The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1) (11 page)

Roland shrugged.

‘See that you do – I want them in custody as soon as possible.’ Angbard harrumphed. ‘As to the prisoner’s disposition . . .’ He paused, head cocked slightly
to one side.

‘Sir?’ Roland was a picture of polite attentiveness.

‘The prisoner is to be treated with all the courtesy due to one of your own station, indeed, as a senior Clan member, I say. As a respected guest, detained for her own
protection.’

‘Sir!’ Roland couldn’t contain his shock.

Angbard stared at him. ‘You have something to say, my earl?’ he asked coldly.

Roland swallowed. ‘I hear and . . . and will of course obey,’ he said. ‘Just, please permit me to say, this is a surprise – ’

‘Your surprise is noted,’ Angbard stated coldly. ‘Nevertheless, I will keep my reasons to myself for the time being. All you need to know at present is that the prisoner must
be treated with kidskin gloves.’ He stared at the young officer intently, but he showed no sign of defiance: and after a moment Angbard relented slightly. ‘This – ’ he
gestured at the box before him – ‘raises some most disturbing possibilities.’ He tapped one finger on the topmost sheet. ‘Or had you noticed any strangers out with the Clan
who are gifted with the family talent?’

‘Mm, no, sir, I had not.’ Roland looked suddenly thoughtful. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Later. Just see she’s transferred to a comfortable – but securely doppelgängered – suite. Be polite and hospitable, win her trust, and treat her person with the
utmost respect. And notify me when she is ready to answer my questions.’

‘I hear and obey,’ Roland acknowledged, less puzzled, but clearly thoughtful.

‘See that you do,’ Angbard rumbled. ‘You are dismissed.’

His nephew rose, straightened his suit jacket, and strode toward the door, a rapier banging at his side. Angbard stared at the door in silence for a minute after he had gone, then turned his eye
back to the items in the file box. Which included a locket that he had seen before – almost a third of a century ago.

‘Patricia,’ he whispered under his breath, ‘what has become of you?’

*

Daylight. That was the first thing that Miriam noticed. That – and she had the mother of all hangovers. Her head felt as if it was wrapped in cotton wool, her right arm
hurt like hell, and everything around her was somehow wrong. She blinked experimentally. Her head
was
wrapped in cotton wool – or bandages. And she was wearing something unfamiliar.
She’d gone to bed in her usual T-shirt, but now she was wearing a nightgown – but she didn’t own one!
What’s going on?

Daylight. She felt muzzy and stupid and her head was pounding. She was thirsty, too. She rolled over and blinked at where the night-stand should have been. There was a whitewashed wall six
inches from her nose. The bed she was lying in was jammed up against a rough cinder-block wall that had been painted white. It was as weird as that confused nightmare about the light and the
chemical stink –

Nightmare?

She rolled the other way, her legs tangling up in the nightgown. She nearly fell out of the bed, which was far too narrow. It wasn’t her own bed, and for a moment of panic she wondered
what could possibly have happened. Then it all clicked into place. ‘Gangsters or feds? Must be the feds,’ she mumbled to herself.
They must have followed me. Or Paulie. Or
something
.

A vast, hollow terror seemed to have replaced her stomach.
They’ll bury you so deep,
she remembered.
So deep that
–

Her throat felt sore, as if she’d spent the entire night screaming. Odd, that.

Maybe it was anticipation.

Somehow she swung her legs over the side of the strange bed. They touched the floor much too soon, and she sat up, pushing the thin comforter aside. The far wall was too close, and the window
was set high up; in fact, the whole room was about the size of a closet. There was no other furniture except for a small stainless-steel sink bolted to the wall opposite the door. The door itself
was a featureless slab of wood with a peephole implanted in it at eye level. She noted with a dull sense of recognition that the door was perfectly smooth, with no handle or lock mechanism to mar
its surface: It was probably wood veneer over metal.

Her hand went to her throat. The locket was gone.

Miriam stood, then abruptly found that she had to lean against the wall to keep upright. Her head throbbed and her right arm was extremely sore. She turned and looked up at the window, but it
was above the top of her head, even if she had the energy to stand on the bed. High and small and without curtains, it looked horribly like the skylight of a jail cell.
Am I in jail?
she
wondered.

With that thought, Miriam lost what calm she had. She leaned against the door and pounded it with her left hand, setting up a hollow racket, but stopped when her hand began to throb and the fear
swept back in a suffocating wave, driving a storm surge of rage before it. She sat down and buried her face in her hands and began to sob quietly. She was still in this position a few minutes later
when the door frame gave a quiet click and opened outward.

Miriam looked up suddenly as the door opened. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

The man standing in the doorway was perfectly turned out, from his black loafers to the ends of his artfully styled blond hair: He was young (late twenties or early thirties), formally dressed
in a fashionable suit, clean-shaven, and his face was set in neutral lines. He could have been a Mormon missionary or an FBI agent. ‘Miss Beckstein, if you’d be so good as to come with
me, please?’

‘Who are you?’ She repeated. ‘Aren’t you guys supposed to read me my rights or something?’ There was something odd about him, but she couldn’t quite get her
head around it.

Past his shoulder she could see a corridor, blurry right now – then she realized what it was that she was having trouble with.
He’s wearing a sword,
she told herself, hardly
believing her eyes.

‘You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension.’ He smiled, not unpleasantly.

‘We don’t have to read you your rights. However, if you’ll come with me, we can go somewhere more comfortable to discuss the situation. Unless you’re entirely happy with
the sanitary facilities here?’

Miriam glanced behind her, suddenly acutely aware that her bladder was full and her stomach was queasy. ‘Who are you?’ she asked uncertainly.

‘If you come with me, you’ll get your answers,’ he said soothingly. He took a step back and something made Miriam suspect there was an implicit or else left dangling at the end
of his last sentence. She lurched to her feet unsteadily and he reached out for her elbow. She shuffled backward instinctively to avoid contact, but lost her balance against the edge of the bed:
She sat down hard and went over backward, cracking her head against the wall.

‘Oh dear,’ he said. She stared up at him through a haze of pain. ‘I’ll bring a wheelchair for you. Please don’t try to move.’

The ceiling pancaked lazily above her head. Miriam felt sick and a little bit drowsy. Her head was splitting.
Migraine or anesthesia hangover?
she wondered.

The well-dressed man with the sword sticking incongruously out from under his suit coat was back, with a wheelchair and another man wearing a green medical smock. Together they picked her up and
planted her in the chair, loose as a sack of potatoes. ‘Oww,’ she moaned softly.

‘That was a nasty bash,’ said her visitor. He walked beside the chair. Lighting strips rolled by overhead, closed doorways to either side. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Lousy,’ she managed. Her right arm had come out in sympathy with her skull. ‘Who’re you?’

‘You don’t give up, do you?’ he observed. The chair turned a corner: More corridor stretched ahead. ‘I’m Roland, Earl Lofstrom. Your welfare is my responsibility
for now.’ The chair stopped in front of burnished stainless-steel panels – an elevator. Mechanisms grumbled behind the door. ‘You shouldn’t have awakened in that isolation
cell. You were only there due to an administrative error. The individual responsible has been disciplined.’

A cold chill washed down Miriam’s spine, cutting through the haze of pain.

‘Don’t want your name,’ she muttered. ‘Want to know who you people
are
. My rights, dammit.’

The elevator doors opened and the attendant pushed her inside. Roland stepped in beside her, then waved the attendant away. Then he pushed a button out of sight behind her head. The doors closed
and the elevator began to rise, but stopped only a few seconds later. ‘You appear to be under a misapprehension,’ he repeated. ‘You’re asking for your rights. The, uh,
Miranda declaration, yes?’

She tried to look up at him. ‘Huh?’

‘That doesn’t apply here. Different jurisdiction, you know.’ His accompanying smile left Miriam deeply unnerved.

The elevator doors opened and he wheeled her into a silent, carpeted corridor with no windows – just widely spaced doors to either side, like an expensive hotel. He stopped at the third
door along on the left and pushed it open, then turned her chair and rolled it forward into the room within. ‘There. Isn’t this an improvement over the other room?’

Miriam pushed down on the wheelchair arms with both hands, wincing at a stab of pain in her right forearm. ‘Damn.’ She looked around. ‘This isn’t federal.’

‘If you don’t mind.’ He took her elbow, and this time she couldn’t dodge. His grip was firm but not painful. ‘This is the main reception room of your suite.
You’ll note the windows don’t actually open, and they’re made of toughened glass for your safety. The bathroom is through that door, and the bedroom is over there.’ He
pointed. ‘If you want anything, lift the white courtesy phone. If you need a doctor, there is one on call. I suggest you take an hour to recover, then freshen up and get dressed. There will
be an interview in due course.’

‘What is this place? Who are you people?’

Finally Roland frowned at her. ‘You can stop pretending you don’t know,’ he said. ‘You aren’t going to convince anyone.’ Pausing in the doorway, he added,
‘The war’s over, you know. We won twenty years ago.’ The door closed behind him with a solid-sounding click, and Miriam was unsurprised to discover that the door handle flopped
limply in her hand when she tried it. She was locked in.

*

Miriam shuffled into the white-tiled bathroom, blinked in the lights, then sat down heavily on the toilet. ‘Wow,’ she mumbled in disbelief. It was like an expensive
hotel – a fiendishly expensive one, aimed at sheikhs and diplomats and billionaires. The floor was smooth, a very high grade of Italian marble if she was any judge of stonework. The sink was
a molded slab of thick green glass and the taps glowed with a deep luster that went deeper than mere gilding could reach. The bath was a huge scalloped shell sunk into the floor, white and
polished, with blue and green lights set into it amid the chromed water jets. An acre of fluffy white towels and a matching bathrobe awaited her, hanging above a basket of toiletries. She knew some
of those brand names; she’d even tried their samplers when she was feeling extravagant. The shampoo alone was a hundred dollars a bottle.

This definitely isn’t anything to do with the government,
she realized.
I know people who’d pay good money to be locked up in here!

She sat down on the edge of the bathtub, slid into one of the seats around its rim, and spent a couple of minutes puzzling out the control panel. Eventually she managed to coax half a dozen jets
of aerated water into life.
This is a prison,
she kept reminding herself. Roland’s words haunted her: ‘Different jurisdiction, you know.’ Where was she? They’d
taken the locket. That implied that they knew about it – and about her. But there was absolutely no way to square this experience with what she’d seen in the forest: the pristine
wilderness, the peasant village.

The bedroom was as over the top as the bathroom, dominated by a huge oak sleigh-bed in a traditional Scandinavian style, with masses of down comforters and pillows. Rather than fitted furniture
there were a pair of huge oak wardrobes and a chest of drawers and other, smaller items – a dressing table with mirror, an armchair, something that looked like an old linen press. Every piece
of furniture in the bedroom looked to be an antique. The combined effect was overwhelming, like being expected to sleep in an auction house’s display room.

‘Oh wow.’ She looked around and spotted the windows, then walked over to them. A balcony outside blocked the view of whatever was immediately below. Beyond it she had a breathtaking
view of a sweep of forested land dropping away toward a shallow valley with a rocky crag, standing proud and bald on the other side. It was as untainted by civilization as the site of her camping
expedition. She turned away, disquieted. Something about this whole picture screamed
Wrong!
at her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

The chest of drawers held an unpleasant surprise. She pulled the top drawer open, half-expecting it to be empty. Instead, it contained underwear. Her underwear. She recognized the holes in one
or two socks that she hadn’t gotten around to throwing away.

‘Bastards.’ She focused on the clothing, mind spinning furiously.
They’re thorough, whoever they are.
She looked closer at the furniture. The writing desk appeared to
be an original Georgian piece, or even older, a monstrously valuable antique. And the chairs, Louis XV or a good replica – disturbingly expensive. A hotel would be content with reproductions,
she reasoned. The emphasis would be on utility and comfort, not authenticity. If there were originals anywhere, they’d be on display in the foyer. It reminded her of something that
she’d seen somewhere, something that nagged at the back of her mind but stubbornly refused to come to the foreground.

She stood up and confirmed her suspicion that the wardrobes held her entire range of clothing. More words came back to haunt her: ‘There will be an interview in due course.’