The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (61 page)

‘Not as bad as some.’ Huw straightened up, then gestured at the bags: ‘I bought the books Miriam wanted. And a few more besides. Yul is’ – footsteps creaked on the
stairs and he stepped aside as his brother hauled two more suitcases over the threshold – ‘here, too.’

‘And all these damned bits of paper,’ his brother complained, shoving the cases forward. ‘Lightning Child damn them for a waste of weight – ’ He stepped forward,
out of the path of the sergeant from the other side of the transit post, who heaved another two bags towards Huw.

‘Trig tables,’ Huw added. ‘Have you any idea how hard it is to find five-digit trigonometry tables in good condition? Nobody’s printed them for years. I also threw in a
couple of calculators – I found a store with old stock HP-48GXs and a thermal printer, so I bought the lot. They take rechargeable batteries so the only scarce resource is the thermal
paper,’ he added defensively. ‘I’m still running the one I bought for my freshman year – they run forever. They predate the ban on lead in solder, so there’s no
problem with tin whiskers forming in the ICs and shorting them out.’

‘Oh, Huw.’ Brill shook her head, still smiling. ‘Listen, I’m sure it’s a good idea! It’s just’ – she glanced over her shoulder – ‘we
may not be able to resupply at will, and you know how easily computers break.’

‘These aren’t computers; they’re programmable calculators. But they might as well be mainframes, by these people’s standards. And we brought rechargeable batteries and
solar chargers.’ He was burbling, he realized: a combination of post-world-walking sickness and the peculiar relief of finding Brill alive and well in the wake of the previous week’s
events. ‘Sorry. Been a stressful time. Is Miriam – ’

‘She’s in bed upstairs. Resting.’ An unreadable expression flickered across Brill’s face. ‘I’ll give you the tour, if you like. Who else . . . ?’

‘Me, ma’am.’ The sergeant reappeared, carrying two more suitcases, wheezing somewhat. ‘One more to go, sirs, ladies.’

‘No need to overdo it, Marek, the last cases will wait half an hour if you want to put your feet up.’ Brill’s concern was obvious: ‘You’ve already been over today,
haven’t you?’

‘Yes, ma’am, but it needs moving and we’re shorthanded – ’

‘You’ll be even more shorthanded if you work yourself into a stroke! Go and sit yourself down in the parlor with a mug of beer and a pill until your head clears. Go on, I’ll
get Maria to look after you – ’ Brill dragged the sergeant out of the servants’ stairwell, seemingly by main force of will, then returned to lead Huw into the downstairs lounge.
‘He’s right that they’re badly undermanned over there, but he insists on trying to do everything,’ she said apologetically. ‘There’s too much of that around
here.’

‘Too much of it
everywhere
!’ Elena said emphatically. ‘Why, if I hadn’t forced Huw to let me drive – but how is her royal highness?’ She looked at Huw:
‘Won’t she want to – ’

‘Yes, how is she?’ Huw began, then stopped. Brill’s expression was bleak. ‘Oh. Oh dear.’

‘The lady Helge is perfectly all right.’ Brilliana’s voice was emotionless. ‘But she’s very tired and needs time to recover.’

‘Recover from what?’ Yul chipped in before Elena could kick his ankle.

‘Her express instructions are that you are to tell no one,’ Brill continued, looking Huw straight in the eye. ‘Nobody is going to leave this house who cannot keep his or her
mouth shut, at least until it no longer matters.’

‘Until
what
matters?’ Yul asked, head swiveling between Brilliana and Huw with ever-increasing perplexity.

‘Was it spontaneous?’ Huw demanded.

Brill nodded. ‘The day of the putsch.’

‘Let me see her?’ demanded Elena. ‘My mother was midwife to the district nobility when I was young and she taught me – ’

Yul stood by, crestfallen and lost for words. ‘Give me your locket,’ Brill said to Elena. ‘And you too,’ she added to Yul. She spared Huw but a brief narrow-eyed glance
that seemed to say,
If I can’t trust you, then who?
‘You’re not to tire her out, mind,’ she added for Elena’s benefit. ‘If she’s sleeping, leave her
be.’ Then she turned towards the door to the owner’s rooms. ‘Leave the cases for now, Huw. Let me fill you in on what’s been going wrong here . . .’

*

In the end, there was no siege: The house surrendered without a shot being fired, doors and windows flung wide, a white flag running up the pole that rose from the apex of the
steeply pitched roof.

That wouldn’t have been enough to save the occupants, of course. Riordan was not inclined towards mercy: In the wake of a hard-fought civil war against the old nobility, it was quite
obvious to one and all that the Clan divided must fall, and this rebellion could be seen as nothing but the blackest treachery. But by the same token, the families were weak, their numbers
perilously low – and acts of gratuitous revenge would only weaken them further, and risk sowing the seeds of blood feud to boot. ‘Arrest everyone,’ he’d instructed his
captain on the ground, Sir Helmut: ‘You may hang Oliver Hjorth, Griben ven Hjalmar, or’ – a lengthy list of confirmed conspirators – ‘out of hand, and you may deal as
you wish with anyone who resists, but we must avoid the appearance of revenge at all costs. We can afford to spare those who did not raise arms against us, and who are guilty only of following
their sworn liege – and their dependents.’

Helmut’s mustache quivered. ‘Is this wise, sir?’ he asked.

‘Probably not,’ Riordan retorted, ‘But the alternative is even less so – unless you think we should undertake our enemies’ work for them by cutting each
other’s throats to the last?’

And so: This was the third great holding of a rebel family that Sir Helmut had ridden into in two days. And they were getting the message. At the last one, the house of Freyn-Hankl, a minor
outer family connected with the Hjorth lineage, the servants had risen up and locked their upstart landowners in the wine cellars, and sued for mercy. Sir Helmut, mindful of his commanding
officer’s advice, had rewarded them accordingly, then sent them packing to spread the word (before he discreetly executed his prisoners – who had, to be fair, poisoned the entire staff
of the local Security post by treachery). Facing the open windows and doors of the summer house at Judtford, with his soldiers going in and coming out at will, he was pleased with the outcome of
this tactic. Whether or not it was wise or necessary, it was certainly proving to be effective.

‘Sir! If you please, to the drawing room.’ A startled-looking messenger boy, barely in his teens, darted from the front door.

Sir Helmut stared at him. ‘In whose name?’ he demanded.

‘Sir! Two duchesses! One of them’s the queen’s mum, an’ the other is hers! What should we do with them, Jan wants to know?’

Sir Helmut stared some more, until the lad’s bravado collapsed with a shudder. Then he nodded and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Sammel, Karl, accompany me,’ he snapped. The two
soldiers nodded and moved in, rifles at the ready. ‘Lead me to the ladies,’ he told the messenger. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’

The withdrawing room was dark, and cramped with too much overstuffed furniture, and it smelled of face powder and death. Flies buzzed near the ceiling above the occupants, a pair whom Sir Helmut
could not help but recognize. One of them was sleeping. ‘What happened here?’ he demanded.

The younger of the pair – the one who was mother to the queen-widow – looked at him from beneath drooping eyelids. ‘Was ’fraid you wouldn’t get here,’ she
slurred.

‘What – ’

‘Poison. In tha’ wine. Sh-she started it.’ A shaking hand rose slowly, pointed at the mounded fabric, the shriveled, doll-like body within. ‘Tha’ coup.
’S’hers. Did it for Helge, she said.’

‘But – ’ Helmut’s eyes took in the empty decanter, the lack of motion. ‘Are you drunk, or – ’

‘Dying, prob’ly.’ She wheezed for a second or two; it might have been laughter. ‘Poisoned the wine with pure heroin. The trade of queens.’

‘I see.’ Helmut turned to the wide-eyed messenger lad: ‘You. Run along and fetch a medic,
fast
.’ To the duchess: ‘There’s an antidote. We’ll get
you – ’

‘No.’ Patricia closed her eyes for a long moment. ‘Ma, Hilde – Hildegarde. Started this all. Leave her. No trial. As for me . . .’ She subsided, slurring. A
rattling snort emanated from the other chair and Helmut glanced at the door, before leaning to listen to the old woman’s chest.

Helmut rose and, turning on his heel, strode towards the door.
Crone save me,
he subvocalized. The messenger was coming, a corpsman following behind. ‘I have two heroin overdoses
for you,’ Helmut told him. ‘Forget triage; save the younger one first if at all possible.’

‘Heroin overdose?’ The paramedic looked startled. ‘But I don’t have – are you sure – ’

‘Deliberate poisoning. Get to it.’ Helmut stepped aside as the medic nodded and went inside. Helmut breathed deeply, then turned to the messenger. ‘Here.’ He pulled out
his notepad and scribbled a brief memo. ‘Tell comms to radio this to Earl-Major Riordan in day code purple, stat.’ The lad took the note and fled. Helmut stared after him for a moment
then shook his head.
What a mess.
Poisoning and attempted matricide versus kidnapping: petty treason versus high treason. How to weigh the balance? ‘Jester’s balls, if only
I’d been delayed an hour on the road . . .’

*

Miriam lay in bed, propped up on a small mountain of pillows, staring blankly at the floral-patterned wallpaper behind the water jug on the dresser and thinking about death.

I never wanted it. So why am I feeling so bad?
she wondered.
What the hell is
wrong
with me?

It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to have a baby: Griben ven Hjalmar’s artificial insemination was, if not actual rape, then certainly morally equivalent. Only Huw’s offer to
help her obtain a termination – if that was what she willed – had kept her from running, and not stopping until she arrived at the nearest available abortion clinic. As the immediate
rage and humiliation and dread faded, she began to reevaluate the situation: not from an American woman’s perspective, but with the eyes of a Clan noblewoman catapulted headlong into the
middle of a fraught political dilemma.
I don’t have to love it. I don’t have to raise it. I just have to put up with eight months of back pain and morning sickness and get it out of
my body. And in return
. . .

She’d signed a fraught compromise with her conscience. Perhaps she was just rationalizing her situation, even succumbing to Stockholm syndrome – the tendency of the abducted to
empathize with their kidnappers – and while she hated what had been done to her, she was no longer eager to dispose of the unwanted pregnancy. She’d done it before, many years ago; it
had been difficult, the situation looming no less inconveniently in a life turned upside down, but she’d persevered. She’d even, a year ago, harbored wistful thoughts about finding a
Mr. Right and –

Her body had betrayed her.

I’m thirty-five, damn it.
Not an ideal age to be pregnant, especially in a medieval backwater without rapid access to decent medical care. Especially in the middle of a civil war
with enemies scheming for her demise, or worse. She’d been stressed, anxious, frightened, and still in the first trimester: and when the cramps began she’d ignored them, refusing to
admit what was happening.
And now it’s not going to happen.
The royal dynasty that had ruled the Gruinmarkt for the past century and a half had bled out in a bedpan in New Britain,
while the soldiers watched their maps and the nobles schemed. It wasn’t much worse than a heavy period (aside from the pain, and the shock, and the sudden sense of horror as a sky full of
cloud-castle futures evaporated). But it was a death sentence, and not just for the dynastic plans of the conservative faction.

She’d managed to hold her face together until she was away from Riordan’s headquarters, with Brill’s support. Ridden piggyback across to a farmhouse in the countryside outside
small-town Framingham – not swallowed by Boston’s suburbs, in New Britain’s contorted history – that Sir Alasdair had located: abandoned, for reasons unclear, but not
decayed.

‘We’ve got to keep you away from court, my lady,’ Brill explained, hollow-eyed with exhaustion, as she steered her up the staircase to an underfurnished bedroom. It had been a
day since the miscarriage: a day of heavy bleeding, with the added discomfort of a ride in an oxcart through the backwoods around Niejwein. She’d begun shivering with the onset of a mild
fever, not taking it all in, anomalously passive. ‘When word gets out all hell will follow soon enough, but we can buy time first. Miriam? How do you feel?’

Miriam had licked her lips. ‘Freezing,’ she complained. ‘Need water.’ She’d pulled the bedding over her shoulders, curling up beneath without removing her
clothes.

‘I’ll get a doctor,’ Brill had said. And that was about the last thing Miriam remembered clearly for the next forty-eight hours.

Her fever was easily banished by bootleg drugs – amoxicillin was eerily effective in a world that hadn’t been overexposed to antibiotics – and she lay abed, weak but
recovering. Brilliana had held the center of her world, drafting in her household staff as they surfaced after the coup, organizing a courier link to the Niejwein countryside, turning her muttered
suggestions into firm orders issued in the name of the security directorate’s highest office.
I don’t deserve these people,
Miriam thought vaguely. Depression stalked her waking
hours incessantly, and her mood fluctuated from hour to hour: She couldn’t tell from moment to moment whether she was relieved or bereft.
Why do they put up with me? Can’t do
anything
right. Can’t build a business, can’t have a baby, can’t even stay awake
–

There was a knock at the door.

She cleared her throat. ‘Enter.’ Her voice creaked like a rusting hinge, underused.

The door opened. ‘Miriam?’

She turned her head. ‘Ah! Sir Huw.’ She cleared her throat again. ‘Sorry. Not been well.’ Huw was still wearing Gruinmarkt-casual: leather leggings, linen blouson. She
saw another face behind him: ‘And, and Elena? Hello, come on in. Sorry I can’t be more hos– hospitable.’ She tried to sit up.