The Hidden Family: Book Two of Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

  Whirr. Click. New memo. “Why didn’t they keep trying different knots until they found one that worked? One that let them make the rendezvous with the other families?”

  Whirr. Click. New memo. “It’s a bloodline thing. If you know of only one other universe, and if you know the ability to go there runs in the family, would you necessarily think in terms of multiple worlds? Would you realize you’d mis-remembered the design of the talisman? Or would you just assume—the West Coast must have looked pretty much the same in both versions, this world and my own back then—that you’d been abandoned by your elder brothers? Scumbags.”

  Whirr. Click. New memo. “Why me? Why Patricia? What was it about her ancestry that threatened them? As opposed to anyone else in the Clan? Did they just want to kill her to restart the blood feuds, or was there something else?”

  Whirr. Click. New memo. “What do they want? And can I use them as a lever to get the Clan to give me what I want?”

  The door around the back of the scullery creaked as it opened.

  Miriam was on her feet instantly, back to the wall beside the cooker, pistol in her right hand. Shit, shit—she froze, breath still, listening.

  “Miriam?” called a familiar voice, “are you there?”

  She lowered her gun. “Yes!”

  Olga shuffled inside, looking about a thousand years older than she had an hour before. “Oh, my head,” she moaned. “Give me drugs, give me strong medicine, give me a bone saw!” She drew a finger across her throat, then looked at Miriam. “What is that you’re wearing?” she asked.

  “Hello.” Brilliana piped up behind her. “Can I come in?” She looked around dubiously. “Are you sure this is another world?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Miriam said tersely. “Here. Take two of these now. I’ll give you the next two when it’s time.” She passed the capsules to Olga, who dry-swallowed them and pulled a face. “Get a glass of water.” Miriam looked at Brill. “Did you bring—”

  Brill grinned. “This?” she asked, hefting a stubby looking riot gun.

  “Uh, yeah.” Miriam froze inside for a moment, then relaxed. She fixed Brill with a beady eye. “You realize an explanation is a bit overdue?”

  “An explan—oh.”

  “It doesn’t wash, Brill,” she said evenly. “I know you’re working for someone in Clan security. Or were you going to tell me you found that cannon in a cupboard somewhere?”

  Olga had taken a step back. Miriam could see her right hand flexing. “Why don’t you go upstairs and get dressed for the party?” Miriam suggested.

  “Ah, if you think so.” Olga looked at her dubiously.

  “I do.” Miriam kept her eyes on Brill, who stared back unwavering as Olga swept past toward the staircase. “Well?”

  “I got word to expect you two days before you arrived in Niejwein,” Brill admitted. “You didn’t really expect Angbard to hang you out to dry, did you? He said, and I quote, ‘Stick to her like glue, don’t let her out of your sight on family territory, and especially don’t give Baron Hjorth an opportunity to push her down a stairwell.’ So I did as he said,” she added, her self-satisfaction evident.

  “Who else was in on it?” Miriam asked.

  “Olga.” Brill shrugged. “But not as explicitly. She’s not an agent, but…you didn’t think she was an accident, did you? The duke sent you down to Niejwein with her because he thought you’d be safer that way. And to add to the confusion. Conspirators and murderers tend to underestimate her because of the giggling airhead act.” She shrugged.

  “So who do you report to?” said Miriam.

  “Angbard. In person.”

  “Not Roland?”

  “Roland?” Brill snorted. “Roland’s useless at this sort of thing—”

  “So you world-walk? Why did you conceal it from me?”

  “Because Angbard told me to, of course. It wasn’t hard: You don’t know enough about the Clan structure to know who’s likely to be outer family and who’s going to have the talent.” She took a deep breath. “I used to be a bit of a tear-away. When I was eighteen I tried to join the Marine Corps.” She frowned. “I didn’t make the physical, though, and my mother had a screaming fit when she heard about it. She told Angbard to beat some sense into me and he paid for the bodyguard training and karate while I made up my mind what to do next. Back at court, my job—” she swallowed—“if we ever had to bring the hammer down on Alexis, I was tasked with that. Outside the Clan, nobody thinks a lady-in-waiting is a threat, did you know that? But outside the Clan, noble ladies aren’t expected to be able to fight. Anyway, that’s why Angbard stuck me on you as a nursemaid. If you ran into anything you couldn’t handle…”

  “Er.” The kettle began to hiss. Miriam shook her head, suffering from information overload. My lady-in-waiting wants to be a marine? “Want some coffee?”

  “Yes. Please. Hey, did you know you look just like your Iris when you frown?”

  Miriam stopped dead. “You’ve seen her?” she demanded.

  “Calm down!” Brilliana held up her hands in surrender. “Yes, I’ve seen her in the past couple of days, and she’s fine. She just needed to go underground for a bit. Same as you, do you understand? I met up with her when you left me in Boston with Paulie and nothing to do. After you shot your mouth off at Angbard, I figured he needed to know what had you so wound up. He takes a keen interest in her well-being, and not just because you threatened to kill him if he didn’t. So of course I went over to see her. In fact, I visited every couple of days, to keep an eye on her. I was there when—” Brill fell silent.

  “It was you with the shotgun,” Miriam pushed.

  “Actually, no.” Brill looked a little green. “She kept it taped under her chair, the high-backed one in the living room. I just called the Clan cleaners for her afterwards. It was during your first trip over here when she, she had the incident. She phoned your office line, and I was in the office, so I picked up the phone. As you were over here I went around to sort everything out. I found—” She shuddered. “It took a lot of cleaning up. They were Clan security, from the New York office, you know. She was so calm about it.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Miriam poured the kettle’s contents into a cafetiere. Her hand was shaking, she noticed distantly. “You’re telling me that Iris gunned down a couple of intruders?”

  “Huh?” Brill looked puzzled. “Oh, Iris. That’s right. Like ‘Miriam.’ Listen, she said, ‘it gets to be a habit after the third assassination attempt. Like killing cockroaches.’”

  “Urk.” Miriam sat down hard and waited for the conceptual earthquake to stop. She fixed Brill with the stare she kept in reserve for skewering captains of industry she was getting ready to accuse of malfeasance or embezzlement. “Okay, let me get this straight. You are telling me that my mother just happens to keep a sawn-off shotgun under her wheelchair for blowing away SWAT teams, a habit which she somehow concealed from me during my childhood and upbringing while she was a political activist and then the wife of a radical bookstore manager—”

  “No!” Brill looked increasingly annoyed. “Don’t you get it? This was the first attempt on her life in over thirty years—”

  Miriam’s walkie-talkie bleeped at her urgently.

  “We’ve got company.” Miriam eyed the walkie-talkie as if it might explode. My mother is an alien, she thought. Must have been in the Weather Underground or something. But there was no time to worry about that now. “Is that thing loaded?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. Then wait here. If anyone comes through the garden door, shoot them. If anyone comes through the other door, it’ll be either me and Olga, or the bad guys. I’ll knock first. Back in a second.”

  Miriam dashed for the hall and took the stairs two at a time. “Zone two breach,” the burglar alarm chirped in her ear. Zone two was the east wall of the garden. “Olga?” she called.

  “Here.” Olga stepped out onto the landing. Her goggles made her look like a tall, angular insect
—a mantis, perhaps.

  “Come on. We’ve got visitors.”

  “Where do you want to hold out?”

  “In the scullery passage and kitchen—the only direct way in is via the front window, and there are fun surprises waiting for them in the morning room and dining room.”

  “Right.” Olga hurried downstairs, a machine pistol clutched in one hand.

  “Brill,” Miriam called, “we’re coming in.” She remembered to knock.

  Once in the kitchen she passed Brill a walkie-talkie with hands-free kit.

  “Put this in a pocket and stick the headphone in. Good. Olga? You too.” She hit the transmit button. “Can you both hear me?”

  Two nods. “Great. We’ve—”

  “Attention. Zone four breach.”

  “—That’s the living room. Wait for it, dammit!”

  “Attention. Zone five breach.”

  “Dining room,” Miriam whispered. “Right. Let’s go.”

  “Let’s—what?”

  She switched her set to a different channel and pressed the transmit button.

  “Attention. Zone four smoke release. Attention. Zone five smoke release. Attention. Zone six smoke release.”

  “What—”

  “Smoke bombs. Come on, the doors are locked on the hall side and I had the frames reinforced. We’ve got them bottled up, unless they’ve got demolition charges. Here.” Miriam passed Brill a pair of handcuffs. “Let’s go. Remember, we want to get the ringleader alive—but I don’t want either of you to take any risks.”

  Miriam led them into the octagonal hallway. There was a muffled thump from the day room door, and a sound of coughing. She waved Olga to one side, then prepared to open the door. “Switch your goggles on,” she said, and killed the lights.

  Through the goggles the room was a dark and confusing jumble of shapes. Miriam saw two luminous green shadows moving around her—Brill and Olga. One of them gave her a thumbs-up, while the other of them raised something gun-shaped. “On my mark. I’m going to open the door. Three, two, one, mark.” Miriam unlocked the door and shoved it open. Smoke billowed out, and a coughing figure stumbled into the darkened hall. Olga’s arm rose and fell, resulting in a groan and a crash. “I’m in.” Miriam stepped over the prone figure and into the smoke-filled room. It was chilly inside, and her feet crackled on broken glass. Bastards, she thought angrily. Something vague and greenish glowed in the smoke at the far corner, caught between the grand piano and the curtains. “Drop your gun and lie down!” Miriam shouted, then ducked.

  Bang-bang: The thud of bullets hitting masonry behind her was unmistakable. Miriam spat, then knelt and aimed deliberately at the shooter. Can I do this—rage filled her. You tried to kill my mother! She pulled the trigger. There was a cry, and the green patch stretched up then collapsed. She froze, about to shoot again, then straightened up.

  “Stop! Police!” Whistles shrilled in the garden. “Attention. Zone three breach.”

  “That’s the south wall! What the fuck?” Miriam whispered. She keyed her walkie-talkie. “Status!”

  “One down.” Brill, panting heavily. “Olga’s got the guy in the hall on the floor. They tried to shoot me.”

  “Listen.” Whistles loud in the garden, flashlight beams just visible through the smoke. “Into the hall! Brill, can you drag the fucker? Get him upright? You take him and I’ll carry Olga.”

  The sound of breaking glass came from the kitchen. Miriam darted back through the doorway and nearly ran straight into Olga.

  “Quick!” Olga cried. “I can’t do it, my head’s still splitting. You’d better—”

  “Shut the fuck up.” Miriam pushed her goggles up, grabbed Olga around the waist, and mashed a hand against the light switch. She fumbled with her left sleeve, saw the blurry outline clearly for a moment, tried to focus on it, and tightened her grip on Olga painfully. “Brill?”

  “Do it!” Brill’s voice was edgy with tension and fear. More police whistles then a cry and more gunshots, muffled by the wall.

  Miriam tensed and lifted, felt Olga grab her shoulders, and stared at her wrist. Her knees began to buckle under the weight: Can’t keep this up for long, she thought desperately. There was a splintering sound behind her, and the endless knotwork snake that ate its own tail coiling in the darkness as it reached out to bite her between the eyes. She fell forward into snow and darkness, Olga a dead weight in her arms.

  Facing The Music

  Miriam was freezing. She had vague impressions of ice, snow, and a wind coming in off the bay that would chill a furnace in seconds. She stumbled to her feet and whimpered as pain spiked through her forehead.

  “Ow.” Olga sat up. “Miriam, are you alright?”

  Miriam blinked back afterimages of green shapes moving at the far end of the room. She remembered her hot determination, followed by a cry of pain. She doubled over abruptly and vomited into the snow, moaning.

  “Where’s the hut?” Olga demanded in a panicky voice. “Where’s the—”

  “Goggles,” Miriam gasped. Another spasm grabbed her stomach. This cold could kill us, she thought through the hot and cold shudders of a really bad world-walk. “Use your goggles.”

  “Oh.” Olga pulled them down across her eyes. “Oh!”

  “Miriam?” Brill’s voice came from behind a tree. “Help!”

  “Aaarh, aarh—”

  Miriam stumbled over, twigs tearing at her face. It was snowing heavily, huge flakes the size of fingernails twisting in front of her face and stinging when they touched her skin. Brill was kneeling on top of something that thrashed around. “Help me!” she called.

  “Right.” Miriam crashed to her knees in front of Brill, her stomach still protesting, and fumbled at her belt for another set of restraints. Brill had handcuffed the prisoner but he’d begun kicking and she was forced to sit on his legs, which was not a good position for either of them. “Here.”

  “Lay still, damn you—”

  “We’re going to have to make him walk. It’s that or we carry him,” Olga commented. “How big is he?”

  “Just a kid. Just a goddamn kid.”

  “Watch out, he may have friends out here!”

  Miriam stood up and pulled her night-vision goggles back down. Brill and the prisoner showed up as brilliant green flames, Olga a hunched figure a few feet away. “Come on. To the cabin.” Together with Brill she lifted the prisoner to his feet—still moaning incoherently in what sounded like blind panic—and half-dragged him toward the hunting blind, which was still emitting a dingy green glow. The heat from the kerosene heater was enough to show it up like a street light against the frigid background.

  It took almost ten minutes to get there, during which time the snow began to fall heavily, settling over their tracks. The prisoner, apparently realizing that the alternative was freezing to death slowly, shut up and began to move his feet. Miriam’s head felt as if someone was whacking on it with a hammer, and her stomach was still rebelling from its earlier mistreatment. Olga crept forward and hunted around in the dark, looking for signs of disturbance, but as far as Miriam could see they were alone in the night and darkness.

  The hut was empty but warm as Brill and Miriam lifted the youth through the door. With one last effort they heaved him onto a sleeping mat and pulled the door shut behind them to keep the warmth in. “Right,” said Miriam, her voice shaking with exhaustion, “let’s see what we’ve got here.” She stood up and switched on the battery-powered lantern hanging from the roof beam.

  “Please don’t—” He lay there shaking and shivering, trying to burrow away into the corner between the wall and the mattress.

  “It speaks,” Brill observed.

  “It does indeed,” said Miriam. He was shorter than she was, lightly built with straight dark hair and a fold to his eyes that made him look slightly Asian. And he didn’t look more than eighteen years of age.

  “Check him for an amulet,” said Miriam.

  “Right, you—got it!” A mome
nt of struggle and Brill straightened up, holding out a fist from which dangled a chain. “Which version is it?”

  Miriam glanced in it, then looked away. “The second variation. For world three.” She stuffed it into a pocket along with the other. “You.” She looked down at the prisoner. “What’s your name?”

  “Lin—Lin.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you have any friends out in this storm, Mr. Lin Lin?” Miriam glanced at the door. “Before you answer that, you might want to think about what they’ll do to you if they found us here. Probably shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “No.” He lay back. “It’s Lee.”

  “Lin, or Lee?”

  “I’m Lin. I’m a Lee.”

  “Good start,” said Brill. She stared malevolently at him. “What were you doing breaking into our house?”

  Lin stared back at her without saying anything.

  “Allow me,” Miriam murmured. Her headache was beginning to recede. She fumbled in her jacket, pulled out a worryingly depleted strip of tablets, punched one of them out, and swallowed it dry. It stuck in her throat, bitter and unwanted.

  “Listen, Lin. You invaded my house. That wasn’t very clever, and it got at least one of your friends shot. Now, I have some other friends who’d like to ask you some questions, and they won’t be as nice about it as I am. In about an hour we’re going to walk to another world, and we’re going to take you with us. It’s a world your family can’t get to, because they don’t even know it exists. Once you’re there, you are going to be stuck. My friends there will take you to pieces to get the answers they want, and they will probably kill you afterwards, because they’re like that.”

  Miriam stood up. “You have an hour to make up your mind whether you’re going to talk to me, or whether you’re going to talk to the Clan’s interrogators. If you talk to me, I won’t need to hurt you. I may even be able to keep you alive. The choice is yours.”