The Trade of Queens

Never Coming Back

The row of big town houses, set back behind high walls or hedges, had seen better days. Every other building showed boarded-up windows to the street, the blank-eyed, gape-doored stare of ruination and downfall. Some of them—some very few—had been squatted, but for the most part the Freedom Riders had kept the dusty workless poor out of the houses of the bourgeoisie, for this was not solely a revolution of the working class.

The big steamer huffed and bumped across last winter’s potholes, then slowed as Yul wrestled with the wooden steering wheel, swearing at it as he worked the brake handle and tried to lever the beast between stone gateposts. Miriam sat up in the back, trying to see over his shoulders for a first glimpse of the house she’d bought in this city using smuggled Clan bullion, a little over a year ago. “Is it—” She swallowed her words as the front of the building came into view.

“It seems intact.” Brilliana, next to her, nodded. “Let us examine it, my lady.”

The boarded-up windows were still sealed, the front door barred and padlocked as one of her armsmen held the car’s door open for Miriam. “By your leave, my lady?” Alasdair slid round in his jump seat. “I should go first.”

Miriam bit back an irritated response. “Yes,” she agreed. “Thank you.” Sir Alasdair unfolded his legs and stood, interposing his not-inconsiderable frame between Miriam and the facade of the building.

“Wait,” Alasdair rumbled without looking round as he moved forward. “Schraeder, left and rear. Yul, you stay with the car. Brunner, with me.…” They spread out around the house purposefully, their long coats still closed despite the summer humidity. It looked empty, but appearances could be deceptive and Sir Alasdair was not inclined to take risks with Helge’s life, figurehead though her queen-widowship might be: He’d sworn an oath to protect her, and his people took such things seriously.

Miriam stared at the front door as Alasdair approached it, slowing on the steps, then bending close to peer at the door handle. Beside her, Brill shifted on the bench seat, one hand going to the earpiece tucked discreetly under her hat. “Clear behind,” she said suddenly. “Schraeder’s in.”

I bought that house, Miriam told herself. Right now it looked as unfamiliar as her father—her adoptive father—had looked in the funeral parlor. Houses took as much of their character from the people who filled them as racks of meat on bone took from their animating personality. It had once been her home; but for the miscarriage she might now be looking to raise a child in it. But for now it was just a big neglected building, a cumbersomely inanimate corpse—

Alasdair interrupted her morbid stream of consciousness by straightening up. He unlocked the door, opened it slowly, and stepped inside.

“All clear,” said Brill, tapping Miriam on the shoulder. “Let’s go inside.”

The house was much as Miriam had last seen it, only dusty and boarded-up, the furniture looming beneath dust sheets. “Who organized this?” she asked, pausing at the foot of the stairs.

“I did,” said Brill. “When Baron Henryk assigned the business operation to Morgan I assumed they’d want you back sooner or later. Morgan didn’t like it here, he preferred to spend as much time at home as he could.”

“Right. This way.” Miriam headed upstairs in the dark, a flashlight guiding her feet. Opposite the top of the stairs was the door to the main bedroom. She pushed it open, saw daylight: The upper windows at least were not boarded up. “I need a hand with this.”

“With what—”

Miriam was already kneeling near the skirting board beside the bed. Stale dust and a faint smell of mouse piss wrinkled her nose. “In here. Here, hold this.” She passed Brill the loose piece of woodwork. Behind it, the brickwork was visible. “Pass me your knife.…” It took a little work, but between them they levered the two half-bricks out of their niche. Then Miriam reached inside and grabbed. “Got it.”

The black cloth bag was about the size of a boot, but much heavier. Miriam grunted and lifted it onto the bed.

“How much is it?” asked Brilliana.

“I’m surprised it’s still here.” Miriam untied the knotted drawstring then thrust her hand inside. “Yep, it’s the real thing.” The gold brick glinted in the afternoon light; she returned it to the bag hastily. “About six kilos of twenty-three-carat. It was worth a hell of a lot a year ago—God only knows what it’s worth right now.” Stuck in a deflationary cycle and a liquidity crash with a revolution on top, gold—with or without seigniorage—was enormously more valuable than it had been when it was merely what the coin of the realm was made of. The national treasury had been stripped bare to pay for the war: That was what had started the crisis.

She straighted up and dusted herself down. “Job number one for Alasdair is to get someone who knows what they’re doing to hide this properly. We lucked out once, but sooner or later one of Erasmus’s rival ministries will probably try and shake us down to see where the leverage is coming from. They won’t believe the truth, and if they find this here we’ll be for the chop. Revolutionary governments hate hoarders; it’s a law of nature.”

“I’ll see to it, my lady—”

“That’s another thing.” Miriam glanced at the windows. “It’s not ‘my lady’ anymore—I mean it. Drop the honorific, and tell everyone else: It’s Miriam, or ma’am, but not ‘my lady.’”

Brill’s dismay was palpable. “But you are my lady! You are my liege, and I owe you an acknowledgment of that fact! This isn’t the United States, this is—”

“This is a continent in the grip of revolution.” Miriam walked towards the wardrobe and lifted one corner of its dusty shroud. “What do you know about revolutionary governments?”

“Not much; we hang rebels, my lady.” Brill lifted back the top of the dust sheet from the bed, wrinkling her nose.

“Well, I’ve been doing some reading this week. Remember the books?” Miriam had given Brill a list of titles to order from Amazon. “There’s a general pattern. First there’s a crisis—usually fiscal, often military. The old government is discredited and a coalition of interests move in and toss the bums out. Then they start trying to govern as a coalition, and it goes to hell quickly because just changing the government doesn’t solve the underlying crisis unless it was a crisis of legitimacy.” Brill looked perturbed, as Miriam continued: “This means that the new government gets to try and fix the crisis at its weakest, and in conditions where it’s very easy to replace them. Most postrevolutionary regimes are overthrown by their own hard-line radicals, the ones with the most blinkered ideological outlook—precisely because they’re also the ones most willing to murder anyone who stands between them and a solution to the crisis.”

She tugged the dust sheet down from the wardrobe and stepped aside.

“The revolution here was against the autocratic monarchy, but there’s also a fiscal crisis and a war. They hit the trifecta—crisis of currency, conflict, and legitimacy in one go. The aristocracy, such as it is, gets its own legitimacy from the Crown—for centuries, John Frederick and his family have sold titles as a way of raising revenue—so anyone with a noble title is going to be automatically suspect to the hard-liners in the new government. And unless Sir Adam can end the war with France and fix the economy in, oh, about six months, the hard-liners are going to get restive.” She turned worried eyes on Brilliana. “That’s why I want everyone to stop using titles immediately. If I’m wrong, they’ll get over it. But if I’m right…”

“I understand,” Brill said tiredly. “There’s no need to repeat yourself. Miriam. Ma’am.” She peeled back the blankets and sheets that had stayed on the bed, exposing them to air for the first time in months. “What else is going to happen here?”

“I don’t know. It depends on whether they tackle the economy, the war, or the constitutional problems—any or all of them.” She opened the wardrobe, sniffed. “I think something died in here. Where’s the flashlight?”

“Here.” Brill waited while Miriam shoved aside the dresses on the rail and shone the beam around the interior of the wardrobe. “What do you think?”

“I think they’ll have to execute the king, and a lot of his supporters, or the French would use him as an excuse to make mischief. And they won’t rest with a revolutionary superpower on the other side of the world—Sir Adam Burroughs’s Leveler ideology is an existential threat to any absolute monarchy, much like the Soviet Union was to the United States’ capitalist system. Which leaves the economy.” Miriam straightened up. “Lots of radical ministries jockeying for preeminence, a permanent emergency in foreign affairs, a big war effort. Central planning, maybe, lots of nationalization. They’re going to have to industrialize properly if they’re going to dig their way out of this mess. War spending is always a good way to boost an economy. And land reform, let’s not forget the land reform—they’ll probably expropriate the big slave plantations in South America, the duchies of the Midwest.”

“My—Miriam, you can’t sleep here: The bedding’s mildewed.”

“Wha—oh? Shit. There should be spare sheets in the laundry—” Miriam wound down. “Oh. No servants.”

“I could hire bodies easily enough, if you think it necessary?”

“No.” Miriam frowned. “Flashing around cash would be really dangerous right now. Huh. Need to know if the electricity’s working … listen, let’s go see if the office is intact and the power still works. If so, we ought to go look at the factory. Then I can electrograph Erasmus and tell him we’re ready to start work whenever he comes up with those passes he was talking about.”

* * *

In an office near the northern end of Manhattan, with a window overlooking the royal navy dockyard, Stephen Reynolds set aside the stack of death warrants at his left hand and stood, smiling warmly, as commissioners Jennings and Fowler walked in.

“Good morning, citizens.” He gestured at the seats beside his desk as he walked around it, placing himself on the same side of the table as his visitors: “Nice to see you. Are you both well? Edward, is your wife—”

“She’s fine,” Jennings said, a trifle brusquely, then cleared his throat. “Nothing to worry about, and the would-be assassin is already in custody.” As the citizen inquisitor supervising the Justice Directorate, Jennings (not to mention his family) had become accustomed to being the principal target of the regime’s enemies (not to mention their surviving relatives). “I gather your people have identified his conspirators already.”

“Ah, excellent.” Fowler cleared his throat. “Time is short, I’m afraid: Got a meeting of the Construction Subcommittee to chair in an hour. You have something that calls for extreme measures?”

“Yes.” Reynolds smiled again, concealing his minor irritation at being so preempted. “Alas, we have a minor problem. That fine fellow Mr. Burgeson is apparently trespassing on our turf. I’ve had a tipoff from certain sources”—not mentioning Elder Cheung and his magical powers, or his strange associate, the Dutch doctor—“that Erasmus is, not to put too fine a point on it, dealing with persons of interest. There’s some question as to what he is doing; I haven’t been able to get an informer into his organization. But the secrecy with which he is conducting his affairs is suggestive. Certainly it’s not any activity that falls within the portfolio of the commissioner for state truth. I believe he is in league with wreckers and subversives, and I would appreciate the cooperation of your departments in, ah, distinguishing the sheep from the goats.”

Jennings tilted his head on one side thoughtfully. “I’m sure we can work together on this matter—if Citizen Burgeson is acting against the best interests of the people.” A caveat from Justice was to be expected.

Reynolds nodded. It didn’t signify opposition as such, merely that Jennings knew exactly what was going on and had no intention of being strung up as a scapegoat for Reynolds’s move against the rival directorate. “Of course,” he said unctuously. “There must be proceedings with all due process to confirm or disprove guilt, absolutely! But I think it would be best if they were handled in the Star Court with all available speed, precision, and discretion”—in other words, secretly and hastily—“and the prisoners segregated. If there’s actual subversion within the party’s highest echelons, we will need to obtain absolute proof before we arrest a party commissioner. And if not—again, it would be best if it were handled quietly. The scope for embarrassment is enormous and it would reflect badly on the party as an institution.”

Fowler shrugged. “It can be done, but it’ll cost you,” he said bluntly. “There’s a new interrogation and processing block scheduled for development on Long Island. Or I could do you a prison hulk.”

“A prison hulk?” Reynolds’s eyes lit up: “Capital! That would be just the ticket!” After the initial shock, he’d paid close attention to Cheung’s sales pitch—and spent time in subsequent meetings attempting to deduce the limitations of the world-walkers’ abilities. A steam yacht with decent owner’s quarters and a train with sleeping car were already on his department’s budget—officially to make it easier for the commissioner for internal security to travel safely between offices, unofficially to insure his safety against world-walking killers. “Do you have anything offshore near the Massachusetts coastline? Preferably with an antimutiny plug?” (Explosive scuttling charges had proven a most effective tool in preventing prison mutinies under the ancien régime.)

“I think something along those lines can be provided.” Fowler pulled out a notebook. “How many berths do you need, and when and where will the arrests take place?”

“Number: unknown, but not more than a thousand at the absolute maximum. More likely under a hundred in the first instance, then a flow of stragglers for processing. Somewhere within a couple of hours of Boston. To be moored in deep water—not less than thirty feet beneath the keel—and not less than a mile offshore. If you could set it up within the next two days I would be eternally grateful…?”

“I’ll see what we can do.” Fowler put his notebook away. “I take it the detainees are, er, disposable?”

“If necessary.” Reynolds nodded.

“I didn’t hear that,” Jennings said fastidiously.

“Of course not.”

“Jolly good, then.” Jennings stood. “I’ll see that a circuit tribunal under Star Rules is at your men’s disposal in Boston two days hence. Now if you don’t mind, I have a dreadful pile of paperwork to catch up on…?” He sighed. “These wreckers and subversives! I swear we’re going to run out of rope before they’re all hanged.”

* * *

The fortified great house had seen better days: Its walls were fire-scorched, half the downstairs windows were bricked up, the hastily applied mortar still weeping salts across the stone blocks of its facade, and the stable doors had been crudely removed. But it was still inhabitable—which counted for something—and the ten-meter radio mast sprouting from the roofline made it clear who its inhabitants must be.

“You wanted to see me, sir.”

The office on the second floor had once been a squire’s wife’s boudoir; it still smelled faintly of rosewater and gunpowder. The bed had been broken up for firewood and scrap, used to reinforce the shutters during the brief siege, and today the room was dominated by a green folding aluminum map table.

“Yes. Come in, sit down, make yourself comfortable. I’ve got Pepsi if you need a drink.”

“That would be wonderful, sir.”

Rudi sat tensely on the narrow edge of the camp chair while Earl-Major Riordan poured him a mug of foaming brown cola with his own hands. The lack of a batman did not escape his notice, but if Riordan wanted to preserve the social niceties … It must be bad news, he decided, a hollowness below his ribs waiting to be filled by the exotic imported beverage.

“I want to pick your brains about aircraft,” Riordan said stiffly. “Think of this as an informal brainstorming session. Nothing we discuss is for ears beyond this room, by the way.”

Really? Rudi leaned forward. “Brainstorming, sir?”

Riordan sighed. “Her Majesty”—he paused, and poked at a paper on his desk—“has written me a letter, and you’re the man to answer it.” He looked slightly pained, as if his lunch had disagreed with his digestion.

“Sir.”

“You know about the British.” They spoke hochsprache. “She is talking to them. She wants an aircraft. Something that can be built for them within two years and that outstrips anything they can imagine. Something for war.”

“To be built there?” Rudi shook his head. “I thought they were stuck in the steam age?”

“They have aircraft. Two wings, spaced above each other like so”—Riordan gestured—“slow, lumbering things. Made of wood and sailcloth.”

“Really?” Rudi perked up. “And Her Majesty wants to build something better? What for?”

“They’ve got a war on.” Riordan finally sat down in the chair opposite, and Rudi relaxed slightly. “The French are blockading them, there is a threat of bombardment from aerial tenders offshore. I told her to give the British something for their navy, one of those submarines—you’ve seen Das Boot? no?—but she says ships take too long. They understand not to expect too much of aircraft, so build something revolutionary.” He took a deep breath. “Give me an eagle’s view. What should I be asking?”

“Huh.” Rudi rubbed his chin. It was itching; he hadn’t had a chance to shave for three days, scurrying hither and yon trying to arrange bodies to haul across the ultralight parts he’d been buying. “What engines do they have? That’s going to limit us. And metallurgy. Electronics … I assume they’ve got vacuum tubes? It’ll have to be something from the nineteen-forties. A warbird. Two engines for range, if it’s going offshore, and it needs to be able to carry bombs or guns.” He paused. “You know a plane on its own isn’t going to do much? It needs tactical doctrine, pilot training, navigation tools and radar if they can build it, ideally an integrated air defense—”

Riordan waved an impatient hand. “Yes, that’s not the point. We need what Her Majesty calls a technology demonstrator.”

“Can they do aluminum engine blocks?” Rudi answered his own question: “Maybe not, but aluminum goes back to the nineteenth century—we can work on them. Hmm. Engines will be a bottleneck, but … P-38? No, it’s a pure fighter. Hard to fly, too. If they’re still doing wood—” He stopped.

“Wood?” Riordan frowned.

“We’d need to work out how to produce the engines, and we’d need modern epoxy glues instead of the shit they had back then, but. But.” Rudi shook his head. “I think I know what you want,” he said.

“Do you?”

“The de Havilland Mosquito. The British built tons of them during the war, kept them flying until the nineteen sixties—it was originally a fast two-seat bomber, but they hung guns on it and used it as a fighter too. Made out of plywood, with two Merlin engines—they were a nineteen-thirties design, so the metallurgy might be up to it. Long range, fast; if they’re still using biplanes it’ll run rings around anything they’ve seen. If the metallurgy is better and quality control is up to it, I’d go for the P-51D, the Mustang. Faster, single-engined, similar range, more maneuverable. But for a first cut, I’d go for something made of wood with two engines. Safer that way.”

Riordan nodded slowly. “Could you build one?”

“Could.” Rudi carefully placed his half-full mug on the map table. He tried not to exhale Pepsi. “Build one?”

“For the British.” Riordan wasn’t smiling. “With unlimited resources, but a knife over your head.”

“Urk.” Rudi thought for a while. “Maybe. But I’d hedge my bets.”

“How?”

“I’d start by talking to their existing aircraft designers. And bring the biggest damn library of metallurgy, electronics, materials, and aerodynamics textbooks I can find. The designs for those nineteen-forties warbirds—you can buy them on eBay for a couple of hundred dollars—CD-ROMs with just about everything on them, technical manuals, patents, blueprints, everything. But you’ll probably take longer to build an exact replica of one from the blueprints than it would take a clued-up manufacturer on a war footing to invent a new one and build it from scratch. Much better to grab all the textbooks and histories, copies of Jane’s Aircraft, manuals, ephemera—everything—and drop them in front of a team who’re already used to working together. Hell, give them a history of air warfare and blueprints of the aircraft and they’ll have a field day.”

“Huh.” Riordan’s frown deepened. “That may not be possible.”

“Oh.” Rudi deflated slightly. “That would make it a lot harder. If we can only use Clan members, it’s nearly impossible. There aren’t even a dozen of us who know an aileron from a slotted flap. But we could do the liaison thing, act as librarians, figure out what a design team needs to know and get it for them. Hell. We could go recruiting, you know? Look for aerospace engineers in trouble with the law, offer them a bolt-hole and a salary and a blind eye if they’ll work for us.”

“Not practical. That last idea, I mean. But the liaison idea, hmm. Can you get me a list of names?”

“Certainly, sir. When do you need it by?” But what about the ultralights? he wondered.

“You have two hours. Here’s a pad and a pen; Comms and Crypto are downstairs on the left if you need to ask any questions. You have my seal.” Riordan tossed a heavily embossed metal ring on the table in front of Rudi. Rudi flinched, as if from a poisonous mushroom. “I’ll be back at five and I need to send the answer to Her Majesty by six. Your task is to identify those of our people who you will need in order to help the British develop their aerospace sector. Oh, and remember to include runway construction, fuel and repair equipment and facilities, munitions, bombsights, gunsights, training, and anything else I’ve forgotten. That’s a higher priority than your ultralight squadron, I’m afraid, but it’s a much bigger job. The Pepsi’s all yours.”

* * *

Late afternoon of a golden summer day. On a low ridge overlooking a gently sloping vale, a party of riders—exclusively male, of gentle breeding, discreetly armed but not under arms—paused for refreshment. To the peasants bent sweating over sickle and sheaf, they would be little more than dots on the horizon, as distant as the soaring eagle high above, and of as little immediate consequence.

“I fear this isn’t a promising site,” said one of the onlookers, a hatchet-faced man in early middle age. “Insufficient cover—see the brook yonder? And the path over to the house, around that outcrop?—we’d stick out like pilliwinked fingers.”

“Bad location for helicopters, though,” said a younger man. “See, the slope of the field: makes it hard for them to land. And for road access, I think we can add some suitable obstacles. If the major is right and they can bring vehicles across, they won’t have an easy time of it.”

Earl Bentbranch hung back, at the rear of the party. He glanced at his neighbor, Stefan ven Arnesen. Ven Arnesen twined his fingers deep in his salt-and-pepper beard, a distant look on his face. He noticed Bentbranch watching and nodded slightly.

“Do you credit it?” Bentbranch murmured.

Ven Arnesen thought for a moment. “No,” he said softly, “no, I don’t.” He looked at the harvesters toiling in the strip fields below. It didn’t look like the end of the world as he knew it. “I can’t.”

“They may not come for a generation. If ever. To throw everything away out of panic…”

Ven Arnesen spared his neighbor a long, appraising look. “They’ll come. Look, the harvest comes. And with it the poppies. Their war dead—their families used to wear poppies to remember them, did you know that?”

“You had your tenants plant dream poppies in the divisions.”

“Yes. If the bastards come for us, it’s the least I can do. Give it away”—he looked out across his lands, as far as the eye could see—“for free.” He coughed quietly. “I’m too old to uproot myself and move on, my friend. Let the youngsters take to the road, walk the vale of tears as indigent tinkers just like our great-great-grandfathers’ grandsires once more. These are my lands and my people and I’ll not be moving. All this talk of business models and refugees can’t accommodate what runs in my veins.”

“So you’ll resist?”

Ven Arnesen raised an eyebrow. “Of course. And you haven’t made your mind up yet.”

“I’m … wavering. I went to school over there, do you remember? I speak Anglische, I could up sticks and go to this new world they’re talking of, I’d be no more or less of a stranger there than I was for seven years in Baltimore. But I could dig my own midden, too, or run to Sky Father’s priests out of mindless panic. I could do any number of stupid or distasteful things, were I so inclined, but I don’t generally do such things without good reason. I’d need a very good reason to abandon home and hearth and accept poverty and exile for life.”

“The size of the reason becomes greater the older one gets,” ven Arnesen agreed. “But I’m not convinced by this nonsense about resisting the American army, either. I’ve seen their films. I’ve spent a little time there. Overt resistance will be difficult. Whatever Ostlake and his cronies think.”

“I don’t think they believe anything else, to tell you the truth. If—when—they come, the Americans will outgun us as heavily as we outgunned the Pervert’s men. And there will be thousands of them, tens of thousands. With tanks and helicopters. Sure, we’ll kill a few of them. And that will make it worse, it’ll make them angry. They’re not good at dealing with locals, not good at native tongues. They’ll kill and they’ll burn and they’ll raise every man’s hand against them and their occupation, and it will still take a bloody five years of pain and tears and death before they’ll even think about changing their approach. By which time—”

“Look.” Ven Arnesen raised his arm and pointed.

“Where?”

“Look up.” A ruler-straight white line was inching across the turquoise vault of the sky, etching it like a jeweler’s diamond on glass. A tiny speck crawled through the air, just ahead of the moving tip of the line. “Is that what, what I think it is?”

“A contrail.” Bentbranch’s cheeks paled. “It’s them.”

“Are you sure? Could it be something else? Something natural—”

“No. Their jets make those cloud-trails, when they move through the sky.”

“And they look down on us from above? Do you suppose they can see us now? Lightning Child strike them blind.”

“I very much fear that they’re anything but blind.” Bentbranch looked away as the aircraft’s course led it westwards, towards the sunset. “Though how much detail they can see from up there … well, that tears it, of course. They will be drawing up maps, my lord. And they care naught that we know their mind. I find that a singularly ominous sign. Do you differ, can I ask?”

“No.” Ven Arnesen shook his head as he stared after the aircraft. “No.” But Bentbranch was unable to discern whether he was answering the question or railing against the sign in the heavens.

Ahead of them, the main group of riders, Lord Ostlake and his men, had noticed the contrail; arms were pointing and there were raised voices. “We should warn them,” Bentbranch said, nudging his horse forward. Ven Arnesen paid him no attention, but stared at the sky with nerve-struck eyes.

Out over the ocean in the east, the U-2’s contrail was already falling apart, like the dreams of future tranquility that it had so carelessly scrawled across.

It would not take many more forty-thousand-foot overflights to update the air force’s terrain maps.

* * *

The old woman had been reading a book, and it still lay open on her lap, but her attention was elsewhere. There was a discreet knock at the door. She looked up as it opened, and adjusted her spectacles, unsurprised at the identity of her visitor. “Yes?”

“Your grace.” The door closed behind him. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

“No, no…” She slid a bookmark into place, then carefully closed the book and placed it on the table beside her. “I’ve got plenty of time. All the time in the world.”

“Ah, yes. Well, I’d like to apologize for leaving you to your own devices for so long. I trust you have been well-attended?”

“Young man, you know as well as I do that when one is in a jail cell, however well furnished, it does little good to grumble at the jailer.”

“It might, if you harbor some hope of release. And might reasonably expect to be in a position of authority over your captor, by and by.” He raised an eyebrow, and waited.

She stared at him grimly. “Release.” She raised her right hand. It shook, visibly. She let it fall atop the book. “Release from what?” The palsy was worse than it had been for some time. “What do you think I have to look forward to, even if you give me the freedom of the city outside these walls? Without imported medicines my quality of life will be poor. I can’t use that liberty you hint at.” She gestured at the wheelchair she sat in. “This is more of a jail than any dungeon you can put me in, Riordan.”

Rather than answering, the earl crossed the stone-flagged floor of the day room and, picking up the heavy armchair from beside the small dining table, turned it to face her. Then he sat, crossing one leg over the other, and waited.

After a while she sighed. “Credit me with being old enough to be a realist, kid.” She paused. “I’m not going to see the right side of sixty again, and I’ve got multiple sclerosis. It’s gaining on me. I’d like to go back home to Cambridge, where I hear they’ve got stuff like hot and cold running water and decent health care, but thanks to my dear departed mother and her fuckwitted reactionary idiots that’s not a terribly practical ambition, is it? I’m too old, too ill, and too tired to cast off and start up anew in another world, Riordan. I did it the once, in my youth, but it was a terrible strain even with Angbard’s connivance. Besides, you need me here in this gilded cage. Rule of law, and all that.”

“The rule of law.” Riordan leaned forward. “You’ve never been much for that, have you?”

Patricia’s cheek twitched in something that might have been the ghost of a smile. “I’ve never been much of one for bending the neck to authority.” She shook her head. “If I had been born to a lower estate I’d have been lucky to have made it to adulthood. As it is, the lack of highborn bloodlines taking precedence over mine—well. Easier to be rebellious when you’re the daughter of a duke, not a slave. What did you want to talk to me about?”

Her attempt to wrong-foot Riordan failed. “To ask you what I should do with you, your grace.”

Patricia smile widened. “Well, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it? I suppose it depends what you want to achieve.”

“I want to keep our people alive.” He crossed his arms. “What do you want?”

“Huh.” Her smile slipped away. “It’s come to that?”

“You know it has. I’m not going to charge you with petty treason, your grace; the only evidence against you is your own word, and besides, the victim had abducted you and was a conspirator at high treason. To hold her poisoning against you would be ungrateful, not to mention sending entirely the wrong message. But there is a question to which I would like some answers.”

“My brother?”

Riordan shook his head. “I know you didn’t kill him. But Dr. ven Hjalmar is missing. And so is a certain set of medical records.”

“A set of—” Patricia stopped dead. “What do you know about them?”

“I’ve been reading Angbard’s files.” Riordan’s tone was quiet but implacable. “I know about the fertility clinics and the substituted donor sperm. Five thousand unwitting outer-family members growing up in the United States. The plan to approach some of them and pay them to bear further children. I’m not stupid, Patricia. I know what that plan would mean to the old ladies and their matchmaking and braid alliances. The files are missing, your grace. Do you happen to know where they are?”

She shook her head. “Not exactly, no.”

“And inexactly?”

“I don’t think I should answer that question. For your own good.”

Riordan made a fist of his left hand and laid it quietly down on the table beside him. “Why?”

“It’s an insurance policy, kid. I don’t know exactly where the records are, only where they’re going to surface. Griben ven Hjalmar—if you see him, shoot him on sight, I beg you. He may have made off with a copy of the breeding program records too.”

“Why?” repeated the earl. “I think you owe me at least an explanation.”

“Our numbers are low. If they dip lower, the trade—our old trade—may no longer be viable. But at the same time, Angbard’s plan was destabilizing in the extreme. If Clan Security suddenly acquired an influx of tractable, trained world-walkers with no loyalty to family or braid—it would overbalance the old order, would it not? We agree that much, yes?”

Riordan nodded reluctantly. “So?”

“So Hildegarde tried to smash the program, at least by seizing the infants and having them adopted. Griben was her cat’s-paw. It was a power play and countermove, nothing more. But her solution would give us other problems. There is a reason why we are six high families and their clients, why each group numbers less than three hundred. An extended family—a clan, not our great collective Clan, but a normal grouping—is of that order, you know? Anthropologists have theories to explain why humans form groups of that size. Tribes, clans. We knit our six together into one bigger group, to permit the braiding of recessive genetic trait without excessive inbreeding. But if you triple our numbers—well, there was a reason we were susceptible to civil war eighty years ago. If a tribe grows too large it splinters along factional lines.”

“But you’re—” Riordan stopped. “Oh.”

Patricia nodded. “Yes. If Hildegarde’s idea—bring the newborn world-walkers into the Clan’s client families and raise them among us—had worked, we’d have grown much too fast to maintain control. It would have set us up for another damaging civil war.”

“Have you destroyed the records, then?”

She shook her head. “No need. We may even need them later. I leave that to the Council’s future deliberations; but in the meantime, I took steps to insure that nobody would use them to breed an army of world-walkers. It has to be done openly, with the consent of the entire Clan, or not at all.”

“I can live with that—if you can guarantee it.”

“The problem is ven Hjalmar.” She turned her face to the window. A beam of sunlight splashed through it, lengthening across the floor. “The sleazy little tapeworm’s stolen a set of the records. And now he’s gone missing. You know that Helge will hang him as soon as look at him. Put yourself in his shoes—where would you go?”

Riordan stared at her. “You think he’d defect to … who? The Lees?”

“I wouldn’t bet against it. He might be lying low in America, but what’s he going to do? He can’t fake up a good enough identity to practice as an ob-gyn—the full academic and employment track record would be a lot harder than a regular cover—so he can’t simply jump the wall and hide there, not unless he’s willing to take a big cut in his standard of living. So he needs sponsorship. The breeding program is … well, it’d be more useful to the Lees than it is to us: They’re not far from extinction, did you know that? They’ve got less than a hundred world-walkers. He might have gone to the US government a couple of weeks ago, but he can’t do that now: They wouldn’t need him once they get their hands on the breeding program records and they’re in no mood to be accommodating. That leaves the Lee family, or maybe the authorities in New Britain, but the latter won’t have a clue what he’s offering them without a working demonstration.”

“God-on-a-stick.” Riordan ran one hand through his thin hair. “I’ll point Olga after him. One more damn thing to worry about.”

“I have a question.” Patricia waited.

“Yes?”

“My daughter’s interest in Roland last year.” She licked suddenly dry lips. “And Olga was betrothed to him. And that nasty business Helge told me about, in the old orangery. Which was that to do with—WARBUCKS or the breeding program?”

“WARBUCKS—” For a moment Riordan looked confused. He shook his head. “Let me think. There was something about it in the files. The old man knew there was a leak; Olga was investigating. I think he may have set her on him—she was still under cover so she could run the fresh-faced ingenue pumping her fiancé—to see if he was the leak. Someone on the inside was still colluding with WARBUCKS after we officially cut him off, and Roland was considered unreliable. But you may be right. Economics was his big thing, wasn’t it? If he was talking to ven Hjalmar…” He trailed off.

“A tame army of world-walkers,” Patricia said tartly. “If Roland had been planning to defect, and if he could get his hands on the breeding-program records and take them to WARBUCKS, he could have named his own price, couldn’t he? Was that why he had to die?”

Riordan gave her a flat stare. “You might think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.”

Patricia met his gaze. After several long seconds she nodded, very slightly. “In any case, there are other plausible explanations. My mother, for example. There’s no way she would have allowed her granddaughter to marry a mere earl. Not with a pliable prince on offer, and her own elder sister—the queen-mother—happy to matchmake for her grandson.”

“That is true.” Riordan inclined his head. Then he took a deep breath. “I find the weight of your half-brother’s secrets inordinately onerous, my lady. I wish I could confide fully in you; it’s only those matters concerning your bloodline which give me cause for hesitation. I hope you can forgive me—but can you put yourself in my place?”

Patricia nodded again. “I beg your forgiveness. I don’t believe even for a moment that you might have arranged the liquidation of your elder brother Roland, not even on the duke’s orders. I don’t think Angbard would have given such a—but we live in paranoid times, do we not? And we know Dr. ven Hjalmar is a lying sack of shit who liked to incriminate other people.”

“Indeed. Did I mention it was his signature on your brother’s death certificate?”

“Was it really?” Patricia breathed.

“Yes. Really.” Riordan cleared his throat. “Just so you understand what—who—we’re dealing with here. I gather Helge has given her retainers certain orders in his regard. I’m inclined to declare him outlaw before Clan Security. If you, and the committee, concur?”

Patricia nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes.”

They sat in contemplative silence for a minute.

“Are you sure I can’t convince you to go to New Britain?” asked Riordan. “Your daughter could use your support.”

“She’s a grown woman who can make her own mistakes,” Patricia said sharply. “And I’ll thank you for not telling her what I had to do to give her that freedom.” Softly: “I think it better for the older generation to retire discreetly, you know. Rather than fighting, kicking and screaming, against the bitter end.”

“I’m certain they could take care of you, over there,” the earl pointed out. “If you stay behind when the Americans come…”

“I’ll die.” She sniffed. “I’ve been there, to the other world, Frederick. It’s backward and dangerous. With my condition it’s just a matter of time. Did I tell you, my mother was dying? She thought she had a year to live. Didn’t occur to her to ask how I was doing, oh no. If it had, and if she’d won, she might have outlived me, you know.”

“You’re not that ill, are you?”

“Not yet. But without my medication I will be. And when the Americans come, it won’t matter whether I’m hale and hearty or on my deathbed. If I evacuate, those medicines I need to sustain me will run out by and by. And if I stay…” She fixed him with a gimlet stare. “I hope you’re going to evacuate yourself before the end. My daughter doesn’t need old dead wood like me clogging up her household and draining her resources; but a young, energetic lord of security is another matter.”

Riordan stared right back at her. “This land is my land. And enough of my people are staying that I’d be derelict if I abandoned them.”

“My mother said something like that. My mother was also a damned fool.” Patricia took a deep breath. “She shot a man-eating tiger in the tip of its tail, where the wound is calculated to cause maximum pain and outrage, but to do no lasting harm. Do you really expect it not to bite?”

“Oh, it’s going to bite all right.” Riordan looked as resigned as a condemned man on his way to the scaffold. “You are correct, your grace. And I am encouraging every man and woman I meet to make their way to the evacuation points. But it’s an uphill battle, and many of our less well-traveled cousins are skeptical. If I go, my powers of persuasion are vastly reduced. So, like the captain of a sinking ship, my station is on the bridge.”

“Exactly.” Patricia folded her hands. “But I’m not going anywhere, even if you throw wide the doors to this gilded cell. So why not let me help?”

* * *

On the other side of the sprawling metropolis, a steamer drove slowly along a road lined with big houses, set back behind the wire-topped fences and overgrown hedges of a mostly absent bourgeoisie. Those with royalist connections or a history with the Polis or sympathies with the Patriot Party had mostly decided that they had pressing business out of town, far from urban militias who might recognize them and Leveler Party commissioners who might think the city better off without their ilk.

Sitting in the back of the steamer, James Lee stared pensively at the padlocked gates from behind smoked glass pince-nez spectacles. There, but for the lubrication of certain palms and the careful maintenance of appearances, were his own family’s estates; in time of civil war, nobody suffered quite like foreign merchants, despised for their race and resented for their imagined wealth. Only the Lee family’s dedication to concealing their true nature had kept them from attracting the mob’s attention so far. “This next,” he called ahead to the chauffeur and his companion, a heavyset fellow with a nose that had been broken so many times that it was almost flat. “She’s at home.” There was a trickle of smoke from one chimney pot, no doubt a flue venting from the kitchen range.

The thick hedge fronting the Beckstein estate was unkempt and as bushy as its neighbors, but the gate wasn’t chained shut—and the hut beside it showed signs of recent use. As the car hissed to a halt in the roadway, the hut’s door opened and a fellow stepped out, making no attempt to conceal his breech-loading blunderbuss.

“Ahoy, the house,” called the chauffeur.

The gatekeeper stayed well clear of the car. “Who calls?” he demanded.

James leaned forward to rap the head of his cane once on the back of the driver’s partition, then opened the car door and stepped out. “James Lee,” he said easily in hochsprache. The gatekeeper jumped. “I have come to visit my cousin, Helge of Thorold-Hjorth.”

“Wait, if it pleases you.” The gatekeeper raised his left hand and held something to his mouth, muttering. Then he shook his head, as if hearing an answer. His face froze. “Please wait … my lord, I am told that you are welcome here. But your men will please leave their arms in the vehicle.” Two more men appeared, hurrying along the driveway from the direction of the house. “If that is acceptable…?”

James nodded. “Take the car where he directs you and wait with it,” he told his chauffeur.

“Are you sure?” the bodyguard asked edgily.

James smiled tightly. “We’re safer here than we were on the way,” he pointed out. Which was true: Three men who would be taken as foreigners driving an expensive motor through a British city in time of revolution—“They won’t lay a finger on us, Chang. They don’t know what we are capable of. And besides, I am an honored guest.” He closed the car door and walked towards the gate as it swung open.

The house Miriam had purchased for her first foray into the business world in New Britain was large enough to conceal a myriad of sins, and James Lee was not surprised when the suspiciously unobsequious butler who met him at the front door rushed him into a parlor off to one side. “If you’d wait here, sir, her—my lady sends her apologies, and she will see you shortly.” He began to move towards the door, then paused. “Can I fetch you anything? Tea, coffee, whisky?”

James smiled. “I am perfectly all right,” he said blandly. The not-butler frowned, then bowed briskly and hurried out of the room. He was clearly unused to playing this role; his stockings were creased and his periwig lamentably disordered. James sat in the solitary armchair, glancing round curiously. Aside from the presence of the armchair and a small box attached to the wall close to one ceiling corner, there was nothing particularly unusual about the room—for a butler’s pantry. Someone is not used to entertaining, he decided. Now, what does that signify?

As it happened, he didn’t have long to wait. Barely ten minutes later, the not-butler threw the door open in a rush. “They’re ready for you now,” he explained. “In the morning room. If you’ll follow me, sir.”

“Certainly.” James stood and followed the fellow out into a gloomy passage, then out into a wood-paneled hall and through a doorway into a daylit room dominated by a large mahogany table set out with nearly a dozen seats. Dining table or conference table? He nodded politely at the occupants, reserving a small smile for their leader. “Good morning, Your Majesty—your grace—however I should address you? I must say, I’m glad to see you looking so well.” Well was questionable; she looked as if she had recently been seriously unwell, and was not yet back to full health.

She nodded. “Thank you, my lord baron. Uh—we are trying to make a practice of avoiding titles here; the neighbors are less than understanding. You may call me Miriam and I shall call you James, or Mr. Lee, whichever you prefer. Unless you insist on formalities?”

“As you wish.” The not-butler stepped forward, drawing out a chair for him. “Perhaps you could introduce your companions? I don’t believe we’ve all met.”

“Sure. Have a seat—everybody? Brilliana I think you’ve met. This is Sir—uh, Alasdair, my—”

“Chief of security,” the man-mountain rumbled mildly. He, too, sat down. “Your men are being taken care of with all due hospitality,” he added.

“Thank you.” Message received. James nodded and concentrated on remembering names as Miriam—the former Duchess Helge—introduced another five members of the six traitor brothers’ families—Stop that, he reminded himself. It was a bad habit, born of a hundred and fifty and more years of tradition built on the unfortunate belief that his ancestor had been abandoned to his fate by his wicked siblings. A belief which might or might not be true, but which was singularly unhelpful in the current day and age.…

“I assume you’re here because of my letter,” Miriam finished after the naming of names. Then she simply sat back, watching him expectantly.

“Ah—yes.” Damn. He hadn’t expected quite such an abrupt interrogation. He smiled experimentally. “My father was most intrigued by it—especially by what it left unsaid. What is this threat you referred to?”

Miriam took a deep breath. “I don’t want to mince words. The Clan fucked up.”

Brilliana—Miriam’s chief of staff, as far as he could tell—glanced at her liege. “Should you be telling—”

Miriam shook her head. “Leave this to me, Brill.” She looked back at James Lee, her shoulders slumping slightly. “You know about our factional splits.” He nodded cautiously. The blame game might be easy enough to play at this point; gods knew, his parents and grandparents had done their best to aggravate those disputes in decades past. “But you don’t know much about the Clan’s trade in the United States.”

He cocked his head attentively. “No. Not having been there, I couldn’t say.”

More euphemisms; the Lee family knotwork enabled them to travel between the worlds of the Gruinmarkt and New Britain, while the Clan’s knot had provided them with access to the semimythical United States.

“The US government discovered the Clan,” Miriam said carefully. “The Clan has earned its power over there through criminal enterprise—smuggling. The US government sent them a message by means of an, a, a superweapon. The conservatives decided to send one right back using stolen weapons of the same class—and at the same time to decapitate the Clan security apparatus and council. Their coup failed, but they really got the attention of the US authorities. Like climbing over the railings at a zoo and stamping on the tail of a sleeping tiger.”

James tried not to wince visibly. “But what can they do?”

“Quite a lot.” Miriam frowned and glanced at the skinny young fellow called Huw. “Huw? Tell him about the project my uncle gave you.”

Huw fidgeted with his oddly styled spectacles. “I was detailed to test other knotwork designs and to systematically explore the possibility of other worlds.” He rested a hand on a strange device molded out of resin that lay on the table before him. “I can show you—”

“No,” Miriam interrupted. “Just the summary.”

“Okay. We found and visited three other worlds before the coup attempt—and identified fifteen different candidate knots that look promising. One of the worlds was accessible using your, the Lee family, knotwork from the United States. We found ruins, but very high-tech ruins. Still slightly radioactive.” James squinted slightly at the unfamiliar jargon. “The others were all stranger. Upshot: The three worlds we know of are only the tip of an iceberg.”

“Let me put Huw’s high technology in perspective.” Miriam’s smile tightened with a moue of distaste: “He means high tech in comparison to the United States. Which is about as far ahead of New Britain as New Britain is ahead of the Gruinmarkt. There is strange stuff out there, and no mistake.”

“Perhaps, but of what use is it?” James shrugged, trying to feign disinterest.

“Well, perhaps the fact that the United States government has threatened us, and appears to have the ability to build machines that can move between worlds, will be of interest to you?” Miriam looked at him expectantly.

“Not really. They can’t find us here, after all.” James crossed his arms. “Unless you’ve told them where to look…?”

“We haven’t—we wouldn’t know who to talk to, or how.” James froze.

“Why are you here?” Alasdair asked pointedly.

Miriam held up a warning hand. “Stop,” she told him. Looking back at James: “Let me see. This might just be a social visit.” She looked amused. “But on balance, no, I don’t think so. You’re here to deliver a message.”

James nodded.

“From your elders—” Miriam stopped, registering his expression. “Oh shit. You’re not here on your uncle’s behalf?”

“You are not the only people with a problem,” James confessed ruefully. “I am afraid my elders have made an error of judgment, one that is in nobody’s best interests—not ours, nor yours.”

“An error—”

“Shut up, Huw.” This from Brilliana. “What have they done, and what do you think we can do about it?”

“These are dangerous, turbulent times.” James stopped, hunting for the least damaging way of framing his confession. These are dangerous, turbulent people, he reminded himself. Who were until a year ago enemies of our blood. “They sought a patron,” he confessed.

“A patr—” Miriam stared at him. “Crap. You mean, they’ve gone public?”

“Yes.” Wait and see. James crossed his arms.

“How public?” asked Miriam. “What have they done?”

“It started nearly a month ago.” James met her eyes. “When they learned of the upheaval in the Eastern states, the elders became alarmed. Add your cousins’ manifest difficulties with their own strange world, the America, and there was … cause for concern. My uncle sought advice on the wisdom of maintaining the rule of secrecy. His idea was that we should seek out a high-ranking minister within the provisional government, provide them with discreet services—ideally to the point of incrimination, to compel their cooperation later—and use their office to secure our safety. Does this sound familiar?”

They were all nodding. “Very,” said Miriam. “We made the same mistake.” She glanced sidelong at Brill. “Getting involved in local politics. Hmm.”

“Don’t blame me,” Brill said with some asperity.

“I’m not. But if the Council hadn’t wanted to place a world-walker on the throne, or to do business with local politicians in Wyoming, we wouldn’t be in this fix now.”

Fascinating, thought James. There was familial loyalty on display here, and also a strangely familiar bitterness. He cleared his throat. “Then a defector from your own ranks showed up.”

“Who?”

“A doctor—” He stopped. They were staring at him, as if he’d grown a second head. “—I believe you know him. Ven Hjalmar, he’s called.” Their faces—cold sweat sprang out in the small of his back. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“Please continue.” Miriam’s voice was flat.

“But you—”

“It’s a personal matter.” She made a cutting gesture. James took in the other signs: Sir Alasdair, Lady Brilliana—sudden focus, as attentive as hounds at the trail of a fox. “What happened?”

Suddenly lots of things slid into place. “You have reason to hate him?” Good. “He has convinced my uncle that it is necessary to conspire with a political patron, and to sell him a, a breeding program he says your families established in America. Preposterous nonsense, but…” He trailed off. Miriam’s expression was deathly.

“He did, did he?”

“Yes—” James took a deep breath. “It’s true? He’s telling the truth? There is a breeding program? The American doctors can breed world-walkers the way a farmer breeds sheep?”

“Not exactly like that, but close enough for government work.” Miriam made eye contact with Alasdair. “We’re in so much shit,” she said quietly. She looked back to James: “Which commissar is your uncle doing business with?”

“Commissioner Reynolds, overstaff supervisor in charge of the Directorate of Internal Security.” James took no pleasure from their expressions. “A man I love even less than the doctor. He carries a certain stink; if I was a Christian I’d say he’s committed mortal sins, and knows himself for one of the damned.” He smiled crookedly. “I was in at their last meeting, yesterday; to my eternal shame my uncle believes my loyalty knows no limits, and I have not yet disabused him of this notion. Yesterday. The meeting … the doctor told Reynolds that your acquaintance Mr. Burgeson was trying to acquire world-walkers of his own. I’m not entirely sure whether he was telling the truth or not, and this is purest hearsay and gossip—I know nothing specific about your arrangements, my lady, and I don’t want to. But if the doctor was telling the truth, you’d better warn your patron sooner rather than later.…”

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