The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1)

by Charles Stross

  Brilliana jumped as she emerged. ‘Oh! By my soul, you gave me a fright, my lady. I was so worried for you!’

  ‘I think I gave me a fright too.’ She shut the door.

  ‘We’re going back to the heated quarters now,’ she said. ‘And we’re going to bolt the door – on the inside. Come on. I wonder if that bath will be ready.’

  *

  The bath was indeed ready, although Miriam had to ransack her luggage for toiletries and chase two ladies-in-waiting and three servants out of the room before she could strip off and get in the tub. In any event, it grew cold too fast for her to soak in it for long. Baths hereabouts were a major chore, and if she didn’t get across to the other side regularly, she’d have to get used to making it a weekly event. At least she didn’t have to put up with the local excuse for soap, which was ghastly beyond belief.

  Drying herself with her feet up against the back side of the fireplace – which for a miracle had warmed right through the stonework – she reflected on the progress she’d made. Brilliana is going to be okay, she mused. Maybe I could give her to Paulie as a gofer? If she survived the culture shock. It’s no joke, she chided herself. She’d grown up with museums and films about the past – how much harder would she have it if she’d found herself catapulted into the equivalent of the twenty-sixth century, without any means of going home? She’d be helpless. Had Brilliana ever seen a light switch? Or a telephone? Perhaps – and then again, perhaps not.

  She pulled on her jeans and sweater again, frowning – Should have asked Kara to get something out for me – then went back into the main room. The servants had pulled out a small dining table from somewhere, and it was set with silverware and a huge candelabra. ‘Wonderful!’ she said. Kara and Brill were standing beside it, Kara looking pleased with herself. ‘Okay, sit down. Did anyone order any wine?’

  Brill had, and the food, which she’d ordered up from the cavernous kitchens far below, was still edible. By the time they’d drained two bottles of a passable pinot noir, Miriam was feeling distinctly tired and even Kara had lost her tendency to squeal, bounce, and end every sentence with an exclamation point.

  ‘Bedtime, I think,’ she said, pointedly dismissing everyone from her chamber before pulling back the curtain on her bed, pulling out the warming pan, and burrowing inside.

  The next morning Miriam awoke rapidly and – for a miracle – without any trace of a hangover. I feel fine, she realized, surprised. Pulling back the curtain, she sat up to find a maid sitting with down-turned face beside her bed. Oh. I did feel fine, she amended. ‘You can send them in,’ she said, trying to keep the tone of resignation out of her voice. ‘I’m ready to dress now.’

  Kara bounded in. ‘It’s your walk with Lady Olga today!’ she enthused. ‘Look what I found for you?’

  Miriam looked – and stifled a groan. Kara had zeroed in on one of her work suits, along with a silvery top. ‘No,’ she said, levering herself off the bed. ‘Bring me what I was wearing yesterday. I think it’s clean enough to do. Then pass me my underwear and get out.’

  ‘But! But – ’

  ‘I am thirty-two years old, and I have been putting on my own clothes for twenty-eight of those years,’ Miriam explained, one gentle hand on Kara’s back, propelling her gently toward the door. ‘When I need help, I’ll let you know.’

  Miriam dressed quickly and efficiently, then exited her bedroom to find Kara and a couple of servants waiting by the dining table, on which was laid a single breakfast setting. She was about to protest when she took one look at Kara and bit her tongue. Instead, she sat down. ‘Coffee or tea, whatever’s available,’ she said to the maid. ‘Kara. Come here. Sit down with me. Cough it up.’

  ‘I’m meant to dress you,’ she said miserably. ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Miriam rolled her eyes. ‘You do know I come from the other side?’

  Kara nodded. ‘If it makes you feel better, tell yourself I’m a crazy old bat who’ll be sorry she ignored you later.’ She grinned at Kara’s expression of surprise. ‘Listen, there’s something you need to know about me: I don’t play head games.’

  ‘Games? With heads?’

  Ye gods! ‘If I think someone has made a mistake, I tell them. It doesn’t mean I secretly hate them or that I’ve decided to make their life unpleasant. I don’t do that because I’ve got other things to worry about, and screwing around like that – ’ she saw Kara’s eyes widen – Don’t tell me swearing isn’t allowed? – ‘is a waste of time. Do you understand?’

  Kara shook her head, mutely.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, then. I’m not angry with you. Drink your tea.’ Miriam patted her hand. ‘It’s going to be all right. You said there’s a reception this evening. You said we were invited. Do you want to go?’

  Kara nodded, slowly, watching Miriam.

  ‘Fine. You’re coming, then. If you didn’t want to go, I wouldn’t make you. Do you understand? As long as you do your job properly when you’re needed, as far as I’m concerned you’re free to do whatever you like with the rest of your time. I am not your mother. Do you understand?’

  Kara nodded again, but her entire posture was one of mute denial and her eyes were wide. How do I get through to her? Miriam asked herself. She sighed. ‘Okay. Breakfast first.’ The toast was getting cold. ‘Is Brill going to the party?’

  ‘Yes, mistress.’ Kara seemed to have found her tongue again, but she sounded a bit shaky. She’s about seventeen, Miriam reminded herself. A teenager. Whatever happened to teenage rebellion here? Do they beat it out of them or something?

  ‘Good. Listen, when you’ve finished, go find her. I need someone to walk with me to Lady Olga’s apartment. When Brill gets back, the two of you are to sort out whatever I’m wearing tonight. When I get back I’ll need you both to dress me and tell me who everybody is, where the bodies are buried, and what topics of conversation to avoid. Plus a quick refresher in court etiquette to make sure I know how to greet someone without insulting them. Can you manage that?’

  Kara nodded, a quick flick of the chin. ‘Yes, I can do that.’ She was about to say something else, but she swallowed it. ‘By your leave.’ She stood.

  ‘Sure. Be off with you.’

  Kara turned and scurried out of the room, her back stiff. ‘I don’t think I understand that girl,’ Miriam muttered to herself. Brill I think I’ve got a handle on, but Kara – She shook her head, acutely aware of how much she didn’t know and, by implication, of how much potential for damage this touchy teenager contained within her mood swings.

  Brilliana turned up as Miriam finished her coffee, dressed for an outdoor hike.

  Hey, have I started a fashion for trousers? Miriam rose. ‘Good morning! Slept well after last night?’

  ‘Oh.’ Brilliana rubbed her forehead. ‘You plied us with wine like a swain with his – well, I think it’s all still there.’ She waited for Miriam to stand up. ‘Would you like to go straight to Lady Olga? Her Aris says she would receive you in the orangery, then take tea with you in her rooms.’

  ‘I think, hmm.’ Miriam raised an eyebrow, then nodded when she saw Brilliana’s expression. No newspapers, no telephones, no electricity. Visiting each other is probably the nearest thing to entertainment they get around here when none of the big nobs are throwing parties. ‘Whatever you think is the right thing to do,’ she said. ‘Where’s my coat?’

  Brilliana led her through the vast empty reception chamber of the night before, now illuminated with the clear white light of a snow-blanketed day. They turned down a broad stone-flagged corridor. It was empty save for darkened oil paintings of former inhabitants, and an elderly servant slowly polishing a suit of armor that looked strangely wrong to Miriam’s untrained eye: The plates and joints not quite angled like anything she’d seen in a museum back home.

  ‘Lady Aris said that Her Excellency is in a foul mood this morning,’ Brilliana said quietly. ‘She doesn’t know why.’

  ‘Hmmph.’ Miriam had some thou
ghts on the subject. ‘I spent a long time talking to Olga on the way here. She’s . . . let’s just say that being one of the inner Clan and fully possessed of the talent doesn’t solve all problems.’

  ‘Really?’ Brilliana pointed Miriam down a wide staircase, carpeted in blue. Two footmen in crimson livery stood guard at the bottom, backs straight, never blinking at the two women as they passed. Their brightly polished swords looked less out of place to Miriam’s eye than the submachine guns slung discreetly behind their shoulders. Any pitchfork-wielding mob who tried to storm the Clan’s holding would get more than they bargained for.

  They walked along another corridor. A small crocodile of maids and dubious-looking servants, cleaning staff, shuffled out of their way as they passed. This time Miriam felt eyes tracking them. ‘Olga has issues,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you know Duke Lofstrom?’

  ‘I’ve never been presented to him.’ Brilliana’s eyes widened. ‘Isn’t he your uncle?’

  ‘He’s trying to marry Olga off,’ Miriam murmured. ‘Funny thing is, now I think about it, not once during three days in a carriage with her did I hear Olga say anything positive about her husband-to-be.’

  ‘My lady?’

  They came to another staircase, this time leading down into a different wing of the preposterously huge mansion. They passed more guards, this time in the same colors as Oliver Hjorth’s butler. Miriam didn’t let herself blink, but she was aware of their stares, hostile and unwelcoming, drilling into her back.

  ‘Is it my imagination or . . . ?’ Miriam muttered as they turned down a final corridor.

  ‘They may have been shown miniatures of you,’ Brilliana said. She shivered, and glanced askance at Miriam. ‘I wouldn’t come this way without a companion, my lady. If I was mistrustful.’

  ‘Why? How bad could it be?’

  Brilliana looked unhappy. ‘People with enemies have been known to find the staircases very slippery. Not recently, but it has happened within living memory.’

  Miriam shuddered. ‘Well, I take your point, then. Thank you for that charming thought.’

  A huge pair of oak doors gaped ahead of them, a curtain blocking the vestibule. Chilly air sent fingers past it. Brilliana held it aside for Miriam, who found herself in a shielded cloister, walled on four sides. The middle was a sea of white snow as far as the frozen fountain. All sound was damped by winter’s natural muffler. Miriam suddenly wished she’d brought her gloves.

  ‘Whew! It’s cold!’ Brill was behind her. Miriam turned to catch her eye. ‘Which way?’ she asked.

  ‘There.’

  Miriam trudged across the snow, noting the tracks through it that were already beginning to fill in. Occasional huge flakes drifted out of a sky the color of cotton wool.

  ‘Is that the orangery?’ she asked, pausing at the door in the far wall.

  ‘Yes.’ Brilliana opened the door, held it for her. ‘It’s this way,’ she offered, leading Miriam toward an indistinct gray wall looming from the snow.

  There was a door at the foot of the hump. Brilliana opened it, and hot air steamed out. ‘It’s heated,’ she said.

  ‘Heated?’ Miriam ducked in. ‘Wow!’

  On the other side of the wall, she found herself in a hothouse that must have been one of the miracles of the Gruinmarkt. Slender cast-iron pillars climbed toward a ceiling twenty feet overhead. It was roofed with a fortune in plate-glass sheets held between iron frames, very slightly greened by algae. It smelled of citrus, unsurprisingly, for on every side were planters from which sprouted trees. Brilliana ducked in out of the cold behind her and pulled the door to. ‘This is amazing!’ said Miriam.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Brilliana. ‘Baron Hjorth’s grandfather built it. Every plate of glass had to be carried between the worlds – nobody has yet learned how to make it here in such large sheets.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I can see that.’ Miriam nodded. The effect was overpowering. At the far end of this aisle there was a drop of three feet or so to a lower corridor, and she saw a bench there. ‘Where do you think Lady Olga will be?’

  ‘She just said she’d be here,’ said Brilliana, a frown wrinkling her brow. ‘I wonder if she’s near the boiler room? That’s where things are warmest. Someone told me that the artisans have built a sauna hut there, but I wouldn’t know about such things. I’ve never been here on my own before,’ she added wistfully.

  ‘Well.’ Miriam walked toward the benches. ‘If you want to wait here, or look around? I’ll call you when we’re ready to leave.’

  When she reached the cast-iron bench, Miriam turned and stared back along the avenue of orange trees. Brill hadn’t answered because she’d evidently found something to busy herself with. Well, that makes things easier, she thought lightly. Whitewashed brick steps led down through an open doorway to a lower level, past water tanks the size of crypts. The ceiling dipped, then continued – another green-lined aisle smelling of oranges and lemons, flakes of rust gently dripping from the pillars to the stone-flagged floor. Here and there Miriam caught a glimpse of the fat steam pipes, running along the inside of the walls. The trees almost closed branches overhead, forming a dark green tunnel.

  At the end, there was another bench. Someone was seated there, contemplating something on the ground. Miriam walked forward lightly. ‘Olga?’ she called.

  Olga sat up when she was about twenty feet away. She was wearing a black all-enveloping cloak. Her hair was untidy, her eyes reddened.

  ‘Olga! What’s wrong?’ Miriam asked, alarmed.

  Olga stood up. ‘Don’t come any closer,’ she said. She sounded strained.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Miriam asked uncertainly.

  Olga brought her hands out from beneath the cloak, and pointed a boxy machine pistol at Miriam’s face. ‘You are,’ she said, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘If you have any last lies to whisper before I kill you, say them now and be done with it, whore.’

  PART FOUR

  KILLER STORY

  HOSTILE TAKEOVER

  The interview room was painted pale green except for the floor, which was unvarnished wood. The single window, set high up in one wall, admitted a trickle of wan winter daylight that barely helped the glimmering of the electrical bulb dangling overhead. The single table had two chairs on either side of it. All three pieces of furniture were bolted to the floor, and the door was soundproofed and locked from the outside.

  ‘Would you care for some more tea, Mr. Burgeson?’ asked the inspector, holding his cup delicately between finger and thumb. He loomed across the table, overshadowing Burgeson’s frail form: they were alone in the room, the inspector evidently not feeling the need for a stout sergeant to assist him as warm-up man.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Burgeson. He coughed damply into a wadded handkerchief. ‘’Scuse me . . .’

  ‘No need for excuses,’ the inspector said magnanimously. He smiled like a mantrap. ‘The winters up in Nova Scotia are terrible, aren’t they?’

  ‘Character-building,’ Burgeson managed, before breaking out in another wracking cough. Finally he managed to stop and sat up in his chair, leaning against the back with his face pointed at the window.

  ‘That was how the minister of penal affairs described it in parliament, wasn’t it?’ The inspector nodded sympathetically. ‘It would be a terrible shame to subject you to that kind of character-building experience again at your age, wouldn’t it, Mr. Burgeson?’

  Burgeson cocked his head on one side. So far the inspector had been polite. He hadn’t used so much as a fist in the face, much less a knee in the bollocks, relying instead on tea and sympathy and veiled threats to woo Burgeson to his side. It was remarkably liberal for an HSB man, and Burgeson had been waiting for the other shoe to drop – or to kick him between the legs – for the past ten minutes. ‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’ he asked, clutching at any faint hope of fending off the inevitable.

  ‘I shall get to the point presently.’ The inspector picked up the teapot and turne
d it around slowly between his huge callused hands. He didn’t seem to feel the heat as he poured a stream of brown liquid into Burgeson’s cup, then put the pot down and dribbled in a carefully measured quantity of milk. ‘You’re an old man, Mr. Burgeson, you’ve seen a lot of water flow under the bridge. You know what happens in rooms like this, and you don’t want it to happen to you again. You’re not a young hothead who’s going to get hisself into trouble with the law anymore, are you? And you’re not in the pay of the Frogs, either, else we’d have hanged you long ago. You’re a careful man. I like that. You can do business with careful men.’ He cradled the round teapot between his hands gently.

  ‘And I much prefer doing business to breaking skulls.’ He put the teapot down. It wobbled on its base like a decapitated head.

  Burgeson swallowed. ‘I haven’t done anything to earn the attention of the Homeland Security Bureau,’ he pointed out, a faint whine in his voice. ‘I’ve been keeping my nose clean. I’ll help you any way I can, but I’m not sure how I can be of use – ’

  ‘Drink your tea,’ said the inspector.

  Burgeson did as he was told.

  ‘’Bout six months ago a joe called Lester Brown sold you his dear old mother’s dressing table, didn’t he?’ said the inspector.

  Burgeson nodded cautiously. ‘It was a bit battered – ’

  ‘And four weeks after that, a woman called Helen Blue came and bought it off you, didn’t she?’