The Clan Corporate: Book Three of The Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

  She’d carried a hundred kilograms in each direction across the space between two worlds, a gap narrower than atoms and colder than light-years. Lightning Child only knew what had been in those packages. The Clan’s mercantilist operations in the United States emphasized high-value, low-weight commodities. Like it or not, there was more money in smuggling contraband than works of art or intellectual property. It was a perpetual sore on Miriam’s conscience, one that only stopped chafing when for a few hours she managed to stop being Miriam Beckstein, journalist, and to be instead Helge of Thorold by Hjorth, Countess. What made it even worse for Miriam was that she was acutely aware that such a business model was stupid and unsustainable. Once, mere weeks ago, she’d had plans to upset the metaphorical applecart, designs to replace it with a fleet of milk tankers. But then Matthias, secretary to the Duke Angbard, captain-general of the Clan’s Security Directorate, had upset the applecart first, and set fire to it into the bargain. He’d defected to the Drug Enforcement Agency of the United States of America. And whether or not he’d held his peace about the real nature of the Clan, a dynasty of world-walking spooks from a place where the river of history had run a radically different course, he had sure as hell shut down their eastern seaboard operations.

  Matthias had blown more safe houses and shipping networks in one month than the Clan had lost in all the previous thirty years. His psycho bagman had shot and killed Miriam’s lover during an attempt to cover up the defection by destroying a major Clan fortress. Then, a month later, Clan security had ordered Miriam back to Niejwein from New Britain, warning that Matthias’s allies in that timeline made it too unsafe for her to stay there. Miriam thought this was bullshit: but bullshit delivered by men with automatic weapons was bullshit best nodded along with, at least until their backs were turned.

  Mid-morning loomed. Miriam wasn’t needed today. She had the next three days off, her corvée paid. Miriam would sleep in, and then Helge would occupy her time with education. Miriam Beckstein had two college degrees, but Countess Helge was woefully uneducated in even the basics of her new life. Just learning how to live among her recently rediscovered extended family was a full-time job. First, language lessons in the hochsprache vernacular with a most attentive tutor, her lady-in-waiting Kara d’Praha. Then an appointment for a fitting with her dressmaker, whose ongoing fabrication of a suitable wardrobe had something of the quality of a Sisyphean task. Perhaps if the weather was good there’d be a discreet lesson in horsemanship (growing up in suburban Boston, she’d never learned to ride): otherwise, one in dancing, deportment, or court etiquette.

  Miriam was bored and anxious, itching to get back to her start-up venture in the old capital of New Britain where she’d established a company to build disk brakes and pioneer automotive technology transfer. New Britain was about fifty years behind the world she’d grown up in, a land of opportunity for a sometime tech journalist turned entrepreneur. Helge, however, was strangely fascinated by the minutiae of her new life. Going from middle-class middle-American life to the rarefied upper reaches of a barely postfeudal aristocracy meant learning skills she’d never imagined needing before. She was confronting a divide of five hundred years, not fifty, and it was challenging.

  She’d taken the early part of the morning off to be Miriam, sitting in her bedroom in jeans and sweater, her seat a folding aluminum camp chair, a laptop balanced on her knees and a mug of coffee cooling on the floor by her feet. If I can’t do I can at least plan, she told herself wryly. She had a lot of plans, more than she knew what to do with. The whole idea of turning the Clan’s business model around, from primitive mercantilism to making money off technology transfer between worlds, seemed impossibly utopian—especially considering how few of the Clan elders had any sort of modern education. But without plans, written studies, and costings and risk analyses, she wasn’t going to convince anyone. So she’d ground out a couple more pages of proposals before realizing someone was watching her.

  “Yes?”

  “Milady.” Kara bent a knee prettily, a picture of instinctive teenage grace that Miriam couldn’t imagine matching. “You bade me remind you last week that this eve is the first of summer twelvenight. There’s to be a garden party at the Östhalle tonight, and a ball afterward beside, and a card from her grace your mother bidding you to attend her this afternoon beforehand.” Her face the picture of innocence she added, “Shall I attend to your party?”

  If Kara organized Helge’s carriage and guards then Kara would be coming along too. The memories of what had happened the last time Helge let Kara accompany her to a court event made her want to wince, but she managed to keep a straight face: “Yes, you do that,” she said evenly. “Get Mistress Tanzig in to dress me before lunch, and my compliments to her grace my mother and I shall be with her by the second hour of the afternoon.” Mistress Tanzig, the dressmaker, would know what Helge should wear in public and, more important, would be able to alter it to fit if there were any last-minute problems. Miriam hit the save button on her spreadsheet and sighed. “Is that the time? Tell somebody to run me a bath; I’ll be out in a minute.”

  So much for the day off, thought Miriam as she packed the laptop away. I suppose I’d better go and be Helge . . .

  “Have you thought about marriage?” asked the duchess.

  “Mother! As if!” Helge snorted indignantly and her eyes narrowed. “It’s been about, what, ten weeks? Twelve? If you think I’m about to shack up with some golden boy so soon after losing Roland—”

  “That wasn’t what I meant, dear.”

  Helge drew breath. “What do you mean?”

  “I meant . . .” The duchess Patricia glanced at her sharply, taking stock: “The, ah, noble institution. Have you thought about what it means here? And if so, what did you think?”

  “I thought”—a slight expression of puzzlement wrinkled Helge’s forehead—“when I first arrived, Angbard tried to convince me I ought to make an alliance of fortunes, as he put it. Crudely speaking, to tie myself to a powerful man who could protect me.” The wrinkles turned into a full-blown frown. “I nearly told him he could put his alliance right where the sun doesn’t shine.”

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t,” her mother said diplomatically.

  “Oh, I know that! Now. But the whole deal here creeps me out. And then.” Helge took a deep breath and looked at the duchess: “There’s you, your experience. I really don’t know how you can stand to be in the same room as her grace your mother, the bitch! How she could—”

  “Connive at ending a civil war?” the duchess asked sharply.

  “Sell off her daughter to a wife-beating scumbag is more the phrase I had in mind.” Helge paused. “Against her wishes,” she added. A longer pause. “Well?”

  “Well,” the duchess said quietly. “Well, well. And well again. Would you like to know how she did it?”

  “I’m not sure.” A grimace.

  “Well, whether you want to or not, I think you need to know,” Iris—Patricia, the duchess Patricia, said. “Forewarned is forearmed, and no, when I was your age—and younger—I didn’t want to know about it, either. But nobody’s offering to trade you on the block like a piece of horseflesh. I should think the worst they’ll do is drop broad hints your way and make the consequences of noncooperation irritatingly obvious in the hope you’ll give in just to make them go away. You’ve probably got enough clout to ignore them if you want to push it—if it matters to you enough. But whether it would be wise to ignore them is another question entirely.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “Aha! The right question, at last!” Iris laboriously levered herself upright on her chaise, beaming. “I told you the Clan is democratic, in the classical sense of the word. The marriage market is democracy in action, Helge, and as we all know, Democracy Is Always Right. Yes? Now, can you tell me who, within the family, provides the bride’s dowry?”

  “Why, the—” Helge thought for a moment. “Well, it’s the head of the househo
ld’s wealth, but doesn’t the woman’s mother have something to do with determining how much goes into it?”

  “Exactly.” The duchess nodded. “Braids cross three families, alternating every couple of generations so that issues of consanguinity don’t arise but the Clan gift—the recessive gene—is preserved. To organize a braid takes some kind of continuity across at least three generations. A burden which naturally falls on the eldest women of the Clan. Men don’t count: men tend to go and get themselves killed fighting silly duels. Or in wars. Or blood feuds. Or they sire bastards who then become part of the outer families and a tiresome burden. They—the bastards—can’t world-walk, but some of their issue might, or their grandchildren. So we must keep track of them and find something useful for them to do—unlike the rest of the nobility here we have an incentive to look after our by-blows. I think we’re lucky, in that respect, to have a matrilineal succession—other tribal societies I studied in my youth, patrilineal ones, were not nice places to be born female. Whichever and whatever, the lineage is preserved largely by the old women acting in concert. A conspiracy of matchmakers, if you like. The ‘old bitches,’ as everyone under sixty tends to call them.” The duchess frowned. “It doesn’t seem quite as funny now I’m sixty-two.”

  “Um.” Helge leaned toward her mother. “You’re telling me Hildegarde wasn’t acting alone? Or she was being pressured by her mother? Or what?”

  “Oh, she’s an evil bitch in her own right,” Patricia waved off the question dismissively. “But yes, she was pressured. She and the other ladies of a certain age don’t have the two things that a young and eligible Clan lady can bargain with: they can’t bear world-walkers, and they can no longer carry heavy loads for the family trade. So they must rely on other, more subtle tools to maintain their position. Like their ability to plait the braids, and to do each other favors, by way of their grandchildren. And when my mother was in her thirties—little older than you are now—she was subjected to much pressure.”

  “So there’s this conspiracy of old women”—Helge was grasping after the concept—“who can make everyone’s life a misery?”

  “Don’t underestimate them,” warned the duchess. “They always win in the end, and you’ll need to make your peace with them sooner or later. I’m unusual, I managed to evade them for more than three decades. But that almost never happens, and even when it does you can’t actually win, because whether you fight them or no, you end up becoming one yourself.” She raised one finger in warning. “You’re relatively safe, kid. You’re too old, too educated, and you’ve got your own power base. As far as I can see they’ve got no reason to meddle with you unless you threaten their honor. Honor is survival here. Don’t ever do that, Miriam—Helge. If you do, they’ll find a way to bring you down. All it takes is leverage, and leverage is the one thing they’ve got.” She smiled thinly. “Think of them as Darwin’s revenge on us, and remember to smile and curtsey when you pass them because until you’ve given them grandchildren they will regard you as an expendable piece to move around the game board. And if you have given them a child, they have a hostage to hold against you.”

  Mid-afternoon, Helge returned to her rooms to check briefly on the arrangements for her travel to the Östhalle—it being high summer, with the sun setting well after ten o’clock, she need not depart until close to seven—then turned to Lady Kara. “I would like to see Lady Olga, if she’s available. Will you investigate? I haven’t seen her around lately.”

  “Lady Olga is in town today. She is down at the battery range,” Kara said without blinking. “She told me this morning that you’d be welcome to join her.”

  Most welcome to—then why didn’t you tell me? Helge bit her tongue. Kara probably had some reason for withholding the invitation that had seemed valid at the time. Berating her for not passing on trivial messages would only cause Kara to start dropping every piece of trivia to which she was privy on her mistress’s shoulders, rather than risk rebuke. “Then let’s go and see her!” Helge said brightly. “It’s not far, is it?”

  The battery range was near the outer wall of the palace grounds—the summer palace, owned and occupied by those of the Clan elders who needed accommodation in the capital, Niejwein—and separated from those grounds by its own high stone wall. Miriam strolled slowly behind her guards, taking in the warm air and the scent of the ornamental shrubs planted to either side of the path. Her butler held a silk parasol above her to keep the sunlight off her skin. It still felt strange, the whole noble lady shtick, but there were some aspects of it she could live with. She paused at the gate in the wall. From the other side, she heard a muffled tapping sound. “Announce us,” she told Kara.

  “Yes, milady.” A moment later, the doors opened onto bedlam.

  Lady Olga Thorold Arnesen—of Thorold, by Arnesen—was blond, pretty, and on first acquaintance a complete ditz. Her enthusiasms included playing the viola, dancing, and making a good marriage. But first acquaintances could be extremely misleading when dealing with children of the Clan, as Miriam had discovered. Right now the ditz was lying in the grass on the other side of the door, practicing her other great enthusiasm with the aid of a Steyr AUG carbine chambered for 9mm ammunition. The more delicately inclined Helge winced and covered her ears as Olga sent a final three-round burst downrange, then safed the gun and bounced to her feet.

  “Helge!” Olga beamed widely but refrained from hugging her, settling instead for brushing her cheek. “How charming to see you! A new creation, I see you’re working your seamstress’s fingers to the ivory. I suppose you didn’t come to join me on the range?”

  “If only.” Helge sniffed. “It’s business, I’m afraid.” She took in Olga’s camo jacket and trousers. “Are you coming to tonight’s circus?”

  “There’s enough time to prepare later,” Olga said dismissively. “I say, Master of Arms! You there! I’m going now, clean this up.” She handed the gun over, then turned back to her visitor. “It’s an excellent device, you really must try it one of these days,” she said, gesturing at the rifle. The range master and his apprentice were fussing with it, unloading the magazine and stripping out the barrel and receiver. “There’s a short version too, police forces use them a lot. I’m going to get them for my bodyguards.”

  “Really.” Helge found it impossible not to smile at Olga’s enthusiasm—except when it was pointed right at her, so to speak, a situation that had only happened once, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding she was not keen to repeat. “Let’s walk. Somewhere quiet?” She glanced round, taking in the plethora of servants, from the range master and armorer and their assistants to her own bodyguard and butler and lady-in-waiting and Olga’s two impassive-faced mercenaries from the Kiowa nation.

  Olga chuckled. “I’m hardly dressed for polite company.”

  “So let’s avoid it. The water garden?”

  Olga cocked her head on one side: “Yes, I do believe it will be nearly empty at this time of year.”

  “So let’s go. Leave the escort at the edge, I want to talk.”

  The water garden began near the far end of the firing range, where a carefully diverted stream ran underground through a steel-barred tunnel in the walls of the grounds and then through sinuous loops around cunningly landscaped mounds and hollows. Trees shaded it, and small conservatories and rustic lodges provided a retreat for visitors tired of the bustle and business of the great estate. However, it was designed for the lush spring or the fiery autumn, not the heat of summer. At this time of year the stream ran sluggish, yielding barely more than a trickle of water to damp down the mud, and most of the plants were either past their peak or not yet come to it.

  Helge and Olga walked alongside the dry streambed on a brick path encrusted in yellow and brown lichen, Olga in her grass-stained camouflage fatigues, Helge in a silk gown fit for a royal garden party. Presently, when they passed the second turn in the path, Olga slowed her pace. “All right, be you out with it.”

  “I’m—” Helge stoppe
d, an expression of mild puzzlement on her face. “Let me be Miriam for a bit. Please?”

  “My dear, you already are!”

  “Huh.” Miriam frowned. “Well, that’s the problem in a nutshell, I suppose. Have you been over to the workshop lately?”

  “Have I?” Olga rolled her eyes. “Your uncle’s been running me ragged lately! Me and Brilliana—and everyone else. I think he sent in Morgan du Hjalmar to do the day-to-day stuff in your workshop, and a couple of Henryk’s people to audit the organization for security, but honestly, I haven’t had time to keep an eye on it. It’s been a rat race! I’m lucky to have the time to attend the midsummer season, he’s working me like a servant!”

  “I see.” Miriam’s tone was dry.

  Olga looked at her sharply. “What is it?”

  “Oh, nothing much: every time I ask if it’s safe for me to go over there and look in on my company I get some excuse from security like, ‘We can’t go there, the hidden family gangsters may not honor the ceasefire’ or ‘We think Matthias’s little friends may be looking for you there’ or ‘It isn’t safe.’ ” Miriam took a deep breath. “It feels like I’m being cut out, Olga, and they’re not even trying very hard to hide it. It’s insultingly obvious. I get to sit here in Thorold Palace practicing dance steps and hochsprache and court etiquette, and every time I try to make myself useful something comes up to divert me. From my own company! The one I set up in New Britain that’s showing a higher rate of profit growth than anything else the Clan’s seen in thirty years!”