The Revolution Business

Realignments

If he’s dead, we’re so screwed.”

Brill’s fingers whitened on the steering wheel, but Miriam took Huw’s gloomy appraisal as a conversational opportunity. They were coming less frequently today, as the reality of driving across a continent took hold. “Isn’t that a little pessimistic?”

Huw closed the lid of his laptop and carefully unplugged the cable from the satphone. He slid them both into their pockets in the flight case before he replied. “It’s not sounding good. They got him into the high dependency unit more than seventy-two hours after the initial intracerebral hemorrhage. He’s still alive, but he’s confused and only semiconscious and, uh, I’ve done some reading. More than forty percent of patients with that kind of hemorrhage die within a month.”

Yul, sprawled across the van’s third bench seat, chose that moment to emit a thunderous snore. Elena, who’d been lying asleep with her head in his lap, shuddered and opened her eyes, then yawned. “What?”

“He’s not dead yet,” Miriam observed tiredly. “He’s not going to die of anything nonmedical, not with Olga looking out for him. And he’s got the best treatment money can buy.”

“Which is not saying a lot.”

Brill hunched her shoulders behind the wheel, pulling out to inch past a big rig. “Listen, Huw, why don’t you just shut up?” she snapped.

“Wha? . . .” Huw gaped.

“Hush, Brill, he doesn’t know my uncle—his grace—like you do.” Miriam glanced in her sunshade mirror and spotted Elena sitting up, clearly fascinated. “Sorry, but he’s right. I hope he does pull through, but the odds aren’t much better than fifty-fifty. And we ought to have some idea about what to do if we get there and . . .” She trailed off, diving back into her thoughts.

“I don’t want to think about it,” said Brill. “I’m sorry, Huw. I should not exercise myself over your words. Many will be thinking them. But I feel so helpless.” She thumped the steering column. “I wish I could drive faster!”

“If you get pulled for speeding, and he does recover—” Elena began.

Miriam snorted. “Enough of that, kid. What’s more important to you, Brill: getting there, or going fast? You don’t want to get a traffic stop. Think of the poor cop’s widow and orphans, if it helps.”

“You are perfectly correct, as usual, milady.” Brill sighed. “What other news, Sir Huw?”

“Um.” Huw stretched, extending his legs under Miriam’s seat and his arms backwards to touch the ceiling above his brother’s head. “There’s a condition red lockdown. Avoid commercial flights, avoid all contact with the authorities, avoid unnecessary travel, lock the doors and bar the windows. Something about a major battle near Wergatsfurt, and something really bad happening to the Pervert’s army. Sounds like my Lord Riordan opened a can of whoop-ass or something. But you’d expect them to sound a little less tense if they’d nailed the bad guys properly, wouldn’t you?”

“Not necessarily.” Miriam sounded thoughtful. “If there’s been an army running wild through the countryside in a civil war, it could take a long time for things to get back to normal. Look at Iraq: They went in weeks ago and it’s still a mess, whether or not the President declared ‘Mission Accomplished.’ ” She paused. “Egon could be down, but what about the rest of his vassals? The Duke of Niejwein, this that and the other baron or earl or whatever. It’s not over until the council hammers out a settlement that ends the fighting.” She rubbed her belly thoughtfully, then paused. “And I need to see a doctor.” The test kit had been unequivocal, but the uncertainty over the sex of the fetus remained. “Then get a seat at the table before they decide I’m just one of the chess pieces.”

“A chess piece with a posse!” Elena giggled.

“Not funny,” Huw chided her.

Her moué mirrored Brill’s, for an entirely different reason. “I suppose not,” she said. “I was just joking.”

“Bored now,” Yul mocked, having woken up in the preceding minute or two. “Are we there yet?” he squeaked in a falsetto imitation.

“Bastard!” Elena thumped him over the head with a travel pillow.

“Children! . . .” Huw shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed at Miriam by way of the mirror.

Miriam glanced sidelong at Brill. “How long have you known these reprobates?”

“Long enough to know they’re just acting out because they’re over here for the first time.” She braced her arms across the steering wheel, slumping forward in evident boredom. “They get dizzy.”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t like this on your first time out?” Miriam thought back to the first time she’d brought Brill over to Boston (her version of Boston—not the curious retarded twin in New Britain). She’d thought Brill was a naïve ingénue and a scion of the outer families, not able to world-walk for herself, not realizing Angbard would never have turned her loose in Niejwein without planting one or more of his valkyries on her as spy and bodyguard.

“My first time out was”—Brill looked pensive—“I was twelve, I think. But I had a false identity in my own name by the time I was fourteen. Thanks to the duke. He believed in starting them early.”

“Lucky cow.” Elena giggled again.

I am trapped on a school bus in the middle of flyover country with a bunch of overarmed and undersocialized postadolescents, Miriam realized, and there’s no way out. She sighed. “Starting what early?”

“Starting the doppelganger identities. It’s only sensible, you know. He wanted to put as many of us as possible through the right kind of finishing school—Harvard, Yale, the Marine Corps—in case we ever have to evacuate.”

“Evacuate.” The gears whirred in Miriam’s head. “Evacuate the Gruinmarkt?” If that was even on the menu—“Why hasn’t it already happened?”

“Would you voluntarily abandon your home? Your world?” Brill looked at her oddly.

“Um. It’s home, right?” The idea resonated with her own experience. “But there are no decent roads, no indoor plumbing, hedge-lords with pigs in their halls, a social setup out of the dark ages—why would you stay?”

“Home is where everyone you know is,” said Brill. “That doesn’t mean you’ve got to love it—you know my thoughts, my lady! What you can’t do is ignore it.”

Miriam fell silent for a couple of minutes, thinking. She’d had a taste of living another life in another world—but it had strings attached, and not ones to her liking, in Baron Henryk’s captivity. Then she’d escaped during the debacle at the betrothal, and considered making a run for it when she was in New Britain; thought hard about going native, dropping out, leaving everything behind for a false identity. New Britain had big drawbacks, especially compared to home, but at least it was free of reactionary aristocrats who wanted to turn her into a dynastic slave. And if she’d done it, it would have been through her own choice. But I decided to come back, she realized. I’ve got a family and while I was busy being independent they got their claws into me.

“What do you need a doppelganger identity for, then?” She paused. “I mean, if all it’s for is to maintain a toehold identity in this world . . .”

“Identity is a lever,” Huw said gnomically. “The fulcrum is world-walking.”

“But what do you want a lever for?” Miriam persisted.

“So we can move the world!” Brill straightened her back, looking straight ahead.

Then Elena chirped up again: “Are we nearly there, yet?”

In the end, it took them eighty-five hours to make a journey that would have taken a day if they’d been able to fly direct. Eighty-five hours and two changes of vehicle and three changes of plates, driving licenses, and other ID documents—care of certain arrangements the Clan maintained with local contractors.

With five drivers available they could have shaved a couple of hours off if they hadn’t changed vehicles and taken certain other precautions, and a whole eight hours if Miriam hadn’t insisted on stopping for the night at a motel outside Syracuse. “I am going to visit the duke tomorrow,” she pointed out. “I need to sleep properly, I need a shower, and I need to not look like I’ve been sleeping in a van for a week, because I don’t know who else will be visiting the duke. This is politics. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” Brill agreed meekly—and the morning after the motel stop they lost another two hours in a strip mall, hunting suitable shoes, a business suit, and some spray to keep Miriam’s bleached hair from going in all directions.

“How do I look?” asked Miriam.

“Scary,” Brill admitted after a pause. “But it’ll do.”

“You think so?”

“Stop worrying. If any knave denigrates your topiary, I’ll shoot him.”

Miriam gave her an old-fashioned look as she climbed in the cab of the new van, but Brilliana was obviously in high spirits—probably in anticipation of their arrival. It’s alright for her, she’s not the one who has to confront them, Miriam reminded herself. She’s not the one with the unwanted pregnancy. Her stomach burned with acid indigestion, product of stress and too much Diet Pepsi. “Let’s go,” she told Huw (for it was his turn behind the wheel). “I want to get this over with.”

Cerebrovascular incidents were a familiar and unpleasant problem for the Clan: World-walking induced abrupt blood-pressure spikes, and far too many of their number died of strokes. But Miriam still had to grapple with her disbelief as Huw pulled up outside a discreet, shrub-fronted clinic in the outskirts of Springfield. “Forty beds? All of them?”

“Yes, milady.” Huw reached for the parking brake. “It’s the price of doing business.”

She glanced at him sharply, but his expression was deadly serious. “Nobody knows why, I suppose?”

“Indeed.” The engine stopped. “It’s on my research list. A way down.” He swallowed. “I suppose you’re going to say, because I’m young.”

“No, it’s more like I was thinking, it might tell us something about the family talent,” Miriam replied. She dabbed at a stray wisp of hair in the mirror, split ends mocking her. “I knew it was a problem. I didn’t realize it was this big a problem, though. There’s too much to do, isn’t there?”

“I’m working on it,” Huw said soberly. “It’s just that my to-do list is eight years long.”

“I beg your pardon, Miriam.” Brill sounded as tense as she felt. “Visitors hours . . .”

“Alright.” Miriam opened her door and carefully climbed down from the van. She pulled a face as she caught her reflection in the mirror: Appearances counted for a lot when dealing with the elders and the formal Clan hierarchy. “I look a mess. Let’s get on with this.”

Behind her, Yul and Elena were dismounting. “With your permission, I’ll take point, my lady.” Elena winked at her as she swung a sports bag over her shoulder. “I think you look just fine.”

Miriam looked at Brill in mute appeal. “Let her do it, it’s what she does best,” Brill replied. “Yul, rear guard. Huw? Lock up and let’s go.” All of them, Miriam realized, were armed—but Elena was the one with the serious firepower in her bag. What am I doing here? she asked herself as they crossed the car park towards the doors to reception: How did I get into this mess? Unfortunately, that question was easy enough to answer: Mom dumped me in at the deep end, sink or swim. Iris had raised her in the United States in ignorance of the Clan families, for her own reasons—reasons that could be viewed as cold-bloodedly calculating rather than compassionate, depending on whether Iris thought of herself as a player or a fugitive. Not that she could hate Iris—or Patricia, to her extended family—either way; her mother had been under enormous pressure at the time. But I wish she’d prepared me better.

Getting into the small and very exclusive hospital that the Clan maintained for their brainstruck was not a simple matter of walking up to the reception desk and saying, “Hello, I’ve come to visit Angbard Lofstrom.” Even leaving aside the small matter of the DEA’s most wanted list and the question of his place on it, Angbard had enemies, many of whom might well consider hospital visiting hours to be the perfect time to even up old scores. So Miriam was unsurprised when her introductory statement of intent, “Hello, I’ve come to visit Angbard Lofstrom,” resulted in the ornamental receptionist staring vacuously up at her as if she’d demanded money with threats. A serious-faced young man whose dark suit was cut to conceal his sidearm bounced out from behind a glass screen off to one side, sized them up, then relaxed momentarily. “Wer’ isht?” he demanded.

Brill replied in machine-gun hochsprache, too fast for Miriam to catch. The young man looked surprised, but mildly relieved as he replied. Then he turned to Miriam. “My lady, if you please”—he pointed at a seating area off to one side—“to wait there in?” His English was heavily accented.

“Ja—” Brill replied at length. “Bertil says he needs to check our identities before he can let us in,” she explained to Miriam. “He knows who we are.”

“Good.” Miriam allowed herself to be led to the waiting area. “Any idea how long? . . .”

“Not long.” Brill didn’t bother sitting down. “They’ll just need time to make sure we didn’t bring any unwanted company.” Her posture was relaxed, but Miriam couldn’t help noticing the way her eyeballs flickered from doors to windows.

A minute passed before another of the dark-suited security guards came in through a door behind the receptionist’s desk. They always look like Mormon missionaries, Miriam noted, or Secret Service agents. That’s a weakness, isn’t it? Angbard’s guidelines for looking inconspicuous had evolved decades earlier; after her weeks on the run and the tutorial in escape and evasion she’d received from the Leveler underground, their uniform consistency now struck her as a weakness, like wearing a flashing neon sign advertising Clan operation here.

“My lady?” The new guy walked straight over to Miriam and half bowed to her. “If you would come this way, please?”

“I’m bringing my companions,” she said.

“Ah.” His eyes focused on Elena’s shoulder bag. “I would like to see that, please.”

Elena looked as if she was about to object. Miriam shook her head. “Show him.”

Elena opened her bag reluctantly and the guard looked inside. He blinked. “Hmm. You may come, but please unload and safe your arm.” He shrugged at Miriam apologetically. “I am sorry but it is a matter of policy—no armor-piercing loads are allowed. The rest of you, pistols only? No concealed shotguns?” His lips quirked. “Good. If you would follow me . . .”

Elena trailed behind them, her hands buried in her bag, from which muffled clicking noises were emerging.

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 a 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 insult—“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 back foot 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.” He nodded. “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 acidic 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. 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 one thing.” 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 set up 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. “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 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 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 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 communiques 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 as a fugitive 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 surprisingly far 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.

“Yesterday. People’s courts in Santiago have arrested and tried sixteen Polis commissars and eleven informers for crimes against the people: Three have been executed for ordering the arrest and torture of patriots during the Andean campaign last fall. More details . . .”

“Run it. Paper only, inside pages.” Erasmus jotted down a quick note on his pad. “Next.”

“Today. Communique from the New London people’s committee: A people’s provisional council will be voted in, by open polling next Tuesday, to form a constitutional convention that will determine the structure of the people’s congress and establish a timetable for its election. Lots of details here. Um, delegates from the provinces are to attend, as are members of the inner council—”

“Stop.” Erasmus stood. “That’s the front page for you, right there, and get it on the wire. I’ll need a copy for reference while I write the editorial. Go get it now.” He glanced at Winstanley, who was examining his fingernails. “Coming?”

“What? Where?”

Erasmus closed his eyes for a few seconds, feeling every second of his years. Give me strength. When he opened them again, he spoke evenly. “I don’t know about you, but I am going to see Sir Adam, who will surely be preparing to depart very shortly, in order to learn what he expects of me in his absence.” He paused. Winstanley was looking at him dumbly. “I expect he’ll have some errands for you to run,” he added, not unkindly.

“What—oh? But. Surely? . . .” Winstanley looked confused.

“You weren’t listening, were you? Or rather, you were listening to the voice, not to the words.”

Winstanley flinched. “I say, there’s no need for—”

“Negativism?” Erasmus smiled humorlessly. “Get your jacket, man. We have to see the chief right away.”

“The correct salutation is ‘citizen.’ ” Winstanley levered himself out of his chair with a glare.

“Certainly, citizen.” Erasmus headed for the door.

Over in the Committee Palace (its new name hastily hacked into a layer of fresh cement that covered the carved lintel of the former mayoral mansion), Erasmus found the usual ant-heap a-buzzing with petitioners, delegates from regional committees from places as far afield as Chihuahua and North Cascadia, guards drawn from the local militia, and the anxious families of arrested king’s men. “Commissioner Burgeson, to see Sir Adam,” he told the harried page waiting in the Hall of People’s Justice (formerly the western state dining room).

“This way, sir. You’re just in time.”

Am I, now? He stifled a wince as the door opened. “Ah! Erasmus.” Sir Adam grinned impishly and stood up, cutting off the manager or committee member who had been talking to him. “I’d just sent a courier for you. Did he arrive?”

“A courier? No, we must have passed in the street.” Burgeson glanced round. The manager or committee member was an unfamiliar face; Burgeson’s secretary Joseph MacDonald, though . . . “I take it you’re going east?”

“We’re going, Erasmus.” Sir Adam inspected him curiously. “Unless you have more pressing concerns to keep you in this provincial capital than the business of keeping the people appraised of the progress of the new constitutional convention?”

“I’m sure Jim and Judas between them can keep the press and the wire running, just as long as you leave orders to keep that sheep Winstanley away from the hay. But I assumed we’d be here a bit longer. . . . Do you really need me merely as a stenographer or ordinary correspondent?”

“God, no!” Sir Adam looked him in the eye. “I need you in the capital, doing what you’ve started here, only on a larger scale. You pick the correspondents—and the editors—then leave them to it unless they go off course. But we’re about to up our game, man, and I want someone riding herd on the gossipmongers who knows what he’s doing.”

Erasmus’s cheek twitched. “The correct salutation is ‘citizen,’ or so Citizen Winstanley keeps reminding me, but aside from that I take your point.” He grinned. “So what’s the plan?”

“The militia—rather, an army air wing who have signed to us—are arranging for a mail packet to fly from Prussian Ridge encampment tonight. You and I will be on it, along with a dozen trusted cadre—Haynes, Smith, Joe, Miss Rutherford, a few others, I’ve written a memo—your copy is on its way to the wrong place—and we shall arrive in New London the day after tomorrow. Andrew White is collating the lists of longtime party members for us to review when we arrive. You will take your pick of staff for a new Communications Committee, which will take over from the Truth and Justice commissioners when the congressional committee sits. Edicts are being drafted to nationalize all the telautographs and printing presses and place them under your ministry. Are you for it?”

“All of them?” Erasmus raised an eyebrow; Sir Adam nodded. “Well, that’s reassuring—nothing like half measures to short the stew pot.” He rubbed his hands together. “Yes, I’m up for it. But, one question—”

“Yes? Spit it out, man!”

Erasmus grimaced. “Is there somewhere in this place where I can catch a bath and some fresh clothes? I’ve been living in my office for the past week—I’d rather not stand up in front of a room full of newspaper owners and tell them I’m holding their front pages to ransom smelling like a tramp. . . .”

The next day, Miriam visited the clinic again—this time, for her own appointment.

Brill had found her an anonymous motel suite near the interstate, along with a survival kit. “Here’s your driving license, credit card, and phone. Want to do dinner?”

“Sounds like a plan. Uh, what about you guys?”

“Oh, we’ll be around.” Brill looked amused. “I thought you’d appreciate some privacy. Tomorrow . . .”

“Yeah, that.”

Tomorrow dawned hot and early through the picture window in the suite’s lounge; Miriam rolled over and buried her face in the pillow until the bedside alarm radio cut in, reminding her that she really needed to get up. She sat up slowly, fuzzy-headed and confused: Where am I? A concatenation of hotel bedrooms seemed to blur behind her. What am I—oh. And so it began—the first day of Iris’s, of her own, little conspiracy.

She swallowed, feeling a mild sense of nauseous dread. You can’t avoid this step, a little voice reminded her. But it’s too much like admitting it’s real. The result of the cheap pregnancy test kit on the road had left her feeling numb but clearheaded. Going to see an OB/GYN and finding out whether it was a boy was the inexorable next step down the road, but she wasn’t ready to face up to her destination yet, or to decide whether she was going to go there or stamp on the brake pedal. As she brushed her teeth, combed out her hair—which was darkening at the roots again, after its brutal treatment in New London—and pulled on her clothes, she found herself treasuring every remaining second of her indecision.

Brill was waiting for her downstairs in the lobby, concealed behind a newspaper. She rustled it as she rose, to signal her presence. “Ready?” she asked.

“Let’s get this over with.” Miriam managed a brittle smile.

“As my lady wishes.”

While Miriam had been held prisoner for a couple of months by Baron Henryk—held in the conditions of a most privileged prisoner, the troublesome heiress of a noble family who must needs be mewed up and married off before she embarrassed the elders enough to warrant strangling—the baron had arranged a most unpleasant medical examination for her by a doctor who specialized in making sure that the family tree always bore fruit in the right places. And seven weeks later, give or take a couple of days, her period was still late, and she was regularly skipping breakfast. Not to mention the other, terrifying symptom: the loss of her ability to world-walk. There was no room for doubt in her mind, even before the test stick had shown her the treacherous blue label. It’s not like I haven’t been pregnant before, she’d told herself. But dealing with it was another matter entirely, and if it was male, potentially heir to an explosive situation . . . this wasn’t about her doubts and fears. It was about everybody else’s. And Mom. Mustn’t forget Mom.

“Your pardon, Miriam—aren’t you a bit tense?”

“Put yourself in my shoes. How would you feel?”

“I’d be petrified! If it’s a boy it’s the heir—” Brill stopped, her hands gripping the steering wheel.

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Miriam agreed. With the free run of a fertility clinic, ven Hjalmar would have been able to put his sperm samples through a sex sorting protocol, and while that wasn’t a surefire guarantee, she wasn’t inclined to bet against it. “But what about me?”

Brill paused for a few seconds. “I’m sorry.”

Miriam took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Don’t be. What’s done is not your fault.” What happens next, though . . . “Just get me there and back. Then we’ll talk.”

This time there was no security cordon of bible-scholar bandits to penetrate, just a brilliant and vacuous smile from the receptionist followed by directions to a waiting room. “Dr. Price is waiting for you,” she added as Miriam put one foot in front of the other and forced herself along the corridor. Brilliana, behind her, felt like the shadow of all her fears, come to escort her to the examination room. I’ve done this before, she reminded herself. Yes, but you were twenty-one and indecisive and Mom guilt-tripped you out of having an abortion—and there was a nasty thought, because how certain was she that Mom wasn’t playing a riff on that same head game all over again?

Seven weeks along. All I have to do is ask. Huw said he’d sort everything out. She held the thought like the key to a prison cell as she paused on the threshold of the examination room, and the guy with curly brown hair sitting at the desk turned to look at her and then rose to greet her. “Hello? Are you Miriam? I’m Dr. Price, Alan Price.” His eyes tracked past her. “And this is . . .”

“A friend.” She practiced her smile again; she had a feeling that if she was going to go through with this she’d be needing it a lot over the next weeks and months. “Hi. I understand you’re an OB/GYN.” She shuffled sideways as he gestured towards a chair. “Have you ever worked with Dr. ven Hjalmar?”

Price frowned. “Van Hjelmar . . . no, doesn’t ring a bell.” He shook his head. “Were you seeing him?”

“A different practice.” Miriam sat down heavily, as if her strings had been cut; a vast weight of dread that she hadn’t even been aware of disappeared. “I really didn’t like him. Hence this, uh . . .”

“I understand.” Price leaned over and dragged a third chair into position, then waved Brilliana towards it. His face assumed an expression of professional interest. “And your mother, I gather, suggested? . . .”

“Yes.” Miriam took another deep breath. “My fiancé is, uh—”

“—He died last month,” Brill picked up without a pause.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Price sat up. “Well, that probably explains it.”

“It was a shooting accident,” Miriam said tonelessly, earning her a sharp look from Brill.

“Eh.” Price glanced back at his computer screen. “Alright. So you were on his HMO plan, but now you’ve moved to—oh, I see. Well. I think my receptionist’s got the new release forms through—if you can sign one and get your old practitioner’s details to us we can take it from there.”

“Okay.” Miriam nodded.

“Meanwhile? . . .” Price raised an eyebrow.

“Well.” Miriam managed to get a grip on her breathing: mustn’t start hyperventilating. “I’m pregnant.” It was funny how you could change your script and the person who you were talking to would fall into a new pattern of their own, she thought as she watched Price visibly tense as he tried to keep up with the conversation: from polite sympathy through to curiosity to a quickly suppressed wince. Brill glanced sidelong at her again: You’re laying it on too thick, back off! “It wasn’t planned,” she added, not backpedaling exactly but trying to fill in enough details to put Price back on ground he was comfortable with, that wouldn’t raise any questions. “We were going to wait until after the wedding. But . . .” She shrugged helplessly.

“I see.” Price was visibly trying to get a grip on the situation. “Well, then.” He cleared his throat. “Have you used a pregnancy test kit?”

“Yes. I assume you’ll want a urine sample so you can verify? . . .”

“Yes.” Price opened his desk drawer and removed a collection jar. “If you wouldn’t mind? The rest room is through there.”

When Miriam returned she placed the collection jar on the desk as carefully as if it were full of nitroglycerin. “Here it is.”

“Right.” Price looked as if he was about to say something else, then changed his mind at the last moment. “I’ll run it right now and then we can take it from there. Is that okay?”

Miriam didn’t trust herself to reply. She nodded jerkily.

“Okay. I’ll be right back.” Price pulled on a blue disposable glove, then stood up and carried the sample jar out through a side door.

Miriam looked at Brill. “How discreet is he going to be?”

“Very. He’s on salary. Our dime.”

“Ah.”

They sat in silence for five minutes; then, as Miriam was considering her conversational options, Dr. Price opened the door again. He was, she noticed, no longer wearing the glove. There was a brief, awkward silence as he sat down again, then: “It’s positive,” he confirmed. Then he picked up his pen and a notepad. “How long ago did you last have sex?”

The question threw Miriam for a moment, bringing back unwelcome memories of Roland. She was about to say “at least eight months ago,” when suddenly she realized, that’s not what he’s asking. “Seven weeks,” she said. A little white lie; sex had nothing to do with her current situation, except in the most abstract imaginable sense.

“Well. You’ve made it through the riskiest period—most spontaneous miscarriages occur in the first eight weeks. So the next question is—I’m assuming you’re here because you want to continue with it?” He paused, prompting.

Miriam could feel the blood pounding in her ears. No matter how she unpacked the question it didn’t quite make sense to her: It felt like the introduction to a much larger question, monstrously large, an iceberg of possibilities. I could say no, she thought. Get this over with right now. Quit the game. Mom might disapprove, the duke might object when he recovered, but they couldn’t stop her if . . . Miriam opened her mouth. “Yes,” she heard herself whisper hoarsely. She swallowed. “Yes,” she said again, louder; thinking, I can change my mind later. There’s still time. “I’m assuming you’re going to want to schedule an amniocentesis appointment, for,” she swallowed, “things like Down’s syndrome and hydrocephalus? Will you be able to check on the—my baby’s—sex?”

“Eh, we can do that. It’s a bit early for amniocentesis right now, though, if it’s only been seven weeks. I’d like to start by asking some questions about your family and medical history. Then I’m going to take a blood sample to get started with, while we’re waiting for your old records to arrive. Shall we begin?”