The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (14 page)

‘In your dreams.’ Miriam gnawed at a fresh chunk of pizza. ‘Well, we’ve got a bigger problem now.’

‘Yes, I was just thinking that . . .’ Huw slid another portion onto her plate. ‘Here, have a chunk of mine. Um. So what’s
your
life’s ambition?’

‘Uh?’ Miriam stared at him, a chunk of pizza crust held in one hand. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Go on.’ Huw grinned. ‘There must be something, right? Or someone?’

‘I – uh.’ She lowered the piece of crust very carefully, as if it had suddenly been replaced by high explosive. ‘You know,’ she continued, in a thoughtful tone of
voice, ‘I really have absolutely no idea.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Is there anything to drink?’

‘Wine, or Diet Coke?’

‘Ugh. Wine, I think, just not too much of it . . .’

‘Okay.’ Huw fetched a pair of glasses and a bottle.

‘I used to think I had the normal kinds of ambition,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Married, kids, the family thing. Finish college, get a job. Except it didn’t quite work out
right, whatever I did. I did everything the wrong way round, the kid came too soon and I gave her up for adoption because things were . . . fucked up right then? Yes, that’s about the size of
it. Mom suggested it, I think.’ Her face froze for a moment. ‘I wonder why,’ she said softly.

Huw slid a glass in front of her. ‘I didn’t know you had a child?’

‘Most people don’t.’ She sipped briefly, then took a mouthful of wine. ‘I married him. The father. Afterwards, I mean. And it didn’t work out and we got
divorced.’ She stifled an unhappy laugh. That’s what I mean about doing things in the wrong order. And before you ask, no, I’m not in contact with the adoptive parents. Mom might
know how to trace them, but I bet’ – she looked thoughtful – ‘she won’t have made it easy. For blackmail, you see. So anyway, after my marriage fell apart I had a
career for a decade until some slime in a vice president’s office flushed it down the toilet. And I’d still
have
a career, a freelance one, except I discovered I had a family,
and they wanted me to get married and have a baby, preferably in the right order, thanks, electricity and running water strictly optional. Oh, and my mother is an alien in both senses of the word;
the first man I met in ten years who I thought I’d be willing to risk the marriage thing with was shot dead in front of me; the boyfriend before
that
, who I dropped because of the
thousand-yard stare, turns out to be a government spy who’s got my number; I’m probably pregnant with a different dead man’s baby; and the whole world’s turned to
shit.’ She was gripping the glass much too tightly, she realized. ‘I just want it to
stop.’

Huw was staring at her as if she’d grown a second head.
Poor kid
, she thought.
Still at the mooning after girlfriends stage, not sure what he wants – why did I dump all
that on him?
Now she knew what to look for – now she knew the pressure that had broken Roland – she could see what was looming in his future, the inevitable collision between
youthful optimism and brutal realpolitik.
Did I really just say all that?

While she was trying to work it out, Huw reached across the breakfast bar and laid a finger on the back of her hand. ‘You’ve been bottling that up for a long time, haven’t
you?’

‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘I’m twenty-seven,’ he said calmly, taking her by surprise: He had five years on her estimate. ‘And I hear what you’re not saying. You’re what, thirty?
Thirty-one? And – ’

‘Thirty-four,’ she heard herself saying.

‘ – Thirty-four is a hard age to be finding out about the Clan for the first time, and even harder if you’re a woman. It’s a shame you’re not ten or fifteen years
older,’ he continued, tilting his head to one side as he stared at her, ‘because they understand old maids; they wouldn’t bother trying to marry you off.’ He shook his head
abruptly. ‘I’m sorry, I’m treating your life like a puzzle, but it’s . . .’

‘No, that’s okay.’

‘Ah, thank you.’ He paused for a few seconds. ‘I shall forget whatever you want me to, of course.’

‘Um?’ Miriam blinked.

‘I assume you don’t want your confidences written up and mailed to every gossip and scandalmonger in the Gruinmarkt?’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘Of course not!’ Catching the gleam in his eye: ‘You wouldn’t. Right?’

‘I’m not suicidal.’ He calmly reached out and took the final wedge of her pizza. ‘I bribe easily.’

‘Here’s to wine and pizza!’ She raised her glass, trying to cover her rattled nerves with a veneer of flippancy.
Damn, he’s not that unsophisticated at all. Why do I
keep getting these people wrong?

‘Wine and pizza.’ Huw let her off the hook gracefully.

‘You wanted to know what my life’s ambitions were,’ she said. ‘May I ask why?’

Huw stopped chewing, then swallowed. ‘I’d like to know what motivates the leader I’m betting my life on.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘That heavy enough for
you?’

‘Whoa!’ She put her glass down slightly too hard. ‘I’m not leading anyone!’ But Brill’s words, earlier, returned to her memory.
Your mother intends to put
you on the throne; and we intend to make sure you’re not just there for show
. ‘I’m – ’ She stopped, at a loss for words.

‘You’re going to end up leading us whether you like it or not,’ Huw said mildly. ‘I’m not going to shove you into it, or anything like that. You’re just in
the right position at the right time, and if you
don’t
, we’ll all hang. Or worse.’

‘What do you mean?’

Huw turned his head and looked at the window, his expression opaque. ‘The duke has been holding the Clan together, through ClanSec, for a generation. He’s, he’s a modernizer,
in his own way. But there aren’t enough of us, and he’s aging. He’s also a fascist.’ Huw held up a finger: ‘I say that in the strict technical sense of the word
– he’s what you get when you take the principle of aristocratic exceptionalism and push it down a level onto the bourgeoisie, and throw in a big dose of the subordination of the will of
the individual to the needs of the collective. Ahem.’

He took a sip of wine. ‘Sorry, Political Econ 301, back before I ended up in MIT. The Clan is only five generations removed from folks who remember being itinerant tinkers in a late
medieval marcher kingdom. We are the nearest thing that the Gruinmarkt has thrown up to a middle class, and it’s the lack of any effective alternative that had our great-grandparents buying
titles of nobility and living it up. Anyway, the duke took a bunch of warring, feuding extended families and gave them a security organization that guards them all. He’s kicked butt and taken
names, and secured a truce, and virtually everyone now agrees it’s a good thing. But he’s a single point of failure. When he goes, who’s going to be the next generalissimo?
Your
trouble is that you’re his niece, by his wildcat stepsister. More importantly, you’re the only surviving one in the direct line of succession – the attrition rate
forty years ago was fearsome. So if you decide not to play your cards you’d better be ready to run like hell. Whichever of the conservative hard-liners comes out on top will figure
you’re a mortal threat.’

‘Hang on, whichever? Conservatives? Aren’t you jumping the gun – ’

‘No, because
we’re not ready
. Give us another few years and maybe Earl Riordan could do it. Or Olga, Baroness Thorold, although she’s even younger. There are others:
Kennard Heilbrunner ven Arnesen, Albericht Hjalmar-Hjorth. But they’re not in position. You’re in an unusual spot: You’re young but not too young, you’ve got
different
experience, you demonstrated a remarkable ability to innovate under pressure, and – the icing on the cake – assuming you’re pregnant, you’re carrying a
legitimate heir to the throne. Or at least one who everyone who survived the betrothal will swear is legitimate, and that’s what counts. And they’ll swear to it because, while the old
nobility wouldn’t know a DNA paternity test from a hole in the ground, the
Clan
nobility have heard of it, and even the old folks have a near-superstitious respect for the products of
science.’

‘But I’m not –’ Miriam stopped. She picked up her glass again, rolling it between her palms. ‘Did Brill tell you the details of Dr. ven Hjalmar’s creepy
plan?’ Huw nodded. ‘Good. But you know something? I’m old, and not all pregnancies come to term, and I am really
not fucking happy
about being turned into a brood mare. And
I completed enough of pre-med that if – that’s an
if
– I decide to lose it, you – that’s a collective
you
– are going to have to keep me in a
straitjacket for the next nine months if you want your precious heir. Assuming it exists and it’s a boy. And I haven’t made my mind up yet. And as for what ven Hjalmar’s got
coming, if he isn’t dead, if I ever see him again . . .’

Silence. Then Huw spoke, in a low voice, as if talking to himself: ‘Miriam, if you are pregnant and you decide you don’t want to go through with it, I would consider it a matter of
my personal honor to help you end it. Just as long as you keep it quiet . . . the old folks, they wouldn’t understand. But I won’t be party to keeping you in a straitjacket.’

‘Uh. I. Er.’ Miriam drained her wineglass, trying to cover her confusion. ‘What you just offered. You know what you just said?’

‘Yes.’ Huw nodded. ‘I will either get you the appropriate medication, or, if it’s too late for that, help you get to an abortion clinic.’ He paused. ‘It
wouldn’t be the first time I’ve helped a girl out that way.’

‘Uh.’ Miriam stared at him.
Just when I think I’m getting to understand them . . .
‘No offense, but you made it sound like organizing a shopping trip . .
.’

‘I may be an MIT graduate student, but I’m from
the Gruinmarkt.’
Huw visibly searched for words. ‘We don’t place much stock in a babe ’til it’s
born. Which is perhaps a good thing. You wouldn’t want it to be born if it would trigger a blood feud that would claim its own – and its parents’ – lives, would
you?’

‘But – you said it was leverage – ’

‘Yes, I did.’ He looked back at her. ‘But it’s not the only lever you’ve got. The duke’s accident elevates your rank in the game. You might still have a
chance, even if you throw it away.’ He slid off his bar stool and picked up the dirty plates. ‘Just try to give the rest of us some warning when you make your mind up, huh?’

‘I know what this looks like.’ She was still gripping the wineglass tightly, she realized, tightly enough to stop her hands shaking. ‘I am not going to flip. I’ve been
here before, a long time ago.’ ‘But’ – Huw peered at her – ‘you’re doing fine, so far.’ ‘It’s a control thing.’ Miriam forced
herself to let go of the glass. ‘You never know, I might
not
be pregnant. I need a test kit. And then I need some space to think, to get my head around this.’ She paused.
‘Were you serious about that offer?’

Huw hesitated for a few seconds before answering. ‘All the plans anyone’s making – they all rely on your active participation. We need you to trust us. Therefore’ –
he shrugged uncomfortably – ‘having made that offer I’m bound by it; if I forswear myself you’ll never trust me ever again. And we, my faction, need you to show us what to
do. That’s more important than any crazy plan Henryk hatched to manipulate the succession. We need your trust. And that’s something that can only be bought with our own.’

*

Three o’clock in the morning.

The occasional crack of heavy-caliber gunfire, punctuated by the boom of a black-powder cannon, split the nighttime quiet outside the castle walls. Nobody was getting much sleep, least of all
the guards who hunkered down in the courtyard around the central keep, night-vision goggles active, waiting for a sign.

The sign, when it came, was a mere flickering in the shadows near the dynamited well house. Two of the guards spotted it at once, lowered their guns, and darted out across the open ground
towards it. Their target bent over, emptying his stomach on the hard-packed cobblestones. ‘This way, sir! We need to get under cover.’

The traveler nodded weakly, straightening up. ‘Take. This.’ He held out a shoulder bag. ‘I’ll mark the spot. It’s crowded around there.’ His clothing was
unfamiliar, but not his face; the sergeant nodded and took his bag.

‘You sit down and wait, then. We’ll be along presently.’ He glanced at the sky: So far the enemy forces hadn’t tried lobbing shells into the courtyard at random, but it
was only a matter of time before they got bored with sniping at window casements. ‘Try to stay close to the wall.’

He dashed back towards the keep, not bothering to jink – they held the walls so far, Lightning Child be praised – going flat-out with the shoulder bag clenched in both hands.

Carl was waiting in the grand hall with his staff. By lamplight, his face was heavily lined. He seemed, to the sergeant’s eye, to have aged a decade in the past two days.
‘Let’s see that,’ he suggested.

‘Sir.’

The guard upended the bag’s contents in the middle of the table with a thin clatter of plastic. Carl picked one of the cards up and carefully angled it for a glance. He drew breath
sharply. ‘What do you think?’

Oliver Hjorth took the card and squinted at it. ‘Yes, this looks like the right thing.’ He glanced at the guard. ‘You recognized the courier.’

‘It’s Morgan du Hjalmar, somewhat the worse for wear.’

The baron thought for a moment. ‘He’ll be wanting a ride back over, won’t he.’

Carl nodded. ‘See to it,’ he told the sergeant, then glanced sideways at Helmut Anders, his lieutenant. ‘Get everyone moving out. The recon lance first, as planned, then if the
insertion site is cold the, the casualty and his party’ – he couldn’t bring himself to refer to the duke by name – ‘followed by everyone else. My lord Hjorth, if
you’d care to accompany my headquarters staff . . . Let’s get a move on, people!’

The crowd gathered around the table scattered, except for the core of officers and Helmut, who carefully removed his helmet and scooped the laminated plastic cards into it, averting his eyes as
he did so. He moved to stand by the door, waiting for the clatter and clump of boots as the recon lance descended the grand staircase, weapons ready.