The Trade of Queens tmp-6

by Charles Stross

  Beneath its parachutes, the bulbous B53 slowly descended towards the city. The strobing flare of distant apocalypses flashed ruby highlights across its burnished shell as it twisted in the wind, drifting towards the roof of a well-to-do carpenter’s house on the Sheepmarket Street to the south of the city. The carpenter and his wife and apprentices were standing outside, staring at the horizon in gape-jawed dismay. “If it be a thunderstorm it’s an unseasonal huge one,” he told his wife. “Better fetch in your washing—” He whirled at the crashing and crunching from the roof. “Who did that!” Instant rage caught him as he saw the deflating dome of a white parachute descend across the yard. “If that be your idea of a prank, Pitr—”

  Niejwein, population just under sixty thousand, two and a half miles by one and a quarter, Niejwein, capital of the Gruinmarkt—all gone.

  Wiped away as if a bullet had slammed through a map pasted across a target.

  Niejwein: home to just under sixty thousand artisans and tradesmen and their families, and almost two hundred aristocrats and their servants and hangers-on, and previously home to as many as ninety members of the Clan—of whom only eleven remained at this point—all brought to a laser-bright end by a flash of light from the heart of a star.

  The boiling, turbulent fireball resulting from a surface laydown expanded in a fraction of a second until it was over a mile in diameter. At its periphery, the temperature was over a hundred thousand degrees: Stone boiled, the bodies of man and animal flashed into vapor. A short distance beyond it—out to five miles—the heat was enough to melt iron structures. Castles and palaces only a mile or two beyond the fireball, be their walls made of stone and never so thick as a man’s body, slumped and then shattered on the shock wave like a house of cards before a hand grenade.

  There would be no survivors in Niejwein. Indeed, there could have been no survivors in the open within fifteen miles, had not the other bombers of the strike force continued to plow their fields with the fires of hell.

  It was not the intention of the planners who designed Operation CARTHAGE to leave any survivors, even in subsurface cellars.

  The firestorm raged steadily down the coast, marching at the pace of a speeding jet bomber. Behind it, the clouds boiled up into the stratosphere, taking with them tens of millions of tons of radioactive ash and dust. Already the sun was paling behind the funeral pyre.

  In the aftermath, the people of the Gruinmarkt might well be the luckiest of all. It was their fate to be gone in a flash or burned in a fire: a brief agony, compared with the chill and starvation that were to follow all around their world.

  * * *

  Huw was in the shed near the far end of the vegetable garden, tightening the straps on his pressure suit, when Brilliana found him.

  “What in Sky Father’s name do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  She was, Huw realized abstractedly, even more pretty when she was angry: the brilliant beauty of a lightning-edged thundercloud. Not even the weird local fashions she wore in this place could change that. He straightened up. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  Yul chipped in: “He’s getting ready to—”

  Brill turned on him. “Shut up and get out,” she said flatly, her voice dangerously overcontrolled.

  “But he needs me to—”

  “Out!” She waved her fist at him.

  “Give us some space, bro,” Huw added. “Don’t worry, she won’t shoot me without a trial.”

  “You think so?” She waited, fists on hips, until Yulius vacated the shed and the door scraped shut behind him. “You’re not going to do this, Huw. I forbid it.”

  “Someone has to do it,” he pointed out. “I’ve got the equipment and, more importantly, the experience to go into an uncharted world.”

  “It’s not an uncharted world, it’s our world. And you’re not going. You don’t need to go. That’s an order.”

  “You’re not supposed to give me orders—”

  “Then it’s an order from Helge—”

  “—Isn’t she busy visiting her special friend in New London right now?” Huw raised an eyebrow.

  Brill glared at him. “It will be one, as soon as I tell her. Don’t think I won’t!”

  “But if the Americans—”

  “Listen to me!” She stepped in front of him, standing on her toes until he couldn’t help but see eye-to-eye with her. “We got a report.”

  “Oh?” Huw backed down. Heroic reconnaissance into the unknown was one thing, but wasting resources was something else. “Who from? What’s happened?”

  “Patricia’s guards came across. They wired us a report and Brionne’s only just decrypted it. They were in the palace when the sky lit up, the entire horizon north of Niejwein. Helmut reported at least thirty thermonuclear detonations lighting up over the horizon, probably many more of them, getting progressively closer over the quarter hour before he issued the order to evacuate. They were carpet-bombing with H-bombs. Now do you understand why you’re not crossing over?”

  Huw looked puzzled. “How do you know they were H-bombs?”

  “Hello?” Brill’s nostrils flared as she squinted at him. “They lit up the sky from over the horizon in clear daylight and they took a minute to fade! What else do you think they might be?”

  “Oh.” After a moment, Huw unbuckled the fastener on his left glove. “Shit. More than thirty of them? Coming towards Niejwein?”

  Brill nodded mutely.

  “Oh.” He sat down heavily on the stool he’d been using while Yul helped him into the explorer’s pressure suit. “Oh shit.” He paused. “We’ll have to go back eventually.”

  “Yes. But not in the middle of a firestorm.” Her shoulders slumped. “It was only a couple of hours ago.”

  “There’s a firestorm?”

  “What do you think?”

  “We’re stranded here.”

  “Full marks, my pretty one.”

  Huw looked up at her. “My parents were going to evacuate; I should find out if they made it in time. What about your—”

  She avoided his eyes. “What do you think?”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be.” She made a cutting gesture, but her eyes seemed to glisten in the afternoon light filtered through the hazy window glass. “I burned my bridges with my father years ago. And my mother would never think to stand up to him. He told her to stop writing to me. I’ve been dead to them for years.”

  “But if they’re—”

  “Shut up and think about your brother, Huw. At least you’ve got Yul. How do you think he feels?”

  “He—” Huw worked at the chin strap of his helmet. “Shit. Where’s Elena? Is she—”

  “Turn your head. This way.” She knelt and worked the strap loose, then unclipped it. Huw lifted the helmet off. “Better.” She straightened up. A moment later Huw rose to his feet. He stood uncertainly before her. “I last saw Elena half an hour ago.”

  “Sky Father be praised.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” She watched him uncertainly. “Do you understand what’s happening to us?”

  Huw took a breath. “No,” he admitted. “You’re sure they were hydrogen bombs—”

  “Denial and half a shilling will get you a cup of coffee, Huw.”

  “Then we’re all orphans. Even those of us whose parents came along.”

  “Yes.” Brill choked back an ugly laugh. “Those of us who haven’t been orphaned all along.”

  “But you haven’t been—” He stopped. “Uh. I was going to ask you to, uh, but this is the wrong time.”

  “Huw.” She was, she realized, standing exactly the wrong distance away from him: not close enough, not far enough. “I didn’t hear that. If you were going to say what I think you meant to say. Yes, it’s the wrong time for that.”

  He swallowed, then looked at her. A moment later she was in his arms, hugging him fiercely.

  “If we’re orphans there’s nobody to force us together or hold
us apart,” he whispered in her ear. “No braids, no arranged marriages, no pressure. We can do what we want.”

  “Maybe,” she said, resting her chin on his shoulder. “But don’t underestimate the power of ghosts. And external threats.”

  “There are no ghosts strong enough to scare me away from you.”

  His sincerity scared her at the same time as it enthralled her. She twisted away from his embrace. “I need some time to myself,” she said. “Time to mourn. Time to grow.”

  He nodded. A shadow crossed his face. “Yes.”

  “We don’t know what we’re getting into,” she warned.

  “True.” He nodded, then looked away and began to work at the fasteners on his pressure suit.

  She paused, one hand on the doorknob. “You didn’t ask me your question,” she said, wondering if it was the right thing to do.

  “I didn’t?” He looked up, confused, then closed his mouth. “Oh. But it’s the wrong time. Your parents—”

  “They’re dead. Ask me anyway.” She forced a smile. “Assuming we’re not talking at cross-purposes.”

  “Oh! All right.” He took a deep breath. “My lady. Will you marry me?” Not the normal turn of phrase, which was more along the lines of May I take your daughter’s hand in marriage?

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she said lightly.

  “But I thought you—” He shook his head. “Forgive me, I’m slow.”

  “I’m an orphan, over the age of majority,” she reminded him. “No estates, no guardians, no braids, no dowry. You know I don’t come with so much as a clipped groat or a peasant’s plot?”

  His smile was luminous. “Do I look like I care?”

  She walked back towards him; they met halfway across the floor of the hut. “No. But I wasn’t certain.”

  “For you, my lady”—they leaned together—“I’d willingly go over the wall.” To defect from the Clan, to voluntarily accept outlawry and exile: It was not a trivial offer.

  “You don’t need to,” she murmured. She kissed him, hard, on the mouth: not for the first time, but for the first time on these new terms, with no thought of concealment. “Nobody now alive in this world will gainsay us.” Her knees felt weak at the thought. “Not my father, nor your mother.” Even if his mother had lived to enter this exile, she was unlikely to reject any Clan maid her son brought before her, however impoverished; they were, indeed, all orphans, all destitute. “No need to fear a blood feud anymore. All the Clan’s chains are rusted half away.”

  “I wonder how long it’ll take the others to realize? And what will they all do when they work it out…?”

  Epilogue

  BEGIN RECORDING

  “My fellow Americans, good evening.

  “It is two months since the cowardly and evil attack on our great nation. Two months since the murder of the president along with eighteen thousand more of our fellow citizens. Two months since my predecessor and friend stood here with tears in his eyes and iron determination in his soul, to promise you that we would bring prompt and utter annihilation to the enemies who struck at us without warning.

  “Many of you doubted WARBUCKS’s word when he spoke of other worlds. He spoke of things that have been unknown—indeed, of unknown unknowns—threats to the very existence of our nation that we knew absolutely nothing of, threats so serious that the instability of the Middle East, or the bellicosity of Russia, dwindle into insignificance in comparison. The horrific tragedy that unfolded between India and Pakistan last month—and our hearts go out to all the survivors of that extraordinary spasm of international madness—demonstrates what is at stake here; as long as hostile powers exist in other timelines that overlap our geographical borders, we face the gravest of existential threats.

  “But I am speaking to you tonight to tell you that one such existential threat has been removed: WARBUCKS’s promise has been carried out, and we shall all sleep safer in our beds tonight.

  “At half past two this afternoon, aircraft of the Fifth Bomb Wing overflew the land of the enemy who attacked us so savagely on July the sixteenth. And I assure you that our enemies have just reaped the crop that they sowed that day. Those that attacked us with stolen nuclear weapons have received, in return, a just and proportional measure of retribution. And they have learned what happens to assassins and murderers who attack this great nation. Gruinmarkt, the nest of world-walking thieves and narcoterrorists, is home to them no longer. We have taken the brand of cleansing fire and cauterized this lesion within our geographic borders. And they will not attack us again.

  “This does not mean that the threat is over. We have learned that there exists a multiplicity of worlds in parallel to our own. Most of them are harmless, uninhabited and resource-rich. Some of them are inhabited; of these, a few may threaten our security. I have today issued an executive order to put in place institutions to seek out and monitor other worlds, to assess them for usefulness and threat—and to insure that never again does an unseen enemy take us by surprise in this way. Over the coming weeks and months, I will work with Congress to establish funding for these agencies and to create a legislative framework to defend us from these threats.

  “Good night, and God bless America.”

  END RECORDING

  Tor Books by Charles Stross

  The Clan Corporate

  The Family Trade

  The Hidden Family

  The Merchants’ War

  The Revolution Business

  The Trade of Queens

  Praise for the Novels of the Merchant Princes

  “The world-building in this series is simply superb—in other words, it is engaging, crystal clear, and disturbingly real.… The Merchants’ War is fast-paced and engrossing and will leave readers ravenous for the next installment.”

  —SciFi Weekly

  “Lots of action … this should please Stross fans and anyone else interested in Dr. Strangelove scenarios.”

  —Booklist on The Trade of Queens

  “Raises the tension several more notches … The action continues to be compelling, with the author throwing in new surprises every time the reader thinks the story’s about to settle down for an easy lope through a world that many writers would consider sufficiently interesting to explore without searching for still more wrinkles.”

  —Asimov’s Science Fiction on The Merchants’ War

  “Charles Stross, whose books burst with pop-science ideas, intrigue, strong characters, and even romance, continues his Merchant Princes series.… Stross is an energetic writer … who creates page-turning reads.”

  —BookPage

  “These books are immense fun, a sort of twenty-first-century version of the solid, thought-out costume sword-and-spaceship fiction that provided the enduring spine of science fiction entertainment.”

  —Locus on The Hidden Family

  “Very successful—perhaps even successful enough to give Roger Zelazny’s Amber and Philip José Farmer’s World of Tiers a run for their money. Yes, Stross is that good.”

  —Analog on The Hidden Family

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  Charles Stross

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