The Revolution Business: Book Five of the Merchant Princes Page 8

  So he'd walked into Miwoc, dusty and sore-footed, and taken a room in a working men's hostel, and spent the night lying awake listening to the fights and the begging and the runners clubbing indigents outside the thin wall of his dive—and set off for Fort Petrograd the next morning, whistling and doubtlessly mangling a ditty he'd picked up from Miriam, about a hotel in California.

  It was a hundred miles to the big city, where the guns of Fort Petrograd loomed out across the headland of the bay, aiming south towards San Mateo. It shouldn't have taken three days, but Erasmus decided to avoid the railways—one close shave with the law was more than enough—and not risk buying an automobile: A solitary man driving alone was as good as a green flag to a certain kind of highwayman, and it would swallow all his remaining funds besides. The buses and streetcars that connected the grids of these western townships were more than adequate, if one made allowances for delayed connections . . . and the increasing number of checkpoints where nervous thief takers and magistrate's men stood guard with shotguns while the transport polis examined internal passports and work permits. These, at least, Erasmus was equipped to deceive, thanks to the package Edward had given him in New London.

  Until, on the third day, the bus he was riding from Abadon reached Patwin (which Miriam would have pointed to on a map and called "Vallejo"), and ran into a general strike, and barricades, and grim-faced men beneath a blue flag slashed diagonally with a cross of St. Andrew beneath the glaring face of a wild turkey. "Ye can gae nae farthur," said the leader of the band blocking the high street, "wi'out an aye calling ye strikebreaker." He stood in front of the bus with arms crossed in front of him and the stolid self-confidence born of having two brothers-in-arms standing behind him with hunting rifles and an elderly and unreliable-looking carronade—probably looted from the town hall's front steps—to back them up.

  "I'm no' arguing wi't'artillery," said the driver, turning to address his passengers. "End of t' road!"

  An hour later, by means of various secret handshakes and circumlocutions, Erasmus was talking to the leader of the strike force, a lean, rat-faced man called Dunstable. "I was on my way to Fort Petrograd on Party business when I was forced off the train and only just escaped with my life. I need to get there immediately. Party business."

  "Let me see what I can do," said Dunstable, then vanished into the back of the Town Aldermen's office, doubtless to cable for directions. The two hard-faced men with pistols sat with Erasmus in silence; he made himself comfortable until Dunstable returned. "Aye, well, your story checks out." Dunstable nodded at the two men. "Joe, go and get the mayor's runabout. Frank, you stay with Mister Burgeson here. You and Joe will drive Mister Burgeson straight to Fort Petrograd, to the Crimea Barracks—you know how to find it? Good. Our people hold it. When you get there, do as Mister Burgeson says."

  Erasmus stood. "I'll send them back as soon as possible," he promised. "Good luck here."

  "Luck?" Dunstable snorted. "Luck's got now't to do with it: People are starving and the frogs are trying to retake New France!"

  "They're what?" Erasmus stared at him.

  "Oh, the king's got it nailed down quiet like, but we know the score. Furrin troops in Red Club, a dauphin looking to set foot in New Orleans next week." Dunstable tapped the side of his nose. "Got to look fer our selves in times of unrest, `aven't we?"

  It took eight hours to drive the fifty miles from Patwin, overlooking the inner shore of the great bay, to Fort Petrograd and the downtown strip of barracks and museums and great houses that defined the core of western society, here on the edge of the Pacific. The roads were good, but the two ferries they required ran only infrequently at present, and they had to stop every five to ten miles to convince another roadblock, revolutionary caucus, civil defense brigade, emergency committee, republican guard, and ladies' union that they were not, in fact, agents of the secret political police, the French dauphin (who had simultaneously invaded New France, or Louisiana as the French called it, and Alaska, and the Brazilian Directorate, not to mention New London), or even the Black Fist Freedom Guard (which last was worryingly close to the truth). Luckily the situation was so confused, the news so hazy, that Erasmus discovered that sounding vague and asking lots of questions quickly convinced most of them that he was what he said he was—an innocent business traveler trapped on the road with his driver and bodyguard. A couple of the local militias made halfhearted attempts to shake him down, but his invincible self-righteousness, combined with a pious appeal to the forces of order and justice once the emergency resolved itself, scared them off. The British were, it seemed, still half-convinced that it was all a bad dream, and the breakdown of government—it seemed the exchequer had run out of money two days ago, and the king had told parliament to resign, and parliament had refused, and the unpaid dragoons had refused to clear the benches—was not quite real.

  It was, in short, exactly the sort of confused pre-revolutionary situation that Erasmus had spent most of his life not praying, but hoping for. And he was in very nearly exactly the wrong place, if not for having the good luck to run into Dunstable and his fellow travelers.

  The broad boulevards and steel-framed stone buildings of metropolitan Fort Petrograd were awash with excited strikers from the munitions factories and—not entirely to Erasmus's surprise—sailors from the vast naval base sprawling across the southwestern rim of the bay (which Miriam would have pointed to on a map and called "San Mateo"). Erasmus made a snap decision. "Forget the Crimea Barracks, take me to City Hall," he told Joe.

  City Hall, a neoclassical lump of concrete reinforced with steel—and, curiously, featuring no windows less than eighteen feet above ground level, and clear lines of fire in all directions—was the logical place to go. And so, when they were stopped two blocks from the place by a barricade manned by marines who had torn their insignia of rank from their uniforms, Erasmus climbed out of the car. "I'm here to see Adam," he said openly. "Take me to him."

  It took a while, but half an hour later Erasmus slid to the front of a queue of supplicants. They were queuing to see the man in the mayor's office, but the man behind the mayor's desk was not the mayor, and he wasn't doing ordinary civic business as usual. When Erasmus entered the room he was holding forth animatedly with a group of hard-looking types who he recognized instantly as party cadres. Sir Adam Burroughs had aged in the nearly twenty years since Erasmus had last seen him: His hair was thin and straggling, and his high forehead was deeply grooved with worry lines. But the magnetic charm and hyperactive temperament remained—

  "Hello? Who's this?" Burroughs looked at him for a few seconds. Then his eyes widened. "Joshua? Is that you?"

  "It is indeed." Erasmus bowed low—not a flourishing courtier's bow, but a salute born of deep respect. "Lady Margaret sends her regards, and her hopes for your success in this venture." He smiled. "Though it seems to me that you've made a good start already!"

  "Joshua, man—" Burroughs stood up and flew from behind his desk, then gripped Erasmus by the shoulders. "It's been too long!" He turned to face his half-dozen assistants. "This man is Joshua Cooke! During the eighty-six he was my secretary and correspondent, he ran the People's Voice in New York. Since then he's been a mainstay of the movement out east." Eyes were staring, lips mumbling silently. "You've come to join us, I take it."

  "Oh yes." Erasmus nodded. "But I go by the name of Erasmus Burgeson these days, and it's gotten to be something of a habit. And to plug you into what's been happening out east. I was delayed, I'm afraid, by the Polis—got away, but it was a near thing. And everywhere I went, rumor was chasing falsehood's tail for truth's bone. I take it loyalists are thin on the ground around here?"

  "Vanished like rats from a sinking ship," grumped one of Burroughs's new assistants, a heavy-set fellow with a nautical beard. "We'll root 'em out."

  "Organization first," Burroughs said mildly. "Josh—Erasmus, is it?—you've arrived at exactly the right time. We've got to get the word out, now that the Hanoverian has emptied
his treasury, get control—I want you to take a flying picket down to the Petrograd Times and get the presses rolling again. And the telautograph senders on the east bay mount. You're going to be in charge of the propaganda ministry. Can you do that?"

  Erasmus cracked his knuckles, grinning cadaverously. "It'll be a good start."

  "An accident." Miriam stared at Brill across the width of the safe house's kitchen. She looks like someone told her the family dog's got cancer. "What kind of accident?"

  "The duke—" Brill swallowed.

  Huw sidestepped towards the sink, making an adroit grab for a water glass.

  "Yes?" Miriam said encouragingly, her heart sinking.

  "He's had a stroke, they say. World-walking."

  "But why would he—" Huw fell silent, seeing Miriam's expression.

  "The pretender's army took the Hjalmar Palace by treachery. His grace was organizing a force to take it back when . . . something happened, something bad. Near Concord. Everyone had to cross over in a hurry. They retook the fortifications, but the duke—"

  Brilliana swallowed.

  "Well shit," Huw said angrily.

  Miriam raised a finger. "Is he still alive?" she asked. "Is he conscious? Because—"

  "Wait." Brill took the water glass from Huw's fingers. "Anything. To put in this?"

  "There's a bottle of brandy in the luggage." Huw headed for the door. "Don't go away. Be right back."

  Miriam pulled a stool out and steered it behind Brilliana, who sat, gratefully.

  "He's in a bad way," she said eventually, visibly gathering her wits. "Paralyzed on one side. They need to get him to a neurology ward but they're trapped in the Hjalmar Palace—a big castle near Concord, in this world—by some Winter Crone-cursed police or paramilitary force that tried to raid them just as they were mounting the counterattack on the pretender's forces."

  Huw reappeared with a dark green bottle. "Here." He splashed amber fluid into Brill's glass, then fetched down another and offered it to Miriam. "Yourself?"

  "No thanks." She glanced at him dubiously as he poured two fingers for himself. "What if you need to drive somewhere?"

  "Firstly, I delegate to Yul, and secondly, there's a difference between having a shot and getting drunk. Are you sure? . . ."

  "Oh hell, go ahead." Miriam snorted. Sometimes it was the little things about her relatives who'd grown up in the Gruinmarkt that tripped her up the hardest, like their extremely un-American attitude to alcohol. "Can they get him to a hospital?"

  Brill lowered her glass. "It's in train, I think. I mean, Olga's there, she's working something out with Earl Riordan. They couldn't tell me more—need to know. But—it's spooky. The feds swooped on ClanSec just as they concentrated to go across to relieve the Hjalmar Palace. It's almost as if someone told them exactly when—"

  "Matthias is dead," Miriam interrupted.

  "Matthias?" Huw looked fascinated. "Wasn't he the duke's personal secretary? I knew he disappeared, but—"

  Miriam looked at Brill, who silently shook her head. "Later, Huw," she promised. "Brill, we need to get back to, to—" She stopped, the words to wherever we need to be piling up like a car crash on her tongue.

  Brill took a sip of brandy. "By the time we could get back to the east coast it'll all be over," she said huskily. "The important thing is what happens after that."

  I can't believe how fast it's all falling apart. Miriam shook her head. "Something about this doesn't make sense," she said slowly. "Things fell apart in Niejwein when Egon decided Henryk's little power play was a personal threat to him, that's clear. But this new stuff, the feds—it's one coincidence too many." She paused. "Could they be connected? Beyond the obvious, beyond Matthias defecting and spilling his guts?"

  Brill gave her an odd look. "You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment."

  "Oh for—" Miriam forced herself to stop. "Okay, let me tell you what I think is probably happening, Brill. You're in Angbard's chain of command, you deal with it."

  "You'd better wait outside, Huw," Brill said sharply.

  He shrugged and walked over to the door. "Call me when you've finished politicking," he called, then closed it.

  Miriam took a deep breath and tried to gather the unraveling threads of her concentration. Too much, too fast. "I think that we figured out Matthias had defected seven, eight months ago, when it first happened. And what followed was a factional race to get into the best position to come out on top when the US government figured out what was going on and brought the hammer down on the trade network. I stood up and told them their business model was flawed, and they didn't do anything—but they weren't all ignoring me. The conservative faction, led by Baron Henryk, decided to shut me up, but they had to be subtle about it. Angbard didn't block him because he hoped they'd fail. Meanwhile, some other groups were looking into the possibilities dragged up by my stumbling over the hidden family and New Britain. That'd be where Huw comes in, yes? Angbard's sitting at the center of a web, like a spider, holding everything together—trying to keep business running as usual, but trying to hedge everybody's bets."

  She swallowed, then took a sip of brandy. "Trouble is, everybody's doing different things. There have been sub rosa attempts to modernize the Clan going on for decades; I just didn't recognize them. That's what I got wrong—I took you all at face value, didn't look below the surface. Everyone pays lip service to the status quo, but not everyone goes along with it. There's the breeding program that was intended to rebuild the population base eroded by the civil war over the past fifty years, and crack the manpower monopoly effectively controlled by the marriage-brokering old grannies"—she watched Brilliana for signs of surprise, but didn't see any—"and that debating society and talking shop Huw's into. There's even Clan Security, for heaven's sake! Which is more like the, the Russian KGB, than something you'd expect in a post-feudal society like the Gruinmarkt. Am I right?"

  She waited for Brill to say something, but the silence dragged out. After a few seconds, she cleared her throat and continued. "So, I upset a bunch of applecarts, and the fallout included Matthias going over the wall. I expect someone's been trying to negotiate with the feds, buying time, patching things up. And I expect everyone's been scrambling to secure a workable Plan B for their particular faction. I'm not going to ask what the hell ClanSec or the Council or whoever thought they were doing, messing around with stolen nukes, it's immaterial; I just want to note that it was a really bad idea, because from the feds' point of view it turned the Clan from a minor irritant into a serious menace. You can negotiate with a nuisance, but you shoot menaces—isn't that right?" She put her glass down and looked at Brill. After a minute, she asked: "Well?"

  Brilliana looked uncomfortable. "I can't talk about . . . certain . . . matters without getting permission first. But broadly speaking"—she looked at Miriam appraisingly—"you are speculating along the right lines." She coughed. "But please, refrain from airing your speculation in public? Lest other factions conclude that you know more than you do, and attempt to silence you."

  Miriam's left eyelid twitched. "I've had enough of that, thank you. Since even my dear mother is prone to, to . . ." It was too painful to continue. She rested one hand on her lap. "And what that bastard yen Hjalmar tried to do. Did." A long pause. "It's only been about six weeks. I could get an abortion. If I'm pregnant."

  Brill looked at her oddly. "If you did that, you'd be throwing away your best leverage." She took another sip of brandy. "Because it's Creon's get, and you've got a fistful of witnesses to the betrothal, even—by implication—the pretender. That's the throne to the Gruinmarkt, Miriam."

  "And it's my body." Miriam looked at her half-empty glass and twitched, then she picked it up again and swallowed it in a single mouthful. "Not that that seems to mean much to you people."

  Brilliana reached out and grabbed her hand. "Helge!"

  "What?" Miriam glared at her across the breakfast bar. "This world is not fair or just. But I swore I would look aft
er you—"

  "—Who to?"

  "To you, and to your uncle: but that is not important. I swore an oath to protect you. I must tell you that as long as you carry the heir to the throne of Niejwein, nobody in the six families will dare to lift a finger against you. And if, if we are still alive in eight months, things will be different. The pretender will be dead and Angbard will need a regent's council and at a minimum you will be on it. He told me, if necessary"—her voice cracked—"tell her that if she does this thing, all debts are canceled."

  "And if I don't?" Miriam made as if to pull her arm back, but paused. "You know there are no guarantees. I'm old for this. Miscarriages aren't that unusual in older pregnancies. And there's only a fifty-fifty chance it's a boy, anyway. What if it doesn't work?"

  "Then at least you tried." Brill moderated her voice. "You came back willingly: That weighs in your favor. The more you do for us, the harder it becomes for your enemies to belittle or ignore you. Thus has it ever been."

  "You make it sound as if the Clan runs on honor."

  "But it does!" Brill's expression of surprise took her aback. "How else do you control an aristocracy?"

  "I don't think I'll ever understand you guys." Miriam watched while Brill refilled both their glasses. "Hey. Suppose I'm pregnant? You want to go easy with that."

  "What's that got to do with it?" She looked perplexed.

  "The Surgeon-General's—no, fuck it." Miriam picked up the glass. "Next time you send someone out for a pizza, try and get them to buy me a pregnancy test kit . . . hell, make that two of them, just in case." She sipped at her brandy defiantly. "So anyway, I kicked over an anthill. And Henryk's faction try to tie me down, to control the damage, and it backfires spectacularly and sets Egon off. Is that how I'm reading it? While at the same time, I set Matthias off, which set the feds on us. Right?"