The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1) (24 page)

*

Two extremely uncomfortable days passed in chilly boredom. They stopped at a coaching house the first night, and Miriam insisted on unloading a suitcase and trunk. The next day
she scandalized Margit by wearing jeans, fleece, and hiking boots, and Olga by spending the afternoon engrossed in a book. ‘You’d best not wear that tomorrow,’ Margit said
disapprovingly when they stopped that evening at another post house. ‘It is for us to make a smart entrance, to pay our respects at court as soon as we arrive, do you see? Did you bring
anything suitable?’

‘Oh hell,’ replied Miriam, confusing her somewhat (for Hel was a province administered by Olga’s father). ‘If you could help me choose something?’

Expensive western formal costume – Armani suits, Givenchy dresses, and their equivalents – appeared to be de rigueur among the Clan in private. But in public in the Gruinmarkt, they
wore the finery of high nobility. Their peculiarities were kept behind closed doors.

The duke’s resident seamstress had packed one of Miriam’s trunks with gowns hastily fitted to her measurements, and at dawn on the third day Margit shoehorned her into one deemed
suitable for a court debut. It was even more elaborate than the outfit they’d fitted her for dinner with the duke; it had underskirts, profusions of lace exploding at wrist and throat,
slashed sleeves layered over tight inner layers. Miriam hated everything it said about the status of women in this society. But Olga wore something similar, with an exaggerated pink bustle behind
that suggested to Miriam nothing so much as a female baboon in heat. Margit declared Miriam’s presentation satisfactory. ‘That’s most fittingly elegant!’ she pronounced.
‘Let no time be lost, now, lest we be undone by our lateness.’

‘Mmph,’ said Miriam, holding her skirts out of the courtyard dampness and trying to avoid tripping over them on her way over to the coach.
Really
, she thought.
This is
crazy! I should have just crossed over and caught the train
. But Angbard had insisted – and she could second-guess his reasoning. ‘Avoid transport bottlenecks where somebody might
intercept her – also, see if she breaks.’ After three days on the road she was feeling ripe, long overdue for a shower. The last thing she needed was a new dress, let alone one as
intricately excessive as this. Only a grim determination not to play her hand too early made her put up with it. She settled into her accustomed corner in a rustling heap of bottle-green velvet and
tried to get comfortable, but her back was stiff, the dress vast and uncontrollable, and parts of her were sweating while other bits froze.

Plus, Olga was looking at her triumphantly.

‘You look marvelous,’ Olga assured her, leaning forward and resting a hand in the vicinity of Miriam’s knee. ‘I’m sure you’ll make a great entry at court!
You’ll be surrounded by suitors before you’ve been there a moment – despite your age!’

‘I’m sure,’ Miriam said weakly.
Give me patience
, she prayed to the goddess of suffering and/or social conformity.
Otherwise I swear I’ll strangle
someone
. . .

Before they moved off, Margit insisted on dropping the blinds. It reduced the draft, but in the closeness of the carriage Miriam began to feel claustrophobic.

Olga insisted on painting Miriam’s cheeks and eyebrows and lips, redoing the procedure while the carriage swayed and bumped along a stone-cobbled street. Other carriages and traffic
rattled past. Presently they heard people calling greetings and warnings. ‘The gates,’ Olga said, breathlessly. ‘The gates!’

Miriam sneaked a peek through the blinds before Margit noticed and scolded her. The gatehouse was made of stone, perhaps four stories high. She’d seen similar on a vacation in England many
years ago. The walls themselves were of stone, but banked with masses of rammed earth in front and huge mounds of mud beyond the ditch.
Isn’t that something to do with artillery?
she
thought, puzzled by memories of an old History Channel documentary.

‘Put that down at once, I say!’ Margit insisted. ‘Do you want everyone to see you?’

Miriam dropped the window blind. ‘Shouldn’t they?’ she asked.

‘Absolutely not!’ Margit looked scandalized. ‘Why, it would be the talk of society for months!’

‘Ah,’ Miriam said neutrally. Olga winked at her.
So this is how it works,
she realized. Enforcement through peer pressure.
If they get the idea that I’m not going
to conform, I’m never going to hear the end of it
, she realized. Olga, far from being her biggest problem, was beginning to look more like a potential ally.

*

Their first call was at the Thorold Palace, a huge rambling stone pile at the end of the Avenue of Rome, a broad stone street fronted by mansions. The carriage drew right up to
the front entrance, their escort of guards strung out behind it as servants emerged with a mounting box, which they shoved into place before holding the door open. Margit was the first to leave,
followed by Olga, who squeezed through the door with a shake of her behind; Miriam emerged last, blinking in the daylight like a prisoner released from an oubliette.

A butler in some sort of intricate house uniform – a tunic over knee breeches and floppy boots – read from a letter in a loud voice before a gaggle of onlookers. ‘His
Excellency the High Duke Angbard of House Lofstrom is pleased to consign to your care the Lady Margit, Châtelaine of Praha, Her Excellency the Baroness Olga Thorold, and Her Excellency the
Countess Helga Thorold Hjorth, daughter of Patricia of that braid.’ He bowed deeply, then gave way to a man standing behind him. ‘Your Excellency.’

‘I bid you welcome to the house in my custody, and urge you to accept my hospitality,’ said the man.

‘Baron Oliver Hjorth,’ Olga stage-whispered at Miriam. Miriam managed a fixed, glassy-eyed smile then followed Olga’s lead by picking up her skirts and dipping. ‘I thank
you, my lord,’ Olga replied loudly and clearly, ‘and accept your protection.’

Miriam echoed him. English, it seemed, was still the general language of nobility here. Her Hoh’sprashe was still restricted to a couple of polite nothings.

‘Delighted, my beaux,’ said the earl, not cracking a smile. He was tall and thin, almost cadaverous, his most striking feature a pair of striking black-rimmed spectacles that he wore
balanced on the tip of his bony nose; dusty black trousers and a flared red coat worn over a lace-throated shirt completed his outfit. There was something threadbare about him, and Miriam noticed
that he didn’t wear a sword. ‘If you will allow Bortis to show you to your rooms, I believe you are expected at court in two hours.’

He turned and stalked away grimly, without further comment.

‘Why, the effrontery!’ Olga gripped Miriam’s hand tightly.

‘Huh?’

‘He’s snubbing you,’ Olga hissed angrily, ‘and me, to get at you! How peculiarly rude! Oh, come on, let the servant show us to our rooms – and yours. We still need
to finish you for the royal court.’

*

An hour later Miriam had two ladies-in-waiting, an acute attack of dizziness, growing concerns about the amenities of this ghastly stone pile – which appeared to lack such
essentials as running water and electricity – and a stiff neck from all the heavy metal they’d wrapped around her throat. The ladies-in-waiting were, like Margit, family members who
lacked the fully expressed trait that allowed them to world-walk. The Misses Brilliana of Ost and Kara of Praha – one blonde, the other brunette – looked like meek young things waiting
their turn for the marriage market, but after spending a couple of days with Olga, Miriam took that with a pinch of salt. ‘Were you really raised on the other side?’ Kara asked,
wide-eyed.

‘I was.’ Miriam nodded. ‘But I’ve never been presented at court before.’

‘We’ll see to that,’ the other one, Brilliana, said confidently. ‘You look splendid! I’m sure it will all go perfectly.’

‘When do we need to leave?’ asked Miriam.

‘Oh, any time, I suppose,’ Brilliana said carelessly.

The coach was even more claustrophobic with six overdressed women jammed into it. It jarred and bumped through the streets, and Brilliana and Kara made excited small talk with Olga’s
companions, Sfetlana and Aris. Olga, sandwiched between the two, caught Miriam’s eye and winked. Miriam would have shrugged, but she was hemmed in so tightly that she could barely breathe,
let alone move.

After what felt like an hour of juddering progress, the carriage turned into a long drive. As it drew to a halt, Miriam heard a tinkle of glassware, laughter, strains of string music from
outside. Olga twitched. ‘Hear, violins!’ she said.

‘Sounds like it to me.’ The door opened and steps appeared, as did two footmen, their gold-encrusted livery as pompous and excessive as the women’s dresses. They hovered
anxiously as the occupants descended.

‘Thank you,’ Miriam commented, surprising the footman who’d offered her his hand. She looked around. They stood before the wide-flung doors of a gigantic palace, a flood of
light spilling out through the glass windows onto the lawn.

Within, men in coats cut away over ballooning knee breeches mingled with women in elaborate gowns: The room was so huge that the orchestra played from a balcony, above the heads of the
court.

Miriam went into a state of acute culture shock almost immediately, allowing the Misses Kara and Brilliana to steer her like a galleon under full sail. Someone bellowed out her name – or
the parcel of strange titles by which she was known here. She shook herself for a moment when she saw heads turn to stare at her – some inquisitive, some surprised, others supercilious, and
some hostile – the names meant nothing to her. All she could think of was trying not to trip over her aching toes and keeping her glassy eyes and shit-eating grin steady on her rouged and
strained face.
This isn’t me
, she thought vaguely, being presented to a whirl of titled pompous idiots and simpering women swathed in silk and furs.
This is a bad dream
, she
repeated to herself. She shied away from the idea that these people were her family, that she might have to spend the rest of her life attending this sort of event.

Miriam had done formal dinners and award ceremonies before, dinner parties and cocktail evenings, but nothing that came close to this. Even though – from Olga’s vague but
enthusiastic description of the territories – Niejwein was a small kingdom, not much larger than Massachusetts and so dirt-poor that most of the population lived on subsistence farming, its
ruling royalty lived in a casual splendor far beyond any ceremonial that the head of a democratic nation would expect. It was an imperial reception, the prototype that the high school prom or its
upmarket cousin, the coming-out ball, aped. Someone clapped a glass into her gloved hand – it turned out to be a disgustingly sweet fruit wine – and she politely but firmly turned down
so many invitations to dance that she began to lose track.
Please, make it all go away
, she whimpered to herself, as Kara-Brilliana steered her into a queue running along a suspiciously
red carpet toward a short guy swathed in a white fur cloak that looked preposterously hot.

‘Her Excellency Helge Thorold Hjorth, daughter and heir of Patricia of Thorold, returned from exile to pay tribute at the court of His High Majesty, Alexis Nicholau III, ruler in the name
of the Sky Father, blessed and awful be he, of all of the Gruinmarkt and territories!’

Miriam managed a deep curtsey without falling over, biting her lip to keep from saying anything inappropriate or incriminating.

‘Charmed, charmed, I say!’ said Alexis Nicholau III, ruler of the Gruinmarkt (by willing concession of the Clan). ‘My dear, reports of your beauty do not do you justice at all!
Such elegant deportment! A new face at court, I say, how charming. Remind me to introduce you to my sons later.’ He swayed slightly on his raised platform, and Miriam spotted the empty glass
in his hand.

He was a slightly built man with a straggly red beard fringing his chin who was going prematurely bald on top. He wore no crown, but a gold chain of office so intimidatingly heavy that it looked
as if his spine would buckle at any moment. She felt a stab of sympathy for him as she recognized the symptoms of a fellow sufferer.

‘I’m delighted to meet you,’ she told the discreetly drunken monarch with surprising sincerity. Then she felt an equally discreet tug as Kara-Brilliana steered her aside with
minute curtseys and simpering expressions of delight at the royal presence.

Miriam took a mouthful from her glass, forced herself to swallow it, then took another.
Perhaps the king had the right idea
, she thought. Kara-Brilliana drifted to a halt not far from
the dais. ‘Isn’t he cute?’ Kara squealed quietly.

‘Who?’ Miriam asked distractedly.

‘Egon, of course!’

‘Egon – ’ Miriam fumbled for a diplomatic phrasing.

‘Oh, that’s right. You weren’t raised here,’ said Brilliana, practicality personified. Quietly, in Miriam’s ear, she continued, ‘See the two youngsters behind
his majesty? The taller is Egon. He’s the first prince, the likely successor should the council of electors renew the dynasty whenever his majesty, long may he live, goes to join his
ancestors. The short one with the squint is Creon, the second son. Both are unmarried, and Creon will probably stay that way. If not, pity the maiden.’

‘Why pity her, if it’s not rude to ask?’

‘He’s addled,’ Brilliana said matter-of-factly. ‘Too stupid to – ’ she noticed Miriam’s empty glass and turned to fetch a replacement.

‘Something a bit less sweet, please,’ Miriam implored. The heat was getting to her. ‘How long must we stay here?’ she asked.

‘Oh, as long as you want!’ Kara said happily. ‘The revelry continues from dusk till dawn.’ Brilliana pressed a glass into Miriam’s hand. ‘Isn’t it
wonderful?’ Kara added.

‘I think my lady looks a little tired,’ Brilliana said diplomatically. ‘She’s spent three days on the road, Kara.’

Miriam wobbled. Her back was beginning to seize up again, her kidneys were aching, and in addition her toes felt pinched and she was becoming breathless. ‘I’m exhausted,’ she
whispered. ‘Need to get some sleep. ’If you take me home, you can come back to enjoy yourselves. Promise. Just don’t expect me to stay upright much longer.’