The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (65 page)

She glanced down at the floor. ‘It’s possible it’s not you they’re looking for,’ she said.
I should have thought of this earlier: they know Erasmus is my
friend, why wouldn’t they be watching him? They’re probably watching Paulette, too
–
I’m a trouble magnet
. ‘Hair dye and a cover identity may not be
enough.’

‘Explain.’ He leaned forward.

‘Suppose someone in Boston spotted you leaving in a hurry, a day or two after I’d disappeared. They handed off to associates in New London. Either they followed you to your hotel, or
they figured you’d pay for a room under your own name. They missed a trick; they probably thought you were visiting a brothel for the usual reason –’ Were his ears turning red?
‘ – but when you reappeared with a woman they knew they’d found the trail. We threw them with the streetcar, and then I turned up at the hotel separately and in disguise, but they
picked us up again on the way into the station and if we hadn’t done the track side scramble they’d be –’ Her eyes widened.

‘What is it?’

‘We’ll have to be really careful if we go back to Boston.’

‘You think they’re looking for you, yes?’

‘Well –’ Miriam paused. ‘I’m not sure. It could be the Polis tailing you. But if they were doing that, why wouldn’t they turn over Lady Bishop’s
operation? I think it’s more likely someone who decided you might lead them to me. In which case it could be nearly anyone. The cousins in this world, maybe. Or it could be the Polis looking
for
me
, although I figure that’s unlikely. Or it could be the Clan, in which case the question is, which faction is it? It’s not as if – ’

‘The Clan factions would be a problem?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. Even if,
if,
I wanted to go back, I’d have to approach it really carefully. A random pickup could be
disastrous. I need to get in touch with them or they’ll think I’ve gone over the wall, and that’s – I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding from assassins.
But I’ve got to get in touch with the right people there, see if I can cut some kind of deal. I’ve got information they need, so I might be able to work something out – but I
don’t trust that slimy shit Morgan who they put in charge of the Boston office.’

‘But they’ve lost us, haven’t they? They can’t possibly overtake us before – ’

‘You’re wrong. They’ve got two-way wireless communications better than anything the Royal Post can build. If it
is
Clan security, they’ll have us in the
Gruinmarkt before we get off the platform.’

Erasmus nodded thoughtfully. ‘Then we won’t be on this train when it arrives, will we?’ He reached into his valise and pulled out a dog-eared gazetteer. ‘Let’s see.
If we get off at Hartford, the next stopping train is forty-two minutes behind us. If we catch that one, we can get off at Framingham and take the milk train into Cambridge, then hail a cab.
We’ll be a couple of hours later getting home, but if we do our business fast we can make the express, and we won’t be going through the city station. You know about the back route into
the cellar. Do you think your stalkers know about it?’

Miriam blotted at her forehead. ‘Olga would. But she’s not who I’m worried about. She I can talk to. You’re right, if we do it your way, we can probably get around
them.’ She managed a strained smile. ‘I really don’t need this. I don’t like being chased.’

‘It won’t be for long. Once we’re on the transcontinental, there’s no way they’ll be able to trace us.’

*

The shadows were lengthening and deepening, and the omnipresent creaking of cicadas provided an alien chorus as Huw sat in the folding chair on the back stoop, waiting for
Hulius. Elena had installed her boom box in the kitchen, and it was pumping out plastic girl-band pop from the window ledge. But she’d gone upstairs to powder her nose, leaving Huw alone with
the anxiety gnawing at his guts like a family of hungry rats. For the first hour or so he’d tried working on the laptop, chewing away at the report on research methodologies he was writing
for his grace, but it was hard to concentrate when he couldn’t stop imagining Yul out there in the chilly twilit pine forest, alone and in every imaginable permutation of jeopardy.
You
put him there,
Huw’s conscience kept reminding him:
You ought to be there instead.

Well yes,
he’d tell his conscience – which he liked to imagine was a loosely knit sock puppet in grime-stained violet yarn, with web-cams for eyes –
but you know
what would happen. I don’t have Yul’s training. And Yul doesn’t have the background to run this project if anything happened to me.
It sounded weak to his ears, even though
it was true. He’d known Yul back when he’d been a tow-headed blond streak of mischief, running wild through the forest back of Östhalle keep with a child’s bow and a belt of
rabbit scalps to show for it – and Huw had been a skinny, sickly, bookish boy, looked down on pityingly by his father and his hale, hunting-obsessed armsmen. The duke’s visit changed
all that, even though the intensive English tuition and the bewildering shift to a boarding school in the United States hadn’t felt like much of an improvement at the time. It wasn’t
until years later, when he returned to his father’s keep and went riding with Yul again, that he understood. Yul was a woodland creature, not in an elfin or fey sense, but like a wild boar:
strong, dangerous, and shrewd within the limits of his vision. But not a dreamer or a thinker.

Yul had gone to school, too, and there’d even been talk of his enlisting in the U. S. Marine Corps for a while – the duke’s security apparatus had uses for graduates of that
particular finishing school – but in the end it came to naught. While Huw had been sweating over books or a hot soldering iron, Hulius had enlisted in Clan security, with time off to serve
his corvée duty with the postal service. And now, by a strange turnaround of fate that Huw still didn’t quite understand, he was sitting with a first-aid kit on the back stoop of a
rented house at twilight, worrying his guts out about his kid brother, the tow-headed streak who’d grown up to be a bear of a man.

Huw checked his wristwatch for about the ten-thousandth time. It was coming up on eight fifteen, and the sun was already below the horizon. Another half hour and it would be nighttime proper.
I could go over and look for him,
he told himself.
If he misses this return window, I could go over tomorrow.
Elena’s video footage had been rubbish, the condensation on her
helmet camera lens blurring everything into a madcap smear of dark green shade and glaring sunlight, but Hulius was wearing a radio beacon. If anything had happened –

Something moved. Huw’s head jerked round, his heart in his mouth for an instant: then he recognized Yul’s tired stance, and the tension erupted up from his guts and out of his mouth
in a deafening whoop.

‘Hey, bro!’ Yul reached up and unfastened his helmet. ‘You look like you thought I wasn’t coming back!’ He grimaced and rubbed his forehead as he shambled heavily
towards the steps. ‘Give me medicine. Strong medicine.’

Huw grabbed him for a moment of back-slapping relief. ‘It’s not easy, waiting for you. Are you all right? Did anything try to eat you? Let’s get you inside and get the
telemetry pack off you, then I’ll crack open the wine.’

‘Okay.’ Hulius stood swaying on the stoop for a moment, then took a heavy step towards the doorway. Huw picked up the first-aid kit and laptop and hurried after him.

‘Make your weapons safe, then hand me the telemetry pack first – okay. Now your backpack. Stick it there, in the corner.’ He squinted at his brother. Yul looked much more
wobbly than he ought to be. ‘Hmm.’ Huw cracked the first-aid kit and pulled out the blood pressure cuff. ‘Get your armor off and let’s check you out. How’s the
headache?’

‘Splitting.’ Hulius pawed at the Velcro fastenings on his armor vest, then dumped it on the kitchen floor. He fumbled at the buttons on his jacket. ‘I can’t seem to get
this open.’

‘Let me.’ Huw freed the buttons then helped Hulius get one arm free of its sleeve. ‘Blood pressure,
right now
.’

‘Aw, nuts. You don’t think – ’

‘I don’t know what to think. Chill out and try to relax your arm.’ The control unit buzzed and chugged, pumping air into the pressure cuff around Yul’s arm. Huw stared at
it as it vented, until the digits came up. ‘One seventy-four over one ten.’
Shit
. ‘You remember to take your second-stage shots on time, two hours ago?’

‘Uh, I, uh, only remembered half an hour ago.’ Hulius closed his eyes. ‘Dumb, huh?’

Huw relaxed a little. ‘Real dumb. You’re not used to doing back-to-back jumps, are you?’
Lightning Child, he could have sprung a cerebral hemorrhage!
‘The really
bad headache, that’s a symptom. You need those pills. They take about an hour to have any effect, though, and if you walk too soon after you take them you can make yourself very
ill.’

‘It’s just a headache – ’

‘Headache, balls.’ Huw began to pack up the blood pressure monitor. ‘All you can feel is the headache, but if your blood pressure goes too high the arteries and veins inside
your brain can burst from it. You don’t want that to happen, bro, not at your age!’ Relief was making him angry.
Change the subject.
‘So how was it?’

‘Oh, it was quiet, bro. I didn’t see any animals. Funny thing, I didn’t hear any birds either; it was just me and the trees and stuff. Quite relaxing, after a while.’

‘Okay, so you had a nice relaxing stroll in the woods.’
Why needle him? It’s not his fault you were chewing your guts out.
‘Sorry.’ He glanced away from
Hulius just as the door opened and Elena bounced in.

‘Hulius! You’re back!
Squeee!
’

Huw winced as Elena pounced on his brother. Judging from the noises he made, the headache couldn’t be too serious. Huw cleared his throat: ‘I’ll be in the front room,
downloading the take. You guys, you’ve got ten minutes to wash up. We’re going out for dinner, and I’m buying.’ He picked up the telemetry pack and slunk towards the living
room, trying to ignore the giggling and smooching behind him.
Young love
– He winced again. He might be out from under the matrons’ collective thumb, but being expected to
chaperon Hulius and Elena was one of the more unpleasant side effects of the manpower shortage.
If the worst happened . . . At least they’re both inner family, and eligible.
A rapid
wedding was a far more likely outcome than an honor killing if their parents found out.

Back in the front room, he set the tablet PC down and plugged it in. Yul’s camera had worked out okay, although there wasn’t a hell of a lot to see. He’d come out in a forested
area, with nothing but trees in all directions, and spent the next hours stooging around semi-aimlessly without ever coming across open ground. The weather station telemetry told its own story,
though. Sixty degrees Fahrenheit had been the daytime peak temperature, and towards nightfall it dipped towards freezing.
I bet there’s going to be a frost over there tonight.

Huw poked at the other instrument readings. The scanner drew a blank; nobody was transmitting, at least on any wavelength known to the sophisticated software-directed radio he’d acquired
from a friend who was still working at the Media Lab. The compact air sampler wouldn’t tell him much until he could send it for analysis – much as he might want one, nobody was selling
a backpack-sized mass spectroscope. He poked at the video, tripping it into fast-forward.

Trees. More trees. Elena hadn’t been wrong about the tree surplus.
If we could figure out a way to get them back, we could corner the world market in cheap pine logs
. . . Yul had
followed the plan at first, zipping around in a quick search then planting a spike and a radio beacon. Then he’d hunkered down for a while, probably listening. After about half an hour,
he’d gotten up and begun walking around the forest, frequently pausing to scrape a marker on a trunk.
Good boy.
Then –

‘Oh you have
got
to be kidding me.’

Huw hit the pause button, backed up a few frames, and zoomed in. Yul had been looking at the ground, which lay on a gentle slope. There were trees everywhere, but for once there was a view of
the ground the trees were growing in. For the most part it was a brownish carpet of dead pine needles and ferns, interspersed with the few hardy plants that could grow in the shadow of the
coniferous forest – but the gray-black chunks of rocky material off to one side told a different story. Huw blinked in surprise, then glanced away, his mind churning with possibilities. Then
he bounced forward through the next half hour of Hulius’s perambulations, looking for other signs. Finally, he put the laptop down, stood up, and went back into the hall.

‘Yul?’ he called.

‘Hello?’ A door opened, somewhere upstairs.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about the ruins, Yul?’

Hulius appeared at the top of the staircase, wearing a towel around his waist, long blond hair hanging damply: ‘What ruins?’

‘The black stones in the forest. Those ruins.’

‘What stones –’ Yul looked blank for a moment, then his expression cleared. ‘Oh,
those.
Are they important?’

‘Are they –’ Huw tugged at his hair distractedly. ‘Lightning Child! Do I have to explain everything in words of one syllable? Where’s Elena?’

‘She’s in the – hey, what’s up?’

I’m hyperventilating again. Stop it,
Huw told himself. Not that it seemed to help much. ‘There’s no radio, it’s really cold, and you stumbled across a fucking
road! Or what’s left of one. Not a dirt track or cobblestones, but asphalt! Do I have to do all the thinking around here?’

‘What’s so special about asphalt?’ Hulius asked, hitching up his towel as he came downstairs.

‘What’s so special? Well, maybe it means there was a civilization there not so long ago!’ Nervous energy had Huw bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. ‘Think,
bro. If there was a civilization there, what else does it mean?’