The Merchants’ War

by Stross, Charles

  “What’s it to you?” Paulie demanded. She stared at Brilliana for a few seconds, then jammed her fist across her mouth. “Oh. Oh shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  “Not your fault. My mother had…difficulties. Around the time the clinic was being set up. Angbard proposed to my father that he and my mother…”

  “Oh. Oh dear.”

  “My father has issues,” Brill said bitterly. “I believe that is the accepted euphemism. Over here, it’s easy enough to say ‘test tube baby.’” Over there…” She lapsed into silence as the coffee machine began to burble and spit. “In any case. To the matter in hand: Miriam stuck her nose into sensitive business—making life much harsher for people she has never met—and was imprisoned, under house arrest. Baron Henryk decided to see if he could domesticate her, using the stick alongside the carrot.”

  “What kind of carrot? And stick?”

  “He promised not to execute her, if she married the King’s younger son, the Idiot. She agreed—reluctantly. And to ensure the succession, he arranged for artificial insem—are you all right, my lady?”

  Paulette finished coughing. “Bastards.” She stared at Brill blearily. “The bastard. He did that?”

  Brill shrugged. “Evidently. He didn’t tell Angbard: this all came to light later, by which time it was too late. There was a betrothal ceremony, to be followed by a wedding at the palace. Egon—the Idiot’s elder brother—got wind of it, and realized he would be a liability once the younger brother’s wife bore a child, so he—”

  “Hang on, this is the crown prince we’re talking about? Why would his younger brother’s offspring be a threat?”

  “Creon might be damaged, but he’s outer family. There’s a test. The clinic only developed it in the past two years. Egon is not even outer family, he is merely royalty. Obviously, he was afraid that once a royal Clan member was to hand, he might suffer an unfortunate hunting accident. So he contrived an explosion in the great hall and proceeded to kill his father, usurp the throne, and start a civil war in the Gruinmarkt. In the middle of all this, Miriam disappeared. She is either here, or in New Britain. I have agents searching for her over there, and over here—” she shrugged again “—I thought she’d come to you if she was in trouble.”

  “Oh sweet Mary, mother of God…” The coffeemaker spluttered and hissed as Paulette stood up and shuffled over to it. She pulled two mugs down from the cupboard: “How do you take yours? White, no sugar, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, please.” Brill waited while Paulette filled the mugs and carried them over to the table. Finally she said, in a small voice, “Her plight is perilous.”

  Paulette froze for a few seconds. “I seem to recall you said this was good news. Is there anything worse?”

  “Oh, plenty.” Brill picked up her mug. “Your government knows about us now. We have reason to believe they know Miriam is connected to us, too. They obviously don’t know about you yet, because they haven’t dragged you off to a secret underground detention facility. Hopefully they won’t notice you—they are tracing the Clan courier routes, which you have never been connected with—but if she shows up on your doorstep, there is a chance they will follow her and find you.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out a business card case. “Here’s my mobile number. If Miriam shows up, ring me at once. If I’m not there, the phone will be answered by a trusted associate. Tell them the word bolt-hole. You will remember that?”

  “Bolt-hole.” Paulette licked her lips.

  “They’ll tell you where to go and what to do. From that moment on, we will ensure your security. Once we’ve got Miriam back, if you want to go home we’ll make sure it’s safe to do so.” She paused. Paulette was staring at something on the table. Following her gaze, Brill noticed her handbag was gaping. “Oh. I am sorry.” She reached across and flipped it shut.

  “You’re carrying. Concealed.”

  “Yes.” Brill met her gaze evenly. “It’s not meant for you.”

  “Why—” Paulette stopped for a moment. “Why don’t you shoot me? If there’s such a security risk? Surely I know too much?”

  “I don’t believe you know anything that could jeopardize our security. The breeding program is being moved: the patient records are already in a safe location while a new clinic is set up. So, strictly speaking, you can’t actually harm us. Besides.” She pulled up a wan grin: “I try not to kill my friends.”

  Paulette chuckled weakly. After a moment, Brill joined in. Especially when the friend in question is one of the two people who Miriam is most likely to go to for help, she added silently, and resolved to check back on what progress her employees had made with the other one as soon as possible.

  Things in New Britain had clearly gone to hell in a hand-basket while she’d been away, but Miriam’s first intimation that they might have more personal consequences for her came from the set of Erasmus’s shoulders as the streetcar rumbled and clanked past the end of the street.

  “What is it?” she asked, as he raised his newspaper to shield his face from the window.

  “We’re getting off at the next stop,” he said, standing up to ring the bell. The streetcar turned a corner, wheels screeching on their track, and began to slow. “Come on.”

  Miriam followed him out onto the high street’s sidewalk. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  “The shop’s under surveillance.” His expression was grim.

  “I see.” They walked past a post box.

  “I’m going back there, by the back alley.” He reached into an inner pocket and passed her a small envelope. “You might want to wait in the tearoom up New Bridge Way. If I don’t reappear within half an hour—”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” she interrupted. “I’m going first. If there’s someone inside—”

  “It’s too—”

  “No, Erasmus, going in on your own is the dumbest thing you can do. Come on, let’s go.”

  He paused by the entrance to an alleyway. “You don’t want to make my life easy, woman.”

  “I don’t want to see you get yourself arrested or mugged, no.”

  “Hah. Remember last time?”

  “Come on.” She entered the alley.

  Piles of rubbish subsided against damp-rotted brickwork: galvanized steel trash cans composting week-dead bones and fireplace ashes. Miriam stifled a gag reflex as Burgeson fumbled with a rusting latchkey set in a wooden gate. The gate creaked open on an overgrown yard piled with coal and metalwork. Erasmus headed for a flight of cellar steps opening opposite. Miriam swallowed, and squeezed past him. “What exactly are we picking up?” she asked.

  He glanced over his shoulder: “Clothing, cash, and an antiquarian book.”

  “Must be some book.” He nodded jerkily. “Who was watching the shop?”

  “Two coves. Ah, you mean why? I’m not sure. They didn’t look like Polis to me, as I said. I think they may be your friends.”

  “In which case—” She briefly considered a direct approach, but rejected it as too risky: if they weren’t Clan Security, or if ClanSec had gotten the wrong idea about her, she could be sticking her head in a noose. “—we can just nip in and out without them seeing us. But what if there’s someone in your apartment, waiting?”

  “There’d better not be.” They were at the foot of the steps now.

  “I’m getting sick of this.” She pushed the door open. “Follow me.”

  She duckwalked into a cellar, past a damp-stained mattress, then through a tangle of old and decrepit wooden furniture that blocked off the back wall. Erasmus followed her. There was a hole in the brickwork, and he bent down to retrieve a small electric lantern from the floor just inside it. As he stood up, he began to cough.

  “You can’t go in like that, they’ll hear you.” Miriam stared at him in the gloom. “Give me the lamp. I’ll check out the shop.”

  “But if you—”

  She rested a hand lightly on his shoulder. “I’ll be right back. Remember, I’m not the
one with the cough.” And besides, I’m sick of just waiting for shit to happen to me. At least this made it feel as if she was back in control of her destiny.

  Erasmus nodded. He handed over the lantern without a word. She took it carefully and shone it along the tunnel. She’d been this way before, six months ago. Is this entirely sensible? She asked herself, and nearly burst into hysterical laughter: nothing in her life had been entirely sensible for about a year, now, since her mother had suggested she retrieve a shoe box full of memories from the attic of the old family house.

  The smuggler’s corridor zigzagged underground, new brick and plasterwork on one side showing where neighboring tenement cellars had been encroached on to create the rat run. A sweet-sick stink of black water told its own story of burst sewerage pipes. Miriam paused at a T-junction, then tiptoed to her left, where the corridor narrowed before coming to an end behind a ceiling-high rack of pigeonholes full of dusty bundles of rags. She reached out and grabbed one side of the rack. It slid sideways silently, on well-greased metal runners. The cellar of Erasmus’s store was dusty and hot, the air undisturbed for days. Flicking the lamp off, Miriam tiptoed towards the central passage that led to the stairs up to the shop. Something rustled in the darkness and she froze, heart in mouth: but it was only a rat, and after a minute’s breathless wait she pressed on.

  At the top of the stairs, she paused and listened. It’s empty, she told herself. Isn’t it? It’s empty and all I have to do is take two more steps and I can prove it. Visions paraded through her mind’s eye, the last time she’d ventured into a seemingly unoccupied residence, a horror-filled flashback that nailed her to the spot. She swallowed convulsively, her hand tightening on the rough handrail nailed to the wall. She’d gone into Fort Lofstrom, ahead of the others, and Roland had died—This is crazy. Nothing’s going to happen, is it?

  She took a step forward, across inches that felt like miles: then another step, easier this time. The short passage at the top of the stairs ended in the back room. She crept round the door: everything was as empty as it should be. The archway leading to the main room—there was an observation mirror, tarnished and flyspecked. Relaxing, she stepped up to the archway and peered sidelong into the shop itself.

  It was a bright day, and sunbeams slanted diagonally across the dusty window display shelves and the wooden floor boards. The shop was empty, but for a few letters and circulars piling up under the mail slot in the door. If it had been dark, she wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary, and if she’d been coming in through the front door she wouldn’t have seen it until it was too late. But coming out of the dimness of the shop…her breath caught as she saw the coppery gleam of the wire fastened to the door handle. The sense of déjà vu was a choking imposition on her fragile self-confidence. She’d seen too many trip wires in the past year: Matt had made a bad habit of them, damn him, wherever he was. She turned and retraced her steps, gripping the banister rail tightly to keep her hands from shaking.

  “The shop is empty, but someone’s been inside it. There’s a wire on the door handle.” She shuddered, but Erasmus just smiled.

  “This I must see for myself.”

  “It’s too dangerous!”

  “Obviously not,” he replied mildly. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

  “But I—” she stopped, unable to explain the dread that gripped her.

  “You saw it in time. It won’t be a petard, Miriam, not if it’s the Polis, probably not if it’s your relatives. Your bête noir, the mad bomber, is unlikely, isn’t he? We’ll take care not to trip over any other wires. I’ll wager you it turns out to be a bell, wired to wake up a watcher next door. Someone wants to know when I return, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” She wanted to stamp her feet in frustration. “They broke into your shop and installed a trip wire and you say that’s all? Come on, let’s go—you can buy new clothes—”

  “I need the book.” He was adamant.

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I, but…” He shrugged.

  Paradoxically, Miriam felt herself begin to relax once they returned to the back room. Trip wires and claymore mines were Matthias’s stock in trade, a nasty trick from the days of the Clan-on-Clan civil war. But Matthias wasn’t a world-walker, and he couldn’t be over here, could he? He’d gone missing in the United States six months earlier, a week before the first series of targeted raids had shut down the Clan’s postal service. While she waited patiently, Erasmus sniffed around his shelves, the writing desk and dusty ledgers, the battered sink with the tin teapot and oil burner beside it, the cracked frosted-glass window pane with the bars on the outside. “Nobody’s touched these,” he said after a few minutes. “I’m going to look in the shop.”

  “But it’s under observation! And there’s the wire—”

  “I don’t think anyone outside will be able to see in, not while the sun’s out. And I want to fetch some stuff. Come help me?”

  Miriam tensed, then nodded.

  Erasmus slowly walked into the front of the shop, staying well back from the windows. He paused between two rails of secondhand clothing. “That’s interesting,” he said quietly.

  “What is it?”

  He pointed at the door handle. “Look.” The copper wire ran to the door frame, then round a nail and down to the floor where it disappeared into a small gray box, unobtrusively fastened to the skirting board. “What’s that?”

  Miriam peered at the box. It was in shadow, and it took her a few seconds to make sense of what she was seeing. “That’s not a claymore—” She swallowed again.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  It was gray, with rounded edges—as alien to this world as a wooden automobile would be in her own. And the stubby antenna poking out of its top told another story. “I think it’s a rad—a, uh, an electrograph.” And it sure as hell wasn’t manufactured over here. “It might be something else.”

  “How very interesting,” Erasmus murmured, stooping further to retrieve the letters. “You were right, earlier,” he added, glancing her way: “if this was planted by the men who followed us in New London, they’re not looking for me. They’re looking for you.”

  And they’re not the same as the men staking out the front door, damn it. She nodded. “Let’s get your stuff and hit the road. I don’t like this one little bit.”

  They hanged the servants beneath the warmth of the early afternoon sun, as Neuhalle’s minstrel played a sprightly air on the hurdy-gurdy. It was hard work, and the men were drinking heavily during their frequent breaks. “It takes half the fun out of it, having to do all the heavy lifting yourself,” Heidlor grumbled quietly as he filled his looted silver tankard from the cask of ale sitting on the cart.

  Neuhalle nodded absently as another half-naked maid swung among the branches, bug-eyed and kicking. The bough groaned and swayed beneath its unprecedented crop, much of which was still twitching. “You don’t have to,” he pointed out. “Your men seem to be enjoying themselves.”

  “Maybe, but it’s best to set a good example. Besides, they’ll change their minds when they run out of beer.”

  The tree emitted another ominous creak, like the half-strangled belch of a one-eyed god. “Start another tree,” Neuhalle ordered. “This one is satisfied. That one over there looks like he’s willing to serve.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Sky Father will be grateful for your work today,” Neuhalle added, and his sergeant’s face split in a broad grin.

  “Oh, aye, sir!”

  It paid to put a pious face on such affairs, Otto reflected, to remind the men that the sobbing women and shivering, whey-faced lads they were dispatching were a necessary sacrifice to the health of the realm, a palliative for the ailment that had afflicted the royal dynasty for the past three generations. The servants of the tinker families—no, the clan of witches, Neuhalle reminded himself—weren’t the problem: the real problem was the weakness of the dy
nasty and the debauched compliance of the nobility. Egon might be unable to sacrifice himself or another of the royal bloodline for the strength of the kingdom, but at least he could satisfy Sky Father by proxy. The old ways were bloody, true, but sometimes they provided a salutary lesson, strengthening the will of the state. And so these unfortunates’ souls would be dedicated to Sky Father, the strength of their lives would escheat to the Crown, and their gold would pay for the royal army’s progress.

  Neuhalle was sitting on his camp chair with an empty cup, watching his soldiers man-handle a hogtied and squalling matron towards the waiting tree, when a horseman rode up to the ale cart and dismounted. He cast about for a moment, then looped his reins around the wagon’s shaft and walked towards Otto. Otto glanced at the fellow, and his eyes narrowed. He stood up: as he did so, his hand-men appeared, clearly taking an interest in the stranger with his royalist sash and polished breastplate.

  “Sir, do I have the honor of addressing Otto, Baron Neuhalle?”

  Second impressions were an improvement: the fellow was young, perhaps only twenty, and easily impressed—or maybe just stupid. “That would be me.” Otto inclined his head. “And who are you?” He kept his right hand away from his sword. A glance behind the fellow took in Jorg, ready to draw at a moment’s notice, and he nodded slightly.

  “I have the honor to be Eorl Geraunt voh Marlburg, second son of Baron voh Marlburg, my lord. I am here at the word of my liege his majesty—” He broke off, nonplussed, at a particularly loud outbreak of wailing and prayers from the corral. “—I’m sorry, my lord, I bear dispatches.”