The Hidden Family: Book Two of Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

  “Um. You sure that you want to do this?”

  “No, I’m not sure, I just know that I have to.”

  Paulie turned the corner then pulled over. Miriam was out of the car in a second and Paulette pulled away. There was virtually nobody about—no parked occupied vans, no joggers. She crossed the road briskly, walked up to her front door, and remembered two things, in a single moment of icy clarity. Firstly, that she had no idea where her house keys might be, and secondly, that if there were no watchers this might be because—Uh-oh, she thought, and backed away from the front step, watching where her feet were about to go with exaggerated caution. A cold sweat broke out in the small of her back, and she shuddered violently. But fear of trip wires didn’t stop her carefully opening the yard gate, slipping around the side of the house, and up to the shed with the concealed key to the French doors at the back.

  When she had the key, Miriam paused for almost a minute at the glass doors, trying to get her hammering heart under control. She peered through the curtains, thoughtfully. They’ll expect me to go in the front, she realized. But even so… She unlocked the door and eased it open a finger’s width. Then she reached as high as she could, and ran her index finger slowly down the opening, feeling for the faint tug of a lethal obstruction. Finding nothing, she opened the door farther, then repeated the exercise on the curtains. Again: nothing. And so, Miriam returned to her home.

  Her study had been efficiently and brutally strip-searched. The iMac was gone, as were the boxes of CD-ROMs and the zip drive and disks from her desk. More obviously, every book in the bookcase had been taken down, the pages riffled, and dumped in a pile on the floor. It was a big pile. “Bastards,” she said quietly. The pink shoebox was gone, of course. Fearing the worst she tiptoed into her own hallway like a timid burglar, her heart in her mouth.

  It was much the same in the front hall. They’d even searched the phone books. A blizzard of loose papers lay everywhere, some of them clearly trampled underfoot Drawers lay open, their contents strewn everywhere. Furniture had been pulled out from the walls and shoved back haphazardly, and one of the hall bookcases leaned drunkenly against the opposite wall. At first sight she thought that the living room had gotten off lightly, but the damage turned out to be even more extensive—her entire music collection had been turned out onto the floor, disks piled on a loose stack.

  “Fuck.” Her mouth tasted of ashes. The sense of violation was almost unbearable, but so was the fear that they’d taken her mother and found Paulie’s research disk as well. The money-laundering leads were in the hands of whoever had done this to her. Whoever they were, they had to know about the Clan, which meant they’d know what the disk’s contents meant. They were a smoking gun, one that was almost certainly pointing at the Clan’s east coast operations. She knelt by the discarded CD cases and rummaged for a minute—found The Beggar’s Opera empty, the CD-ROM purloined.

  She went back into the front hall. Somehow she slithered past the fallen bookcase, just to confirm her worst fear. They’d strung the wire behind the front door, connecting one end of it to the handle. If she hadn’t been in such a desperate hurry that she’d forgotten her keys, the green box taped crudely to the wall would have turned her into a messy stain on the sidewalk. Assassin number two is the one who likes Claymore mines, she reminded herself edgily. The cold fear was unbearable and Miriam couldn’t take any more. She blundered out through the French doors at the back without pausing to lock them, round the side of the house, and onto the sidewalk to wait for Paulie.

  Seconds later she was in the back of the car, hunched and shivering. “I don’t see any signs of anything going on,” Paulie said quietly. She seemed to have calmed down from her state at Iris’s house. “What do you want to do now? Why don’t we find a Starbucks, get some coffee, then you tell us what you found?”

  “I don’t think so.” Miriam closed her eyes.

  “Are you alright?” Brill asked, concern in her voice.

  “No, I’m not alright,” Miriam said quietly. “We’ve got to ditch the car, now. They trashed the place and left a trip-wire surprise behind the front door. Paulie, the box of stuff my mother gave me was gone. And so was the disk.”

  “Oh—shit. What are we going to do?”

  “I—” Miriam stopped, speechless. “I’m going to talk to Angbard. But not until I’ve had a few words with Roland.” She pulled an expression that someone who didn’t know her might have mistaken for a smile. “He’s the one who told me about the surveillance. It’s time to clear the air between us.”

  Part 3

  Capitalism for Beginners

  Interrogations

  The city of Irongate nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians, soot-stained and smoky by day, capped at night by a sky that reflected the red glow of the blast furnaces down by the shpping canal. From the center of town, the Great North-East Railway spur led off toward the coastline and the branches for Boston and New London. West of the yards and north of the banked ramparts of the Vauban pattern fortress sloped a gentle rise populated by the houses of the gentry, while at the foot of the slope clustered tight rows of worker’s estates.

  Irongate had started as a transport nexus at the crossing of the canal and the railways, but it had grown into a sprawling industrial city. The canal and its attendant lock system brought cargos from as far as the Great Lakes—and, in another time, another world, it was the site of a trading post with the great Iroquis Nation, who dominated the untamed continental interior between the Gruinmarkt and the empire of the West.

  There was a neighborhood down in the valley, rubbing shoulders with the slums of the poor and the business districts, that was uncomfortable with its own identity. Some people had money but no standing in polite society, no title or prospects for social advancement. They congregated here, Chinese merchants and Jewish brokers and wealthy owners of bawdy houses alike, and they took pains to be discreet, for while New Britain’s laws applied equally to all men, the enforcers of those laws were only too human.

  Esau walked slowly along Hanover Street, his cane tapping the cobblestones with every other stride. It was early evening and bitterly cold with it, but the street sweepers had been at work and the electric street lamps cast a warm glow across the pavement. Esau walked slowly, forgoing the easy convenience of a cab, because he wanted time to think. It was vital to prepare himself for the meeting that lay ahead, both emotionally and intellectually.

  The street was almost empty, the few pedestrians hurrying with hands thrust deep in coat pockets and hats pulled down. Esau passed a pub, a blare of brassy noise and a stench of tobacco smoke squirting from the doorway as it opened to emit a couple of staggering drunks. “Heya, slant-eye!” one of them bellowed after him. Esau kept on walking steadily, but his pulse raced and he carefully grasped the butt of the small pistol in his pocket. Don’t react, he told himself. You can kill him if he attacks you. Not before. Not that Esau looked particularly Oriental, but to the Orange louts of Irongate anyone who didn’t look like themselves was an alien. And reports of a white man killed by a Chinee would inflame the popular mood—building on the back of a cold winter and word of defeats in the Kingdom of Siam. The last thing Esau’s superiors needed right now was a pogrom on the doorstep of their East Coast headquarters.

  The betting shops were closed and the pawnbrokers shut, but between two such shops Esau paused. The tenement door was utterly plain, but well painted and solidly fitted. A row of bellpulls ran beside a set of brass plaques bearing the names of families who hadn’t lived here in decades. Esau pulled the bottom-most bellpull, then the second from the top, the next one down, and the first from the bottom, in practiced series. There was a click from the door frame and he pushed through, into the darkened vestibule within. He shut the door carefully behind him, then looked up at the ceiling.

  “Esh’sh icht,” he said.

  “Come on in,” a man’s voice replied in accented English. The inner door opened on light and finery—a stairwel
l furnished with rich hand-woven carpets, banisters of mahogany, illuminated by gilt-edged lamps in the shape of naked maidens. A ceramic lucky cat sat at one side of the staircase, opposite a guard. The guard bowed stiffly as soon as he saw Esau’s face.

  “You are expected, lord,” he said.

  Esau ignored him and ascended the staircase. The tenement block above the two shops had been cunningly gutted and rebuilt as a palace. The rooms behind the front windows—visible from the street as ordinary bedrooms or kitchens—were Ames rooms barely three feet deep, their floors and walls and furniture slanted to preserve the semblance of depth when seen from outside. The family had learned the need for discretion long ago. Fabulous wealth was no social antidote for epicanthic folds and dark skins in New Britain and if there was one thing the mob disliked more than Chineemen, it was rich and secretive criminal families of Chinee-men. Vermin, Esau thought of the two drunks who had harangued him outside the pub. Never mind. At the top of the staircase he bowed once to the left, to the lacquered cabinet containing the household shrine. Then he removed his topcoat, hat, and shoes, and placed them in front of the servant’s door to the right of the stairs. Finally he approached the door before the staircase, and knocked once with the head of his cane.

  The door swung open. “Who calls?” asked the majordomo.

  “It is I.” Esau marched forward as the majordomo bowed low, holding the door aside for him. Like the guard below, the majordomo was armed, a pistol at his hip. If the mob ever came, it was their job to buy the family time to escape with their lives. “Where can I find the elder of days?”

  “He takes tea in the Yellow Room, lord,” said the majordomo, still facing the floor.

  “Rise. Announce me.”

  Esau followed the majordomo along a wood-floored passage, the walls hung with ancient paintings. Some of them legacies of home, but others, in the European renaissance style, bore half-remembered names. The majordomo paused at a door just beyond a Caravaggio, then knocked. After a whispered conversation two guards emerged—guards in family uniform this time, not New British street clothes. In addition to their robes and twin swords (in the style this shadow-world called “Japanese,” after a nation that had never existed in Esau’s family home) they bore boxy black self-feeding carbines.

  “His lordship,” said the majordomo. Both soldiers came to attention.

  “Follow me.”

  The majordomo and guards proceeded before Esau, gathering momentum and a hand’s count of additional followers as befitted his rank: a scribe with his scrolls and ink, a master of ceremonies whose assistant clucked over Esau’s suit, following him with an armful of robes, and a gaggle of messengers. By the time they arrived outside the Yellow Room, Esau’s quiet entry had turned into a procession. At the door, they paused. Esau held out his arms for the servants to hang a robe over his suit while the majordomo rapped on the door with his ceremonial rod of office. “Behold! His lordship James Lee, second of the line, comes to pay attendance before the elder of days!”

  “Enter,” called a high, reedy voice from inside the room.

  Esau entered the Yellow Room, and bowed deeply. Behind him, the servants went to their knees and prostrated themselves.

  “Rise, great-nephew,” said the elder. “Approach me.”

  Esau—James Lee—approached his great-uncle. The elder sat cross-legged upon a cushioned platform, his wispy beard brushing his chest. He had none of the extravagant fingernails or long queue that popular mythology in this land imagined the mandarin class to have. Apart from his beard, his silk robes, and a certain angle to his cheekbones, he could pass for any beef-eating New Englishman. The family resemblance was pronounced. This is how I will look in fifty years, James Lee thought whenever he saw the elder. If our enemies let me live that long.

  He paused in front of the dais and bowed deeply again, then once to the left and once to the right, where his great-uncle’s companions sat in silence.

  “See, a fine young man,” his great-uncle remarked to his left. “A strong right hand for the family.”

  “What use a strong right hand, if the blade of the sword it holds is brittle?” snapped his neighbor. James held his breath, shocked at the impudence of the old man—his great-uncle’s younger brother, Huan, controller of the eastern reaches for these past three decades. Such criticism might be acceptable in private, but in public it could only mean two things—outright questioning of the Eldest’s authority, or the first warning that things had gone so badly awry that honor called for a scapegoat.

  “You are alarming our young servant,” the Eldest said mildly. “James, be seated, please. You may leave,” he added, past Esau’s shoulder.

  The servants bowed and backed out of the noble presence. James lowered himself carefully to sit on the floor in front of the elders. They sat impassively until the doors thumped shut behind his back. “What are we to make of these accounts?” asked the Eldest, watching him carefully.

  “The accounts?…” Esau puzzled for a moment. This was all going far too fast for comfort. “Do you refer to the reports from our agent of influence, or to the—”

  “The agent.” The Eldest shuffled on his cushion. “A cup of tea for my nephew,” he remarked over his shoulder. A servant Esau hadn’t noticed before stepped forward and placed a small tray before him.

  “The situation is confused,” Esau admitted. “When he first notified me of the re-emergence of the western alliance’s line I consulted with uncle Stork, as you charged me. My uncle sent word that the orders of your illustrious father were not discharged satisfactorily and must therefore be carried out. Unfortunately, the woman’s existence was known far and wide among the usurpers by this time, and her elder tricked us, mingling her party with other women of his line so that the servants I sent mistook the one for the other. Now she has gone missing, and our agent says he doesn’t know where.”

  “Ah,” said the ancient woman at the Eldest’s right hand. The Eldest glanced at her, but she fell silent.

  “Our agent believes that the elder Angbard is playing a game within the usurper clan,” Esau added. “Our agent intended to manipulate her into a position of influence, but controlled by himself—his goal was to replace Angbard. This goal is no longer achievable, so he has consented to pursue our preferences.”

  “Indeed,” echoed Great-Uncle Huan, “that seems the wisest course of action to me.”

  “Stupid!” Esau jerked as the Eldest’s fist landed on a priceless lacquered tray. “Our father’s zeal has bound us to expose ourselves to their attack, lost a valued younger son to their guards, and placed our fate in the hands of a mercenary—”

  “Ah,” sighed the ancient woman. The Eldest subsided abruptly.

  “Then what is to be done?” asked Huan, almost plaintively.

  “Another question,” said Esau’s great-uncle, leaning forward. “When you sent brothers Kim and Wu after the woman they both failed to return. What of their talismans?”

  James Lee hung his head. “I have no news, Eldest.” He closed his eyes, afraid to face the wrath he could feel boiling on the dais before him. “The word I received from our agent Jacob is that no locket was found on either person. That the woman Miriam disappeared at the same time seems to suggest—” his voice broke. “Could she be of our line, as well?” he asked.

  “It has never happened before,” quavered the ancient woman next to the Eldest.

  He turned and stared at her. “That is not the question, aunt,” he said, almost gently. “Could this long-lost daughter of the western alliance have come here?” he asked Esau. “None of them have ever done so before. Not since the abandonment.”

  James Lee took a deep breath. “I thought it was impossible,” he said. “The family is divided by the abandonment. We come here, and they go…wherever it is that the source of their power is. They abandoned us, and that was the end of it, wasn’t it? None of them ever came here.”

  “Do we know if it’s possible?” asked Huan, squinting at Esa
u. “Our skill runs in the ever-thinning blood of the family. So does theirs. I see no way—”

  “You are making unfounded assumptions,” the Eldest interrupted. He turned his eyes on Esau. “The talisman is gone, and so is the woman. I find that highly suggestive. And worrying.” He ran his fingers through his beard, distractedly. “Nephew, you must continue to seek the woman’s demise. Seek it not because of my father’s order, but because she may know our secrets. Seek her in the barbarian castles of Niejwein; also seek her here, in the coastal cities of the north-east. You are looking for a mysterious woman of means, suddenly sprung from thin air, making a place for herself. You know what to do. You must also—” he paused and took a sip of tea—“obtain a talisman from the usurper clan. When you have obtained one, by whatever means, compare it to your own. If they differ then I charge you to attempt to use it, both here and in the world of our ancestors. See where it takes you, if anywhere! If it is to familiar territory, then we may rest easy. But if the talent lies in the pattern instead of the bearer, we are all in terrible danger.”

  He glanced at the inner shrine, in its sealed cabinet on the left of the Yellow Room. “Our ancestor, revered though he be, may have made a terrible error about the cause of the abandonment. Unthinkable though that is, we must question everything until we discern the truth. And then we must find a way to achieve victory.”

  “Hello, Roland’s voice mail. If it’s still secure, meet me at the Marriott suite you rented, tonight at six p.m. Bye.” She stabbed the “off” button on her phone viciously then remarked to the air, “Be there or be dead meat.”

  Paulette was bent over the screen of her laptop, messing around with some fine arts web sites, a browser window pointing to a large online bookstore: “Are you sure you mean that?” she murmured.