The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1) (26 page)

‘Oh yeah, but when you didn’t answer I left a message about the bridge club. Something I made up on the spur of the moment. I’ve been so worried – ’

‘Paulie, you didn’t mention the other stuff, did you? Or go around in person?’

‘I’m not stupid,’ Paulette said quietly, all ebullience gone.

‘Good – uh, I’m sorry. Let me try again.’ Miriam closed her eyes. ‘Hi, I’m Miriam Beckstein, and I have just discovered the hard way that my long-lost family
have got very long memories and longer arms, and they invited me to spend some time with them. It turns out that they’re in the import/export trade, and they’re so big that the story we
were working on probably covers some of their turf. Hopefully they don’t think you’re anything other than a ditzy broad who plays bridge with me, because if they did you might not enjoy
their company. Capisce?’

‘Oh, oh shit! Miriam, I am so sorry! Listen, are you all right?’

‘Yeah. Not only am I all right, I’m on a train that gets into South Station in – ’ she checked her watch – ‘about an hour and a half. I don’t have long,
this is a day trip, and I have to be on the four o’clock return train. I’m kind of on probation. But if you can meet me at the station, I’ll drag you out to lunch and fill you in
on everything, and I mean everything. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ Paulette sounded a little less upset. ‘Miriam?’

‘Yes?’

‘What are they like? What are they doing to you?’

Miriam closed her eyes. ‘Did you ever see the movie
Married to the Mob
?’

‘No way! What about your locket? You mean they’re – ’

‘Let’s just say, it would be a bad idea for you to phone my house, visit it in person, talk to or visit my mother, or do anything that is in any way out of character for an
out-of-work research geek who vaguely knows me from work and plays bridge once a week. At least, where they can see you. Which is why I’m phoning on a number you’ve never seen and
probably won’t ever see again. Meet me at one inside the station, near the south entrance?’

‘Okay, I’ll be there. Better have a good story!’ Paulette hung up, and Miriam settled back to watch the countryside roll by.

*

Leaving the station, Miriam immediately hit the mall across the street. There was an ATM, and she pulled another two thousand in cash out of it. There seemed to be no end to the
amount she could draw, as long as she didn’t mind leaving an audit trail. This time she wanted to. Putting a timestamp on Boston would tell the Duke where she’d been. She planned on
telling him anyway. Let him think she was being open and truthful about everything.

She headed back into the station in the same state she’d been in in the taxi. This was home, a place she’d been before, intimately familiar at the same time that it was anonymous and
impersonal. She was shaken by how relieved she was to be back. Suddenly being jobless in a recession with her former employer threatening to blacken her name didn’t seem so bad, all things
considered. She almost walked right past Paulette, as unnoticed as any other commuter in a raincoat, but she swerved at the last moment, blinking the daze away.

‘Paulie!’

‘Miriam!’ Paulette grabbed her in a hug, then held her at arm’s length, inspecting her face anxiously. ‘You look thinner. Was it bad, babe?’

‘Was it bad?’ Miriam shook her head, unsure where to begin. ‘Jesus, it was weird, and bits of it were very bad and bits of it were, um, less bad. Not bad at all. But it’s
not over. Listen, let’s go find something to eat – I haven’t had any breakfast – and I’ll tell you all about it.’

They found a booth in a not unbearable pizza joint in the mall, where the background noise loaned them a veneer of privacy, and Miriam wolfed down a weird Californian pizza with a topping of
chicken tikka on a honeyed sourdough base. Between bites, she gave Paulette a brief run-down: ‘They kidnapped me right out of my house after you left, a whole damn SWAT team. But then they
put me up in this stately house, a palace really, and introduced me to a real honest-to-god duke. You know the medieval shit I came back with? It’s real. What I didn’t figure on was
that my family, my real family, I mean, are, like, the aristocracy who run it.’

‘They rule it.’ Paulette’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. ‘You’re not shitting me. I mean, they’re kings and stuff?’

‘No, they’re just an extended trading Clan that happens to be an umbrella for about a third of the nobility that runs the eastern seaboard – the nouveau riche crowd.
They’re not long established, and deeply paranoid. Think like the Medicis. There are several countries over there, squabbling feudal kingdoms: the one hereabouts is called the Gruinmarkt, and
they don’t speak English – or rather, the ruling class do, the way the nobles in England spoke French during the middle ages. But anyway. The high king rules the Gruinmarkt, but the
Clan – the Clan of the families who can walk between worlds – they own everything. I mean, the king wants to marry one of his sons into the Clan to tighten his grip on power.’

Miriam paused to finish her pizza, aware that Paulette was staring at her thoughtfully.

‘Where do you fit in all this?’ she asked.

‘Oh.’ Miriam put her fork down. ‘I’m the long-lost daughter of a noblewoman whose coach was ambushed by bandits. Or assassins – there was a war on at the time,
between branches of the Clan. She escaped, ran away to our world, but died before she could get help.’ Miriam looked Paulette in the eye. ‘When you were a kid, did you ever fantasize
about maybe you were switched with another baby in the hospital, and your real parents were rich and powerful, or something?’

‘Isn’t that every little girl’s daydream? Didn’t Disney build a whole multinational brand on top of it?’

‘Well, when you’re thirty-two and divorced and have a life, and long-lost relatives from your newly discovered family show up and tell you that actually you’re a countess, it
might put a bit of a different spin on things, huh?’

Paulette looked slightly puzzled. ‘How do you mean – ’

‘Like, they insist that you marry someone suitable, because they can’t have independent women running around. You’ve got a choice between living in a drafty castle with no
electricity and running water, oh, and having lots of children by the husband they’ve chosen for you, a choice between that and, well, there is no choice marked “B”. Resistance is
futile; you will be assimilated. Got it, already?’

‘Oh sweet Jesus. No wonder you look fried!’ Paulette shook her head slowly.

‘Yeah, well, I was afraid I was going to go crazy if I didn’t get away after the last week. What makes it really bad is that, well . . .’ Miriam chewed her lower lip for a
while before continuing. ‘Your guesses about where they could make money were right on the nail. I don’t know if they’re into Proteome Dynamics and Biphase Technologies, but
they’re sure into everything else under the sun. They gave me a debit card and said, “Here’s a two-million-dollar credit limit, try not to overload it.” There is no way in
hell that they will let me walk away from them. And the thing that frightens me most is that I’m not, like, one hundred percent sure I entirely want to.’

Paulie was studying her intently. ‘Is there something else?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes, oh yes.’ Miriam fell silent. ‘But I don’t want to talk about him just now.’

‘Is he bad? Did he – ’

‘I said I didn’t want to talk about it!’ she snapped. A moment later, she added, ‘I’m sorry. No, he isn’t bad. You know, it’s just you’ve never
been able to resist ragging me about men, and I don’t need that right now. It’s messy, very messy, and things are bad enough without adding that kind of complication.’

‘Lovely.’ Paulette pulled a face. ‘Okay, so I won’t ask you about your mystery boyfriend. Let me see if I’ve got this straight? It turns out your family think
you’re a little lost heiress. They want to treat you like one, which is to say, not a hell of a lot like the way it works out in the fairy tales. You’d maybe tell them to screw off, but
first they won’t, and second they’ve got lots of money. Third, you’ve met a man who didn’t want to strangle you after five minutes – sorry – and he’s mixed
up in all of it. Is that a fair summary?’

‘Pretty much.’ Miriam waved for the check. ‘Which is why I had to get away from it all for the day. I’m not even a – a prisoner. I’m just considered valuable.
Or something.’ She frowned. ‘It’s absolutely crazy. Even their business operations! It’s like something out of the middle ages. They’re about three centuries overdue
for modernization, and I’m not just talking about the cultural stuff. Pure zero-sum mercantilism, red in tooth and nail, in an environment where they have barely invented banking, never mind
the limited liability company. Deeply primitive, not to say wasteful of resources, but they’re set in their ways. I’ve seen companies like that before; sooner or later someone else
comes along and eats their lunch. There ought to be something smarter they could be doing, if only I could think of it . . .’

‘O-k-a-y. You do that, Miriam.’

The bill arrived and Miriam stuck down a fifty before Paulette could protest.

‘Come on.’ She stood up; Paulette hurried after.

‘Did I just see that? Did I? Miriam Beckstein putting down a fifty percent tip?’

‘I want out of this restaurant,’ Miriam said flatly. Continuing on the hoof: ‘Money doesn’t mean anything any more, Paulie, didn’t you catch that bit? I’m so
rich I could buy
The Weatherman
if I wanted to – only it won’t do me any good because my problems aren’t money-related. There are factions among the families. One of them
probably wants me dead. They had a nice little number going with my mother’s shareholding in the Clan; now that I’ve shown up, I’ve disrupted a load of plans. Another faction
wants me married off. The king, his number-two prince is a retard, Paulie, and you know what? I think my old goat of an uncle is going to try to marry me off to him.’

‘Oh, you poor kid. Don’t they have an equal rights amendment?’

‘Oh, poor me, these guys don’t even have a constitution,’ Miriam said with feeling. ‘It’s a whole other world, and women like me get the . . . get the – hell,
think about the Arabs. The Saudi royal family. They come over here in expensive suits and limousines and buy big properties and lots of toys, but they don’t think like us, and when they go
back home they go straight back to the middle ages. How would you feel if you woke up one morning and discovered you were a Saudi princess?’

‘Not very likely,’ Paulette pointed out, ‘seeing as how I am half-Italian and half-Armenian and one hundred percent peasant stock, and damn happy to live here in the U.S. of
A., where even peasants are middle class and get to be paralegals and managers and are allowed to vote. But yeah, I think I see where you’re coming from.’ Paulette looked at her
pensively. ‘You got problems,’ she said. ‘I’d worry about the bunch who want you out of the way before worrying about the risk of being married off to Prince Charming,
though. At least they’ve got money.’ She pulled a face. ‘If
I
found I had a long-lost family, knowing my luck, the first thing they’d do is ask to borrow a hundred
bucks until payday. Then they’d start with the death threats.’

‘Well, you might want to think back to what you said about smuggling,’ Miriam pointed out. ‘I don’t want to be involved in that shit. And I’m worried as hell about
the string we were pulling on the other week. Have you had any other incidents?’

‘Incidents?’ Paulie looked angry. ‘You could say that. Somebody burgled my apartment the day before yesterday.’

‘Oh shit.’ Miriam stopped dead. ‘I’m so sorry. Was it bad?’

‘It could have been. Only I was out at the time. The cops said it looked very professional. They cut the phone line and drilled the lock out on the landing, then went in and turned the
whole place over. Took my computer and every disk they could find. Ransacked the bookcases, went through my underwear – and left my spare credit card and emergency bankroll alone. They
weren’t after money, Miriam. What do
you
think?’

‘What do I think?’ Miriam stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Paulette waited for her. ‘Well, you’re still alive,’ she said slowly.

‘Alive – ’ Paulette stared at her.

‘Paulie, these guys play hardball. They leave booby traps. You go into a place they’ve black-bagged and you open the door and it blows up in your face – or there’s a guy
waiting for you with a gun and he can leave the scene just by looking at a wrist tattoo. I figure either I’m wrong and the shit Joe Dixon’s involved in isn’t to do with the Clan,
or they don’t rate you as a threat – just sent some hired muscle to frighten you, rather than the real thing.’

‘I am so relieved. Not.’

‘
Do
be. I mean that seriously. If you’re still alive, it means they don’t think you’re a threat. They didn’t find the disk, so that’s probably an end
of it. If you want to get the hell out of this now, just say. I’ll find the CD and burn it and you’re out of the frame.’

Paulette began walking again. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said tensely. Then she stopped and turned to face Miriam. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I was hoping you could help me.’ Miriam paused for a moment, then continued: ‘Did you get the job?’

‘As a paralegal?’ Paulette shrugged. ‘I didn’t get that one, but I’ve got another interview this afternoon.’

‘Well, how would you like another job? Starting today?’

‘Doing what?’ Paulette asked cautiously.

‘Being my self-propelled totally legal insurance policy,’ said Miriam. ‘I need someone who can work for me on this side when I’m locked up being Princess Buttercup in a
palace with toilets consisting of a drafty hole in the wall. You’re clean, they didn’t pin anything on you, and now that we know who the hell we’re up against, we can make sure
that you stay that way. What I’ve got in mind for the job will mostly involve handling non-stolen, non-illegal goods that I want to sell, keeping records, paying taxes, and making like a
legitimate import/export business. But it’ll also involve planting some records, very explicit records, in places where the families can’t get their hands on them without getting
caught.’ Miriam stopped again, thinking. ‘I can pay,’ she added. ‘I’m supposed to be very rich now.’