The Family Trade (23 page)

Ye gods!
“If I think someone has made a mistake, I tell them. It doesn’t mean I secretly hate them or that I’ve decided to make their life unpleasant. I don’t do that because I’ve got other things to worry about, and screwing around like that—” she saw Kara’s eyes widen—
Don’t tell me swearing isn’t allowed?
—“is a waste of time. Do you understand?”

Kara shook her head, mutely.

“Don’t worry about it, then. I’m not angry with you. Drink your tea.” Miriam patted her hand. “It’s going to be all right. You said there’s a reception this evening. You said we were invited. You want to go?”

Kara nodded, slowly, watching Miriam.

“Fine. You’re coming, then. If you didn’t want to go, I wouldn’t make you. Do you understand? As long as you do your job properly when you’re needed, as far as I’m concerned you’re free to do whatever you like with the rest of your time. I am not your mother. Do you understand?”

Kara nodded again, but her entire posture was one of mute denial and her eyes were wide.
Shit, I’m not getting through to her,
Miriam thought to herself. She sighed. “Okay. Breakfast first.” The toast was getting cold. “Is Brill going to the party?”

“Yes, mistress.” Kara seemed to have found her tongue again, but she sounded a bit shaky.
She’s about seventeen,
Miriam reminded herself.
A teenager. Whatever happened to teenage rebellion here? Do they beat it out of them or something?

“Good. Listen, when you’ve finished, go find her. I need someone to walk with me to Lady Olga’s apartment. When Brill gets back, the two of you are to sort out whatever I’m wearing tonight. When
I
get back I’ll need you both to dress me and tell me who everybody is, where the bodies are buried, and what topics of conversation to avoid. Plus a quick course in court etiquette to make sure I know how to greet someone without insulting them. Think you can manage that?”

Kara nodded, a quick flick of the chin. “Yes, I can do that.” She was about to say something else, but she swallowed it. “By your leave.” She stood.

“Sure. Be off with you.”

Kara turned and scurried out of the room, back stiff. “I don’t think I understand that girl,” Miriam muttered to herself.
Brill I think I’ve got a handle on, but Kara
—She shook her head, acutely aware of how much she didn’t know and, by implication, of how much potential for damage this touchy teenager contained within her mood swings.

Brilliana turned up as Miriam finished her coffee, dressed for an outdoor hike.
Hey, have I started a fashion for trousers?
Miriam rose. “Good morning!” She grinned. “Sleep well after last night?”

“Oh.” Brilliana rubbed her forehead. “You plied us with wine like a swain with his—well, I
think
it’s still there.” She waited for Miriam to stand up. “Would you like to go straight to Lady Olga? Her Aris says she would receive you in the orangery, then take tea with you in her rooms.”

“I think, hmm.” Miriam raised an eyebrow, then nodded when she saw Brilliana’s expression.
No newspapers, no telephones, no electricity. Visiting each other is probably the nearest thing to entertainment they get around here when none of the big nobs are throwing parties.
“Whatever you think is the right thing to do,” she said. “Where’s my coat…”

Brilliana led her through the vast empty reception chamber of the night before, now illuminated with the clear white light of a snow-blanketed day. They turned down a broad stone-flagged corridor. It was empty save for darkened oil paintings of former inhabitants, and an elderly servant slowly polishing a suit of armour that looked strangely wrong to Miriam’s untrained eye: The plates and joints not quite angled like anything she’d seen in a museum back home.

“Lady Aris said that her Excellency is in a foul mood this morning,” Brilliana said quietly. “She doesn’t know why.”

“Hmmph.” Miriam had some thoughts on the subject. “I spent a long time talking to Olga on the way here. She’s … let’s just say that being one of the inner Clan and fully possessed of the talent doesn’t solve all problems.”

“Really?” Brilliana looked slightly disappointed. She pointed Miriam down a wide staircase, carpeted in blue. Two footmen in crimson livery stood guard at the bottom, backs straight, never blinking at the two women as they passed. Their brightly polished swords looked less out of place to Miriam’s eye than the submachine guns slung discreetly behind their shoulders. Any mob who tried to storm the Clan’s holding would get more than they bargained for.

They walked along another corridor. A small crocodile of maids and dubious-looking servants, cleaning staff, shuffled out of their way as they passed. This time Miriam felt eyes tracking them. “Olga has issues,” she said quietly. “Do you know Duke Lofstrom?”

“I’ve never been presented to him.” Brilliana’s eyes widened. “Isn’t he your uncle?”

“He’s trying to marry Olga off,” Miriam murmured.

“Funny thing is, now I think about it, not once during three days in a carriage with her did I hear Olga say anything positive about her husband-to-be.”

“My lady?”

They came to another staircase, this time leading down into a different wing of this preposterously huge mansion. They passed more guards, this time in the same colours as Oliver Hjorth’s butler. Miriam didn’t let herself blink, but she was aware of their stares, hostile and unwelcoming, drilling into her back.

“Is it my imagination or… ?” Miriam muttered as they turned down a final corridor.

“They may have been shown miniatures of you,” Brilliana said. She shivered, glanced askance at Miriam. “I wouldn’t come this way without a companion, my lady. If I was mistrustful.”

“Why? How bad could it be?”

Brilliana looked unhappy. “People with enemies have been known to find the staircases very slippery. Not recently, but it
has
happened. In turbulent times.”

Miriam shuddered. “Well, I take your point, then. Thank you for that charming thought.”

A huge pair of oak doors gaped ahead of them, a curtain blocking the vestibule. Chilly air sent fingers past it. Brilliana held it aside for Miriam, who found herself in a shielded cloister, walled on four sides. The middle was a sea of white snow as far as the frozen fountain. All sound was damped by winter’s natural muffler. Miriam suddenly wished she’d brought her gloves.

“Whew! It’s cold!” Brill was behind her. Miriam turned to catch her eye. “Which way?” she asked.

“There.”

Miriam trudged across the snow, noting the tracks through it that were already beginning to fill in. Occasional huge flakes drifted out of a sky the colour of cotton wool.

“Is that the orangery?” she asked, pausing at the door in the far wall.

“Yes.” Brilliana opened the door, held it for her. “It’s this way,” she offered, leading Miriam toward an indistinct gray wall looming from the snow.

There was a door at the foot of the hump. Brilliana opened it, and hot air steamed out. “It’s heated,” she said.

“Heated?” Miriam ducked in. “Oh!”

On the other side of the wall, she found herself in a hothouse that must have been one of the miracles of the Gruinmarkt. Slender cast-iron pillars climbed toward a ceiling twenty feet overhead. It was roofed with a fortune in plate-glass sheets held between iron frames, very slightly greened by algae. It smelled of citrus, unsurprisingly, for on every side were planters from which sprouted trees of not inconsiderable dimensions. Brilliana ducked in out of the cold behind her and pulled the door to. “This is amazing!” said Miriam.

“It is, isn’t it?” said Brilliana. “Baron Hjorth’s grandfather built it. Every plate of glass had to be carried between the worlds—nobody has yet learned how to make it here in such large sheets.”

“Oh, yes, I can see that.” Miriam nodded. The effect was overpowering. At the far end of this aisle there was a drop of three feet or so to a lower corridor, and she saw a bench there. “Where do you think Lady Olga will be?”

“She just said she’d be here,” said Brilliana, a frown wrinkling her brow. “I wonder if she’s near the boiler room? That’s where things are warmest. Someone told me that the artisans have built a sauna hut there, but I wouldn’t know about such things. I’ve never been here on my own before,” she added a little wistfully.

“Well.” Miriam walked toward the benches. “If you want to wait here, or look around? I’ll call you when we’re ready to leave.”

When she reached the cast-iron bench, Miriam turned and stared back along the avenue of orange trees. Brill hadn’t answered because she’d evidently found something to busy herself with.
Well, that makes things easier,
she thought lightly. Whitewashed brick steps led down through an open doorway to a lower level, past water tanks the size of crypts. The ceiling dipped, then continued—another green-lined aisle smelling of oranges and lemons, flakes of rust gently dripping from the pillars to the stone-flagged floor. Here and there Miriam caught a glimpse of the fat steam pipes, running along the inside of the walls. The trees almost closed branches overhead, forming a dark green tunnel.

At the end, there was another bench. Someone was seated there, contemplating something on the ground. Miriam walked forward lightly. “Olga?” she called.

Olga sat up when she was about twenty feet away. She was wearing a black all-enveloping cloak. Her hair was untidy, her eyes reddened.

“Olga! What’s wrong?” Miriam asked, alarmed.

Olga stood up. “Don’t come any closer,” she said. She sounded strained.

“What’s the matter?” Miriam asked uncertainly.

Olga brought her hands out from beneath the cloak. Very deliberately, she pointed the boxy machine pistol at Miriam’s face. “You are,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “If you have any last lies to whisper before I kill you, say them now and be done with it,
whore
.”

Part 4

Killer Story

Hostile Takeover

The interview room was painted pale green except for the floor, which was unvarnished wood. The single window, set high up in one wall, admitted a trickle of wan winter daylight that barely helped the glimmering of the electrical bulb dangling overhead. The single table had two chairs on either side of it. All three pieces of furniture were bolted to the floor, and the door was soundproofed and locked from the outside.

“Would you care for some more tea, Mr. Burgeson?” asked the plainclothes inspector, holding his cup delicately between finger and thumb. He loomed across the table, overshadowing Burgeson’s frail form: they were alone in the room, the inspector evidently not feeling the need for a stout sergeant to assist him as warm-up man.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Burgeson. He coughed damply into a wadded handkerchief. “ ’Scuse me …”

“No need for excuses,” the inspector said, as warmly as an artist inspecting his handiwork. He smiled like a mantrap. “Terrible winters up there in Nova Scotia, aren’t they?”

“Character-building,” Burgeson managed, before breaking out in another wracking cough. Finally he managed to stop and sat up in his chair, leaning against the back with his face pointed at the window.

“That was how the minister of penal affairs described it in parliament, wasn’t it?” The inspector nodded sympathetically. “It would be a terrible shame to subject you to that kind of character-building experience again at your age, wouldn’t it, Mr. Burgeson?”

Burgeson cocked his head on one side. So far the inspector had been polite. He hadn’t used so much as a fist in the face, much less a knee in the bollocks, relying instead on tea and sympathy and veiled threats to win Burgeson to his side. It was remarkably liberal for an HSB man, and Burgeson had been waiting for the other shoe to drop—or to kick him between the legs—for the past ten minutes. “What can I do for you, Inspector?” he asked, clutching at any faint hope of fending off the inevitable.

“I shall get to the point presently.” The inspector picked up the teapot and turned it around slowly between his huge callused hands. He didn’t seem to feel the heat as he poured a stream of brown liquid into Burgeson’s cup, then put the pot down and dribbled in a carefully measured quantity of milk. “You’re an old man, Mr. Burgeson, you’ve seen lots of water flow under the bridge. You know what ‘appens in rooms like this, and you don’t want it to ‘appen to you again. You’re not a young hothead who’s going to get his self into trouble with the law any more, are you? And you’re not in the pay of the Frogs, either, else we’d have scragged you long ago. You’re a
careful
man. I like that. Careful men you can do business with.” He cradled the round teapot between his hands gently. “And I much prefer doing business to breaking skulls.” He put the teapot down. It wobbled on its base like a decapitated head.

Burgeson swallowed. “I haven’t done anything to warrant the attention of the Homeland Security Bureau,” he pointed out, a faint whine in his voice. “I’ve been keeping my nose clean. I’ll help you any way I can, but I’m not sure how I can be of use—”

“Drink your tea,” said the inspector.

Burgeson did as he was told.

“ ’Bout six months ago a Joe called Lester Brown sold you his dear old mother’s dressing table, didn’t he?” said the inspector.

Burgeson nodded cautiously. “It was a bit battered—”

“And four weeks after that, a woman called Helen Blue came and bought it off you, din’t she?”

“Uh.” Burgeson’s mouth went dry. “Yes? Why ask me all this? It’s in my books, you know. I keep records, as the law requires.”

The inspector smiled, as if Burgeson had just said something extremely funny. “A Mr. Brown sells a dressing table to a Mrs. Blue by way of a pawnbroker who Mr.
Green
says is known as Dr.
Red
. In’t that colourful, Mr. Burgeson? If we collected the other four, why, we could give the hangman a rainbow!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Burgeson said tensely. “What’s all this nonsense about? Who are these Greens and Reds you’re bringing up?”

“Seven years in one of His Majesty’s penal colonies for sedition back in seventy-eight and you still don’t have a fucking clue.” The inspector shook his head slowly. “
Levellers,
Mr. Burgeson.” He leaned forward until his face was inches away from Burgeson’s. “That dressing table happened to have a hollow compartment above the top drawer and there were some most
interesting
papers folded up inside it. You wouldn’t have been dealing in proscribed books again, would ye?”

“Huh?” The last question caught Burgeson off-guard, but he was saved by another coughing spasm that wrinkled his face up into a painful knot before it could betray him.

The inspector waited for it to subside. “I’ll put it to you like this,” he said. “You’ve got bad friends, Erasmus. They’re no good for yer old age. A bit o’ paper I can’t put me finger on is one thing. But if I was to catch ’em, this Mrs. Blue or Mr. Brown, they’d sing for their supper sooner than put their necks in a noose, wouldn’t they? And you’d be right back off to Camp Frederick before your feet touch the ground, on a one-way stretch. Which in your case would be approximately two weeks before the consumption carried you away for good an’ all and Old Nick gets to toast you by the fires of hell.

“All that Godwinite shit and old-time Egalitarianism will get you is a stretched neck or a cold grave. And you are too old for the revolution. They could hold it tomorrow and it wouldn’t do you any good. What’s that slogan—’Don’t trust anyone who’s over thirty or owns a slave’? Do you
really
think your young friends are going to help you?”

Burgeson met the inspector’s gaze head-on. “I have no Leveller friends,” he said evenly. “I am not a republican revolutionary. I admit that in the past I made certain mistakes, but as you yourself agree, I was punished for them. My tariff is spent. I cooperate fully with your office. I don’t see what else I can do to prevent people who I don’t know and have never heard of from using my shop as a laundry. Do we need to continue this conversation?”

“Probably not.” The inspector nodded thoughtfully. “But if I was you, I’d stay in touch.” A business card appeared between his fingers. “Take it.”

Burgeson reached out and reluctantly took the card.

“I’ve got my eye on you,” said the inspector. “You don’t need to know how. If you see anything that might interest me passing through your shop, I’ll trust you to let me know. Maybe it’ll be news to me—and then again, I’ll know about it before you do. If you turn a blind eye, well—” he looked sad—“you obviously won’t be able to see all the titles of the books in your shop. And it’d be a crying shame to send a blind man back to the camps for owning seditious tracts, wouldn’t it?”

* * *

Two women stood ten feet apart, one shaking with rage, the other frightened into immobility. Around them, orange trees cloistered in an unseasonable climate perfumed the warm air.

“I don’t understand.” Miriam’s face was blank as she stared down the barrel of Olga’s gun. Her heart pounded.
Buy time!
“What are you talking about?” she asked, faint with the certainty that her assignation with Roland had been overseen and someone had told Olga.

“You know very well what I’m talking about!” Olga snarled. “I’m talking about my honour!” The gun muzzle didn’t deviate from Miriam’s face. “It’s not enough for you to poison Baron Hjorth against me or to mock me behind my back. I can ignore those slights—but the infamy! To do what you did! It’s unforgivable.”

Miriam shook her head very slowly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I didn’t know at the time it started between us, I mean. About your planned marriage.”

A faint look of uncertainty flickered across Olga’s face. “My betrothal has no bearing on the matter!” She snapped.

“Huh? You mean this
isn’t
about Roland?” Miriam asked, feeling stupid and frightened.

“Roland—” Olga stared at her. Suddenly the look of uncertainty was back. “Roland can have nothing to do with this,” she claimed haughtily.

“Then I haven’t got a clue what the
it
you’re talking about is,” Miriam said heavily. Fear would only stretch so far, and as she stared at Olga’s eyes all she felt was a deep wellspring of resignation, at the sheer total stupidity of all the events that had brought her to this point.

“But you—” Olga began to look puzzled, but still angry. “What
about
Roland? What have you been up to?”

“Fucking,” Miriam said bluntly. “We only had the one night together but, well, I really care about him. I’m fairly sure he feels the same way about me, too. And before you pull that trigger, I’d like you ask yourself what will happen and who will be harmed if you shoot me.” She closed her eyes, terrified and amazed at what she’d just heard herself say. After a few seconds, she thought,
Funny, I’m still alive.

“I don’t believe it,” said Olga. Miriam opened her eyes.

The other woman looked stunned. However, her gun was no longer pointing directly at Miriam’s face.

“I just told you, dammit!” Miriam insisted. “Look, are you going to point that thing somewhere safe or—”

“You and Roland?” Olga asked incredulously.

A moment’s pause. Miriam nodded. “Yes,” she said, her mouth dry.

“You went to bed with that dried-up prematurely middle-aged sack of mannered stupidity? You care about him? I don’t believe it!”

“Why are you pointing that gun at me, then?”

For a moment, they stood staring at each other; then Olga lowered the machine pistol and slid her finger out of the trigger guard.

“You don’t know?” she asked plaintively.

“Know
what?
” Miriam staggered slightly, dizzy from the adrenaline rush of facing Olga’s rage. “What on earth are you talking about, woman? Jesus fucking Christ, I’ve just admitted I’m having an affair with the man you’re supposed to be marrying and that
isn’t
why you’re threatening to kill me over some matter of honour?”

“Oh, this is insupportable!” Olga stared at her. She looked very uncertain all of a sudden. “But you sent your man last night.”

“What man?”

Their eyes met in mutual incomprehension.

“You mean you don’t know? Really?”

“Know
what?
”

“A man broke into my bedroom last night,” Olga said calmly. “He had a knife and he threatened me and ordered me to disrobe. So I shot him dead. He wasn’t expecting that.”

“You. Shot. A, a rapist. Is that it?”

“Well, that and he had a letter of instruction bearing the seal of your braid.”

“I don’t understand.” Miriam shook her head. “What seal? What kind of instructions?”

“My maidenhead,” Olga said calmly. ‘The instructions were very explicit. What is the law where you come from? About noble marriage?”

“About—what? Huh. You meet someone, one of you proposes, usually the man, and you arrange a wedding. End of story. Are things that different here?”

“But the ownership of title! The forfeiture. What of it?”

“What ‘forfeiture’?” Miriam must have looked puzzled because Olga frowned.

“If a man, unwed, lies with a maid, also unwed, then it is for him to marry her if he can afford to pay the maiden-price to her guardian. And all her property and titles escheat to him as her head. She has no say in the matter should he reach agreement with her guardian, who while I am in his care here would for me be Baron Hjorth. In my event, as a full-blood of the Clan, my Clan shares would be his. This
commoner
—” she pronounced the word with venomous diction—“invaded my chamber with rape in mind and a purse full of coin sufficient to pay his way out of the baron’s noose.”

“And a letter,” Miriam said in tones of deep foreboding. “A letter sealed with … what? Ink? Wax? Something like that, some kind of seal ring?”

“No, sealed with the stamps of Thorold and Hjorth. It is a
disgusting
trick.”

“I’ll say.” Miriam whistled tunelessly. “Would you believe me if I said that I don’t have—and have never seen—any such stamp? I don’t even know who my braid
are,
and I really ought to, because they’re not going to be happy if I—” she stopped. “Oh, of course.”

“ ‘Of course,’ what?”

“Listen, was there an open door to the roof in your apartment last night? After you killed him? I mean, a door he came in through?”

Olga’s eyes narrowed. “What if there was?”

“Yesterday I world-walked from my room to the other side,” said Miriam. “This house is supposed to be doppelgängered, but there is no security on the other side of my quarters. Anyone who can world-walk could come in. Later,

Brilliana and I found an open door leading to the roof.”

“Ah.” Olga glanced around, taking in whatever was behind Miriam. “Let’s walk,” she said. “Perhaps I should apologize to you. You have further thoughts on the matter?”

“Yes.” Miriam followed Olga, still apprehensive, knees weak with relief. “My question is: Who profits? I don’t have a braid seal, I didn’t even know such a thing existed until you told me, but it seems clear that others in my braid would benefit if you killed me. Or if that failed, if I was deprived of a friend in circumstances bound to create a scandal of monstrous proportions around me, it certainly wouldn’t harm them. If you can think of someone who would
also
benefit if you were split apart from your impending alliance—” She bit her tongue, but it was too late.

“About Roland,” Olga said quietly.

“Uh.  Yes.”

“Do you really love him?” she asked.

“Um.” Tongue-tied, Miriam tried to muster her shredded integrity. “I think so.”

“Well, then!” Olga smiled brightly. “If the two of you would
please
conspire to convince your uncle to amend his plans for me, it would simplify my life considerably.” She shook her head. “I’d rather marry a rock. Is he good in bed?”

Miriam coughed violently into her fist. “What would you know about—”