The Family Trade

by Stross, Charles

  “By all means.” Olga sat up straight as the messenger—dripping wet and looking chilled to the bone—entered. “My good man! What do you have for me?”

  “Milady, I have been charged to deliver this into you hands,” he said, dropping to one knee and presenting a sealed envelope from a shoulder bag. Olga accepted it, slit the wrapping, and read. She frowned. “Very well. You may tell your master I received word and passed it on to all present here. Feel free to leave immediately.”

  The messenger backed out, bowing. Olga returned to her chaise, looking distracted. “How unfortunate,” she said.

  “‘Unfortunate’?” Miriam raised an eyebrow.

  “Tonight’s reception is postponed,” Olga read, “by virtue of the unusually foul weather. It shall in any event be held tomorrow, once arrangements have been made for additional shelter from the elements.” She glanced at the shuttered window. “Well, I can’t say I am surprised. This may be the season for storms, but this one appears to be setting in hard.” Wind howled around the shutters outside.

  “Is this normal?” Miriam asked. “To postpone events?”

  “By your leave, it’s not normal, my lady, but it’s not unheralded.” Brilliana looked unhappy. “They may need time to move the lifeguard cavalry to other stables, to accommodate the coaches of the visitors. Or a roof may have caved in unexpectedly. This being the first real storm of winter, they may be hoping it will blow itself out overnight.”

  “Hmm.” Miriam drained her teacup. “So it’ll be tomorrow night instead?”

  “Almost certainly,” Olga said confidently. “It’s a shame to postpone once, twice is an embarrassment. Especially when the occasion is the return to court of his majesty’s winter sessions. And his opening of the sessions and levy of taxes follows the next day, to be followed by a hanging-holiday.”

  “Well, then.” Miriam nodded to herself. “Is anything at all of consequence due to happen then?”

  “Oh, a lot of drinking, and not a little eating and making merry,” Olga assured her. “It’s not a greatly important event for the likes of us. Our great sessions fall in six months, near upon Beltaigne, when alliances are discussed and braids rededicated, and the court of families-in-Clan hear grievances and settle treaties.”

  “Hmm. Well, I suppose I’d better make sure I’m around for that, too,” said Miriam, waiting for a servant to refill her cup.

  Olga winked at her. “I expect you will be—if we find you some reliable bodyguards.”

  Late in the afternoon, Miriam returned to her apartment—briefly.

  Dismissing the servants, she called Brilliana and Kara into her bedroom. “I’m in trouble,” she said tersely.

  “‘Trouble,’ my lady?” asked Kara, eyes glinting.

  “Someone tried to force themselves upon Lady Olga last night. Someone with gold in their pocket and a commission bearing the seal of my braid. Which I have never seen, so I have to take Olga’s word for it.” She sat down on a chest and waited for Kara’s declarations of shock to die down. Brilliana just nodded thoughtfully.

  “This room—and other parts of this suite—are not doppelgängered properly,” she continued. “On the other side, security is virtually nonexistent—until you go fifty feet that way.” She gestured at the wall. “I don’t think that’s an accident. Nor was that open door last night,” she added to Brilliana’s questioning look.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Kara, looking frightened and younger than ever.

  “What you are going to do—both of you—is tell the servants we’re going to have a quiet supper: cold cuts or a pie or something plain and simple. Then we’re going to dismiss the servants and go to bed early so we are well rested for the morrow. After they bring our meal up and stoke the fireplace, they can leave.” She stood up and paced. “What’s really going to happen, once the servants have left is that two of Lady Olga’s guards—the guards Baron Hjorth hasn’t assigned to me—are going to enter the near audience chamber through the side door.”

  She grinned at Brilliana’s surprise. “You will put on your cloaks and go where they lead you, which will be straight to Lady Olga’s rooms, where you will be able to sleep safe and warm until it’s time to come back here, in the morning.”

  “And you, my lady?” asked Kara, searching her face. “You can’t spend the night alone here!”

  “She doesn’t intend to,” Brill said tersely. “Do you?”

  “Correct.” Miriam waited.

  “You’re going to go over there,” Brilliana added. “How I’d like to follow you!”

  “You can’t, yet,” Miriam said bluntly. “Someone is conspiring against me. I am going to have to move fast and be inconspicuous. On the other side, there is a teeming city with many people and strange customs. I can’t risk you attracting attention while I’m on the run.” She raised a finger to anticipate Brilliana’s objection. “I’ll take you along later, I promise. But not this time. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Brill muttered something under her breath. Miriam pretended not to notice.

  “That’s it, then. If someone comes calling in the night, all they’ll find are beds stuffed with pillows: You’ll be elsewhere. On the other side, the fewer people who know where I’m going, the safer I’ll be. I’ll meet you back here tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll decide what to do then, depending on whether the opening of the court of winter sessions is going ahead or not. Any last questions?”

  It was snowing in New York, too, but nothing like the blizzard that had dumped two feet of snow on Neijwein in a day. Miriam met nobody in the warehouse. At the top of the stairs she paused. What was that trick? She wondered, racking her brains. A flashback to the training course, years ago: It had been a giggle at the time, spy tradecraft stuff for journalists who were afraid of having their hotel rooms burgled in Krygistan or wherever. But now it came back to her. Kneeling, she tied a piece of black cotton sewing thread from the wall to the handrail, secured with a needle. It was invisible in the twilight. If it was gone when she returned, that would tell her something.

  On this trip, she wore her hiking gear and towed her suitcase. With street map in hand, she wanted to give the impression of being a tourist from out of state who’d wandered into the wrong part of town. Maybe that was why a taxi pulled up almost as soon as she emerged from the back street, while her phone was still chirping its voice mail alert.

  “The Marriott Marquis, Times Square,” she told the driver. Head pounding, she hit the “mail” button and clamped the phone to her ear.

  “Marriott Marquis, room 2412, continuously booked for the whole week in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Roland Dorchester. Just ask at the front desk and they’ll give you a key.”

  Thank you, she thought, pocketing the phone and blinking back tears of relief.

  The taxi took her straight to the main entrance and a bellboy was on hand to help her with her suitcase. She headed straight to the front desk.

  “Mrs. Dorchester? Yes, ma’am, I have your card-key here. If you’d like to sign…”

  Miriam did a little double-take, then scrawled something that she hoped she’d be able to replicate on demand. Then she took the keys and headed for the elevator bank.

  She was inside the glass-walled express elevator, and it was surging up from the third floor in a long glide toward the top, when a horrible thought occurred to her. What if they’ve got to Roland? she wondered. After he booked the hotel. They could be waiting for me.

  It was a frightening thought, and Miriam instinctively reached toward her pocket. How the hell do you do this? Suddenly it occurred to her that the little revolver was as much of a threat as an asset in this kind of situation. If she went through the door and some bad guy was just inside, he could grab her before she had a chance to use it. Or grab the gun. And she was more than twenty stories up, high enough that—she looked out and down through the glass wall of the lift and took a deep breath of relief. “Oh, that’s okay,” she muttered, as the obvious explanation occur
red to her just before the lift bell dinged for attention: Skyscrapers didn’t need doppelgängering against attack from another world where concrete and structural steel were barely known.

  Miriam stepped out into the thickly carpeted hallway and stopped. Pulling out her mobile phone, she dialed Roland’s number. It rang three times.

  “Hello?”

  “Roland, what happens if you’re on the twenty-fourth floor of a tall building, say a hotel, and—” quick glance in either direction—“you try to world-walk?”

  “You don’t do that.” He chucked dryly. “That’s why I chose it. I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Come right on up?”

  “Sure,” she said and rang off, abruptly dizzy with relief and anticipation.

  I hope this works out, she thought, dry-swallowing as she walked down the corridor, hunting for room 2412. Hell, we hardly know each other—

  She reached the door. All her other options had run out. She put the card in the slot and turned the handle.

  Three hours later they came up for air. The bedding was a tangled mess, half the fluffy white towels were on the bathroom floor and the carpet was a wasteland of discarded clothing—but it had worked out.

  “I have missed you so much,” she murmured in his ear, then leaned close to nibble at his lobe.

  “That makes two of us.” He heaved up a little, bracing against the bed head, turning to look at her. “You’re beautiful.”

  “I bet you say that to every naked woman you wake up in bed with,” she replied, laughing.

  “No,” he said, in all seriousness, before he realized what he’d done. Then he turned bright red. “I mean—”

  He was too late. Miriam pounced. “Got you,” she giggled, holding him down. Then she subsided on top of him. “Like that?” she asked. “Or this?”

  “Oh.” He rolled his eyes. “Please. A few minutes?”

  “Frail male reed!”

  “Guilty, I’m afraid.” He wrapped an arm around her. “What’s with the early appearance? I thought there was supposed to be a reception this evening?”

  “There was, past tense.” Miriam explained about the cancelation.

  “So you came over early, just in case I was here?”

  “No.” She felt very sober, all of a sudden, even though they hadn’t been drinking—and felt the need to remedy the condition, too.

  “Why, then? I thought you were sticking with the program?”

  “Not when people try to kill me twice in one day.”

  “What?” His arms tensed and he began to sit up.

  “No, no—lie down. Relax. They can’t come through here and I took steps to throw off the trail.” She kissed him, again, tasted the sweat of their lovemaking. “Wow. What did I do to deserve someone like you?”

  “You were really, really wicked in a previous life?”

  “Nonsense!”

  “The killers.” She’d broken the magic, she realized with a sense of desolation.

  “They won’t follow us here, but there’s a lot to tell,” she said. “How about we dig a bottle out of the minibar and have a bath or something while I tell you?”

  “I think we can do better than that,” he said with a glint in his eye. He reached for the bedside phone. “Room service, please. Yes? It’s room 2412. Can you send up the item I ordered earlier? Leave it outside.”

  “Huh?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “My surprise.” He looked smug.

  “I thought I was your surprise.” He’d been surprised enough when she came through the door—but he’d kissed her, and one thing led to another, and they hadn’t even made it as far as the bed the first time. Now she sat up on the rumpled sheets, brushing one hand up and down his thigh and watching his face. “About your uncle’s plans. What do you think Olga makes of them?”

  Roland looked pained. “She doesn’t get a say in it. She’s a naïve little dutiful contessa who’ll do as Angbard tells her parents to tell her.”

  “If that’s what you and Angbard think, you may be in for a nasty surprise.” Miriam watched him carefully. “You don’t know her very well, do you?”

  “I’ve met her a time or two,” he said, slightly puzzled.

  “Well, I have just spent several days in her company and that little minx may be young and naïve, but she isn’t dumb. In fact, it’s lucky for me she’s smart and doesn’t want to marry you any more than you want her—otherwise I wouldn’t be here now.”

  “What—”

  “She nearly shot me.”

  “Holy Crone Wife! What happened?”

  “Let go! You’re hurting—”

  “Sorry.” He sat up and gently put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry. You caught me by surprise. Tell me all about it. Everything. Don’t leave anything out. My gods—I am so glad you’re here and safe now.” He hugged her. “Tell me everything. In your own time.”

  “Time is the one thing I don’t think we’ve got.” She leaned against him. “Someone sent Olga an unwelcome gift—a rape-o-gram. Luckily for me, but unluckily for the thug concerned, Olga’s childlike enthusiasms include embroidery, violins, haute couture, and semiautomatic weapons. She found a commission in his back pocket, with my seal on it and a purse of coin sufficient to pay the kind of maidenprice Oliver might ask for someone he really didn’t like much. Roland, I didn’t even know I had a seal.”

  “‘A seal.’” He looked away just as someone knocked on the door. Miriam jumped. “I’ll get it—”

  “No! Wait!” Miriam scrabbled for her jacket, fumbled in its pockets. “Okay, now you can open the door. When I’m out of sight.”

  Roland glanced at her as he tied his bathrobe. “It’s only room service, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not taking any chances.” She crouched against the wall around the corner from the door, pistol cradled in both hands.

  “Will you give that up? If it’s the DEA, we have very expensive lawyers who’ll have us both out on bail in about thirty microseconds.”

  “It’s not the DEA I’m worried about,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s my long-lost family.”

  “Well, if you put it that way…” Roland opened the door. Miriam tensed. “Thank you,” she heard him tell someone. “That’s great, if you could leave it just here.” A moment later, she heard the door close, then a squeaking of wheels. Roland appeared, pushing a trolley upon which sat an ice bucket with a bottle of something poking out of it.

  “This is your surprise?” she asked, lowering the gun.

  He nodded. “You are on edge,” he observed. “Listen, do you want me to chain the door and hang out a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign?”

  “I think that would be a good start.” She was shivering. Worse, she had no idea where it had come from. “I’m not used to people trying to shoot me, love. It’s not the kind of thing that normally happens to a journalist, unless you’re a war correspondent.”

  She put the gun down on the bedside table.

  “Listen, Château Rothschild ’98. Sound all right to you?” He brandished the bottle.

  “Sounds perfect. Open it now, dammit, I need a drink!”

  He peered at her. “You do, at that,” he said. “One moment…” He popped the cork carefully, then slowly filled two fluted glasses, taking care not to spray the champagne everywhere. He passed her a glass, then raised his own. “To your very good health.”

  “To us—and the future.” She took a sip. “Whatever the hell that means.”

  “You were telling me about Olga.”

  “Olga and I had a little conversation at cross-purposes. She was raised to never unintentionally cause offense, so she gave me time to confess before she shot me. Luckily, I confessed to the wrong crime. Did you know that you’re an, uh, ‘dried-up prematurely middle-aged sack of mannered stupidity’? She doesn’t want to marry you—trust me on this.”

  “Well, it’s mutual.” Roland sat in the chair opposite the end of the bed, looking disturbed. “Have you any idea how the man got into he
r apartments?”

  “Yup. Through my own, by way of the roof. Turns out that the rooms Baron Oliver assigned me aren’t doppelgängered—or rather they are, but the location on this side is unprotected. And aren’t I supposed to have bodyguards or something? Anyway, that’s why I came here. I figured it was safer than spending the night in an apartment that has a neon sign on the door saying ASSASSINS THIS WAY, with cousins next door who seem to have opened a betting pool on my life expectancy.”

  “Someone tried to rape Olga?” Roland shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “It does if I was their first target and they meant to kill me, but couldn’t get at me directly: it was a contingency plan, to set up a blood feud between us.” Briefly, she told him about the open staircase, and her instructions to lock and bolt all the doors on the inside. “I don’t feel safe there, I really don’t.”

  “Hmm.” He took a mouthful of wine. “I don’t know.” He looked thoughtful rather than shocked. “I can eliminate some suspects, but not everybody.” He glanced up at her, worry writ large across his face. “First, it’s not official. It’s family, not Clan business. If it was the Clan, they’d have sent soldiers. You’ve seen what we’ve got over here.” She nodded. “Our enforcement teams—you don’t bother resisting. They’re better armed, better trained, and better paid than the FBI’s own specialist counterterrorism units.”

  “Well, I guessed that much,” she said.

  “Yes. Anyway, for seconds it’s too damned blatant—and that’s worrying. Whoever did it is out of control. Oliver Hjorth might dislike you and feel threatened, but he wouldn’t try to kill you in his own house. Not offering you a guard of honor is another matter, but to be implicated—no.” He shook his head. “As for Olga, that’s very disturbing. It sounds as if someone set her up to kill you or cause a scandal that would isolate you—one or the other. And you are probably right about being the intruder’s first target. That means it’s an insider—and that’s the frightening part. Someone who knows that you don’t know the families well, that you can be cut apart from the pack and isolated, that you are unguarded. Someone like that, who is acting like they’re out of control. A rogue, in other words.”