The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1)

by Charles Stross

  It was the last message. Miriam stared at her phone for a good few seconds before she moved her thumb to the delete key. It only traveled a millimeter, but it felt like miles. She hung up. ‘Did I just hear myself do that?’ she asked the empty room. ‘Did I just decide to ignore a commission from The Herald?’

  She shook her head, then began to rummage through the clothes in her burnished suitcase, looking for something to wear. They felt odd, and once dressed she felt as if she’d forgotten something. ‘Weird,’ she muttered and went back out into the corridor just as the front door banged open, admitting a freezing gust of cold air.

  ‘Miriam!’ Someone in a winter coat leapt forward and embraced her.

  ‘Brill!’ There was someone behind – ‘Olga! What are you doing here?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Olga looked around curiously. ‘What kind of house do you call this?’

  ‘I don’t. It’s going to be a doppelgängered post office, though. Brill, let go, you’re freezing!’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said earnestly. ‘The duke, he sent a message to you with Lady Olga – ’

  ‘Yo! Coffee?’ Paulie took one look at them and ducked back into the kitchenette.

  ‘Come in. Sit down. Then tell me everything,’ Miriam ordered.

  They came in, stripping off outdoor coats: Olga had acquired a formal-looking suit from somewhere, which contrasted oddly with her arm in a sling. She shivered slightly. ‘How strange,’ she remarked, looking round. ‘Charming, quaint! What’s that?’

  ‘A fax machine. Everything feeling strange?’ Miriam looked at her sympathetically. ‘I know that sensation – been having it a lot, lately.’

  ‘No, it’s how familiar it feels! I’ve been seeing it on after-dinner entertainments for so long, but it’s not the same as being here.’

  ‘Some of those tapes are quite old. Fashions change very fast over here.’

  ‘Well.’ Olga attempted a shrug, then winced. ‘Oh, coffee.’ She accepted the offered mug without thanks. Paulie cast her a black look.

  ‘Uh, Olga.’ Miriam caught her eye.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is Paulette. She’s my business manager and partner on this side.’

  ‘Oh!’ Olga stood up. ‘Please, I’m so sorry! I thought you were – ’

  ‘There aren’t any servants here,’ Brill explained patiently.

  ‘Oh, but I was so rude! I shouldn’t have – ’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Paulette. She glanced at Miriam. ‘Is this going to happen every time? It could get old fast.’

  ‘I hope not. Okay, Olga. What did Uncle A have to say for himself?’

  ‘He came to visit me shortly after you left. I’d had time to think on your explanations, and they made uncommon sense. So much sense, in truth, that I passed them on to him in a most forthright manner.’

  Brill cracked up.

  ‘Care to share the joke?’ Miriam asked carefully.

  ‘Oh, it was mirthful!’ Brill managed to catch her breath for a moment before the giggles came back. ‘She told him, she told – ’

  Olga kept her face carefully neutral. ‘I pointed out that my schooling was incomplete, and that I had been due to spend some time here in any case.’

  ‘She pointed out – ’

  ‘Uh.’ Miriam stared at Olga. ‘Did she by any chance have something pointed to do the pointing out with?’

  ‘There was no need, he took the message,’ Olga explained calmly. ‘He also said that desperate times required desperate measures, and your success was to be prayed for by want of avoiding – ’ she glanced at Paulette – ‘the resumption of factional disputes.’

  ‘Civil war, you mean. Okay.’ Miriam nodded. ‘How long have you been out of the hospital?’

  ‘But Miriam, this was today,’ said Brilliana.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I think I’m losing the plot.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘Too many balls in the air, and some of them are on fire.’ She looked around at her audience; Paulie was watching them in fascination. ‘Olga, did you keep the locket you took from the gunman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. In that case, you may be able to help me earn more than the extra million dollars I borrowed from Angbard last month.’ She pretended to ignore Paulette’s sharp intake of breath. ‘The locket doesn’t work in this world,’ she explained, ‘but if you use it on the other side, it takes you to yet another place – more like this one than your home, but just as different in its own way.’

  She took a mouthful of coffee. ‘I’m setting up a business in, uh, world three,’ she told Olga. ‘It’s going to set the Clan on its collective ear when they find out. It’s also going to flush out our mystery assassins, who come from world three. Right out of wherever they’re hiding. The problem is, it takes a whole day for me to world-walk across in each direction. Running a business there is taking all my time.’

  ‘You want me to be a courier?’ asked Olga.

  ‘Yes.’ Miriam watched her. ‘In a week or two I’ll own a house in world three that is in exactly the same place as this office. And we’ve already got the beginnings of a camp in world one, in the woods north of Niejwein, on the same spot. Once I’ve got the house established, it’ll be possible to go from here to there without having to wander through a strange city or know much about local custom – ’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me I’m not fit to be allowed out over there?’ Olga’s eyes blazed.

  ‘Er, no! No!’ Miriam was taken aback until she noticed Brill stifling laughter. ‘Er. That is, only if you want to. Have you seen enough of Cambridge yet? Don’t you want to look around here, first, before going to yet another world?’

  ‘Do I want – ’ Olga looked as if she was going to explode: ‘Yes! I want it all! Where do I sign? Do you want it in blood?’

  *

  Early evening, a discreet restaurant on the waterfront, glass windows overlooking the open water, darkness and distant lights. It was six-thirty precisely. Miriam nervously adjusted her clothing and shivered, then marched up to the front desk.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked the concierge.

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘I’m Miriam Beckstein. Party of two. I believe the person I’m expecting will already be here. Name of Lofstrom.’

  ‘Ah, just a moment – yes, please go in. He’s at a window table, if you’d just come this way – ’

  Miriam went inside the half-deserted restaurant, still filling up with an upmarket after-work crowd, and headed for the back. After weeks in New Britain she felt oddly exposed in a cocktail dress and tux jacket, but nobody here gave her a second glance. ‘Roland?’

  He’d been studying the menu, but now he rocketed to his feet, confusion in his face. ‘Miriam – ’ He remembered to put the menu down. ‘Oh. You’re just – ’

  ‘Sit down. I don’t want you to offer me a seat or hold doors open when it’s easier for me to do it myself.’

  ‘Uh.’ He sat, looking slightly flustered. She felt a sudden surge of desire. He was in evening dress, like the first time. Together they probably looked as if they were heading for a night at the opera. A couple.

  ‘It’s been how long?’ she asked.

  ‘Four weeks and three days,’ he said promptly. ‘Want the number of hours, too?’

  ‘That would be – ’ She stopped and looked at the waiter who’d just materialized at her elbow. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would sir and madame care to view the wine list?’ he asked.

  ‘You go ahead,’ she told Roland.

  ‘Certainly. We’ll have the Château Lafite ’93, please,’ he said. The waiter scurried away.

  ‘Come here often?’ she asked, amused despite her better judgment.

  ‘A wise man said, when you’re planning a campaign, preparation is everything.’ He grinned wryly.

  ‘Are we safe here?’ she asked. ‘Really?’

  ‘Angbard sent a message. Your house appears to be clear, but it might be a bad idea to sleep over there. It’s not dopp
elgängered, and even if it was, he couldn’t vouch for its security. Apart from that – ’ He looked at her significantly. ‘I made sure nobody back at the office knows where I am tonight. And I wasn’t tailed here.’

  The wine arrived, as did the waiter. They spent a minute bickering good-naturedly over the relative merits of a warming chowder against the chef’s way with garlic mushrooms. ‘What has Angbard got you doing?’

  ‘Well.’ He looked ruefully out of the window. ‘After our last meeting it was like you’d thrown a hornet’s nest through his window. Everybody got to walk around downtown Cambridge in the snow, looking for a missing old lady in a powered wheelchair. I ended up spending a week spying on a private security firm we’d hired. Didn’t find much except a few padded expense claims. Then Angbard quietly started shuffling people around – again, nothing turned up except a couple of guards on the take. So then he put me back on regular courier duty in the post room, with a guard assignment or two on the side, moved himself to a high-rise in New York – real estate above the thirtieth floor is going cheap these days – left Matthias running Fort Lofstrom and Angus in Karlshaven, and declared that the search for your foster-mother couldn’t go on any longer. He figured we weren’t going to find anything new after that much time – the trail was cold. Well.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you any specifics about my current assignments, but his lordship told me that if you got in touch, I was to – ’ He paused.

  ‘I think I can guess,’ she said.

  ‘No, I promise! Angbard doesn’t know about us. He thinks we’re just friends.’

  The appetizers arrived. Miriam took a sip of her chowder. The news about the hunt for Iris depressed her, but came as no real surprise. ‘Angbard. Does not know. That we, uh, you know.’ Somehow the thought made her feel free and sinful, harboring personal secrets – as well as strategic information about the third universe – that the all-powerful intelligence head didn’t. She paused for a moment and studied the top of his head, trying to memorize every hair.

  ‘I never told him,’ Roland said, putting down his soup spoon. ‘Did you think I would?’

  ‘You can keep secrets when it suits you,’ Miriam noted.

  He looked up. ‘I am an obedient servant to your best interests,’ he said quietly. ‘If Angbard finds out he’ll kill us. If you want me to apologize for not giving him grounds to kill us, I apologize.’

  She met his eyes. ‘Apology noted.’ Then she went back to her soup. It was deliciously fresh and lightly seasoned, and Miriam luxuriated in it. She stretched out her legs, and nearly spilled soup everywhere as she found his ankle rubbing against hers. Or was it the other way around? It didn’t matter. Nearly two months of lonely nights was coming to the boil. ‘What would you do for me?’ she whispered to him over the remains of the appetizer.

  ‘Anything.’ He met her eyes. ‘Almost anything.’

  ‘Well, I’d like that. Tonight. On one condition.’ The waiter removed their bowls, discreetly avoiding the line of sight between them – obviously couples behaving this way were a well-understood phenomenon in his line of work.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t, whatever you do, talk about tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘Okay. I promise.’ And it was that simple. He surrendered before the main course, a sirloin steak for him and a salmon cutlet for her, and Miriam felt something tight unwind inside her, a subliminal humming tension that had been building up for what felt like forever. She barely tasted the food or noticed as they finished the bottle of wine. He paid, but she paid no attention to that, either. ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you still have an apartment here?’ she replied.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it safe? You’re sure nobody’s, uh – ’

  ‘I sleep there. No booby traps. Do you want to – ’

  ‘Yes.’ She knew it was a bad idea, but she didn’t care about that – at least, not right now. What she cared about, as she pulled her jacket on and allowed him to take her arm, was the warmth at the base of her spine and the sure knowledge that she could count on tonight. All the tomorrows could take their chances.

  He drove carefully, back to his apartment in a warehouse redevelopment not far from the restaurant. Miriam leaned back, watching him sidelong from the passenger seat of the Jaguar. ‘This is it,’ he said, pulling into the underground garage. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, turning off the engine.

  She leaned forward and bit his lower lip, gently.

  ‘Ow – ’ Their mouths met. ‘Not here.’

  ‘Okay. Upstairs.’

  They worked their way into the elevator without getting too disheveled. It stopped on a neat landing with three doors. Roland freed up a hand to unlock one, and punched a code into a beeping alarm system. Then they were inside. He locked the door, put a chain across it, then bolted it – and she tackled him.

  ‘Not here!’

  ‘Where, then?’

  ‘There!’ He pointed through an open door into the living room, dimly lit by an old seventies lava lamp that shed moving patterns of orange and red light across a sofa facing the uncurtained window.

  ‘That’ll do.’ She dragged him over, and they collapsed onto the sofa. He was ready for her, and it was all Miriam could do to force herself to unwrap a condom before she launched herself at him. There was no time to pull off his clothes. She straddled him, felt his hands working under her dress, and then she was –

  – an hour later, sitting on the toilet, giggling madly as she watched him shower. Both of them frog-naked and sweaty. ‘We’ve got to stop this happening to us!’ she insisted.

  ‘Come again?’

  She threw the toilet roll at him.

  ‘You’re violent,’ he complained: ‘That isn’t in The Rules!’

  ‘You read that?’

  ‘Olga’s elder sister had a copy. I sneaked a peek.’

  ‘Ugh!’ Miriam finished with the toilet. ‘Move over, you’re not doing that right.’

  ‘I’ve been showering myself for years – ’

  ‘Yes, that’s what’s wrong. Stand up.’ She stepped into the bathtub with him and pulled the shower curtain across.

  ‘Hey! This wasn’t in The Rules either!’

  ‘Where’s the soap?’

  ‘It does, doesn’t – ow!’

  Morning came late. Miriam stirred drowsily, feeling warm and secure and unaccountably bruised. There was something wrong with the pillow: It twitched. She tensed. An arm! I didn’t, did I . . . ?

  Memory returned with a rush. ‘Your apartment is too big,’ she said.

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Too many rooms.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She squirmed backwards slightly until she felt his crotch behind her. ‘We managed the living room, the bathroom, and the bedroom. But you’ve got a kitchen, haven’t you? And what about the back passage?’

  ‘I, uh.’ He yawned, loudly. She could feel him stiffening. ‘Need the toilet,’ he mumbled.

  ‘And I was just getting my hopes up.’ She rolled over and watched him stand up, fondly. Aren’t they funny in the morning? she thought. If only . . . Then the numb misery was back. It was tomorrow, too soon.

  Damn, she thought. Can’t keep it together for even a night! What’s wrong with me?

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ he called through the open doorway.

  ‘Yeah, please.’ She yawned. Waking up in bed with him should feel momentous, like the first day of the rest of her life. But it didn’t, it just filled her with angst – and a strong desire to spit in the faces of the anonymous killers who’d made it so. She wanted Roland. She wanted to wake up this way forever. She’d even think about the marriage thing, and children, if it was just about him. But it wasn’t, and there was no way she’d sacrifice a child on the altar of the Clan’s dynastic propositions. Romeo and Juliet were just stupid dizzy teenagers, she thought. I know better. Don’t I?

  She stood up and pulled her dress on. Then she padded into Roland’s
small kitchen. He smiled at her. ‘Breakfast?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ She smiled back at him, brain spinning furiously. Okay, so why don’t you give him a chance? she asked herself. If he is hiding something, let’s see if he’ll get it off his chest. Now. She knew full well why she didn’t want to ask, but not knowing scared her. Especially while Iris remained missing. On the other hand, a plausible bluff might make him tell her whatever it was, and if it was about Iris, that mattered. Didn’t it? So what can I use – oh. It was obvious. ‘Listen,’ she said quietly. ‘I know you’re holding out on me. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. You haven’t told Angbard. So who knows about us?’

  She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting: denial, maybe, or laughter; but his face crumpling up like a car wreck wasn’t on the list. ‘Damn,’ he said quietly. ‘Shit.’

  Her mouth went dry. ‘Who?’ she asked.

  Roland looked away from her. ‘He showed me pictures,’ he said quietly. ‘Pictures of us. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Who? Who are you talking about?’ Miriam took a step back, suddenly feeling naked. Ask and ye shall learn.

  Roland sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. ‘Matthias.’

  ‘Jesus, Roland, you could have told me!’ Anger lent her words the force of bullets. He winced before them. ‘What – ’

  ‘Cameras. All the cameras in Fort Lofstrom. Not just the ordinary security ones – he’s got bugs in some of the rooms, hidden and wired into the surveillance net. You can’t sweep for them, they don’t show up, and they’re not supposed to be there. He’s a spider, Miriam. We were in his web.’ Roland’s face was turned toward her, white and tortured. ‘If he tells the old man – ’

  ‘Damn.’ Miriam shook her head – whether in disgust or denial, she was unsure. ‘When?’

  ‘After you disappeared. Miriam, he’s blackmailing me. Not you, you might survive. Angbard’d kill me. He’d be honor-bound to, if it came out.’

  Miriam glared. ‘What. What did he ask. You to do?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Roland cried out. He was right on the edge. I’m scaring him, she realized, an echo of grim satisfaction cutting through the numbness around her. Good. ‘At least, nothing yet. He says he wants you out of the picture. Not dead, just out of the Clan politics. Invisible. What you’re doing now – he thinks I’m behind it.’