The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1)

by Charles Stross

  Miriam took a deep breath. ‘First, I need to know where Roland is.’

  ‘Roland – ’ Angbard looked at his watch, his face intent. Then back at Miriam. ‘He’s been looking after Patty for the past month,’ he said, his tone neutral. ‘Right now he’s in Boston, minding the shop. You don’t need to worry about his reliability.’

  For a moment Miriam felt so dizzy that she had to shut her eyes. She opened them again when she heard her mother’s voice. ‘Such a suitable young man.’ She glared at Iris, who smiled lazily at her. ‘Don’t let them get together, Angbard, or they’ll be over the horizon before you have time to blink.’

  ‘It’s not. That.’ Miriam was having difficulty breathing. ‘There’s a hole in your security,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘It’s at a very high level. I told Roland to do something about a corpse in an inconvenient place and instead a bunch of high explosives showed up. It turns out that Matthias has been blackmailing him.’ She felt dizzy with the significance of the moment.

  ‘Roland? Are you sure?’ Angbard leaned forward. His face was expressionless.

  ‘Yes. He told me everything.’ She felt as if she were floating. ‘Listen, it was on the specific understanding that I would intercede with you to clear it up. Your secretary has been running his own little game and seems to have decided that getting a handle on Roland would help him cover his traces.’

  ‘That was a mistake,’ Angbard said, his voice deceptively casual. His expression was immobile, except for his scarred left cheek, which twitched slightly. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘It happened in the warehouse my chamber is doppelgängered onto here. Most of this pile is collocated with a bonded warehouse, but one wing sticks out into a real hole-in-the-wall shipping operation.’ She swallowed, then forced herself to speak. ‘There was a night watchman. Emphasis on the was.’ She explained what had happened when she’d first carried Brill through to New York.

  ‘Roland, you say,’ said Angbard. ‘He’s been blackmailed?’

  ‘I want your word,’ Miriam insisted. ‘No consequences.’

  A sharp intake of breath. ‘Well – ’ Angbard started to pace. ‘Did he betray any secrets?’

  Miriam stood up. ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘And did anyone die as a result of his actions?’

  Miriam paused for a moment before answering: ‘Again, not as far as I know. Certainly not directly. And certainly not as a result of anything he knew he was doing.’

  ‘Well. Maybe I will not have to kill him.’ Angbard stopped again, behind Iris’s chair. ‘What do you think I should do?’ he asked, visibly tense.

  ‘I think – ’ Miriam chewed her lower lip. ‘Matthias has tapes. I think you should hand the tapes over to me, unwatched. I’ll burn them. In front of you both, if you want.’ She paused. ‘You’ll want to remove all his responsibilities for security operations, I guess.’

  ‘This blackmail material,’ Iris prodded. ‘These tapes – is it something personal? Or has he been abusing his position in any way?’

  ‘It’s absolutely personal. I can swear to it. Matthias just got the drop on Roland’s private life. Nothing illegal; just, uh, sensitive.’

  Iris – Patricia, the long-lost countess – stared at her for a long moment, then turned to look at her half-brother. ‘Do as she says,’ she said.

  Angbard nodded, then cast her a sharp look. ‘We’ll see,’ he said.

  ‘No, we won’t!’ Iris snapped. She continued quietly but with emphasis: ‘If your secretary has been building up private dossiers on nobles, you’re in big trouble. You need all the friends you can get, bro. Starting by pardoning anyone who isn’t an active enemy will clear the field. And make damn sure you burn those tapes without watching them, because for all you know some of them are fabrications that Matthias concocted just in case you ever stumbled across them. It’s untrustworthy evidence, all of it.’ She turned to Miriam. ‘What else have you dug up?’ she demanded.

  ‘Well.’ Miriam leaned against a priceless lacquered wooden cabinet and managed to muster up a tired smile to conceal her sense of relief. ‘I’m pretty sure Matthias is in league with whoever was running the prisoner.’

  ‘The prisoner,’ Angbard echoed distantly. By his expression, he was already wrapped up in calculating the requirements of the coming purge.

  ‘What prisoner?’ asked Iris.

  ‘Something your daughter’s friends dragged in a couple of days ago,’ Angbard dropped offhandedly. To Miriam he added, ‘He’s downstairs.’

  ‘Have you worked out who he is, yet?’ Miriam interrupted.

  ‘What, that he’s a long-lost cousin? And so are the rest of his family, stranded with a corrupt icon that takes them to this new world you have opened up for our trade? Of course. Your suggestion that we do DNA fingerprinting made it abundantly clear.’

  ‘Cousins? New world?’ Iris asked. ‘Would one of you please back up a bit and explain, before I have to beat it out of you with my crutches?’

  Angbard stood up. ‘No, I don’t think so. You kept Miriam in the dark for nearly a third of a century, I think it’s only fair that we keep you in suspense for a third of a day.’

  ‘So nobody else knows?’ Miriam asked Angbard.

  ‘That’s correct. And I’m going to keep it that way, for now.’

  ‘I want to talk to the prisoner,’ Miriam said hastily.

  ‘You do?’ Angbard turned the full force of his icy stare on her. ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Because – ’ Miriam struggled for words – ‘I don’t have old grudges. I mean, his relatives tried to kill me, but . . . I have an idea I want to test. I need to see if he’ll talk to me. May I?’

  Angbard looked thoughtful. ‘You’ll have to be quick, if you want to collect your pound of flesh before we execute him.’

  Miriam swallowed bile. ‘That’s not what I have in mind.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Give me a chance?’ she asked. ‘Please?’

  ‘If you insist. But don’t lose the plot.’ He stared at her, and for a moment Miriam felt her bones turn to water. ‘Remember not all your relatives are as liberal-minded as I am, or believe that death heals all wounds.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Miriam said automatically. Then she looked at Iris again, a long, appraising inspection. Her mother met her gaze head-on, without blinking. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to stop being your daughter. Just as long as you don’t stop being my ma. Deal?’

  ‘Deal.’ Iris dropped her gaze. ‘I don’t deserve you, kid.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ Angbard looked Miriam up and down. ‘Like mother, like daughter, don’t you know what kind of combination that makes?’ He chuckled humorlessly. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, Helge, you have made much work for this old man to attend to . . .’

  *

  I should have realized all castles had dungeons, thought Miriam. If not for keeping prisoners, then for supplies, ammunition, food, wine cellars – even ice. It was freezing cold below ground, and even the crude coal-gas pipes nailed to the brickwork and the lamps hissing and fizzing at irregular intervals couldn’t dispel the chill. Miriam followed the guard down a surprisingly wide staircase into a cellar, then up to a barred iron door behind which a guard waited patiently. Finally he led her into a well-lit room containing nothing but a table and two chairs.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll bring the prisoner to you, ma’am,’ the sergeant said patiently. ‘With another guard. The gate at the front won’t be unlocked again until he’s back in his cell.’

  ‘Oh.’ Miriam sat down, feeling stupid, and waited nervously as the guard disappeared into the basement tunnels beneath the castle. The dungeon. I put him here, she thought. What must he be thinking?

  A clattering outside brought her back to herself, and she turned around to watch the door as it opened. The sergeant came in, followed by another soldier, and a hunched, thin figure with his arms behind his back and a hood over h
is head. He’s manacled, Miriam realized.

  ‘One moment.’ The guards positioned the prisoner against the wall opposite Miriam’s table. The guard knelt, and Miriam heard something click into place – padlocks. ‘That’s it,’ said the sergeant. He pulled off the prisoner’s hood, then he and the other guard withdrew to stand beside the door.

  ‘Hello, Lin,’ Miriam said as evenly as she could. ‘Recognize me?’

  He flinched, clearly terrified, and was brought up short by his chains. A sense of horror stole over Miriam as she peered at him in the dim light. ‘They’ve been beating you,’ she said quietly. The things on the gatehouse walls – no, she didn’t want to be involved in this. It was all a horrible mistake. Multiple contusions, some bleeding and inflammation around the left eye. He stared past her left shoulder, shivering fearfully, but didn’t say anything. Miriam resisted the urge to turn around and yell at the guards. She had a hopeless feeling that all it would do was earn the kid another beating when she was safely out of the way.

  Her medical training wouldn’t let her look away. Up until this moment she’d have sworn she was angry with him: But she hadn’t expected them to treat him like this. Breaking into her house on the orders of someone placed in authority over him – sure, she was angry. But the real guilty parties were a long way away, and if she didn’t do something fast, this half-starved kid was going to join the grisly chunks of meat on the gatehouse wall, for the crime of following orders. And where was the justice in that?

  ‘I’m not going to hit you,’ she said.

  He didn’t reply. His posture said he didn’t believe her.

  ‘Listen.’ She pulled one of the chairs out from the table, turned it around, and sat down on it, her arms folded across the back. ‘I just want some answers. That’s all. Lin of, what did you call yourself?’

  ‘Lin. Lin Lee. My family is called Lee.’ He kept glancing past her, as if trying to conceal his fear: I’m not going to hit you, but my guards –

  ‘That’s good. How old are you?’

  ‘Fifteen.’ Fifteen! They’re running the children’s crusade! A thought struck her. ‘Have they been feeding you? Giving you water? Somewhere to sleep?’

  He managed a brief, painful croak: Maybe it was meant to be laughter.

  Miriam looked around. ‘Well? Have you been feeding him?’

  The sergeant shook himself. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘What food, drink, and medical attention has this child had?’

  He shook his head. ‘I really couldn’t say, ma’am.’

  ‘I see.’ Miriam’s hands tensed on the back of the chair. She turned back to Lin. ‘I didn’t order this,’ she said. ‘Will you tell me who sent you to my house?’

  She saw him swallow. ‘If I do that you’ll kill me,’ he said.

  ‘No, that’s not what I’ve got in mind.’

  ‘Yes you will.’ He looked at her with bitter certainty in his eyes. ‘They’ll do it.’

  ‘Like you were going to kill me?’ she asked quietly.

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘You were supposed to find out if I was from the Clan,’ she said. ‘Weren’t you? A strange new woman showing up in town and making waves. Is that it? And if I was from the Clan, you were supposed to kill me. What was it to be? A bomb in my bedroom? Or a knife in the dark?’

  ‘Not me,’ he whispered. ‘One of the warriors.’

  ‘So why were you there? To spy on me? Are they that short-handed?’

  He looked down at the table, but not before she saw shame in his eyes.

  ‘Ah.’ She glanced away for a moment, trying desperately to think of a way out of the impasse. She was hopelessly aware of the guards standing behind her, waiting patiently for her to finish with the prisoner. If I leave him here, the Clan will kill him, she realized, with a kind of hollow dread she hadn’t expected to be able to summon up for a housebreaker. Housebreaker? What his actions said about his family, that was something she could get angry about. ‘Hell.’ She made up her mind.

  ‘Lin, you’re probably right about the Clan. Most of them would see you dead as soon as look at you. There’ve been too many years of their parents and grandparents cutting each other’s throats. They’re suspicious of anything they don’t understand, and you’re going to be high on any list of mysteries. But I’ll tell you something else.’ She stood up. ‘You know how to world-walk, don’t you?’

  Silence.

  ‘I said – ’ She stopped. ‘You ought to know when you can stop holding it in,’ she said tiredly. Thinking back to Angbard, and how she’d managed to face him down over Roland: Don’t look too deep. Everything on the surface. The families all worked that way, didn’t they? ‘Nothing you say to me can make your position worse. It might make it better, though.’

  Silence.

  ‘World-walking,’ she said. ‘We know you can do it, we got the locket you carried. So why lie?’

  Silence.

  ‘The Clan can world-walk too, you know,’ she said quietly. ‘It isn’t a coincidence. Your family are relatives, aren’t they? Lost for a long time, and this murder – the killing, the feuding, the attempts to reopen old wounds – isn’t in anyone’s interests.’

  Silence.

  ‘Why do they want me dead?’ she asked. ‘Why are you people killing your own blood relatives?’

  Maybe it was something in her expression – frank curiosity, perhaps – but the youth looked away at last. The silence stretched out for a long moment, lengthened toward a minute, punctuated only by the sound of one of the guards shifting position.

  ‘You betrayed us,’ he whispered.

  ‘Uh?’ Miriam shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘In the time of the loyal sons,’ said Lin. ‘All the others. They abandoned my ancestor. The promise of a meeting in the world of the Americans. Reduced to poverty, he took years to gain his freedom, then he spent his entire life searching for them. But they never came.’

  ‘This is all news to me,’ Miriam said quietly. ‘He was reduced to poverty?’

  Lin nodded convulsively. ‘This is the tale of our family,’ he said, in sing-song tones. ‘That of the brothers, it was agreed that Lee would go west, to set up a trading post. And he did, but the way was hard and he was reduced to penury, his caravan scattered, his goods stolen by savages, abandoned by his servants. For ten years he labored as a bond servant, before buying his freedom: He lost everything, from his wife to the first talisman of the family. Finally he forged a new talisman, working from memory, earned his price, and bought himself liberty. He was a very determined man. But when he walked to the place assigned for meeting, nobody was there to wait for him. Every year, at the appointed day and hour, he would go there; and never did anyone come. His brothers had abandoned him, and over the years his descendants learned much of the eastern Clan. The betrayers, who profited from his estate.’

  Oops, a betrayal-for-a-legacy myth. So he accidentally mangled the knotwork and ended up going to New Britain instead of – she blinked.

  ‘You’ve seen my world,’ she said. ‘Do you know, that’s where the Clan have been going all along? Where you go when you world-walk, it’s all set up by the, uh, talisman. Your illustrious ancestor recreated it wrong. Sending himself over to, to, New Britain. For all you know, the other brothers thought that your ancestor had abandoned them.’

  Lin shrugged. ‘When are you going to kill me?’ he asked.

  ‘In about ten seconds if you don’t shut up about it!’ She glared at him. ‘Don’t you see? Your family’s reasons for feuding with the Clan are bogus. They’ve been bogus all along!’

  ‘So?’ He made a movement that might have been a shrug if he hadn’t been wearing fetters. ‘Our elders, now dead, laid these duties upon our shoulders. We must obey, or dishonor their memory. Only our eldest can change our course. Do you expect me to betray my family and plead for mercy?’

  ‘No.’ Miriam stood up. ‘But you may not need to beg, Lin. There is a Clan meeting coming up t
omorrow. Some – most – of them will want your head. But I think it might be possible to convince them to let you go free, if you agree to do something.’

  ‘No!’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Really? You don’t want to go home and deliver a letter to this elder of yours? I knew you were young and silly, but this is ridiculous.’

  ‘What kind of letter?’ he asked hesitantly.

  ‘An offer of terms. It seems to me that you need it more than we do, I hasten to add. Now we can get into your world – ’ he flinched – ‘and there are many more of us, and there’s the other world you saw, the one the Clan’s power is based in. Did you see much of America?’ His eyes went wide: He’d seen enough. ‘From now on, in any struggle, we can win. There is no “maybe” in that statement. If the eldest orders your family to fight it out, they can only lose. But I happen to have a use for your family – I want to keep them alive. And you. I’m willing to settle this thing between us, the generations of blood and murder, if your eldest is willing to accept that declaring war on the Clan was wrong, that his ancestor was not deliberately abandoned, and that ending the war is necessary. So I’m going to do everything I can to convince the committee to send you home with a cease-fire proposal.’

  He stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head.

  ‘Will you carry that message?’ she asked.

  He nodded, slowly, watching her with wide eyes.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ she warned. She turned to the door. ‘Take this one back to his cell,’ she said. ‘I want you to make sure he’s given food and water. And take good care of him.’ She leaned toward the sergeant. ‘There is a chance that he is going to run an errand for us. I do not want him damaged. Do you understand?’

  Something in her eyes made the soldier tense. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he grunted warily. ‘Food and water.’ His companion pulled the door open, staring at the wall behind her, trying to avoid her gaze.

  ‘See that you do.’

  She came out of the cellars shivering into the evening twilight, and headed upstairs as fast as she could, to get back to a warm fireplace and good company. But it was going to take more than that to get the chill of the dungeon out of her bones, and out of her dreams.