The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1)

by Charles Stross

  GOING POSTAL

  Down in the post office in the basement of Fort Lofstrom, two men waited nervously for their superior to arrive. Both of them were young – one was barely out of his teens. They dressed like law firm clerks or trainee accountants. ‘Is this for real?’ the younger one kept asking, nervously. ‘I mean, has it really happened? Why does nobody tell us anything? Shit, this sucks!’

  ‘Shut up and wait,’ said the elder, leaning against a wall furnished with industrial shelving racks, holding a range of brightly colored plastic boxes labeled by destination. ‘Haven’t you learned anything?’

  ‘But the meeting! I mean, what’s going on? Have the old guys finally decided to stop us going over – ’

  ‘I said, shut the fuck up.’ The older courier glared at the kid with all the world-weary cynicism of his twenty-six years. Spots, tufts of straggly beard hair – Sky Father, why do I get to nurse the babies? ‘Listen, nothing is going to go wrong.’

  He nudged the briefcase at his feet. Inside its very expensive aluminum shell was a layer of plastic foam, inside which nestled an HK MP5 submachine gun. The kid didn’t need to know that, though. ‘When the boss man gets here, we do a straight delivery run then lock down the house. You stay with the boss and do what he says. I get the fun job of telling the postmen to drop everything and yelling at the holiday heads to execute their cover plans. Then we arrest anyone who tries to drop by. Get it? The whole thing will be over in forty-eight hours, it’s just a routine security lockdown.’

  ‘Yes, Martijn.’ The kid shook his head, puzzled. ‘But there hasn’t been an extraordinary meeting in my lifetime! And this is an emergency lockdown, isn’t it? Shutting down everything, telling all our people on the other side to go hide, that sucks. What’s going on?’

  The courier looked away. Hurry up and get the nonsense out of your system, he thought. ‘What do you think they’re doing?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s obvious: They envy us, don’t they? The old dudes. Staying over, fitting in. You know I’m going back to college in a couple of weeks, did I tell you about the shit my uncle Stani’s been handing out about that? I’ve got a girlfriend and a Miata and a place of my own and he’s giving me shit because he never had that stuff. “What do you need to learn reading for if you’ve got scribes?” he told me. And you know what? Some of them, if they could stop us going back – ’

  The door opened, stemming his tirade in full flood. The older courier straightened up; the young one just flushed, his mouth running down in a frightened stammer. ‘Uh, yessir, uh, going back, uh – ’

  ‘Shut up,’ Matthias said coldly.

  One more squeak and the kid fell silent. Matthias nodded at Martijn, the older one. ‘You ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Very well.’ Matthias didn’t smile, but some of the tension went out of his shoulders. He wore a leather flying jacket and jeans, with gloves on his hands and a day pack slung over one arm. ‘Kid. You are going to carry me across. Ready?’

  ‘Uh.’ Gulp. ‘ Yes sir. Yes. Sir.’

  ‘Go on, then.’ He advanced on the youth. ‘I’m heavier than any load you’re used to. You will need to have your key ready in one hand. When you are ready, speak, and I’ll climb on your back. Try not to break.’

  ‘Yessir!’

  A minute later they were in another post room. This one was slightly smaller, its shelves less full, and a row of wheeled suitcases were parked on the opposite wall inside an area painted with yellow stripes. The kid collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath while Matthias looked around for the older courier. ‘Martijn, you have your orders?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Execute them.’

  Matthias removed a briefcase from the rack on one wall then walked toward the exit from the room. He unlocked it then waved Martijn and the younger courier through. Once they were in the elevator to the upper floors, Matthias shut the door – then turned on his heel and headed for the emergency stairs to the garage.

  The silver-blue BMW convertible was waiting for him, just as he’d ordered. Finally, Matthias cracked a smile, thin-lipped and humorless. There was barely room for the briefcase in the trunk, and his day pack went on the passenger seat. He fired up the engine as he hit the ‘door open’ button on the dash, accelerating up the ramp and into the daylight beyond.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ he whispered to himself as he merged with the traffic on the turnpike. ‘Give me fifteen minutes!’

  The time passed rapidly. Waiting at an intersection, Matthias pulled out a cheap anonymous cell phone and speed-dialed a number. It rang three times before the person at the other end answered.

  ‘Who is this?’ they asked.

  ‘This is Judas. Listen, I will say this once. The address you want is . . .’ he rattled through the details of the location he’d just left. ‘Got that?’

  ‘Yes. Who are you and – ’

  Matthias casually flipped the phone out of the half-open window then accelerated away. Moments later, an eighteen-wheeler reduced it to plastic shrapnel.

  ‘Fuck you very much,’ he muttered. ‘You can’t fire me: I quit!’

  It wasn’t until he was nearly at the airport with his wallet full of bearer bonds and a briefcase full of Clan secrets that he began to prepare for the next step.

  *

  A ghastly silence fell across the grand hall as Miriam stepped out of the doorway. She took a deep breath and smiled as brightly as she could. ‘Don’t mind me!’ she said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Iris whispered, ‘mind me, you back-stabbing faux-aristocratic bastards!’

  ‘Mother!’ she hissed, keeping a straight face with considerable effort.

  ‘Oligarchic parasites. Hah.’ Louder: ‘Steer left, if you please, can’t you tell left from right? That’s better. Now, who do I have to bribe to get a glass of Pinot Noir around here?’

  Iris’s chatter seemed to break an invisible curtain of suspense. Conversations started up again around the room, and a pair of anxious liveried servants hurried forward, bearing trays with glasses.

  Iris hooked a glass of red wine with a slightly wobbly hand and took a suspicious sniff. ‘It’ll pass,’ she declared. ‘Help yourself while you’re at it,’ she told Miriam. ‘Don’t just stand there like a rabbit in the headlights.’

  ‘Um. Are you sure it’s wise to drink?’

  ‘I’ve always had difficulty coping with my relatives sober. But yes, I take your point.’ Iris took a moderate sip. ‘I won’t let the side down.’

  ‘Okay, Ma.’ Miriam took a glass. She looked up just in time to see Kara across the room, looking frightened, standing beside an unfamiliar man in late middle age. ‘Hmm. Looks like the rats are deserting or something. Olga?’

  Beside her and following her gaze, Olga had tensed. ‘That’s Peffer Hjorth. What’s she doing talking to him, the minx?’

  ‘Peffer Hjorth?’

  ‘The baron’s uncle. Outer family, not a member.’

  Iris whistled tunelessly. ‘Well, well, well. One of yours?’ she asked Miriam.

  ‘I thought so.’ Miriam took a sip of wine. Her mouth felt bitter, ashy.

  ‘Lady Helge, what a story! Fascinating! And your mother – why, Patricia? It’s been such a long time!’

  She looked around, found Iris craning her neck, too. ‘Turn me, please, Miriam – ’ Iris was looking up and down: ‘Mors Hjalmar! Long time indeed. How are you doing?’

  The plumpish man with a neatly trimmed beard and hair just covering his collar – like a middle-aged hippy uncomfortably squeezed into a dark suit for a funeral or court appearance – looked happy enough. ‘I’m doing well, Patricia, well!’ His expression sank slightly. ‘I was doing better before this blew up, I think. They mostly ignore me.’ He rubbed his left cheek thoughtfully. ‘Which is no bad thing.’ He looked at Olga, askance. ‘And who do I have the pleasure of meeting?’

  ‘This is Lady Olga Thorold,’ Iris offered.

  ‘And you are of
the same party as these, ah, elusive Thorold-Hjorths?’

  ‘Indeed I am!’ Olga said tightly.

  ‘Oh. Well, then.’ He shrugged. ‘I mean no offense, but it’s sometimes hard to tell who’s helping who, don’t you know?’

  ‘Lady Olga has only our best interests at heart,’ Miriam replied. ‘You knew my mother?’

  Iris had been looking up at Mors all this time, her mouth open slightly, as if surprised to see him. Now she shook her head. ‘Thirty years,’ she muttered darkly. ‘And they haven’t murdered you yet?’ Suddenly she smiled. ‘Maybe there’s hope for me after all.’

  ‘Do you know what she means?’ Miriam asked Olga, puzzled.

  ‘I, ahem, led an eccentric life many years ago,’ said Mors.

  Iris shook her head. ‘Mors was the first of our generation to actually demand – and get – a proper education. Yale Law School, but they made him sign away his right of seniority, if I remember rightly. Wasn’t that so?’ she asked.

  ‘Approximately.’ Mors smiled slightly. ‘It took them a few years to realize that the Clan badly needed its own attorney on the other side.’ His smile broadened.

  ‘What?’ Iris looked almost appalled. ‘No, I can’t see it.’

  ‘So don’t. Is it true?’ His eyes were fixed on Iris.

  ‘If she says it’s true, it’s true,’ Iris insisted, jerking her head slightly in Miriam’s direction. ‘A credit to the family. Not that that’s what I wanted, but – ’

  ‘ – We don’t always get what we want,’ Mors finished for her, nodding. ‘I think I see.’ He sounded thoughtful. Then he looked at Miriam. ‘If you need any legal advice, here’s my card,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Miriam, pocketing it. ‘But I think I may need a different kind of help right now.’ All too damned true, she thought, seeing what was bearing down on them. Nemesis had two heads and four arms, and both heads wore haughty expressions of utmost disdain, carefully tempered for maximum intransigence.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t the runaway,’ snorted head number one, Baron Hjorth, with a negligent glance in Miriam’s direction.

  ‘Imposter, you mean,’ croaked head number two, glaring at her like a Valkyrie fingering her knife and wondering who to feed to the ravens next.

  ‘Hello, mother.’ Iris smiled, a peculiar expression that Miriam had seen only once or twice before and which filled her with an urgent desire to duck and cover. ‘Been keeping well, I see?’

  ‘I’ll just be off,’ Mors started nervously – then stopped as Iris grabbed his wrist. In any case, the gathering cloud of onlookers made a discreet escape impossible. There was only one conversation worth eavesdropping in this reception, and this was it.

  ‘I was just catching up on old times with Mors,’ Iris cooed sweetly, her eyes never leaving the dowager’s face. ‘He was telling me all about your retirement.’

  Nasty. Miriam forced herself to smile, glanced sideways, and saw Olga glaring at head number one. The baron somehow failed to turn to stone, but his hauteur seemed to melt slightly. ‘Hello, Oliver,’ said Miriam. ‘I’m glad to see you’re willing to talk to me instead of sneaking into my boudoir when I’m not about.’

  ‘I have never – ’ he began pompously.

  ‘Stow it!’ snapped Iris. ‘And you, mother – ’ she waved a finger at her mother, who was gathering herself up like a serpent readying to strike – ‘I gather you’ve been encouraging this odious worm. Is it true?’

  ‘Who I encourage or not is none of your business!’ Hildegarde hissed. ‘You’re a disgrace to family and Clan, you whore. I should have turned you out the day I gave birth to you. As for your bastard – ’

  ‘I believe I understand, now.’ Miriam nodded, outwardly cordially, at Baron Hjorth. Startled, he pretended to ignore her words: ‘Your little plan to get back the Clan shares ceded to trust when my mother vanished – I got in the way, didn’t I? But not to worry. An insecure apartment, a fortune-seeking commoner turned rapist, and an unlocked door on the roof would see to that, wouldn’t it?’ If not a couple of goons with automatic weapons, she added mentally. Just by way of insurance.

  The duchess gasped. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  ‘Quite possibly you don’t,’ Miriam agreed. She jabbed a finger: ‘He does, don’t you?’

  Baron Oliver had turned beet-red with her first accusation. Now he began to shake. ‘I have never conspired to blemish the virtue of a Clan lady!’ he insisted. The duchess stared at him. ‘And if you allege otherwise – ’

  ‘Put up or shut up, I’d say,’ Iris said flatly. ‘Mors, wouldn’t you say that any accusations along those lines would require an indictment? Before the committee, perhaps?’

  ‘Mmm, possibly.’ Mors struck a thoughtful pose, seeming to forget his earlier enthusiasm to be elsewhere. ‘Were there witnesses? Unimpeachable ones?’

  ‘I don’t think any charges against the baron could be made to stick,’ Miriam said slowly, watching him. He watched her right back, unblinking. ‘And you will note that I made no allegation of involvement in a conspiracy to commit rape on your part,’ she added to Hjorth. Or to send gunmen round to Olga’s rooms. ‘Although I might change my mind if you supplied sufficient cause.’

  ‘You bitch,’ he snarled.

  ‘Just remember where I got it from.’ She nodded at her grandmother, who, speechless with rage, hung on Hjorth’s arm like an overripe apple, ruddy-faced and swollen with wasps. ‘We really must get together for a family reunion one of these days,’ she added. ‘I’m sure you’ve got a lot of poison recipes to share with me.’

  ‘I’d stop, if I were you,’ Iris observed with clinical interest. ‘If you push her any further the only reunion you’ll get is over her coffin.’

  ‘You treacherous little minx!’ Hildegarde was shaking with fury.

  ‘So it’s treachery now, is it? Because I had higher standards than you and didn’t want to marry my way to the top of the dung heap?’ Iris threw back at her.

  ‘Children,’ Miriam sighed. She caught Olga’s eye.

  ‘I didn’t notice you making an effort to find any suitable alternatives!’ the duchess snapped. ‘And it got the Wu and Hjorth factions to stop murdering each other. Would you rather the feuding had continued? We’d both be dead a dozen times over by now!’ She was breathing deeply. ‘You’ve got no sense of duty,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘The feuding, in case you’ve been asleep, was caused by forces outside our control,’ Iris retorted. ‘You gained precisely nothing, except for a wife-beating son-in-law. Your granddaughter, now, has actually done something useful for the first time in living memory in this Clan of parasites. She’s actually uncovered some of the reasons why we’ve been messed up for so long. The least you could do is apologize to her!’

  ‘There’s nothing to apologize for,’ Hildegarde said stiffly. But Miriam saw her grip on Hjorth’s arm tighten.

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ Oliver Hjorth muttered in her ear: ‘You’re quite right about them.’ He cast a poisonous stare at Miriam. ‘Especially that one.’

  ‘You – ’ Miriam was brought up short by Olga’s hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t,’ Olga said quietly. ‘He wants you to react.’

  For the first time, Hjorth smiled. ‘She’s right, you know,’ he said. ‘On that note, I shall bid you adieu, ladies. If I may conduct you back to civilized conversation, madam?’ he added to the dowager.

  Iris stared bleakly at the receding back of her mother. ‘I swear she’ll outlive us all,’ Iris muttered. Then she glanced at Miriam. ‘There’s no justice in this world, is there?’

  ‘What was she talking about?’ Miriam asked slowly. ‘The treachery thing.’

  ‘An old disagreement,’ said Iris. She sounded old and tired. ‘A bit like picking at scabs. Most families have got the odd skeleton in the closet. We’ve got a whole damn graveyard in every wardrobe, practicing their line dancing. Don’t sweat it.’

  ‘But – ’ Miriam stopped. S
he remembered her wine glass and took a mouthful. Her hand was shaking so badly that she nearly spilled it.

  ‘You won,’ Olga said thoughtfully.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘She’s right. You went eyeball to eyeball with the baron, and he blinked. They’ll know you’ve got balls now. That counts for everything here. And I – ’ Iris stopped.

  ‘You got your mother on the defensive,’ said Miriam. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Iris said uncertainly. ‘Old iron-face must be rusting. Either that, or there’s a deep game I don’t know about. She never used to concede anything.’

  ‘Iron-face?’

  ‘What we called her. Me and your aunt Elsa.’

  ‘I have an aunt, too?’

  ‘Had. She died. Olga, if you don’t mind taking over my chair? Miriam seems to be having trouble.’

  ‘Died – ’

  ‘You didn’t think I had it in for the old bat just because of how she treated me, did you?’

  ‘Oh.’ Miriam bolted back the rest of her wine glass, sensing the depths she was treading water over. ‘I think I need another glass now.’

  ‘Better drink it quick, then. Things are about to get interesting again.’

  *

  There was a low bed with a futon mattress on it. It occupied most of a compact bedroom on the third floor of an inconspicuous building in downtown Boston. The bed was occupied, even though it was late morning; Roland had been awake for most of the night, working on the next month’s courier schedule, worrying and reassigning bodies from a discontinued security operation. In fact, he’d deliberately worked an eighteen-hour shift just to tire himself out so that he could sleep. The worries wouldn’t go away. What if they find her incompetent? was one of them. Another was, What if the old man finds out about us? In the end he’d slugged back a glass of bourbon and a five-milligram tab of Valium, stripped, and climbed into bed to wait for the pharmaceutical knockout.

  Which was why, when the raid began, Roland was unconscious: dead to the world, sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted, twitching slightly beneath the thin cotton sheet.