The Merchants’ War

Breakthroughs

It’s all very simple, Huw tried to reassure himself. It’ll take us somewhere new, or it won’t. True, the Wu family knotwork worked fine, as a key for travel between the worlds of the Gruinmarkt and New Britain. But the limited, haphazard attempts to use it in the United States had all failed so far. Huw had a theory to explain that: Miriam was in the wrong place when she’d tried to world-walk.

You couldn’t world-walk if there was a solid object in your position in the destination world. That was why doppelgangering worked, why if you wanted protection against assassins for your castle in the Gruinmarkt you needed to secure the equivalent territory in the United States—or in any other world where the same geographical location was up for grabs. That explained why the Wu family had been able to successfully murder a handful of Clan heads over the years, triggering and fueling the vicious civil war that had decimated the Clan between the nineteen-forties and the late nineteen-seventies. And their lack of the pattern required to world-walk to the United States explained why, in the long run, the Wu family had fallen so far behind their Clan cousins.

“There are a bunch of ways the knotwork might work,” he’d tried to explain to the duke. “The fact that two different knots let us travel between two different worlds is interesting. And they’re similar, which implies they’re variations on a common theme. But does the knotwork specify two endpoints, in which case all a given knot can do is let you shuttle between two worlds, A and B—or does it define a vector relationship in a higher space? One that’s quantized, and commutative, so if you start in universe A you always shuttle from A to B and back again, but if you transport it to C you can then use it to go between C and a new world, call it D?”

The duke had just blinked at him thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I understand. How will I explain this to the committee?”

Huw had to give it some thought. “Imagine an infinite chessboard. Each square on the board is a world. Now pick a piece—a knight, for example. You can move to another square, or reverse your move and go back to where you started from. That’s what I mean by a quantized commutative transformation—you can only move in multiples of a single knight’s move, your knight can’t simply slide one square to the left or right, it’s constrained. Now imagine our clan knotwork is a knight—and the Wu family’s design is, um, a special kind of rook that can move exactly three squares in a straight line. You use the knight, then the rook: to get back to where you started you have to reverse your rook’s move, then reverse the knight’s move. But because they’re different types of move, they don’t go to the same places—and if you combine them, you can discover new places to go. An infinite number of new places.”

“That is a very interesting theory. Test it. Find out if it’s true. Then report to me.” He raised a warning finger: “Try not to get yourself killed in the process.”

The pizza crusts were cold and half the soda was drunk. It was mid-afternoon, and the house was cooling down now that the air-conditioning had been on for a while. Huw sat in the front room, staring at the laptop screen. According to the geo graph i cal database, the ground underfoot was about as stable as it came. There were no nearby rivers, no obvious escarpments with debris to slide down and block the approaches. He closed his eyes, trying to visualize what the area around the house might look like in a land bare of human habitation. “You guys ready yet?” he called.

“Nearly there.” There was a clicking, rattling noise from the kitchen. Elena was tweaking her vicious little toy again. (“You’re exploring: your job is to take measurements, look around, avoid being seen, and come right back. But if the worst happens, you aren’t going to let anyone stop you coming back. Or leave any witnesses.”)

“Ready.” Hulius came in the door, combat boots thudding.

Huw glanced up. In his field camouflage, body armor, and helmet Hulius loomed like a rich survivalist who’d been turned loose in an army surplus store. “where’s your telemetry pack?”

“In the kitchen. Where’s your medical kit?”

Huw gestured at the side of the room. “Back porch.” He slid the laptop aside carefully and stood up. “How’s your blood pressure?”

“No problems with it, I’m not dizzy or anything.”

“Good. Okay, so let’s go…”

Huw found Elena in the kitchen at the back of the rental house. She had her telemetry belt on, and the headset, and had rigged the P90 in a tactical sling across her chest. “Ready?” he asked.

“I can’t wait!” She bounced excitedly on her toes.

“Let me check your equipment first.” She surrendered with ill grace to Huw’s examination. “Okay, I’m switching it on now.” He poked at the ruggedized PDA, then waited until the screen showed an off-kilter view of the back of his head. “Good, camera’s working.” He turned to Hulius. Gruffly: “Your turn now.”

“Sure, dude.” Hulius stood patiently while Huw hung the telemetry pack off his belt, under the big fanny pack of ration packs, drink cans, and survival tools. Hulius’s was heavier, and included a Toughbook PC and a short-wave radio—unlike Elena he might be sticking around for a while.

“Got signal.”

“Cool. I’m ready whenever you are.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you out back.”

Huw headed for the front room to collect the big aid kit and the artist’s portfolio, his head spinning. Demo time. Right? Nobody had done this before; not this well-or ganized, anyway. He felt a momentary stab of anxiety. If we’d done this right, we’d have two evenly matched world-walkers, able to lift each other, not a line backer and a princess. The failure modes scared him shitless if he stopped to think about them. Still, Yul and ’Lena were eager volunteers. That counted for something, didn’t it?

The back door, opening off the kitchen, stood open, letting in a wave of humidity. Hulius and Elena stood in the overgrown yard, Elena facing Yul’s back as he crouched down. “Ready?” called Huw.

“Yo!”

Huw placed the first aid kit carefully on the deck beside him, then unzipped the art portfolio. “Elena, you ready?”

“Whenever big boy here gets down on his knees.”

“I didn’t know you cared, babe—”

Huw stifled a tense grin. “You heard her. Piggyback up, I’m going to uncover in ten. Good luck, guys.”

Hulius crouched down and Elena wrapped her arms around his chest from behind. He held his hands out and she carefully placed her feet in them. With a grunt of strain, he rose to his feet as Huw dropped the front cover of the folio, revealing the print within—carefully keeping it facing away from himself. “Go!”

He tripped the stopwatch, then put the folio down, closing it. Heart hammering, he watched the yard, stopwatch in hand. Five seconds. Elena would be down and looking around, a long, slow, scan, her headset capturing the view. Ten seconds. The weather station on her belt should be stabilizing, reading out the ambient temperature, pressure, and humidity. Fifteen seconds. Her first scan ought to be complete, and the smart radio scanner ought to be logging megabits of data per second, searching for signs of technology. If there were no immediate threats she should be taking stock of Yul, making sure his blood pressure was stable from the ’walk. Thirty seconds. Huw began to feel a chilly sweat in the small of his back. By now, Hulius should have planted a marker and be on his way to the nearest cover, or would be digging in to wait out the one-hour minimum period before he could return. He’d have a bad headache right now—if he used the one-hour waypoint he’d be in bed for twenty hour hours afterwards, if not puking his guts up. Otherwise he’d stay a while longer…

Fifty-five. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty. Oh shit. Sixty one. Sixty-two.

The scenery changed. Huw’s heart was in his mouth for a moment: then he managed to focus on Elena. She was holding her hands out, thumbs-up in jubilation. “Case green! Case green!”

Huw sat down heavily. I think I’m going to be sick. It had been the longest minute of his life. “What happened?” he asked, his voice thick with tension: “Which schedule is Yul running to?”

She climbed the steps to the rear stoop. Her submachine gun was missing. “Let’s go inside, I need to take some of this stuff off before I melt.”

Huw held the door open for her with barely controlled impatience. “What happened?” He demanded.

“Relax, it’s all right, really.” She began to unfasten her helmet and Huw moved in hastily to unplug the camera. It was beaded with moisture and he swore quietly when he saw that the lens was fogged over.

“You need to remove the telemetry pack first, I need to get this downloaded.”

“Oh all right then! Here’s your blasted toy.” For a moment she worked on her equipment belt fastenings, then held it up at arm’s length with an expression of distaste. Huw grabbed it before she let it drop. “It’s perfectly safe over there. A lot cooler than it is here, and there are trees everywhere—”

“What kind of trees?”

She shrugged vaguely. “Trees. Like in the Alps. Dark green, spiny things. Christmas tree trees. You want to know about trees? Send a tree professor.”

“Okay. So it’s cold and there are coniferous trees. Anything else?”

Elena laid her helmet on the kitchen worktop and began to unfasten her body armor. “It was raining and the rain was cold. We couldn’t see very far, but it was quiet—not like over here.”

Huw shook his head: City girl.

“Anyway, I checked over Yul and he said he felt fine and there was no sign of anybody, so I gave him the P90 and tripped back over. Whee!”

Huw managed to confine his response to a nod. “When is he coming back?”

“Uh, we agreed on case green. That means four hours, right?”

“Four hours.” Elena laid her armor out on the kitchen table then began to unlace her combat boots. “Then we can break out the wine, yay!”

“I’ll be in the front room,” Huw muttered, cradling the telemetry belt. “Would you mind staying here and watching the back window for a few minutes? If you see anything at all, call me.”

In the front room, Huw poked at the ruggedized PDA, switching off the logging program. He plugged it into the laptop to recharge and hotsync, then sighed. The video take would be a while downloading, but the portable weather station had its own display. He unplugged it from the PDA, flicked it on, and looked at the last reading. Temperature: 16 Celsius. Pressure: 1026 millibars. Relative humidity: 65%. “What the fuck?” He muttered to himself. Sixteen Celsius—sixty Fahrenheit—in Maryland, in August? With high pressure? That was the bit that didn’t make sense. It was over ninety outside, with 1020 millibars. “It’s twenty Celsius degrees colder over there? And the trees are conifers?”

The penny dropped. “No wonder nobody could use the Wu family knotwork up in Massachusetts—it’s probably under half a mile of ice!”

“Hey, you talking to me?” Elena called from the kitchen.

Huw glanced at the laptop. “Be right back, buddy,” he told it, then carefully put it down on the battered cargo case, picked up the brown paper bag with the wine, and walked back towards Elena to wait for Hulius’s return.

It was afternoon, according to the baleful red lights on the small TV opposite Mike’s bed. He blinked at it sleepily, feeling no particular inclination to reach out for the remote control that sat on the trolley beside his bed. The curtains were drawn across what he took for a window niche, and he was alone in the small hospital room with nothing for company but the TV, the usual clutter of spotlights and strange valves and switches on the wall behind his bed, and the plastic cocoon they’d wrapped his leg in. The cocoon—it’s like something out of Alien, he thought dreamily. Drainage tubes ran from it to the side of the bed, and there was a trolley with some kind of gadget next to him, and a hose leading to his left wrist. A drip. That was it. I’m on a drip. Therefore, I must be home. I drip, therefore I am. The thought was preposterously funny in a distant, swirly kind of way. Come to think of it, all his thoughts seemed to be leaving vapor trails, bouncing off the inside of his skull in slow motion. His leg ached, distantly, but it was nothing important. I’m home. Phone home. Maybe I should phone Mom and Pop? Let them know I’m all right. No, that wouldn’t work—Mom and Pop died years ago, in the car crash with Sue. Forget it. He managed to roll his eyes towards the table the TV stood on. There was no telephone. Some hospital bedroom this is…

He was too hot. Much too hot. He was wearing pajamas: that was it. Fumbling for the buttons with his right hand, he realized he was fatigued. It felt as if his arm was weak, a long way away. He managed to get a couple of buttons undone, just as the door opened.

“As you can see he’s, oh my—”

“Mike? Can he hear me?”

“I’m too hot.” It came out funny.

“I’m real sorry, Mr. Smith, but he’s running a fever. We’ve got him on IV penicillin for the infection, and morphine—”

“Penicillin? Isn’t that old-fashioned; I mean, aren’t most bacteria resistant to it these days?”

“That’s not what the path lab report says about this one, thank Jesus; you’re right, most infections are resistant, but he’s had the good fortune to pick up an old-fashioned one. So, like I was saying, he’s on morphine, his leg’s an almighty mess, and they used a whole lot of Valium on him last night so he wouldn’t pull out his tubes.”

“Mike?”

The voice was familiar, conjuring up images of a whirring hand exerciser, a tense expression. “Boss?”

“Mike? Did you try to say something?”

Lips are dry. He tried to nod.

“Ah, h—heck. Is it the Valium? Or the morphine?”

“He ought to be better in a couple of hours, Mr. Smith.”

“Okay. You hang in there, Mike. I’ll be right back.”

The door closed on discussion, and the sound of footsteps walking away. Mike closed his eyes and tried to gather his thoughts. In the hospital. Doped up. Leg hurts a little. Morphine? Colonel Smith. Got to talk to the colonel…

An indefinite time later, Mike was awakened by the rattle of the door opening.

“Huh—hi, boss.” The cotton wool wrapping seemed to have gone away: he was still tired and a little fuzzy, but thinking didn’t feel like wading through warm mud anymore. He struggled, trying to sit up. “Huh. Water.”

There was a jug of water sitting on the bedside trolley, and a couple of disposable cups. Eric sat down on the side of the bed and filled a cup, then passed it to him carefully. “Can you manage that? Good.”

“’S better.” What’s the colonel wanting? Must be really anxious for news to be here himself… He cleared his throat experimentally. “How…how long?”

“It’s Sunday afternoon. You were dumped on our doorstep on Friday evening, two and a half days past your due date. Do you feel like talking, or do you need a bit more time?”

“More water. I’ll talk. Is…is official debrief?”

“Yes, Mike. Fill me in and I promise to leave you alone to recover.” Eric smiled tightly. “If you need anything, I’ll see what I can sort out. Guess you’re not going to be in the office for a while.” He passed the refilled cup over and Mike drained it, then struggled to sit up.

“Here, let me—gotcha.” The motorized bed whined. Colonel Smith placed a small voice recorder on the bedside table, the tape spool visibly rotating inside it. “That comfortable?”

“Y-yeah. You want to know what happened? Everything was on track until I got into the palace grounds. Then everything went to hell…”

For the next hour Mike described the events of the past week in minute detail, racking his brains for anything remotely relevant. Eric stopped him periodically to flip tape cassettes, then began to supply questions as Mike ran down. Mike held nothing back, his own ambiguous responses to Miriam notwithstanding. Finally, Eric switched the recorder off. “Off the record. Why did you tell her we’d play hardball? Did you think we were going to burn her? How did you think it’s going to sound if we have to go to bat with an oversight committee to keep your ass out of jail?”

Mike reached towards the water again. He swallowed, his throat sore. “You should know: if you want to run HUMINT assets, you can’t treat them like machines. They have to trust you—they absolutely have to trust you. So I gave her the unvarnished truth. If I’d spun her a line of bullshit, do you really think she’d have believed me? She knows me well enough to know when I’m lying.”

Smith nodded. “Go on.”

“Her situation is shitty enough that—hell, her mom said she’s on the run—she’s short on options. If I’d told her we’d welcome her with open arms she’d have smelled a rat, but this way she’s going to carry on thinking about it, and then eventually start sniffing the bait. At which point, we can afford to play her straight, and she’s starting with low expectations. Offer her a deal—she cooperates with us fully, we look after her—and you’ll get her on board willingly. You’ll also get leverage over her mother, who is still in place and in a position to tell us what the leadership is up to. But I think the most important thing is, you’ll have a willing world-walker who will do what we want, and—I figure this is important—try to be helpful. I can’t quantify that, but I figure there’s probably stuff we don’t know that a willing collaborator can call out for us, stuff a coerced subject or a non–world-walker would be useless for. If Doc James gets some crazy idea about turning her into a ghost detainee, we’re not going to be able to do that, so I figured I’d start by lowering her expectations, then raise the temperature at the next contact.”

“Plausible.” Eric nodded again. “It’s a plausible excuse.”

Mike put the cup down. His throat felt sore. “Is this going to go to oversight?”

Eric was watching him guardedly. “Not unless we fuck up.”

“Thought so.” Get your cynical head on, Mike. “How do you meant to handle her, then?”

“We go on as planned.” Eric looked thoughtful. “For what it’s worth I agree with you. I had a run-in with James over how we deal with contacts, and while he’s a whole lot more political than I thought, he’s also a realist. Beckstein isn’t a career criminal, you’re right about that side of things. Not that it’d be a problem to nail her on conspiracy charges, or even treason—the DoJ has a hard-on for anyone it can label as a terrorist, especially if they’re collaborating with enemy governments to make war on the United States—but there’s no need to bring out the big stick if we don’t need it. If you can coax her into coming in willingly, I’ll do my best to persuade James to reactivate one of the old Cold War defector programs. You can tell her that, next time you see her.”

“Cold War defector program?”

“How do you think we used to handle KGB agents who wanted to come over? They’d worked for an enemy power, maybe did us serious damage, but you don’t see many of them doing time in Club Fed, do you? You don’t burn willing defectors, not if you want there to be more defectors in future. There were a couple of Eisenhower-era presidential directives to handle this kind of shit, and I think they’re still in force. It’s just a matter of working on James and figuring out what the correct protocol is.”

“Okay, I think I see what you’re getting at.” Mike eased back against the pillows. “It fits with the timetable. The only problem is, she hasn’t gotten back in touch this week, has she? Are you tapping my home telephone?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.” Eric looked irritated. “I’m not aware of any contact attempts, but I’ll make inquiries. I’d be surprised if nobody was watching your apartment—or mine, for that matter—but that’s not my call to make.”

“Okay. Then can you tell me where I am? Or when I’m going to be let out of this place, or what the hell is happening to my leg in there?” Mike gestured loosely at the bulky plastic brace and the cocoon of dressings. “It’s kind of disturbing…”

“Shit.” Eric glanced away. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ll ask one of the medics to tell you. They told me was your leg was broken, got chewed up pretty badly—who the hell expected them to be using mantraps in this day and age?”

“It’s not this day and age over there,” Mike offered dryly.

Eric laughed, a brief bark: “Okay, you got me! Listen, I figure the medics should give you the full rundown. What they told me is that you’ll be off your legs for a few weeks and you won’t be running any marathons for the rest of this year, but you should make a full recovery. They were more worried about the infection you brought home, except it responds well to penicillin, of all things. Something about there being no antibiotic resistance in the sample they cultured…anyway. You’re in a private wing of Northern Westchester. We’ve closed it off to make it look like it’s under maintenance, the folks who’re seeing you are all cleared, there are guards on the front desk, and as soon as you’re ready to move we’re going to send you home. Officially you’re on medical leave for the next month, renewed as long as the doctors think necessary. Unofficially, once I confirm this with Dr. James, you’re going to be on station waiting for Iris Beckstein to get in touch. You can call in backup if you see fit—even a full surveillance team and SWAT backup—but from what you’re telling me, she’s got tradecraft, which would make that a high-risk strategy. Think you’re up to it?”

“I’ll have to be.” Mike reached for the water again. “What a mess.”

“That’s what you get when you go back to running agents.” Eric stood up. “Enough of that, I’ve got to go type all this up.” He frowned. “Be seeing you…”

Begin Transcript:

(Coldly.) “You realize that if anyone else had done this, I’d have had them shot.”

“Yes, dear: I was counting on it. This way, hopefully the auld bitches won’t be expecting it.”

“Sky Father, give me patience! What did you think you were playing at? We’ve got a war on, in case you hadn’t noticed—”

“Oh, really? And I suppose the sky is a funny non red color, too? I’m not playing, I’m deadly serious: this is more important than your little war.”

“Damn it, woman! Can’t you leave your mother’s embroidery circle alone just this once?”

(Exasperated sigh.) “Who exactly do you think it was that started the war, brother?”

“What—excuse me. You can’t be serious. Do you really expect me to believe that she’s in cahoots with Egon?”

“Absolutely not! It would be beneath her dignity to be in cahoots with anyone below the rank of the Romish Pope-Emperor. But you know, she’s always been opposed to the idea of marrying into the royal family, hasn’t she? ‘Marrying beneath our station,’ indeed. She set up this stupid business with Creon by way of Henryk, in order to provoke Egon. And really, do you believe for a moment that Egon was a real threat to us, absent her maneuvering? She set Helge up as a target while she had me under her proxy’s thumb in Niejwein. If she hadn’t overreached herself I’d still be stuck there.”

“That’s…curiously plausible. Hmm. You said she overreached herself. Do you mean Hildegarde didn’t expect Egon to mount the putsch then and there?”

“I doubt it.” (Pause.) “She wouldn’t have shown her precious nose at the betrothal if she thought it was going to be cut off by the hussars, would she? But her intent was there. I know her schemes, the way her mind works. I think she meant to provoke Egon into doing something stupid, like the way he poisoned his younger brother all those years ago. She doesn’t like Helge, as you might have noticed. After what she did to her sister, do you question her ruthlessness?”

“All right.” (Pause.) “Your mother’s embroidery circle dabbles in dangerous waters, and it is a bad idea to cross them. They’ve stirred up a third of the nobility against us and Egon’s raiders are harrowing the countryside with fire and the sword—at least until we force him to group his army so that we can crush it beneath our boot-heel. As we shall, when the time comes, and make no mistake—they have carronades and musketry, but we have machine guns and radios. But, still. You have not yet explained why you did that thing. You’d best try to explain it to me, and get your story straight—the council will be a much less receptive audience, sister.”

“Alright. You’re not going to like it, though. Between your incredibly foolish machinations and mother-dearest’s scheming, I’ve nearly lost my only child. That’s not all I’ve lost, I’ll concede, but unlike some of our relatives, I hold her dear. If I can get her back, I will move heavens and underworld to do so. That’s the first thing I’d like to remind you of. The second point is—and this had better not be advanced before the council, or we are all lost beyond redemption—your niece knows about the insurance policy, but thanks to Henryk’s stupidity and mother-dearest’s venality, she’s on the outside. If you’d told me what bait you’d used on her, I could have settled things, but oh no—”

“Henryk’s men got to her first. He knows—knew—too, you understand that?”

“I’ve never understood why any of the old assholes should be allowed near the breeding program—”

“Stop and think about it. If we didn’t at least let them observe, they’d have to assume it’s a conspiracy against them. (As indeed it is, but not in such crude terms.) Henryk’s participation was vital, to prevent a new civil war.”

“Still. It’s a delicate matter, you used it as a carrot for Helge to get her teeth into, then you complain when the other donkey in the stable bites her?”

“Enough. We can discuss might-have-beens some other time. But what of the American spy?”

“If you must. When I found out who he was—at first he was an ‘injured clansman,’ you should remember—my first thought was to hang him from the nearest available tree: but it turned out he’d already spoken to her. It was too late.”

“Sky Father, you mean—”

“He was sent here to ‘talk to Miriam.’ He didn’t know where she’d gone after the battle—my guess is, with a Wu family locket, she’s somewhere in New Britain right now—but that’s not the point. She spoke to him. Let me assure you that hanging her ex-boyfriend would be exactly the most effective way to make her turn traitor. She grew up in America, remember. In my opinion, the least damaging option was to spin him a line of disinformation, let his leg fester a bit, then send him back. If we’re really lucky, we’ve got ourselves a back channel all the way to the White House. And if not—well, let’s just say, whoever debriefs him is going to get a usefully skewed view of our politics.”

(Pause.) “That will probably keep the council from demanding your head.”

“I know.” (Pause.) “Now let me draw you a diagram. The Americans have captured world-walkers and worked out how to make them serve. That means they know what they’re dealing with. Helge—being Miriam—is on the run, she knows about the breeding program, and one of their agents has already tried to seduce her. Why haven’t you tried to kill her?”

“She’s my niece. You are not the only one who feels some residual loyalty, Patricia.”

“Rubbish. There’s another reason, isn’t there? Is it something she knows? No? Oh. Something she did, no—the betrothal?”

“Henryk wanted to ensure a fruitful marriage. He was in a hurry. He sent Dr. ven Hjalmar to see to her.”

“Tell me you didn’t…”

“I didn’t. Henryk did. With the queen mother’s connivance, of course. That’s the point, you see. It’s going to be a world-walker.”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes. It was always going to be a very short betrothal, just long enough for the pregnancy test to be confirmed. And, do you know something? Once we’ve put down the pretender, all the surviving witnesses who were present at the palace will swear that it was, in fact, a lawful marriage ceremony, not just a betrothal.”

“Holy mother of snakes! You’re telling me that with Egon out of the picture, she’s carrying the lawful heir to the throne?”

“Yes. You did ask why I hadn’t issued a death warrant, didn’t you?”

(Pause.) “Angbard, I’ve really got to hand it to you: that is the most crazy, fucked-up, Machiavellian conspiracy I’ve heard of since Watergate.” (Pause.) “Does Hildegarde know?”

(Pause.) “You know, I really hadn’t thought about that.”

“Because as soon as she finds out, she’s going to hit the roof.” (Pause.) “Who did you send after Helge?”

“I sent Lady Brilliana after her. She’s to stop Helge if she shows signs of turning traitor—beyond that, she’s to try to bring her home. Ideally before the pregnancy goes too far.”

“Brilliana? That’s a good choice. Might even be enough, if we’re lucky.”

“Enough? I hardly think Helge will be able to prevent her—”

“I meant, enough to stop the auld bitches’ assassins. If you’ll excuse me, Angbard, I have urgent arrangements to make. Is the prescription I asked for ready yet?”

“It’s in the outer office.”

(Chuckle.) “So you weren’t planning to kill me after all! Admit it!”

“Don’t tempt me. You believe Hildegarde will try to kill Helge?”

“Who said anything about Hildegarde? She’ll be pissed about me having a granddaughter to call my own, especially one who’s an heir and a world-walker, but it’s still her lineage. No, what you’ve really got to worry about are the other members of the old ladies’ embroidery circle and poisoning society. Hmm. Then again, Helge thinking she’s Miriam—thinking she’s an American woman—could really spoil all your plans.”

“I hardly think that changes anything—”

“Really? You’re telling me you’ve never heard of Roe v. Wade?”

(Pause.) “Who?”

END TRANSCRIPT

Miriam found the journey uncomfortable. It wasn’t the compartment, for the seats were padded and the facilities adequate, but the lack of privacy. Of the eight places—there were two bench seats that faced each other across the compartment—she and Erasmus occupied one side. The other was taken by the plump man in the loud coat, sitting beside the window, and a pinch-faced woman of uncertain years who clutched her valise to her lap, her long fingers as double-jointed as the legs of a crane fly. When she wasn’t flickering suspicious glances at the fellow in the check jacket, she parked her watery gaze on a spot fifteen centimeters behind Miriam’s head. Whenever the discomfort of being stared at got the better of her, Miriam tried to stare right back—but the sight of the woman’s stringy, gray hair sticking out from under the rim of her bonnet made her feel queasy.

It was also hot. Air-conditioning was an exotic, ammonia-powered rarity, as likely to poison you as to quell the heat. A vent on the ceiling channeled fresh air down through the compartment while the train was moving, but it was a muggy, humid day and before long she felt sticky and uncomfortable. “We should have waited for the express,” she murmured to Erasmus, provoking a glare from Crane Fly Woman.

“It arrives a few minutes later.” He sighed. “Can’t be late for work, can I?” He put a slight edge on his voice, a grating whine, and caught her eye with a sidelong glance. The fat man rattled his newspaper again. He seemed to be concentrating on a word puzzle distantly related to a crossword, making notes in the margin with a pencil.

“Never late for work, you.” She tried to sound disapproving, to provide the shrewish counterpart to his henpecked act. What’s going on? She sniffed, and glanced out of the window at the passing countryside. Where did Erasmus go last night? Why were those guys tailing us? Was it him or me they were after? The urge to ask him about the incident was a near-irresistible itch, but one glance at the fellow travelers told her that any words they exchanged would be eavesdropped on and analyzed with vindictive, exhaustive curiosity.

Luckily, things improved after an hour. The train stopped at Bridgeport for ten minutes—a necessity, for only the first-class carriages had toilets—and as she stretched her legs on the platform, Erasmus murmured: “The next compartment along is unoccupied. Shall we move?”

As the train moved off, Miriam kicked back at last, leaning against the wooden paneling beside the window. “What was that about? At the station.” She prodded idly at an abandoned newspaper on the bench seat opposite.

Erasmus looked at her from across the compartment. “I had to see a man last night. It seems somebody wanted to know who he was talking to, badly enough to set up a watch on the hotel and tail all his contacts. They got slack: I spotted a watcher when I opened the curtains.”

“Why didn’t they just move in and arrest you?”

“You ask excellent questions.” Erasmus looked worried. “It might be that if they were Polis, they didn’t want to risk a poison pill. You can interrogate people, but they won’t always tell you what you want to know, and if they do, it may come too late. If you take six hours out to break a man, by the time you get him to spill his guts his own people will have worked out that he’s been taken, and they won’t be home when you go looking for them.”

“Oh.” Her voice was very small. Shouldn’t you have been expecting this? She asked herself. Then she looked back at his eyes. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

He nodded, reluctantly. “They didn’t smell like Polis.” His expression was troubled. “There was something wrong about them. They looked like street thugs, backstairs men, the kind your, ah, business rivals employed.” The Wu family’s street fixers, in other words. “The Polis aren’t afraid to raise a hue and cry when their quarry breaks cover. And the way they covered us was odd.”

She glanced down at the floor. “It’s possible it’s not you they’re looking for,” she murmured. I should have thought of this earlier: they know Erasmus is my friend, why wouldn’t they be watching him? They’re probably watching Paulette, too—her business agent in Boston, back home in the world of airliners and antibiotics—I’m a trouble magnet. “Hair dye and a cover identity may not be enough.”

“Explain.” He leaned forward.

“Suppose someone in Boston spotted you leaving in a hurry, a day or two after I’d disappeared. They handed off to associates in New London. Either they followed you to your hotel, or they figured you’d pay for a room under your own name. They missed a trick; they probably thought you were visiting a brothel for the usual reason—” Were his ears turning red? “—but when you reappeared with a woman they knew they’d found the trail. We threw them with the streetcar, and then I turned up at the hotel separately and in disguise, but they picked us up again on the way into the station and if we hadn’t done the track side scramble they’d be—” Her eyes widened.

“What is it?”

“We’ll have to be really careful if we go back to Boston.”

“You think they’re looking for you, yes?”

“Well—” Miriam paused. “I’m not sure. It could be the Polis tailing you. But if they were doing that, why wouldn’t they turn over Lady Bishop’s operation? I think it’s more likely someone who decided you might lead them to me. In which case it could be nearly anyone. The cousins in this world, maybe. Or it could be the Polis looking for me, although I figure that’s unlikely. Or it could be the Clan, in which case the question is, which faction is it? It’s not as if—”

“The Clan factions would be a problem?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I’ve been thinking about it. Even if, if, I wanted to go back, I’d have to approach it really carefully. A random pickup could be disastrous. I need to get in touch with them or they’ll think I’ve gone over the wall, and that’s—I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding from assassins. But I’ve got to get in touch with the right people there, see if I can cut some kind of deal. I’ve got information they need, so I might be able to work something out—but I don’t trust that slimy shit Morgan who they put in charge of the Boston office.”

Erasmus shrugged. “But they’ve lost us, haven’t they? They can’t possibly overtake us before—”

“You’re wrong. They’ve got two-way radios better than anything the Royal Post can build. If it is Clan security, they’ll have us in the Gruinmarkt before we get off the platform.”

Erasmus nodded thoughtfully. “Then we won’t be on this train when it arrives, will we?” He reached into his valise and pulled out a dog-eared gazetteer. “Let’s see. If we get off at Hartford, the next stopping train is forty-two minutes behind us. If we catch that one, we can get off at Framingham and take the milk train into Cambridge, then hail a cab. We’ll be a couple of hours later getting home, but if we do our business fast we can make the express, and we won’t be going through the city station. You know about the back route into the cellar. Do you think your stalkers know about it?”

Miriam blotted at her forehead. “Olga would. But she’s not who I’m worried about. You’re right, if we do it your way, we can probably get around them.” She managed a strained smile. “I really don’t need this. I don’t like being chased.”

“It won’t be for long. Once we’re on the transcontinental, there’s no way they’ll be able to trace us.”

The shadows were lengthening and deepening, and the omnipresent creaking of cicadas provided an alien chorus as Huw sat in the folding chair on the back stoop, waiting for Hulius. Elena had installed her boom box in the kitchen, and it was pumping out plastic girl-band pop from the window ledge. But she’d gone upstairs to powder her nose, leaving Huw alone with the anxiety gnawing at his guts like a family of hungry rats. For the first hour or so he’d tried working on the laptop, chewing away at the report on research methodologies he was writing for his grace, but it was hard to concentrate while he couldn’t stop imagining Yul out there in the chilly twilit pine forest, alone and in every imaginable permutation of jeopardy. You put him there, Huw’s conscience kept reminding him: You ought to be there instead.

Well yes, he’d tell his conscience—which he liked to imagine was a loosely knit sock-puppet in grime-stained violet yarn, with webcams for eyes—but you know what would happen. I don’t have Yul’s training. And Yul doesn’t have the background to run this project if anything happened to me. It sounded weak to his ears, even though it was true. He’d known Yul back when he’d been a tow-headed blond streak of mischief, running wild through the forest back of Osthalle keep with a child’s bow and a belt of rabbit scalps to show for it—and Huw had been a skinny, sickly, bookish boy, looked down on pityingly by his father and his hale, hunting-obsessed armsmen. The duke’s visit changed all that, even though the intensive English tuition and the bewildering shift to a boarding school in the United States hadn’t felt like much of an improvement at the time. It wasn’t until years later, when he returned to his father’s keep and went riding with Yul again, that he understood. Yul was a woodland creature, not in an elfin or fey sense, but like a wild boar: strong, dangerous, and shrewd within the limits of his vision. But not a dreamer or a thinker.

Yul had gone to school, too, and there’d even been talk of his enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps for a while—the duke’s security apparatus had more than a little use for graduates of that particular finishing school—but in the end it came to naught. While Huw had been sweating over books or a hot soldering iron, Hulius had enlisted in Clan security, with time off to serve his corvee duty with the postal service. And now, by a strange turnaround of fate that Huw still didn’t quite understand, he was sitting with a first-aid kit on the back stoop of a rented house at twilight, worrying his guts out about his kid brother, the tow-headed streak who’d grown up to be a bear of a man.

Huw checked his wristwatch for about the ten-thousandth time. It was coming up on eight fifteen, and the sun was already below the horizon. Another half hour and it would be nighttime proper. I could go over and look for him, he told himself. If he misses this return window, I could go over tomorrow. Elena’s video footage had been rubbish, the condensation on her helmet camera lens blurring everything into a madcap smear of dark green shade and glaring sunlight, but Hulius was wearing a radio beacon. If anything had happened—

Something moved. Huw’s head jerked round, his heart in his mouth for an instant: then he recognized Yul’s tired stance, and the tension erupted up from his guts and out of his mouth in a deafening whoop.

“Hey, bro!” Yul reached up and unfastened his helmet. “You look like you thought I wasn’t coming back!” He grimaced and rubbed his forehead as he shambled heavily towards the steps. “Give me medicine. Strong medicine.”

Huw grabbed him for a moment of back-slapping relief. “It’s not easy, waiting for you. Are you alright? Did anything try to eat you? Let’s get you inside and get the telemetry pack off you, then I’ll crack open the wine.”

“Okay.” Hulius stood swaying on the stoop for a moment, then took a heavy step towards the doorway. Huw picked up the first aid kit and laptop and hurried after him.

“Make your weapons safe, then hand me the telemetry pack first—okay. Now your backpack. Stick it there, in the corner.” He squinted at his brother. Yul looked much more wobbly than he ought to be. “Hmm.” Huw cracked the first-aid kit and pulled out the blood pressure cuff. “Get your armor off and let’s check you out. How’s the headache?”

“Splitting.” Hulius pawed at the Velcro fastenings on his armor vest, then dumped it on the kitchen floor. He fumbled at the buttons on his jacket. “I can’t seem to get this open.”

“Let me.” Huw freed the buttons then helped Hulius get one arm free of its sleeve. “Blood pressure, right now.”

“Aw, nuts. You don’t think—”

“I don’t know what to think. Chill out and try to relax your arm.” The control unit buzzed and chugged, pumping air into the pressure cuff around Yul’s arm. Huw stared at it as it vented, until the digits came up. “One seventy four over one ten.” Shit. “You remember to take your second-stage shots on time, two hours ago?”

“Uh, I, uh, only remembered half an hour ago.” Hulius closed his eyes. “Dumb, huh?”

Huw relaxed a little. “Real dumb. You’re not used to doing back-to-back jumps, are you?” Lightning Child, he could have sprung a cerebral hemorrhage! “The really bad headache, that’s a symptom. You need those pills. They take about an hour to have any effect, though, and if you walk too soon after you take them you can make yourself very ill.”

“It’s just a headache—”

“Headache, balls.” Huw began to pack up the blood pressure monitor. “All you can feel is the headache, but if your blood pressure goes too high the arteries and veins inside your brain can burst from it. You don’t want that to happen, bro, not at your age!” Relief was making him angry. Change the subject. “So how was it?”

“Oh, it was quiet, bro. I didn’t see any animals. Funny thing, I didn’t hear any birds either; it was just me and the trees and stuff. Quite relaxing, after a while.”

“Okay, so you had a nice relaxing stroll in the woods.” Why needle him? It’s not his fault you were chewing your guts out. “Sorry.” He glanced away from Hulius just as the door opened and Elena bounced in.

“Hulius! You’re back! Squeee!”

Huw winced as Elena pounced on his brother. Judging from the noises he made, the headache couldn’t be too serious. Huw cleared his throat: “I’ll be in the front room, downloading the take. You guys, you’ve got ten minutes to wash up. We’re going out for dinner, and I’m buying.” He picked up the telemetry pack and slunk towards the living room, trying to ignore the giggling and smooching behind him. Young love—he winced again. He might be out from under the matrons’ collective thumb, but being expected to chaperon Hulius and Elena was one of the more unpleasant side effects of the manpower shortage. If the worst happened…At least they’re both inner family, and eligible. A rapid wedding was a far more likely outcome than an honor killing if their affair came to light.

Back in the front room, he set the tablet PC down and plugged it in. Yul’s camera had worked out okay, although there wasn’t a hell of a lot to see. He’d come out in a forested area, with nothing but trees in all directions, and spent the next hours stooging around semi-aimlessly without ever coming across open ground. The weather station telemetry told its own story, though. Sixty degrees Fahrenheit had been the daytime peak temperature, and towards nightfall it dipped towards freezing. I bet there’s going to be a frost over there tonight.

Huw poked at the other instrument readings. The scanner drew a blank; nobody was transmitting, at least on any wavelength known to the sophisticated software-directed radio he’d acquired from a friend who was still working at the Media Lab. The compact air sampler wouldn’t tell him much until he could send it for analysis—much as he might want one, nobody was selling a backpack-sized mass spectroscope. He poked at the video, tripping it into fast-forward.

Trees. More trees. Elena hadn’t been wrong about the tree surplus. If we could figure out a way to get them back, we could corner the world market in cheap pine logs…Yul had followed the plan at first, zipping around in a quick search then planting a spike and a radio beacon. Then he’d hunkered down for a while, probably listening. After about half an hour, he’d gotten up and begun walking around the forest, frequently pausing to scrape a marker on a trunk. Good boy. Then—

“Oh you have got to be kidding me.”

Huw hit the pause button, backed up a few frames, and zoomed in. Yul had been looking at the ground, which lay on a gentle slope. There were trees everywhere, but for once there was a view of the ground the trees were growing in. For the most part it was a brownish carpet of dead pine needles and ferns, interspersed with the few hardy plants that could grow in the shadow of the coniferous forest—but the gray-black chunks of rocky material off to one side told a different story. Huw blinked in surprise, then glanced away, his mind churning with possibilities. Then he bounced forward through the next half hour of Hulius’s perambulations, looking for other signs. Finally, he put the laptop down, stood up, and went back into the hall.

“Yul?” he called.

“Hello?” A door opened, somewhere upstairs.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the ruins, Yul?”

Hulius appeared at the top of the staircase, wearing a towel around his waist, long blond hair hanging damply: “what ruins?”

“The black stones in the forest. Those ruins.”

“What stones—” Yul looked blank for a moment, then his expression cleared. “Oh, those. Are they important?”

“Are they—” Huw tugged at his hair distractedly. “Lightning Child! Do I have to explain everything in words of one syllable? Where’s Elena?”

“She’s in the—hey, what’s up?”

I’m hyperventilating again. Stop it, Huw told himself. Not that it seemed to help much. “There’s no radio, it’s really cold, and you stumbled across a fucking road! Or what’s left of one. Not a dirt track or cobblestones, but asphalt! Do I have to do all the thinking around here?”

“What’s so special about asphalt?” Hulius asked, hitching up his towel as he came downstairs.

“What’s so special? Well, maybe it means there was a civilization there not so long ago!” Nervous energy had Huw bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “Think, bro. If there was a civilization there, what else does it mean?”

“There were people there?” Hulius perked up. “Hey, I think that rates at least a bottle of wine…”

“We’re going back over, tomorrow,” Huw said bluntly. “I’ll e-mail a report to the duke tonight. Then we’re going to double-check on that road and see where it leads.”