The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (20 page)

Another hospital corridor leading to another hospital room, like a hotel with oxygen lines and diagnostic machines in place of the Internet hub and minibar.
I’m getting to hate these
places
, she realized, as she followed the broad shoulders and buzz cut of her guide. ‘Have you been here before?’ she asked Brill.

‘Yes.’ Brilliana seemed reluctant to say more, so she dropped the topic.

They passed a set of fire doors, then a nursing station, and finally came to a door where another pair of machine-gun missionaries were standing easy. Their guide knocked twice, then opened the
door. ‘More visitors,’ he said quietly.

The first thing Miriam saw in the small hospital room was a bed with a body in it and people gathered around, their backs turned to her. Then one of them looked round: ‘Olga!’

Olga’s expression of startled relief emboldened Miriam to take a step forward.

‘Miriam – ’

Then the woman beside Olga looked up. ‘Miriam?’ And her heart fluttered and skipped a beat.

‘Mom?’

‘Ach,
scheisse
. You didn’t need to see him like this.’

Iris stared up at her. She looked tired, and apprehensive – guilty, perhaps – and worried. Miriam looked past her at the figure in the bed. ‘Maybe not, Mom, but let me be the
judge of that.’ There was an ache in her throat as she looked at Olga. ‘How is he?’

Olga shook her head. ‘He is not good,’ she said. ‘Earlier, he could speak, he spoke of you – but not since we moved him. He is barely conscious.’

‘Then why
did
you move – ’

Iris cut in. ‘They were under siege, kid. You know, bad guys with machine guns shooting at them? They wouldn’t have relocated him if staying was an option. You can ask Dr. MacDonald
later if you want to know more.’ She nodded at Brilliana. ‘Who are your companions?’

Brill gestured. ‘They’re mine.
Ours
.’ She put an odd emphasis on the words. ‘Who’s seen his grace in this condition?’

‘Everyone and their dog.’ Iris addressed Miriam: ‘I’m expecting that little shitweasel Julius Arnesen to turn up any minute now. Oliver Hjorth is making himself
surprisingly useful, all things considered – I think he finally worked out how unreliable mother dearest is’ – the dowager Hildegarde, who seemed to take Miriam’s mere
existence as a personal affront – ‘and Mors Hjalmar is running interference for me. The silver lining on this particular shit sandwich is that most of the conservative tribal elders
attended your betrothal, Miriam. They were in the Summer Palace when Egon staged his little divertissement – we came out much better. Also, they’re on the defensive now because of the
troubles at home. But once they get a grip on how ill my half brother is, they’re going to jump us. You can be sure of it.’

‘Good!’ said Miriam, surprising herself – and, from their reactions, everybody else. ‘Let them.’ She sidestepped around Brill and got her first good look at the
duke.

Last time she’d seen him, months ago, Angbard had seemed implacable and unstoppable: a mafia don at the height of his power, self-assured and calculating, a healthy sixty-something
executive whose polished exterior masked the ruthless drive and cynical outlook within. Lying half-asleep in a hospital bed, an intravenous drip in his left arm and the cables of an EEG taped to
his patchily shaved head, he looked pathetic and broken. His skin was translucent, stretched thin across ancient muscles, the outline of bones showing through at elbows and shoulders; his closed
eyes were half-sunk in their sockets. His breathing was shallow and slow.

Iris cleared her throat. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider that?’

Miriam looked her mother in the eye. ‘Can you think of a better time?’

‘Ladies – ’ Heads turned. The Clan security officer who’d brought them here paused. ‘Perhaps you would like to move to the conference room? He is not well, and the
doctor said not to disturb him overly. They will try to feed him in half an hour, and need space . . .’

‘That sounds like a good idea,’ said Brilliana. ‘Will you call us if any other visitors arrive, Carlos?’

‘I’ll do that. This way, please.’

*

Over peppermint tea and refreshments in the conference room, Miriam eyed Iris warily. ‘You’re looking healthy.’

Iris nodded. ‘Over here, treatment is easier to come by.’ She was making do with a single cane, moving without any obvious signs of the multiple sclerosis that periodically confined
her to a wheelchair. ‘And certain bottlenecks are . . . no longer present.’ Months ago, she’d as good as told Miriam that she was on her own: that Hildegarde – or other
members of the conservative faction – had a death grip on the supply of medicines she needed, and if Iris went against their will she’d stay in a wheelchair in the near-medieval
conditions of the Gruinmarkt until she rotted.

‘How nice.’ Miriam managed an acid smile. ‘So what happens now?’

Iris looked at her sharply. ‘That depends on you, kid. Depends on whether you’re willing to play ball.’

‘That depends on what rules the ball game is played by.’

Her mother nodded. ‘Yes, well; the rules are changing.’ She glanced at the young people gathered at the other end of the room, chatting over drinks and snacks. ‘There’s a
garden here. Are you up to pushing a wheelchair?’

‘I think I can trust them, Mom.’ Miriam let a note of exasperation into her voice.

‘More fool you, then,’ Iris said tartly. ‘Your uncle trusted me, and look where it got him . . .’ She trailed off thoughtfully, then shrugged. ‘You may be right
about them. I’m not saying you’re not. Just . . . don’t be so certain of people. We have met the class enemy, and they is us. You can never tell in advance who’s going to
betray you. And we need to talk in private, just you and me. So let’s get a wheelchair and go look at the flowers.’

‘What’s to talk about that needs so much secrecy?’ Miriam asked.

Iris smiled crookedly. ‘Oh, you’d be surprised, kid. I’ve got a plan. And I figure
you’ve
got a plan, too. So, let’s walk, and I’ll tell you mine if
you tell me yours.’

‘After the last plan you hatched that got me sucked in . . .’ Miriam followed Iris slowly into the corridor, shaking her head. ‘But it got worse. You know what those bastards
have done to me?’

‘Yes.’ A moment’s pause, then: ‘Mother dearest told me, right before the betrothal. She was very proud of it.’ Miriam quailed at the tone in Iris’s –
her own mother’s – voice. A stranger might not have recognized it, but Miriam had grown up knowing what it signified: the unnatural calm before a storm of coldly righteous anger.
‘I’m appalled, but not surprised. That’s how they play the game, after all. They were raised to only value us for our uterus. Uteri.’ They reached the nursing station; an
empty wheelchair waited beside it. ‘If you could push . . . ?’ Iris asked.

The garden was bright and empty, neatly manicured lawns bordered by magnolia hedges. ‘You said the rules had changed,’ Miriam said quietly. ‘But I don’t see much sign of
them changing.’

‘As I said, I’ve been developing a plan. It’s a long-term project – you don’t get an entrenched aristocracy to change how they do things overnight – and it
relies on an indirect approach; the first step is to build a coalition and the second is to steer it. So I’ve been cutting deals, finding out what it’ll take to get various parties to
sign on. For it to succeed, we’ve got to work together, but everyone I’ve spoken to so far seems to be willing to do that – for their own reasons, if not for mine. Now . . . the
one thing the conservatives will rely on is the sure knowledge that mothers and daughters always work at cross-purposes. They
always
stab each other in the back, because the way the Clan is
structured to encourage arranged first-cousin marriages puts them in conflict. But . . . our rules are different. That’s a big part of why I raised you in the United States, by the way. I
wanted a daughter I could trust, a daughter who’d trust
me
. A daughter I could work with rather than against.’

Miriam stared at the backs of her hands on the handles of the wheelchair. A daughter’s hands. Trusting, maybe too trusting. They’d been over this ground before, and the outcome had
been unwelcome. But that was then . . . ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

Iris chuckled quietly. ‘Well, let me see. Knowing you, you’re planning something to do with business models and new worlds. Am I right? You’re plotting a business
revolution.’ Without waiting for Miriam’s assent she continued: ‘
My
plan is a bit different. I just want to make sure that no daughter of the families ever goes through
what you’ve been put through ever again, for dynastic reasons. Or what I went through. That’s all; nothing huge.’

Miriam cleared her throat. ‘But. You’d need to break the Clan’s entire structure to do that,’ she said conversationally. She could hear the blood throbbing in her
ears.

‘Yes,’ said Iris. ‘You see? You’re not the only one of us who wants a revolution.’ Her voice dropped a notch. ‘The trouble is, like I said: I can’t make
it work without your help. You’re in a powerful position, and better still, you’ve got a perfect excuse for moving across social boundaries rather than obeying convention. It’s
not going to be obvious to onlookers whether you’re doing stuff deliberately or because you don’t know any better. Which gives you a certain freedom of action . . . Meanwhile, my plan
depends on us agreeing to cooperate, and that’s something the braid system tends to discourage. See? A year ago you wouldn’t have been this suspicious of my motives. That’s part
of the problem. I know it’s a lot to ask of you – but I want you to trust me to help you.’

Miriam stared at the back of her mother’s head, her mind a whirl of emotions. Once, a year ago, she’d have trusted Iris implicitly, but now that she knew the forge her mother had
been tempered in, a tiny voice urged caution. ‘Tell me exactly what you’re planning,’ she said slowly, ‘then I’ll tell you what
I’m
planning.’

‘And then?’

‘Then perhaps we can do a deal.’

*

Working in the belly of the beast, supervising the electrically driven presses of the
Petrograd Times
and minding the telautograph senders that broadcast the message of
the Committee for Democratic Accountability up and down the western seaboard, Erasmus had little time to spare for mundane tasks (he slept under his desk, having not had time even to requisition a
room in a miner’s flophouse), but he had a superb perspective on the revolution. ‘We’re going to succeed,’ he told John Winstanley one morning, over tea. ‘I think this
time it’s actually going to
work.’

Winstanley had stared at him. ‘You thought it might not? Careful, citizen!’

‘Feh.’ Burgeson snorted. ‘I’ve spent half my life in exile,
citizen
, working underground for a second chance. Ask Sir Adam, or Lady Bishop, if you doubt my
commitment. And I’ll willingly do it all over again and go for third time lucky, and even a fourth, if this one doesn’t succeed. I’m just pleased to note that it probably
won’t be necessary
, and so I am taking advantage of your discretion to vent a little steam in company where it won’t fog the minds of the new fish.’

‘Ahem. Well, then, I certainly can’t find fault with
that
. I’m sorry, Erasmus. Sometimes it’s hard to be sure who’s reliable and who isn’t.’

Burgeson turned his attention back to the pile of communiqués on the table, studiously ignoring the Truth Commissioner. He was rapidly developing a jaundiced view of many of his fellow
revolutionaries, now that the time to come out of the shadows and march for freedom and democracy had arrived; too many of them stood revealed as time-servers and insidious busybodies, who
glowingly talked up their activities in the underground struggle with scant evidence of actually having done anything.
I didn’t spend twenty years underground just so the likes of you
could criticize me for pessimism
,
citizen
. The New Men seemed to be more preoccupied with rooting out dissenters and those lacking in ideological zeal than in actually building a better
nation, but Erasmus wasn’t yet sure enough of his footing to speak out against them. The rot had spread far and wide in a matter of weeks.
Not so surprising, if what the membership
subcommittee reports is right
, he reminded himself; the council’s declared members – whose number could all count on a short drop to the end of a rope if the revolution failed
– had quadrupled in the past two weeks, and just keeping Polis informers out of the rank and file was proving a challenge.

‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘Jim, if you’d be so good . . . ?’

‘Ayup.’ Jim, who Erasmus had drafted as a sub-editor as soon as he’d ascertained his literacy, picked up the top of the pile. ‘Lessee now. Yesterday, Telegraph Street,
Cyprus Hill: A people’s collective has seized control of the Jevons Ironworks and Steam Corporation factory and is restarting the manufacturing of parts for the war effort, with the arming of
the Cyprus Hill militia as a first priority. The first four armored steamers have been delivered and are patrolling the Hispaniola Reaches already.’

‘Bottom drawer,’ Erasmus said instantly. ‘Next.’

‘Yesterday, Dunedin: The ships of the Ontario patrol have put into harbor and their officers and men have raised the people’s flag. That’s the last of the undeclared
territorial and riverine patrols – ’

‘Get that on the wire. Hold page three, this sounds promising.’

‘A moment.’ Winstanley leaned forward. ‘Are those ships under control of people’s commissioners? Because if not, how do we know they’re not planning –
’

Burgeson glared at him. ‘That’s not your department,’ he said, ‘nor mine. If you want to waste your time, make inquiries; my job is to get the news out, and this is
news.’ He turned back to Jim. ‘Get someone to look for some stock pictures of the Ontario patrol. I know: you, Bill. Go now, find pictures.’

Bill, the put-upon trainee sub, darted off through the news room towards the stairs down to the library. ‘Next story,’ Erasmus said wearily.