The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1) (62 page)

‘I think I can guess,’ she said.

‘No, I promise! Angbard doesn’t know about us. He thinks we’re just friends.’

The appetizers arrived. Miriam took a sip of her chowder. The news about the hunt for Iris depressed her, but came as no real surprise. ‘Angbard. Does not know. That we, uh, you
know.’ Somehow the thought made her feel free and sinful, harboring personal secrets – as well as strategic information about the third universe – that the all-powerful
intelligence head didn’t. She paused for a moment and studied the top of his head, trying to memorize every hair.

‘I never told him,’ Roland said, putting down his soup spoon. ‘Did you think I would?’

‘You can keep secrets when it suits you,’ Miriam noted.

He looked up. ‘I am an obedient servant to your best interests,’ he said quietly. ‘If Angbard finds out he’ll kill us. If you want me to apologize for not giving him
grounds to kill us, I apologize.’

She met his eyes. ‘Apology noted.’ Then she went back to her soup. It was deliciously fresh and lightly seasoned, and Miriam luxuriated in it. She stretched out her legs, and nearly
spilled soup everywhere as she found his ankle rubbing against hers. Or was it the other way around? It didn’t matter. Nearly two months of lonely nights was coming to the boil. ‘What
would you do for me?’ she whispered to him over the remains of the appetizer.

‘Anything.’ He met her eyes. ‘Almost anything.’

‘Well, I’d like that. Tonight. On one condition.’ The waiter removed their bowls, discreetly avoiding the line of sight between them – obviously couples behaving this way
were a well-understood phenomenon in his line of work.

‘What?’

‘Don’t, whatever you do, talk about tomorrow,’ she said.

‘Okay. I promise.’ And it was that simple. He surrendered before the main course, a sirloin steak for him and a salmon cutlet for her, and Miriam felt something tight unwind inside
her, a subliminal humming tension that had been building up for what felt like forever. She barely tasted the food or noticed as they finished the bottle of wine. He paid, but she paid no attention
to that, either. ‘Where to?’ he asked.

‘Do you still have an apartment here?’ she replied.

‘Yes.’

‘Is it safe? You’re sure nobody’s, uh – ’

‘I sleep there. No booby traps. Do you want to – ’

‘Yes.’ She knew it was a bad idea, but she didn’t care about that – at least, not right now. What she cared about, as she pulled her jacket on and allowed him to take her
arm, was the warmth at the base of her spine and the sure knowledge that she could count on tonight. All the tomorrows could take their chances.

He drove carefully, back to his apartment in a warehouse redevelopment not far from the restaurant. Miriam leaned back, watching him sidelong from the passenger seat of the Jaguar. ‘This
is it,’ he said, pulling into the underground garage. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, turning off the engine.

She leaned forward and bit his lower lip, gently.

‘Ow – ’ Their mouths met. ‘Not here.’

‘Okay. Upstairs.’

They worked their way into the elevator without getting too disheveled. It stopped on a neat landing with three doors. Roland freed up a hand to unlock one, and punched a code into a beeping
alarm system. Then they were inside. He locked the door, put a chain across it, then bolted it – and she tackled him.

‘Not here!’

‘Where, then?’

‘There!’ He pointed through an open door into the living room, dimly lit by an old seventies lava lamp that shed moving patterns of orange and red light across a sofa facing the
uncurtained window.

‘That’ll do.’ She dragged him over, and they collapsed onto the sofa. He was ready for her, and it was all Miriam could do to force herself to unwrap a condom before she
launched herself at him. There was no time to pull off his clothes. She straddled him, felt his hands working under her dress, and then she was –

– an hour later, sitting on the toilet, giggling madly as she watched him shower. Both of them frog-naked and sweaty. ‘We’ve got to stop this happening to us!’ she
insisted.

‘Come again?’

She threw the toilet roll at him.

‘You’re violent,’ he complained: ‘That isn’t in
The Rules
!’

‘You
read
that?’

‘Olga’s elder sister had a copy. I sneaked a peek.’

‘Ugh!’ Miriam finished with the toilet. ‘Move over, you’re not doing that right.’

‘I’ve been showering myself for years – ’

‘Yes, that’s what’s wrong. Stand up.’ She stepped into the bathtub with him and pulled the shower curtain across.

‘Hey! This wasn’t in
The Rules
either!’

‘Where’s the soap?’

‘It does, doesn’t – ow!’

Morning came late. Miriam stirred drowsily, feeling warm and secure and unaccountably bruised. There was something wrong with the pillow: It twitched. She tensed.
An arm! I didn’t, did
I . . . ?

Memory returned with a rush. ‘Your apartment is too big,’ she said.

‘It is?’

‘Too many rooms.’

‘What do you mean?’

She squirmed backwards slightly until she felt his crotch behind her. ‘We managed the living room, the bathroom, and the bedroom. But you’ve got a kitchen, haven’t you? And
what about the back passage?’

‘I, uh.’ He yawned, loudly. She could feel him stiffening. ‘Need the toilet,’ he mumbled.

‘And I was just getting my hopes up.’ She rolled over and watched him stand up, fondly.
Aren’t they funny in the morning?
she thought.
If only . . .
Then the
numb misery was back. It was tomorrow, too soon.

Damn,
she thought.
Can’t keep it together for even a night! What’s
wrong
with me?

‘Would you like some coffee?’ he called through the open doorway.

‘Yeah, please.’ She yawned. Waking up in bed with him should feel momentous, like the first day of the rest of her life. But it didn’t, it just filled her with angst –
and a strong desire to spit in the faces of the anonymous killers who’d made it so. She
wanted
Roland. She wanted to wake up this way forever. She’d even think about the
marriage thing, and children, if it was just about him. But it wasn’t, and there was no way she’d sacrifice a child on the altar of the Clan’s dynastic propositions.
Romeo and
Juliet were just stupid dizzy teenagers,
she thought.
I know better. Don’t I?

She stood up and pulled her dress on. Then she padded into Roland’s small kitchen. He smiled at her. ‘Breakfast?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.’ She smiled back at him, brain spinning furiously.
Okay, so why don’t you give him a chance?
she asked herself.
If he is hiding something, let’s see
if he’ll get it off his chest. Now.
She knew full well why she didn’t want to ask, but not knowing scared her. Especially while Iris remained missing. On the other hand, a
plausible bluff might make him tell her whatever it was, and if it was about Iris, that mattered. Didn’t it?
So what can I use – oh.
It was obvious. ‘Listen,’ she
said quietly. ‘I know you’re holding out on me. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. You haven’t told Angbard. So who knows about us?’

She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting: denial, maybe, or laughter; but his face crumpling up like a car wreck wasn’t on the list. ‘Damn,’ he said quietly.
‘Shit.’

Her mouth went dry. ‘Who?’ she asked.

Roland looked away from her. ‘He showed me pictures,’ he said quietly. ‘Pictures of us. Can you believe it?’

‘Who? Who are you talking about?’ Miriam took a step back, suddenly feeling naked.
Ask and ye shall learn.

Roland sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. ‘Matthias.’

‘Jesus, Roland, you could have told me!’ Anger lent her words the force of bullets. He winced before them. ‘What – ’

‘
Cameras.
All the cameras in Fort Lofstrom. Not just the ordinary security ones – he’s got bugs in some of the rooms, hidden and wired into the surveillance net. You
can’t sweep for them, they don’t show up, and they’re not supposed to be there. He’s a spider, Miriam. We were in his web.’ Roland’s face was turned toward her,
white and tortured. ‘If he tells the old man – ’

‘Damn.’ Miriam shook her head – whether in disgust or denial, she was unsure. ‘When?’

‘After you disappeared. Miriam, he’s blackmailing me. Not you, you might survive. Angbard’d kill me. He’d be honor-bound to, if it came out.’

Miriam glared. ‘What. What did he ask. You to do?’

‘Nothing!’
Roland cried out. He was right on the edge.
I’m scaring him,
she realized, an echo of grim satisfaction cutting through the numbness around her.
Good.
‘At least, nothing yet. He says he wants you out of the picture. Not dead, just out of the Clan politics. Invisible. What you’re doing now – he thinks I’m
behind it.’

‘Give me that coffee.’

‘When you called about the body in the warehouse, I told Matthias because he’s in charge of internal security,’ Roland explained as he poured a mug from the filter machine.
‘Then when you told me there was a bomb, I couldn’t figure it out. Because if he wants to blackmail me he needs you to be alive, don’t you see? So I can’t see why he’d
plant it, but at the same time – ’

‘Roland.’

‘Yes?’

‘Shut up. I’m trying to think.’

Matthias. Cameras everywhere.
She remembered the servant’s staircase. Roland’s bedroom.
So Matthias wants us out of the way?
It was tempting. ‘Two million
dollars.’

‘Huh?’

‘We could go a long way on two million bucks,’ she heard herself say. ‘But not far enough to outrun the Clan.’

‘You want to – ’

‘Shut up.’ Roland had been holding out on her. For what sounded like good reasons, she admitted – but the thought made her blood run cold. Roland was no knight in shining
armor. The Clan had broken him. Now all it took was Matthias pushing his buttons to make him do whatever they wanted. She wanted to hate him for it, but found that she couldn’t. The idea of
going up against an organization with billions of dollars and hundreds of pairs of hands was daunting. Roland had done it once already, and paid the price.
Okay, so he’s not brave,
she thought.
Where does that leave me? Am I brave, or crazy?
‘Are you holding out anything else on me?’ she asked.

Roland took a deep breath. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Honest. The only person who’s got anything on me is Matthias.’ He chuckled bitterly. ‘Nobody else. No other
girlfriends. No boyfriends, either. Just you.’

‘If Matthias has primed you for blackmail, he must want something you can do for him,’ she pointed out. ‘He knows he could get rid of both of us by just giving us a shitload of
money and covering our trail. And if he was behind these attempts to kill me, I’d be dead, wouldn’t I? So what does he want to do that involves me and needs you – and that he
figures he needs a blackmail lever for?’

‘I – I don’t know.’ Roland pulled himself together, visibly struggling to focus on the problem. ‘I feel so stupid. I haven’t been thinking rationally about
this.’

‘You’d better start, then.’ Miriam took a mouthful of coffee and looked at him. ‘What does Matthias want?’

‘Advancement. Recognition. Power.’ Roland answered immediately.

‘Which he can’t get, because . . . ?’

‘He’s outer family.’

‘Right. Do you see a pattern here?’ she asked.

‘He can’t get it, from the Clan. Not as long as it’s run the way it is right now.’

‘So.’ Miriam stood up. ‘We’ve been stupid, Roland. Shortsighted.’

‘Huh?’ He looked at her uncomprehendingly, lost in his private self-hatred.

‘I’m not the target. You’re not the target.
Angbard
is the target.’

He straightened up. ‘You think Matthias wants to take over the whole Clan security service?’

‘With whoever his mystery accomplices are. The faction who murdered my mother and kept the family feuds going with judicious assassinations over a thirty-year period. The faction from
world three. Leave aside Oliver and that poisonous dowager granny and the others who’d like me dead, Matthias is in league with those assassins. And before he makes his move –
’

‘He’ll tell Angbard about us, whatever we do. To get us out of the frame before he rolls the duke up. But we can’t go to Angbard with it – we’d be openly admitting
past disloyalty, hiding things from him. What are we going to
do
?’

PART NINE

TIP-OFF

It was a Friday morning late in January. The briefing room in the police fortress was already full as the inspector entered, and there was a rattle of chairs as a dozen
constables came to their feet. Smith paused for a moment, savoring their attentive expressions. ‘At ease, men,’ he said, and continued to the front of the room. ‘I see
you’re all bright and eager this morning. Sit down and rest your feet for a while. We’ve got a long day ahead, and I don’t want you whining about blisters until every last one of
our pigeons is in the pokey.’

A wave of approving nods and one or two coughs swept the room. Sergeant Stone stayed on his feet, off to one side, watching his men.

‘You’ll all be wondering what this is all about, then,’ began Smith. ‘Some of you’ll ’ave heard rumors.’ He glanced around the room, trying to see if
anyone looked surprised. Rumors were a constable’s stock in trade, after all. ‘If any of ’em turns out to be true, I want to know about it, because if you’ve heard any
rumors about what I’m telling you now, odds are the pigeons’ve heard it too. An’ today we’re going to smash a nest of rotten eggs.’

He scanned his audience for signs of unease: Here and there a head nodded soberly, but nobody was jumping up and down. ‘The name of the game is smuggling,’ he said. ‘In case
you was wondering why it’s our game, and not the Excise’s, it turns out that these smugglers have a second name, too: Godwinite scum. The illegal press we cracked last week was
bankrolled from here, in
my
manor, by a Leveler quartermaster. We ain’t sure where the gold’s coming from, but my money is on a woman who’s lately moved into town and who
smells like a Frog agent to me. At least, if she ain’t French she’s got some serious explaining to do.’