“A problem?” He raised an eyebrow as they neared the rear of the truck where Irma and Gerd, with Leonhard’s unwilling help, were lifting the duke into the covered load bed.
“A passenger who is somewhat . . . sick. We need dropping off elsewhere from the rest of Carl’s men, to make a crossing to the United States where he can receive urgent medical care.”
“If he’s so sick, why—” James paused. “Oh. Who is he?”
“I don’t think you want to know. Officially.”
James paused in midstride. “There have been signals,” he said. “Huge disturbances, civil strife in Gruinmarkt. We have eyes and ears; we cannot help but notice that things are not going according to your plans.”
Olga nodded politely, trying not to give anything away. “Your point, sir?”
“You are imposing on us for a big favor,” he pointed out. “Six months ago our elders were at daggers’ drawn. Some of them are still not sure that sheathing them was a good idea. We have our own external security problems, especially here, and escorting your soldiers through our territory is bound to attract unwanted attention. I’m sorry to have to say this so bluntly, but I need something to give my elders, lest they conclude that you have nothing to offer them.”
“I see.” Olga kept her smile bland as she frantically considered and discarded options. Shoot his men and steal their vehicles was, regrettably, not viable; without native guides to the roads of Irongate they’d risk getting hopelessly lost, and in any case the hidden family’s elders wouldn’t have sent James without an insurance policy. Offer him something later would send entirely the wrong signal, make her look as weak as the debtor turning out his purse before a loan shark’s collection agents. Her every instinct screamed no at the idea of showing him the duke in his current state, but on the other hand . . .
“Let me put it to you that your elders’ interests are served by the continued stability of our existing leadership,” she pointed out. “If one of our . . . leaders . . . had experienced an unfortunate mishap, perhaps in the course of world-walking, it would hardly enhance your security to keep him from reaching medical treatment.”
“Of course not.” James nodded. “And if I thought for a second that one of your leaders was so stricken, I would of course offer them the hospitality of our house—at least, for as long as they lingered.” He raised an eyebrow quizzically.
Olga sighed. “You know we travel to another world, not like New Britain.” Well, of course he did. “Their doctors can work miracles, often—at least, they are better than anything I’ve ever seen here, or anything available back home. It does not reflect on your honor that I must decline your offer of hospitality; it is merely the fact that the casualty might survive if we can get him into the hospital that is waiting for him, but he will probably die if we linger here.” She looked James Lee in the eye. “And if he dies without a designated successor, all hell will break loose.”
James swallowed. The violent amber flare of the floodlights made it hard to be sure, but it seemed to her that he looked paler than normal. “If it’s the duke—” He began to turn towards the truck, and Olga grabbed him by one elbow.
“Don’t!” she said urgently. “Don’t get involved. Forget your speculation. It’s not the duke; the duke cannot possibly be allowed to be less than hale, lest a struggle to inherit his seat break out in the middle of a civil war with the Pervert’s faction. Let Ang—Let our sick officer pass, and if he recovers he will remember; and if he dies, you can remind his successors that you acted in good faith. But if you delay us and he dies . . . you wouldn’t want that to happen.”
She felt him tense under her hand, and clenched her teeth. James was taller than she, and significantly stronger: If he chose not to be restrained, if he insisted on looking in the truck—
He relaxed infinitesimally, and nodded. “You’d better go, my lady.” Shadows flickered behind them—another lance of Wu’s soldiers coming through. “Right now. Your men Leonhard or Morgan, one of them can guide you. Take this truck; I will arrange a replacement for your comrades.” Olga released his elbow. He rubbed it with his other hand. “I hope you are right about your dream-world’s doctors. Losing the thin white duke at this point would indeed not be in our interests.”
“I’m pleased you agree.” Olga glanced round, spotted Leonhard walking towards the driver’s cabin. “I’d better go.”
“One thing,” James said hastily. “Is there any news of the lady Helge?”
“Helge?” Olga looked back at him. “She passed through New London a week ago. One of my peers is following her.”
“Oh,” James said quietly. “Well, good luck to her.” He turned and walked back towards the gate.
Olga watched him speculatively for a few seconds. Now what was that about? she wondered. But there was no time to be lost, not with the duke stricken and semiconscious on the back. She climbed into the cab of the truck behind Leonhard and a close-lipped driver. “Let’s go,” she told them.
“There’s no time to lose.”
The Execution
Protocol
Governments run on order and process. There was probably a protocol for everything, thought agent Judith Herz—formerly of the FBI, now attached semipermanently to the Family Trade Organization—short of launching a nuclear attack on your own territory. Unfortunately that was exactly what she’d been tasked with doing, and probably nobody since the more psychotic members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tasked with planning Operation Northwood during the 1960s had even imagined it. And even though a checklist had come down from on high and the colonel and Major Alvarez had confirmed it looked good, just thinking about it gave her a headache.
(1) Secure the package at all times. She glanced up from her clipboard, across the muddy field, at the white armored truck with the rectangular box body. The floodlights they’d hastily rigged that afternoon showed that it was having some difficulty reversing towards the big top; the rear axle would periodically spin, the engine roaring like an angry tiger as the driver grappled with its overweight carcass. Maybe we ought to have just used a minivan, she thought. With a suitable escort, it would have been less conspicuous. . . . On the other hand, the armed guards in the back, watching each other as well as the physics package, would probably disagree.
(2) Do not deploy the package until arrival of ARMBAND. Armband, whatever it was—some kind of magic box that did whatever it was the world-walking freaks from fairyland did in their heads—had landed at MacArthur Airport; she’d sent Rich Hall and Amanda Cruz to pick it up. Check.
(3) PAL codes—call WARBUCKS for release authorization. That was the bit that brought her out in a cold sweat, because along with the half-dozen unsmiling federal agents from the NNSA, call sign WARBUCKS meant that this was the real deal, that the permissive action lock code to activate the nuclear device would be issued by the vice president himself, as explained in the signed Presidential Order she’d been allowed to read—but not to hold—by the corpsefaced bastard from the West Wing who Colonel Smith answered to. Since when does the President give WARBUCKS backpack nukes to play with, anyway? she asked herself; but it looked official enough, and the folder full of top secret code words that had landed on her desk with a palpable thud yesterday suggested that this might be a cowboy operation, but if so, it was being led by the number one rancher himself. At least, that was what the signatures of half the National Command Authority and a couple of Supreme Court justices implied.
(4) FADM/ARMBAND final assembly and PAL programming to be carried out on launch scaffold. The thing in the tent gave her the creeps; Smith called it a transdimensional siege tower, but it looked too close to a field-expedient gallows for her liking. She was going to go up there with Dr. Rand and a posse of inspectors from NNSA and a couple of army officers and when they came down from the platform some person or persons unknown would be dead. Not that she was anti-death-penalty or anything, but she’d started out as an FBI agent: The anonymous military way of killing felt prof
oundly wrong, like a gap in a row of teeth, or a death in the family.
(5) ARMBAND failure contingency plan. That was the worst bit of all, because if ARMBAND failed to work as advertised, she and Lucius Rand and everyone else would be standing on a scaffold with a ticking bomb on a sixty-second countdown, and they’d get precisely two chances to enter the eight-digit abort code.
It was a good thing that she’d taken the time for holy communion and attended confession that morning, she thought, as she walked towards the tent. It had been a long day, and she had a feeling that the night was going to be even longer.
Her earbud crackled: “Herz, speak to me.” It was the colonel.
“Stage one is in hand, I’m waiting on news of ARMBAND.” Out of one corner of her eye she saw moving headlights, another of the undercover patrol cars circling the block slowly, looking for rubberneckers. “Everything seems to be on track so far.”
“Please hold.” She walked on, briefly looking round to check on the armored car. (It was reversing again, pulling free of the patch of soft ground that had stymied it.) “Okay, that’s good. Update me if there are any developments.”
So the colonel is jittery? Good. A uniform over near the support truck from the NNSA was waving to her; local cops drafted in for crowd control and vehicle marshaling. She changed course towards him. So he should be. “What’s up?” she demanded.
“Uh, agent—” He was nervous; not used to dealing with FBI.
“Herz.” She nodded. “You have something.”
“Yeah, there’s a car at the north quadrant entrance, driver says it’s for you. Name of Hall.”
“Oh.”—what’s Rich doing up there?—“If that’s Rich Hall and Amanda Cruz, we’re expecting them.” She kicked herself mentally: Should have told them which gate to use. “Let them in. They’ve got a package we’re expecting.”
“Sure thing, ma’am.” He leaned over towards the driver’s window of the patrol car, talking to his partner. Herz walked on, jittery with too much poor-quality caffeine and a rising sense of tension. We’re about to fire the opening shot in a war, she thought. I wonder where it’s going to end. . . .
It was dark, and the moon already riding low in the sky outside the kitchen window, when Huw yawned and conceded defeat. He saved the draft of his report, closed the lid of his laptop, picked up two glasses and a bottle of zinfandel, and went upstairs to bed.
As he closed the door and turned on the light, the bedding moved. A tousled head appeared: “What kept you?”
“I have a report to write, in case you’d forgotten.” He put the glasses and the bottle down on the dressing table and began to unbutton his shirt. “I hope you had a better day than I did, my lady.”
“I very much doubt it.” She sat up and plumped up the pillows. As the comforter dropped, he saw that she was naked. Catching his gaze, she smiled. “Lock the door?”
“Sure.” He dropped his shirt on the carpet, let his jeans fall, then went to the door and shot the dead bolt. Then he picked up the wine bottle and twisted the screw cap. “What happened?”
“Head office are going mad.” She screwed up her face. “It’s unreal. The council are running around like half-headed turkey fowl, the whole flock of them.”
“Well, that’s a surprise.” He filled a glass, sniffed it, then held it out to her. She took it. “Any word? . . .”
“Olga’s bringing him out within the next hour. Assuming nobody attacks the ambulance, he’ll be in a hospital bed by dawn. The last word from that quarter is that he’s tried to talk, since the incident.”
Huw filled his own wineglass, then sat down on the edge of the bed. “Can we forget about politics for a few hours? I know you want me to bring you up to date on what I was doing back in New York, and I’m sure you’ve got a lot of stuff to tell me about what’s been going on since the last time we were together, but I would like, for once, to take some time out with you. Just you and me alone, with no unquiet ghosts.”
Her frown faded slightly. “I wish we could.” She sighed. “But there’s so much riding on this. We’ll have time later, if we succeed, but”—she glanced at the door anxiously—“ there’s so much that can still go wrong. If Miriam has any mad ideas about running away . . .”
“Well, that’s an interesting question. While you were away, we had a talk. She seemed to need it.”
“Oh?” Brilliana drank down a mouthful of wine. “How is she doing?”
“Not well, but I don’t think she’s going to run out on us, as long as she feels we’re standing alongside her.”
“It’s that bad? I’ve known her for, ah, nearly a year, and her highness does not strike me as disloyal to her friends.”
Huw did not miss the significance of the honorific. “She hasn’t acceded to that rank yet. Has she?”
“No.” Brill’s expression was bleak. “I don’t think she’s even realized, yet, what it means—she was having a difficult time understanding that vile business of Henryk’s, much less thinking about what is going to happen . . .”
“Er, I think you’re wrong.” Huw emptied his glass in one long swallow. “Needed that. Excuse me. Did you buy her a pregnancy test kit?” He refilled her glass, then topped up his own.
“I—yes, but I haven’t given it to her yet. She asked you about that?”
“She is remarkably open, but her ability to trust—anyone, I think—is badly damaged by the whole business of the succession. I . . . I offered to help her obtain an abortion if she thought she needed one.”
“Huw!” Brill clapped one hand to her mouth. Then: “Why?”
“She raised the subject.” Huw hunched his shoulders. “I don’t think she will, but . . . if she feels pressured, what will she do?”
“React,” Brill said automatically. “Oh. Yes, that was cleverly played, my love. But you should have warned me. That’s too clever by half. What if she’d called your bluff?”
“What if it wasn’t a bluff?” He shrugged. “She’s no use to our cause if she doesn’t trust us. No use to anyone at all. That is true whether or not she has a royal bun in the oven. We’re trying to break the pattern, not reinforce it.”
“Uh-huh. Winning her trust is one thing.” She leaned towards him. “But you’d help her shoot herself in the head?”
“If I was convinced that she wanted to, and knew what she was asking for . . . yes.” He looked at Brilliana with a bleakness that sat badly with his age. “I’d try to save her first, mind you.”
“Would you try to save me from my worst urges?” she asked sharply.
Huw put his glass down. “That’s one of those questions to which there’s no safe answer, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She drained her own glass and reached across him, to put it down beside his. He shivered as she pushed her breasts against his side; her nipples were stiff. “My worst urge right now says I want you to fuck me like there’s no tomorrow. Because tomorrow”—she ran her hand down his chest—“we might both be dead.”
Erasmus was going over the next morning’s news with John Winstanley and Oliver Smith, the party commissioners for truth and justice, when word of the abdication came in.
Smith was reading down a plate, his lips moving silently as he read the raised bright mirror-text of the lead: “. . . and we call upon all right minded men to, hang on, here’s a dropped—”
“Yes, yes,” Erasmus said acidly. “No need for that, leave it to the subs. What I need to know is, do you think it’s sound?”
“Is it sound?” Winstanley nodded lugubriously. “Well, that’s the—”
The door rattled open. Burgeson looked up sharply. “What is it?” he demanded.
The messenger boy—or youth—looked unabashed: “It’s Mr. Burroughs, sir! He wants you to come, quick like! ‘E says it’s important!”
Erasmus stared at him. “Where is he?” he demanded.
“ ’E’s in the mayor’s mansion, sir! There’s news from out east—a train just came in, and there was folks on it wh
o said the king’s abdicated!”
Erasmus glanced at Smith. “I think you’d better hold the front page,” he said mildly, “I’m going to go see what this is all about.”
It was an overcast, gray summer’s day outside, with a thin fog from the bay pumped up to a malignant brown haze by the smoke from a hundred thousand stoves and steam cars on this side of the bay. Fishing boats were maneuvering around the wharves, working their way in and out of the harbor as if the crisis of the past weeks was just a distant rumor. From the front steps, waiting as his men brought the car round to him, Erasmus could just make out the dots of the picket fleet in the distance, military yachts and korfes riding at anchor to defend the coast against the approach of French bombardiers or submarines. He eyed them warily every morning, half afraid they would finally make their move, choosing sides in the coming struggle. Word from the cadres aboard the ships was that the sailors were restive, unpaid for months now, but that the officers remained crown loyalists for the most part. Should putsch come to shove, it would be an ugly affair—and one that the realm’s foreign enemies would be keen to exploit. Which was probably why John Frederick had not tried his luck by ordering the picket into the bay to put down the provisional government forces. It was a card he could only play once, and if it failed, he might as well dust off Cromwell’s block. Although if the messenger lad was right . . .
By the time he arrived at the mayoral mansion, a light rain was falling and the onshore breeze was stiffening, blowing the smog apart. Erasmus paused for a deep breath as he stepped out of the back of the car, relishing the feel of air in lungs he’d almost despaired of a year ago. Where are you now, Miriam? he wondered briefly. It was her medication that had cured him, of that he was certain, even though the weird pills had turned his urine blue and disrupted his digestion. What other magic tricks do you have up your sleeve? It was something he’d have to explain to the chairman, sooner or later—if he could work out how to broach the subject without sounding as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “Follow,” he said over his shoulder. The two bodyguards and the woman from the stenography pool moved hastily into position.
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