The Family Trade

by Stross, Charles

  “O-k-a-y. You do that, Miriam.”

  The bill arrived and Miriam stuck down a fifty before Paulette could protest. “Come on.” She stood up; Paulette hurried after.

  “Did I just see that? Did I? Miriam Beckstein putting down a thirty percent tip? What the hell is happening to my eyes?”

  “I want out of this restaurant,” Miriam said flatly. Continuing on the hoof: “Money doesn’t mean anything any more, Paulie, didn’t you catch that bit? I’m so rich I could buy The Weatherman if I wanted to—only it won’t do me a blind bit of good because my problems aren’t money-related. There are factions among the families. One of them wants me dead. They had a nice little number going with my mother’s shareholding in the Clan; now that I’ve shown up, I’ve disrupt a load of plans. Another faction wants me married off. The king, his number-two prince is a retard, Paulie, and you know what? I think my old goat of an uncle is going to try to marry me off to him.”

  “Oh, you poor baby. Don’t they have an equal rights amendment?”

  “Oh, poor-baby me, these guys don’t even have a constitution,” Miriam said with feeling. “It’s a whole other world, and women like me get the…get the—hell, think about the Arabs. The Saudi royal family. They come over here in expensive suits and limousines and buy big properties and lots of toys, but they don’t think like us, and when they go back home they go straight back to the middle ages. How would you feel if you woke up one morning and discovered you were a Saudi princess?”

  “Not very likely,” Paulette pointed out, “seeing as how I am half-Italian and half-Armenian and one hundred percent peasant stock, and damn happy to live here in the U.S. of A., where even peasants are middle class and get to be paralegals and managers. But yeah, I think I see where you’re coming from.” Paulette looked at her grimly. “You got problems,” she said. “I’d worry about the bunch who want you out of the way before worrying about the risk of being married off to Prince Charming, though. At least they’ve got money.” She pulled a face. “If I found I had a long-lost family, knowing my luck, the first thing they’d do is ask to borrow a hundred bucks until payday. Then they’d start with the death threats.”

  “Well, you might want to think back to what you said about smuggling,” Miriam pointed out. “I don’t want to be involved in that shit. And I’m worried as hell about the string we were pulling on the other week. Have you had any other incidents?”

  “‘Incidents’?” Paulie looked angry. “I don’t know if you’d call it that. Somebody burgled my apartment the day before yesterday.”

  “Oh shit.” Miriam stopped dead. “I’m so sorry. Was it bad?”

  “It could have been,” Paulette said tightly. “I was out at the time. The sergeant said it looked very professional. They cut the phone line and drilled the lock out on the landing, then went in and turned the whole place over. Took my computer and every disk they could find. Ransacked the bookcases, went through my underwear—and left my spare credit card and emergency bankroll alone. They weren’t after money, Miriam. What do you think?”

  “What do I think?” Miriam stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Paulette waited for her. “Well, you’re still alive,” she said slowly.

  “Alive—” Paulette stared at her.

  “Paulie, these guys play hardball. They leave booby traps. You go into a place they’ve black-bagged and you open the door and it blows up in your face—or there’s a guy waiting for you with a gun and he can leave the scene just by looking at a wrist tattoo. I figure either I’m wrong and the shit Joe Dixon’s involved in isn’t to do with the Clan or they don’t rate you as a threat—just sent some hired muscle to frighten you, rather than the real thing.”

  “I am so relieved. Not.”

  “Do be. I mean that seriously. If you’re still alive, it means they don’t think you’re a threat. They didn’t find the disk, so that’s probably an end of it. If you want to get the hell out of this now, just say. I’ll find the CD and burn it and you’re out of the frame.”

  Paulette began walking again. “Don’t tempt me,” she said tightly. Then she stopped and turned to face Miriam. “What are you going to do?” she asked bluntly.

  “I was hoping you could help me.” Miriam paused for a moment, then continued: “Did you get the job?”

  “As a paralegal?” Paulette shrugged. “I didn’t get that one, but I’ve got another interview this afternoon,” she added self-consciously.

  “Well.” Miriam paused. “How would you like another job? Starting today?”

  “Doing what?” Paulette asked cautiously.

  “As my self-propelled totally legal insurance policy,” said Miriam. “I need an agent, someone who can work for me on this side when I’m locked up being Princess Buttercup in a palace with toilets consisting of a drafty hole in the wall. You’re clean, they didn’t pin anything on you, and now that we know who the hell we’re up against, we can make sure that you stay that way. What I’ve got in mind for the job will mostly involve handling nonstolen, nonillegal goods that I want to sell, keeping records, paying taxes, and making like a legitimate import/export business. But it’ll also involve planting some records, very explicit records, in places where the families can’t get their hands on them—without getting caught.” Miriam stopped again, thinking. “I can pay,” she added. “I’m supposed to be very rich now.”

  Paulette grinned. “This wouldn’t have something to do with you bearing a grudge against the asshole who fired us both, would it?”

  “Could be.” Miriam thrust her hands deep in her pockets and tried to look innocent.

  “When does it start and what does it pay?”

  “It starts fifteen minutes ago, and if you want to discuss pay and conditions, let’s go find a Starbucks and talk about it over a coffee…”

  Miriam became increasingly depressed on the train back to New York. It was late in the year, and darkness was already falling as the train raced through the bleak New England countryside. Soon the snow would be falling thick and deep, burying the bare branches beneath a layer of deadening numbness. She popped out one of the Atenolol tablets that Roland had given her and a couple of Tylenol, swallowing them with the aid of a Coke from the bar. She felt like autumn, too: The train was carrying her south toward a bleak world where she’d be enveloped in the snow of—well, maybe it was stretching the metaphor past breaking point. Only forty-four hours, and I’ll be seeing Roland again, she thought. Forty-four hours? She brightened for a moment, then lapsed into even deeper gloom. Forty-four hours, forty of which would be spent in the company of…of…

  She hailed a taxi from the station concourse, feeling slightly light-headed and numb, as if she hadn’t eaten. It took her to the block near Chinatown where she’d found the door. It looked a whole hell of a lot less welcoming after dark and closing time, and she hunched her shoulders as she stalked down the street, homing in on the alleyway by means of the green-lit display of her GPS compass.

  When she reached the alley, she balked—it was black and threatening, like a Central Station for muggers and rapists. But then, remembering who and what she was, she reached into her pocket and wrapped her right hand around the snub-nosed pistol she’d carried all day. They can arrest you, but they can’t hold you, she reminded herself with a flicker of reckless glee. What must it be like to grow up with the talent on the other side, then to come over to this world and realize that you could do absolutely anything at all and melt away into the night, undetected? She shivered.

  As it happened the alleyway was empty, a faint glow leaking from under the warehouse doorway. She opened it and walked past the cabin. Nobody hailed her. She followed the GPS compass until its coordinates went to zero and she saw the metal emergency staircase.

  At the top of the steps she took a moment to look around. There was no sign of any burglar alarms, nothing to stop anyone coming in off the street. Hmm. I don’t like the look of this, she thought. Thirty feet farther on there was a sturdy brick wall. I can’t b
e sure, but it looks like most of the palace would be on the other side of that. Right? It was weird, but she didn’t have time to examine it right now. Putting her GPS compass away, she hauled out the locket from the chair around her neck that she wore under her sweater. She focused on the image and felt—

  “Mistress! Oh my—” she stumbled, black shadows pulling at the edges of her vision, and felt hands on her day pack, her shoulders, pulling her toward a richly cushioned ottoman—“you startled us! What is that you’re wearing? Oh, you’re so cold!”

  The black shadows began to fade, and she had a feeling like a headache starting a long way away. The huge fireplace in one side of the main room—a fireplace big enough to park her car in—was blazing with flames and light, pumping out heat. Kara helped her stand upright, a hand under one shoulder. “You gave us such a fright!” she scolded.

  “I’m back now.” Miriam smiled tiredly. “Is there anything to drink? Without alcohol in it?”

  “I’ll get it,” said Brilliana, the more practical of the two. “Would my lady care for a pot of tea?”

  “That would be fine.” Miriam felt herself closer to fainting than throwing up. Yes, the beta-blockers seem to work, she thought. “Drop the ‘my lady’—just call me Miriam. You didn’t tell anybody to search for me, did you?”

  “No, my-Miriam.” This from Kara. “I wanted to, but—”

  “It’s all right.” Miriam closed her eyes, then opened them again, to be confronted by a teenager with braided brown hair and a worried expression wearing a brown Dior suit and a blouse the color of old amber. “Nothing to worry about,” she said, trying to exude confidence. “I’ll be fine when I’ve had some tea. This always happens. Did anything unusual happen while I was gone?”

  “We’ve been busy making the servants unpack your wardrobe and traveling possessions!” Kara said enthusiastically. “And Lady Olga sent you an invitation to walk with her in the orangery, tomorrow morning! Nobody is entertaining tonight, but there’s another public reception in Prince Creon’s name tomorrow and you have been invited!” Miriam nodded wearily, wishing she wouldn’t end every sentence with an exclamation. She half-expected Kara to break out in squeals of excitement. “And Sfetlana has been so excited!”

  “About what?” Miriam asked unenthusiastically.

  “She’s had a proposal of marriage! Delivered by proxy, of course! Lady Olga bore it! Isn’t that exciting?”

  “What is that you’re wearing?” asked Brilliana, returning from the fireplace with a silver teapot held carefully in her hands; for the first time Miriam noticed the spindly table beside the ottoman, the chairs positioned around it, the cups and saucers of expensive china. It appeared that ladies-in-waiting led a higher-maintenance lifestyle than servants.

  “Something suited to the weather,” Miriam muttered. Brilliana was wearing a black dress that would have passed unnoticed at any cocktail party from the 1960s through the 1990s. In the setting of a cold, sparsely furnished castle, there was something unbelievably surreal about it. “Listen, that’s a fire and a half.” Her skin crawled. “Is there any chance of using it to heat a lot of water? Like, enough for a bath? I want to get clean, then find something to eat.” She thought for a moment. “Afterward you can choose something for me to wear tomorrow when I go to talk with Lady Olga. And for the reception in the evening as well, I suppose. But right now, I’d kill for a chance to wash my hair.”

  Fire Wall

  It turned out that there was a bathtub in her suite. The huge claw-footed cast-iron behemoth lived in a room she hadn’t seen before, on the far side of the huge fireplace. There were even servants to fill it: three maids and a grumpy squint-eyed lad who seemed to have only half his wits about him. His job seemed to be to lurk in corners whenever anybody forgot to send him packing for another load of Pennsylvania coal.

  Readying the bath involved a lot of running around and boiling coppers on the fireplace. While everybody else was occupied, Miriam pulled on her overcoat and went exploring, picking up Brilliana as a combination of tour guide and chaperone. She’d been half-asleep from exhaustion when she first arrived—and even more dead to the world after the reception at the palace. Only now was she able to take in her surroundings fully. She didn’t much like what she was seeing.

  “This palace,” she said, “tell me about it.”

  “This wing? This is the New Tower.” Brilliana followed a pace behind her. “It’s only two hundred and eighty years old.”

  Miriam looked up at the roof of the reception room they’d walked into. The plasterwork formed a dizzyingly intricate layering of scalloped borders and sculpted bouquets of fruit and flowers, leaping over hidden beams and twisting playfully around the huge hook from which a giant chandelier hung. The doors and window casements were not built to a human scale, and the benches positioned against each wall looked lost and lonely.

  “Who does it belong to?” asked Miriam.

  “Why, the Clan.” Brilliana looked at her oddly. “Oh, that’s right.” She nodded. “The families and the braids. You understand them?”

  “Not entirely,” Miriam admitted.

  “Hmm, I had thought as much.” Brilliana paced toward the far door, then paused. “Have you seen the morning room yet?”

  “No.” Miriam followed her.

  “Our ancestor Angbard the Sly walked the worlds and accrued a huge fortune. His children lacked the ability, and there were five sons, sons who married and had families, and another six daughters. In that generation some kin married their cousins directly, as was done in those days to forestall dower loss, and the talent was rediscovered. Which was a good thing, because they had fallen upon hard times and were reduced to common merchants. Since then we have kept the bloodline alive by marrying first cousins across alternate generations: Three families are tied together in a braid, two in each generation, to ensure the alliances are kept close. The kin with the talent are shareholders in the Clan, to which all belong. Those who lack the talent but whose children or grandchildren might have it are also members, but without the shares.” She waited at the door for Miriam, then lifted the heavy bolt with two hands and pulled it open.

  “That’s amazing,” Miriam said, peering into the vast gloomy recess.

  “It is, isn’t it?” replied Brilliana, squeezing through the half-open doorway as Miriam held it open for her. Miriam followed. “These murals were painted by The Eye himself, it is said.” Miriam blinked at dusty splendor, a red wool carpet and walls forming scenes disturbingly similar to—and yet different from—the traditional devotional paintings of the great houses of Europe. (Here a one-eyed god hung from a tree, his hands outstretched to give the benefit of his wisdom to the kneeling child-kings of Rome. There a prophet posed before a cave mouth within which lurked something unspeakable.) “The palace is held by the Clan in common trust. It is used by those family members who do not have houses in the capital. Each family owns one fifth of it—one tower—and Baron Oliver Hjorth occupies the High Tower, presiding over all, responsible for maintainance. I think he’s angry because the High Tower was burned to a shell eight years ago, and the cost of rebuilding it has proven ruinous,” she added thoughtfully.

  “Very interesting,” murmured Miriam. Thinking: Yes, it’s about fifty feet long. This part of the palace was clearly doppelgängered, if the wall she’d seen in the warehouse was where she thought it was. Which meant that her own corner was far less secure than Angbard had implied. “Why was I accommodated here?”

  “Why, because Baron Oliver refused you as a guest!” Brilliana said, a tight little smile on her face. Miriam puzzled for a moment, then recognized it as the nearest thing to anger she’d seen from the girl. “It is unconscionable of him, vindictive!”

  “I’m getting used to it,” Miriam said dryly. She looked around the huge, dusty audience chamber then shivered from the chill leaching through its stones. The shutters were closed and oil lamps burned dimly in the chandelier, but despite all that it was as cold as a refrigera
tor. “What does he have against me, again?”

  “Your braid. Your mother married his elder brother. You should inherit the Thorold Hjorth shares. You should, in fact, inherit the tower he has spent so long restoring. Duke Angbard has made it a personal project to bring Oliver to his knees for many years, and perhaps he thinks to use you to provoke the baron into an unforgivable display of disloyalty.”

  “Oh shi—” Miriam turned to face the younger woman. “And you?” she demanded.

  “Me?” Brilliana raised a slim hand to cover her mouth, as if concealing a laugh. “I’m in disgrace, most recently for calling Padrig, Baron Oliver’s youngest, a pimple-faced toad!” She shrugged uncomfortably. “My mother sent me away, first to the duke, then to the baron’s table, thinking his would be a good household for a young maid to grow up in.” For a moment, a flicker of nearly revealed anger lit up her face like lightning. “Hoping he’d take a horsewhip to me, more like.”

  “Aha.” Miriam nodded. “And so, when I arrived…”

  “You’re a countess!” Brilliana insisted. “Traveling without companions! It’s a joke, a position of contempt! Ser Hjorth sent me to dwell with you in this drafty decaying pile with a leaking roof—as a punishment to me and an insult to you. He thinks himself a most funny man, to lay the glove against a cheek that does not even understand the intent behind the insult.”

  “Let’s carry on.” Miriam surprised herself by reaching out and taking Brilliana’s arm, but the younger woman merely smiled and walked by her side as she headed toward a small undecorated side door. “What did you do to offend the Baron?”

  “I wanted to go across to the other side,” Brilliana said matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen the education and polish and the source of everything bright in the world. I know I have not the talent myself, but surely someone can take me there? Is that too much to ask? I’ve a mother who saw miracles in her youth: carriages that fly and ships that sail against the wind, roads as wide as the Royal Mile and as long as a country, cabinets that show you events from afar. Why should I not have this, but for an accident of birth?” The anger was running close to the surface, and Miriam could feel it through her arm.