Clan Corporate (3 page)

“Oh, she’s an evil bitch in her own right,” Patricia waved off the question dismissively. “But yes, she was pressured. She and the other ladies of a certain age don’t have the two things that a young and eligible Clan lady can bargain with: they can’t bear world-walkers, and they can no longer carry heavy loads for the family trade. So they must rely on other, more subtle tools to maintain their position. Like their ability to plait the braids, and to do each other favors, by way of their grandchildren. And when my mother was in her thirties-little older than you are now-she was subjected to much pressure.”

“So there’s this conspiracy of old women”-Helge was grasping after the concept-“who can make everyone’s life a misery?”

“Don’t underestimate them,” warned the duchess. “They always win in the end, and you’ll need to make your peace with them sooner or later. I’m unusual, I managed to evade them for more than three decades. But that almost never happens, and even when it does you can’t actually win, because whether you fight them or no, you end up becoming one yourself.” She raised one finger in warning. “You’re relatively safe, kid. You’re too old, too educated, and you’ve got your own power base. As far as I can see they’ve got no reason to meddle with you unless you threaten their honor. Honor is survival here. Don’t ever do that, Miriam-Helge. If you do, they’ll find a way to bring you down.

All it takes is leverage, and leverage is the one thing they’ve got.” She smiled thinly. “Think of them as Darwin’s revenge on us, and remember to smile and curtsey when you pass them because until you’ve given them grandchildren they will regard you as an expendable piece to move around the game board. And if you have given them a child, they have a hostage to hold against you.”

Mid-afternoon, Helge returned to her rooms to check briefly on the arrangements for her travel to the Östhalle-it being high summer, with the sun setting well after ten o’clock, she need not depart until close to seven-then turned to Lady Kara. “I would like to see Lady Olga, if she’s available. Will you investigate? I haven’t seen her around lately.”

“Lady Olga is in town today. She is down at the battery range,” Kara said without blinking. “She told me this morning that you’d be welcome to join her.”

Most welcome to-then why didn’t you tell me? Helge bit her tongue. Kara probably had some reason for withholding the invitation that had seemed valid at the time. Berating her for not passing on trivial messages would only cause Kara to start dropping every piece of trivia to which she was privy on her mistress’s shoulders, rather than risk rebuke. “Then let’s go and see her!”

Helge said brightly. “It’s not far, is it?”

The battery range was near the outer wall of the palace grounds-the summer palace, owned and occupied by those of the Clan elders who needed accommodation in the capital, Niejwein-and separated from those grounds by its own high stone wall. Miriam strolled slowly behind her guards, taking in the warm air and the scent of the ornamental shrubs planted to either side of the path. Her butler held a silk parasol above her to keep the sunlight off her skin. It still felt strange, the whole noble lady shtick, but there were some aspects of it she could live with. She paused at the gate in the wall. From the other side, she heard a muffled tapping sound. “Announce us,” she told Kara.

“Yes, milady.” A moment later, the doors opened onto bedlam.

Lady Olga Thorold Arnesen-of Thorold, by Arnesen-was blond, pretty, and on first acquaintance a complete ditz. Her enthusiasms included playing the viola, dancing, and making a good marriage. But first acquaintances could be extremely misleading when dealing with children of the Clan, as Miriam had discovered. Right now the ditz was lying in the grass on the other side of the door, practicing her other great enthusiasm with the aid of a Steyr AUG

carbine chambered for 9mm ammunition. The more delicately inclined Helge winced and covered her ears as Olga sent a final three-round burst downrange, then safed the gun and bounced to her feet.

“Helge!” Olga beamed widely but refrained from hugging her, settling instead for brushing her cheek. “How charming to see you! A new creation, I see you’re working your seamstress’s fingers to the ivory. I suppose you didn’t come to join me on the range?”

“If only.” Helge sniffed. “It’s business, I’m afraid.” She took in Olga’s camo jacket and trousers. “Are you coming to tonight’s circus?”

“There’s enough time to prepare later,” Olga said dismissively. “I say, Master of Arms! You there! I’m going now, clean this up.” She handed the gun over, then turned back to her visitor. “It’s an excellent device, you really must try it one of these days,” she said, gesturing at the rifle. The range master and his apprentice were fussing with it, unloading the magazine and stripping out the barrel and receiver. “There’s a short version too, police forces use them a lot. I’m going to get them for my bodyguards.”

“Really.” Helge found it impossible not to smile at Olga’s enthusiasm-except when it was pointed right at her, so to speak, a situation that had only happened once, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding she was not keen to repeat. “Let’s walk. Somewhere quiet?” She glanced round, taking in the plethora of servants, from the range master and armorer and their assistants to her own bodyguard and butler and lady-in-waiting and Olga’s two impassive-faced mercenaries from the Kiowa nation.

Olga chuckled. “I’m hardly dressed for polite company.”

“So let’s avoid it. The water garden?”

Olga cocked her head on one side: “Yes, I do believe it will be nearly empty at this time of year.”

“So let’s go. Leave the escort at the edge, I want to talk.”

The water garden began near the far end of the firing range, where a carefully diverted stream ran underground through a steel-barred tunnel in the walls of the grounds and then through sinuous loops around cunningly landscaped mounds and hollows. Trees shaded it, and small conservatories and rustic lodges provided a retreat for visitors tired of the bustle and business of the great estate. However, it was designed for the lush spring or the fiery autumn, not the heat of summer. At this time of year the stream ran sluggish, yielding barely more than a trickle of water to damp down the mud, and most of the plants were either past their peak or not yet come to it.

Helge and Olga walked alongside the dry streambed on a brick path encrusted in yellow and brown lichen, Olga in her grass-stained camouflage fatigues, Helge in a silk gown fit for a royal garden party. Presently, when they passed the second turn in the path, Olga slowed her pace. “All right, be you out with it.”

“I’m-” Helge stopped, an expression of mild puzzlement on her face. “Let me be Miriam for a bit. Please?”

“My dear, you already are!”

“Huh.” Miriam frowned. “Well, that’s the problem in a nutshell, I suppose.

Have you been over to the workshop lately?”

“Have I?” Olga rolled her eyes. “Your uncle’s been running me ragged lately!

Me and Brilliana-and everyone else. I think he sent in Morgan du Hjalmar to do the day-to-day stuff in your workshop, and a couple of Henryk’s people to audit the organization for security, but honestly, I haven’t had time to keep an eye on it. It’s been a rat race! I’m lucky to have the time to attend the midsummer season, he’s working me like a servant!”

“I see.” Miriam’s tone was dry.

Olga looked at her sharply. “What is it?”

“Oh, nothing much: every time I ask if it’s safe for me to go over there and look in on my company I get some excuse from security like, ‘We can’t go there, the hidden family gangsters may not honor the ceasefire’ or ‘We think Matthias’s little friends may be looking for you there’ or ‘It isn’t safe.’- ”

Miriam took a deep breath. “It feels like I’m being cut out, Olga, and they’re not even trying very hard to hide it. It’s insultingly obvious. I get to sit here in Thorold Palace practicing dance steps and hochsprache and court etiquette, and every time I try to make myself useful something comes up to divert me. From my own company! The one I set up in New Britain that’s showing a higher rate of profit growth than anything else the Clan’s seen in thirty years!”

“Profit growth from a very low baseline,” Olga pointed out, a little tactlessly.

“That’s not the point!” Miriam managed to keep her temper under control.

“While they’re keeping me on the shelf under glass I can’t actually meet people and make deals and keep things moving! I’m isolated. I don’t know what’s going on. Hell, do you know what’s going on? Is Roger messing around with epoxides again or is he working on the process quality issue? Did Jeremiah sort out the delivery schedules? Who’s handling payroll? If it’s that man of Bates’s it’s costing us an arm and a leg. Well? Who’s minding the shop?”

Olga shook her head. “I’m sure Morgan was taking care of all that,” she said slowly, not meeting Miriam’s eyes. “Things are very busy.”

“Well, you’re actually going on-site,” Miriam pointed out. “If you don’t know what to look for, how should Morgan know? I’m the only person in the Clan who really knows what the company is good for or where everything goes, and if they’re keeping me away from it, there’s a good chance that-” She stopped.

Olga busied herself looking around the lower branches of the trees for the mockingbird that had been serenading them only a minute before.

“Why am I being frozen out?” asked Miriam.

“I couldn’t possibly comment,” Olga sang, almost tonelessly, an odd affectation she sometimes used when forced to deliver bad news, “because were I to repeat anything I heard from his excellency in the Security Directorate that would be an act of petty treason, not to say a betrayal of his trust in me-but has anything else happened to you lately?”

“Oh, lots.” Miriam’s voice sharpened. “Deportment lessons. Dancing lessons. A daily dossier of relatives and their family trees to memorize. How to ride a horse sidesaddle. How to address a prince, a pauper, or a priest of Sky Father. The use of reflexive verbs in hochsprache. More clothing than I’ve ever needed before, all in styles I wouldn’t have been seen dead in-or expected to see outside a museum or a movie theater. I’ve been getting a crash course.” She grimaced, then glanced sidelong at Olga. “I went to see Ma-Iris, I mean, her grace the duchess Patricia-this afternoon. She’s turned almost as stone-faced and Machiavellian as that dear grandmother of mine.”

“Really?” Olga chirped, just a little too brightly. “Did she have anything interesting to say?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact she did.” Miriam tapped one foot impatiently. “She asked me what I thought about marriage, Olga. She knows damn well what I think about marriage; she was there when I married Ben, and she was still there when the divorce came through, and that was over ten years ago. She knows about Roland.” Her voice wobbled slightly as she named him, and for a moment Miriam looked a decade older than her thirty-three years. “Ma’s frightening me, Olga, it’s as if something’s broken inside her and she’s decided it was all a mistake, running away, and she needs to conform to expectations.”

“Well, maybe-” Olga paused. She glanced around. “Look, Miriam. I think it’s safe to tell you this, all right? But don’t talk about it in front of anybody else.” She took a deep breath. “You are being kept away from your operation in New Britain. It’s a security thing, but not, not Matthias. I think her grace was finding out what you think about marriage because that’s the fastest way to clear things up. If you were-unambiguously-part of the Clan, there’d be fewer grounds to worry about you.”

“About me?” Miriam managed to control her voice. “What do you think-”

“Hush, it’s not what I think that’s the problem!”

Miriam paused. “I’m sorry.”

“I accept your apology, dear friend. No, it’s-the problem is, you’ve been too successful too fast. On your own. Think about Roland, think about what he tried to do years ago. Bluntly, they’re afraid that a lot of young tearaways will look at your example and think, ‘I could do that,’ and, well, copy everything except the way you came home to face a council hearing and explain what you were doing.”

Miriam looked blank for a moment. “You mean, they’re afraid youngsters would use me as an object lesson and strike out on their own. Defect. Leave the Clan.”

“Yes, Helge. I think that’s what they’re afraid of. You’ve handed them a huge opportunity on a plate, but it’s also a threat to their survival as an institution. And there’s already a crisis in train for them to worry about.

Frightened people act harshly … your mother has every reason to be scared witless, on your behalf. Do you see?”

“That’s hard to believe.” Eyes downcast, Helge slowly began to walk back along the path. “Bastards,” she muttered quietly under her breath. “Lying bastards.”

Olga trotted to catch up. “Come along to the garden party tonight,” she suggested. “Try to enjoy it? You’ll meet lots of eligible gentles there, I’m sure.” A quiet giggle: “If they’re not overawed by your reputation!”

“Enjoy it?” Helge stopped dead, a pained expression on her face. “Last time I attended one of those events Matthias tried to blackmail me, his majesty insisted on introducing me to his idiot younger son, and two different factions tried to assassinate me! I’m just hoping that his majesty’s too drunk to recognize me, otherwise-”

“This time will be different,” Olga said confidently, offering her hand.

“You’ll see!”

Translated transcript begins

“A most excellent evening, your grace.”

“Any evening at court is a most excellent one, Otto. Blessed by the presence of our royal sun, as it were. Ah, you-a glass for the baron, here!”

(Pause.)

“That’s very fine, the, ah, Sudten new grape? This year’s, fresh from the cask?”

“Absolutely. His majesty’s vintners are conscientious as always. I understand we can expect this crop to arrive in our own cellars presently, in perhaps a few weeks-as the ships work their way into port, weather permitting.”

“As the-oh. How do they do it?”

“Witchcraft of some description, no doubt, though the how of it hardly matters as much as the why, Otto.” (Pause.) “Are you still having problems with your new neighbor?”