The Trade of Queens

Evacuation

The marcher kingdoms of the East Coast, from the Nordtmarkt south, were scantily populated by American standards: The Gruinmarkt’s three to four million—there was no exact census—could handily live in New York City with room to spare. The Clan and their outer families (related by blood, but not for the most part gifted with the world-walking talent) were at their most numerous in the Gruinmarkt, but even there their total extended families barely reached ten thousand souls. The five inner families had, between them, a couple of thousand adult world-walkers and perhaps twice that many children (and some seniors and pregnant women for whom world-walking would be a hazardous, if not lethal, experience).

At one point in the 1930s, American style, the inner families alone had counted ten thousand adult world-walkers; but the Clan’s long, festering civil war had been a demographic disaster. To an organization that relied for its viability on a carefully husbanded recessive gene, walking the line between inbreeding and extinction, a series of blood feuds between families had sown the seeds of collapse.

Nearly twenty years ago, Angbard, Duke Lofstrom, the chief of the Clan’s collective security agency, had started a program to prevent such a collapse from ever again threatening the Clan. He’d poured huge amounts of money into funding a network of fertility clinics in the United States, and the children of that initiative were now growing to adulthood, ignorant of the genes (and other, more exotic intracellular machinery) for which they were carriers. Angbard’s plan had been simple and direct: to approach young female carriers selected from the clinics’ records, and pay them to act as host mothers for fictional infertile couples. The result was to be a steady stream of world-walkers, raised in the United States and not loyal to the quarreling families, who could be recruited in due course. Miriam, Helge, had been raised in Boston by Angbard’s sister as an experiment in cultural assimilation, not to mention a political insurance policy: Other children of the Clan had been schooled and trained in the ways and knowledge of the exotic West.

But Angbard had planned on being around to coordinate the recruitment of the new world-walkers. He hadn’t expected Matthias’s defection, or the exposure of the clinics to hostile inspection, and he hadn’t anticipated the reaction of the Auld Bitches, the gaggle of grandmothers whose carefully arranged marriages kept the traditional Clan structure afloat. Their tame gynecologist, Dr. ven Hjalmar, was a stalwart of the conservative club. He’d been the one who, at Baron Henryk’s bidding, had arranged for Helge’s involuntary pregnancy. He’d also acquired the breeding program records for his faction and, most recently, taken pains to ensure that Angbard would never again threaten their prestige as gatekeepers of the family trade. And now the surviving members of the Clan’s conservative clique—the ones who hadn’t been massacred by Prince Egon at the ill-fated betrothal feast—were cleaning up.

On that July morning, approximately one in every hundred world-walkers died.

In his private chambers in the Ostrood House, Baron Julius Arnesen was shot dead by Sir Gavaign Thorold.

Lord Mors Hjalmar, his eldest son Euen, and wife Gretyl were blown up by a satchel charge of PETN delivered by a courier who, not being a member of the clique responsible, also died in the blast—neither the first nor the last collateral casualty.

There were other, less successful assassination attempts. The young soldier detailed to slay Sir Helmut Anders had second thoughts and, rather than carrying out his orders, broke down and confessed them to his commander. The assault team targeting Earl-Major Riordan arrived at the wrong safe house owing to faulty intelligence, and by the time they located the correct headquarters building it had already been evacuated. And the poison-pen letter addressed to Lady Patricia Thorold-Hjorth—lightly spritzed in dimethyl mercury, a potent neurotoxin—never left the postal office, owing to an unusual shortage of world-walkers arriving to discharge their corvée duties that day.

In fact, nearly two-thirds of those targeted for assassination survived, and nearly a third of the would-be assassins were captured, were killed, or failed to carry out their missions. As coup d’état attempts went, this one might best be described as a halfhearted clusterfuck. The conservative faction had been on the back foot since the betrothal-night massacre, many of their most effective members slain; what remained was the rump of the postal committee (cleaving to the last to the trade that had brought them wealth and power), the scheming grandmothers and their young cat’s-paws, and a bedraggled handful who had fallen upon hard times or whose status was in some other way threatened by the new order.

Only one element of the conspiracy ran reliably to completion. Unfortunately, it was Plan Blue.

* * *

In a humid marsh on the banks of a broad river, there stood a scaffold by the grace of the earl of Dankfurt. The scaffold lacked many of the appurtenances of such—no dangling carrion or cast-iron basket of bones to add to the not inconsiderable stench of the swamp—but it provided a stout and very carefully surveyed platform. Here in the Sudtmarkt most maps were hand-scribed in ink on vellum, and accurate to the nearest league. But this platform bore stripe-painted measuring sticks at each corner, and had been carefully pinned down by theodolites borne by world-walkers. Its position and altitude were known to within a foot, making it the most accurately placed location in the entire kingdom.

Five men stood on the scaffold beside a cheap wheelbarrow that held an olive-drab cylinder the size of a beer keg. Two of them wore US army fatigues, in the new desert pattern that had come in with the Iraq war: outer-family world-walkers both, young and more tenuously attached to the Clan than most. The other three were clad in fashions that had never been a feature of that time line. “Are you clear on the schedule?” demanded one fellow, a thin-haired, thin-faced man whom Miriam had once likened to a ferret.

“Sir.” The shorter of the two uniformed men bowed his neck formally.

“Tell us, please,” said one of the other fellows, resting his hand on the pommel of his small-sword.

“At T minus eight minutes, Erik takes his place on the barrow. I then cross over. Emergence is scheduled for level two, visitors’ car park block delta three. There will be cameras but no internal guard patrols inside the car park—active security is on the perimeter and at the doors.”

The ferret-faced man nodded. “Kurt?”

The tall, sandy-haired soldier nodded. “I dismount. We have sixty seconds to clear down any witnesses. Then we wheel the barrow to the stairwell. By T minus six the payload is to be emplaced in the place of the red fire extinguisher, which we will place in the barrow. We are then to proceed back to our arrival point, whereupon Jurgen will take his place in the barrow and I will bring us home no later than T minus five.”

“What provisions for failure have you made?” asked the fellow with the small-sword.

“Not much,” the Ferret admitted. “Jurgen?”

Jurgen shrugged. “We shoot any witnesses, of course.” He tapped one trouser pocket, which was cut away to reveal the butt of a silenced pistol peeping out of a leg holster. The uniforms weren’t very authentic—but then, they only had to mislead witnesses for a few seconds. “If we can’t cross back because of a surveyor’s error, we turn the barrow upside down and Kurt stands on it. I ride him. Yes?”

The Ferret nodded to his companion. “My lord earl, there we are. Simple, sweet, with minimal room for things to go wrong.”

The earl nodded thoughtfully. His eyes flickered between the two soldiers. Did they suspect that the thumbwheel on the payload’s timer-controller had been modified to detonate six minutes earlier than the indicated time? Probably not, else they wouldn’t be standing here. “If we’d been able to survey inside this, this five-sided structure…”

“Indeed. Unfortunately, my lord Hjorth, it is the most important administrative headquarters of their military, and it was attacked by their enemies only two years ago. The visitors’ car park is as close as we could get. The payload”—the Ferret patted the stubby metal cylinder—“is sufficient to the job.”

“Well, then.” Earl Oliver Hjorth managed a strained smile. “I salute your bravery. Good men!”

Jurgen’s cheek quirked. “I’m certain that there will be no trouble, my lord.”

“Everyone in the witch-kingdom expects to see fire extinguishers in stairwells,” added the Ferret, not bothering to explain that the keg-sized payload looked utterly unlike a fire extinguisher. “And it won’t be there long enough for anyone to tamper with it.” Strapped to the detonation controller, it weighed nearly ninety kilos; there was a reason for the carefully surveyed crossing point, the wheelbarrow, and the two strong-backed and incurious couriers.

“Good,” the earl said briskly. He pulled out a pocket watch and inspected the dial. “Fifty-six minutes, I see. Is that the time? Well, I must be going now.” He nodded at the Ferret. “I expect to see you in Dankfurt by evening.”

“And the men, sir,” prompted the Ferret.

“Oh yes. And you.” Hjorth glanced at the uniformed couriers. “Yes, we shall find a suitable reward for you. I must be going.”

With that, he turned and clambered down the ladder, followed by his bodyguard. Together, they squelched towards the rowboat that waited at the water’s edge. It would carry them to the other side, and thence to the carriage waiting to race him away down the post road, so that he would be a couple of leagues distant before the clocks counted down to zero.

Just in case something went wrong at the last moment. You could never be too sure, with these devices.

* * *

The Explorer rumbled slowly down a narrow road near Andover, thick old-growth trees blocking the view to either side. Harold Parker State Forest wasn’t exactly the back end of nowhere, but with thousands of acres of hardwood and pine forest, campground and logging roads, and day trippers moving in and out all summer, it was a good place to disappear. Miriam sat back with her eyes closed, trying to fend off the sickening sense of impending dread. It was happening again: the sense of her life careering out of control, in the hands of—Stop that, she told herself. Half the occupants of the big SUV were sworn to her, bound by oaths of fealty; the rest were—If I can’t trust them, I can’t trust anybody.

It was turning into a recurring motif. Just as she tried to get a handle on her life and steer a course for herself, someone would try to look after her, usually with disastrous consequences. Betrayal, destabilization, chaos, and—as often as not—deaths. She’d thrown a party two days ago, inviting friends and possible allies to sound them out about a new venture—a whole new political program, in fact, not simply a business idea—only to receive heavy-handed hints about matters more properly handled by Clan Security. And today she’d come to talk to Earl-Major Riordan about them, only to learn that her worst suspicions were if anything an understatement of the problem: that the stick-in-the-mud faction, fearful of change, were on the edge of all-out revolt—

—had in fact revolted, that event possibly triggered by the very fact of her absence from the royal court; and other matters out of nightmare were in train, the Clan’s stolen atomic weapons lost and possibly deployed. So here they were, bumping along a logging road towards a secret, undisclosed location where Clan Security maintained a cache of equipment and a doppelgangered transfer house—

The SUV was slowing. Miriam opened her eyes. “Nearly there,” Sir Alasdair grunted.

Riordan was still glued to his cell phone, nodding occasionally between bursts of clipped hochsprache. Miriam tapped him on the shoulder. He held up a hand. “Be right back,” he told his absent conversationalist. “What is it?”

“If there’s a mole inside ClanSec, how do you know your Plan Black site hasn’t been rigged?” she asked. “If I was trying to mousetrap you, I can’t think of a better way to do it than scaring you into running for a compromised rendezvous.”

Riordan looked thoughtful. Miriam noticed Sir Alasdair’s shoulders tense. Brilliana chirped up from the back row of seats: “She’s right, you know.”

“Yes,” Riordan said grudgingly. “But we need to evacuate—”

“It can be booby-trapped here, or in the Gruinmarkt,” Olga pointed out, her voice icy cold. “If here, we can deal with it. Over there—we shall just have to reconnoiter, no?”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Sir Alasdair. “Who are we expecting here, my lord?”

“This site is meant to be held by Sir Helmut’s second lance.” Riordan sounded thoughtful as he stared at the screen of the tablet PC in his lap. “Two over here, six over there with two active and four in recovery or ready for transfer. The site on the other side is a farmhouse, burned out during the campaign, I’m afraid, but defensible.”

“Can you identify them?” asked Brilliana.

“By sight, yes, most probably. Outer-family aspirants, a couple of young bloods—I can show you their personnel files, with photographs. Why?”

“Because if I see the wrong faces on duty I want to be sure before I shoot them.”

The Explorer was slowing. Now Sir Alasdair took a sharp left onto a dirt trail barely any wider than the SUV. “We’re about two hundred yards out,” he warned. “Where do you want me to stop?”

“Right here.” Riordan glanced at Brilliana. “Are you ready, my lady?”

Brill nodded, reaching into her shoulder bag to pull out a black, stubby gun with a melted-looking grip just below the muzzle and a box magazine stretching along the upper surface of the barrel. “Sir Alasdair—”

“I’m coming too,” rumbled Miriam’s head bodyguard. He pulled the parking brake. “My lord, would you care to take the wheel? If a quick withdrawal is required—”

“I can drive,” Miriam heard herself saying. “You don’t need me for anything else, and I’m sure you need your hands?”

Riordan glanced at her, worried, then nodded. “Here’s the contact sheet.” He passed the tablet PC back to Brill, who peered at it for a few seconds.

“Okay, I am ready,” she announced, and opened her door.

For Miriam, the next few minutes passed nightmarishly slowly. As Alasdair and Brill disappeared up the track and into the trees alongside it, she took Sir Alasdair’s place behind the wheel, adjusting the seat and lap belt to fit. She kept the engine running at a low idle, although what she’d do if it turned out to be an ambush wasn’t obvious—backing up down a dirt trail while under fire from hostiles didn’t seem likely to have a happy outcome. She sighed, keeping her eyes on the road ahead, waiting.

“They know what they’re doing,” Olga said, unexpectedly.

“Huh?” Miriam swallowed an unhappy chuckle.

“She’s right,” added Riordan. “I would not have let them go if I thought them likely to walk into an ambush.”

“But if they—”

Someone was jogging down the track, waving. Miriam focused, swallowing bile. It was Brill. She didn’t look happy.

“Wait here.” Olga’s door opened; before Miriam could say anything, she was heading towards Brill. After a brief exchange, Brill turned and headed back up the path. Olga returned to the Explorer. “She says it’s safe to proceed to the shack, but there’s a problem.” Her lips were drawn tight with worry.

“You’d better go,” Riordan added. “We’re on a timetable here.”

“We’re—” Oh. Miriam put the SUV in gear and began to crawl forward. It’s an evacuation plan; they’ve got to figure on hostiles blowing it sooner or later, so … She’d seen enough of the Clan’s security machinations in action to guess how it went. Wherever they were evacuating through, the safe house—shack?—would be anything but safe to someone arriving after the cutoff time.

The track curved around a stand of trees, then down an embankment and around another clump to terminate in a clearing. At one side of the clearing stood a windowless shack, its wooden slats bleached silvery gray by the weather. Brilliana stood in front of the padlocked door, white-faced, her P90 at the ready in clenched hands. “Park here,” said Olga, opening her door again.

Miriam parked, then climbed down from the cab. “Where’s Alasdair?” she asked, approaching Brill.

Brill shook slightly. “Milady, he’s gone across already. Please don’t go there—” But Miriam had already seen what was round the side of the shack.

“What happened?” she demanded. “Who are they?” Riordan had also seen; he knelt by the nearer of the two bodies, examining it. Lying facedown, dressed in hunting camouflage jacket and trousers, they might have been asleep. Miriam stared at Riordan, then back at Brill. “What happened?” she repeated.

“They were waiting for us.” Brill’s voice was robotic, unnaturally controlled. “They were not the guards we expected to see. That one”—Riordan was straightening up—“I recognized him. He worked for Henryk.”

Riordan was holding something at arm’s length. As he came closer, Miriam recognized it. “Silenced,” Riordan told her, his voice overcontrolled as he ejected the magazine and worked the slide to remove the chambered round. “An assassin’s weapon.”

Brill nodded, her face frozen; but something in the set of her shoulders unwound, slumping infinitesimally.

“Oh my god.” Miriam felt her knees going weak. “What’s Sir Alasdair walking into?”

“I don’t know.” Brill took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. Don’t worry, my lady, he’ll try to save one of them for questioning.”

Miriam shivered. Her sense of dread intensified: not for herself, but for Alasdair. The man-mountain had already saved her life at least once; deceptively big and slow, he could move like an avalanche when needs must. “What are they doing here?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say the conservatives think they’re inside our OODA loop.” Olga looked extremely unhappy. “This has to have been planned well in advance. My lady, I beg your indulgence, but would you mind waiting in the truck? It has been modified—there is some lightweight armor—it would set my mind at ease.”

“Really?” Miriam fought back the urge to scream with frustration.

“Lady Olga, allow me.” Brill touched Miriam’s arm. “Walk with me.”

Brill led Miriam back up the track, just beyond the bend.

“What’s going to—”

Brill cut across her, her voice thick with tension. “Listen, my lady. In a couple of minutes, two of us—I would guess the earl and myself—will have to cross over, piggyback. If the map is truthful, if Sir Alasdair has been successful at his task, I will return. Then Lady Olga will have to carry you across, while the returnee recovers their wits. If I don’t come back you should assume that we are both dead and that before we died we betrayed your presence here to your enemies. In which case you and Lady Olga must drive like hell then go to ground and lose yourselves as thoroughly as you can imagine. Because if Earl-Major Riordan is dead or captured, our enemies will have accomplished their end, and all they need you for is to bring the heir to term and then … they won’t need you anymore. Do you understand? Do you understand?”

Brill’s grip on her wrist was painful. Miriam nodded, jerkily. “How long?” she managed.

“About … hmm. No more than five minutes.” Brilliana’s lips quirked. “If Sir Alasdair ran into trouble and we can’t fix it, we’ll come back. No false heroics. So you see? If I don’t come back soon, it’s because I can’t.”

“You could be walking into an ambush.” Her heart was going too fast, Miriam realized distantly.

“We could but we won’t.” Brill nodded her head at the uphill slope. “What do you think that is?”

“That’s a—” Miriam stopped. “Oh. Clever.”

“Yes.” The ground level in the Gruinmarkt didn’t always match the level in this world. World-walking tended not to go too well if the world-walker arrived several meters above ground level; and it didn’t work at all if they tried to cross over inside a solid object. “The shack is the primary location, but there’s a secret secondary. At the crest of the ramp, step off the track to the left, about six feet, then cross over. There’s an outhouse, and you come out at roof level with a clear field of fire.” Brill hefted her gun. “Listen, go back to the truck and wait with Lady Olga.” She smiled diffidently: “It will work out, you see.”

* * *

Near a small town in Pennsylvania, six miles north of Camp David, Highway 16 runs through rolling hills and open woodland, past the foot of a low mountain called Raven Rock.

A casual visitor turning off the highway onto Harbaugh Valley Road wouldn’t see much: a wire mesh fence and a narrow track off to one side, and a sign warning of a restricted area. But if they drove up the road a couple of miles it would be another story—assuming the armed guards didn’t stop them first. Tucked away behind the trees on top of the mountain there was a huge array of satellite dishes and radio masts. And beneath the ground, buried under many meters of bedrock, lay the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, home of the Alternative National Military Command Center, the 114th Signal Battalion, and the emergency operations centers for the army, navy, air force, joint staff, and secretary of defense.

Of course, a casual visitor wouldn’t have seen the visitors arriving in the back of unmarked black Lincoln Town Cars with smoked windows, that sat oddly low on their suspension. They wouldn’t have seen the thick steel doors that opened inside the low, windowless buildings, or the downward-sloping tunnel that cut into the ground, or the elevators and cranes and the blast doors set into the side of the tunnel. Indeed, there was no such thing as a casual visitor at the concrete-and-steel-lined installation embedded in the ground beneath the motel and golf club buildings.

Welcome to the Undisclosed Location.

In a compact, brightly lit conference room ninety feet below the ground, the vice president sat with his advisors, watching television. They had a lot of television to watch; a rack of six sets covered half a wall, flicking through channels on a twenty-second cycle. Bloomberg, CNN, Fox News, and C-SPAN played tag with the Cartoon Network and Discovery Channel on four monitors; two others were permanently tuned to NBC and the view from a traffic camera overlooking a street intersection in Dupont Circle.

The vice president leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms, and glanced at the skinny Yalie with his lapel-pin crucifix and rimless spectacles. “This is the boring part,” he confided. “We used to come down here and game these scenarios every month or so during the nineties, you know. All weekend long. Used to be the Russkies on the other side, or the Iranians. They’d set up their opening move, we’d set up our response, and then we’d see how it all played out, whether or not we locate and kill the threat before it activates, which branch of the crisis algorithm we go down. The trouser legs of terror.” He chuckled, a throaty laugh that terminated in a bubbling cough. “So. Do you think they’re bluffing?”

Dr. Andrew James glanced past his boss, at the empty chair where State’s assistant secretary ought to be sitting if this session wasn’t classified FAMILY TRADE–only. “I couldn’t say for sure, sir, but that phone call sounded promising.” He gestured at the desk telephone in front of him, beige and stuffed with buttons with obscure labels that only made sense to the NSA eggheads who designed these gadgets. “The call terminated promptly.”

“Good,” WARBUCKS said vehemently. “Gutless bastards.”

“We don’t know for sure that it terminated as intended, sir,” James warned. “The adversary’s INFOSEC is pretty good for an amateur operation, and the bugging transcript from contact FLEMING indicates at least one of them was concerned about the bait phone.”

“They got the message, either way. Bart, is there any noise on the Continuity side?”

“Nothing new, sir.” Bart, a graying DISA apparatchik, was hunched over a laptop with a trailing cable patched into a wall jack—a SIPRNet connection. “They’re all just standing by. SECDEF is aboard KNEECAP on the ramp at Andrews AFB, standing by for JEEP with short-notice takeoff clearance. BOY WONDER is in the EOB as usual. Uh, message from SECDEF. He wants to know if you’ve got an update.”

“Tell him no”—WARBUCKS stared at the wall of televisions, then reached behind his left ear to adjust the multichannel earpiece—“but if they don’t send us a message within the next twenty-four hours I think they’re probably going to fold. I just want him where—want backup. This could go wrong.”

Dr. James’s BlackBerry buzzed for attention. Glancing down at its screen, he froze. “Sir.”

“Speak.”

“SIGTRADE just issued a RED FLASH—some kind of coded signal. It’s running through their network—” The machine buzzed again. “Uh, right. Something is going on. Post six reports surveillance subjects all just freaked. They’re moving, and it’s sudden.”

WARBUCKS closed his eyes. “Round ’em up, then. That’s plan—which plan—”

Another aide riffled hastily through a ring binder. “Would that be HEAD CRASH, sir? Track and disable immediate, then hood and ship?”

“That’s the one.” WARBUCKS nodded. “Send it,” he told Bart. “And tell them I want hourly head counts and updates on everything—misses as well as arrests.”

* * *

In private, behind locked doors, the discussion took a different shape.

“Sit down, Jim. Have a whisky?”

“Yes, please.” James Lee settled into the overstuffed armchair and waited while his father—Elder Huan’s nephew Shen—filled two crystal tumblers from a hip flask and ensconced himself in the room’s other armchair. His den was furnished in conventional Western style, free of exotic affectations or imported reminders of the Middle Empire here; just two overstuffed armchairs, a battered mahogany bureau from the inventory of a retired ship’s captain, and a wall of pigeonholes and index files. The Lee family’s decidedly schizophrenic relationship with New Britain was tilted to the Occident, here; but then, Dad had always been a bit of an Anglophile. “How’s Mother keeping? And Angelina? I haven’t seen them lately—”

“Neither have I, Jim. We write, regularly—Xian says all is well and they’re enjoying the peace in the summer house near Nan Shang.” Nan Shang in what would be California, two worlds over—or the Middle Empire in the world where the eastern seaboard belonged to the marcher kingdoms. With the fiscal crisis in full flow, and latterly the riots and disorder, many of the family’s elders had deemed it prudent to send their dependents away to safety. While the Lee extended family were nothing like as prominent in the West as the six Eastern families had become in the East, their country estates were nevertheless palatial. “The postal service is still working. Do you want me to—”

“No, I’m sorry, Father. Just curious. You wanted a chat?”

“Yes.” His father was silent for a few seconds. Then: “What is your opinion of the doctor? Did you have an opportunity to form an opinion of him during your stay with the cousins?” During the six months during which James had been a pampered hostage.

“I didn’t know him well, Father. But—you want my honest opinion? He’s a worm. A most dangerous, slimy, treacherous worm.”

“Strong words.” The lightness of his father’s tone was belied by his sour face. “Do you have reason for it?”

“I believe so. I don’t think he told Eldest any outright untruths, but nothing he said was quite right, either. He was telling the truth when he said he was the personal physician to many of the Eastern cousins’ womenfolk, but he was also … not as put-upon as he would have you believe. He said he earned the undying hatred of the woman Helge—and he was telling the truth there, too. But Helge didn’t impress me as being anybody’s fool. She’s neither naive nor stupid, and when we had time to talk—there’s something unpleasant underneath this excess of servility on his part, Father. I can’t tell you precisely what he’s hiding, but he’s hiding something.”

“That much was obvious from his performance.” Shen took a sip of whisky. “I don’t think Mei is serious about finding him a wife—unless she means to set the Widow Ting on him.” James flinched; avoiding cousin Ting and her dangerous games had been one of his wiser moves. “I gather she’s itching to marry again. That would make … three? Four? No matter. It is perfectly clear that the doctor is as twisty as a hangman’s noose. What your uncle would like to know is—can he deliver what he offered?”

“I don’t know.” James paused. “You may know more than I, Father. Is it true that Helge is with child?”

For a long moment his father stared into his tumbler. “It might be so.”

“Because.” James licked his lips. “Before the Per—before the youngest son’s rebellion, she was held prisoner and securely chaperoned. And I met the heir to whom she was betrothed. He wasn’t going to do any begetting on her. There was unsavory whispering about some of ven Hjalmar’s works, among the servants I cultivated. Some said that the man was an abortionist. Others accused him of drugging and raping noblewomen—a story I find incredible, under the circumstances described. What is true is that the Clan’s ladies, whom he served, made use of a hospital or clinic in the United States, which he helped run. I know that much. And Helge was leashed for poking her nose into some business that sounds very like this baby clinic he offered to elder Yuan. So: I believe he is mostly telling the truth—again, only mostly.”

“What do you think he plans?”

“What he—” James stopped. “You can’t be thinking of working with him! He’s a viper. He’s stung two masters already, why would he stop short of making it three? It’s in his nature!”

“Calm down, boy, I’m not making that decision!”

“I’m sorry, Father.”

“That is good. Don’t worry unduly—we trust him no more than you do. But we need to have some idea of his goals before we can decide whether to make use of him or not. If he can deliver what he offers—perhaps as many as five hundred world-walkers within ten years—that is a matter of enormous significance! We would not have to worry about the Eastern cousins after that. It would open up new business possibilities, ways of making ourselves useful to those in authority—whoever they may be, when the current incivility dies down—new blood in our thinning arteries. Can he do it? That is what my brother asks. If he can, then we can use him: tie him down, shadow his work, and eventually take it over. But if he’s a mere charlatan”—Shen made a dismissive gesture, casting the shadow of ven Hjalmar over his left shoulder—“we know how to deal with that, too.”

James tried again: “I think it’s unwise—”

“You have made that clear already!” his father snapped. “Your opinion is noted. But the decision-making is for your elders; they must balance the safety and needs of the family against the risks involved in taking this asp to our breast. All my brother needs from you now is an assessment—is what he says possible?”

James took a deep breath, embarrassment and anger warring. “I … I can’t deny it. From what the Eastern cousins were saying, when they had no reason to guard their tongues—yes, very possibly.”

“Thank you.” Shen lifted his tumbler. “I think it best if we do not include you in the discussion; you are, perhaps, too close to its subjects. I agree with your assessment of the doctor’s character—but even serial traitors may be useful to us on occasion. Especially if we know their weaknesses. Which is why I ask again: What do you believe his goals are?”

James frowned. “What goals? Beside keeping his head on his shoulders?”

Shen leaned forward. “Has it gone that far?”

“He did something to Helge that angered her greatly. And she is pregnant, with an heir to the throne of Gruinmarkt that is universally acknowledged as such by the Eastern cousins, who say something about a, uh, DNA paternity check, whatever that might be. Are they fools, Father? Is she a fool? I think those rumors about drugs and rape are … not true, exactly, but close. Ven Hjalmar got Lady Helge pregnant with seed from the royal line—then his patron died, and he must run for his life. He wants money, sanctuary, and time to continue his work—which is this breeding program. He wants to use us, Father, that’s what I think.”

“Ah.” His father relaxed, smiling at last. He raised his glass. “And you think that’s all?”

“I wouldn’t swear to it, but—”

“It’ll do.” Shen took a sip. “Thank you, son. I think I can discuss this with Eldest now.”

James’s shoulders sank. “You think Uncle will take Dr. ven Hjalmar on.”

“Yes.” Shen’s smile widened. “But don’t worry. He will be under control.…”

* * *

The second thing to catch Miriam’s attention was the mingled smells of scorched wood and warm blood. The first was managing to control her fall; being carried piggyback was hard enough when the steed was a strapping young soldier, never mind a physically fit but lightly built younger woman. As Miriam and Olga disentangled themselves, Miriam looked around curiously. They’d come through in the target area once a deeply relieved Brill had confirmed that the zone was secure, and it was Miriam’s first chance to see the havoc that the Pervert’s army had inflicted on the Clan’s outlying minor steadings.

One farmhouse looked much like another to her eye—in the Gruinmarkt they tended to be thick-walled, made from heavy logs or clay bricks depending on the locally available materials—but this one bore clear signs of battle. The roof of one wing was scorched and blackened, and the window shutters on the central building had been wrecked. More to the point—

“Who—” she began, as Olga raised a hand and waved at the armed man standing guard by the door.

“My lady!” He went to one knee. “Lord Riordan awaits you in the west wing.”

“Rise, Thom. Where are Knuth and Thorson?” Olga was all business, despite what had to be a splitting headache.

“We haven’t seen ear nor tail of them since they crossed over yesterday.” The guard’s eyes widened as he looked at Miriam: “Is this—”

“Yes, and you don’t need to make a scene over me,” she said hastily. Turning to Olga: “The other two—they’re your missing guards?”

“Let us discuss that indoors.” Olga nodded at the farmstead’s front door, which stood ajar. Thom followed behind like an overeager dog, happy his mistress was home. “I think Knuth and Thorson are probably dead,” she said quietly. “The two who were waiting for us definitely weren’t them.”

Miriam nodded, jerkily. “So they were assassins? Just there to kill whoever turned up?”

“Whoever turned up at the duty staff officer’s primary evacuation point, yes.” The picture was clear enough. The evac point had been guarded by a lance of soldiers, two on the American side and six in the Gruinmarkt. The assassins had murdered the two guards in the state park, then planned on catching Earl Riordan and his colleagues as they arrived, one by one. They hadn’t anticipated a group who, forewarned, arrived expecting skullduggery. “I expect Lady d’Ost will try and find where they hid the bodies before she comes hither to report. Come on inside, my lady.”

The farmstead was a wreck. The guards had made a gesture towards clearing up, pushing the worst of the trashed furniture and shattered kitchenware up against one wall and sweeping the floor—the pretender’s cavalry had briefly used it as a stable—but the scorch marks of a fire that had failed to take hold still streaked the walls, and there was a persistent, faint aroma of rotting meat. The guards had brought out camp chairs and a folding table, and Riordan had set up his headquarters there, organizing the guards to man a shortwave radio and track unfolding events on a large map. He looked up as Miriam arrived. “Welcome, Your Majesty.”

“How bad is it?” Miriam asked.

“We’re getting reports.” He grimaced. “The evac plan is running smoothly and I’ve ordered all stations to check out the other side for unwelcome visitors. Didn’t want to say why—things will be chaotic enough without setting off a panic about a civil war. The trouble is, we’re fifteen miles out of Niejwein—the eye of the storm—half a day’s ride; and I’m not happy about disclosing your location. In the worst case our enemies may have direction-finding equipment, and if they’ve got their hands on Rudy’s ultralight … we’ve got to sit tight as long as possible. I’ve ordered Helmut to bring a couple of lances here as soon as he’s nailed down the Summer Palace and I’ve put orders out for the arrest of the entire postal committee and, I regret to say, your grandmother. We can weed that garden at our leisure once we’ve got it fenced in. Unless you have any other suggestions?”

“Yes.” Miriam swallowed. “Is there any word of my mother? Or, or Dr. Griben ven Hjalmar? I think they’re in cahoots.…”

Riordan glanced at one of his men and barked a question in hochsprache too fast for Miriam to follow. The reply was hesitant. “No reports,” he said, turning to Miriam. “I’ll let you know if anything turns up. I assume you’re talking about the duke’s special, ah, medical program?” Miriam nodded. “I’m on it. Now, if you wouldn’t mind—” He looked pointedly at the security guard with the radio headset, who was waving urgently for attention.

“Go to it.” Miriam shuffled awkwardly aside, towards the doorway into the burned-out wing of the farmhouse. “What do we do now?” she asked Olga.

Olga grimaced. “We wait, my lady. And we learn. Or you wait, I have orders to send. Please.” She gestured at the bedrolls on the hard-packed floor. “Make yourself comfortable. We may be here some time.”

* * *

Twenty years ago, in the rookeries of a town called New Catford, Elder Huan had known a young and dangerous radical—a Leveler and ranter called Stephen Reynolds.

In those days, Huan had been the public face of the family’s business involvements—a discreet railroad for money and dispatches that the underground made use of from time to time. Reynolds had been Huan Lee’s contact, and for a while things had gone swimmingly. Few organizations had as great a need for secrecy as the Leveler command, and indeed Huan had toyed with the idea of disclosing the family’s secret to him—for the family’s singular talent and the needs of the terrorists and bomb-throwers and other idealists were perfectly aligned, and the pogroms and lynchings of the English, tacitly encouraged by the government (who knew a good target for the mob’s ire when they saw it—and skin of the wrong color had always been one such), did nothing to endear the authorities to him. At least the revolutionaries preached equality and fraternity, an end to the oppression of all races.

A series of unfortunate events had closed off that avenue before Huan started down it; raids, arrests, and executions of Leveler cells clear across the country. He, himself, had been forced to world-walk in a hurry, one jump ahead of the jackboots of the Polis troopers. And that had been the end of that. The first duty of the family was survival, then profit—martyrdom in the name of revolutionary fraternity wasn’t part of the package. In the wake of the raids he’d thought Stephen Reynolds dead—until he heard the name again, in a broadcast by the revolutionary propaganda ministry. Reynolds had survived and, it seemed, prospered in the council of the Radical Party.

This didn’t entirely surprise Elder Huan. As he had described it to his brothers, some time later, “The man is a rat—sharp as a wire, personally courageous, and curious. The Polis will have a hard time taking him.” And now the fox was in charge of a hen coop of no small size, having emerged in charge of the Annapolis Freedom Riders, then promoted to organize the Bureau of Internal Security that the party had formed to replace the reactionary and untrustworthy Crown Polis.

Now Elder Huan—through conduits and contacts both esoteric and obscure—had arranged for a meeting with the man himself. The agenda of the meeting was to be the renewal of an old alliance. And Elder Huan intended to make Reynolds an offer that would secure the safety of the family throughout the current crisis.

* * *

For his part, Reynolds—a thickset fellow with brown hair, thinning at the crown, and half-moon pince-nez that gave him an avuncular appearance even when supervising interrogations—was looking forward to the meeting for entirely the wrong reasons.

“I want you and two squads to be ready outside the front door. Place another squad round the back. Plain clothes, two steamers ready for backup.” He smiled, not warmly. Brentford, his secretary, nodded and scribbled in his notebook. “You should arrest everyone in the building or leaving it after my departure, unless I indicate otherwise by displaying a red kerchief in my breast pocket. Special Regime Blue, with added attention. The charges will be resisting arrest, treason, membership of a proscribed organization, and anything else that occurs to you. Have the Star Tribunal ready to sit on them and I’ll sign off on the execution warrants immediately. Do you have that?”

Brentford nodded, impassive. These were not unusual orders; Citizen Reynolds took a very robust approach to dealing with subversives. “The, ah, exception, sir? Do you have any other instructions to deal with that case?”

“No.” Reynolds made a fist, squeezing. “If anything comes up I’ll handle it myself.”

“The danger, sir—”

“They’re petty smugglers and racketeers, citizen. I dealt with them before, during the Long Emergency; it’s almost a certainty that they want to deal themselves a hand at the table, in which case they’re in for a short, sharp surprise. I merely reserve the final judgment in case there’s something more serious at hand.” He stood, behind his desk, and straightened his uniform tunic, flicking invisible dust motes from one black lapel. “Plain clothes, I say again. I’ll see you at eight.”

Reynolds strode to the door as Brentford saluted. He didn’t look back. Brentford was a reliable party man, a typical functionary of the new organization: He’d do as he was told, and look up to Reynolds as a bluff fellow who led from the front, as long as he occasionally indulged in eccentricities such as periodically going into the field to gather up nests of vipers and traitors with his own hands.

Reynolds didn’t smile at the thought. There were risks attached to this behavior, and he didn’t hold with taking risks unless there was something he held to be personally important at stake. Maintaining his carefully constructed public image was all very well, but placing himself in front of a desperate fugitive’s knife was … it was undignified. On the other hand, sometimes it was necessary to deal with former Polis informers himself, to insure that they fell downstairs or swallowed their suicide pills. He considered it to be a small mercy—far less unpleasant than what fate held in store for them in the ungentle hands of his enthusiastic staff in Interrogations and Inquiries.

Citizen-Commissioner Stephen Reynolds was more than willing to go into the field in person and meet past friends—especially if it meant that he could silence them before they could spill their guts to the interrogators in the BIS basements.

* * *

The venue Eldest Huan had chosen for the meeting was a tiny front-room bar in a public house in Menzies Gate, a run-down suburb on the edge of what, in another world, would be called Brooklyn. His foot soldiers had paid the owner handsomely to take his wife and six children and two servants and move out for the night: a three-month amnesty from protection money, and a wallet bulging with ration coupons. “I want privacy,” Huan had told One-Eye Cho, “and I want a safe exit. See to it.” The pub, unbeknownst to its owner, was colocated with a trackless forest clearing in the northern Sudtmarkt—one carved out with sweat and axe and saw by Cho’s sons. Eldest had dealt with Reynolds before, and with the Polis, and was under no illusions about the hazards of dining with devils in Secret Security Police uniforms. “Place two reliable bearers in the exit, and two armed guards. Find someone who can pass as white, and put him behind the bar with a shotgun to cover my retreat. He can be the bartender. Put another in the kitchen, who can at least provide cold cuts and soup if our guest is hungry.”

The pub was a theater: Reynolds and Huan had both prepared scripts for the other’s benefit. The only question remaining was that of whose review would be more favorable.

* * *

Eight o’clock; the sky was still bright, but the shops were mostly shuttered, the costermongers and peddlers and rag-and-bone men and beggars had mostly slunk away, and the front windows of the pub were dark. Reynolds surveyed it professionally as he approached along the pavement. He’d swapped his uniform for a suit of clothes as ill-fitting—even moth-nibbled—as any he had worn during the long desperate years on the run. On the far side of the road, a couple of dusty idlers clustered near a corner; he glanced away. Down the street, a steamer sat by the curb, curtains drawn in its passenger compartment. All was as it should be. He nodded, then turned back towards the door and rapped the head of his cane on it twice.

A spy-slot slid aside. “We’re shut.”

“Tell your master an old friend calls.” Reynolds kept his voice low. “Remember New Catford to him.”

The spy-slot closed. A moment later, the door opened. Reynolds slid inside.

The pub was indeed short on customers, but as the barman shot the bolts and returned to his place, Reynolds was intrigued by the appearance of the couple sitting at the one sound table, each with a glass of beer to hand. The old Chinaman he recognized, after a pause: It was indeed the gangmaster and smuggler from New Catford who had called himself Cheung. But who was the middle-aged white man? Questions, questions. Reynolds smiled broadly as he approached the table and Cheung stood.

“Ah, Citizen Reynolds!” cried Cheung—Reynolds suppressed a wince—and the other fellow stood, somewhat slowly. “How wonderful to see you prospering so in these harsh times. Please, this is my associate Dr. ven Hjalmar, a physician. Please have a seat. Beer? Spirits? Have you eaten?”

Reynolds negotiated the social minefield and sat, without glancing at the bartender—whose impassivity told him more than he needed to know about his loyalties. Most professional, he decided: Cheung clearly knew what he was about. Which suggested a simple wrap-up might be difficult—but then, the presence of the doctor implied that this might be rather more complex than the usual pathetic blackmail attempt. “A beer would be welcome. I gather you had a business proposal you wanted to bring to my attention?”

“Oh yes, indeed.” Cheung smiled happily. “To your very good health!” He raised his glass. Reynolds perforce followed suit and submitted to another five minutes of trivial niceties. “We considered putting some elements of this proposal to you all those years ago, in Catford, but the unfortunate excess of zeal displayed by the Polis impressed upon us the need for discretion. Now, however, anything we choose to confide in you is unlikely to be beaten out of you by the royalist inquisitors. So: another toast, to our future business success!”

Reynolds blinked as he answered the toast: This was very much not what he’d been expecting. “I’m afraid you have the better of me,” he admitted. “What business do you have in mind?”

Cheung glanced around before he replied. “You must have realized that I had a most effective way of moving dispatches and contraband between locations, without fear of interception.” Reynolds nodded. “Well, that … mechanism … is still available. And I believe that, given the nature of your current engagement, you might very well find a use for it.” Reynolds nodded again, slightly perturbed. What’s he on about? he wondered. Cheung beckoned at the bartender. “Scott. Please come and stand in front of Citizen Reynolds, then make yourself scarce. Have Ang report to me in five minutes.”

The bartender—Scott—bowed slightly, then stepped in front of the table. “Observe,” he told Reynolds. He looked away, in the direction of the archway leading to the kitchen. Then he vanished.

“This is our family secret,” Reynolds heard Cheung saying behind him as he waved his arms through the thin air where Scott had stood: “We can walk between worlds. We have had to hold this to ourselves, in utter confidence, for generations; I’m sure you can imagine the consequences if word were to leak out in public. However, I know you to be a man of utmost probity and integrity, and in your new and elevated rank, I am certain you will recognize the desirability to keep this a secret as close to your chest as any matter of state. I brought the doctor along because he can explain to you the origins, transmission, and limits of our family talent better than I; it is hereditary, and we have never met any people to whom we are not blood kin who can do it.…”

Reynolds swallowed: His heart was hammering. “Business,” he said hollowly. “What business?” He turned round slowly. Where had Scott gone? Was he behind him? Waiting with an axe—

“I want to put my family at your service,” said Cheung. His expression was bland. “I am certain you will find our unique talent very valuable indeed. These are dangerous times; the party has many enemies. I hope that you—we—will better be able to defend it if we can come to a working agreement?”

Reynolds licked suddenly dry lips. “How many of you are there?” he asked.

“Seventy adults, able to perform at will, and their children. Two hundred other relatives, some of whose offspring may be able to do so. And Dr. ven Hjalmar has a proposal that will, I am sorry to say, strike you as something out of a philosophical romance, but which may revolutionize our capacity in the longer term, ten years or more.”

Reynolds glanced round again, just as a young man—half a head shorter than the absent Scott—appeared out of thin air, bowed deeply to him, and moved to take up his station behind the bar. He swallowed again, mind churning like a millrace. “How much do you want?” he asked.

Cheung smiled. “Perhaps Dr. ven Hjalmar should start by telling you exactly what is on sale. We can discuss the price later…”