The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (74 page)

Fascinating,
thought James. There was familial loyalty on display here, and also a strangely familiar bitterness. He cleared his throat. ‘Then a defector from your own ranks showed
up.’

‘Who?’

‘A doctor – ’ He stopped. They were staring at him. ‘ – I believe you know him. Ven Hjalmar, he’s called.’
Their faces
– cold sweat sprang
out in the small of his back. ‘Why? Is something wrong?’

‘Please continue.’

‘But you – ’

‘It’s a personal matter.’ Miriam made a cutting gesture. James took in the other signs: Sir Alasdair, Lady Brilliana – sudden focus, as attentive as hounds at the trail
of a fox. ‘What happened?’

Suddenly lots of things slid into place. ‘You have reason to hate him?’
Good.
‘He has convinced my uncle that it is necessary to conspire with a political patron, and to
sell him a, a
breeding program
he says your families established in America. Preposterous nonsense, but . . .’ He trailed off. Miriam’s expression was deathly.

‘He did, did he?’

‘Yes – ’ James took a deep breath. ‘It’s true? He’s telling the truth? There
is
a breeding program? The American doctors can breed world-walkers the
way a farmer breeds sheep?’

‘Not
exactly
like that, but close enough.’ Miriam made eye contact with Alasdair. ‘We’re in so much shit,’ she said quietly. She looked back to James:
‘Which commissar is your uncle doing business with?’

‘Commissioner Reynolds, overstaff supervisor in charge of the Directorate of Internal Security.’ James took no pleasure from their expressions. ‘A man I love even less than the
doctor. He carries a certain stink; if I was a Christian I’d say he’s committed mortal sins, and knows himself for one of the damned.’ He crossed his arms. ‘I was in at
their last meeting, yesterday; to my eternal shame my uncle believes my loyalty knows no limits, and I have not yet disabused him of this notion. Yesterday. The meeting . . . the doctor told
Reynolds that your acquaintance Mr. Burgeson was trying to acquire world-walkers of his own. I’m not entirely sure whether he was telling the truth or not, and this is purest hearsay and
gossip – I know nothing specific about your arrangements, my lady, and I don’t want to. But if the doctor was telling the truth, you’d better warn your patron sooner rather than
later . . .’

The track from Kirschford down to the Linden Valley – which also defined the border of the duchy of Niejwein and Baron Cromalloch’s ridings – was unusually
crowded with carriages and riders this day. A local farmer out tending his herd might have watched with some surprise; the majority of the traffic was clearly upper-class, whole families of minor
nobility and their close servants taking to the road in a swarm, as if some great festival had been decreed in the nearby market town of Glantzwurt. But there was no such god’s day coming,
nor rumor of a royal court tour through the provinces. The aristocracy were more usually to be found on their home estates, staying away from the fetid kennels of the capital at this time of
year.

But there were no curious farmers, of course. The soldiers who had ridden ahead with the morning sunrise had made it grimly clear that this procession was not to be witnessed; and in the wake of
the savagery of spring and early summer’s rampage, those tenants who had survived unscathed were more than cooperative. So the hedgerows were mostly empty of curious eyes as the convoy
creaked and squealed and neighed along the Linden Valley – curious eyes which might, if they were owned by unusually well-traveled commoners, recognize the emblems of the witch-families.

The Clan was on the move, and nothing would be the same again.

A covered wagon or a noble’s carriage is an uncomfortable way to travel at the best of times, alternately chill and drafty or chokingly, stiflingly hot (depending on the season), rocking
on crude leaf springs or crashing from rut to stone on no springs at all, the seats a wooden bench (perhaps with a thin cushion to save the noble posterior from the insults of the road). The
horsemen might have had a better time of it, but for the dust clouds flung up by the hooves of close to a hundred animals, and the flies. To exchange a stifling shuttered box for biting insects and
mud that slowly clung to sweating man and horse alike was perhaps no choice at all. But one thing they agreed: It was essential to move together, and the path of least resistance was, to say the
least, unsafe.

‘Why can’t we go to ’Mer’ca, Ma?’

Helena voh Wu gritted her teeth as one carriage wheel bounced across a stone in the road. Tess, her second-youngest, was four years old and bright by disposition, but the exodus was taking its
toll after two days, and the question came out as a whine. ‘We can’t go there any more, dear. I told you, it’s not safe.’

‘But it’s where Da goes when he travels?’

‘That’s different.’ Helena rested a hand lightly on the crib. Markus was asleep – had, in fact, cried himself to sleep after a wailing tantrum. He didn’t travel
well. ‘We can’t go there.’

‘But why can’t we – ’

The other occupant of the carriage raised her eyes from the book she had been absorbed in. ‘For Sky Lady’s love, leave your ma be, Tess. See you not, she was trying to
sleep?’

Helena smiled gratefully at her. Kara, her sister-in-law, was traveling with them of necessity, for her husband Sir Leon was already busied with the residual duty of the postal corvée;
his young wife, her pregnancy not yet showing, was just another parcel to be transferred between houses in this desperately busy time. Not that Sir Leon believed the most outlandish warnings of the
radical faction, but there was little harm in sending Kara for a vacation with her eldest brother’s family.

Now Kara shook her head and glanced at Helena. The latter nodded, and Kara lifted Tess onto her lap, grunting slightly with the effort. ‘Once upon a time we could all travel freely to
America, at least those of us the Postal Service would permit, and it was a wondrous place, full of magic and treasure. But that’s not where we’re going, Tess. There are bad men in
America, and evil wizards; they are hunting our menfolk who travel there, and they want to hunt us all down and throw us in their deepest dungeons.’

The child’s eyes were growing wider with every sentence. Helena was about to suggest that Kara lighten up on the story, but she continued, gently bouncing Tess upon her knee: ‘But
don’t worry, we have a plan. We’re going on a journey somewhere else, to a new world like America but different, one where the k– where the rulers don’t hate and fear us.
We’re going to cross over there and we’ll be safe. You’ll have a new dress, and practice your Anglischprache, and it’ll be a great adventure! And the bad men won’t be
able to find us.’

Tess looked doubtful. ‘Will the bad men get Da?’

Helena’s heart missed a beat. ‘Of course not!’ she said hotly. Gyorg ven Wu would be deep underground, shuffling between doppelgängered bunkers with a full wheelbarrow as
often as the blood-pressure monitor said was safe: a beast of burden, toiling to carry the vital necessities of life between a basement somewhere in Massachusetts and a dungeon or wine cellar
beneath a castle or mansion in the Gruinmarkt. Ammunition, tools, medicine, gold, anything that Clan Security deemed necessary. The flow of luxuries had stopped cold, the personal allowance
abolished in the wake of the wave of assassinations that had accompanied the horridness in the Anglischprache capital.

‘Your da is safe,’ Kara reassured the child. ‘He’ll come to see us soon enough. I expect he’ll bring you chocolate.’

Helena cast her a reproving look – chocolate was an expensive import to gift on a child – but Kara caught her eye and shook her head slightly. The effect of the word
chocolate
on Tess was remarkable. ‘Want chocolate!’ she exclaimed. ‘
All
the chocolate!’

Kara smiled over Tess’s head, then grimaced as one of the front wheels thumped over the edge of a rut and the carriage crashed down a few inches. Markus twitched, clenched a tiny fist
close to his mouth uneasily as Helena leaned over him. ‘I wish we had a smoother road to travel,’ she said quietly. ‘Or that we could walk from nearer home.’

‘The queen’s men have arranged a safely defended house,’ Kara reminded her. ‘They wouldn’t force us to travel this way without good reason. She wouldn’t let
them.’

‘She?’

‘Her Majesty.’ An odd look stole across her face, one part nostalgia to two parts regret. ‘I was one of her maids. She was very wise.’

So you never tire of reminding us,
Helena thought, but held her tongue; with another enervating day’s drive ahead, there was nothing to gain from picking a fight. Then Tess chirped
up again: ‘Tell me about the queen?’

‘Surely.’ Kara ruffled her hair. ‘Queen Helge was the child of Duke Alfredo and his wife. One day when she was younger than your brother Markus, when her parents were traveling
to their country estates, they were set upon by assassins sent by – ’

Helena half-closed her eyes and leaned against the wall of the carriage, looking out through the open window at the tree line beyond the cleared roadside strip.
I wonder if this is what it
was like for Helge’s mother,
she wondered.
She escaped just ahead of her attackers, didn’t she? I wonder if we’ll be so lucky
. . .

*

Arranging a meeting was much easier the second time round. Miriam handed Sir Alasdair a hastily scribbled note for the telautograph office to dispatch: NEED TO TALK URGENTLY
TOMORROW AGREED LOCATION STOP. One of Alasdair’s men, and then the nearest post office, did the rest.

Not that imperiously demanding a conversation with the commissioner for propaganda was a trivial matter; receiving it in New London only two hours after it was transmitted, Erasmus swore under
his breath and, before departing for his evening engagement – dinner with Victor McDougall, deputy commissioner for press approval – booked a compartment on the morning mail train to
Boston, along with two adjacent compartments for his bodyguards and a communications clerk. By sheer good luck Miriam had picked the right day: He could see her and, provided he caught the
following morning’s train for the return journey, be back in the capital in time for the Thursday Central Committee meeting. ‘This had better be worth it,’ he muttered to himself
as he clambered into the passenger compartment of his ministerial car for the journey to McDougall’s home. However, it didn’t occur to him to ignore Miriam’s summons. In all the
time he’d known her, she’d never struck him as being one to act impetuously; if she said something was urgent, it almost certainly was.

Attending the meeting was also easier, second time round. The morning after James Lee’s visit, Miriam rose early and dressed for a public excursion. She took care to look as nondescript as
possible; to be mistaken for a woman of particular wealth could be as dangerous here as to look impoverished, and the sartorial class indicators were much more sharply defined than back in the
United States. ‘I’m ready to go whenever you’ve got cover for me,’ she told Sir Alasdair, as she entered the front parlor. ‘Two guards, one car, and a
walkie-talkie.’

‘Emil and Klaus are waiting.’ Sir Alasdair didn’t smile. ‘They’ll park two streets away and remain on call.’ He gestured at the side table: ‘Lady
d’Ost prepared a handbag for you before she went out.’

‘There’s no – ’ Miriam paused. ‘You think I’ll need this?’ She lifted the bag, feeling the drag of its contents – a two-way radio and the dense
metallic weight of a pistol.

‘I hope you won’t. But better safe than unsafe.’

The steamer drove slowly through the streets and neighborhoods of a dense, urban Boston quite unlike the city Miriam had known; different architecture, different street names, different shops
and businesses. There were a few more vehicles on the roads today, and fewer groups of men loitering on street corners; they passed two patrols of green-clad Freedom Rider militiamen, red armbands
and shoulder-slung shotguns matching their arrogant stride. Policing and public order were beginning to return to the city, albeit in a very different shape. Posters had gone up on some of the high
brick walls: the stern-jawed face of a balding, white-haired man. CITIZEN BURROUGHS SAYS: WE WORK FOR FREEDOM! Miriam hunched her shoulders against an imperceptible chill, pushing back against the
bench seat. Erasmus had spoken glowingly of Citizen Burroughs. She found herself wishing fervently for him to be right, despite her better reservations.