He sat back to wait, straining to reveal no sign of his inner tension. It’s like trying not to think of invisible elephants, Helge’s mother Patricia had told him with a twinkle in her eyes. All you have to do is learn to ignore the elephant in the room. Which was perfectly true, but when the elephant in question was the huge lie you’d just told the patriarch of your family, that was easier said than done. The background was true enough, if one chose to overlook some judicious omissions. But his escape—that was another matter. Yes, he’d hidden under a table, shivering and concussed. But it had been one of the eastern Clan’s soldiers who’d carried him across to that strange doppelganger city of New York, and it had been a very much alive Lady Olga Thorold who had gifted him with the locket, in return for certain undertakings. Because, when you got down to it, sometimes treachery was a two-way street.
The elders stared at the locket greedily but with trepidation, as if it might bite. “This is definitely the sigil of the eastern Clan?” the eldest asked, in a tone of almost superstitious disbelief. “Have you compared it to our own?”
James stifled a gasp of relief. “Not directly, uncle,” he admitted. “It allowed me to travel, and its bite is the same—I think it subtly different, but I thought it best to leave the comparison to someone who knows nothing of our ways.”
The eldest nodded thoughtfully, then looked up. “Leave us,” he said, encompassing everyone in the room but his brother, his brother’s wife, and James. There was a mass exodus towards the doors at the back of the day room as various servants and no few guards bowed themselves out, but presently the shuffling and whispering died down. Finally, his great-uncle spoke again. “Do they know you live, nephew?”
The implied claim in his familial loyalty nearly made James overlook the implicit threat in the question. “I don’t believe so, uncle, but I may be mistaken,” he said politely. “I stand ready to return to them if you so order it.” He might have said more, but instead bit his lower lip, waiting. He’d spent more than six months living among the eastern families as a hostage: His disappearance might be taken as a sign of treachery. Might. Except the events of that fateful night a week ago would make a perfect excuse for absence—one that would be accepted, unquestioned, if Olga was in a position to hold her patron to his side of their bargain. On the other hand, if he returned to the Clan too soon he’d be unable to make good his side of their pact. It was, all in all, a delicate situation.
“You broke their parole.” Great-Uncle Huan’s eyes narrowed accusingly.
“He had good reason,” Number One Wife remonstrated.
“Humph.” Huan slouched sideways on his cushion. “Still looks bad.”
“Appearances are everything,” the eldest agreed. “Nephew, we will think on this. I believe, however, it would be for the best if you wrote a letter to the eastern Clan’s elders, perhaps to the white duke himself, explaining your absence. Apologize, remind him of the circumstances that caused you to flee, and ask whether their security will be able to guarantee your safety upon your return.” He smiled, evidently amused. “Shame them for forcing you into an act of cowardice.”
James bowed his head. “I’ll do that.” He paused. “Do you expect me to return?”
“Only if they can guarantee your safety.” Eldest’s smile widened. He picked up the locket. “You’ve done excellent work already, my nephew. I wish we’d been able to persuade them to provide bed, board, and bodyguards for our spies back in my father’s day. It would have made things so much more entertaining. . . .”
The sun had long since set behind the battlements of the Hjalmar Palace, and the besieging forces had settled down to intermittent sniping, seemingly intent on making the defenders keep their heads down. Which might be good news or bad news, Lady Olga thought, depending on whether they were doing so to conserve ammunition for an attack, or simply planning on keeping the Clan security force bottled up indefinitely. The former seemed likely: The usurper had demonstrated a dismaying talent for keeping the Clan on the back foot.
Not that a prolonged siege was in any way preferable. The usurper’s army had taken the castle by stealth, planted explosives, and nearly succeeded in mousetrapping the Clan’s inevitable counterattack. Only the extreme paranoia of Clan security’s leadership (who had prepared a secret way in, against the possibility of treachery) and the professionalism of their assault team (who had found and defused the explosive charges) had stopped them massacring the counterattack. But the situation was far from resolved. Egon’s men had an unpleasant additional surprise for the Clan forces, in the shape of a handful of machine guns—presumably looted from some Clan arms dump earlier in the war—dug in on top of the castle’s gatehouse. The enemy were still clinging on to the gatehouse—largely because Clan security didn’t have enough spare troops to mount a frontal attack on what was effectively a small castle in its own right—and so they were forced to keep their heads down and stay away from the front windows of the inner keep.
What the enemy weren’t to know was that the Clan’s main mobile strength was bottled up in the castle: The doppelganger site in the United States was knee-deep in Special Forces troops, for the secret cross-agency task force set up to track down the Clan had spotted their hastily prepared operation and brought the hammer down hard.
And that was the good news.
Olga turned and paced back across the width of the stone-flagged hall, past the map-strewn table and the improvised command and control station where hollow-eyed radio technicians tried to pull useful information together from the walkie-talkie equipped guards on the outer hard-points, to the cluster of men standing around the foot of the table. “Earl Hjorth. Earl Wu. Lieutenant Anders.” She nodded and smiled agreeably, trying to maintain a facade of confidence. Angbard’s valkyrie, they called her behind her back; a nickname freighted with significance, and one she’d have to work doubly hard to live up to when they learned the truth. “What word from Riordan?” she asked.
“Nothing in the past ten minutes.” Carl, Earl of Wu by Hjorth, and captain of the Clan’s security service, rubbed his mustache. A blunt, bulky fellow, his usually ruddy features showed signs of sagging under the burden of responsibility that had landed on his shoulders. “Riordan tells me the plane’s not equipped for night flying and they’re running short of fuel—we’re at the extremity of its flight radius, and they didn’t have much stockpiled. It’s not a real airborne detachment: We wouldn’t have it at all except that Rudi pursued his hobby despite official discouragement. . . . Well, that’s a question for another time. Right now, we’re not getting anything in or out tonight. I’ve got guards with infrared sights on all four bastions and the gatehouse, with continuous radio coverage and M249 sections to cover the approaches, but the enemy have got the sally ports pinned down, and they brought down the riverside culvert so we can’t sneak anyone out that way. All the early warning we’ve got is what we can see from the walls.”
“That’s going to do us a lot of good if the pretender shows up with an army in the middle of the night,” Oliver, Earl Hjorth, said sharply.
“I don’t think that’s very likely,” pointed out Sir Helmut Anders, a portly figure in the camouflage surcoat he wore over his body armor. “He can’t be closer than Wergatsfurt and it’ll take him a day to move a large force from there to here. Small forces we can deal with, yes? The real threat will arrive on the morrow. So it seems to me that we need to locate the usurper’s main force, and then trap him between Riordan’s mobile force and this stronghold.” It all sounded so reasonable, until she reminded herself that Riordan’s mobility owed itself to his ability to move his troops across to the other world, and that the United States was not hospitable territory for Clan security detachments right now. And the other complications . . .
“How is his grace?” Helmut asked, in a misplaced attempt to divert Earl Hjorth. Olga tensed, hunting for an excuse, but then Oliver nodded emphatically.
“Yes, damn it, how is he?” They were staring at her, exp
ecting an answer.
“He’s hanging on.” Olga glanced away from the table as she extemporized. “Ivar and Morgaine are tending to him in the baron’s bedroom. If we weren’t mewed up in here I’d have him in a hospital as soon as look at him—the apoplexy has taken his left side and left him sleepy.” Which was a major understatement, but they didn’t need to hear the unvarnished truth right now. Duke Angbard, the foundation stone on which Clan Security was built—the one professionally organized institution to which all five member families deferred—had managed to gargle a few words after his collapse, following the disastrous forced world-walk out of their assembly area near Concord. He was enfeebled and incoherent, and it was well past the magic first hour in which advanced medical care might reap rewards. He wasn’t exactly dead, but the likelihood of him ever making a recovery was very poor—especially if they couldn’t get him to a stroke center. But the last thing they needed right now was to be leaderless, so . . . “He gave me instructions to resolve this situation, but it’s going to take a little while to set up.” She shrugged. “I don’t suppose we could fly him out tomorrow morning?”
It was a faint hope, and Carl’s shaken head told her all she needed to know. “The ultralight’s not equipped to carry a passenger who’s incapacitated. If we had a real airplane, maybe things would be different. I already asked. When this is over—”
She could finish the thought herself: When this is over, we will have ultralight helicopters and jeeps with mortars and two-way radio systems in every stronghold. Even if it takes us a decade to carry them across. And, of course, a chicken in every world-walker’s pot. But for now—
“What are we going to do?” asked Earl Hjorth. To his credit, there was no quaver in his voice. “What are these special orders of yours?”
“Sir Anders mentioned trapping the usurper’s army, didn’t he? We have certain weapons that aren’t public knowledge. I’d rather not disclose the precise details, my lord, until we’re ready to deploy them, but if we can locate the usurper I am certain they will make the job of ending his rampage easier. But for that, we need to know where the pretender is. And we need to get out of this mousetrap.” She smiled happily. “None of which should be particularly hard.”
“But we’re doppelgangered—”
“Not in New Britain.” She tried not to laugh at his expression. “And that’s where we’re all going, just as soon as the mail arrives.”
It was late in the day: The sun had already set, and the evening rush of homebound commuters was well under way. Business was beginning to slacken off, which was fine by Jason. The sooner they all went home, the sooner the boss would shut up shop and he could go home. But for now . . .
The store was mostly empty: a couple of tired guys with handbaskets down by the discount stationery, a harried suburban mom riding herd on two preteens round the aisle of laptops; nothing much to do. Jason waited by the cash register, trying to look attentive. It’d be just like Bill to hang out in back and watch him on the CCTV, then jump on anything he did wrong. That was the trouble with this job—with a busybody like Bill minding the floor, you just couldn’t fart without him noticing. One of the fluorescents overhead was flickering, its strobing glow reflecting off the glass cabinets. He shifted from foot to foot—sore as usual, after a day of pacing the aisles.
The doors opened. A few seconds later Jason glanced up, registered the two weirdly dressed men. “Can I help you?” he mumbled, taken aback.
“Yes.” The younger of the two grinned. “We’ve got a shopping list. And we’re in a real hurry.” He held up a sheet of paper in one gloved hand.
That’s armor, isn’t it? Jason blinked. The glove was made out of ringlets of metal, knitted together as if by machine—dull gray metal, hundreds of ringlets. Both men were wearing chain mail suits under loose tunics. The tunics were speckled with camouflage dye, like army fatigues. The older man had a full beard and a livid scar drew an emphatic frownline across his brow. “Uh, I can’t leave the register, sir—”
The old guy—middle-aged, by the gray hairs speckling his beard—shook his head. “Call your manager, son. We do not have much time.” His voice was heavily accented.
“Uh, I can’t—”
“What seems to be the problem?”
Jason gritted his teeth as Bill materialized somewhere behind him. “These folks need a personal shopper.”
“Well, you’d better look after them.” He could practically hear Bill’s shit-eating grin. “I’ll mind the register for you.”
“Let me see that list.”
The young guy handed it over. Jason squinted. “A Hewlett-Packard 4550N? I don’t know if we’ve got one of those in stock—”
“Please check.” The young guy shrugged. “If you’ve got one, we want it right now. And the other items. If you do not have that precise model, we’ll discuss alternatives. Whatever you’ve got.”
“Okay, let me have a look.”
Jason scanned the list. A laptop, a heavy laser printer, a scanner, software—all big-ticket items. Some cheaper stuff: a badge laminator, paper, spare toner cartridges, a paper cutter. And some stuff that didn’t make sense: an uninterruptible power supply and a gas-fueled generator? He didn’t bother to glance at his watch, he already knew the time: three minutes to closing. Shit. I’ll be here all evening. But the stuff on this list was worth close to ten big ones; the commission on it was close to a day’s wages. Plus, Bill would have his guts if he let these fish go. Jesus. “I’ll get the big stuff out of the stockroom if we’ve got it, sir. Do you want to pick up the software? It’s over on that aisle—”
“Hurry up, we don’t have all night.” That was Bill, grinning humorlessly at him from behind the register.
Jason shoved through the doors into the stockroom, grabbed a cart, and went hunting. Yet another fucked-up job to add to his list of eccentrics and weirdos who passed through the shop on a daily basis: Did you hear the one about the two guys in chain mail and camo who came in to buy a DTP system at three minutes to closing? They did have the printer in stock, and just his luck, the fucking thing weighed more than a hundred pounds. No scanner, so he picked the next model up. Laptop, check.
It took him just five minutes to rush round the stockroom and grab the big ticket stuff on the list. Finally, impatient to get them the hell out of the shop and cash up and go home, Jason shoved the trolley back out onto the floor. Bill slouched behind the cash register, evidently chatting with the older customer. As he followed the cart out, Bill glared at him. “I wanna take this sale,” he said.
“No you don’t.” Bill laid one hand on the trolley as the younger guy appeared round the end of an aisle, carrying a full basket. “You want to go home, kid, that’s the only reason you were so fast. Go on, shove off.”
“But I—”Now he got it: Bill would log himself in and process the sale and claim the commission, while Jason did all the heavy lifting.
“Think I’m stupid? Think I don’t see you watching the clock? Shove off, Jason.” Bill leaned towards him, menacing. “Unless you want me to notice your timekeeping.”
The younger of the two customers glanced at Bill. “What is your problem?” he asked, placing his basket on the counter.
“We get a commission on each sale,” mumbled Jason. “He’s my supervisor.”
“I see.” The older customer looked at Jason, then at the trolley, then back at Jason. “Well, thank you for your fast work.” He held out his hand, a couple of notes rolled between his fingers; Jason took them. He turned back to Bill. “Put the purchases on this card. We will need help loading them.”
Jason nodded and headed for the back room to grab his coat. Fucking Bill, he thought disgustedly, then glanced at the banknotes before he slid them into his pocket.
There were five of them, and they were all fifties.
“I am sorry, but that’s impossible, sir.”
Rudi paused to buy himself time to find the words he needed. Standing up in front of the CO to brief him
on a tool they’d never used before was hard work: How to explain? “The Saber 16 is an ultralight. It has to be—that’s the only way I could carry it over here on my own. The wing weighs about a hundred pounds, and the trike weighs close to two hundred and fifty; maximum takeoff weight is nine hundred pounds, including fifty gallons of fuel and a pilot. You—I, whoever’s flying the thing—steer it with your body. It’s a sport trike, not a general aviation vehicle.”
Earl Riordan raised an eyebrow. “I thought you could carry a passenger, or cargo?”
The question, paradoxically, made it easier to keep going. “It’s true I can lift a passenger or maybe a hundred pounds of cargo, sir, but dropping stuff—anything I drop means taking a hand off the controls and changing the center of gravity, and that’s just asking for trouble. I can dump a well-packaged box of paper off the passenger seat and hit a courtyard, sure, but a two-hundred-pound bomb? That’s a different matter. Even if I could figure out a way to rig it so I could drop it without tearing the wing off or stalling, I’d have to be high enough up that the shrapnel doesn’t reach me, and fast enough to clear the blast radius, and the Saber’s got a top speed of only fifty-five, so I’d have to drop it from high up, so I’d need some kind of bombsight—and they don’t sell them down at Wal-Mart. Sorry. I can drop grenades or flares, and given a tool shop and some help we might even be able to bolt an M249 to the trike, but that’s all. In terms of military aviation we’re somewhere round about 1913, unless you’ve got something squirreled away somewhere that I don’t know about.”
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