The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (86 page)

‘He’s a theoretician, isn’t he?’ she asked Erasmus, as their carriage slid through the wooded hills. ‘What’s Lady Bishop’s interest?’

He stared out of the window silently, until she thought he wasn’t going to reply. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Sir Adam has credibility. Old King George sought his counsel. Before
Black Monday, he was a Member of Parliament, the first elected representative to openly declare for the radicals. And to be fair, the book – it’s his diagnosis of the ailment afflicting
the body politic, not his prescription. He’s the chair of the central committee, Miriam. We need him in the capital – ’

There was a sudden jerk, and Miriam was pushed forward in her seat. The train began to slow. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Odd.’ He frowned. ‘We’re still in open country.’ The train continued to slow, brakes squealing below them. The window put the lie to Erasmus’s comment almost
immediately, as a low row of wooden shacks slid past. Brakes still squealing, the long train drifted to a halt. Erasmus glanced at her, worried. ‘This can’t be good.’

‘Maybe it’s just engine trouble? Or the track ahead?’
That’s right, clutch at straws,
she told herself. Her hand went to her throat, where she had taken to
wearing James Lee’s locket on a ribbon: at a pinch she could lift Erasmus and land them both in the same world as the Gruinmarkt, but . . . ‘I can get us out of here, but I know nothing
about where we’d end up.’

‘We’ve got papers.’ Now he sounded as if he was grasping at straws, and knew it.

‘Don’t anticipate trouble.’

‘Get your bag. If they want a bribe – ’

‘Who?’

‘How should I know?’ He pointed at the window: ‘Whoever’s stopped the train.’

The door at the end of the compartment opened abruptly, and a steward stepped inside. He puffed out his brass-buttoned chest like a randy pigeon: ‘Sorry to announce, but there’s been
a delay. We should be moving soon, but –’ A bell sounded, ringing like a telephone outside the compartment. ‘’Scuse me.’ He ducked back out.

‘What kind of delay?’ Miriam asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Erasmus stood up. ‘Got everything in your bag?’

Miriam, thinking of the small pistol, swallowed, then nodded. ‘Yes.’ It was stuffy in the un-air-conditioned carriage, but she stood up and headed over to the coat rail by the door,
to pick up her jacket and the bulging handbag she’d transferred the notebook computer into. ‘Thinking of getting off early?’

‘If we have to.’ He frowned. ‘If this is – ’

Footsteps.
Miriam paused, her coat over her left arm. ‘Yes?’ she asked coolly as the door opened.

It was a middle-aged man, wearing the uniform of a railroad ticket inspector. He looked upset. ‘Sir? Ma’am? I’m sorry to disturb you, but would you mind stepping this way?
I’m sure we can sort this out and be on our way soon.’

Erasmus glanced sideways at her. Miriam dry-swallowed, wishing her throat wasn’t dry.
Bluff it out, or . . . ?
‘Certainly,’ he said smoothly: ‘Perhaps you can
tell us what it’s about?’

‘In the station, sir,’ said the inspector, opening the door of the carriage. The steps were already lowered, meeting the packed earth of a rural platform with a weathered clapboard
hut – more like a signal box than a station house – hunched beside it. Only the orange groves to either side suggested a reason for there to be a station here. The inspector hurried
anxiously over towards the building, not looking back until he neared the door. Miriam caught Burgeson’s eye: he nodded, slowly.
The Polis would just have come aboard and arrested us,
wouldn’t they?
she told herself.
Probably . . .

As her companion approached the door, Miriam curled her fingers around the butt of her pistol. The inspector held the door open for them, his expression anxious. ‘The electrograph from
your cousin requested a private meeting,’ he said apologetically. ‘This was the best I could arrange – ’

‘My
cousin
?’ Miriam asked, her voice rising as the door opened: ‘I don’t have a cousin – ’

A whoosh of escaping steam dragged her attention up the line. Slowly and majestically, the huge locomotive was straining into motion, the train of passenger cars squealing and bumping behind it.
Miriam spun round, far too late to make a run back for it. ‘Shit,’ she muttered under her breath. A steam car was bumping along the rutted track that passed for a service road to the
station. Erasmus was frozen in the doorway, one hand seeming to rest lightly on the inspector’s shoulder. Another car came into view along the road, trailing the first one’s
rooster-tail of dust.

‘You don’t?’ The inspector looked confused.

‘Who set this up?’ Erasmus asked, his tone deceptively calm.

‘I don’t know! I was only following orders!’ Miriam ducked round the side of the station house again, glancing in through the windows. She saw an empty waiting room furnished
only with a counter, beyond the transom of which was an evidently empty ticket office.
It’s not the station
, she realized, near-hysteria bubbling under.

‘Into the waiting room,’ she snapped, bringing the revolver out of her pocket.
‘Move!’

The inspector stared at her dumbly, as if she’d grown a second head, but Erasmus nodded: ‘Do as she says,’ he told the man. The inspector shuffled into the waiting room.
Erasmus followed, his movements almost bored, but his right hand never left the man’s shoulder.

‘How long ’til they get here?’ Miriam demanded.

‘I don’t know!’ He was nearly in tears. ‘They just said to make you wait!’

‘They,’
said Erasmus. ‘Who would
they
be?’

‘Please don’t kill me!’

The door to the ticket office was ajar. Miriam kicked it open and went through it with her pistol out in front. The office was indeed empty. On the ticket clerk’s desk a message flimsy was
waiting. Miriam peered at it in the gloom. DEAR CUZ SIT TIGHT STOP UNCLE A SENDS REGARDS STOP WILL MEET YOU SOONEST SIGNED BRILL.

Well,
that
settles it.
Miriam lowered her gun to point at the floor and headed back to the waiting room.

‘ – the Polis!’ moaned the inspector. ‘I’ve got three wee ones to feed! Please don’t – ’

Shit, meet fan.
Even so, it struck her as too big a coincidence to swallow.
Maybe the Polis are tapping the wires? That would do it.
Brilliana had figured out where she was,
which train she was on, and signaled her to wait, not realizing someone else might rise to the bait.

Burgeson was grim. ‘Miriam, the door, please.’

‘Let’s not do anything too hasty,’ she said. ‘There’s an easy way out of this.’

‘Oh please – ’

‘Shut up, you. What do you have in mind?’

Miriam waved at the ticket office. ‘He’s not lying about my cousin: she’s on her way. Trouble is, if we bug out before she gets here she’s going to walk into
them
. So I think we ought to sit tight.’ She closed the door anyway, and glanced round, looking for something to bar it with. ‘I can get us both out of here in an
emergency,’ she said, a moment of doubt cutting in when she recalled the extreme nausea of her most recent attempts to world-walk.

The first car –
more like a steam-powered minivan,
Miriam noted – rounded the back of the station and disappeared from sight. Almost two minutes had passed since they
reached the station. Miriam slid aside from the windows, while Burgeson did likewise. Boots thudded on the ground outside: the only sounds within the building were the pounding of blood in her ears
and the quiet sobbing of the ticket inspector.

‘Mr. Burgeson!’ The voice behind the bullhorn sounded almost jovial: ‘And the mysterious Mrs. Fletcher! Or should I say,
Beckstein
?’ He made it sound like an
accusation. ‘Welcome to California! My colleague Inspector Smith has told me all about you both and I thought, why, we really ought to have a little chat. And I thought, why not have it
somewhere quiet-like, and intimate, instead of in town where there are lots of flapping ears to take note of what we say?’

Across the room, Burgeson was mouthing something at her. His face was in shadow, making it hard to interpret. The inspector knelt in the middle of the floor, in a square of sunlight, sobbing
softly as he rocked from side to side wringing his hands. The appearance of the Polis had quite unmanned him.

‘Like this:
parlez-vous français, Madame Beckstein?
’

They think I’m a French spy?
Either the heat or the tension or some other strain was plucking her nerves like guitar strings. Somehow Erasmus had fetched up almost as far away as
it was possible to get, twelve feet away across open ground overlooked by a window. To get him out of here one or the other of them would need to cross that expanse of empty floor, in front of
–

The ticket inspector snapped, flickering from broken passivity to panic in a fraction of a second. He lurched to his feet and ran at the window, screaming, ‘
Don’t hurt
me
!’

Erasmus brought his right hand up, and Miriam saw the pistol in it. He hesitated for a long moment as the inspector fumbled with the window, throwing it wide and leaning out. ‘
Let
me
–’ he shouted: then a spatter of shots cracked through the glass, and any sense of what he had been trying to say.

The bullhorn blared, unattended, as the inspector’s body slumped through the half-open window and Miriam, seeing her chance, ducked and darted across the room, avoiding the lit spaces on
the floor, to fetch up beside Burgeson.

‘I think they want you alive,’ he said, a death’s-head grin spreading across his gaunt cheekbones. ‘Can you get yourself out of here?’

‘I can get us both out –’ She fumbled with the top button of her blouse, hunting for the locket chain.

‘After how you were last time?’

Miriam was still looking for a cutting reply when the bullhorn started up again. ‘If you come out with your hands up we won’t use you for target practice! That’s official,
boys, don’t shoot them if they’ve got their hands up! We want to ask you some questions, and then it’s off to the Great Lakes with you if you cooperate. That’s also a
promise. What it’s to be is up to you. Full cooperation and your lives! Hurry, folks, this is a bargain, never to be repeated. Because you’re on my manor, and Gentleman Jim Reese prides
himself on his hospitality, I’ll give you a minute to think about it before we shoot you. Use it carefully.’

‘Were you serious about waiting around for your friends?’ Burgeson asked. ‘Is a minute long enough?’

‘But –’ Miriam took a deep breath. ‘Brace yourself.’ She put her arms around Erasmus, hugging him closely. His breath on her cheek smelled faintly stale.
‘Hang on.’ She dug her heels into the floor and lifted, staring over his shoulder into the enigmatic depths of the open locket she had wrapped around her left wrist. The knot writhed
like chain lightning, sucking her vision into its contortions – then it spat her out. She gasped involuntarily, her head pulsing with a terrible, sudden tension. She focused again, and her
stomach clenched. Then she was dizzy, unsure where she was.
I’m standing up
, she realized.
That’s funny
. Her feet weren’t taking her weight. There was something
propping her up. A shoulder.
Erasmus’s shoulder.
‘Hey, it didn’t – ’

She let go of him and slumped, doubling over at his feet as her stomach clenched painfully. ‘I know,’ he said sadly, above her. ‘You’re having difficulty, aren’t
you?’

The bullhorn: ‘Thirty seconds! Make ’em count!’

‘Do you think you can escape on your own?’ Burgeson asked.

‘Don’t – know.’ The nausea and the migraine were blocking out her vision, making thought impossible. ‘N-not.’

‘Then I see no alternative to –’ Erasmus laid one hand on the doorknob ‘– this.’

Miriam tried to roll over as he yanked, hard, raising the pistol in his right hand and ducking low. He squeezed off a shot just as Gentleman Jim, or one of his brute squad, opened fire: clearly
the Polis did things differently here. Then there was a staccato burst of fire and Erasmus flopped over, like a discarded hand puppet.

Miriam screamed. A ghastly sense of déjà vu tugged at her:
Erasmus, what have you
done? She rose to her knees and began to raise her gun, black despairing fury tugging her
forward.

There was another burp of fire, ominously rapid and regular, like a modern automatic weapon.
That’s funny
, she thought vacantly, tensing in anticipation. She managed to unkink her
left hand, but even a brief glance at the locket told her that it was hopeless. The design swam in her vision like a poisonous toadstool, impossible to stomach.

Erasmus rolled over and squeezed off two more shots methodically. Miriam shook her head incredulously:
You can’t do that, you’re dead!
Someone screamed hoarsely,
continuously, out behind the station. Shouts and curses battered at her ears. The hammering of the machine gun started up again. Someone else screamed, and the sound was cut short.
What’s
going on?
she wondered, almost dazed.

The shots petered out with a final rattle from the machine gun. The silence rang in her ears like a tapped crystal wineglass. Her head ached and her stomach was a hot fist clenched below her
ribs. ‘Erasmus,’ she called hoarsely.

‘Miriam. My lady, are you hurt?’

The familiar, crystal-clear voice shattered the bell of glass that surrounded her. ‘Brill!’ she called.

‘My lady,
are you alone in there
?’

Urgency. Miriam tried to take stock. ‘No,’ she managed. ‘I’m with Erasmus.’

‘She’s not hurt, but she’s sick,’ Burgeson called out. He shuffled backwards, into the shadowy interior of the waiting room, still clutching his pistol in his hand. He
focused on Miriam. ‘It’s your girl, Brill, isn’t it?’ he hissed.

‘Yes,’ she choked out, almost overwhelmed with emotion.
He’s not dead!
More than half a year had passed since that terrible moment in Fort Lofstrom, waiting beside
Roland’s loose-limbed body, hoping against hope.
And Brill
–