The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3)

by Charles Stross

  ‘We have a name for this enemy: They call themselves the Clan, and they rule a despotic kingdom called Gruinmarkt. And we know what to do to them, for they attacked us without warning on the sixteenth of July, a date that will live in infamy with 9/11, and 12/7, for as long as there is a United States of America.

  ‘To you of the Clan, the cabal of thieves and drug smugglers who have attacked America, I have a simple message: If you surrender now, without preconditions, I will guarantee you a fair trial before the military tribunals now convened at Guantánamo Bay. Only those of you who are guilty of crimes against the United States need fear our justice. But you should think fast. This offer expires one week from today. And then, in the words of my predecessor, Harry S. Truman, you face prompt and utter annihilation.

  ‘Good night, and God bless America.’

  END RECORDING

  BED REST

  It was beyond belief how far things could change in just a week.

  Sir Huw, beanpole-skinny and a bit gawky, reined his horse in and dismounted painfully while he was still a hundred yards short of the farmstead. He stretched, trying to iron the kinks out of his thigh and calf muscles.

  ‘Is this it, bro?’ rumbled the man-mountain driving the cart and pair behind him. ‘In the middle of nowhere?’

  Huw glanced around. ‘On the other side, we’re near Edison,’ he said. ‘I’ll go first. We’re expected, but . . .’ No point saying it: The guards are jumpy. Because, this week and forevermore, all the guards were jumpy. Probably expecting Delta Force to drop in, Huw mused. Not, in his estimate, likely to happen just yet – although in the long run it couldn’t be ruled out. Anxiety battled caution, and set his feet in motion. ‘I wonder how Her Majesty is.’

  ‘Nearly three months gone by now,’ chirped another voice from the back of the cart, emanating from beneath a blanket that covered its passenger and a mound of wheeled luggage – all Tumi-branded, expensive but ultralightweight ballistic nylon. ‘Sick as a mule on a fishing boat.’ Huw didn’t look round: Trust Elena to interpret it as a political question. Because Miriam’s pregnancy was political – and that was all it was. ‘Did you pack the books?’

  ‘Yes.’ Huw had, in fact, packed the books. Two hundred kilograms of them, paper that was worth far more than its weight in gold, or cocaine, where they were going. The Rubber Bible, The Merck Manual, the US Pharmacopeia; and more recondite references, science and engineering and medicine all, with a side order of mathematics and maps. They weighed a bundle, but when he’d messaged ahead to ask if they should go digital, the reply had been a terse no. Which made a certain sense. CD-ROMs and computers weren’t durable enough for what Miriam was planning – if, in fact, he was reading her intentions aright.

  Huw walked towards the farmyard, leading his horse. It was a hedge-laird’s place; the hearth smoke of a small village rose beyond it, and he could see stooped backs in the fields, some of them pausing and turning to stare at the visitors. But then two guards stepped out in front of him from the barn, and he stopped. The middle-aged sergeant raised a hand: ‘Who hails?’ The other stood by tensely, his rifle pointed at the ground before Huw’s feet.

  ‘Sir Huw Thoms, lieutenant by order of his grace, accompanied by Hulius Thoms and the Lady Elena of Holdt, in the service of the Council.’ He halted; his horse exhaled noisily, neck drooping.

  ‘Approach and be identified.’ Huw took a step forward. The sergeant peered at him, then glanced at a clipboard cautiously. ‘You are welcome, sir.’

  Huw stood where he was. ‘The password of the day is “banquet”,’ he stated. ‘Now can we come in? The horses are tired.’

  The armsman with the rifle relaxed visibly as his sergeant nodded. ‘Very good, sir, the countersign is “mullet”.’ He gestured towards the stables. ‘We’ll be pleased to sort you out. Sorry about the precautions – you can’t be too careful these days.’

  Huw waved a hand at the machine gun dug in just inside the tree line, ready to enfilade the approach to the farm. ‘Any rebels try you so far?’

  ‘Not yet, sir. Ah, your companions. If you don’t mind – ’

  Elena and Yul climbed down from the cart and consented to be inspected and compared to their photographs. ‘Is it that bad?’ Elena asked brightly, shaking out her skirts.

  ‘Some of Lord Ganskwert’s retainers attacked the house at Doveswood last night, using a carriage and disguises to cover their approach. Three dead, plus the traitors of course. We can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Elena grinned and flashed the sergeant a glimpse of what she had inside her capacious shoulder bag. He blanched. ‘Sleep tight!’ She added, ‘We’re on your side!’

  ‘Lightning Child, can’t you keep it to yourself for even a minute?’ Huw complained. To the sergeant: ‘We won’t be staying overnight – we’re wanted by Her Majesty, as soon as possible.’

  ‘Ah, we’ll do our best, sir. I’ll have to confirm that first.’ His tone didn’t brook argument.

  ‘We can wait awhile,’ Huw conceded. ‘Got to sort out the horses first, grab something to eat if possible, that sort of thing.’

  ‘There is bread and sausages in the kitchen. If you’d like to wait inside I can have my men deal with your mounts? I take it they’re security livery?’

  ‘Yes,’ Huw agreed. ‘All yours.’ He handed his reins to the man. ‘We’ll be inside if you need us.’

  ‘Excellent,’ added Yul, following his elder brother towards the farm building.

  Huw and his small team had been well away from the excitement when the putsch by the conservatives and the lords of the Postal Service broke; following up a task assigned to him by Angbard, Duke Lofstrom, back before his stroke – the urgency of which had only become greater since. Huw had been in a rented house outside Macon, recovering from an exploration run, when Elena had erupted into the living room shouting about something on the television and waking up Yul (who had a post-walk hangover of doom). He’d begun to chastise her, only to fall silent as the mushroom cloud, red-lit from within, roiled skyward behind a rain of damaged-camera static.

  They’d spent the first hour in shock, but then had come Riordan’s Plan Black; and that had presented Huw with a problem, because they were nearly a thousand miles from the nearest evacuation point. Flights were grounded; police and national guard units were hogging the highways. It had taken them three days to make the drive, avoiding interstates and major cities. Finally they’d reached the outskirts of Providence and crossed over, taking another four days to finish the journey from Huw’s family estates to this transit point, barely seventy miles away. A thousand miles – two hours by air. Or three days by back roads in the United States. Seventy miles – four days, in the Gruinmarkt. It was an object lesson in the source of the Clan’s power – and a warning.

  They didn’t have long to wait; true to his word, the sergeant ducked in through the kitchen door barely half an hour later. ‘By your leave, sir, we have confirmed your permission to travel. If you are ready to go now . . . ?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Yul, reluctantly setting aside a mug of game soup and a half-eaten cornbread roll. Elena was already on her feet, impatient; Huw set down his wine – a half-drained glass, itself exotic and valuable in this place – and stood.

  ‘Have you got a level stage?’ he asked. ‘We need to take the cart’s contents.’

  ‘We have something better, sir.’ The guard turned and headed towards the barn. Huw followed him. Opposite the stalls – he saw a lad busily rubbing down the horses – someone had installed a raised platform, planks stretched across aluminum scaffolding. A ramp led up to it, and at the bottom –

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Elena said admiringly.

  Three big supermarket trolleys waited for them, loaded up with bags. ‘The regular couriers will bring them back once you unload them,’ said the sergeant. He picked up his clipboard. ‘In view of the current troubles we have no postmaster, but I’m keeping score. For later.’

  ‘All ri
ght.’ Huw set his hands to one of the trolleys and pushed it up the ramp. ‘What’s the other side like?’

  ‘It’s in a cellar.’ The sergeant looked disapproving. ‘Good thing too. You don’t want to be seen coming and going over there – it’s a zoo. But you’ll be safe enough here.’ He caught Huw’s expression and nodded. ‘I’ll go first, see if I don’t.’ He climbed onto the platform and waited while Hulius and Elena pushed their laden trolleys up the ramp. ‘Here, you let me take that one, young miss. Why don’t you ride for once?’ Laying one hand on the trolley’s metal frame, he reached up and tugged a cord leading to a blind on the opposite wall. The blind rose –

  The basement was brick-walled, and the ceiling low, but the Clan’s surveyors had done their job well and the raised floor was a perfectly level match for the platform in the barn. As Huw hauled the first of his suitcases out of the trolley, trying to ignore the nausea and migrainelike headache, he heard voices from the top of the staircase: Elena, and someone else, someone familiar and welcome.

  ‘My lady Brilliana,’ he said. He deposited his case beside the top step – the cellar stairs surfaced in what seemed to be a servants’ pantry – and bowed. ‘I’m glad to see you.’

  ‘Sir Huw! How wonderful to see you, too.’ She smiled slightly more warmly than was proper: Huw held himself in check, ignoring the impulse to hug her. He’d been worried about her for the past week; to find her here, her hair in blond curls, dressed after last year’s New London mode, lifted a huge weight from his heart. She held out her hand, and, somewhat daringly, he bent to kiss it. ‘Have you had a troublesome time?’ she asked, gripping his fingers.

  ‘Not as bad as some.’ Huw straightened up, then gestured at the bags: ‘I bought the books Miriam wanted. And a few more besides. Yul is’ – footsteps creaked on the stairs and he stepped aside as his brother hauled two more suitcases over the threshold – ‘here, too.’

  ‘And all these damned bits of paper,’ his brother complained, shoving the cases forward. ‘Lightning Child damn them for a waste of weight – ’ He stepped forward, out of the path of the sergeant from the other side of the transit post, who heaved another two bags towards Huw.

  ‘Trig tables,’ Huw added. ‘Have you any idea how hard it is to find five-digit trigonometry tables in good condition? Nobody’s printed them for years. I also threw in a couple of calculators – I found a store with old stock HP-48GXs and a thermal printer, so I bought the lot. They take rechargeable batteries so the only scarce resource is the thermal paper,’ he added defensively. ‘I’m still running the one I bought for my freshman year – they run forever. They predate the ban on lead in solder, so there’s no problem with tin whiskers forming in the ICs and shorting them out.’

  ‘Oh, Huw.’ Brill shook her head, still smiling. ‘Listen, I’m sure it’s a good idea! It’s just’ – she glanced over her shoulder – ‘we may not be able to resupply at will, and you know how easily computers break.’

  ‘These aren’t computers; they’re programmable calculators. But they might as well be mainframes, by these people’s standards. And we brought rechargeable batteries and solar chargers.’ He was burbling, he realized: a combination of post-world-walking sickness and the peculiar relief of finding Brill alive and well in the wake of the previous week’s events. ‘Sorry. Been a stressful time. Is Miriam – ’

  ‘She’s in bed upstairs. Resting.’ An unreadable expression flickered across Brill’s face. ‘I’ll give you the tour, if you like. Who else . . . ?’

  ‘Me, ma’am.’ The sergeant reappeared, carrying two more suitcases, wheezing somewhat. ‘One more to go, sirs, ladies.’

  ‘No need to overdo it, Marek, the last cases will wait half an hour if you want to put your feet up.’ Brill’s concern was obvious: ‘You’ve already been over today, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, but it needs moving and we’re shorthanded – ’

  ‘You’ll be even more shorthanded if you work yourself into a stroke! Go and sit yourself down in the parlor with a mug of beer and a pill until your head clears. Go on, I’ll get Maria to look after you – ’ Brill dragged the sergeant out of the servants’ stairwell, seemingly by main force of will, then returned to lead Huw into the downstairs lounge. ‘He’s right that they’re badly undermanned over there, but he insists on trying to do everything,’ she said apologetically. ‘There’s too much of that around here.’

  ‘Too much of it everywhere!’ Elena said emphatically. ‘Why, if I hadn’t forced Huw to let me drive – but how is her royal highness?’ She looked at Huw: ‘Won’t she want to – ’

  ‘Yes, how is she?’ Huw began, then stopped. Brill’s expression was bleak. ‘Oh. Oh dear.’

  ‘The lady Helge is perfectly all right.’ Brilliana’s voice was emotionless. ‘But she’s very tired and needs time to recover.’

  ‘Recover from what?’ Yul chipped in before Elena could kick his ankle.

  ‘Her express instructions are that you are to tell no one,’ Brill continued, looking Huw straight in the eye. ‘Nobody is going to leave this house who cannot keep his or her mouth shut, at least until it no longer matters.’

  ‘Until what matters?’ Yul asked, head swiveling between Brilliana and Huw with ever-increasing perplexity.

  ‘Was it spontaneous?’ Huw demanded.

  Brill nodded. ‘The day of the putsch.’

  ‘Let me see her?’ demanded Elena. ‘My mother was midwife to the district nobility when I was young and she taught me – ’

  Yul stood by, crestfallen and lost for words. ‘Give me your locket,’ Brill said to Elena. ‘And you too,’ she added to Yul. She spared Huw but a brief narrow-eyed glance that seemed to say, If I can’t trust you, then who? ‘You’re not to tire her out, mind,’ she added for Elena’s benefit. ‘If she’s sleeping, leave her be.’ Then she turned towards the door to the owner’s rooms. ‘Leave the cases for now, Huw. Let me fill you in on what’s been going wrong here . . .’

  *

  In the end, there was no siege: The house surrendered without a shot being fired, doors and windows flung wide, a white flag running up the pole that rose from the apex of the steeply pitched roof.

  That wouldn’t have been enough to save the occupants, of course. Riordan was not inclined towards mercy: In the wake of a hard-fought civil war against the old nobility, it was quite obvious to one and all that the Clan divided must fall, and this rebellion could be seen as nothing but the blackest treachery. But by the same token, the families were weak, their numbers perilously low – and acts of gratuitous revenge would only weaken them further, and risk sowing the seeds of blood feud to boot. ‘Arrest everyone,’ he’d instructed his captain on the ground, Sir Helmut: ‘You may hang Oliver Hjorth, Griben ven Hjalmar, or’ – a lengthy list of confirmed conspirators – ‘out of hand, and you may deal as you wish with anyone who resists, but we must avoid the appearance of revenge at all costs. We can afford to spare those who did not raise arms against us, and who are guilty only of following their sworn liege – and their dependents.’

  Helmut’s mustache quivered. ‘Is this wise, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Probably not,’ Riordan retorted, ‘But the alternative is even less so – unless you think we should undertake our enemies’ work for them by cutting each other’s throats to the last?’

  And so: This was the third great holding of a rebel family that Sir Helmut had ridden into in two days. And they were getting the message. At the last one, the house of Freyn-Hankl, a minor outer family connected with the Hjorth lineage, the servants had risen up and locked their upstart landowners in the wine cellars, and sued for mercy. Sir Helmut, mindful of his commanding officer’s advice, had rewarded them accordingly, then sent them packing to spread the word (before he discreetly executed his prisoners – who had, to be fair, poisoned the entire staff of the local Security post by treachery). Facing the open windows and doors of the summer house at Judtford, with his soldiers going in and coming out at will, he was pleased with
the outcome of this tactic. Whether or not it was wise or necessary, it was certainly proving to be effective.

  ‘Sir! If you please, to the drawing room.’ A startled-looking messenger boy, barely in his teens, darted from the front door.

  Sir Helmut stared at him. ‘In whose name?’ he demanded.

  ‘Sir! Two duchesses! One of them’s the queen’s mum, an’ the other is hers! What should we do with them, Jan wants to know?’

  Sir Helmut stared some more, until the lad’s bravado collapsed with a shudder. Then he nodded and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Sammel, Karl, accompany me,’ he snapped. The two soldiers nodded and moved in, rifles at the ready. ‘Lead me to the ladies,’ he told the messenger. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’

  The withdrawing room was dark, and cramped with too much overstuffed furniture, and it smelled of face powder and death. Flies buzzed near the ceiling above the occupants, a pair whom Sir Helmut could not help but recognize. One of them was sleeping. ‘What happened here?’ he demanded.

  The younger of the pair – the one who was mother to the queen-widow – looked at him from beneath drooping eyelids. ‘Was ’fraid you wouldn’t get here,’ she slurred.

  ‘What – ’

  ‘Poison. In tha’ wine. Sh-she started it.’ A shaking hand rose slowly, pointed at the mounded fabric, the shriveled, doll-like body within. ‘Tha’ coup. ’S’hers. Did it for Helge, she said.’

  ‘But – ’ Helmut’s eyes took in the empty decanter, the lack of motion. ‘Are you drunk, or – ’