The Trade of Queens tmp-6

by Charles Stross

  “We had to get rid of their current king-emperor somehow; he’s an idiot.” Hildegarde paused while her footman refilled both goblets and retreated. “His next-in-line is far more intelligent. He understands power and its uses.”

  “Granted. But their president is not a king, as we understand the term, he is merely a first citizen, elected by his people. They run everything by a system of laws.”

  “I know that—”

  “The trouble is, simply attacking them on their home field is … it’s a declaration of war. And they don’t know how to surrender, Mother. They can’t. There is no law in their constitution that says ‘if attacked by an irresistible force it is permissible to offer a limited surrender: To do so invoke this clause.’ Once they’re at war, any leader who tries to stop it will be impeached—removed. It’s like stabbing a hornets’ nest: Every one you kill just makes the others angrier. I’m not making this up. The last time they lost a war, nearly thirty years ago, they left it to an unelected temporary regent to take the barrage of rotten fruit, and there are still people who think they could have won in Vietnam if only they’d fought harder. There are still many in the South who think they could have won the slaveowners’ rebellion against the North, a century and a half ago. They’re all quite mad, you know. Just now they’re fighting two wars on the other side of the world, all because a ranting priest sent his idiot followers to blow up a couple of towers. Two wars—because they’re not sure who did it.” Patricia picked up her glass again. “Do you know how powerful these bombs are?” she asked. “I’m told they can be made more or less damaging—”

  “Oh, I’m sure they used the most powerful available,” Hildegarde said dismissively. “No point tapping your enemy on the head with a twig when there’s a club to hand, is there? As you say, it only makes them angry. But the enemy’s intentions, you must understand—they don’t matter. What can they do to us? Certainly they may kidnap one or two of our own, ride them like mules, and they may even bring more of their bombs, but we are on our home ground here. We must be firm and deliver our ultimatum, and they must learn to leave us alone!”

  “Mother.” Patricia looked at Hildegarde: “You’re not the only person who’s been sending messages. I—at the rump Council’s orders—I’ve been trying to negotiate with them for some time. They don’t want to haggle; they want our total surrender. They sent a final démarche and cut me dead.”

  “Really.” Hildegarde didn’t bother to feign interest.

  “They’re working on a machine, Mother dearest. A machine that does what we do, a machine for walking between worlds. Yes, they told us this. Also that it might take months or years, but when they succeeded, they would come here, and how they would treat with us would depend entirely on how we treated with them.”

  “And you believed that?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, I did—and do. You’ve never really lived among them. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

  Hildegarde sniffed. “Well, it will probably never happen. And if it does, we’ll think of something. But for now, our internal factional dispute is settled. The Security apparat is back in its box, we have found a satisfactory solution to Angbard’s silly little breeding program, and we—you and I—are back on course to meet our braid’s long-term goal. Your diversion has had no real long-term effect. That’s always been your besetting problem—always wanting to hare off and do things your own way, even when it forces you to do something silly, like hide yourself away in a foreign scholar’s hovel for thirty years instead of enjoying the rightful fruits due to one of your rank. I know, you’re not going to apologize. I don’t expect you to. Will you believe me if I tell you that I bear you no ill will? Or your daughter? Or her child, be they boy or girl? But you have been a sore trial to your elderly mother, these years, more even than the prodigal stepson. Even now. Not even asking why I wanted to see you.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause. “Why?” Patricia finally asked.

  “Because I’m dying,” Hildegarde said, so offhandedly that it took Patricia a moment to do a double take. “Nothing that the Anglischprache doctors can repair, I assure you—I have been poked and prodded by Drs. ven Skorzeman and ven Hjalmar, and they have attempted to convince me to visit the other side for blood treatments that will make my hair fall out and my gums bleed, to no avail. I am a goodly age, Patricia. I may even live to see a world-walking great-grandchild of mine take the throne, which is more than my half-sister managed. And I never managed to settle my affairs with Angelin. So there is a canker in my guts and I should not want to impose overlong on your patience, but I am an old and impatient woman and I ask you to indulge my sentiment.”

  Patricia stared at the dowager. “But Angelin refused to speak to you—”

  “She might have eventually, had she not died at the hands of her own grandchild’s men.” Hildegarde turned unfocussed eyes on the window. “Which just goes to show the unwisdom of schooling our young in alien ways: Never forget that—we are foreigners wherever we live, whether we be ruler or servant. Angelin failed to look to Egon’s schooling. She left him to go native. You … made the opposite error with Helge. I never took the time to set things right with my sister. So, I thought I should at least make a gesture … don’t make me reconsider the wisdom of this meeting.”

  “Oh, Mother.” Patricia put her wineglass down. “This is most harsh, this news.” A hesitancy crept into her voice.

  “Bear with me.” Hildegarde raised a slightly shaky hand and closed her eyes, as Patricia picked up the decanter with both hands and refilled their glasses. “I have always acted for what I perceived to be the best interests of our braid. I had hoped you would understand that, and at least not stand in my way, but by poisoning my natural heir against me … well, it’s too late to undo that.” She opened her eyes and blinked rheumily at her daughter. “May you have better luck with your grandchild. Angelin’s great-grandchild.”

  “If it arrives. Consanguinuity—”

  “It will be all right, child. Helge and Creon were second cousins, and Creon’s ailment was a consequence of poisoning, not inbreeding. We risk worse with every twist of the braid. The hazard is minimal.”

  “Miriam won’t see it that way, you know.”

  “Miriam—what an odd name. Where did you get it from?”

  Patricia smiled tightly. “The same place I got Iris. And Beckstein. She answers to it, you know. You might have gotten better results from her if you’d called her by the name she prefers.”

  “Perhaps. But it’s not her name, it’s a disguise. Where would we be if people could pick and choose their name? Nobody need recognize their seniors—there would be anarchy! Or another strong man like Angbard would grab everybody by the throat and rule by force majeure. A rogue, that boy. But listen, I have a few months, perhaps a year or two. And seeing that Angbard was ill, I decided to move now, to detach his slippery followers’ fingers from the reins of power and hand them back to their rightful owner—a woman of the line, or a lord working as her agent, as is right and proper. You, Patricia. You have a grandchild in the great game, or you will soon—you will act in their name. Once the hangers-on and opportunists are purged, once Angbard’s security apparatus is emptied of dangerous innovators and cut back to its original size and scope, you will inherit the full power of my position, and they’ll love you. Complete freedom of action. I never had that, girl, but you will.”

  Patricia stared at Hildegarde for almost a minute. Presently, she closed her mouth. “You’re not joking.”

  “You know me, girl. Do I ever joke?”

  Patricia opened her mouth for a moment, then closed it again. “Let me get this straight. You had your granddaughter forcibly inseminated with your sister’s grandson’s sperm so that you could reassert our cadet branch’s claim to the throne. You had me kidnapped and brought here so that we could kiss and make up. You’re dying of cancer, so you decided to set up Miriam’s kid for the throne by destroying Angbard’s security or
ganization, just as the old nobility are getting over the civil war and wondering what we’re going to unleash on them next. And you nuked the White House, just to send a message to WARBUCKS. Am I missing anything?”

  “Yes.” Hildegarde looked smug. “Who do you think taunted Egon about his younger brother’s marriage? Someone had to do it—otherwise we’d never have pried his useless ass off the throne! It would have set us back at least two generations.”

  Patricia picked up her wineglass and drained it for the second time. “Mother, I have a confession to make. Miriam once told me she thought you were a scheming bitch, and I’m afraid I defended your honor. I take it all back. You’re completely insane.”

  “Let us pray that it runs in the family, then. As for your confession—consider yourself forgiven. I shall be relying on your cunning once I surrender to you, you realize.” Hildegarde reached out and pulled the bell rope—“More wine, damn your eyes! I insist on getting drunk with my daughter at least once before I die. Yes, I’m insane. If insanity is defined by wanting to put my great-grandchild on the throne, I’m mad. If it’s crazy to want to strangle the ghouls that crowd the royal crib and break the private army that threatens our autonomy, I’m all of that. I bent the Clan and the Kingdom to serve you and your line, Patricia, and I find at the end of my days that I regret nothing. So. Once you are in charge of the Clan, what do you think you will do with it?”

  “I haven’t made my confession yet, Mother.” Patricia looked at the dowager oddly. “It would have been good to have had this heart-to-heart a little earlier—perhaps a year ago. I’m afraid we’re both too late.…”

  * * *

  An hour after Miriam and her guards and allies arrived at the farmstead, the place was abuzz with Clan Security. There were several safe transfer locations in the state forest, and one of Earl-Major Riordan’s first orders had been to summon every available soldier—not already committed to point defense or the pursuit of the renegade elements of the Postal Service and the Conservative Club—to establish a security cordon.

  Miriam, sick at heart, sat in one corner of the command post, listening—the fast, military hochsprache was hard to follow, and she was catching perhaps one word in three, but she could follow the general sense of the discussion—and watching as Riordan took reports and consulted with Olga and issued orders, as often as not by radio to outlying sites. The headquarters troops had set up a whole bunch of card indexes and a large corkboard, startlingly prosaic in a field headquarters in a fire-damaged farmhouse, and were keeping a written log of every decision Riordan handed down. A hanging list of index cards had gone up on one wall, each card bearing a name: Baron Henryk, Baron Oliver, Dowager Duchess Thorold-Hjorth. Miriam carefully avoided trying to read the handwritten annotations whenever a clerk updated one of them. Ringleaders they might be, and in some cases bitter enemies, but they were all people she knew, or had known, at court. A similar list hung on the opposite wall, and it was both longer and less frequently updated—known allies and their disposition.

  “Why not computerize?” she’d asked Brill, in a quiet moment when the latter had sat down on the bench beside her with a mug of coffee.

  “Where are we going to get the electricity to run the computer from?” Brill replied, shrugging. “Batteries need charging, generators need fuel. Best not to make hostages to fate. Besides,” she glanced sidelong at the communications specialist bent over the radio, “computers come with their own problems. They make treachery easier. And it’s a small enough squabble that we don’t need them.”

  “But the Clan—” Miriam stopped.

  “We know all the main players. By name and by face. We know most of our associates, too.” The world-walkers, children of latent, outer-family lines, not yet fully integrated into the Clan of which they were branches. “We are few enough that this will be over—” Brill stopped. The communications specialist had stood up, hunching over his set. Suddenly he swore, and waved urgently at Olga. Olga hurried over; a moment later Riordan joined her.

  “What’s going on?” Miriam stood up.

  “I don’t know.” Brill’s face was expressionless. “Nothing good by the look of it.”

  Olga turned towards them, mouthed something. She looked appalled.

  “Tell me,” Miriam demanded, raising her voice against the general hubbub of urgent questions and answers.

  Olga took two steps towards her. “I am very sorry, my lady,” she said woodenly.

  “It’s Plan Blue?”

  Olga nodded. “It is all over the television channels,” she added softly. “Two nuclear explosions. In Washington.”

  For a moment everything in Miriam’s vision was as gray as ash. She must have staggered, for Brilliana caught her elbow. “What.” She swallowed. “How bad?”

  “We do not know yet, my lady. That news is still in the pipeline. We have”—she gestured at the radio bench—“other urgent priorities right now. But there are reports of many casualties.”

  Miriam swallowed again. Her stomach clenched. “Was this definitely the work of, of the conservative faction?”

  “It is reasonable to suppose so, but we can’t be certain yet.” Olga was peering at her, worried. “My lady, what do you—”

  “Because if it was their doing, if it was anything to do with the Clan, then we are fucked.” She could see it in her mind’s eye, mushroom clouds rising over the Capitol, and a bleak vision of a future far more traumatic than anything she’d ever imagined. “We’re about to lose all access to the United States. They won’t rest until they’ve found a way to come over here and chase us down and kill us. There won’t be anywhere we can run to in their world or this one that’s far enough away for safety.”

  “Even if it was not Baron Hjorth’s doing, even if we had nothing to do with it, we would not be secure,” Brilliana pointed out. “We know that the vice president has reason to want us dead. This could be some other’s work, and he would still send his minions to hunt us.”

  “Shit.” Miriam swallowed again, feeling the acid tang of bile at the back of her mouth. “Think I’m going to throw up.”

  “This way, milady”—everyone was solicitous towards the mother-to-be, Miriam noted absentmindedly, up to and including making decisions on her behalf, as if she were a passive object with no will of her own—

  It was raining outside, and the stench from the latrines round the side of the house completed the job that the news and the anxiety and the morning sickness had started. Her stomach cramped as she doubled over, spitting bile, and waited for the shooting pain in her gut to subside. Brill waited outside, leaving her a token space. I’m alone, she realized despondently. Alone, surrounded by allies and sworn vassals, some of whom consider themselves my friends. I don’t think any of them truly understand.… Her thoughts drifted back towards the sketchily described horrors unfolding down south, and her stomach clenched again. By the time she finished, she found she had regained a modicum of calm. They don’t know what’s going to happen, she realized. But I do. Miriam had been living in Boston through the crazy days that followed 9/11. And she’d seen the glassy-eyed lockstep to the drumbeat of war that followed, seen the way everybody rallied to the flag. In the past few weeks and months, a tenuous skepticism had been taking hold, but nothing could be better calculated to extinguish it than a terrorist outrage to dwarf the fall of the Twin Towers. The only question was how long it would take the US military to gear up for an invasion, and she had an uneasy feeling that they were already living on borrowed time.

  “Milady?” It was Brill.

  “I’m better. For now.” Miriam waved off her offered hand and took a deep breath of rain-cleansed air. “I’m going to lie down. But. I need to know how bad it is, what the bastards have done. And as soon as Riordan and Olga have a free minute I need to talk to them.”

  “But they’re going to be—” Brill stopped. “What do you need to distract them with?”

  “The evacuation plan,” Miriam said bluntly.


  “What plan—”

  “The one we need to draw up right now to get everyone across to New Britain. Because if we don’t”—she raised her head, stared across the seared fields towards the tree line at the edge of the cleared area—“we’re dead, or worse. I know what my people—sorry, the Americans—are capable of. We don’t stand a chance if we stay here. One way or another, the Clan is finished with the Gruinmarkt; this whole stupid cockamamie scheme to put a baby on the throne is pointless now. The only question is which direction we run.”

  * * *

  A steady stream of couriers, security staff, and refugees trickled into the farmstead over the hours following Miriam’s evacuation. By midafternoon, Earl Riordan had sent out levies to round up labor from the nearest villages, and by sunset a large temporary camp was taking shape, patrolled by guards with assault rifles. The farm itself was receiving a makeover in the shape of a temporary royal residence: However humble it might be by comparison with the palaces of Niejwein, it was far better than the tents and improvised bivouacs of the soldiers.

  Despite her ongoing nausea, Miriam followed Riordan and Olga and their staff when they moved into a pavilion beside the farmhouse. “You should be lying down, taking things easy,” Brilliana said, halfheartedly trying to divert her.

  “The hell with that.” Miriam glared at her. “These are my people, aren’t they? I need to be here.” And I need to know … The sense of dread gnawing at her guts was beyond awful.

  In late afternoon, despite the apparent defection of most of the Clan postal office’s lords to the traitors’ side—at least, it was hard to put any other interpretation on their total failure to comply with the executive head of Clan Security’s increasingly heated orders to report—they managed to establish a solid radio network with the other security sites in the Gruinmarkt; and the New York office was still sufficiently functional to arrange a three-hourly courier run with digital video tapes from the Anglischprache world’s news feeds. Shortwave and FM didn’t have the bandwidth to play back video, but the headlines off the wire services were more than enough to make Miriam sick to her stomach and leave Brilliana and Sir Alasdair anxious for her health.