The Hidden Family: Book Two of Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

Ouch. Miriam took a step back and a branch whacked her on the back of the head.

  “Are you alright?” Olga asked anxiously.

  “Ouch. And again, ouch. How about you?”

  “I’m fine, except for my head.” Olga looked none the worse for wear.

  “Where are we?”

  “I should say we’re still some way outside the city limits.” Miriam put her bag down and concentrated on breathing, trying to get the throbbing in her head under control. “Are you ready for a nice bracing morning constitutional?”

  “Ugh. Mornings should be abolished!”

  “You will hear no arguments from this quarter.” Miriam bent down, opened her bag, and removed a cloak from it to cover her alien clothes. “That looks like clear ground over there. How about we try to pick up a road?”

  “Lead on,” sighed Olga.

  They’d come out in deciduous woodland, snow lying thick on the ground between the stark, skeletal trees; it took them the best part of an hour to find their way to a road, and even that was mostly dumb luck. But, once they’d found it, Niejwein was already in sight. And what a sight it was.

  Miriam hadn’t appreciated before just how crude, small, and just plain smelly the city was. It stood on a low bluff overlooking what might, in a few hundred years, mutate into the Port Authority. Stone walls twenty feet high followed the contours of the ground for miles, bascules sprouting ominously every hundred yards. Long before they reached the walls, she found herself walking beside Olga in a cloud of smelly dust, passing rows of windowless tumbledown shacks. Scores of poor-looking countryfolk—many in clothes little better than layered rags—drove heavily laden donkeys or small herds of sheep toward the city gates. Miriam noticed that they were picking up a few odd looks, especially from the ragged mothers of the barefoot urchins who cast stones across the icy cobbles, but she avoided eye contact and nobody seemed interested in approaching two women who knew where they were going. Especially after Olga pointedly allowed the barrel of her gun to slip from under her cloak, in response to an importuning rascal who attempted to get too close. “Hmm, I see why you always travel by—” Miriam stopped and squinted at the gatehouse. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is, on the wall,” she said.

  “Not what—oh, that.” Olga looked at her oddly. “What else would you have them do with bandits?”

  “Um.” Miriam swallowed. “Not that.” The city gates were wide open and nobody seemed to be guarding them. “Is there meant to be anyone on watch?”

  “Invasion comes from the sea, most often.”

  “Um.” I’ve got to stop saying that, Miriam told herself. Her feet were beginning to hurt with all the walking, she was picking up dust and dirt, and she was profoundly regretting not making use of the dining carriage for breakfast. Or crossing all the way over, phoning for Paulie to pick them up, and driving all the way in the back of an air-conditioned car. “Which way to the castle?”

  “Oh, that’s a way yet.” Olga beamed as a wagon laden with bales of hay clattered past. “Isn’t it grand? The largest city in the Gruinmarkt!”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” Miriam said hollowly. She’d seen something like this before, she realized. Some of the museum reconstructions of medieval life back home were quite accurate, but nothing quite captured the reek—no, the overwhelming stench—of open sewers, of people who bathed twice a year and wore a single set of clothes all the time, of houses where the owners bedded down with their livestock to share warmth. Did I really say I was going to modernize this? she asked herself, aghast at her own hubris. Why yes, I think I did. Talk about jumping in with both feet…

  Olga steered her into a wide boulevard without warning. “Look,” she said. Huge stone buildings fronted the road at intervals, all the way up to an imposing hill at the far end, upon which squatted a massive stone carbuncle, turretted and brooding. “You see? There is civilization in Niejwein after all!”

  “That’s the palace, isn’t it?”

  “It is indeed. And we’ll be much better off once we are inside its walls.” A hundred yards more and Olga waved Miriam into what at first she mistook for an alleyway—before she worked out that it was the drive leading to the Hjorth Palace.

  “I didn’t realize this—” Miriam stopped, coming to a halt behind Olga. Two men at arms were walking toward them, hands close to their sword hilts.

  “Chein bethen! Gehen’sh veg!”

  “Ver she mishtanken shind?” said Olga, drawing herself up and glaring at them icily.

  “Ish interesher’ish nish, when sheshint the Herzogin von Praha—” said one, sneering contemptuously.

  “Stop right there,” Miriam said evenly, pulling her right hand inside her cloak. “Is Duke Lofstrom in residence?”

  The sneering one stopped and gaped at her. “You…say, the duke?” he said slowly in broken English. “I’ll teach you—”

  His colleague laid a hand on his arm and muttered something urgent in his ear.

  “Fetch the duke, or one of his aides,” Miriam snapped. “I will wait here.”

  Olga glanced at her sidelong, then turned her cloak back to reveal her gun and her costume. What she wore would be considered respectable in New London: Over here it was as exotic as the American outfits the Clan members wore in private.

  “I take you inside,” said the more prudent guard, trying to look inoffensive. “Gregor, gefen she jemand shnaill’len, als if foor leifensdauer abhngt fon ihm,” he told his companion.

  Olga grinned humorlessly. “It does,” she said.

  A carriage rattled up the drive behind them; meanwhile, booted feet hurried across the hall. A man, vaguely familiar from Angbard’s retinue, glanced curiously at Miriam. “Oh great Sky Father, it’s her,” he muttered in a despairing tone. “Please, come in, come in! You came to see the duke?”

  “Yes, but I think we should freshen up first,” said Miriam. “Please send him my compliments, tell these two idiots to let us in, and we will be with him in half an hour.”

  “Certainly, certainly—”

  Olga took Miriam’s hand and led her up the steps while the duke’s man was still warming up on the hapless guards. A couple more guards, these ones far more alert-looking, fell in behind them. “Your apartment,” said Olga. “I took the liberty of moving some of my stuff in. I hope you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all.” Miriam shrugged, then winced. “I’ll need more than half an hour to freshen up.”

  “Well, you’ll have to do it fast.” Olga rapped on the huge double doors by the top of the main stairs. “The duke detests being kept waiting.”

  “Indeed—Kara!—oof!”

  “My lady!”

  Miriam pushed her back to arm’s length. “You’ve been alright?” she asked anxiously. “No murderers lurking in your bedroom?”

  “None, milady!” Kara flushed and let go of her. “Milady! What is that you’re wearing? It’s so frumpy! And you, lady Olga? Is this some horrid new fashion from Paris that we’ll all be wearing in a month? Has somebody been biting your neck, that you’ve got to hide it?”

  “I hope not,” Miriam said dryly. “Listen.” She towed Kara into the empty outer audience chamber. “We’re going to see Angbard in half an hour. Half an hour. Get something for me to wear. And warn Olga’s maids. We’ve been on the road half a day.”

  “I shall!” She bounced away toward the bedchamber.

  Miriam rubbed her forehead. “Youth and enthusiasm.” She made a wry curse of it.

  Her bedroom was as she’d left it four months ago—Olga had taken the Queen’s Room, for there were four royal rooms in this apartment—and for once Miriam didn’t drive Kara out. “Help me undress,” she ordered. “Aah, that’s better. Um. Fetch the pot. Then would you mind getting me a basin of hot water? I need to scrub my face.”

  Kara, for a wonder, left Miriam alone to wash herself—then doubled the miracle by laying out one of Miriam’s trouser suits and retiring to the outer chamber. “She’s learning,” Miriam noted. “Hmm.�
�� It felt strange to be dressing for an ordinary day in the office world, doubly strange to be doing so with medieval squallor held at bay outside by guards with swords. “What the hell.” She looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was past shoulder length, there were worry lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there six months ago, and her jacket was loose at the waist. “Not bad.” Then she spotted a couple of white hairs. “Damn. Bad.” She combed it back hard, held it in place with a couple of pins, and turned her back on the mirror. “Hostile takeover time, kid. Go kill ’em.”

  There were no simple chambers for the duke. He’d taken over the royal apartment in the west wing, occupying half of the top floor, and his guards had staked out the entire floor below as a security measure. Nor was it possible for Miriam to pay a quiet visit on him. Not without first picking up a retinue of a palace majordomo, a bunch of guards led by a nervous young officer, and an overexcited teenager. Kara fussed around behind Miriam as she climbed the stairs. “Isn’t it exciting?” she squealed.

  “Hush.” Miriam cast her eye over the guards with a jaundiced eye. Their camouflage jackets and submachine guns sounded a jarring note. Strip them from the scene and this might merely be some English stately home, taken over for the duration of a rich multinational’s general meeting. “Am I always supposed to travel with this much protection?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Kara said artlessly.

  “Make a point of finding out, then,” Miriam said sharply as she climbed the last few steps toward the separate guard detachment outside Angbard’s residence.

  Two soldiers came to attention on either side of the door to the royal apartment. Their sergeant strode forward. “Introduce me,” Miriam hissed at the majordomo.

  “Ahem! May I present my lady, her excellency the countess Helge Thorold-Hjorth, niece of the duke Angbard of that family, who comes to pay her attendance on the duke?” The man ended on a strangled squeak.

  The sergeant checked his clipboard. “Everything is as expected.” He saluted, and Miriam nodded acknowledgment at him. “Ma’am. If you’d like to come this way.” His eyes lingered on Kara. “Your lady-in-waiting may attend. The guards—”

  “Very well,” said Miriam. She glanced over her shoulder: “Wait here, I’m not expecting my uncle to try to kill me,” she told her retinue. Yet, she added silently. The doors swung open and she stepped through into a nearly empty audience chamber. The doors slammed shut behind her with a solid thud of latches, and she would have paused to look around but for the sergeant, who was already halfway across the huge expanse of hand-woven carpet.

  He paused at the inner door and knocked twice: “Visitor six-two,” he muttered to a peephole, then stood aside. The inner door opened just wide enough to admit Miriam and Kara. “If you please, ma’am.”

  “Hmm.” Miriam entered the room, then stopped dead. “Mother!”

  “Miriam!” Iris smiled at her from her wheelchair, which stood beside the pair of thrones mounted at one end of the audience room. A pair of crutches leaned against one of them.

  Miriam crossed the room quickly and leaned down to hug her mother. “I’ve missed you,” she said quietly, mind whirling with shock. “I was so worried—”

  “There, there.” Iris kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I’m alright, as you can see.” Miriam straightened up. “You look as if you’re keeping well!” Then she noticed Kara’s head in the doorway, jaw agape. “Oh dear, another one come to stare at me,” she sighed. “I suppose it can’t be helped. It’ll all be over by this time tomorrow, anyway, isn’t that the case, Angbard?”

  “I would not make any assumptions,” said the duke, turning away from the window. His expression was distant. “Helge, Miriam.”

  “So, it is true,” said Miriam. She glanced at Iris. “He brought you here?” She rounded on Angbard: “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “Nonsense.” He looked offended.

  “Don’t blame him, Miriam.” Iris looked at her strangely. “Drag up a seat, dear. It’s a long story.”

  Miriam sat down beside her. “Why?” she asked, her thoughts whirling so that she couldn’t make her mind up what word to put next. “What is she doing here then, if you didn’t kidnap her?” she asked, looking at Angbard. “I thought it was against all your policies to take people from—”

  “Policies?” Angbard asked, raising his nose. He shrugged dismissively then looked at Iris. “Tell her.”

  “Nobody kidnapped me,” said Iris. “But after a party or parties unknown tried to kill me, I phoned Angbard and asked for help.”

  “Uh.” Miriam blinked. “You phoned him?”

  “Yes.” Iris nodded encouragingly. “Isn’t that how you normally get in touch with someone?”

  “Well yes, but, but…” Miriam paused. “You had his number,” she said accusingly. “How?”

  Iris glanced at the duke, as if asking for moral support. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and half-turned away from Miriam.

  “Um.” Iris froze up, looking embarrassed.

  Miriam stared at her mother. “Oh no. Tell me it isn’t true.”

  Iris coughed. “I expected you to look at the papers, use the locket or not, then do the sensible thing and ask me to tell you all about it. I figured you’d be fairly safe, your house being in the middle of open woodland on this side, and it would make explaining everything a lot easier once you’d had a chance to see for yourself. Otherwise—” She shrugged. “If I’d broken it to you cold you’d have thought I was crazy. I didn’t expect you to go running off and getting yourself shot at!” For a moment she looked angry. “I was so worried!”

  “Ma.” She had difficulty swallowing. “You’re telling me you knew about. The Clan. All along.”

  A patient sigh from the window bay. “She appears to be having some difficulty. If you would allow me—”

  “No!” Iris snapped, then stopped.

  “If you can’t, I will,” the duke said firmly. He turned back to face Miriam. “Your mother has had my number all along,” he explained, scrutinizing her face. “The Clan has maintained emergency telephone numbers—a nine-eleven service, if you like—for the past fifty years. She only saw fit to call me when you went missing.”

  “Ma—” Miriam stopped. Glanced at Angbard again. “My mother,” she said thoughtfully. “Not, um, foster-mother, is it?”

  Angbard shook his head slightly, studying her beneath half-hooded eyes.

  Miriam glared at Iris. “Why all the lies, then?” she demanded.

  Iris looked defensive. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, is all I can say.” She shuffled deeper into her chair. “Miriam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know I brought you up not to tell lies. All I can say is, I wish I could have lived up to that myself. I’m sorry.”

  Angbard took a step forward, then moved to stand behind Iris’s wheelchair.

  “Don’t go too hard on her,” he said warningly. “You have no idea what she’s—” He stopped, and shook his head. “No idea,” he echoed grimly.

  “So explain,” said Miriam. Her gaze slid past Iris to focus on Kara, who was doing her best imitation of a sheet of wallpaper—wallpaper with a fascinated expression. “Whoa. Kara, please wait outside. Now.”

  Kara skidded across the floor as if her feet were on fire: “I’m going, I’m going!” she squeaked.

  Miriam stared at Iris. “So why did you do it?”

  Iris sighed. “They’d shot Alfredo, you know.”

  She fell silent for a moment.

  “Alfredo?”

  “Your father.”

  “Shot him, you said.”

  “Yes. And Joan, my maid, they killed her too. I got across but they’d done a good job on me, too—I nearly bled to death before the ambulance got me to a hospital. And then, and then…” She trailed off. “I was in Cambridge, unidentified, in a hospital, with no chaperone and no guards. Can you understand the temptation?”

  Miriam looked sideways: Angbard was watc
hing Iris like a hawk, something like admiration in his eyes. Or maybe it was the bitterness of the dutiful brother who stuck to his post? It was hard to tell.

  “How did you meet Morris?” she asked her mother, after a momentary pause.

  “He was a hospital visitor.” Iris smiled at the recollection. “Actually he was writing for an underground newspaper at the time and came to see if I’d been beaten up by the pigs. Later he sorted out our birth certificates—mine and yours, that is, including my fake backstory leading out of the country, and the false adoption papers—when we moved around. Me being a naturalized foreigner was useful cover. There was a whole underground railroad going on in those days, left over from when the SDS and the Weather Underground turned bad, and it served our purpose to use it. Especially as the FBI wasn’t actually looking for us.”

  “So I—I—” Miriam stopped. “I’m not adopted.”

  “Does it make any difference to you?” Iris asked, sounding slightly puzzled. “You always said it didn’t. That’s what you told me.”

  “I’m confused,” Miriam admitted. Her head was spinning. “You were rich and powerful. You gave it all up—brought your daughter up to think she was adopted, went underground, lived like a political radical—just to get away from the in-laws?”

  Angbard spoke. “It’s her mother’s fault,” he said grimly. “You met the dowager duchess, I believe. She has always taken a, ah, utilitarian view of her offspring. She played Patty like a card in a game of poker, for the highest stakes. The treaty process, re-establishing the braid between the warring factions. I think she did so partially out of spite, to get your mother out of the way, but she is not a simple woman. Nothing she does serves only a single purpose.” His expression was stony. “But she is untouchable. Unlike whoever tried to ruin her hand by murdering my cousin and her husband.”

  Iris shifted around, trying to make herself more comfortable. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account. If you ever find Alfredo’s body, you’d best not tell me where it’s buried—I’d have a terrible time getting back into my wheelchair after I pissed on it.”