The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (16 page)

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ARMBAND failure contingency plan. That
was the worst bit of all, because if ARMBAND failed to work as advertised, she and Lucius Rand and everyone else would be standing on a
scaffold with a ticking bomb on a sixty-second countdown, and they’d get precisely two chances to enter the eight-digit abort code.

It was a good thing that she’d taken the time for holy communion and attended confession that morning, she thought, as she walked towards the tent. It had been a long day, and she had a
feeling that the night was going to be even longer.

Her earbud crackled: ‘Herz, speak to me.’ It was the colonel.

‘Stage one is in hand, I’m waiting on news of ARMBAND.’ Out of one corner of her eye she saw moving headlights, another of the undercover patrol cars circling the block slowly,
looking for rubberneckers. ‘Everything seems to be on track so far.’

‘Please hold.’ She walked on, briefly looking round to check on the armored car. (It was reversing again, pulling free of the patch of soft ground that had stymied it.) ‘Okay,
that’s good. Update me if there are any developments.’

So the colonel is jittery? Good
. A uniform over near the support truck from the NNSA was waving to her; local cops drafted in for crowd control and vehicle marshaling. She changed course
towards him.
So he should be
. ‘What’s up?’ she demanded.

‘Uh, Agent – ’ He was nervous; not used to dealing with FBI.

‘Herz.’ She nodded. ‘You have something.’

‘Yeah, there’s a car at the north quadrant entrance, driver says it’s for you. Name of Hall.’

‘Oh.’ –
What’s Rich doing up
there
?
– ‘If that’s Rich Hall and Amanda Cruz, we’re expecting them.’ She kicked herself
mentally:
Should have told them which gate to use
. ‘Let them in. They’ve got a package we’re expecting.’

‘Sure thing, ma’am.’ He leaned over towards the driver’s window of the patrol car, talking to his partner. Herz walked on, jittery with too much poor-quality caffeine and
a rising sense of tension.
We’re about to fire the opening shot in a war
, she thought.
I wonder where it’s going to end
. . .

*

It was dark, and the moon already riding low in the sky outside the kitchen window, when Huw yawned and conceded defeat. He saved the draft of his report, closed the lid of his
laptop, picked up two glasses and a bottle of zinfandel, and went upstairs to bed.

As he closed the door and turned on the light, the bedding moved. A tousled head appeared: ‘What kept you?’

‘I have a report to write, in case you’d forgotten.’ He put the glasses and the bottle down on the dressing table and began to unbutton his shirt. ‘I hope you had a
better day than I did, my lady.’

‘I very much doubt it.’ She sat up and plumped up the pillows. As the comforter dropped, he saw that she was naked. Catching his gaze, she smiled. ‘Lock the door?’

‘Sure.’ He dropped his shirt on the carpet, let his jeans fall, then went to the door and shot the dead bolt. Then he picked up the wine bottle and twisted the screw cap. ‘What
happened?’

‘Head office are going mad.’ She screwed up her face. ‘It’s
unreal
. The council are running around like half-headed turkey fowl, the whole flock of
them.’

‘Well, that’s a surprise.’ He filled a glass, sniffed it, then held it out to her. She took it. ‘Any word on the boss . . . ?’

‘Olga’s bringing him out within the next hour. Assuming nobody attacks the ambulance, he’ll be in a hospital bed by dawn. The last word from that quarter is that he’s
tried to talk, since the incident.’

Huw filled his own wineglass, then sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Can we forget about politics for a few hours? I know you want me to bring you up to date on what I was doing back in
New York, and I’m sure you’ve got a lot of stuff to tell me about what’s been going on since the last time we were together, but I would like, for once, to take some time out with
you. Just you and me alone, with no unquiet ghosts.’

Her frown faded slightly. ‘I wish we could. But there’s so much riding on this. We’ll have time later, if we succeed, but’ – she glanced at the door anxiously
– ‘there’s so much that can still go wrong. If Miriam has any mad ideas about running away . . .’

‘Well, that’s an interesting question. While you were away, we had a chat. She seemed to need it.’

‘Oh?’ Brilliana drank down a mouthful of wine. ‘How is she doing?’

‘Not well, but I don’t
think
she’s going to run out on us, as long as she feels we’re standing alongside her.’

‘It’s
that
bad? I’ve known her for, ah, nearly a year, and her highness does not strike me as disloyal to her friends.’

Huw did not miss the significance of the honorific. ‘She hasn’t acceded to that rank yet, has she?’

‘No.’ Brill’s expression was bleak. ‘I don’t think she’s fully realized, yet, what it means – she was having a difficult time understanding that vile
business of Henryk’s, much less thinking about what is going to happen . . .’

‘Er, I think you’re wrong.’ Huw emptied his glass in one long swallow. ‘Needed that. Excuse me. Did you buy her a pregnancy test kit?’ He refilled her glass, then
topped up his own.

‘I – yes, but I haven’t given it to her yet. She asked you about that?’

‘She is remarkably open, but her ability to trust – anyone, I think – is badly damaged by the whole business of the succession. I . . . I offered to help her obtain an abortion
if she thought she needed one.’

‘Huw!’ Brill clapped one hand to her mouth. Then: ‘Why?’

‘She raised the subject.’ Huw hunched his shoulders. ‘I don’t think she will, but . . . if she feels pressured, what will she do?’

‘React,’ Brill said automatically. ‘Oh. Yes, that was cleverly played, my love. But you should have warned me. That’s too clever by half. What if she’d called your
bluff?’

‘What if it wasn’t a bluff?’ He shrugged. ‘She’s no use to our cause if she doesn’t trust us. No use to anyone
at all
. That is true whether or not she
has a royal bun in the oven. We’re trying to break the pattern, not reinforce it.’

‘Uh-huh. Winning her trust is one thing.’ She leaned towards him. ‘But you’d help her shoot herself in the head?’

‘If I was convinced that she wanted to, and knew what she was asking for . . . yes.’ He looked at Brilliana with a bleakness that sat badly with his age. ‘I’d try to save
her first, mind you.’

‘Would you try to save
me
from my worst urges?’ she asked sharply.

Huw put his glass down. ‘That’s one of those questions to which there’s no safe answer, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ She drained her own glass and reached across him, to put it down beside his. He shivered as she pushed her breasts against his side; her nipples were stiff. ‘My worst
urge right now says I want you to fuck me like there’s no tomorrow. Because tomorrow’ – she ran her hand down his chest – ‘we might both be dead.’

*

Erasmus was going over the next morning’s news with John Winstanley and Oliver Smith, the party commissioners for truth and justice, when word of the abdication came
in.

Smith was reading down a plate, his lips moving silently as he read the raised bright mirror-text of the lead: ‘. . . and we call upon all right-minded men to, hang on, here’s a
dropped – ’

‘Yes,
yes
,’ Erasmus said acidly. ‘No need for
that
, leave it to the subs. What I need to know is, do you think it’s sound?’

‘Is it
sound
?’ Winstanley nodded lugubriously. ‘Well, that’s the – ’

The door rattled open. Burgeson looked up sharply. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

The messenger boy – or youth – looked unabashed: ‘It’s Mr. Burroughs, sir! He wants you to come, quick like! ’E says it’s important!’

Erasmus stared at him. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded.

‘’E’s in the mayor’s mansion, sir! There’s news from out east – a train just came in, and there was folks on it who said the king’s
abdicated!’

Erasmus glanced at Smith. ‘I think you’d better hold the front page,’ he said mildly, ‘I’m going to go see what this is all about.’

It was an overcast, gray summer’s day outside, with a thin fog from the bay pumped up to a malignant brown haze by the smoke from a hundred thousand stoves and steam cars on this side of
the bay. Fishing boats were maneuvering around the wharves, working their way in and out of the harbor as if the crisis of the past weeks was just a distant rumor. From the front steps, waiting as
his men brought the car round to him, Erasmus could just make out the dots of the picket fleet in the distance, military yachts and korfes riding at anchor to defend the coast against the approach
of French bombardiers or submarines. He eyed them warily every morning, half afraid they would finally make their move, choosing sides in the coming struggle. Word from the cadres aboard the ships
was that the sailors were restive, unpaid for months now, but that the officers remained crown loyalists for the most part. Should push come to shove, it would be an ugly affair – and one
that the realm’s foreign enemies would be keen to exploit. Which was probably why John Frederick had not tried his luck by ordering the picket into the bay to put down the provisional
government forces. It was a card he could only play once, and if it failed, he might as well dust off Cromwell’s block. Although if the messenger lad was right . . .

By the time he arrived at the mayoral mansion, a light rain was falling and the onshore breeze was stiffening, blowing the smog apart. Erasmus paused for a deep breath as he stepped out of the
back of the car, relishing the feel of air in lungs he’d almost despaired of a year ago.
Where are you now, Miriam?
he wondered briefly. It was her medication that had cured him, of
that he was certain, even though the weird pills had turned his urine blue and disrupted his digestion.
What other magic tricks do you have up your sleeve?
It was something he’d have
to explain to the chairman, sooner or later – if he could work out how to broach the subject without sounding as if he’d taken leave of his senses. ‘Follow,’ he said over
his shoulder. The two bodyguards and the woman from the stenography pool moved hastily into position.

The committee offices on the first floor were seething – nobody was at their posts except for the militia guards, their rifles clenched in nervous hands. ‘Where’s the
chairman?’ Erasmus demanded when they came to the first checkpoint.

‘He’s in the committee room, sir,’ said the senior man – Erasmus, being a regular enough visitor (and a member of the committee to boot), ranked above the regular
interrogation such a question might have drawn from a stranger. ‘Can you tell us what’s going on?’

‘Finding out is why I’m here.’ Erasmus frowned. ‘There’ll be a statement later.’ He glanced at his stenographer. ‘Minute that for me.’ He swept
through the corridors towards the former dining room that Sir Adam had requisitioned as a meeting place for the committee, only pausing at the door where two heavies in the red, white, and blue
armbands of internal security waited with shotguns. ‘Erasmus Burgeson, commissioner for information, here to see the chairman,’ announced one of his guards.

‘Aye, right.’
These
guards were going by the book. Erasmus waited patiently as the senior one uncapped a speaking tube and announced him, then listened for instructions.
‘You’re to go in, sir. Your party’ – a thumb gesture – ‘can wait in the guardroom.’

Burgeson nodded at them. ‘You heard him.’ And then he opened the door.

The Committee for Democratic Accountability was neither accountable, nor democratic, nor even much of a committee – these words were all statements of aspiration, as much as anything else,
for in the early days of building a better nation these words held power, and it was Sir Adam’s hope that his institutions would grow into their names. Personally, Erasmus thought this was
dangerously naïve – he’d read a number of books that Miriam had loaned him, strange books describing the historical processes of her even stranger world – but it was at least
worth a try. Not
all
revolutions ended up eating their young, and heaven knew it was an opportunity to break with the dead hand of the oppressive past, but the thought that
this
revolution might go the way of some of those in Miriam’s books had kept him awake into the small hours on more nights than he cared to think about.

Inside the committee room, there was an atmosphere of euphoria. Sir Adam was standing behind the lectern, and about half the delegates from the district councils seemed to have packed themselves
in. Someone had opened a crate of cava and orange farmers from down south were toasting shipyard workers from the east bay with foam sparkling from their chipped tea mugs. Erasmus grabbed the first
shoulder he could catch inside the doorway. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘It’s the king!’ The man grinned broadly. ‘He’s gone! Packed up his bags in New London and ran. The garrison in Montreal picked him up!’

A sharp stab of anxiety gnawed at Erasmus. ‘Are they ours?’

‘They mutinied three weeks ago and elected a workers’ and soldiers’ council! They’re with the white guards!’

Erasmus blinked. ‘Excuse me.’ He began to elbow his way through the crush towards the lectern where Sir Adam was earnestly holding forth to a gaggle of inner party graybeards who
remained obdurately sober in the face of the collective derangement.

‘Ah, Erasmus.’ Sir Adam smiled. ‘I gather the good news has reached you.’

‘I need to know where it came from’ – Erasmus pointed a thumb over his shoulder – ‘if we’re to get the word out where it’s needed. I’ve got a
stenographer waiting in the guardroom, and a front page to fill by three.’

‘That’s easy enough.’ Burroughs gestured. ‘You know Edward MacDonald, I take it.’

Erasmus nodded. ‘We’ve met.’ Ed, Lady Bishop’s right-hand man, nodded back, cautiously.

‘He brought certain other news of your activities out east, news that I personally consider would stretch the bounds of credibility – if anyone less than Lady Bishop vouched for
their truth.’ Burroughs contemplated Erasmus, an expression of perplexity on his face that reminded Burgeson of a school-teacher examining a pupil who had just done something that, while not
actually deserving of punishment, was inexplicably wrong. ‘We’ll need to talk about it in due course.’