The Family Trade tmp-1

by Charles Stross

  Kara bounded in. “It’s your walk with Lady Olga today!” she enthused. “Look what I found for you?”

  Miriam looked-and stifled a groan. Kara had zeroed in on one of her work suits, along with a silvery top. “No,” she said, levering herself off the bed. “Bring me what I was wearing yesterday. I think it’s clean enough to do. Then pass me my underwear and get out.”

  “But! But-”

  “I am thirty-two years old, and I have been putting on my own clothes for twenty-eight of those years,” Miriam explained, one gentle hand on Kara’s back, propelling her gently toward the door. “When I need help, I’ll let you know.” Alone, she leaned against the cold wall for a moment and closed her eyes. Youth and enthusiasm! She made a curse of the phrase.

  Miriam dressed quickly and efficiently, then exited her bedroom to find Kara and a couple of servants waiting by the dining table, on which was laid a single breakfast setting. She was about to protest when she took one look at Kara and bit her tongue. Instead, she sat down. “Coffee or tea, whatever’s available,” she said to the maid. “Kara. Come here. Sit down with me. Cough it up.”

  “I’m meant to dress you,” she said miserably. “It’s my job.”

  “Fine, fine.” Miriam rolled her eyes. “You do know I come from the other side?” Kara nodded. “If it makes you feel better, tell yourself I’m a crazy old bat who’ll be sorry she ignored you later.” She grinned at Kara’s expression of surprise. “Listen, there’s something you need to know about me: I don’t play head games.”

  “Games? With heads?”

  Ye gods! “If I think someone has made a mistake, I tell them. It doesn’t mean I secretly hate them or that I’ve decided to make their life unpleasant. I don’t do that because I’ve got other things to worry about, and screwing around like that-” she saw Kara’s eyes widen-Don’t tell me swearing isn’t allowed?-“is a waste of time. Do you understand?”

  Kara shook her head, mutely.

  “Don’t worry about it, then. I’m not angry with you. Drink your tea.” Miriam patted her hand. “It’s going to be all right. You said there’s a reception this evening. You said we were invited. You want to go?”

  Kara nodded, slowly, watching Miriam.

  “Fine. You’re coming, then. If you didn’t want to go, I wouldn’t make you. Do you understand? As long as you do your job properly when you’re needed, as far as I’m concerned you’re free to do whatever you like with the rest of your time. I am not your mother. Do you understand?”

  Kara nodded again, but her entire posture was one of mute denial and her eyes were wide. Shit, I’m not getting through to her, Miriam thought to herself. She sighed. “Okay. Breakfast first.” The toast was getting cold. “Is Brill going to the party?”

  “Yes, mistress.” Kara seemed to have found her tongue again, but she sounded a bit shaky. She’s about seventeen, Miriam reminded herself. A teenager. Whatever happened to teenage rebellion here? Do they beat it out of them or something?

  “Good. Listen, when you’ve finished, go find her. I need someone to walk with me to Lady Olga’s apartment. When Brill gets back, the two of you are to sort out whatever I’m wearing tonight. When I get back I’ll need you both to dress me and tell me who everybody is, where the bodies are buried, and what topics of conversation to avoid. Plus a quick course in court etiquette to make sure I know how to greet someone without insulting them. Think you can manage that?”

  Kara nodded, a quick flick of the chin. “Yes, I can do that.” She was about to say something else, but she swallowed it. “By your leave.” She stood.

  “Sure. Be off with you.”

  Kara turned and scurried out of the room, back stiff. “I don’t think I understand that girl,” Miriam muttered to herself. Brill I think I’ve got a handle on, but Kara-She shook her head, acutely aware of how much she didn’t know and, by implication, of how much potential for damage this touchy teenager contained within her mood swings.

  Brilliana turned up as Miriam finished her coffee, dressed for an outdoor hike. Hey, have I started a fashion for trousers? Miriam rose. “Good morning!” She grinned. “Sleep well after last night?”

  “Oh.” Brilliana rubbed her forehead. “You plied us with wine like a swain with his-well, I think it’s still there.” She waited for Miriam to stand up. “Would you like to go straight to Lady Olga? Her Aris says she would receive you in the orangery, then take tea with you in her rooms.”

  “I think, hmm.” Miriam raised an eyebrow, then nodded when she saw Brilliana’s expression. No newspapers, no telephones, no electricity. Visiting each other is probably the nearest thing to entertainment they get around here when none of the big nobs are throwing parties. “Whatever you think is the right thing to do,” she said. “Where’s my coat…”

  Brilliana led her through the vast empty reception chamber of the night before, now illuminated with the clear white light of a snow-blanketed day. They turned down a broad stone-flagged corridor. It was empty save for darkened oil paintings of former inhabitants, and an elderly servant slowly polishing a suit of armour that looked strangely wrong to Miriam’s untrained eye: The plates and joints not quite angled like anything she’d seen in a museum back home.

  “Lady Aris said that her Excellency is in a foul mood this morning,” Brilliana said quietly. “She doesn’t know why.”

  “Hmmph.” Miriam had some thoughts on the subject. “I spent a long time talking to Olga on the way here. She’s… let’s just say that being one of the inner Clan and fully possessed of the talent doesn’t solve all problems.”

  “Really?” Brilliana looked slightly disappointed. She pointed Miriam down a wide staircase, carpeted in blue. Two footmen in crimson livery stood guard at the bottom, backs straight, never blinking at the two women as they passed. Their brightly polished swords looked less out of place to Miriam’s eye than the submachine guns slung discreetly behind their shoulders. Any mob who tried to storm the Clan’s holding would get more than they bargained for.

  They walked along another corridor. A small crocodile of maids and dubious-looking servants, cleaning staff, shuffled out of their way as they passed. This time Miriam felt eyes tracking them. “Olga has issues,” she said quietly. “Do you know Duke Lofstrom?”

  “I’ve never been presented to him.” Brilliana’s eyes widened. “Isn’t he your uncle?”

  “He’s trying to marry Olga off,” Miriam murmured.

  “Funny thing is, now I think about it, not once during three days in a carriage with her did I hear Olga say anything positive about her husband-to-be.”

  “My lady?”

  They came to another staircase, this time leading down into a different wing of this preposterously huge mansion. They passed more guards, this time in the same colours as Oliver Hjorth’s butler. Miriam didn’t let herself blink, but she was aware of their stares, hostile and unwelcoming, drilling into her back.

  “Is it my imagination or…?” Miriam muttered as they turned down a final corridor.

  “They may have been shown miniatures of you,” Brilliana said. She shivered, glanced askance at Miriam. “I wouldn’t come this way without a companion, my lady. If I was mistrustful.”

  “Why? How bad could it be?”

  Brilliana looked unhappy. “People with enemies have been known to find the staircases very slippery. Not recently, but it has happened. In turbulent times.”

  Miriam shuddered. “Well, I take your point, then. Thank you for that charming thought.”

  A huge pair of oak doors gaped ahead of them, a curtain blocking the vestibule. Chilly air sent fingers past it. Brilliana held it aside for Miriam, who found herself in a shielded cloister, walled on four sides. The middle was a sea of white snow as far as the frozen fountain. All sound was damped by winter’s natural muffler. Miriam suddenly wished she’d brought her gloves.

  “Whew! It’s cold!” Brill was behind her. Miriam turned to catch her eye. “Which way?” she asked.

  “There.�
��

  Miriam trudged across the snow, noting the tracks through it that were already beginning to fill in. Occasional huge flakes drifted out of a sky the colour of cotton wool.

  “Is that the orangery?” she asked, pausing at the door in the far wall.

  “Yes.” Brilliana opened the door, held it for her. “It’s this way,” she offered, leading Miriam toward an indistinct gray wall looming from the snow.

  There was a door at the foot of the hump. Brilliana opened it, and hot air steamed out. “It’s heated,” she said.

  “Heated?” Miriam ducked in. “Oh!”

  On the other side of the wall, she found herself in a hothouse that must have been one of the miracles of the Gruinmarkt. Slender cast-iron pillars climbed toward a ceiling twenty feet overhead. It was roofed with a fortune in plate-glass sheets held between iron frames, very slightly greened by algae. It smelled of citrus, unsurprisingly, for on every side were planters from which sprouted trees of not inconsiderable dimensions. Brilliana ducked in out of the cold behind her and pulled the door to. “This is amazing!” said Miriam.

  “It is, isn’t it?” said Brilliana. “Baron Hjorth’s grandfather built it. Every plate of glass had to be carried between the worlds-nobody has yet learned how to make it here in such large sheets.”

  “Oh, yes, I can see that.” Miriam nodded. The effect was overpowering. At the far end of this aisle there was a drop of three feet or so to a lower corridor, and she saw a bench there. “Where do you think Lady Olga will be?”

  “She just said she’d be here,” said Brilliana, a frown wrinkling her brow. “I wonder if she’s near the boiler room? That’s where things are warmest. Someone told me that the artisans have built a sauna hut there, but I wouldn’t know about such things. I’ve never been here on my own before,” she added a little wistfully.

  “Well.” Miriam walked toward the benches. “If you want to wait here, or look around? I’ll call you when we’re ready to leave.”

  When she reached the cast-iron bench, Miriam turned and stared back along the avenue of orange trees. Brill hadn’t answered because she’d evidently found something to busy herself with. Well, that makes things easier, she thought lightly. Whitewashed brick steps led down through an open doorway to a lower level, past water tanks the size of crypts. The ceiling dipped, then continued-another green-lined aisle smelling of oranges and lemons, flakes of rust gently dripping from the pillars to the stone-flagged floor. Here and there Miriam caught a glimpse of the fat steam pipes, running along the inside of the walls. The trees almost closed branches overhead, forming a dark green tunnel.

  At the end, there was another bench. Someone was seated there, contemplating something on the ground. Miriam walked forward lightly. “Olga?” she called.

  Olga sat up when she was about twenty feet away. She was wearing a black all-enveloping cloak. Her hair was untidy, her eyes reddened.

  “Olga! What’s wrong?” Miriam asked, alarmed.

  Olga stood up. “Don’t come any closer,” she said. She sounded strained.

  “What’s the matter?” Miriam asked uncertainly.

  Olga brought her hands out from beneath the cloak. Very deliberately, she pointed the boxy machine pistol at Miriam’s face. “You are,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “If you have any last lies to whisper before I kill you, say them now and be done with it, whore.”

  Part 3

  The interview room was painted pale green except for the floor, which was unvarnished wood. The single window, set high up in one wall, admitted a trickle of wan winter daylight that barely helped the glimmering of the electrical bulb dangling overhead. The single table had two chairs on either side of it. All three pieces of furniture were bolted to the floor, and the door was soundproofed and locked from the outside.

  “Would you care for some more tea, Mr. Burgeson?” asked the plainclothes inspector, holding his cup delicately between finger and thumb. He loomed across the table, overshadowing Burgeson’s frail form: they were alone in the room, the inspector evidently not feeling the need for a stout sergeant to assist him as warm-up man.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Burgeson. He coughed damply into a wadded handkerchief. “ ‘Scuse me…”

  “No need for excuses,” the inspector said, as warmly as an artist inspecting his handiwork. He smiled like a mantrap. “Terrible winters up there in Nova Scotia, aren’t they?”

  “Character-building,” Burgeson managed, before breaking out in another wracking cough. Finally he managed to stop and sat up in his chair, leaning against the back with his face pointed at the window.

  “That was how the minister of penal affairs described it in parliament, wasn’t it?” The inspector nodded sympathetically. “It would be a terrible shame to subject you to that kind of character-building experience again at your age, wouldn’t it, Mr. Burgeson?”

  Burgeson cocked his head on one side. So far the inspector had been polite. He hadn’t used so much as a fist in the face, much less a knee in the bollocks, relying instead on tea and sympathy and veiled threats to win Burgeson to his side. It was remarkably liberal for an HSB man, and Burgeson had been waiting for the other shoe to drop-or to kick him between the legs-for the past ten minutes. “What can I do for you, Inspector?” he asked, clutching at any faint hope of fending off the inevitable.

  “I shall get to the point presently.” The inspector picked up the teapot and turned it around slowly between his huge callused hands. He didn’t seem to feel the heat as he poured a stream of brown liquid into Burgeson’s cup, then put the pot down and dribbled in a carefully measured quantity of milk. “You’re an old man, Mr. Burgeson, you’ve seen lots of water flow under the bridge. You know what ‘appens in rooms like this, and you don’t want it to ‘appen to you again. You’re not a young hothead who’s going to get his self into trouble with the law any more, are you? And you’re not in the pay of the Frogs, either, else we’d have scragged you long ago. You’re a careful man. I like that. Careful men you can do business with.” He cradled the round teapot between his hands gently. “And I much prefer doing business to breaking skulls.” He put the teapot down. It wobbled on its base like a decapitated head.

  Burgeson swallowed. “I haven’t done anything to warrant the attention of the Homeland Security Bureau,” he pointed out, a faint whine in his voice. “I’ve been keeping my nose clean. I’ll help you any way I can, but I’m not sure how I can be of use-”

  “Drink your tea,” said the inspector.

  Burgeson did as he was told.

  “ ‘Bout six months ago a Joe called Lester Brown sold you his dear old mother’s dressing table, didn’t he?” said the inspector.

  Burgeson nodded cautiously. “It was a bit battered-”

  “And four weeks after that, a woman called Helen Blue came and bought it off you, din’t she?”

  “Uh.” Burgeson’s mouth went dry. “Yes? Why ask me all this? It’s in my books, you know. I keep records, as the law requires.”

  The inspector smiled, as if Burgeson had just said something extremely funny. “A Mr. Brown sells a dressing table to a Mrs. Blue by way of a pawnbroker who Mr. Green says is known as Dr. Red. In’t that colourful, Mr. Burgeson? If we collected the other four, why, we could give the hangman a rainbow!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Burgeson said tensely. “What’s all this nonsense about? Who are these Greens and Reds you’re bringing up?”

  “Seven years in one of His Majesty’s penal colonies for sedition back in seventy-eight and you still don’t have a fucking clue.” The inspector shook his head slowly. “Levellers, Mr. Burgeson.” He leaned forward until his face was inches away from Burgeson’s. “That dressing table happened to have a hollow compartment above the top drawer and there were some most interesting papers folded up inside it. You wouldn’t have been dealing in proscribed books again, would ye?”

  “Huh?” The last question caught Burgeson off-guard, but he was saved by
another coughing spasm that wrinkled his face up into a painful knot before it could betray him.

  The inspector waited for it to subside. “I’ll put it to you like this,” he said. “You’ve got bad friends, Erasmus. They’re no good for yer old age. A bit o’ paper I can’t put me finger on is one thing. But if I was to catch ’em, this Mrs. Blue or Mr. Brown, they’d sing for their supper sooner than put their necks in a noose, wouldn’t they? And you’d be right back off to Camp Frederick before your feet touch the ground, on a one-way stretch. Which in your case would be approximately two weeks before the consumption carried you away for good an’ all and Old Nick gets to toast you by the fires of hell.

  “All that Godwinite shit and old-time Egalitarianism will get you is a stretched neck or a cold grave. And you are too old for the revolution. They could hold it tomorrow and it wouldn’t do you any good. What’s that slogan-’Don’t trust anyone who’s over thirty or owns a slave’? Do you really think your young friends are going to help you?”

  Burgeson met the inspector’s gaze head-on. “I have no Leveller friends,” he said evenly. “I am not a republican revolutionary. I admit that in the past I made certain mistakes, but as you yourself agree, I was punished for them. My tariff is spent. I cooperate fully with your office. I don’t see what else I can do to prevent people who I don’t know and have never heard of from using my shop as a laundry. Do we need to continue this conversation?”

  “Probably not.” The inspector nodded thoughtfully. “But if I was you, I’d stay in touch.” A business card appeared between his fingers. “Take it.”

  Burgeson reached out and reluctantly took the card.

  “I’ve got my eye on you,” said the inspector. “You don’t need to know how. If you see anything that might interest me passing through your shop, I’ll trust you to let me know. Maybe it’ll be news to me-and then again, I’ll know about it before you do. If you turn a blind eye, well-” he looked sad-“you obviously won’t be able to see all the titles of the books in your shop. And it’d be a crying shame to send a blind man back to the camps for owning seditious tracts, wouldn’t it?”