The Merchants' War (2 page)

"We are your obedient servants," Innsford assured him.

"Good!" Egon smiled broadly. "I look forward to seeing your lady wife in the next week or two, before the campaign begins."

"Campaign-" Neuhalle bit his tongue, but the prince's eyes had already turned to him. And the prince was smiling prettily, as if all the fires of Hel didn't burn in the imagination concealed by that golden boy's face.

"Why, certainly there shall be a campaign," Egon assured him, beaming widely. "There will be no room for sedition in our reign! We shall raise the nobility to its traditional status again, reasserting those values that have run thin in the blood of recent years." He winked. "And to rid the kingdom of the proliferation of witches that have corrupted it is but one part of that program." He gestured idly at the wooden framework taking place on the lawn outside the pavilion. "It'll make for a good show at the coronation, eh?"

Neuhalle stared. What he had thought to be the framework of a temporary palace was, when seen from this angle, the platform and scaffold of a gallows scaled to hang at least a dozen at a time. "I'm sure your coronation will be a great day, sire," he murmured. "Absolutely, a day to remember."

* * *

A damp alleyway at night. Refuse in the gutters, the sickly-sweet stench of rotting potatoes overlaying a much

Nastier aroma of festering sewage. Stone walls, encrusted in lichen. The chink of metal on cobblestones, and a woman's high, clear voice echoing over it: "I don't believe this. Shit!
Ouch."

The woman had stumbled out of the shadows mere seconds ago, shaking her head and tucking away a small personal item. She wore a stained greatcoat over a black dress of rich fabric, intricate enough to belong on a stage play or in a royal court, but not here in a dank dead end: as she looked around, her forehead wrinkled in frustration, or pain, or both. "I could go back," she muttered to herself, then took a deep breath: "or not." She glanced up mid down the alley apprehensively.

Another chink of metal on stone, and a cracked chuckle: "Well, lookee here! And what's a fine girl like you doing in a place like this?"

The woman turned to stare into the darkness where the voice had spoken from, clutching her coat around her.

Another chuckle. "Let's ask her, why don't we?"

The woman-Countess Helge voh Thorold d'Hjorth, to her vast and squabbling extended family, plain Miriam Beckstein to herself-took a step backwards then stopped, brought up against the crumbling brick wall. Figures solidified out of the shadows beyond the flickering gaslight glow from the end of the alleyway. Her gaze darted across them as she fumbled with the pockets of her coat.

"Heya, pretty lady, what have you got for a growing boy?"

"Show us your tits!"

Miriam counted three of them as her eyes adapted to the darkness. It helped that she'd just stepped over, across a gap thinner than an atom-or greater than 101028 meters, depending how you measured it-from a lawn outside a burning palace, the night punctuated by the roar of cannon and the staccato cracking of the guards' pistols.
Three of them,
she realized, a sick tension in the pit of her stomach,
one of them's on the ground, crouching, or...?

The standing figure came closer and she saw that he was skinny and short, not much more than a boy, bow-legged, his clothing ragged. At five foot six Miriam didn't think of herself as tall, but she could almost look down on the top of his head. Unfortunately this also gave her a good view of the knife clutched in his right hand.

Desperation and a silvery edge of suppressed rage broke her paralysis. "Fuck off!" She stepped forward, away from the wall, hands balling into fists in her black velvet gloves. "Right, that's it. I've had enough!"

The evening had started badly. She was already under house arrest in Niejwein, with a suspended sentence of death hanging over her head, and Miriam's great-uncle had casually informed her that she was to be married off to the king's youngest son-damaged goods, braindamaged goods at that-and the betrothal would be announced that evening. Then, at the very court reception where she was due to be bought and sold like a prize heifer, something had gone so very badly off the rails that she still could barely believe it. There'd been blood flowing in rivers on the marble-floored corridors, brutal figures moving through the palace with guns in their hands: and she'd cut and run, only to find herself here: facing a back-alley mugging or worse on the streets of New London, shadowy ragmen lurching out of the muck and stench to menace her with their demands-

The man with the knife looked surprised for a moment. Then he darted forward, as if to punch her. Miriam felt a light blow across her ribs as he danced back. "Oof!" He was skinny, and short, and she outreached him, and his face was a frozen picture of surprise as she grabbed his arm, yanked him closer, stomped down on his fool, and then jerked her knee up inside his thigh.
Just like teacher said,
she thought, remembering the self-defense class she'd taken-what, two years? three years?-ago. Her assailant made a short, whimpering gasp, then dropped like a log, rolling on the ground in pain. Miriam looked past him, hunting for his friends.

The one standing behind him took one look at her as if he'd seen a ghost, then turned tail and fled. "Doan' leave me!" wailed the third in a thick accent, waving spidery arms at the ground: there was a rattling noise. Miriam stared.
He's got no legs,
she realized as he pawed at the ground with hands like oars, scooting away on a crude cart.
Why did the other one run
-she put a hand to her chest. There was a rip in her stolen coat.
That's funny.
She frowned, stuck a finger through the hole, and felt the matching rip in the outer fabric of her dress where the knife had slid across the boned front. "Damn!" She looked down. The little guy with the knife lay at her feet, twitching and gasping for breath. The knife lay beside him in the gutter: the blade was about three inches long and wickedly sharp. "You little shit!" She hauled up her skirts and kicked him in the ribs with all her might. Then she knelt down and took the knife.

The red haze of fury began to clear. She looked at the moaning figure on the cobblestones and shuddered, then stepped round him and quickly walked to the end of the alleyway. Cold sweat slicked her spine, and her heart pounded so hard it seemed about to burst.
I could have been killed,
she thought dizzily, tugging her coat into place with jerky motions, her hands shaking with the adrenaline aftershock. It wasn't the first time, but it never failed to horrify her afterwards. She moved unconsciously towards the street lights, panicky-tense and alert for any sign that knife-boy's friends had stopped running and were coming back for her.
He tried to stab me!
She felt sick to the pit of her stomach, and her usual post-world-walking headache had intensified unbearably, thumping in time with her pulse.
I've got to get help,
she realized.
Got to find Erasmus.

Miriam had grown up in Boston, in the United States of America, in a world where things made sense. Random spavined beggars in alleyways didn't try to gut you like a fish. There was no king-emperor in New York- New London, as they called it over here, in this world- no zeppelins, either. She'd had a job as an investigative journalist working for a leading tech business magazine, and a mother who she knew had adopted her when she was a baby, and a solid sense of her own identity. But it had all gone out of the window nine months ago, when she'd discovered that she was a long-lost relative of the Clan, a tight-knit body of world-walkers from another, far more primitive world.

The Medicis of their timeline, the Clan traded between worlds, parallel universes Miriam had heard them called. Which was bad news because the Gruinmarkt, where they came from, hadn't progressed much past a high-medieval civilization of marcher kingdoms up and down the eastern seaboard; in the world of the United States, the Clan was the main heroin connection for New England. Miriam's ingrained habit of sticking her nose into any business that took her interest-especially when it was explicitly forbidden-had landed her in a metric shitload of trouble with the Clan. And things had gotten even worse with the shockingly unexpected light at the Summer Palace in Niejwein. Miriam had ducked out (with the aid of a furtively acquired world-walking locket) and ended up here, in New London. In another world that made little sense to her-but where she did, at least, speak the language passably well.

I've got to find Erasmus,
she told herself, holding onto the thought as if it was a charm to ward off panic. The twisting road at the end of the alleyway was at least lit by rusting gas lamps. There was nobody in sight, so she put on a burst of speed, until she rounded a curve to see a main road ahead, more lights, closed shop fronts, a passing streetcar grinding its wheels on the corner with a shower of sparks from the overhead pickups.
Whoa.
She slowed, eyebrows furrowed, shoulders tensing as if there was a target pasted right above her spine-tit the base of her neck. I
can't go anywhere like this...!

She stopped at the end of the side street, panting as she took stock.
I've got no money,
she realized. Which was not good, but there was worse:
I'm dressed like...
like what? Clothing wasn't cheap in New Britain; that had been a surprise for her the first time she came here. People didn't wear fancy dress or strange countercultural out-fits, or rags-unless they could afford no better. If she'd had the right locket to reach New York, her own world, she might have passed for an opera buff or a refugee from a Goth nightclub: but here in New London she'd stick out like a sore thumb. And she did not want to stand out. To mark herself out for special attention might attract the attention of the police, and the word had a different (and much more sinister) meaning here.
I need somewhere to blend in quick, or get a change. Contact Erasmus.
But Erasmus was what, two hundred miles away, in Boston?
What was that place he mentioned?
She racked her brains.
Woman called Bishop. Some place, satirist, Hogarth, that's it. Hogarth House, Hogarth-

A cab was clattering along the nearly-empty high street. Miriam took a step forward and extended her right hand, trying to hold it steadily. The cabbie reined in his horse and peered down at her. "Yuss?"

Miriam drew herself up. "I want to go to Hogarth, Hogarth Villas," she said. "Immediately."

The cabby's reaction wasn't what she expected: a low chuckle. "Oh yuss indeedy, your ladyship. Hop right in and I'll take you right there in a jiffy, I will!"
Huh?
Miriam almost hesitated for a moment. But he obviously knew the place.
What's so funny about it?
She nodded, then grabbed hold of the rail and pulled herself up. The cabbie made no move to help her in, other than to look down at her incuriously. But if he had any opinion of her odd outfit he kept it to himself, for which she was grateful. As soon as she was on the foot plate, he twitched the reins.

I'm going to have to pay him,
Miriam thought, furiously racking her brains for ideas as the cab rattled across the stone pavements.
What with?
She fumbled in her greatcoat's pockets. One of them disgorged a foul-smelling cheesecloth bag full of loose tobacco. The other contained nothing but a loose button.
Oh, great.
They were turning past Highgate now, down in what corresponded to the East Village in her world. Not an upmarket neighborhood in New London, but there were worse places to be-like inside a thief-taker's lockup for trying to cheat a cabbie of his fare. What was the woman's name, Bishop? Margaret Bishop?
I'm going to have to ask her to pay for me.
Miriam tensed up.
Or I could world-walk hack to the other side, wait a couple of hours, and
-but her headache was already telling her no. If she crossed back to the Gruinmarkt she'd be good for nothing for at least three hours, and knowing her luck she'd come out somewhere much worse than an alley full of muggers. For the time being, returning to the other side was unthinkable.
Damn it, why did James have to give me the wrong locket?

The journey seemed interminable, divided into a million segments by the plodding clatter of hooves. Probably a yellow cab in her own familiar New York would have gotten across town no faster-there was less traffic here- but her growing sense of unease was driving her frantic, and the lack of acceleration made her grind her teeth.
That's what's wrong with this world,
she realized,
there's no acceleration. You can go fast by train or airship, but you never get that surging sense of purpose-

The traffic thickened, steam cars rattling and chuffing past the cab. The lights were brighter, some of the street lights running on electricity now: and then there was a wide curving boulevard and a big row of town houses with iron railings out front, and a busy rank of cabs outside it, and people bustling around. "Hogarth Villas coming up, mam, Gin Lane on your left, Beer Alley to your right." The cabbie bent down and leered at her between his legs. "That'll be sixpence ha'penny."

"The doorman will pay," Miriam said tensely, mentally crossing her fingers.
j

"Is that so?" The leer vanished, replaced by an expression of contempt. "Tell it to the rozzers!" He straightened up: "I know your type." A rattle of chain and a leather weather shield began to unroll over the front of the cab,

Blocking off escape. "I'll get me fee out of you one way or the other, it's up to you how you pays."

"Hey!" Miriam waved at a caped figure standing by the gate, pushing the side of the leather screen aside. "You! I need to see Lady Bishop! Now!"

The caped figure turned towards her and stepped up to-wards the cab. The cabbie up top swore: "Bugger off!"

"What did you say?" Miriam quailed. The man in the cape was about six feet six tall, built like a brick outhouse, and his eyes were warm as bullets.