The Trade of Queens (27 page)

There was an alleyway, off the high street between two shuttered shopfronts; partway along it stood a tenement with its own shuttered frontage, and the three gilt balls of a pawnbroker hanging above the doorway. Miriam walked back along the pavement and turned in to the alleyway. There were no obvious watchers, nor loitering muggers. She marched up to the door beside the wooden shuttered window and yanked the bell-pull.

A few seconds later the door opened. “Come in, come in!” It was Erasmus, his face alight with evident pleasure. Miriam drew a deep breath of relief and stepped across the threshold. “How have you been?” he asked. “I've been worried—”

The door swung to behind her, and she took a step forward, ending up in his arms with her chin on his shoulder. He hugged her gingerly, as if afraid she might break. “It's been crazy,” she confessed, hugging him back. “I've missed you too.” Erasmus let go and straightened up awkwardly. “There's been a lot happening, much of it bad.”

“Indeed, yes—” He took a step back, into the shadowy interior of the shop. “Excuse me.” He turned and pushed a button that had been screwed crudely to the wall beside the door. A buzzer sounded somewhere below, in the cellars. “An all-clear sign. Just a precaution.” He shrugged apologetically. “Otherwise they won't let me out of their sight.”

Miriam glanced round. “I know that problem.” The shop was just as she'd last seen it, albeit dustier and more neglected. But there was a light on in the back room, and a creaking sound. “Do you want to talk in front of company?”

“We'll be in the morning room upstairs, Frank,” Erasmus called through the doorway, his voice a lot stronger than when she'd first met him.

“Are you sure?” Frank, staying unseen in the back room, had a rough voice.

“You've got the exit guarded. You've got the area covered. I will personally vouch for Miss Beckstein's trustworthiness; without her I wouldn't be alive for you to nanny me. But your ears are not safe for this discussion. Do you understand?”

Frank chuckled grimly. “Aye, citizen. But all the same, if I don't hear from you inside half an hour, I'll be coming up to check on you by and by. It's what Sir Adam would expect of me.”

Erasmus shrugged apologetically at Miriam. “This way,” he mouthed, then turned and opened the side door onto the tenement stairwell. Halfway up the staircase he added, “I should apologize for Frank. But he's doing no less than his duty. Even getting this much time to myself is difficult.”

“Uh, yes.” Miriam waited while Erasmus opened the door to the morning room. Dust sheets covered the piano and the villainous, ancient sofa. He stripped the latter one off, sneezing as he shook it out and cast it atop the piano stool. “My, I haven't been back here in months.”

Miriam sat down carefully. Then, remembering, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the walkie-talkie. “Miriam here. Stand down, repeat, stand down. Over.” She caught Erasmus staring at the device. “I have guards, too.” It beeped twice, Brill acknowledging; she slid it away. “Please, sit down,” she asked, gesturing at the other side of the sofa.

“You have a habit of surprising me.” Erasmus folded himself into the far corner. “Please don't stop.”

“Not if I can help it.” She tried to smile, belying the tension in her stomach. “How's it going, anyway?”

“How's what going?” He waved a hand at the piano, the dusty fly-specked windows, the world beyond. “I never thought I'd live this long. Never thought I'd see the end of the tyranny, either. Nor that Sir Adam would come back and form a government, much less that he'd ask me to—well. How about yourself? What has happened to you since we last met? Nothing too trying, I hope?” His raised eyebrow was camouflage, she realized.
He's worried. About me?
She pushed the thought aside.

“Madness—bedlam,” she translated. “Let me see if I can explain this.… I told you about the Clan? My relations?” He nodded. “Things went bad, very fast. You know what I was trying to do, the business. Brake pads, disk brakes. Their conservatives—they spiked it. Meanwhile, they tried to shut me up. Apparently a full-scale civil war broke out back home. And the conservative faction also discovered that the other—you know the world I came from isn't the one the Clan live in?—that other America, they found out about the Clan. To cut a long story short, the Clan conservatives tried to decapitate the American government, and at the same time, tried to kill the progressive faction. They failed on both counts. But now the US military are winding up for war on the Clan, and it looks like they might be able to build machinery for moving their weapons between worlds. It's not magic, Erasmus, it's some kind of physical phenomenon, and their scientists—they're better than you can imagine.”

Burgeson shook his head. “This isn't making much sense—”

“I'm telling it wrong.” She screwed up her eyes and took a deep breath. “Erasmus, let me start again?”

“For you, anything.” He smiled briefly.

“Okay.” She opened her eyes and exhaled. “The Clan exists as a family business, trading between worlds. A group of us—several hundred—believe that we have irrevocably fouled up our relationship with the world of the United States. That the United States military will soon have the power to attack the Gruinmarkt. Nowhere in the world the Clan lives in is safe. We are fairly certain that the US military doesn't know about
your
world, or at least has no way of reaching it directly—you can't get there from here without going via the Gruinmarkt. So I've got a proposal for you. We need somewhere to live—somewhere relatively safe, somewhere we haven't shat in the bed. Somewhere like New Britain. In return, we can offer you … well, my people have been busy grabbing all the science and engineering references they can get their hands on.

“The United States is sixty to eighty years ahead of you, although it might as well be two hundred—we can't promise to bridge that gap instantly, but we
can
show your engineers and scientists where to look. Right now you've got a hostile French empire off your shore. There are strategies and weapons technologies we can look up in the American history books that are decades ahead of anything the French—or your—navy can muster. And other stuff; see what their economists say, for example, or their historians.”

“Ah.” Erasmus nodded to himself. “That's an interesting idea.” He paused. “What do your aristocratic cousins say about this idea? You are aware that we have recently held a revolution against the idea of autocracy and the landed gentry…?”

“The ones you're worried about won't be coming, Erasmus. We're on the edge of a permanent split. The people who're listening to me—the progressives—the United States had their revolution more than two hundred years ago, remember that history I gave you?” He nodded. “For decades, the Clan has been educating its children in the United States. I'm unusual only in degree—my mother went the whole way, and raised me there from infancy. There's a pronounced split between the generation that has been exposed to American culture, education, and ideas, and the backwoods nobility of the Gruinmarkt; the Clan has found it increasingly hard to hold these two factions together for decades now. And those are the people I'd be bringing—those Clan members who'd rather be live refugees in a progressive republic than dead nobles clinging to the smoking wreckage of the old order. People whose idea of a world they'd like to live in is compatible with your party's ideology. All they want is a reasonable expectation of being able to live in peace.”

“Oh, Miriam.” Erasmus shook his head. “I would be very happy if I could offer you the assurance you want. Unfortunately”—she tensed—“I'd be lying if I said I could.” He held out his hand towards her. She stared at it for a moment, then reached out and took it. “There is
no
certainty here.
None.
Those books you gave me, the histories of your America, they offer no reassurance. We are at war with an internal enemy who will show us no quarter if we lose, and our people are hungry, angry, and desperate. This is a governance of emergency. We hold the east coast and the west, and the major cities, but some of the small towns—” He shook his head. “The south, the southern continent, the big plantations there—the fighting is bloody and merciless. You shouldn't expect aid or comfort of us, Miriam. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. One of your American wise men said, the tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of patriots. He wasn't exaggerating. My job is to, to try and hide what goes into the watering can. To put a good face on murder. You shouldn't expect too much of me.”

Miriam stared at him for a long moment. “All right.” She pulled on his hand gently. “Let's forget the living-in-peace bit. Can you protect us if we deliver? During the crisis, I mean. We help you develop the industrial mechanisms to defeat your external enemies. Can you, in return, keep the police off us?”

“The police, Reynolds and his Internal Security apparatus—” His expression clouded. “As long as I'm not arrested myself,
that
I can manage. I've got leverage. Bentley and Crowe owe me, Williams needs my support—but best if it comes from the top, though, from Sir Adam and with the approval of the steering committee of the People's Council. Would be best if we kept it under wraps, though, especially if your first task is to build new factories for the war effort. Hmm.”

There was a creak from outside the morning-room door, then a throat-clearing: “Be you folks decent?”

Erasmus's head whipped round. “Yes, everything is fine,” he called.

“Just so, just so.” It was Frank, the unseen bodyguard. He sounded amused.

“You can go away now,” Erasmus added sharply.

A moment later Miriam heard a heavy tread descending the stairs, no longer stealthy. She looked at Erasmus. “Does he think we're—”

Erasmus looked back at her. “I don't
know
he thinks that, but it would make a good cover story, wouldn't you agree?”

“If we—” She stopped, feeling her ears heat.
Sitting on the sofa, holding hands.
She hadn't given much thought to that sort of thing—not since Roland's death. She let go of his fingers hastily.

“I'll need to make inquiries,” said Erasmus. He let his hand fall. “Meanwhile, that big house you bought—I'll see it's left alone. If you follow me.”

Miriam swallowed. “How long?” she asked, trying to regain control.

“You called me back from a, a marketing campaign. I'll have to see it's running smoothly. Then report to the Council, and talk to certain people. It could take months.”

“I'm not sure we've got months.”

“If you can come up with concrete proposals, I can probably hasten the process. Nothing too amazing, but if you can think of something concrete: smaller telautographs, better aircraft engines…?”

“We can do that.” Miriam swallowed. “I can have a written proposal ready next week.”
That sort of target should be easy enough,
she thought: Someone had mentioned a flyer in the Clan who'd smuggled an ultralight into the Gruinmarkt against orders.
Find him, tell him what's needed, and pull the trigger.
Even a Second World War–era fighter plane would make an impressively futuristic demo in the skies above New London. “Let's meet here again. Next week?”

He nodded conspiratorially. “Come at the same time. I'll have something for you.”

“I'll do that,” she said automatically, then thought,
What?
“What kind of something?”

“Documents. A warrant pass. A tele number to call on.” Erasmus rose to his feet, then offered her a hand. She took it, levering herself out of the collapsed cushion.

“Do you really think Frank believes we're having an affair?”

He leaned close to her ear. “Frank reports regularly to Oswald Sartorius, who is secretary in charge of state intelligence. He doesn't realize I know, and I would appreciate your not telling him. It would be safest for you if Oswald thinks we are having an affair; that way you need only worry about being arrested if he decides to move on me, and he will believe you to be of more value alive than dead. If he learns you represent a power center … Oswald wants what's best for state intelligence; he is no more dangerous than a shark, as long as you stay out of the water.”

Miriam froze, feeling his breath on her cheek. “Is it that bad?”

“I don't know.” He sounded uncertain. “So please be careful.”

“You're the second person who's said that to me today.” It was disturbing: It meant more to her than she'd anticipated. “You be careful too.”

“I will be.” He gestured at the door. “After you.…”

BEGIN PHONE TRANSCRIPT

(Groggy.) “Yes? Who is this?”

“Sir? This is BLOWTORCH. Duty officer speaking. Can you confirm your identity, please?”

(Pause.) “I'm KINGPIN. Is this line secure—”

“Not yet sir, if you'd like to press button four on your secure terminal now—”

(Click.) “Okay, I'm scrambling. What time—Jesus, this had better be good. What's the call, son?”

“Sir, we've, uh, there's a medical alert over WARBUCKS.”

“It's definitely medical? The usual problem?”

“Sir, it may be worse this time. Don Ensenat says it would be best if you were up and alert—”

“Damn. How bad is it?”

“Sir, we have, uh, the cardiac crash team are trying to resuscitate, but as of now WARBUCKS is medically unfit. They've got him in transit to PIVOT and there's an operating theater standing by, but it doesn't look good. Sir, we're trying to contact Chief Justice Scalia as per the new continuity of government provisions but it's four in the morning in New York where he's—”