit about you
from our man Henryk. Nothing too outrageous.’ He looked amused about something – amused, and determined.

Helge quailed inside. King Alexis might be plump, short, and drunk, but he was the
king
. ‘What can I do for your majesty?’ she managed to ask.

‘It’s been six months.’ The guard returned, extended a glass of amber fortified wine for the king – and, an afterthought, a smaller fluted glass for Helge. ‘Just
about any situation can change in six months, don’t you know. Back then I said you were too old. Seems
everyone
is too old these days, or otherwise unsuitable, or married.’ He
raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Wouldn’t do to marry a young maid to the Idiot – come now, do you think I don’t know what my own subjects call my youngest son?’

‘I’ve never met the . . . uh, met Creon,’ Helge said carefully. ‘At least, not to talk to. Is he, really?’ She’d seen him before, at court. Prince Creon took
after his father in looks, except that his father didn’t drool on his collar. ‘My duties kept me away from court so much that I know too little – I mean to cause no offense
– ’