Revolution Business (6 page)

"As for your question, I'm not blackmailable. Nothing to hide here." He tapped his chest. "So. When do I begin?"

"Soon as you go back to the office, son. You'll be scheduled for a full security re-cert within a couple of days, then I'll have some extra work for you. Which will go on your worksheet as routine admin, incidentally." James nodded to himself. "That should keep you busy right up until the invasion."

"Invasion?" Mike echoed incredulously. "You're going to invade the Gruinmarkt?"

"We're going to have to sooner or later. Unless you've got any better ideas for how we ought to handle the existence of such a major security threat to American soil?…"

"But how?"

James cast Mike a knowing look. "Ask me again when you're cleared."

Baron Otto Neuhalle was afraid of very few things; the wrath of gods, the scorn of women, and the guns of his enemies were not among them. He was, however, utterly terrified of one man-Egon the First, former crown prince and now self-proclaimed monarch of Gruinmarkt. Egon was a handsome-faced, graceful, hale, and charismatic young man who had all the pity of a rattlesnake for those who failed him. Even if Otto hadn't failed
yet,
failure nevertheless looked disturbingly possible in light of the witch-clan's continuing occupation of the Hjalmar Palace. And the cloud of dust he could see from his vantage point near the brow of the hill was almost certainly the vanguard of Egon's army.

"Another hour, sir," said Anders, who had materialized at his elbow while he peered through the witch-bought "binoculars."

"Nonsense, they'll be three at least-" He blinked. "Wait.
What
will be another hour?"

"The ammunition, my lord."

"Scheisse…"
Otto turned back to the castle, barely visible behind its banked ramparts on the other side of the moat and the sloped killing apron. Bodies littered the ground before it, and clouds of smoke still billowed from the gatehouse his men had latterly abandoned. He'd gotten two of the witch-clan's machine guns out of the gatehouse to cover his soldiers' retreat, but things hadn't gone well: The enemy forces had laid down a stupefying volume of fire, and they'd brought some kind of artillery with them, not honest cannon but an arquebus-sized tube that belched fingers of flame that exploded on impact. And his gunners, undertrained, had burned through their ammunition too fast.
They weren't supposed to counterattack for at least a day. If it hadn't been for that flying spy…
he shook his head. The buzzing witch-bird would cut less ice with his majesty than the heat-warped machine gun barrels and prematurely expended stockpiles of valuable, irreplaceable cartridges. "What word is there from Hern?"

"The waterway holds so far, my lord. That's recent."

Otto nodded thoughtfully. The castle's dependence for fresh water on a buried culvert leading to the nearby river was a weakness. If the new defenders were foolish enough to rely on the well, or the casks in the cellar…
no, they're not inexperienced.
He glanced at a nearby soldier. "You, March. Bring me paper. And pen. I have a report to write."

"My lord." March bowed and scurried back towards the hastily established headquarters tent.

And if I write well, will it save my neck?
Otto suppressed a shudder. All told, it had been a
good
plan, and the witches had been on the back-foot for the past several weeks as the king's forces harried their homesteads and burned their crops-the plan to force them to counterattack in a place of his choosing, where they could be chopped up by the king's stealthily stolen machine guns and mines, was a good one. But the upstart clan of witchesturned-nobles had struck back viciously fast, and shown a good few surprises of their own, from the flying spy down.
And they can walk through the shadow world,
Otto reminded himself. Evidence of witchcraft, but he'd also seen a couple of them vanish in front of his own eyes: Otto was a believer.
What could I do with an army like that?
He raised his glasses again and
peered
at the castle. "Sir Anders," he said quietly. "A general order. Be on watch for the dog that fails to bark in the night. If any man notices that the enemy have fallen silent for more than a quarter of a bell, they are to send word to me immediately, regardless of the hour of day or night."

"Sir?" Anders raised a craggy brow.

"Who are we fighting, again?" Otto grinned sepulchrally as dawning understanding-and fear-crept across his hetman's face.

The dust cast up by the royal army crept closer over the next half hour as Otto scratched an abbreviated report, then sealed it in a hide tube and sent a messenger careening towards the vanguard. Occasionally he had one or another of his troops' pre-prepared positions light up the walls, or take careful aimed shots at the windows of the castle: The returning spasms of automatic fire were reassuringly solid, evidence that the enemy was not yet melting into shadows and mist that could reappear in his rear at any moment. Otto didn't waste his reprieve. His men were beginning to grumble about the amount of ditch-work he was making them dig, but his periodic rounds of the trenches and foxholes they were preparing kept the muttering under control. With a high, fine overcast to keep the sun off their necks, and no rain to bog them down, the weather wasn't giving them much to complain about-but if the witch-clan staged a breakout, or the king arrived to find the works incomplete, they'd have something to moan about for the rest of their lives, however short.

The shadows were beginning to lengthen across the apron in front of the castle (putting his snipers at a considerable disadvantage) when the first column of riders thundered up the valley floor and came to a stop by the guards. They didn't pause for long: After no small amount of shouting half a dozen of them walked on, mounts breathing heavily, towards the headquarters tent. Otto, who had been checking the second gun emplacement, steeled himself as he walked back downhill towards the group. He'd been expecting this moment, trying not to allow it to get in the way of his urgent defensive preparations for most of the day.

"Your Majesty." He bowed deeply, but without flourish.

"Otto." The golden boy's face was calm, but his eyes were stony. "Your tent, please. We will have words." The guards behind him sported strange black weapons, machine-pistols looted or stolen from the clan's dead.

"Yes, sire." He gestured towards the tent. "If you would follow me?"

"Certainly," Egon said, easily enough, but Otto had a hard time pretending to ignore the two guards who preceded them, or the two who took up stations beside the tent.

Inside the tent, the young king turned to face Otto. "What happened?" he asked. "In your own words."

"They counterattacked too early." Otto frowned. "We took the castle as planned. But we'd only been there for half a day when a witch-flying beneath a wing like a bat's-flew overhead. My men shot at him, but he got away. High up, high as an eagle. I redoubled my efforts to prepare the grounds, but only two hours later there was an explosion, then witch-troops everywhere. They came from inside the palace, as your majesty predicted, but they arrived before we were ready for them. Seven hours, I reckon, from our entry to their arrival."

"Seven hours…" Egon stared at Otto measuringly, although Otto couldn't guess whether it might be for a medal or a noose. "This flying witch. Describe what you saw."

Otto felt himself burst into chilly perspiration. "It made a buzzing noise, as of bees, only louder…" He described the ultralight haltingly, its arrival from the southwest and subsequent departure after overflying the castle.

"And three hours later they arrived in force," Egon said musingly. "What of your force did you recover?"

The next ten minutes were the hardest examination of Otto's life, as he explained the precise disposition of his withdrawal. "In the end, we lost two of the machine guns, and we have but four gun barrels left. We have also expended all but four belts of ammunition," he finished. "Of men, eighteen dead and twenty-three wounded. The defensive positions are nearly complete, although I do not propose to defend them past dawn tomorrow-too much risk of the witches infiltrating our lines. My men are at your disposal, sire."

Egon glanced at the rough map of the surrounding area on Otto's camp chair. "Flying spies. Some sort of artillery-that's a new twist." He nodded to himself. "They are still bottled up in there?"

"Yes, sire." Otto nodded back, reflexively. "I've detailed my men to tell me at once if the witches stop replying to our probing fire. But so far they're sitting tight. It's almost as if they can't simply walk away."

For the first time, the young king's poker face relaxed. "Well." His lips quirked. "You've done no worse than aught of our commanders might. And that flying witch-yes." He nodded briskly. "Bravely done, Baron Neuhalle." Then he smiled, and Otto's blood ran cold at the look in the royal eyes. "Something you might not know about the witches is that they have to use their magic sparingly-should they walk through the paths of the dead too frequently, they fall ill and die. By your own word it is barely a day since they retook the palace. Normally that would be enough time to allow them to escape, but I have intelligence that suggests to me a new possibility. Your men did succeed in dropping the culvert and poisoning the well, I trust?" Unsure where this was leading, Otto nodded. "Good." The king clapped his hands. "Krentz. Fetch Sir Geraunt and Baron Rolfuss."

"Sire." One of the bodyguards bowed, then ducked through the tent door; the other visibly tensed, watching Otto alertly.

"Your Majesty?" Otto tried not to let his own tension show.

"We're going to take them." Egon's eyes twinkled. "Because, you see, they are not only under siege
here.
They may be able to walk through the realm of the dead, but the dead, I am informed, have taken a dislike to them. They won't be able to escape this time. All that remains to be established is how we may dig them out of that castle. And my other intelligence suggests a solution."

The house squatting behind the densely tree-clad hillside had seen better years, that much was clear: its wooden decking needed a fresh coat of paint, the shingled roof was silver and cracked behind the eaves, and the chain-link fence that surrounded the acre lot was rusted. But the padlock holding the gate closed was well-oiled, and as she followed Brill and her team of bright young adventurers up the front steps, Miriam spotted the discreet black dome of a CCTV camera lurking in the shadows of the verandah. That, at least, looked to be new and well-maintained.

"It's a safe house," Brill explained as she pushed buttons on an alarm system that was far fancier-and newer-than the building it was attached to. "We own a bunch of them, lease them out for short stays via a local Realtor, so there's a lot of turnover. There's always one free when we need it, and it doesn't look suspicious. We actually make money on the deal: We can buy the properties with spare capital and they're mostly going up."

Miriam glanced around as they entered the front hall. Dust tickled her nostrils; the husk of a dead beetle lay, legs upturned, in the middle of the floor. She wrinkled her nose. "What's the plan?"

"Oh, I just phoned the Realtor and told them I was a friend of the owner and we were taking it for two weeks." She held up a key. "There's some emergency gear stashed in the cellar, behind a false wall. Other than that, it's clean-the emergency gear's the kind of stuff a survival nut would have, nothing to attract special attention. The only real trouble we've ever had with these safe houses was when one of them was accidentally let to a meth dealer. We cleared them out good. The Sheriff's department
like
us." She said it with such evident satisfaction that Miriam shivered. For a meth dealer, setting up a clandestine lab in a Clan safe house was a bit like a fox setting up house in a grizzly's den. "You may want to take the front bedroom, milady. I'll get the air and hot water working and everyone else settled in, then we can talk."

Three hours later, Miriam felt a lot more human. Air conditioning! Proper showers! Toilets with lids and a handle you turned to flush, rather than yanking on a chain! It was almost like being home again. Brill had even, somehow, managed to find the time to scare up some clothes that fit her, so she didn't look totally weird. Well, Brill had been her lady-in-waiting for some months; as one of the odd jobs she did for the thin white duke-Miriam's uncle-knowing her measurements wasn't that odd. It was a shame she'd bleached her hair blond while she'd been on the run, Miriam told herself; the colors Brill had picked didn't match her new look, and besides, her roots were starting to show.

She sat on the edge of the bed, one leg of a very new pair of jeans dangling, and stared at the window. So unlike the stony castle casement she'd spent weeks staring at in a state of desperation, under house arrest and facing a forced political marriage as a lesser evil to paying the price of her earlier mistakes, but it was still a window in a house guarded by the Clan's traditions and rules. The formal betrothal had gone adrift in a sea of flame and gunfire, as crown prince Egon took exception to the idea of a Clan heiress marrying his younger (and retarded) brother; then she'd been running through the confusing political underworld of New Britain, too fast to think. But now-

It all depends on what else has been going on since I left.
She sighed and began to work her other foot down the pants leg.
Is Mom okay?
She paused again.
Brill said something about being under attack over here. Is
Paulie
okay?
Paulette, her sometime PA, was an outsider to all this-but stuck in Cambridge, if the Clan was being attacked from outside, she could be in big trouble. Guilt by association: Some within the Clan would see her as a tool tainted by Miriam's low stock, while whatever agency was going after the Clan would assume the worst.
I've got to find out,
Miriam decided, and stood up just as there was a tentative knock at the door.