The Merchants' War (40 page)

"Not necessary." The duke shook his head, then looked back at Helmut. "Tell me what you know."

Helmut shrugged. Despite the full suit of armor, the gesture was virtually silent-there was neoprene in all the right places, another of the little improvements ClanSec had made to their equipment over the years. World-walkers were valuable enough to be worth the cost of custom-fitted armor, and they hadn't been idle in applying new ideas and materials to the classic patterns. "Stands to reason, he's hit the Hjalmar Palace, or you wouldn't have called us out. Is there any word from Wergatsfurt or Ostgat?"

The duke inclined his head. "Wergatsfurt is taken. Ostgat hasn't heard a whisper, as of-" He snapped his fingers.

"Thirty- seven minutes ago," said the ice blonde. She sounded almost bored.

"So we were strung out with a feint at Castle Hjorth and the Rurval estates, but instead he's concentrated eighty miles away and hit the Hjalmar Palace," summarized Helmut. He glanced around at the scaffolding that was going up. "It's fallen?"

"Within minutes," Angbard confirmed. He was visibly fuming, but keeping a tight rein on his anger.

"Treachery?"

"That's my concern," said the duke, with such icy restraint that Helmut backed off immediately. The blonde, however, showed no sign of surprise: she studied Helmut with such bland disinterest that he had to suppress a shudder.

So we've got a leak,
he realized with a sinking feeling.
It didn't stop with Matthias, did it?
"Should I assume that the intruders know about doppelganger defenses?" He glanced round. "Should I assume they have world-walkers of their own?"

"Not the latter, Gray Witch be thanked." Angbard hesitated. "But it would be unwise to assume that they don't know how to defend against us, so every minute delayed increases the hazard." He reached a decision. "We can't afford to leave it in their hands, any more than we can afford to demolish it completely. Our options are therefore to go in immediately with everything we've got to hand, or to wait until we have more forces available and the enemy has had more time to prepare for us. My inclination is towards the immediate attack, but as you will be leading it, I will heed your advice."

Helmut grimaced. "Give me enough rope, eh? As it happens, I agree with you. Especially if they have an informant, we need to get in there as fast as possible. Do we know if they are aware of the treason room?"

"No, we don't." Angbard's expression was thunderous. "If you wish to use it, you will have to scout it out."

"Aye, well, there are worse prospects." Helmut turned on his heel and raised his voice. "Martyn! Ryk! To me. I've got a job for you!" Turning back to the duke, he added: "If the treason room is clear, we'll go in that way, with diversions in the north guard room and the grand hall. Otherwise, my thinking is to assault directly through the grand hall, in force. The higher we go in-"he glanced up at the scaffolding, then over to the hydraulic lift that two guards were bringing in through the front of the tent"-the better I'll like it."

* * *

Motion sickness was a new and unpleasant experience to Miriam, but she figured it was a side effect of spending days on end aboard a swaying express train. Certainly it was the most plausible explanation for her delicate stomach. She couldn't wait to get solid ground under her feet again. She'd plowed through about half the book by Burroughs, but it was heavy going; where some of the other Levcler tracts she'd read had been emotionally driven punch-in-the-gut diatribes against the hereditary dictators, Burroughs took a far drier, theoretical approach.

He'd taken up an ideological stance with roots Miriam half-recognized-full of respectful references to Voltaire, for example, and an early post-settlement legislator called Franklin, who had turned to the vexatious question of the rights of man in his later years-and had teased out a consistent strand of political thought that held the dictatorship of the hereditary aristocracy to be the true enemy of the people. Certainly she could see why Burroughs might have been exiled, and his books banned, by the Hanoverian government. But the idea that he might be relevant to the underground still struck her as peculiar.
Do I really want to get involved in this?
she asked herself. It was all very well tagging along with Erasmus until she could get her hands on her laptop again and zip back to the United States, but the idea of getting involved in
politics
made her itch. Especially the kind of politics they had here.

"He's a theoretician, isn't he?" she asked Erasmus, as their carriage slid through the wooded hills. "What's Lady Bishop's interest?"

He stared out of the window silently, until she thought he wasn't going to reply. Then he cleared his throat. "Sir Adam has credibility. Old King George sought his counsel. Before Black Monday, he was a Member of Parliament, the first elected representative to openly declare for the radicals. And to be fair, the book-it's his diagnosis of the ailment afflicting the body politic, not his prescription. He's the chair of the central committee, Miriam. We need him in the capital-"

There was a sudden jerk, and Miriam was pushed forward in her seat. The train began to slow. "What's going on?"

"Odd." He frowned. "We're still in open country." The train continued to slow, brakes squealing below them. The window put the lie to Erasmus's comment almost immediately, as a low row of wooden shacks slid past. Brakes still squealing, the long train drifted to a halt. Erasmus glanced at her, worried. "This can't be good."

"Maybe it's just engine trouble? Or the track ahead?"
That's right, clutch at straws,
she told herself. Her hand went to her throat, where she had taken to wearing James Lee's locket on a ribbon: at a pinch she could lift Erasmus and land them both in the same world as the Gruinmarkt, but... "I can get us out of here, but I know nothing about where we'd end up."

"We've got papers." Now
he
sounded as if he was grasping at straws, and knew it.

"Don't anticipate trouble." She swallowed.

"Get your bag. If they want a bribe-"

"Who?"

"How should I know?" He pointed at the window: "Whoever's stopped the train."

The door at the end of the compartment opened abruptly, and a steward stepped inside. He puffed out his brass-buttoned chest like a randy pigeon: "Sorry to announce, but there's been a delay. We should be moving soon, but-" A bell sounded, ringing like a telephone outside the compartment. " 'Scuse me." He ducked back out.

"What kind of delay?" Miriam asked.

"I don't know." Erasmus stood up. "Got everything in your bag?" He raised an eyebrow.

Miriam, thinking of the small pistol, swallowed, then nodded. "Yeah." It was stuffy in the un-air-conditioned carriage, but she stood up and headed over to the coat rail by the door, to pick up her jacket and the bulging handbag she'd transferred the notebook computer into. "Thinking of getting off early?"

"If we have to." He frowned. "If this is-"

Footsteps.
Miriam paused, her coat over her left arm. "Yes?" she asked coolly as the door opened.

It was a middle-aged man, wearing the uniform of a railroad ticket inspector. He looked upset. "Sir? Ma'am? I'm sorry to disturb you, but would you mind stepping this way? I'm sure we can sort this out and be on our way soon."

Erasmus glanced sideways at her. Miriam dry-swallowed, wishing her throat wasn't dry.
Bluff it out, or...?
"Certainly," he said smoothly: "Perhaps you can tell us what it's about?"

"In the station, sir," said the inspector, opening the door of the carriage. The steps were already lowered, meeting the packed earth of a rural platform with a weathered clapboard hut-more like a signal box than a station house- hunched beside it. Only the orange groves to either side suggested a reason for there to be a station here. The inspector hurried anxiously over towards the building, not looking back until he neared the door. Miriam caught Burgeson's eye: he nodded, slowly.
The Polls would just have come aboard and arrested us, wouldn't they?
she told herself.
Probably...

As her companion approached the door, Miriam curled her fingers around the butt of her pistol. The inspector held the door open for them, his expression anxious. "The electrograph from your cousin requested a private meeting," he said apologetically. "This was the best I could arrange-"

"My
cousin!"
Miriam asked, her voice rising as the door opened: "I don't have a cousin-"

A whoosh of escaping steam dragged her attention up the line. Slowly and majestically, the huge locomotive was straining into motion, the train of passenger cars squealing and bumping behind it. Miriam spun round, far too late to make a run back for it. "Shit," she muttered under her breath. A steam car was bumping along the rutted track that passed for a service road to the station. "Double shit." Erasmus was frozen in the doorway, one hand seeming to rest lightly on the inspector's shoulder. Another car came into view along the road, trailing the first one's rooster-tail of dust.

"Please don't!" The inspector was nearly hysterical.

"Who set this up?" Erasmus asked, his tone deceptively calm.

"I don't know! I was only following orders!" Miriam ducked round the side of the station house again, glancing in through the windows. She saw an empty waiting room furnished only with a counter, beyond the transom of which was an evidently empty ticket office.
It's not the. station,
she realized, near-hysteria bubbling under.

"Into the waiting room," she snapped, bringing the revolver out of her pocket.
"Move!"

The inspector stared at her dumbly, as if she'd grown a second head, but Erasmus nodded: "Do as she says," he told the man. The inspector shuffled into the wailing room. Erasmus followed, his movements almost bored, but his right hand never left the man's shoulder.

"How long 'til they get here?" Miriam demanded.

"I don't know!" He was nearly in tears. "They just said to make you wait!"

"They,"
said Erasmus. "Who would
they
be?"

"Please don't kill me!"

The door to the ticket office was ajar. Miriam kicked it open and went through it with her pistol out in front. The office was indeed empty. On the ticket clerk's desk a message flimsy was waiting. Miriam peered at it in the gloom. DEAR CUZ SIT TIGHT STOP UNCLE A SENDS REGARDS STOP WILL MEET YOU SOONEST SIGNED BRILL.

Well,
that
settles it.
Miriam lowered her gun to point at the floor and headed back to the waiting room.

"- The Polis!" moaned the inspector. "I've got three wee ones to feed! Please don't-"

Shit, meet fan.
Even so, it struck her as too big a coincidence to swallow.
Maybe the. Polis are tapping the wires? That would do it.
Brilliana had figured out where she was, which train she was on, and signaled her to wait, not realizing someone else might rise to the bait.

Burgeson's expression was grim. "Miriam, the door, please."

"Let's not do anything too hasty," she said. "There's an easy way out of this." "Oh please-"

"Shut up, you. What do you have in mind?"

Miriam waved at the ticket office. "He's not lying about my cousin: she's on her way. Trouble is, if we bug out before she gets here she's going to walk into
them.
So I think we ought to sit tight." She closed the door anyway, and glanced round, looking for something to bar it with. "I can get us both out of here in an emergency," she said, a moment of doubt cutting in when she recalled the extreme nausea of her most recent attempts to world-walk.

The first car-
more like a steam-powered minivan,
Miriam noted-rounded the back of the station and disappeared from sight. Almost two minutes had passed since they reached the station. Miriam slid aside from the windows, while Burgeson did likewise. Boots thudded on the ground outside: the only sounds within the building were the pounding of blood in her ears and the quiet sobbing of the ticket inspector.

"Mr. Burgeson!" The voice behind the bullhorn sounded almost jovial: "And the mysterious Mrs. Fletcher! Or should I say,
Beckstein?"
He made it sound like an accusation. "Welcome to California! My colleague Inspector Smith has told me all about you both and I thought, why, we really ought to have a little chat. And I thought, why not have it somewhere quiet-like, and intimate, instead of in town where there are lots of flapping ears to take note of what we say?"

Across the room, Burgeson was mouthing something at her. His face was in shadow, making it hard to interpret. The inspector knelt in the middle of the floor, in a square of sunlight, sobbing softly as he rocked from side to side wringing his hands. The appearance of the Polis had quite unmanned him.

"Like this: parlez vous Francoise, Madame Beckstein?"

Miriam felt faint.
They think I'm a French spy?
Either the heat or the tension or some other strain was plucking her nerves like guitar strings. Somehow Erasmus had fetched up almost as far away as it was possible to get, twelve feet away across open ground overlooked by a window. To get him out of here one or the other of them would need to cross that expanse of empty floor, in front of-

The ticket inspector snapped, flickering from broken passivity to panic in a fraction a second. He lurched to his feet and ran at the window, screaming,
"Don't hurt me!"

Erasmus brought his right hand up, and Miriam saw the pistol in it. He hesitated for a long moment as the inspector fumbled with the window, throwing it wide and leaning out.
"Let me
-" he shouted: then a spatter of shots cracked through the glass, and any sense of what he had been trying to say.

The bullhorn blared, unattended, as the inspector's body slumped through the half-open window and Miriam, seeing her chance, ducked and darted across the room, avoiding the lit spaces on the floor, to fetch up beside Burgeson.