The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1)

by Charles Stross

  ‘Where to?’ asked the driver, in an almost-comprehensible accent.

  ‘Penn Station,’ she said. He nodded a couple of times, then swung his car through a circle and flung it into the traffic.

  Miriam lay back and watched the real world go by in a happy daze only slightly tempered by her throbbing head. I’m really here! she thought, feeling the bounce and lurch of pneumatic tires on asphalt and the warm breeze from the heater on her feet. Isn’t it great? She wanted the cab ride to last forever, she realized with a warm glow of nostalgia. Lights and advertisements and people who didn’t look like extras from an historical movie flowed past to either side of her heated cocoon. This was her world, an urban reality where real people wore comfortable clothes, made thoughtless use of conveniences like electricity and tap water, and didn’t weave lethal dynastic games around the future lives of children she didn’t intend to have.

  Wait till I tell Ma, she thought. Then Paulie. Followed moments later by: Damn, first I have to figure out what I can tell them. Then: Hey, at least I can talk to Roland . . .

  She picked up her phone and dialed her mailbox.

  ‘Miriam?’ His voice was distant and scratchy and her heart skipped a beat. ‘I hope you get this message. Listen, I come across on a courier run every two days, between ten and four. I think your uncle may suspect something, he’s put Matthias onto me as an escort. Last night he sent news that you’d arrived at the capital. How are you enjoying life there? Oh, by the way, don’t trust anyone called Hjorth; they’ve got a lot to lose. And watch out for Prince Egon: He’s been known to not take no for an answer. Call me when you get a chance.’

  Her vision had misted at the sound of his voice. Damn, I didn’t plan this. The taxi drifted in stop-and-go traffic, the driver thumping the steering column in time with the radio.

  At the station Miriam’s first act was to hunt down an ATM and try her card. It worked. She pulled out five hundred dollars in crisp green notes and stuffed them in her pocket. That shouldn’t tell them much beyond where I was, she decided. Then she hit the ticket desk for a first-class return ticket to Boston on the next Acela. It took a wad, but once she found the train and settled into the seat, she was pleased with herself for spending it. It would take only three and a half hours, meaning she’d have maybe three hours in Boston before she’d have to go back again.

  Miriam settled back in her seat, notebook computer opened on the table in front of her and phone beside it. Do I have to go back there? she asked herself. She’d just spent a week on the other side – and that week had been enough to last her a lifetime. She felt the stiff edges of the platinum credit card digging into her conscience. It was blood money, and their blood-is-thicker-than-water creed would drag her back – every time. It didn’t drag my birth-mother back, she thought. It killed her instead. Which was even worse, and likelier than not what would happen to her if she ran now – because if she ran, they’d know she was untrustworthy. She wouldn’t get another chance. Darker possibilities occurred to her. Even if they didn’t want to kill her and reduce their precious gene pool, they could immobilize her permanently by blinding her. She doubted it was a common tactic – even given the Clan’s ruthlessness, it would rapidly provoke fear and loathing, a catalyst for conflict – but they might use it as a special measure if they suspected treason, and the possibility filled her with horror.

  On the other hand, the thought of voluntarily going back to the drafty castle and the insane family politics was depressing. So she picked up the phone and dialed Roland’s number instead.

  ‘Hello?’ He answered on the first ring and she cheered up instantly.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said quietly. ‘Can you talk?’

  ‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘He’s not around right now, but he’s never far away.’

  ‘Are they still watching my house?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, I think so. Where are you?’

  ‘On a train partway from New York to Boston.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re running – ’

  ‘No,’ she said hastily, ‘but I’ve got unfinished business. Not just you – other stuff too. I want to see my mother, and I want to see some other people. Okay? Better not ask too many questions. I’m not going to do anything silly, but I have a feeling I don’t want to draw any attention to people I know. Are you able to get away for a day? Say, to New York?’

  ‘They’ve got you in that stone pile?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah. Do you know what it’s like?’

  ‘You survived three days with Olga?’ His tone was one of bemused disbelief.

  ‘The facilities are, uh, open plan, and I get to sit cheek by jowl with two of Olga’s less enlightened coworkers,’ she said, eyes swiveling to track down the nearest passengers. She was clear – nobody in the two seats across the aisle from her. Quietly she added, ‘The ladies-in-waiting are like jail guards, only prettier, if you follow me. They stick like glue. I woke up and they were in my goddamn bed with me. You’d think Angbard had set them on me as minders. Honestly, I’m at my wit’s end. I’m going to go back this evening, but if you don’t come and rescue me soon, I swear I’ll kill someone. And I still haven’t filed copy on that dot-com busted flush feature I’m supposed to be writing for Steve.’

  ‘My poor journalist.’ He laughed, a little sadly. ‘You’re not having a good time. Maybe we should form a club?’

  ‘Culture shocked and brain damaged?’

  ‘That’s right.’ A pause. ‘Going back after six years away, that was the hardest thing, Miriam. You will go back to them?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘If I don’t, I’ll never see you again, will I?’

  ‘Not today. I’ll be over again the day after tomorrow,’ he said. ‘New York, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Rent a double room at the Marriott on Times Square. It’s anonymous and bland, but I think you’ve got more travel time than I have. Leave voice mail with the room number and the name you’re using, and I’ll show up as early as possible.’ She shivered at the thought, shuffling uncomfortably in her seat.

  ‘I’ll be there. Promise.’

  ‘Bring a couple of new prepaid phones, bought with cash, as anonymous as you can. We’ll need them. I miss you,’ she added very quietly and hung up. Forty-eight hours to go. It had already been four days since she’d last seen him.

  The conductor came around, and she glanced around again to confirm how much space she had. The carriage was half-empty: she’d missed the rush hour crush. Now she dialed another number, one she’d committed to memory because she was afraid to program it into the phone.

  ‘Hi, you’ve reached the answering machine of Paulette Milan. I’m sorry I can’t come to the phone right now, but – ’

  ‘Paulie, cut the crap and pick up the phone right now.’

  The line clicked. ‘Miriam! What the fuck are you playing at, sweetie?’

  ‘Playing at? What do you mean?’

  ‘Skipping out like that! Jesus, I’ve been so worried!’

  ‘You think you’ve been worried? You haven’t phoned my house, have you?’ Miriam interrupted hastily.

  ‘Oh yeah, but when you didn’t answer I left a message about the bridge club. Something I made up on the spur of the moment. I’ve been so worried – ’

  ‘Paulie, you didn’t mention the other stuff, did you? Or go around in person?’

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ Paulette said quietly, all ebullience gone.

  ‘Good – uh, I’m sorry. Let me try again.’ Miriam closed her eyes. ‘Hi, I’m Miriam Beckstein, and I have just discovered the hard way that my long-lost family have got very long memories and longer arms, and they invited me to spend some time with them. It turns out that they’re in the import/export trade, and they’re so big that the story we were working on probably covers some of their turf. Hopefully they don’t think you’re anything other than a ditzy broad who plays bridge with me, because if they did you might not enjoy their company. Capisce?’


  ‘Oh, oh shit! Miriam, I am so sorry! Listen, are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah. Not only am I all right, I’m on a train that gets into South Station in – ’ she checked her watch – ‘about an hour and a half. I don’t have long, this is a day trip, and I have to be on the four o’clock return train. I’m kind of on probation. But if you can meet me at the station, I’ll drag you out to lunch and fill you in on everything, and I mean everything. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ Paulette sounded a little less upset. ‘Miriam?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are they like? What are they doing to you?’

  Miriam closed her eyes. ‘Did you ever see the movie Married to the Mob?’

  ‘No way! What about your locket? You mean they’re – ’

  ‘Let’s just say, it would be a bad idea for you to phone my house, visit it in person, talk to or visit my mother, or do anything that is in any way out of character for an out-of-work research geek who vaguely knows me from work and plays bridge once a week. At least, where they can see you. Which is why I’m phoning on a number you’ve never seen and probably won’t ever see again. Meet me at one inside the station, near the south entrance?’

  ‘Okay, I’ll be there. Better have a good story!’ Paulette hung up, and Miriam settled back to watch the countryside roll by.

  *

  Leaving the station, Miriam immediately hit the mall across the street. There was an ATM, and she pulled another two thousand in cash out of it. There seemed to be no end to the amount she could draw, as long as she didn’t mind leaving an audit trail. This time she wanted to. Putting a timestamp on Boston would tell the Duke where she’d been. She planned on telling him anyway. Let him think she was being open and truthful about everything.

  She headed back into the station in the same state she’d been in in the taxi. This was home, a place she’d been before, intimately familiar at the same time that it was anonymous and impersonal. She was shaken by how relieved she was to be back. Suddenly being jobless in a recession with her former employer threatening to blacken her name didn’t seem so bad, all things considered. She almost walked right past Paulette, as unnoticed as any other commuter in a raincoat, but she swerved at the last moment, blinking the daze away.

  ‘Paulie!’

  ‘Miriam!’ Paulette grabbed her in a hug, then held her at arm’s length, inspecting her face anxiously. ‘You look thinner. Was it bad, babe?’

  ‘Was it bad?’ Miriam shook her head, unsure where to begin. ‘Jesus, it was weird, and bits of it were very bad and bits of it were, um, less bad. Not bad at all. But it’s not over. Listen, let’s go find something to eat – I haven’t had any breakfast – and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  They found a booth in a not unbearable pizza joint in the mall, where the background noise loaned them a veneer of privacy, and Miriam wolfed down a weird Californian pizza with a topping of chicken tikka on a honeyed sourdough base. Between bites, she gave Paulette a brief run-down: ‘They kidnapped me right out of my house after you left, a whole damn SWAT team. But then they put me up in this stately house, a palace really, and introduced me to a real honest-to-god duke. You know the medieval shit I came back with? It’s real. What I didn’t figure on was that my family, my real family, I mean, are, like, the aristocracy who run it.’

  ‘They rule it.’ Paulette’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. ‘You’re not shitting me. I mean, they’re kings and stuff?’

  ‘No, they’re just an extended trading Clan that happens to be an umbrella for about a third of the nobility that runs the eastern seaboard – the nouveau riche crowd. They’re not long established, and deeply paranoid. Think like the Medicis. There are several countries over there, squabbling feudal kingdoms: the one hereabouts is called the Gruinmarkt, and they don’t speak English – or rather, the ruling class do, the way the nobles in England spoke French during the middle ages. But anyway. The high king rules the Gruinmarkt, but the Clan – the Clan of the families who can walk between worlds – they own everything. I mean, the king wants to marry one of his sons into the Clan to tighten his grip on power.’

  Miriam paused to finish her pizza, aware that Paulette was staring at her thoughtfully.

  ‘Where do you fit in all this?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh.’ Miriam put her fork down. ‘I’m the long-lost daughter of a noblewoman whose coach was ambushed by bandits. Or assassins – there was a war on at the time, between branches of the Clan. She escaped, ran away to our world, but died before she could get help.’ Miriam looked Paulette in the eye. ‘When you were a kid, did you ever fantasize about maybe you were switched with another baby in the hospital, and your real parents were rich and powerful, or something?’

  ‘Isn’t that every little girl’s daydream? Didn’t Disney build a whole multinational brand on top of it?’

  ‘Well, when you’re thirty-two and divorced and have a life, and long-lost relatives from your newly discovered family show up and tell you that actually you’re a countess, it might put a bit of a different spin on things, huh?’

  Paulette looked slightly puzzled. ‘How do you mean – ’

  ‘Like, they insist that you marry someone suitable, because they can’t have independent women running around. You’ve got a choice between living in a drafty castle with no electricity and running water, oh, and having lots of children by the husband they’ve chosen for you, a choice between that and, well, there is no choice marked “B”. Resistance is futile; you will be assimilated. Got it, already?’

  ‘Oh sweet Jesus. No wonder you look fried!’ Paulette shook her head slowly.

  ‘Yeah, well, I was afraid I was going to go crazy if I didn’t get away after the last week. What makes it really bad is that, well . . .’ Miriam chewed her lower lip for a while before continuing. ‘Your guesses about where they could make money were right on the nail. I don’t know if they’re into Proteome Dynamics and Biphase Technologies, but they’re sure into everything else under the sun. They gave me a debit card and said, “Here’s a two-million-dollar credit limit, try not to overload it.” There is no way in hell that they will let me walk away from them. And the thing that frightens me most is that I’m not, like, one hundred percent sure I entirely want to.’

  Paulie was studying her intently. ‘Is there something else?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes, oh yes.’ Miriam fell silent. ‘But I don’t want to talk about him just now.’

  ‘Is he bad? Did he – ’

  ‘I said I didn’t want to talk about it!’ she snapped. A moment later, she added, ‘I’m sorry. No, he isn’t bad. You know, it’s just you’ve never been able to resist ragging me about men, and I don’t need that right now. It’s messy, very messy, and things are bad enough without adding that kind of complication.’

  ‘Lovely.’ Paulette pulled a face. ‘Okay, so I won’t ask you about your mystery boyfriend. Let me see if I’ve got this straight? It turns out your family think you’re a little lost heiress. They want to treat you like one, which is to say, not a hell of a lot like the way it works out in the fairy tales. You’d maybe tell them to screw off, but first they won’t, and second they’ve got lots of money. Third, you’ve met a man who didn’t want to strangle you after five minutes – sorry – and he’s mixed up in all of it. Is that a fair summary?’

  ‘Pretty much.’ Miriam waved for the check. ‘Which is why I had to get away from it all for the day. I’m not even a – a prisoner. I’m just considered valuable. Or something.’ She frowned. ‘It’s absolutely crazy. Even their business operations! It’s like something out of the middle ages. They’re about three centuries overdue for modernization, and I’m not just talking about the cultural stuff. Pure zero-sum mercantilism, red in tooth and nail, in an environment where they have barely invented banking, never mind the limited liability company. Deeply primitive, not to say wasteful of resources, but they’re set in their ways. I’ve seen companies like that before; sooner or later someone else comes along and eats
their lunch. There ought to be something smarter they could be doing, if only I could think of it . . .’

  ‘O-k-a-y. You do that, Miriam.’

  The bill arrived and Miriam stuck down a fifty before Paulette could protest.

  ‘Come on.’ She stood up; Paulette hurried after.

  ‘Did I just see that? Did I? Miriam Beckstein putting down a fifty percent tip?’

  ‘I want out of this restaurant,’ Miriam said flatly. Continuing on the hoof: ‘Money doesn’t mean anything any more, Paulie, didn’t you catch that bit? I’m so rich I could buy The Weatherman if I wanted to – only it won’t do me any good because my problems aren’t money-related. There are factions among the families. One of them probably wants me dead. They had a nice little number going with my mother’s shareholding in the Clan; now that I’ve shown up, I’ve disrupted a load of plans. Another faction wants me married off. The king, his number-two prince is a retard, Paulie, and you know what? I think my old goat of an uncle is going to try to marry me off to him.’

  ‘Oh, you poor kid. Don’t they have an equal rights amendment?’

  ‘Oh, poor me, these guys don’t even have a constitution,’ Miriam said with feeling. ‘It’s a whole other world, and women like me get the . . . get the – hell, think about the Arabs. The Saudi royal family. They come over here in expensive suits and limousines and buy big properties and lots of toys, but they don’t think like us, and when they go back home they go straight back to the middle ages. How would you feel if you woke up one morning and discovered you were a Saudi princess?’

  ‘Not very likely,’ Paulette pointed out, ‘seeing as how I am half-Italian and half-Armenian and one hundred percent peasant stock, and damn happy to live here in the U.S. of A., where even peasants are middle class and get to be paralegals and managers and are allowed to vote. But yeah, I think I see where you’re coming from.’ Paulette looked at her pensively. ‘You got problems,’ she said. ‘I’d worry about the bunch who want you out of the way before worrying about the risk of being married off to Prince Charming, though. At least they’ve got money.’ She pulled a face. ‘If I found I had a long-lost family, knowing my luck, the first thing they’d do is ask to borrow a hundred bucks until payday. Then they’d start with the death threats.’