The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (82 page)
Read The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) Online
Authors: Charles Stross
‘I’m an orphan, over the age of majority,’ she reminded him. ‘No estates, no guardians, no braids, no dowry. You know I don’t come with so much as a clipped groat
or a peasant’s plot?’
‘Do I look like I care?’
She walked back towards him; they met halfway across the floor of the hut. ‘No. But I wasn’t certain.’
‘For you, my lady’ – they leaned together – ‘I’d willingly go over the wall.’ To defect from the Clan, to voluntarily accept outlawry and exile: It was
not a trivial offer.
‘You don’t need to,’ she murmured. She kissed him, hard, on the mouth: not for the first time, but for the first time on these new terms, with no thought of concealment.
‘Nobody now alive in this world will gainsay us.’ Her knees felt weak at the thought. ‘Not my father, nor your mother.’ Even if his mother had lived to enter this exile, she
was unlikely to reject any Clan maid her son brought before her, however impoverished; they were, indeed, all orphans, all destitute. ‘No need to fear a blood feud anymore. All the
Clan’s chains are rusted half away.’
‘I wonder how long it’ll take the others to realize? And what will they all do when they work it out . . . ?’
BEGIN RECORDING
‘My fellow Americans, good evening.
‘It is two months since the cowardly and evil attack on our great nation. Two months since the murder of the president along with eighteen thousand more of our
fellow citizens. Two months since my predecessor and friend stood here with tears in his eyes and iron determination in his soul, to promise you that we would bring prompt and utter
annihilation to the enemies who struck at us without warning.
‘Many of you doubted my predecessor’s word when he spoke of other worlds. He spoke of things that have been unknown – indeed, of unknown unknowns
– threats to the very existence of our nation that we knew absolutely nothing of, threats so serious that the instability of the Middle East, or the bellicosity of Russia,
dwindle into insignificance in comparison. The horrific tragedy that unfolded between India and Pakistan last month – and our hearts go out to all the survivors of that
extraordinary spasm of international madness – demonstrates what is at stake here; as long as hostile powers exist in other timelines that overlap our geographical borders, we
face the gravest of existential threats.
‘But I am speaking to you tonight to tell you that one such existential threat has been removed: Mr. Cheney’s promise has been carried out, and we shall
all sleep safer in our beds tonight.
‘At half past two this afternoon, aircraft of the Fifth Bomb Wing overflew the land of the enemy who attacked us so savagely on July the sixteenth. And I assure
you that our enemies have just reaped the crop that they sowed that day. Those that attacked us with stolen nuclear weapons have received, in return, a just and proportional measure
of retribution. And they have learned what happens to assassins and murderers who attack this great nation. Gruinmarkt, the nest of world-walking thieves and narcoterrorists, is home
to them no longer. We have taken the brand of cleansing fire and cauterized this lesion within our geographic borders. And they will not attack us again.
‘This does not mean that the threat is over. We have learned that there exists a multiplicity of worlds in parallel to our own. Most of them are harmless,
uninhabited and resource-rich. Some of them are inhabited; of these, a few may threaten our security. I have today issued an executive order to put in place institutions to seek out
and monitor other worlds, to assess them for usefulness and threat – and to ensure that never again does an unseen enemy take us by surprise in this way. Over the coming weeks
and months, I will work with Congress to establish funding for these agencies and to create a legislative framework to defend us from these threats.
‘Good night, and God bless America.’
END RECORDING
Praise for the Merchant Princes series
‘A marvelous romp through this world and others, told by a master of the imaginative thrill-ride. These books will remain on my shelf for many years to come’
Karl Schroeder
‘Inventive, irreverent, and delightful... an alternate world where business is simultaneously low and high tech, and where romance, murder, marriage, and business are hopelessly intertwined – and deadly’
L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
‘Shocks, surprises, reversals, and elaborations keep tumbling from Stross’s nimble fingers ... These books are immense fun’
Locus
‘Fantasies with this much invention, wit and gusto don’t come along every day’
SFX
‘Fans of the author’s previous work will recognize his trademark skill at world building – you can almost see the filth on the streets of New England, feel the
closeted oppression of the Clan hierarchy, and experience Miriam’s terror at the horrifying circumstances she finds herself in’
SciFiNow
‘Fast-moving action with a number of interesting characters ... Stross’s ability to combine interesting ideas with solid plotting is one of his great
strengths’
Asimov's Science Fiction
‘A rollicking, pacy read and delivers on the fun’
Interzone
‘One of the defining phenomena of twenty-first century SF is Charles Stross, for the quality of his work at its best.. .’
Time Out
‘For sheer inventiveness and energy, this cliffhanger-riddled serial remains difficult to top’
Publishers Weekly
‘An intriguing and thought-provoking world’
Vector
‘It’s official – Charles Stross can do anything. And what he likes to do best is take hoary old chestnuts – say, the space opera or the alternate-Earth
fantasy – and roast them over an open fire until the heat has cooked them into something deliciously new and strange .. . It’s never less than completely engrossing’
SFReviews.net
‘He builds a steampunk future familiar from other sources - zeppelins, primitive automobiles and typewriters, etc. – yet with its own unique twists ... Stross is
having great fun with these books, and it’s contagious’
SciFi.com
‘The Merchant Princes is easily one of the finest, most involved and inventive science-fiction series on the market. A very highly recommended series from a master
storyteller’
CivilianReader
blog
Charles Stross
was born in Leeds, England, in 1964. He has worked as a pharmacist, software engineer and freelance journalist, but now writes full-time. To date, Stross
has won two Hugo awards and been nominated twelve times. He has also won the Locus Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best Novella and has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke and
Nebula Awards. In addition, his fiction has been translated into around a dozen languages.
Stross lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife Feòrag, a couple of cats, several thousand books, and an ever-changing herd of obsolescent computers.
The Merchant Princes series
The Bloodline Feud
(Originally published as
The Family Trade
and
The Hidden Family)
The Traders’ War
(Originally published as
The Clan Corporate
and
The Merchants’War)
The Revolution Trade
(Originally published as
The Revolution Business
and
The Trade of Queens)
This is the third omnibus collecting an ongoing series of six novels – and the final one in this story line. It wouldn’t exist without help from a multitude of
people; no novelist works in a creative vacuum, and whatever we do, we owe a debt both to the giants upon whose shoulders we stand, and to our test readers and editors. Giants first: This book
– indeed, this whole series – would not have happened if I hadn’t read the works of H. Beam Piper and Roger Zelazny.
But literary giants aren’t the only folks I want to thank. This series wouldn’t have been written without the intervention of several other people. My agent, Caitlin Blaisdell,
nudged me to make a radical change of direction from my previous novels. David Hartwell and Tom Doherty of Tor encouraged me further, and the editorial process benefited from the valuable
assistance of Moshe Feder and Stacy Hague-Hill, not to mention Tor’s outside copy editors. My wife, Feòrag, lent me her own inimitable support while I worked on the series. Other
friends and critics helped me in one way or another. I’d like to single out for their contributions: my father; also Steve Glover, Andrew Wilson, Robert ‘Nojay’ Sneddon, Cory
Doctorow, Sydney Webb, and James Nicoll. Thank you all. And then there is my army of test readers, who went over early drafts of the manuscript, asking awkward questions: Soon Lee, Charles Petit,
Hugh Hancock, Martin Page, Emmet O’Brien, Dan Ritter, Erik Olson, Stephen Harris, Larry Schoen, Fragano Ledgister, Luna Black, Cat Faber, Lakeland Dawn, Harry Payne, Marcus Rowland, Carlos
Wu, Doug Muir, Tom Womack, Zane Bruce, Jeff Wilson, and others – so many I’ve lost track of them, for which I can only apologize. Thank you all!
Finally, I’d like to thank the Office of the Under-Secretary of Defense for inviting me to talk at the Highlands Forum in Washington, D.C., thereby giving me the opportunity to do my
reconnaissance.
The Revolution Business
first published 2009 by Tor, Tom Doherty Associates, NY
The Trade of Queens
first published 2010 by Tor, Tom Doherty Associates, NY
This electronic edition published 2013 by Tor
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-230-77177-2
Copyright © Charles Stross 2013
The right of Charles Stross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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