The Clan Corporate

RUMORS OF WAR

Meanwhile, a transfinite distance and a split second away, the king-emperor of New Britain was having a bad day.

“Damn your eyes, Farnsworth.” He hunched over his work-glass, tweezers in hand, one intricate gear wheel clasped delicately between its jaws. “Didn’t I tell you not to disturb me at the bench?”

The unfortunate Farnsworth cleared his throat apologetically. A skinny fellow in the first graying of middle age, clad in the knee breeches and tailcoat of a royal equerry, his position as companion of the king’s bedchamber made him the first point of contact for anyone who wanted some of the king’s time—and also the lightning conductor for his majesty’s occasional pique. “Indeed you did, your majesty.” He stood on the threshold of the royal workshop, flanked on either side by the two soldiers of the Horse Guards who held the door, his attention focused on the royal watchmaker. King John the Fourth of New Britain was clearly annoyed, his plump cheeks florid and his blond curls damp with perspiration from hours of focus directed toward the tiny mechanism clamped to his workbench.

“Then what have you got to say for yourself?” demanded the monarch, moderating his tone very slightly. Farnsworth suppressed a sigh of relief: John Frederick was not his father, blessed with decisiveness but cursed with a whim of steel. Still, he wasn’t out of the woods yet. “I see it is”—the king’s eyes swiveled toward a mantel covered from edge to edge in whirring clocks, every one of which he had built with his own hands—“another thirty-seven minutes before I must withdraw to the Green Room and prepare for the grand opening.”

“I deeply regret the necessity of encroaching upon your majesty’s precious time, but”—Farnsworth took a deep breath—“it’s the Ministry for Special Affairs. They’ve hatched some sort of alarm or excursion, and Sir Roderick says it cannot possibly wait, and the prime minister himself heard Sir Roderick out in private and sent me straight to you forthwith. He apologizes for intruding upon your majesty’s business, but says he agrees the news is extremely grave and demands your most urgent attention in your capacity as commander in chief.”

“News?” The king snorted. “Urgent? It’s probably just some jumped-up border fort commander complaining that Milton’s been squeezing their bully and biscuit again.” But he carefully lowered the tiny camshaft assembly, placing it back on the velvet cloth beside the rectangular gear mill he was building, and lowered a second cloth atop the work in progress. “Where’s he waiting?”

“In the Gold Office, your Majesty.”

Two footmen of the royal household scurried forward to secure the items on the royal workbench. A third servant bowed deeply, then bent to untie the royal apron, while a fourth approached bearing the king’s topcoat. The king slid down off his high stool and stretched. At thirty-six years old he was in good health, although his waistline showed the effect of too many state banquets, and his complexion betrayed the choleric blood pressure that so worried his physiopaths and apothecaries. He extended his arms for the coat, of conservative black broadcloth embroidered with gold frogging in the style of the earlier century. “Take me to Sir Roderick and the prime minister. Let us hear this news that is important enough to drag the royal gearsman away from his analytical engine.”

Farnsworth glanced over his shoulder. “Make it so,” he snapped. And it was done. The King of New Britain, Emperor of Terra Australis, by grace of God Protector-Regent of the Chrysanthemum Throne, pretender to the Throne of England, and Presider of the Grand Assembly of American States, could go nowhere without an escort of Horse Guards to protect the royal person, majors-domo to announce his presence in advance lest some hapless courtier fail to be alerted and take their cue to pay their respects, household servants to open the doors before him and close them behind him and brush the carpets before his feet fell upon them . . . but John Frederick the man had scant patience when kept waiting, and Farnsworth took considerable pride in ensuring that his lord and master’s progress was as frictionless as one of the royal artificer’s own jeweled gear trains.

The royal procession paced smoothly through the west wing of the Brunswick Palace, traversing wood-paneled and richly plastered corridors illuminated by the cold, clear brilliance of the electrical illuminants the technocrat-emperor favored. Courtiers and servants scattered before his progress as Farnsworth marched, stony-faced, ahead of the king, aware of the royal eyes drilling speculatively into the back of his high-collared coat. He turned into the North Hall, then through the Hall of Monsters (walled with display cabinets by the king’s grandfather, who had taken his antediluvian cryptozoological studies as seriously as the present incumbent took his watchmaker’s bench), and then into the New Hall. From there he turned left and paused in a small vestibule before the polished oak doors of the Gold Office.

“Open all and rise for his majesty!” called one of the guards. An answering announcement, muffled by the thickness of wood, reached Farnsworth. He nodded at the nearest footman, who moved smartly to one side and opened the door. Farnsworth stepped forward.

“His Majesty the King bids you good afternoon, and graces you with his presence to enquire of the running of his domains,” he announced. Then he took two steps back, to stand beside the door, as invisible to the powerful occupants as the tape-telegraph on its pillar to one side of the enormous desk or the gigantic map of the world that covered the wall opposite the door.

John Frederick stepped inside, then glanced over his shoulder. “Shut it. Everyone who isn’t cleared, get out,” he said. Two men, one tall and cadaverous in his black suit, the other wizened and stooped with age, waited beside his desk as he strode toward it and threw himself down in the wide-armed chair behind it with a grunt of irritation. The stooped man watched impassively, but the tall fellow looked slightly apprehensive, like an errant pupil called into the principal’s office. “Sir Roderick, Lord Douglass. We assume you would not have lightly called us away from our one private hour of the day without good reason. So if you would be good enough to be seated, perhaps you could explain to us what that reason was? You, fetch chairs for my guests.”

Servants cleared for the highest discussions brought chairs for the two ministers. Lord Douglass sat first, creakily lowering himself into his seat. “Roderick, I believe this is your story,” he said in a thin voice that betrayed no weakness of mind, merely the frailty of extreme old age.

“Yes, your lordship. Majesty. I have the grave duty to report to you that our intelligence confirms that two days ago the Farmers General detonated a corpuscular dissociation petard on their military test range in Northumbria.”

“Shit.” John Frederick closed his eyes and rubbed them with the back of one regal wrist. “And which of our agents have reported this? Roderick, they were at least six months away from that last week, what-what?”

Sir Roderick cleared his throat. “I am afraid our intelligence estimates were incorrect, your majesty.” He took a deep breath. “Our initial information comes from a communicant in Lancaster who has heard eyewitness reports of the flash from villagers in the Lake District, southwest of the test range. Subsequently a weather ballonet over Iceland detected a radiant plume of corpuscular fragments indicative of a petard of the gun type, using enriched light-kernel cronosium. We’ve had detailed reports of the progress of the Farmers’ Jenny-works in Bohemia, which has been taking in shipments of Pitchblende from the Cape. If they’ve got enough highly enriched cronosium to hoist a petard, and if they’ve also commissioned the crucible complex that was building near Kiev, then according to the revised estimates that my department has prepared we can expect the Frogs to have as many as twelve corpses in service by the end of the year, and production running at two per month through next year, rising to ten per month thereafter.”

The king sighed. “We cannot afford to ignore this affront. Our credibility will be deeply weakened if we are seen to ignore such a clear challenge by an agency of the French crown. And the insult of using our former territory as a test range”—his voice crackled with indignation—“cannot be other than intentional.” John Frederick straightened up in his chair. “Lord Douglass. This matter must be addressed by the Imperial Security Council. A new policy is required to deal with the affront. And a public position, lest panic ensure when the Frogs announce their new capability.” He drummed the fingers of his left hand on the intricately lacquered desktop. “Well. What else to keep us from our workshop?”

Farnsworth focused on the prime minister. Douglass might be old and withered, but there was still a sharp mind behind the wispy white hair and liver-spotted wattles. Moreover, to the extent Farnsworth could claim to know the prime minister at all, he struck the equerry as looking shifty—and Sir Roderick was visibly sweating. This is going to be very bad indeed, Farnsworth realized. They’re using the French corpuscular test to soften him up. What on God’s earth could be worse than Louis XXII with corpuscular weapons?

“Sire.” It was Douglass. Farnsworth focused on him. “This, ah, led me to question the diligence with which the Ministry for Special Affairs has been discharging its duties abroad. And indeed, Sir Roderick has instigated certain investigations without prompting, investigations which are revealing a very frightening deficit in our understanding of continental machinations against the security of your domain.”

“We . . . see.” The king sounded perplexed and mildly irritated. “Would you get to the point, please? If the situation is as bad as you say, it would be expedient to draw no attention to our knowledge of it, and to reassure those who know something of it but not the substance—therefore one should depart to dress for the opening as one’s progression dictates on time and without sign of turmoil, at least until after the next scheduled ISC meeting. So what exactly are you talking about?”

“Sir Roderick,” Douglass prompted.

Sir Roderick looked like a man about to be hanged. “Sire, it pains me to lay this before you, but in the wake of the disturbances in Boston three weeks ago I instigated certain investigations. To draw a long story short, it appears that certain of our paid agents at large have been in actual fact accepting the coin of a second paymaster, whose livres and francs have added color to their reportage—to say nothing of delaying vital intelligence. We are now trying to ascertain the extent of the damage, but it appears that there has been for some time a French spy ring operating in our very halls, and this ring has suborned at least one network of our agents overseas. My men are now trying to isolate the spies, and discover how far the rot has spread.

“I believe that in addition to perverting the course of incoming intelligence—which they were unable to do with the petard, it would seem, because weather ballonets with scintillation tubes accept no bribes—these enemy agents have been arranging for numerous shipments of gold to arrive in this country. Certainly more gold than usual has been seized on the black market in the past six months, and it appears that certain troublemakers and rabble-rousers have been living high on the hog.”

“The usual?” John Frederick asked coldly.

“Levelers and Ranters,” Douglass said quietly. He looked sad. “They never learn, although this treason is, I think, unprecedented in recent years. If true.”

The king stood up. “We do not tolerate slander and libel and anarchism, much less as a front for that bastard pretender’s machinations!” His cheeks shone; for a moment Farnsworth half-expected him to burst into a denunciation, but after a while the monarch regained control. “Bring forward the next ISC meeting, as soon as possible,” he ordered. “Sir Roderick. We expect a daily briefing on the fruits of your investigation. We realize you have had barely nine months to get to grips with your office, but we must insist on holding you responsible for the progress of the ministry. Should you succeed in leeching it back to health you will find us a forgiving ruler, and we appreciate your candor in bringing the disease to our notice—but if this pot boils over, it will not be the Crown who is scalded.” He glanced round. “Farnsworth, attend to our wardrobe. Lord Douglass, thank you for bringing the situation to our attention. We shall now proceed to appear our regal best for the state opening tonight. If you should care to seek audience with us after the recession of parliament, we would value your advice.”

“I am at your majesty’s service, as always,” murmured the prime minister. He stood, slowly. The minister of Special Affairs rose too, as Farnsworth moved smoothly to ensure the king’s progress back to his dressing room.

That evening, after the state opening and the royal progress from Brunswick Palace to the Houses of Parliament at the far end of Manhattan island, Farnsworth pulled on a heavy overcoat and slipped out through a side door of the palace, to visit an old acquaintance in a public house just off Gloriana Street.

Wooden paneling and a brown, stained ceiling testified to the Dutch origins of the Arend’s Nest: the pub’s front windows looked out toward the high-rise tenements crowding the inner wall of the bastion that had protected New York from continental aggression as far back as the late eighteenth century. Now a favorite haunt by day of city stock merchants and the upper crust of businessmen who filled the new office blocks behind the administrative complex, by night the Nest was mostly empty. Farnsworth slipped past the bar and stood next to a booth at the back with his coat collar turned up against the chill from the sea and his hat pulled down close to his ears. “You won’t fool nayone like that,” said a familiar voice. “You look like you’re trying to hide and they’ll pay attendance on ye when the police come asking. And now what time have you?”

Farnsworth shook himself. “I’m sorry, but my pocket oyster’s broken,” he said in a robotic tone of voice.

“Then ye’ll just have to tell me what time it says?”

He hauled out his watch and flipped it open. “Ten to nine.”

“Jolly good.” With a sigh and a rustle his welcomer moved aside to let him into the cubicle. Farnsworth sat down gratefully. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering your pint already.” He was a plump, slightly shabby man whom Farnsworth knew only as Jack. Farnsworth had studiously suppressed any instinct to dig deeper. Jack wore a dark suit, shiny at the elbows, and a red silk cravat that although clean was clearly in need of ironing. Beside him sat another fellow, unknown to Farnsworth: a long-faced man in early middle age, but with a consumptive pallor about him and a face that seemed to chronicle more insults than any one life should bear. Farnsworth removed his hat and scarf and placed them fastidiously on one of the hooks screwed to the upper rail of the booth. “Have you anything to report?”

“For whose ears?” Farnsworth picked up his glass. A full one sat untouched before Mr. Long-Face, which seemed an unconscionable waste of a good pint of porter to him. “No offense.”

“This is, um, Rudolf,” said Jack. “He’s from Head Office. You remember what we spoke about earlier.”

“Ah, yes.” Farnsworth shuffled uneasily in his seat. Head Office covered a multitude of sins, most of them capital offenses in the eyes of the Homeland Security Bureau. Far more subversive than any bomb-throwing wild-eyed democrat or fly-by-night unlicensed desktop publisher spreading lies and slanders about her royal highness’s enthusiasm for tight-breeched household cavalry officers . . . but the exchange of passwords had gone smoothly. Jack hadn’t used the bail out challenge. Which meant this was official.

“Nothing new. His majesty is trying to keep a placid face but is mightily exercised over the continental despotism. They’ve exploded a corpuscular weapon months ahead of what our spies said was possible. Sir Roderick is dusting under chairs and tables in search of a mouse hole, as if his head depends upon it—and indeed it might, if Douglass is of a mind to hold him responsible. There is the usual ongoing crisis over precedence in the royal bedchamber, and My Lady Frazier is vexed to speak of creating a new post of—well, perhaps this is of no interest? In any case, Douglass is exercised, too. He seems much gloomier than normal, and muttered something about fearing war was making virtue of necessity, and we must ensure the French use of the new weapons—corpses, he calls them, a vile contraction—is subjected to prior restraint by a mutual terror of annihilation.” With this, Farnsworth reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and produced a small envelope. He slid it across the table. “Usual drill.”

Jack passed it to the stranger. It vanished immediately, and at once Farnsworth felt a load off his shoulders. He sighed and drained half his pint. Jack smiled sardonically. “Pass the noose is what we called this game in Camp Frederick.”

The stranger, Rudolf, blinked his rheumy eyes, expressionless. “We require more detailed economic information,” he said, in an unexpectedly educated accent. “The V1 and V2 treasury indicators, any information you can obtain about the prevalence of adulterants in the royal mint’s stock, confiscations of bullion, the rate of default of debt secured against closed bodies corporate, the proposed repayment terms on the next issue of war bonds, and everything you can discover about the next budget.”

Farnsworth leaned back. “That’s the Exchequer,” he said slowly. “I don’t work there or know anything. Or know anyone who does.”

Rudolf nodded. “We understand. And we don’t expect miracles. All we ask is that you be aware of our needs. Douglass is a not infrequent visitor to the palace, and should he by mistake leave his brief unattended for a few minutes—well.” The hint of a smile came to Rudolf’s face. “Have you ever seen one of these before?” He slid a device barely larger than a box of matches onto the table.

Farnsworth stared at it. “What is it?”

“It’s a camera.”

“Don’t be silly”—Farnsworth bent over it—“nobody could build a camera that small! Could they? And what’s it made of, lacquered cardboard?”

“No.” Rudolf pushed it toward him. “It’s made of a material like foramin or cellulate, or a phenolic resin—even the lens. It’s waterproof and small enough to conceal in a boot heel. It will take eight pictures, then you must return it to us so that we can remove the sketchplate and downlo—ah, develop it. You aim it with this viewfinder, like so, and take a picture by pressing this button—thus. Yes, it will work without daylight—this is adequate for it. Keep it—no, not that one, this one”—he produced a second camera and handed it to Farnsworth—“about your person where it will not be found easily but where you can reach it in an instant. Inside your hat ribbon in circumstances like this, perhaps, or in your periwig when paying attendance upon his majesty.”

“I—” Farnsworth looked at the tiny machine as if it were a live scorpion. “Did this come from the Frogs?” he heard himself asking as if from a great distance. “Because if so—”

“No.” Rudolf flushed, and for the first time showed emotion. Anger. “We aren’t pawns of the Bourbon tyranny, sir. We are free democrats all, patriotic Englishmen fighting in the vanguard of the worldwide struggle for the rights of man, for freedom and equality before the law—and we’ll liberate France and her dominions as well, when the time comes to join in one great brotherhood of humanity and set the east afire! But we have allies you are unaware of, and hopefully will remain unaware of for some time to come, lest you jeopardize the cause.” He fixed Farnsworth with a gimlet stare. “Do you understand?”

Farnsworth nodded. “I—yes.” He pocketed the tiny device hastily, then finished his beer. “Another pint?” he asked Jack. “In the interests of looking authentic . . .”

“By all means.” Jack stood. “I’ll just go to the bar.”

“And I must make haste to the jakes,” said Rudolf, nodding affably at Farnsworth. “We won’t meet again, I trust. Remember: eight, then to Jack. He will give you a replacement. Good night.” He took his hat and slipped away, leaving Farnsworth to sit alone, lonely and frightened until Jack returned with a fresh glass and a grin of conviviality, to chat about the dog racing and shore up his cover by helping him spend another evening drinking beer with his friend of convenience. Jack the Lad, Jack be Nimble, Jack the Leveler . . .

The man Farnsworth knew as Rudolf was in no particular hurry. First he took his ease in the toilet. It was a cold night for the time of year, and he was old enough to have learned what a chill could do to his bladder. As he buttoned his coat and shuffled out the back door, through the yard with the wooden casks stacked shoulder high, he stifled a rattling cough. Something was moving in his chest again, foreshadowing what fate held in store for him. “All the more reason to get this over with sooner rather than later, my son,” he mumbled to himself as he unlocked the gate and slid unenthusiastically into the brick-walled alleyway.

The alley was heaped with trash and hemmed in by the tumbledown sheds at the back of the buildings that presented such a fine stone front to the highway. Rudolf picked his way past a rusting fire escape and leaned on a wooden doorway next to a patch of wall streaked with dank slime from a leaky down-pipe. The door opened silently. He ducked inside, then closed and bolted it. The darkness in the cellar was broken only by a faint skylight. Now moving faster, Rudolf crossed over to another door and rapped on it thrice. A second later the inner door opened. “Ah, it’s you.”

“It’s me,” Rudolf agreed. The sullen-faced man put away his pistol, looking relieved. “Coat,” Rudolf snapped, shedding his outer garment. “Hat.” The new garments were of much better cut than those that he’d removed, suitable for an operagoer of modest means—a ministry clerk, perhaps, or a legal secretary—and as he pulled them on “Rudolf” forced himself to straighten up, put a spring in his step and a spark in his eye. “Time to be off, I think. See you later.”

He left by way of a staircase and a dim hallway, an electrical night-light guiding his footsteps. Finally, “Rudolf” let himself out through the front door, which was itself unlocked. The coat and hat he’d arrived in would be vanishing into the belly of the furnace that heated the law firm’s offices by day. In a few minutes there’d be nothing to connect him to the man from the royal household other than a tenuous chain of hearsay—not that it would stop the Homeland Security Bureau’s hounds, but with every broken link the chain would become harder to follow.

The main road out front was brightly lit by fizzing gas stands; cabs rumbled up and down it, boilers hissing as their drivers trawled for trade among the late-night crowds who dotted the sidewalk outside cafes and fashionable eating houses. The music hall along the street was emptying out, and knots of men and women stood around chattering raucously or singing the latest ditties from memory—with varying degrees of success, for the bars were awash with genever and scrumpy, and the entertainment was not noted for genteel restraint. Overhead, the neon lights blinked like the promise of a new century, bright blandishments of commerce and a ticker of news running around the outside of the theater’s awning. “Rudolf” stepped off the curb, avoided a cab, and made his way across to the far side of the street. The rumble of an airship’s engines echoed off the roadstone paving from overhead, a reminder of the royal presence a few miles away. “Rudolf” forced himself to focus as he walked purposefully along the sidewalk, avoiding the merrymakers and occasional vagrant. Dear friends, he thought; the faces of multitudes. He glanced around, a frisson of fear running up his spine. I hope we’re in time.

Passing a penny to a red-cheeked lad yelling the lead from tomorrow’s early edition, “Rudolf” took a copy of The Times and scanned the headlines as he walked. Nader Reasserts Afghan Claim. Nothing good could ever come from that part of the world, he reflected; especially Shah Nader’s thirst for black gold he could sell to the king’s navy via the oiling base at Jask. Saboteurs Apprehended in Breasil. All part and parcel of the big picture. Crown Prince James Visits Santa Cruz made it sound like a grand tour of the nation rather than a desperate hope that the Pacific warmth would do something to ease the child’s ailment. “Rudolf” turned a corner into a narrower street. Prussian Ambassador Slights French Envoy at Gala Opening: now that didn’t sound very clever, did it? As the joke put it, when the French diplomat said “Frog” the Germanys all croaked in chorus. Murdock Suit: Malcolm Denies Slur. All the best barristers arguing the big libel case on a pro bono basis—a faint smile came to the thin man’s face as he read the leading paragraph, squinting under the thin glare of the lamps. Then he folded the paper beneath his arm, palming something between the pages, and strode on toward the intersection with New Street. The crowds were thicker here, and as he stepped onto the pavement at the far side a fellow ran straight into him.

“I say, sir, are you all right?” the man asked, dusting himself off. “You dropped your paper.” He bent and handed a folded broadsheet to “Rudolf.”

“If you’d been looking where you were going, I wouldn’t have.” “Rudolf” snorted, jammed the paper beneath his arm, and hurried off determinedly. Only when he’d passed the outrageously expensive plate glass windows of the Store Romanova did he slow, cough once or twice into his handkerchief, and verify with a sidelong glance that the paper clenched in his left hand was a copy of The Clarion.

Queen’s Counselor Denies Everything, Threatens Libel Suit! screamed the headline. “Rudolf” smiled to himself. And so he should, he thought, and so he should. If Farnsworth said there was no substance to the rumors then he was almost certainly telling the truth—not that his loyalty was above and beyond question, for nobody was beyond question, but his dislike for her majesty was such that if there had been any substance to the rumors, the dispatches he sent via Jack would almost certainly have confirmed them. “Rudolf” took a deep, slow, breath, trying not to irritate his chest, and forced himself to relax, slowing to an old man’s ambling pace. Every second that passed now meant that the incriminating letter was that much further from its origin and that much closer to the intelligence cell that would analyze it before making their conclusions known to the Continental Congress.

At the corner with Bread Street, “Rudolf” paused beside the tram stop for a minute, then waved down a cab. “Hogarth Villas,” he said tersely. “On Stepford High Street.”

“Sure, and it’s a fine night fir it, sor.” The cabbie grinned broadly in his mirror as he bled steam into the cylinder and accelerated away from the roadside. His passenger nodded, thoughtfully, but made no attempt to reply.

Hogarth Villas was a broad-fronted stretch of town houses, fronted with iron rails and a gaudy display of lanterns. It stretched for half a block along the high street, between shuttered shop fronts that slept while the villas’ residents worked (and vice versa). One of the larger and better-known licensed brothels at the south end of Manhattan island, it was anything but quiet at this time of night. “Rudolf” paid off the cabbie with a generous tip, then approached the open vestibule and the two sturdy gentlemen who stood to either side of the glass inner door. “Name’s Rudolf,” he said quietly. “Ma’am Bishop is expecting me.”

“Aye, sir, if you’d just step this way, please.” The shorter of the two, built like a battleship and with a face bearing the unmistakable spoor of smallpox, opened the door for him and stepped inside. The carpet was red, the lights electric-bright, shining from the gilt-framed mirrors. In the next room, someone was playing a saucy nautical air on the piano; girlish voices chattered and laughed with the gruff undertone of the clientele. This was by no means a lower-class dive. The doorman led “Rudolf” along the hallway then through a side door into understairs quarters, where the carpet was replaced with bare teak floorboards and the expensive silk wallpaper with simple sky-blue paint. The building creaked and chattered around them, sounds of partying and other sport carrying through the lath and plaster. They climbed a narrow spiral staircase before arriving on a landing fronted by three doors. The bouncer rapped on one of them. “Here’s where I leave you,” he said, as it began to swing open, and he headed back toward the front of the building.

“Come in, Erasmus.”

She sounded amused. Erasmus—Rudolf no more—set his shoulders determinedly and stepped forward. No avoiding it now, he told himself, feeling a curious sinking feeling as he met the opening door and the presence behind it.

“Ma’am.” Most of the girls downstairs bared their shoulders and wore their fishtail skirts slit in front to reveal their knees, in an exaggerated burlesque of the latest mode from Nouveau Paris. The woman in the doorway was no girl, and she wore a black crêpe mourning dress. After all, she was in mourning. With black hair turning to steel gray at the temples, blue eyes and a face lined with worries, she might have been a well-preserved sixty or a hard-done-by thirty. The truth, like much else about her, lay in between.

“Come in. Sit down. Would you care for a sip of brandy?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” The room was furnished with a couple of overstuffed and slightly threadbare chairs, surplus to requirements downstairs: a bed in the corner, too narrow by far to suit the purposes of the house, and a writing desk, completed the room. The window opened onto a tiny enclosed square, barely six feet from the side of the next building.

Erasmus waited while his hostess carefully filled two glasses from a brandy decanter sitting atop the bureau, next to a conveniently burning candle—the better to dispose of the desk’s contents, should they be disturbed—and handed one to him. Then she sat down. “How did it go?” she asked tensely.

He took a cautious sip from his glass. “I made the delivery. And the pickup. I have no reason to believe I was under surveillance and every reason not to.”

“Not that, silly.” She was fairly humming with impatience. “What word from the palace?”

“Ah.” He smiled. “They seem to be most obsessed with matters of diplomatic significance.” His smile slipped. “Like the way the French have pulled the wool over their eyes lately. There’s a witch hunt brewing in the foreign service, and an arms race in the Ministry of War. The grand strategy of encirclement has not only crumbled, it appears to have backfired. The situation does not sound good, Margaret.”

“A war would suit their purposes.” She nodded to herself, her gaze unfocused. “A distraction always serves the rascals in charge.” She glanced at the side door to the room. “And the . . . device? Did you give it to our source?”

“I gave it to him and showed him how to use it. All he knows is that it is a very small camera. And he needs to return it to us to have the, ah, film developed. Or downloaded, as Miss Beckstein’s representative calls it.”

Margaret, Lady Bishop, frowned. “I wish I trusted these alien allies of yours, Erasmus. I wish I understood their motives.”

“What’s to understand?” Erasmus shrugged. “Listen, I’d be dead if not for them and the alibi they supplied. Their gold is pure and their words—” It was his turn to frown. “I don’t know about the aliens, but I trust Miriam. Miss Beckstein is a bit like you, milady. There’s a sincerity to her that I find more than a little refreshing, although she can be alarmingly open at times. There are strange knots in her thinking—she looks at everything a little oddly. Still, if she doesn’t trust her companions, the manner of her mistrust tells me a lot. They’re in it for money, pure and simple, Margaret. There’s no motive purer than the pig in search of the truffle, is there? And these pigs are very canny indeed, hence the bounteous treasury they’ve opened to us. They’re our pigs, at least until it comes time to pay the butcher’s bill. As Miss Beckstein says, money talks—bullshit walks.”

She nodded. “The mint, and the ability to debase the currency, has always been the criminal-in-chief’s best weapon, Erasmus. He could buy out the bourgeoisie from under our banner in a split second, did he but recognize their importance. It’s time we recognized that, and acted accordingly.”

“Well.” Erasmus took a sip of brandy. It was fine stuff, liquid fire that warmed his old bag of bones from the inside out. “Judging from what your ‘intimate source’ told me, even if he recognized its importance he probably wouldn’t act on it until it was too late. Indecisive doesn’t begin to describe this one, milady. Stranded in a well-stocked kitchen John Frederick could starve himself to death between two cookbooks. He looks solid with the machinery of state behind him, but if he’s forced to make tough choices he’ll dither and haver until he’s half past hanging.”

“Well, that’s his look out,” she said tartly. “Was there anything else we can use?”

“Yes. If you don’t mind risking the source—at least, this week. It’s so big that it will leak sooner rather than later; the French have exploded a corpuscular petard. Caught the navy napping, too; they weren’t supposed to have that high a command of the new physics. The flash was visible from Blackpool, apparently, and the toadstool cloud from Lancaster.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “And with wars, and rumors of wars—”

“Yes, milady. I think something is going to have to happen, sooner or later. The situation in Persia if nothing else is a source of friction, and the temptation to send a message to the court of the Sun King—I wouldn’t place money on it starting this year, but I can’t see him lasting out the decade without strife. John Frederick wants to leave his mark on the history books, lest his son is followed rapidly by a nephew or cousin in the line of succession.”

“Then let’s start making plans, shall we?” She smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “If the leviathan is determined to drink the blood of the people, there’s going to be plenty to spare for the ticks.”

Erasmus shivered. “Indeed, milady.”

“Well then.” She put her glass down. “Which brings me to another matter I have in mind.” Her smile vanished. “I think it’s past time you arranged for me to meet this Miss Beckstein, who you say is so like me. I have many questions for her; I’m sure we can trade more than toys once we understand each other better.”