The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3)

by Charles Stross

  *

  The next day, Miriam received the visitor she’d been half dreading and half waiting for. Rising that morning, she’d donned Helge like a dress even as her maids were helping her into more material garments. Then she’d started the day by formally swearing Brilliana and Sir Alasdair to her service, before witnesses, followed by such of her guards as Sir Alasdair recommended to her. Then she’d gone out into the garden, just to get out of the way of the teeming servants – Brill’s self-kicking anthill was still settling down and sorting out its various niches in the house – and partly to convince herself that she was free to do so. And that was where her mother found her, sitting on a bench in an ornamental gazebo. And proceeded to lecture her about her newfound status.

  ‘You’re going to have to be a queen widow for a while,’ the Duchess Patricia voh Hjorth d’Wu ab Thorold explained to her. Wearing a voluminous black silk dress that she had somehow squeezed into the seat of an electric wheelchair, which in turn must have taken two strapping couriers to carry across in pieces, she posed an incongruous sight. ‘Probably not forever, but you should plan on doing it for at least the next nine months. It’ll give you a lot of leverage, but don’t misunderstand – you won’t be ruling the country. There’s no tradition of rule by women in this culture. We – the junta – have agreed we’re going to present ourselves in public as a council of regents. They’ll be the ones who do the ruling – making policy decisions – but I’ve held out for you to have a seat on the council. You’ll have title and nobility in your own right, and the power of high justice, the ability to arraign and try nobles. You’ll sign laws agreed by the assembly of lords, as a member of the council of regents. Which in turn means the Clan council can’t ignore you.’

  ‘Yes, Mom,’ Helge said obediently.

  ‘Don’t patronize me and I won’t patronize you, kid. The quid pro quo is that there’s a lot of ceremonial that goes with the job, a lot of face time. You’re going to have to be Helge in public for ninety percent of that. Also, the Clan council will expect you to issue decrees and perform administrative chores to order. They say rabbit, you hop – at least at first. How much input you manage to acquire into their decisions is up to you, but my advice would be to do it very slowly and carefully. Don’t risk overrunning your base, as you did last time. I’m going to be around to help. Our enemies won’t be expecting that. And you’ll have Brilliana. Olga and Riordan seem to like you, Sky Father only knows why, but that’s another immense advantage because those two are holding Security together right now. I’d advise against trying to swear them to you – nothing’s likely to scare the backwoods conservatives into doing something stupid like the fear that you’re trying to take over Clan Security – but Riordan leans our way and Olga is one of us.’

  ‘Define us,’ Helge challenged.

  ‘Us is you and me and everyone else who wants to drag the Clan kicking and screaming into the modern world.’ Her mother’s cheek dimpled. ‘Hot and cold running water, votes for women, that sort of thing. Next stupid question?’

  ‘So you tell me you’ve fixed up this situation where I’ll have a lot of leverage but I’m going to be a figurehead, and I have the power to basically try the nobility, even pass laws, but I can’t go head-to-head with the council, and if I push the limits too hard the reactionaries might try to assassinate me, and by the way, I’m going to be on public display as a storybook princess almost all the time. Is that the picture?’ Helge stood up. ‘What else am I missing?’

  ‘Your own power base,’ Patricia said crisply. She peered at Miriam. ‘Have you sworn Brilliana yet? Your head of security?’

  ‘Yes – ’

  ‘That young whippersnapper Huw? Or his brother and his doxy?’

  ‘Ma!’ She sat down again.

  ‘You’re not thinking ahead. You need them on your side, they’re young and enthusiastic and willing – what’s stopping you?’

  ‘Um. An opportunity?’

  ‘Exactly! So manufacture one. Invite them to a party. Better still, invite all the progressives. Be visible.’

  ‘But I don’t know who – ’

  ‘Brilliana does. Rely on her!’

  ‘You think I can do that?’ Helge asked disbelievingly.

  ‘No.’ Her mother grinned. ‘I know you can. You just need to make up your mind to do it.’ The grin faded. ‘But. On to other matters. It’s been a long time since we talked about the birds and the bees, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Ma.’ Helge kicked her skirts out. ‘I’m not a teenager anymore.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Patricia nodded. ‘But you didn’t grow up here. Can I offer some blunt advice?’

  ‘You’re going to, whether I want it or not, right?’

  ‘Oh M– Helge. You slay me. Very well, it’s this: You’re a grown woman and you’ve got needs. And if you wait until the bun’s finished baking and are reasonably discreet, nobody will look askance. Once you’ve been publicly acknowledged as the queen-widow, you’re . . . in effect you’re married, to a dead, absentee husband. Marriage is about property, and status, and rank, and if you’re fool enough you can throw it all away. So don’t do that, okay? Take a lover, but be discreet, use contraception. And whatever you do, don’t mess with the help, especially don’t mess with your sworn vassals. Pick a man who’s respectably married and owes you no obligation, and what you get up to harms no one. But unmarried men, or vassals? They’re trouble.’

  Helge gaped, speechless. After a moment she managed to shut her mouth. ‘Mother!’

  Patricia sighed. ‘Kid, the rules are different here. What have I been trying to beat into that thick skull of yours?’

  ‘But, but – ’

  ‘You’re confusing love and marriage. That old song, love and marriage, horse and carriage? It’s rubbish.’ She snorted dismissively. ‘At least, that’s not how any self-respecting aristocracy comports itself. You marry for power and heirs and you take your fun where you find it.’ For a moment she looked wistful: ‘That’s one of the things I’m really going to miss about not living in the United States anymore. But just because a society runs on arranged marriages, it doesn’t mean people don’t fall in love. Just as long as they’re discreet in public.’

  ‘Oh god.’ Helge made to run a hand through her hair, stopped at the last moment as she touched the jeweled pins that held it in place. ‘That is just so screwed up . . .’

  ‘I realize it must seem that way to you. The rules here are very different.’

  ‘Ick.’

  ‘It’s not that bad, kid.’ Patricia stage-managed a smile from somewhere. ‘You’re a widow. You’ve graduated from the marriage market, summa cum laude.’

  ‘I don’t need to hear this right now,’ said Helge. ‘I am so not interested in men right now – ’

  ‘But you will be, if not now then next year, and you need to know this stuff before it happens. Unless you want to let being a victim define you for the rest of your life, you’re going to look back on this one day and shrug and say, “but I moved on.”’

  Helge stared at her mother sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  Patricia looked her in the eye. ‘Your – my husband – was a real piece of work. But I didn’t let that get between us, between you and me, kid.’

  Helge looked away. ‘I’m not – ’

  ‘You’re my daughter. Mine, not his. That’s all the revenge that’s good for me.’

  After a moment, Helge looked back at her mother. Her eyes were dark, glistening with unshed tears. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to. I really didn’t want to lay that on you.’ Patricia held out a hand. After a moment, her daughter took it. ‘But you wanted to know why I want to change the Clan. I’m doing it so no granddaughter or great-granddaughter of mine ever has to go through what I went through.’

  ‘Oh, Mom.’ Helge rose, then knelt in front of the wheelchair. She laid her head on her mother’s lap, hugging her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Hush. It’s not your f
ault.’

  ‘But I thought you – ’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you thought. It’s the usual Clan mother/daughter rivalry. But like I said, we’re not going to play by their rules. Are you with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Helge.

  ‘Excellent.’ Her mother stroked the nape of her neck lightly. ‘You and me, kid. Together we’ll make this thing work.’

  *

  In the end, the coup came down to simple economics. The emergency government had neglected to pay their employees for three weeks; whereas Sir Adam’s party had, if not put a chicken in every pot, at least put a loaf of bread and tripe in dripping on every table that was spread with yesterday’s copy of The Leveler in lieu of a cloth. They didn’t have money but they had plenty of guns, and so they’d sent the party militia to seize control of the dockside warehouses. Wherein they found plenty of bulk grain that had been stockpiled for export, and which they lost no time in distributing to the people. It was a short-term gambit, but it paid off: Nothing buys friends in a famine like a full belly.

  The morning of the coup came three days after the Patriot Club withdrew from the emergency assembly. Patriot gangs had taken to the streets of New London, protesting the Levelers’ presence in the debating chamber with paving stones and pry bars. They’d scoured the army barracks, recruiting the wrong kind of soldiers – angry, unpaid young men, their bellies full of looted beer, looking for someone to blame. ‘We can’t allow this to continue,’ Sir Adam had said, his voice tinny over the crackling electrograph conference call. ‘They’ll cause chaos, and the people will blame us for losing control of the situation. So they must be stopped. Tomorrow morning, I want to see every man we’ve got turned out and ready for action. The Freedom Riders will patrol the streets around Parliament and the government buildings on Grosvenor Street; those of you in charge of departments will go to your offices with your guards and secure them against intrusion.’

  ‘What about the New Party and the other opposition groups?’ asked one of the delegates on the line.

  ‘I don’t think we’re going to waste our time worrying about them,’ said Sir Adam. ‘They’re either broadly for us and our program, in which case we will listen to their input before we act – once the emergency is over – or they’re against us, in which case they are part of the problem. The Freedom Riders will bar access to the Commons while we debate and pass the Enabling Act; let them protest once we’ve saved their necks from the noose. I’m more concerned about the Patriot mob. As soon as they work out what’s going on they’ll attempt to storm the citadel, and I want us to be ready for them.’

  Which was why, at four o’clock in the morning, instead of being sound asleep in bed, Erasmus was sitting in the passenger cab of a steamer, facing backwards, knee to knee with two strapping militiamen and nose to nose with Supervisor Philips, as it screamed up the broad boulevard fronting the East River at the head of a column of loudly buzzing motorcycle combinations. They were heading for the Propaganda Ministry offices in Bronckborough, to catch them at the tail end of a quiet graveyard shift. For lack of any other distraction, he scrutinized Philips closely; in his long black coat and forage cap he resembled a hungry crow.

  ‘Soon be over, eh, sir?’

  Philips’s eyes swiveled sideways, towards the serg– No, under-officer, Erasmus reminded himself – must keep the new ranks straight – underofficer who had spoken. ‘One expects so, Wolfe, unless anyone tipped a wink to the traitors.’

  ‘Not me, sir!’

  Erasmus suppressed his momentary amusement at the man’s discomfort. Someone might have done so, despite the Party’s control over the Post Office and the central electrograph exchanges, and if that was the case they might be heading straight into a field of beaten fire between heavy machine guns. In which case we’ll pay with our lives. But Philips’s reference to the Patriots as traitors – that was interesting. So easily do our names twist and bite us, Erasmus mused cynically.

  The ministry offices stood at the crest of a north–south ridgeline at the intersection of two broad boulevards lined with plane trees; with clear fields of fire in all directions and no windows below the third floor, it was a characteristic example of the governmental architectural style that had arrived in the wake of the Black Fist Freedom Guard’s assassination of King George Frederick’s father. The steps fronting the building were guarded, but the railway sidings and loading docks at the back, through which huge rolls of newsprint arrived every evening to print the next day’s edition of the Parliamentary Gazette, were another matter. By the time Burgeson’s car drew up beside a gap-doored loading bay, there wasn’t a red shirt in sight: All the guards on duty wore the black pea coats and helmets of the Freedom Riders.

  ‘Ah, good.’ Erasmus unwound to his full height as Philips hurried into the warehouse and conferred with his junior officers. ‘Under-officer Wolfe.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘As soon as it’s safe, I intend to go to the minister’s office. I need guards.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Allow me to petition Supervisor Philips?’

  Erasmus nodded. ‘Make it fast.’

  The second staff car arrived, disgorging a claque of radical journalists and sub-editors handpicked by Erasmus earlier in the week just as Philips strutted over. ‘Sir, the building appears to be in our hands for now. There was only a skeleton crew on duty, as the Patriots appear to have been shorting the staff to pay their thugs. I can’t guarantee there isn’t an assassin lurking in the minister’s dining room until my men have searched the place top to bottom, but if you’ll let me assign you a guard you can have the run of it.’ He grinned beakishly, as if claiming ownership of a particularly juicy piece of roadkill.

  ‘Good.’ Erasmus addressed his editorial staff: ‘Jonas, Eric, I want you to go to the speaking-room and see that the pulpit is ready for a morning broadcast. I’ll be addressing the nation on Voice of New England as soon as we have a program. Milo, get the emergency broadcast filler ready to run. Stephen, coordinate with Milo on developing a schedule of news announcements to run round the clock. I will be on hand to read proclamations and announce emergency decrees as we receive them from Freedom House through the day. Jack, the print floor is yours. Let’s go to work!’

  They stormed through the Ministry building like children in a sweet shop, capering around the huge printing presses and the broadcasting pulpits of the king’s own mouthpiece; marveling at the stentorian voice of the state that fate, audacity, and Sir Adam’s brash plan had put at their disposal. ‘’T’s going ter be glorious, sorr,’ Stephen confided in Erasmus as they walked the editor’s gallery overlooking the presses that had until recently spun the Gazette, official mouthpiece of John Frederick’s despotic agenda. His eyes gleamed. ‘All them years hiding type-trays in us basement, an’ it come to this!’

  ‘Enjoy it while you can, Steve. Seize the front page!’ They came to the door leading to the third-floor landing, and the stairs up to the soundproofed broadcasting pulpits. ‘You’ll have to excuse me: I’ve got a speech to record for the nine o’clock news, and then I’ll be in the Minister’s office, working up our schedule for the next week.’

  ‘A speech? What’s in it?’

  ‘Just some announcements Sir Adam charged me with making,’ Erasmus said blandly. Then he relaxed slightly: No point in not confiding in his new subordinate, after all! ‘We’re taking the People’s Palace’ – the Houses of Parliament, renamed by raucous consensus earlier in the week – ‘this morning, to pass an Enabling Act. It’ll give the Executive Council the power to rule by decree during the current emergency, and we’ll use it to round up the Patriots as soon as they raise their heads and start yelling for our blood. The sooner we can shut the opposition down for a while, the faster we’ll be able to set up a rationing system and get food to the people again. And the faster we do that, the sooner we’ll have their undivided support.

  ‘By winter, we’ll be building the new Jerusalem! And you, my friend, are going to tell the world t
hat’s what we’re going to do.’

  *

  Pomp, circumstance, and matters of state seemed inseparable; and the more tenuous the state, the more pomp and circumstance seemed to surround it, Miriam reflected. ‘I hope this is going to work,’ she murmured.

  ‘Milady, it looks perfect!’ Gerta, her recently acquired lady of the wardrobe, chirped, tugging at the laces of her left sleeve. ‘You are the, the model of a queen!’ Her English was heavily accented and somewhat hesitant, but at least she had some; Brill had filtered the candidates ruthlessly to ensure that Miriam wasn’t left floundering with her rudimentary Hochsprache.

  I don’t feel like one, Miriam thought, but held her counsel. I feel more like a wedding cake decoration gone wrong. And this outfit weighs more than a suit of armor. She was still ambivalent about the whole mad scheme; only the certain knowledge of what could happen if this masquerade failed was holding her on course – on course for weeks of state audiences and banquets and balls, and seven months of sore feet, morning nausea, aching back, and medical worries. ‘Continue,’ she said tonelessly, as Gerta continued to wind a seemingly endless silver chain around her collar, while three other maids – more junior by far – fussed around her.

  She’d lain awake for most of the previous night, listening to the wind drumming across the roof above her, and the calls of the sentries as they exchanged watch, and she’d worried at the plan like a dog with a mangy leg. If this was the right thing to do, if this was the right thing for her, if, if . . . If she was going to act a part in a perilous play, if she was going to have another baby – at her age – not with a man she loved, but by donor insemination, as a bargaining chip in a deadly political game, to lay claim to a toxic throne. Poor little bastard, she thought – and he would, indeed, be a bastard except for the elaborate lies of a dozen pre-briefed and pre-blackmailed witnesses who would swear blind to a secret wedding ceremony – doomed to be a figurehead for the throne. Damn, and I thought I had problems . . .