The Clan Corporate: Book Three of The Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

  “You will speak to nobody about reading the post, without my permission, or that of the duke your uncle. The, ah, loose ends who might have deduced your activity have been tied off. If you do not speak of it, and we do not speak of it, it did not happen. This paper will remain on file for a few years, until we feel we can trust you. But.” He paced back toward the other side of the room. “You will have nothing more to do with the Clan postal service ever again, Helge, ever again. This is the immediate consequence of your actions. You are to be permanently removed from the corvée, and temporarily deprived of the ability to walk between worlds.” He grimaced. “Don’t force us to make it permanent, there are ways and means short of execution that would achieve that end”—he picked up a pen-sized cylinder and held it for her to see, then put it down again—“do you see?”

  Miriam swallowed. That’s a laser! He’s talking about blinding me! The idea of spending the rest of her life unable to see horrified her. “I understand,” she managed to croak.

  “Good.” Baron Henryk looked slightly relieved. “I’m sure you appreciate that your position is somewhat fraught. But the Queen Mother approves of you.” Pace, pace, pace: he was off again, as if he didn’t want to face her. “She has requested your attendance upon her and her youngest surviving grandson at your convenience, Helge. I trust you know what this is about.”

  Miriam felt the blood draining from her face. “What?” she asked nervously.

  “Face facts.” Henryk could sound as fussily pedantic as any schoolteacher when he was upset. “You are a Clan lady of high birth, single, still of childbearing age. If you can’t serve the commerce committee, how else may you serve us? There’s not a lot else for you to do,” he said, almost apologetically. “So you’re going to go back to your residence and wait there, and work on your, what you think of as, your cover identity. Countess Helge voh Thorold d’Hjorth. You’re not going to be allowed to be Miriam Beckstein again until we’re sure we can trust you. We know about your dissociative tendencies, this unfortunate tendency toward imposter syndrome. It’s time we gave you some help in breaking the habit. Think of it as an enforced vacation from the pressures of modern life, hein? Practice your hochsprache and persist with the gentle arts, and try not to overexert yourself too much. One way or the other, you’re going to make yourself of use, even if only to give us another generation of world-walkers or a royal heir. It will go easier for you if you cooperate of your own free choice.”

  “You want to marry me off to the Idiot,” she heard herself saying. “You want me to bear world-walking children who are in line for the throne. If Egon were to die—”

  “That would be treason,” Henryk said sharply, staring at her. “The Clan would never, ever, countenance treason.”

  The blood was roaring in Miriam’s ears: You wouldn’t dabble, but you might play at it in earnest, she thought. Get me out of here! A monstrous sense of claustrophobia pressed down on her, and her stomach twisted. “I feel sick,” she said.

  “Oh, I hope not.” Henryk looked alarmed. “It’s much too soon for that.”

  12

  FORCED

  ACCULTURATION

  T

  he ferret was waiting outside with two men-at-arms. They handcuffed her wrists behind her back, then marched her back down the narrow staircase and out to a walled courtyard at the rear of the building where a carriage was waiting. The windows were shuttered, screens secured with padlocks. Miriam didn’t resist as they loaded her in and bolted the door. What would be the point? Henryk was right about one thing—she’d screwed up completely, and before she tried to dig her way out of this mess it would be a good idea to think the consequences of her actions through very carefully indeed.

  The carriage was small and stuffy and threw her around as it wandered interminably along. The noise of a busy street market reached her, muffled by the shutters. Then there was shouting, the clangor of hammers on metal. Smith Alley, she thought. Every time the carriage swayed across a rut in the cobblestone road surface it lurched from side to side, throwing her against the walls. It stank of leather, and stale sweat, and fear.

  After a brief eternity the carriage lurched to a halt, and someone unlocked the door. The light was harsh: blinking, Miriam tried to stretch the kinks out of her back and legs. “This way,” said the ferret.

  It was another of those goddamn mansions with closed courtyards and separate servants’ quarters. Miriam panted as she tried to keep up, half-dazzled by the glare of daylight. The ferret’s two minions seized her by the elbows and half-dragged her to a small door. They propelled her up four flights of stairs—passing two servants who stood rigidly still, their faces turned to the wall so that they might not see her disgrace—then paused in front of a door. At least it’s not the cellar, Miriam thought bleakly. She’d already seen what the Clan’s dungeons looked like. The ferret paused and stared at her, then nodded minutely.

  “These will be your quarters.” He glanced at the door. “You may consider yourself under house arrest. Your belongings will be moved here, once we have searched them. Your maidservants likewise, and you may continue your activities as before, with reservations. I will pay attendance in the outer chamber. You will not leave your quarters without my approval, and I will accompany you wherever you go. Any messages you wish to send you will give to me for approval. You will not invite anyone to visit you without my approval. If you attempt to disobey these terms, then”—he shrugged—“I stand ready to do my duty.”

  Miriam swallowed. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Doppelgangered.” The ferret’s cheek twitched. Abruptly, he turned and pushed the door open. He stepped behind her and unlocked the cuffs. “Go on in.”

  Miriam shuffled through the door to her new home, staring at the floor. It was rough-cut stone, with an intricate handwoven carpet laid across it. Behind her, the door scraped shut: there was a rattle of bolts. She looked up, across a waiting room—perhaps a little smaller than her chambers in Thorold Palace had been—at a window casement overlooking the walled courtyard they’d brought her in through.

  So I’m under house arrest. “It could have been worse,” she told herself quietly. The place was furnished—expensively, by local standards—although there was no electric lighting in evidence. Doors led off to other rooms. The fireplace was about the size of her living room back in Cambridge, but right now it was unlit. “Where are the servants?” She was beginning to feel hungry: it was the stomach-stuck-to-ribs haven’t-eaten-for-days kind of hunger that sometimes came on after extreme stress. She walked over to the nearest door, opened it. A housemaid jumped to her feet from a stool just inside the doorway and ducked a deep curtsey.

  “Do you know who I am?” Miriam asked.

  The woman looked confused. “Myn’demme?”

  Of course. “I am Countess Helge,” Miriam began in her halting hochsprache. “Where—what—is food here?” The woman looked even more confused. “I am—to eat—” she tried again, a sinking feeling in her heart. It was, she realized, going to be very hard to get anything done.

  It took Miriam only an evening to appreciate how far her universe had shrunk. She had four rooms: a bedroom dominated by a huge curtained bed, the reception room, a waiting room that doubled as a dining area, and the outer vestibule. The ferret lived in the vestibule, so she avoided it. What lay beyond its external door, which was formidably barred, she had no idea. The only window with a view, in the reception room, overlooked the courtyard but was not high enough to see over the crenellated walls. This wasn’t a show house in the style of Thorold Palace, but a converted castle from an older, grimmer age. A window with a scenic view would have been an invitation to a crossbow bolt. The sanitary facilities were, predictably, primitive.

  Three maidservants came when she tugged the bellpulls in the bedroom or the reception room. None of them spoke English, and they all seemed terrified of her. Or perhaps they were afraid of being seen talking to her by the ferret. She was forced to communicate i
n her halting hochsprache, but they weren’t much use when it came to getting language practice.

  On the evening of her first day, after she’d picked over a supper of cold cuts and boiled Jerusalem artichokes, the ferret came and ordered her into the vestibule. “Wait here,” he said, and went back into the reception room, locking the door. Miriam worked her way into an anxious frenzy while he was gone, terrified that Baron Henryk had revisited his decision to leave her alive; a distant thumping on the other side of the door suggested structural changes in progress. When the ferret opened the door again and returned to his seat by the barred door, Miriam looked at him in disbelief. “Go on,” he said impatiently; “I told you your possessions would be moved in, didn’t I?”

  There was a huge wardrobe in her bedroom now, and a dresser. Relieved, Miriam hurried to look through them—but there was nothing in the drawers or on the chest but the garments Mistress Tanzig had laboriously assembled for her. No laptop, no books, no Advil, no CD Walkman, nothing remotely reminiscent of American life. “Damn,” Miriam complained. She sat on the embroidered backless bench that served for a chair. “Now what?” Obviously Henryk’s security people considered anything that hinted of her original home to be suspect, and after a moment she couldn’t fault them. The laptop—if she’d had a digital camera she might have loaded a picture of the Clan sigil into it, then made her escape. Or she might have slid a Polaroid between the pages of a book. They’d made a clean sweep of her possessions, taking everything except that which a noblewoman of the Gruinmarkt might have owned—even her battered reporter’s notebook and automatic pencil were gone. Which left her with a wardrobe full of native costumes and a jewel box with enough ropes of pearls to hang herself with, but nothing that might facilitate her flight. Henryk really does expect me to revert to being Helge, she thought. She looked around in mild desperation. There was a strange book on the dresser. She reached for it, opened the leather cover: Notes towards a Hochsprache-Anglaische Grammarion it said, printed in an old-fashioned type. “Shit.” Succumbing to the inevitable, Miriam started reading her homework.

  The next morning she wore a local outfit. Better get used to it, she thought resignedly. No more jeans and tees for slobbing about in. She was sitting on the bench by the window casement, staring out at the courtyard to relieve her eyes from studying the grammarion, when the door to the vestibule opened without warning. It was the ferret, with two unfamiliar maidservants standing behind him, and another man: avuncular-looking, with receding hair and spectacles and a beer gut. He was holding a large leather briefcase. “Milady voh Thorold d’Hjorth?” he said in a slightly creepy way that made Miriam take an instant dislike to him.

  “Yes?” She frowned at the ferret.

  “If you will permit me to introduce myself? I am Dr. Robard ven Hjalmar. Your great-uncle the baron asked me to pay a house call.”

  “What kind of doctor are you?”

  “The medical kind.” He managed a smile that was halfway between a simper and a smirk.

  “A medical—” Miriam paused. “I don’t need a doctor,” she said automatically. “I’m fine.” Which wasn’t strictly true—her ribs ached from the punch, and she was feeling unnaturally torpid and depressed—but something about ven Hjalmar made her mistrust him instinctively.

  “You don’t need a doctor now,” he said fussily, and planted his case on the floor. “However, I have been asked to take you on as one of my patients.”

  The ferret cleared his throat. “Dr. ven Hjalmar ministers to the royal family.”

  “Oh, I see.” Miriam put the book down, carefully positioning the bookmark. “What does that entail?” Why me?

  “I am required to testify to your health and fitness.” Ven Hjalmar’s gaze slid around the room nervously, avoiding her. “You are, I am sure you are aware, of a certain age—not too old for a first confinement, but certainly in need of care and attention. And I understand you may have other medical needs. If you would be so good as to retire to your bedchamber, your maids will relieve you of your outerwear so that I may prepare my report. You need not be afraid, you will be chaperoned and your guardian will be right outside the door.”

  Miriam glared at the ferret. “Do I get an opportunity to say no?”

  The ferret was stony-faced. “Remember your instructions.” The two unfamiliar maids stepped forward and took Miriam by the arms. She tensed, on the edge of panic: but the ferret was watching her.

  What happened next was one of the most unintrusive but oddly unpleasant medical examinations Miriam had ever undergone. The servants led her into the bedroom; then, with the door closed, one of them (a beefy blond woman with rosy cheeks and the look of an amateur boxer to her) held Miriam’s wrists together while the other unlaced her bodice. Neither of them spoke. “Let me—go,” Miriam tried, but boxer-woman just stared at her dumbly.

  “Stand still, please.” It was ven Hjalmar. Boxer-woman refused to let go, holding her pinioned. “Open your mouth. Ah—hah. Very good.” He stepped around her and she felt a stethoscope through her chemise. “Breathe in—and out. Ah, good.” He worked fast, giving her a basic examination. Then: “I gather you were given a pap smear on the other side. I’ll have the results of that back in a day or so. Meanwhile, I’d like to ask you some questions about your medical history.”

  Pap smear? Miriam blinked. “Make them let me go,” she said stubbornly, flexing her wrists.

  “Not yet.” Ven Hjalmar looked down his nose at her, standing there in her underwear with her wrists immobilized by boxer-woman. “When, exactly, did you lose your maidenhood?”

  “None of your business.” She tried not to snarl. If you do not obey your orders I will hurt you, the ferret had said: she didn’t dare forget.

  “I assure you, it is very much my business.” Ven Hjalmar shrugged. “And it will be the worse for you if you don’t answer.”

  “Why do you want to know?” she demanded. Boxer-woman tugged on her left wrist, hard enough to make her wince. “What is this?”

  “I am attempting to compile a report for the Crown,” Ven Hjalmar said primly. “You are thirty-three years old, I understand? You are in good health and disease-free, and I am informed already that you are not a virgin, but this is old for a first pregnancy, such as you will be attempting within the next year. I need to know everything about your reproductive history. If you will not tell me, I will have to examine you intimately, and then guess as to the rest. Which would you prefer?”

  “It won’t be a first pregnancy,” Miriam admitted through gritted teeth. Damn, why couldn’t I have gotten my tubes tied? She knew why: she’d never gotten around to it. She even knew why she’d never gotten around to it—the sneaking suspicion that one day there might be a right time and a right man to start a family with. The huge irony being that as a direct result she was now being lined up to start a family with absolutely the wrong man at the wrong time. “I was twenty-one.” She tried to pull away again. “Make her let go of me.”

  “Keep talking,” said ven Hjalmar.

  Miriam tensed, but boxer-woman was developing an evil Nurse Ratched glare. “One child. Girl, the father was my ex-husband, I was still studying—a contraceptive accident. I didn’t want an abortion but we couldn’t afford to bring her up so Mom suggested we adopt out—”

  Scribble scribble. Ven Hjalmar’s pen was busy. Miriam kept talking, her mind blank; she managed one barefaced lie (that she didn’t know anything about the adopters), but that was it. Abject surrender. She felt dirty. What business was it of this quack to pick over her sexual history? He wanted to know everything: had she suffered from morning sickness, what medicines had they prescribed, had she ever had bladder problems—only when your hired thugs punch me in the gut—and more. He went on for hours. Miriam made another stab at resistance when he started asking for names of every man she’d slept with, but at that point he dropped the matter and switched to asking about her hearing. But the interrogation left her feeling unaccountably dirty, like shop-soiled l
inen on display for all to see.

  Finally, ven Hjalmar muttered something to Nurse Ratched, who let go of Miriam. Miriam took a step back, then sat down on the padded bench. “Yes?” she asked wearily.

  “You have something of an attitude problem, young lady.”

  “No shit.” Miriam drew her knees up beneath her shift and crossed her arms defensively around them. “You’re the one giving me the third degree in front of an audience.”

  “They won’t say anything.” Ven Hjalmar smiled and said something to the other servant woman. She made a gabbling noise, incoherent and liquid, and turned to face Miriam. “As you can see.”

  Miriam looked away the moment she saw the tongueless ruin inside the woman’s mouth. Oh shit, I’m going to have bad dreams tonight. “I see,” she said weakly, trying to recover what was left of her shredded dignity. “What did she do to deserve that?”

  “She discussed her mistress’s intimate details.” Ven Hjalmar shook his head lugubriously. “The royal family takes medical confidentiality very seriously.”

  Unaccountably, Miriam felt slightly less disheartened. So even you’re afraid, huh? We’ll see what we can do with that. “So what happens next?”

  “I think we can skip the virginity test. It isn’t as if you are being considered for the crown prince, after all.” Ven Hjalmar stood up. “I believe you are a perfectly fit young woman, of sound body, perhaps a little disturbed by your circumstances but that will pass. If you would like something to help your mood, I am sure we can do something about that—have you considered Prozac? Guaranteed to cure all black humors, so I’m assured by the manufacturer. I shall take my leave now, and your own maidservants will help return you to your usual peak of feminine beauty.” He produced the odd, simpering smile once again. “Incidentally,” he added sotto voce, “I understand and commiserate with the difficult circumstances of your marriage. If it’s any consolation, you may not have to lie with the, ah, afflicted one if you do not wish to. A sample can be obtained and a douche prepared, if you prefer.”