Revolution Business (22 page)

"That's the picture," Brilliana said sharply. "I love you like a
sister,
but you can be so slow at times!"

"Well, then." Miriam glanced at the window. "Maybe it's because I've been playing the wrong card game all along," she said slowly. Then she looked back at Brill. "I've been here a year and I haven't so much as sworn a swineherd to my service. Right?"

Brill's eyes widened. "You can't. I'm sworn to his grace, unto the death-his or mine."

Miriam nodded, satisfied.
Thanks, Mom.
"I understand. But his grace is clearly ill-possibly on his deathbed?"

Brill nodded jerkily.

"Well, then. I believe there is a thing called an oath contingent, yes?"

"Who told you about
that?"

"Look." Miriam leaned forward. "What are you going to do if-when-my uncle dies?"

"But that's different!" It came out almost as a wail.

"Not according to my mother." Miriam pinned her in place with a stare. "In the old days, oaths contingent were quite common-to ensure a secure succession in event of an assassination. The contingent liege's orders are overridden by those of the first lord living. Yes?"

"I suppose so. But-"

"Brill." Miriam paused. "This is my third question. Did his grace give you any orders that would bring you into a conflict of loyalty if you were sworn to me by an oath contingent?"

The younger woman looked at her, wide-eyed as a doe in the headlights of a truck. "Yes," she whispered.

"Uh-oh." Miriam flopped back on the sofa. She rubbed her forehead. "Well, there goes
that
good-"

"Wait." Brill raised a hand. "You would not have raised the oath contingent unless you planned to live among us, would you?"

Miriam steeled herself. "I need sworn vassals to defend me if I'm going to live in the Gruinmarkt. I was hoping-"

"Well." Brill took a deep breath. "Then the conflict of interests does not arise." She grimaced. "His grace directed me-while you were in New Britain-to bring you back, alive or dead. Preferably alive, but-"

"Whoa." Miriam stared at her. "Do I want to hear this?" Brill shuffled, uncomfortable. "You are not planning to offer your services to the American government. Are you?"

"I-" Miriam flashed back to what Mike had told her in the walls of a smoldering palace. "No. No way."

"Well." Brill held out her hands across the coffee table. "In that case, I can swear to you. If"-she made eye contact-"you still want me?"

Miriam swallowed. ("It's a bit like a marriage," Iris had told her. "A big, rowdy, polygamous one, arguments and all. Minus the sex.") "This means you're going to be part of my household and responsibilities for life, doesn't it?"

"Once his grace dies or otherwise discharges me." Brill ducked her head.

"Then"-Miriam reached out and caught her hands-"I accept. Your oath of loyalty, contingent on the word of your first liege." She stood, slowly, pulling Brill with her. "We can swear to each other in front of witnesses later, can't we?"

"Whenever you ask, milady." Brilliana bowed low and kissed the backs of both her hands. "There, that is the minimal form. It is done." Then she smiled happily.

"Tell me," said Miriam. "I was a real idiot not to do this when I first arrived, wasn't I? There are other people I should be swearing, aren't there?"

"Yes, milady." Brill straightened up, her eyes glistening. Then she leaned forward and, surprising Miriam, kissed her on the mouth. Before Miriam could recoil or respond she took a step away. "It's going to be so much
fun
working for you! I can tell."

Barely a week had passed, but the atmosphere in this meeting was darker by far than its predecessor. The venue was the same-an air-conditioned conference room in a Sheraton hotel adjoining a conference center in the middle of downtown Boston, with heavily padded leather chairs arranged around a boardroom table. And now as then, the attendees were dressed as conservatively as a party of merchant bankers. But there were fewer of them today, barely a round dozen; some of the faces had changed, and two of the newcomers were women. It was, however, none of his business, decided the hotel facilities manager who was seeing to their needs; they were good customers-quiet, serious, utterly unlikely to start shooting each other or snorting crank in the rest room.

Which just went to show how misleading appearances could be.

There were thirteen seats at the table today, but one of them-at its head-was vacant. The broad-shouldered man sitting to its left nodded to a younger fellow at the far end. "Rudi, please shut the door. If you would pay attention, please?"

The quiet conversation ebbed as Rudi sat down again, the door securely locked behind him. "I think we'll begin with a situation report," Riordan said quietly. "Lady Thorold, if you wouldn't mind?"

"Of course." Olga opened the leather conference folder she'd brought to the meeting; in a severe black suit, with her long blond hair tied back, she resembled a trial lawyer rather than an intelligence officer. "The duke's medical condition is stable. That's the good news."

Olga read from her notes: "The average thirty-day survival figures for subarachnoid hemorrhage are around six-tenths. His grace has already come through the main danger period, but the doctors agree his chances of full recovery are slight. He's paralyzed on the left side, and his speech is impaired. They can't evaluate his mental functioning yet. He may recover some of his faculties, but he's likely to be mobility-challenged-probably wheelchair-bound, possibly bedridden-for life. They've scheduled a second MRI for him tomorrow to track the reduction of the thrombosis, and they should have more to report on Friday." She managed the medical terms with an ease that might have surprised Miriam, had she been present; but then, she'd checked her carefully cultivated airhead persona at the door. "The balance of medical opinion is that his grace will definitely not be able to resume even light duties for at least thirty days. Even if he makes a significant recovery, he is unlikely to be back in the chair"-her eyes tracked to the empty seat at the head of the table-"for half a year."

The attentive silence she'd been speaking into dissolved in a buzz of expressions of shock and sharply indrawn breath. Earl Riordan brought his hand down on the edge of the table. "Silence!" he barked. "We knew it was going to be bad. Thank you, milady." He grimaced. "We have a chain of command here. I recognize that I am not equipped to replace his grace in his capacity of director of security policy, or in his management of the intelligence apparatus, but for the former we have the Council of Lords, and for the latter"-he glanced sideways: Olga inclined her head-"there is a parallel line of authority. For the time being I will assume operational command, until his grace resumes his duties or I am removed by order of the Council. Is that clear?"

There was a vigorous outbreak of nodding. "Have you met with the Council yet?" asked Carl, with uncharacteristic hesitancy.

"That's where I'm going as soon as we conclude this meeting." Riordan leaned back. "Does anyone else wish to comment? On the record?"

"You're going to find it hard to convince the stick-in-the-muds to accept Lady Thorold as acting director of intelligence," remarked Carl, his arms crossed.

"They'll like my second-choice candidate even less." Riordan bared his teeth. "Are you questioning her fitness for the role, or merely her sex?"

Carl shook his head, his expression shuttered. "Just saying," he muttered.

Riordan glanced round the table as Olga closed her file and leaned back, trying to keep all expression off her face.

"I've worked with her for the past six years and I would not propose her for this position if I doubted her capability," Riordan said sharply. "The empty pots in the conservative club can rattle as much as they please; it's as good an issue as any to remind them that this is not business as usual."

There was a general rumble of agreement. "You're in the saddle now," Olga murmured in Riordan's ear. "Just try not to fall off."

Riordan flushed slightly. "Right. Next item." He glanced up. "Rudi. Your flying machine. You are hereby ordered to prepare a report on the feasibility of equipping, supplying, training, and operating a squadron of no fewer than six and no more than twelve aircraft, within the Gruinmarkt. Tasks will be scouting and surveillance, and-if you can work out how to do it medical evacuation. Your initial corvée budget is twelve tons. I want it on my desk, with costing, in three days' time. I understand that training pilots and observers takes time, so I want a list of candidate names-outer families for preference, we can't routinely divert world-walkers to a hazardous auxiliary duty. Any problems?"

Rudi looked awestruck. "I can do it! Sir."

"That's what I like to hear." Riordan didn't smile. "Kiril, Rudi's got priority over
everything
except first-class post; even ammunition resupply. We need an airborne capability; I've discussed it with Count Julius already, and it's going to happen. So. Next item, the Hjalmar Palace. Carl. What can you tell us?"

The heavyset man shrugged lazily, almost indolently. Riordan took no offense; he'd worked with him long enough to know better than to think it an insult. "The palace is gone. Sorry, but that's all there is to say about it. Snurri and Ray took samples and we had them analyzed, and they found fallout. Cesium-131, strontium-90, lots of carbon-14. Snurri and Ray indented for new boots and fatigues and I've sent them to the clinic, just in case."

"Scheisse." Nobody but Olga really noticed Riordan's one-word curse, because nobody but Olga was listening to anything but the sound of their own voices. Clan Security, though a highly disciplined organization in the field, tended to operate more like a bickering extended family behind closed doors. "Silence!" Riordan whacked the tabletop. "Let him finish, damn you!"

"Thank you, cuz." Carl's face twisted in something horribly close to a smile. "They couldn't measure the crater because there isn't one. The keep was blown out, completely shattered, but the inner walls of the sunken moat caught the blast, and the foundations are solid stone, all the way down. But we got a good estimate of how big it was from the remains the pretender's men left on the field. Half a kiloton, and it probably went off in the vicinity of the treason room we used for the assault. Sir, do you know what's going on? Because if so, an announcement might quell some of the crazier rumors that are floating around…

Riordan sighed. "Unfortunately, the rumors hold more than a grain of truth." This time around he didn't try to maintain order. Instead, he leaned back and waited, arms crossed, for the inevitable flood of questions to die down to a trickle. "Are we ready now?" His cheek twitched. "Milady, I believe you have a summary."

Olga glanced around the table. Twelve pairs of eyes looked back at her with expressions ranging from disbelief to disgust. "Eighteen years ago the Council, sitting in camera with the duke present, discussed the question of our long-term relationship with the United States. Of particular concern was the matter of leverage, if and when the American rulers discovered us."

She picked up a glass and filled it from the jug on the table. Nobody spoke; curiosity was, it seemed, a more valuable currency than outrage. "A variety of strategies were discussed. Our predecessors' reliance on access to the special files of the American investigator Hoover was clearly coming to an end-Hoover's death, and the subsequent reorganization of the American secret police, along with their adoption of computerized files, rendered that particular channel obsolete. Computers in general have proven to be a major obstacle: We can't just raid the locked filing cabinets at night. So a couple of new plans were set up."

She saw a couple of heads nodding along at the far end of the table and tried to suppress a smile. "I believe Piotr has just put two and two together and worked out why the duke took it upon himself to issue certain career advice. Piotr spent six years in the USAF, not as an aerial knight but as a black-handed munitions officer. Unfortunately he did not enter precisely the speciality the duke had in mind… but others did." More of her audience were clearly putting two and two together. Finally, Rudi raised a hand. "Yes?"

"I looked into this. Nukes-they're not light! You couldn't world-walk one across. At the least, you'd have to disassemble it first, wouldn't you?"

"Normally, yes." She nodded. "But. Back in the sixties, the Americans developed small demolition devices, the SADM, for engineers to use in demolishing bridges in enemy territory. Small is a figure of speech-a strong man could carry one on his back for short distances-but it was ideal for our purposes. Then, in the seventies, they created a storable type, the FADM, to leave in the custody of their allies, to use in resistance operations. The friends they picked were not trustworthy"-an understatement: The Italian fascists who'd blown up the Bologna railway station in the 1970s had nearly sparked a civil war-"and the FADMs were returned to their stores, but they weren't all scrapped. A decade ago we finally placed a man in the nuclear inspectorate, with access. He surveyed the storage site, organized the doppelganger revetment, and we were in. Reverse-engineering the permissive action locks took less than two years. Then we had our own nuclear stockpile."

She raised her glass, drank deeply. "The matter rested with his grace until the last year. It appears that the traitor Matthias had access to the procedures, and to his grace's seal. He ordered one of the devices removed from storage and transported to Boston." She waited as the shocked muttering subsided. "More recently, we learned that the Americans had learned of this weapon. Our traitor had apparently threatened them with it. They indicated their displeasure and demanded our cooperation in retrieving it. I think"-her gaze flickered towards Carl-"that most likely they found it and, by doing so, decided to send us a message. Either that, or our traitor has struck at us-but he is no world-walker. Meanwhile, we know the American secret police hold some of ours prisoner."