The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (3 page)

Miriam shrugged. ‘I thought I did.’ Her hands were restless; trying to keep them still, she thrust them deep in the pockets of her overly heavy coat. ‘The political situation
in New Britain is going to hell in a handbasket. Erasmus was on his way to meet a big wheel in the, uh, resistance.’ In point of fact, the
biggest
wheel in the underground, returning
from exile after a generation – to whom he had once been a personal assistant. ‘It’s much too hot for comfort. I was only going along because I couldn’t think of anything
else to do; when I fetched up in London all I had was the clothes on my back.’

‘Well, at least you got away from the mess at the Summer Palace with your skin intact. And thank whatever gods you believe in for that.’

She fell silent for a few minutes. But finally Miriam’s curiosity got the better of her. ‘I can guess how you tracked me down. But what about Huw? And the other two? Who are they?
You said something about a job I’d suggested, but I don’t recall . . . and they don’t look like Uncle Angbard’s little helpers to me.’

‘They’re not.’ Brilliana’s eyes narrowed. ‘I just called in help and head office sent them along. Hey! Sir Huw? Have you a minute?’

Huw nodded. ‘Bro, cover for me,’ he told the tall, heavily built guy with the semiauto shotgun as he walked towards them. Huw was anything but husky: skinny and intense. ‘Has
something come up?’

‘Huw.’ Brill smiled, oddly cheerful. ‘We’ve got a couple of hours to kill. Why don’t you tell her grace what you found?’

Her grace? But I’m not a duchess
. Miriam blinked. Suddenly bits of the big picture were falling into place.
Heir to the throne – what exactly does that entail?
‘What you found, where?’

‘We’re calling it world four right now, but I think a better name for it would be Transition A–B,’ Huw said as he sat down at the far end of the fallen trunk.
‘It’s where you go if you use the Hidden Family’s knotwork as a focus in your world, uh, the United States.’ He looked twitchily pleased with himself. ‘Nobody was able
to cross over in New England because, well, it’s probably under an ice sheet – the weather there’s definitely a lot colder than in any of the other time lines we know
about.’

Hang on, time lines
– Miriam held up a hand. ‘What were you doing?’

‘The duke tasked me with setting up a systematic exploration program,’ Huw explained. ‘So I started by taking the second known knotwork design and seeing where it’d take
you if you used it in world two, in the USA, which the Hidden Family had no access to. The initial tests in Massachusetts and New York failed, so I guessed there might be a really large obstacle in
the way. There’s some kind of exclusion effect . . . but anyway, we found a new world. A fourth one.’

Miriam narrowly resisted the urge to grab him and start yelling questions. ‘Go on.’

‘World four is cold, about ten degrees celsius below datum for the other worlds we’ve found. That’s about the climate difference you’d expect if it’s in an ice age
right now. We didn’t have time to do much exploring, but we found evidence that there were people there, once. We didn’t see any signs of current habitation but we found relics. High
tech,
very
high tech – perfect dentistry, gantries made out of titanium, and other stuff. We’re still trying to figure out the other stuff, but it’s a whole different ball
game. The building we found looked like it had been struck from above by some kind of directed energy weapon – ’

‘Some kind of – ’ Miriam stopped. On the opposite side of the clearing, the young blond woman who’d come with Huw was kneeling, her weapon trained on something invisible
through the trees.

Brill was already moving. ‘Get ready to go.’

‘But it’s too early.’

‘What’s Elena spotted?’ Huw rose to his feet. The big guy at the far side of the clearing – the one Huw had called ‘bro’ – was crouching behind the
blonde, his shotgun raised: A moment later she turned and scrambled towards them, staying low.

‘Riders,’ she said quietly, addressing Brill. ‘At least three, maybe more. They’re trying to stay quiet. Milady, we await your instructions.’

‘I think’ – Brill’s eyes narrowed – ‘we’d better cross over. Right now. Huw, can you carry her grace?’

‘I think so.’ Huw knelt down. ‘Miriam, if you could climb on my shoulders?’

Miriam swallowed. ‘Is this necessary? It’s too early – ’

Brill cut her off. ‘It is necessary to move as fast as possible, unless you want another shoot-out. I generally try to limit them to no more than one before lunch on any given day. Huw,
get her across. We’ll be along momentarily.’

Miriam stood up, wrapped her arms around Huw’s shoulders, and tried to haul her legs up. Huw rose into a half-crouch. She strained to clamp her knees around his waist. ‘Are you all
right?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Just a second,’ he gasped. ‘All right. Three. Two.’ Something flickered in the palm of his hand, just in the corner of her vision: a fiery knot that tried to turn her
eyes and her stomach inside out. ‘One.’

The world around them flickered and Huw collapsed under her, dry-retching. Miriam fell sideways, landing heavily on one hip.

They were in scrubland, and alone. Someone’s untended back lot, by the look of it: a few stunted trees straggling across a nearby hillside like hairs across a balding man’s pate, a
fence meandering drunkenly to one side. A windowless barn that had clearly seen better days slumped nearby.

Miriam rose to her feet and dusted herself off. Her traveling clothes, unremarkable in New Britain, would look distinctly odd to American eyes: a dark woolen coat of unusual cut over the mutant
offspring of a shalwar kameez. It was a disguise that had outlived its usefulness, along with her temporarily blond, permed hair. ‘Where are you parked?’ she asked Huw as his retching
subsided.

‘Front of. Barn.’ He staggered to a crouch. ‘Need. Painkillers . . .’

Something moved in the corner of her sight. Miriam’s head whipped round as she thrust a hand in her coat pocket, reaching for the small pistol Erasmus had given her before she recognized
Elena. A few seconds later Huw’s brother Hulius popped into view, followed almost immediately by Brilliana. ‘Come on, people!’ Brill sounded more annoyed than nauseous.
‘Cover! Check!’

‘Check,’ Huw echoed. ‘I think we’re still alone.’

‘Check!’ trilled Elena. ‘Did they see you, Yul? Ooh, you don’t look so good!’

‘
Guuuh
. . . Check. I don’t think so. Going. Be sick.’

Brill clapped her hands. ‘Let’s get
going
, people.’ She was almost tapping her feet with impatience. ‘We’ve got a safe house to get to. You can throw up all
you like once we report in, but first we’ve got a job to do.’ She nodded at Miriam. ‘After you, milady.’

*

In a soot-stained industrial city nestling in the Appalachians, beneath a sky stained amber by the fires of half a million coal-burning stoves, there was a noble house defended
by the illusion of poverty.

The Lee family and their clients did not like to draw attention to themselves. The long habit of secrecy was deeply ingrained in their insular souls; they’d lived alone among enemies for
almost ten generations, abandoned by the eastern Clan that had once – so they had thought until recently, and so some still thought – cast them out and betrayed them. Here in the
industrial heartland of Irongate there was little love for rich foreigners, much less wealthy Chinese merchants, at the best of times. And the times were anything but good: With the empire locked
in a bewildering and expensive overseas war (to say nothing of multiple consecutive crop failures and a bare treasury, freak weather disasters, deflation, and high unemployment), the city was as
inflammable as a powder keg.

Consequently, the Lees did not flaunt their wealth and power openly. Nor did their home resemble a palatial mansion. Rather, it resembled a tenement block fronted by the dusty window displays of
failing shops (for only the pawnbroker’s business remained good). Between two such shops there stood a blank-faced door, a row of bellpulls discreetly off to one side. It might have been a
stairwell leading to the cramped flats of shopkeepers and factory foremen. But the reality was very different.

‘Be seated, nephew,’ said the old man with the long, wispy beard. ‘And tell me what brings you here?’

James Lee bowed his head, concealing his unease for a few more moments. As was right, he went to his knees and then sat cross-legged before the low platform on which his great uncle, the eldest
of days – and his companions, the eldest’s younger sibling, Great-Uncle Huan, and his first wife – perched.

‘The Clan has gone too far,’ he began, then paused.

‘Tea for my favorite nephew,’ the eldest commented, and one of the servants who had been standing behind James bowed and slipped out through a side door. ‘You may
continue.’

James took a deep breath. ‘They resumed their scheme to capture the royal house. My understanding is that the chosen bride, the long-lost daughter of the western alliance, was not an
enthusiastic participant: The architect of the marriage, her grandmother, allied with the conservative faction at court to coerce her.’

He paused for a moment as the servant, returning, placed a tray bearing a steaming cup before him. ‘I considered the merits of direct action, but concluded the cost would far outweigh any
benefit. It would be interpreted as base treachery, and I did not feel able to take such measures without your approval.’

‘Just so.’ His great-uncle nodded. ‘What happened next?’

James chose his next words very carefully, aware of the tension in the room: There was no whispering in corners, and none of the usual cross-play between the ancients that was normal when the
eldest held court. ‘The baroness and her coconspirators made a fundamental error of judgment when they arranged the betrothal of the heir Miriam to the youngest son of the King. They failed
to see how this would be received by his elder brother. Prince Egon is not of the blood and therefore they ignored him; Creon, though damaged, was thought by them to be an occulted carrier’
– one who carried the recessive trait for the world-walking ability, but was not able himself to world-walk – ‘and so they planned to breed from him a king who would be one of
their own. Egon took as dim a view of this marriage as you would expect, and the result was bound to be messy. Although I did not realize how drastically he would react at the time.’

He reached out and picked up the cup of tea, then took a sip before continuing.

‘I intervened at the betrothal by presenting the eastern heir – Helge, as they call her, Miriam, in her own tongue – with a locket containing our house sigil. She had made it
clear that she felt no filial piety, and wished to escape. I therefore concluded that there was no reason to kill her if it was her heart’s desire to do what we wanted: I merely gave her the
means. I confess that I did not anticipate Egon’s attempt to massacre everybody at the ceremony – but by now either she’s dead or in exile, so our goal is achieved without her
blood on our hands.’

‘About the massacre.’ Great-Uncle Huan leaned forward. ‘You were present, were you not?’

James nodded.

‘How did you escape?’

Another sip of tea: ‘The situation was confused. When Egon’s men detonated a petard beneath the palace and then attacked, the royal life guards fought back. While this was going on,
those of the Clan’s leaders who were present made themselves scarce. They left their dead behind. I hid under a table until I could get out, using my spare sigil.’ With one hand, James
reached into the sleeve of his robe.
Now or never
. He pulled out a small gilded locket on a fine chain. ‘Before I left, I removed this from the body of a dead baron. It’s the
authentic sigil of the eastern Clan. I have tested it myself.’ He laid it on the dais before the eldest. ‘I brought it here directly.’

He sat back to wait, straining to reveal no sign of his inner tension.
It’s like trying not to think of invisible elephants
, Helge’s mother Patricia had told him with a
twinkle in her eyes.
All you have to do is learn to ignore the elephant in the room
. Which was perfectly true, but when the elephant in question was the huge lie you’d just told the
patriarch of your family, that was easier said than done. The background was true enough, if one chose to overlook some judicious omissions. But his escape – that was another matter. Yes,
he’d hidden under a table, shivering and concussed. But it had been one of the eastern Clan’s soldiers who’d carried him across to that strange doppelgänger city of New York,
and it had been a very much alive Lady Olga Thorold who had gifted him with the locket, in return for certain undertakings. Because, when you got down to it, sometimes treachery was a two-way
street.

The elders stared at the locket greedily but with trepidation, as if it might bite. ‘This is definitely the sigil of the eastern Clan?’ the eldest asked, in a tone of almost
superstitious disbelief. ‘Have you compared it to our own?’

James stifled a gasp of relief. ‘Not directly, uncle,’ he admitted. ‘It allowed me to travel, and its bite is the same – I think it subtly different, but I thought it
best to leave the comparison to someone who knows nothing of our ways.’

The eldest nodded thoughtfully, then looked up. ‘Leave us,’ he said, encompassing everyone in the room but his brother, his brother’s wife, and James. There was a mass exodus
towards the doors at the back of the day room as various servants and no few guards bowed themselves out, but presently the shuffling and whispering died down. Finally, his great-uncle spoke again.
‘Do they know you live, nephew?’

The implied claim on his familial loyalty nearly made James overlook the implicit threat in the question. ‘I don’t believe so, uncle, but I may be mistaken,’ he said politely.
‘I stand ready to return to them if you so order it.’ He might have said more, but instead bit his lower lip, waiting. He’d spent more than six months living among the eastern
families as a hostage: His disappearance might be taken as a sign of treachery.
Might
. Except the events of that fateful night a week ago would make a perfect excuse for absence – one
that would be accepted, unquestioned, if Olga was in a position to hold her patron to his side of their bargain. On the other hand, if he returned to the Clan too soon he’d be unable to make
good his side of their pact. It was, all in all, a delicate situation.