The Clan Corporate: Book Three of The Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, that’s all right,” she said numbly. “It was an arranged marriage. They like to deal with uppity women by marrying them off.” She stared at him fixedly. I can’t believe I’m standing in a burning palace talking to Mike Fleming! “So this is DEA business, right? I guess Matthias spilled his guts in return for protection?”

  “DEA—Matthias—” He stared at her tensely. A thought struck Miriam: hoping he wouldn’t notice, she clasped her hands together in front of her, trying to unobtrusively unfasten one cuff.

  “How well did you know Matt?” Mike asked.

  “He tried to kill me, and murdered my—” She bit her tongue. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  The sleeve was coming loose. She looked him in the eye. “Well?”

  “Are you happy here?” he asked cautiously. “Because you don’t look it . . .”

  “Am I—” The laugh from hell was back, trying to get out again. “The fuck I am! If you can get me away from here—” Her voice broke. “Please, Mike! Can you?” She hated the tremor of desperation but she couldn’t stop it. “I’m going mad!”

  “I—I—oh shit.”

  Her heart fell. “What is it?”

  “I.” His voice was small. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re moving in over here,” he said, in a voice that sounded like he was trying to figure out how to give her some bad news. “We need world-walkers.”

  “You’ve come to the right place. Except the folks outside want them all dead; I think this could be a civil war breaking out, you know?”

  “We need world-walkers.” He looked troubled. “But what the organization is doing with them—I’m sorry, but I’ve got to ask—”

  “Yes, I’m a goddamn world-walker!” Miriam vented. “That’s my mother you want to blame—she ran away decades ago, then they came and fetched her back and found me. Why do you want to know?”

  He seemed to relax, as if coming to a decision. “I’ve got to go now,” he said.

  “Can you put me in the Witness Protection Program?” she asked.

  “I’d love to—I’d like nothing better than to get you into a safe house and a debriefing program. But listen, I’d also say—and I’m not supposed to—you should wait a bit. They’re using world-walkers as mules, Miriam. I mean, the folks I work for now, big-hat federal spooks. I was supposed to try and convince you to work as an informer for us, if that’s possible, but I guess this shit means it’s not . . .”

  “It wouldn’t have worked anyway,” she said heavily. “They don’t trust me.”

  He paused. “I can’t say I’m surprised. But at least I can report that. Identify you as a sympathizer, I mean. That’ll make things easier later on.” A longer pause. “If you can get over to Boston, do you still have my home number?”

  “Damn,” she said bleakly, staring at him. The old Mike would never have given a smuggler an even break. “It’s that bad, is it?”

  He nodded minutely. “There’s a turf war inside the bureaucracy. Cops like me are on the down side at present. Things are really bad. Matt created quite a mess.”

  “I can imagine.” Miriam certainly could. She’d brainstormed a lot of things a determined world-walker could do; like reach the places other terrorists couldn’t reach, and escape to do it over again. If the government thought they were dealing with more than just a ring of supernatural drug smugglers . . . “Listen, this wasn’t my idea.” She thought about the locket. “Do you need a lift out of here?”

  “No.” He turned, his back to the window. “This was supposed to be a quick in and out, with maybe a friendly chat in the middle. I’ve got my own way out of this. Take my advice, Miriam: get the hell away from these people. They’re pure poison. Go to ground, then phone me in a week or so and I’ll see if there’s a way to get you into the program without the spooks shutting you down.”

  “Easier said than done,” she said bitterly, her shoulders shaking. They’ve got me over a barrel, they’ve got Mom—and this seemed to be her night for meeting unexorcised ghosts. “They’ve got my mom.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “That makes things difficult, doesn’t it?” He took a deep breath. “I’ve got to go now.” He glanced at the locket she was dangling openly. “On foot, through the shit going down outside. Look, you get the hell out of here. Use your magic whatever. Call me. I won’t be back for a week or so, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Right.” He began to back toward the window. “Oh, and stay down until you world-walk. I don’t want you getting shot by accident.”

  “Okay.” She held her hands up.

  Some impulse made her ask, “Do you still have the hots for me, Mike?”

  “In your dreams.”

  Then he was gone. Miriam began to notice the screams and moans from the building, the pops and crackling and quiet roar of fire. And found she could smell smoke on the nighttime breeze.

  I am in a burning building, she thought madly. The king’s just been shot. The man I was supposed to marry is dead, there’s a bomb behind me, the crown prince is holding a coup and shooting world-walkers. She tittered in disbelief. And not only did James Lee make a pass, but I just ran into an ex-boyfriend who’s working for the DEA.

  She raised a fist to her mouth, the locket clenched tightly inside it. If I run away, they’ll think Egon’s men got me, she thought slowly, trying to gather her scattered wits. That means Mom’s off the hook! And—

  If she could remember Mike’s phone number, she could defect. There was something happening there, okay. It had already started, so it wouldn’t be her fault if she sought sanctuary, the feds were already able to reach the Clan at home. “I could do it,” she told herself. “All I have to do is world-walk away from here. Then pick up the telephone.”

  She glanced at the locket. “Hang on. It was James’s. Is it a Lee locket, or a Clan locket?” There was a big difference: a Lee locket would take her to New Britain, where a Clan locket would dump her somewhere in downtown New York. Which would be a pain, but if she could make it overnight, get some cash, she could phone Mike in the morning. Whereas if she ended up in New London . . . “Only one way to find out.”

  Miriam turned round and stared at the corpse. He wore a soldier’s greatcoat. She’d need that: her current outfit wasn’t exactly inconspicuous anywhere. Swallowing bile, she stooped and rolled the body over. It was surprisingly heavy, but the coat wasn’t fastened and she managed to keep it out of the puddle. She pulled it over her shoulders: the pockets were heavy. Mentally she flipped a die, tensing. New York or New London. Please let it be New York . . .

  She stared at the knotwork by the light of a blazing palace. It was hard to concentrate on world-walking, to find the right state of mind. The sky lit up behind her for a moment, as a pulse of sound slammed through her, then cut off suddenly. She stumbled, a dull ache digging into her temples, and her stomach flipped. The rich sweetbreads came up in a rush, leaving her bent over the stone gutter. The stone gutter. She straightened up slowly, taking in the narrow street, the loaf-shaped paving bricks, the shuttered houses leaning over her. The piles of stinking refuse and fish guts, the broken cartwheel at one corner.

  “Fuck, I don’t believe this,” she said, and kicked at the curbstone. “Ouch.” It was New London, and her dream of easy defection shattered on the rock of reality. Frustrated, she looked around. “I could go back,” she told herself faintly. “Or not . . .” She’d run into the Clan again, and she might not be able to get away. With Creon dead, and the US military able to invade the Gruinmarkt, Henryk might do anything: going back was far too dangerous to contemplate. It’d be much harder to steal a Clan locket and run for New York, wouldn’t it? Damn, I’ve got to find Erasmus . . .

  There was a chink of metal on stone, from about twenty yards up the alleyway.

  A chuckle.

  “Well, lookee here! And w
hat’s a fine girl like her doing in a place like this?”

  Miriam’s stomach lurched again. Not only am I in New London instead of New York, she realized, I’m in the bad part of town.

  There was another chuckle. “Let’s ask her, why don’t we?”

  And the bad part of town had noticed her.