The Clan Corporate

by Stross, Charles

  “You said two things?”

  “Yes. Here is the second.” Matt reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, silvery metallic cylinder. Mike blinked: on first sight he almost mistook it for a pistol cartridge, but it was solid, with no sign of a percussion cap. And from the way Matt dropped it on the tabletop it looked dense.

  “May I?” Mike asked.

  Matt waved at it. “Of course.”

  Mike tried to pick it up—and almost dropped it. The slug was heavy. It felt slightly oily and was pleasantly warm to the touch. “Jesus! What is it?”

  “Plutonium. From the Duke’s private stockpile.” Matt’s expression was unreadable as Mike flinched away from the ingot. “Do not take my word for it; analyze it, then come back here to talk to me.” He crossed his arms. “I said they were a government. And I can tell you everything you need to know about their nuclear weapons program . . .”

  A lightning discharge always seeks the shortest path to ground. Two days after she discovered Duke Angbard’s location to be so secret that nobody would even tell her how to send him a letter, Miriam’s wrath ran to ground through the person of Baron Henryk, her mother’s favorite uncle and the nearest body to Angbard in age, position, and temperament that she could find.

  Later on, it was clear to all concerned that something like this had been bound to happen sooner or later. The dowager Hildegarde was already presumed guilty without benefit of trial, the Queen Mother was out of reach, and Patricia voh Hjorth d’Wu ab Thorold—her mother—was above question. But the consequences of Miriam’s anger were something else again. And the trigger that set it off was so seemingly trivial that after the event, nobody could even recall the cause of the quarrel: a torn envelope.

  At mid-morning Miriam, fresh from yet another fit of obsessive GANTT-chart filing, emerged from her bedroom to find Kara scolding one of the maidservants. The poor girl was almost in tears. “What’s going on here?” Miriam demanded.

  “Milady!” Kara turned, eyes wide. “She’s been deliberately slow, is all. If you’d have Bernaard take a switch to her—”

  “No.” Miriam was blunt. “You: go lose yourself for a few minutes. Kara, let’s talk.”

  The maid scurried away defensively, eager to be gone before the mistress changed her mind. Kara sniffed, offended, but followed Miriam over toward the chairs positioned in a circle around the cold fireplace. “What troubles you, milady?” asked Kara, apprehensively.

  “What day is it?” Miriam leaned casually on the back of a priceless antique.

  “Why, it’s, I’d need to check a calendar. Milady?”

  “It’s the fourteenth.” Miriam glanced out the window. “I’m sick, Kara.”

  “Sick?” Her eyes widened. “Shall I call an apothecary—”

  “I’m sick, as in pissed off, not sick as in ill.” Miriam’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m being given the runaround. Look.” She held up an envelope bearing the crest of the Clan post. Its wax seal was broken. “They’re returning my letters. ‘Addressee unknown.’ ”

  “Well, maybe they don’t know who—”

  “Letters to Duke Angbard, Kara.”

  “Oh.” For a moment the teenager looked guilty.

  “Know anything about it?” Miriam asked sweetly.

  “Oh, but nobody writes to the duke! You write to his secretary.” Kara looked confused for a moment. “Then he arranges an appointment,” she added hesitantly.

  “The duke’s last secretary, in case you’ve forgotten, was Matthias. He isn’t answering his correspondence any more, funnily enough.”

  “Oh.” A look of profound puzzlement crept over Kara’s face.

  “I can’t get anywhere!” Miriam burst out. “Ma—Patricia—holds formal audiences. Olga’s away on urgent business most of the time and on the firing range the rest. I haven’t even seen Brill since the—the accident. And Angbard won’t answer his mail. What the hell am I meant to do?”

  Kara looked faintly guilty. “Weren’t you supposed to be going riding this afternoon?” she asked.

  “I want to talk to someone,” Miriam said grimly. “Who, of the Clan council, is in town? Who can I get to?”

  “There’s Baron Henryk, he stays at the Royal Exchange when he’s working, but he—”

  “He’s my great-uncle, he’ll have to listen to me. Excellent. He’ll do.”

  “But, mistress! You can’t just—”

  Miriam smiled. There was no humor in her expression. “It has been three weeks since anyone even deigned to tell me how my company is doing, much less answered my queries about when I can go back over and resume managing it. I’ve been stuck in this oh-so-efficiently doppelgangered suite—secured against world-walking by a couple of hundred tons of concrete piled on the other side—for two months, cooling my heels. If Angbard doesn’t want to talk to me, he’ll sure as hell listen to Henryk. Right?”

  Kara was clearly agitated, bouncing up and down and flapping her hands like a bird. In her green-and-brown camouflage-pattern minidress—like many of the Clan youngsters, she liked to wear imported western fashions at home—she resembled a thrush with one foot caught in a snare. “But mistress! I can arrange a meeting, if you give me time, but you can’t just go barging in—”

  “Want to bet?” Miriam stood up. “Get a carriage sorted, Kara. One hour. We’re going round to the Royal Exchange and I’m not leaving until I’ve spoken to him, and that’s an end to the matter.”

  Kara protested some more, but Miriam wasn’t having it. If Lady Brill had been around she’d have been able to set Miriam straight, but Kara was too young, inexperienced, and unsure of herself to naysay her mistress. Therefore, an hour later, Miriam—with an apprehensive Kara sucked along in her undertow, not to mention a couple of maids and a gaggle of guards—boarded a closed carriage for the journey to the exchange buildings. Miriam had changed for the meeting, putting on her black interview suit and a cream blouse. She looked like an attorney or a serious business journalist, sniffing after blood in the corporate watercooler. Kara, ineffectual and lightweight, drifted along passively in the undertow, like the armed guards on the carriage roof.

  The Royal Exchange was a forbidding stone pile fronted by Romanesque columns, half a mile up the road from Thorold Palace. Built a century ago to house the lumber exchange (and the tax inspectors who took the royal cut of every consignment making its way down the coast), it had long since passed into the hands of the government and now housed a number of offices. The Gruinmarkt was not long on bureaucracy—it was still very much a marcher kingdom, its focus on the wilderness beyond the mountains to the west—but even a small, primitive country had desks for scores or hundreds of secretaries of this and superintendents of that. Miriam wasn’t entirely clear on why the elderly baron might live there, but she was clear on one thing: he’d talk to her.

  “Which way?” Miriam asked briskly as she strode across the polished wooden floor of the main entrance.

  “I think his offices are in the west wing, mistress, but please—”

  Miriam found a uniformed footman in her way. “You. Which way to Baron Henryk’s office?” she demanded.

  “Er, ah, your business, milady?”

  “None of yours.” Miriam stared at him until he wilted. “Where do I find the baron?”

  “On the second floor, west wing, Winter Passage, if it pleases you—”

  “Come on.” She turned and marched briskly toward the stairs, scattering a gaggle of robed clerks who stared at her in perplexity. “Come on, Kara! I haven’t got all day.”

  “But mistress—”

  The second-floor landing featured wallpaper—an expensive luxury, printed on linen—and portraits of dignitaries to either side. Corridors diverged in the pattern of an H. “West wing,” Miriam muttered. “Right.” One arm of the H featured tapestries depicting a white, snowbound landscape and scenes of industry and revelry. Miriam nearly walked right into another robed clerk. “Baron Henryk’s office. Which way?” she snapped.r />
  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 to himself. “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,” Henryk agreed. “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 sai
d. “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. “Okay, back to basics. 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 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.”