The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (43 page)

Innsford paused, leaning on his cane as if tired. Neuhalle moved closer to him, continuing the pretense that their escorts were as transparent as air while the hetman hurried towards the big
tent, his progress punctuated interminably as he was passed from sentry to sentry. The guards were clearly taking no chances with their new monarch’s life. ‘A bad night for the
kingdom,’ he remarked quietly. ‘Long live the king.’

‘Indeed.’ Innsford looked almost amused. ‘And may his reign be long and peaceful.’ It was the right thing to say under the circumstances, indeed the only thing to say
– their escort looked remarkably twitchy, in the shadow of the ruined palace – but Neuhalle had to force himself not to wince. The chances that King Egon’s reign would be peaceful
were slim, at best.

They didn’t have long to reflect on the new order in peace. The guards hetman came loping back across the turf: ‘His grace the duke of Niejwein awaits you and bids me say that his
majesty is in conference right now, but will see you presently,’ he managed, a long speech by his standards. ‘Come this way.’

The big pavilion was set up for the prince’s guests: royal companions and master of hounds at one side, and smaller rooms for the royal functions at the other. The middle was given over to
an open space. The duke of Niejwein sat on a plain camp stool in the middle of the open area, surrounded by an ever-changing swarm of attendants: a thin-faced man of early middle years, he was, as
Innsford might have remarked,
one of us
– a scion of the old nobility, the first fifty families whose longships had cleaved the Atlantic waves four centuries ago to stake their
claims to the wild forested hills of the western lands. He was no friend of the merchant princes, the tinker nobles with their vast wealth and strange fashions, who over the past century had spread
across the social map of the Gruinmarkt like a fungal blight across the bark of an ancient beech tree. Neuhalle felt a surge of optimism as he set eyes on the duke. ‘Your grace.’ He
bowed, while his patron nodded and clasped hands with his peer.

‘Be welcome, sirs. I had hoped to see you here. Rise, Otto. You are both welcome in this time of sorrow. I trust you have been apprised of the situation?’ Niejwein’s left
eyebrow levered itself painfully upwards.

‘In outline,’ Innsford conceded. ‘Otto was entertaining me in Oestgate when the courier reached us. We came at once.’ They had ridden since an hour before dawn from
thirty miles down the coast, nearly killing half a dozen mounts with their urgency. ‘Gunpowder and treason.’ His lips quirked. ‘I scarcely credited it until I saw the
wreckage.’

‘His majesty blames the tinkers for bringing this down upon our heads,’ Niejwein said bluntly.

‘A falling out among thieves, perhaps?’ Otto offered hopefully.

‘Something like that.’ Niejwein nodded, a secretive expression on his face. ‘His Majesty is most keen to inquire of the surviving tinkers the reason why they slew his father
using such vile tools. Indeed, he views it as a matter of overwhelming urgency to purge the body of the kingdom of their witchery.’

‘How many of the tinkers survived?’ asked Innsford.

‘Oh, most of them. Details are still emerging. But beside the death of his majesty’s father and his majesty’s younger brother –’ Otto started at that point
‘– it appears that his majesty is the only surviving heir for the time being.’ Niejwein nodded to himself. ‘The queen mother is missing. Of the tinkers, the heads of three
of their families were present, some eighteen nobles in total, including the bitch they planned to marry to the Idiot –’ Otto started again, then contained himself ‘– and
sixty sundry gentles of other houses. The tinkers not being without allies.’

‘But the main company of those families are untouched,’ Innsford said.

‘For the time being.’ Niejwein’s cheek twitched.
Has he the palsy?
Otto wondered. ‘As I said, his majesty –’ Niejwein stopped and rose to his feet,
turning to face one of the side panels. A moment later he dropped to one knee; Otto scrambled to follow suit.

‘Rise, gentlemen.’ Otto allowed himself to look up at his new monarch. The Pervert –
no, forget you ever heard that name, on pain of your neck,
he told himself –
was every inch a king: tall, hale of limb, fair of face, with a regal bearing and a knowing gleam in his eye. Otto, Baron Neuhalle, had known Egon since he was barely crawling. And he was
absolutely terrified of him.

‘Sire.’ Innsford looked suitably grave. ‘I came as soon as I heard the news, to pledge myself to you anew and offer whatever aid you desire in your time of need.’ Not
grief, Otto noted.

Prince Egon – now King Egon – smiled. ‘We appreciate the thought, and we thank your grace for your thoughtfulness. Your inclination to avoid any little misunderstandings is
most creditable.’

‘Sire.’ Innsford nodded, suppressing any sign of unease.

Egon turned to Niejwein. ‘Is there any word of that jumped-up horse thief Lofstrom?’ he asked offhandedly. Neuhalle kept his face still: to talk of Angbard, Duke Lofstrom, so crudely
meant that the wind was blowing in exactly the direction Innsford had predicted. But then, it wasn’t hard to guess that the new monarch – who had hated his grandmother and never seen
eye-to-eye with his father – would react viciously towards the single biggest threat to his authority over the kingdom.

‘No word as yet, sire.’ Niejwein paused. ‘I have sent out couriers,’ he added. ‘As soon as he is located he will be invited to present an explanation to
you.’

‘And of my somewhat-absent chief of intelligence?’

‘Nor him, sire. He was leading the party of the tinkers at the past evening’s reception, though. I believe he may still be around here.’

‘Find proof of his death.’ Egon’s tone was uncompromising. ‘Bring it to me, or bring
him.
And the same for the rest of the upstarts. I want them all rounded up
and brought to the capital.’

‘Sire. If they resist . . . ?’

Egon glanced at Innsford. ‘Let us speak bluntly. The tinker vermin are as rich a target as they are a tough one, but they are not invulnerable and I
will
cut them down to size.
Through magic and conspiracy, and by taking advantage of the good will of my forefathers, they’ve grown like a canker in my father’s kingdom. But I intend to put a stop to them.
One-tenth of theirs, your grace, will be yours if you serve me well. Another tenth for our good servant Niejwein here. The rest to be apportioned appropriately, between the Crown and its honest
servants. Who will of course want to summon their families to attend the forthcoming coronation, and to take advantage of the security provided for them by the Royal Life Guards in this time of
crisis.’

Neuhalle shrank inwardly, aghast.
He wants hostages of us?
He found himself nodding involuntarily. To do aught else would be to brand himself as a rebel, and it seemed that Egon had no
intention of being the bluntest scythe in the royal barn; but to start a reign with such an unambiguous display of mistrust boded ill for the future.

‘We are your obedient servants,’ Innsford assured him.

‘Good!’ Egon smiled broadly. ‘I look forward to seeing your lady wife in the next week or two, before the campaign begins.’

‘Campaign –’ Neuhalle bit his tongue, but the king’s eyes had already turned to him. And the king was smiling prettily, as if all the fires of Hel didn’t burn in
the imagination concealed by that golden boy’s face.

‘Why, certainly there shall be a campaign,’ Egon assured him, beaming widely. ‘There will be no room for sedition in our reign! We shall raise the nobility to its traditional
status again, reasserting those values that have run thin in the blood of recent years.’ He winked. ‘And to purge the kingdom of the proliferation of verminous witches that have
corrupted it is but one part of that program.’ He gestured idly at the wooden framework taking place on the lawn outside the pavilion. ‘It’ll make for a good show at the
coronation, eh?’

Neuhalle stared. What he had thought to be the framework of a temporary palace was, when seen from this angle, the platform and scaffold of a gallows scaled to hang at least a dozen at a time.
‘I’m sure your coronation will be a great day, sire,’ he murmured. ‘Absolutely, a day to remember.’

*

A damp alleyway at night. Refuse in the gutters, the sickly-sweet stench of rotting potatoes overlaying a much nastier aroma of festering sewage. Stone walls, encrusted in
lichen. The chink of metal on cobblestones, and a woman’s high, clear voice echoing over it: ‘I don’t believe this. Shit!
Ouch.
’

The woman had stumbled out of the shadows mere seconds ago, shaking her head and tucking away a small personal item. She wore a stained greatcoat over a black dress of rich fabric, intricate
enough to belong in a stage play or in a royal court, but not here in a dank dead end: as she looked around, her forehead wrinkled in frustration, or pain, or both. ‘I could go back,’
she muttered to herself, then took a deep breath: ‘or not.’ She glanced up and down the alley apprehensively.

Another chink of metal on stone, and a cracked chuckle: ‘Well, lookee here! And what’s a fine girl like you doing in a place like this?’

The woman turned to stare into the darkness where the voice had spoken from, clutching her coat around her.

Another chuckle. ‘Let’s ask her, why don’t we?’

The woman took a step backwards then stopped, brought up against the crumbling brick wall. Figures solidified out of the shadows beyond the flickering gaslight glow from the end of the alleyway.
Her gaze darted across them as she fumbled with the pockets of her coat.

‘Heya, pretty lady, what have you got for a growing boy?’

‘Show us your tits!’

Miriam counted three of them as her eyes adapted to the darkness. It helped that she’d just stepped over, across a gap thinner than an atom – or greater than 10
¹⁰²⁸
meters, depending how you measured it – from a lawn outside a burning palace, the night punctuated by the roar of cannon and the staccato cracking of the guards’ pistols.
Three of
them
, she realized, a sick tension in the pit of her stomach,
one of them’s on the ground, crouching, or
. . . ?

The standing figure came closer and she saw that he was skinny and short, not much more than a boy, bow-legged, his clothing ragged. At five foot six Miriam didn’t think of herself as
tall, but she could almost look down on the top of his head. Unfortunately this also gave her a good view of the knife clutched in his right hand.

Desperation and a silvery edge of suppressed rage broke her paralysis. ‘Fuck off!’ She stepped forward, away from the wall, hands balling into fists in her black velvet gloves.
‘That’s it. I’ve had enough!’

The man with the knife looked surprised for a moment. Then he darted forward, as if to punch her. Miriam felt a light blow across her ribs as he danced back. ‘Oof!’ He was skinny,
and short, and she outreached him, and his face was a frozen picture of surprise as she grabbed his arm, yanked him closer, stomped down on his foot, and then jerked her knee up inside his thigh.
Just like teacher said,
she thought, remembering the self-defense class she’d taken however many years ago. Her assailant made a short, whimpering gasp, then dropped like a log,
rolling on the ground in pain. Miriam looked past him, hunting for his friends.

The one standing behind him took one look at her as if he’d seen a ghost, then turned tail and fled. ‘Doan’ leave me!’ wailed the third in a thick accent, waving spidery
arms at the ground: there was a rattling noise. Miriam stared.
He’s got no legs,
she realized as he pawed at the ground with hands like oars, scooting away on a crude cart.
Why
did the other one run
? She put a hand to her chest. There was a rip in her stolen coat.
That’s funny.
She frowned, stuck a finger through the hole, and felt the matching rip in
the outer fabric of her dress where the knife had slid across the boned front. ‘Damn!’ She looked down. The little guy with the knife lay at her feet, twitching and gasping for breath.
The knife lay beside him in the gutter: the blade was about three inches long and wickedly sharp. ‘You little shit!’ She hauled up her skirts and kicked him in the ribs as hard as she
could. Then she knelt down and took the knife.

The red haze of fury began to clear. She looked at the moaning figure on the cobblestones and shuddered, then stepped round him and quickly walked to the end of the alleyway. Cold sweat slicked
her spine, and her heart pounded so hard it seemed about to burst.
I could have been killed,
she thought dizzily, tugging her coat into place with jerky motions, her hands shaking with the
adrenaline aftershock. It wasn’t the first time, but it never failed to horrify her afterwards. She moved unconsciously towards the street lights, panicky-tense and alert for any sign that
knife-boy’s friends had stopped running and were coming back for her.
He tried to stab me!
She felt sick to the pit of her stomach, and her usual post-world-walking headache had
intensified unbearably, thumping in time with her pulse.

I’ve got to get help.
G
ot to find Erasmus,
she told herself, holding onto the thought as if it was a charm to ward off panic. The twisting road at the end of the alleyway
was at least lit by rusting gas lamps. There was nobody in sight, so she put on a burst of speed, until she rounded a curve to see a main road ahead, more lights, closed shop fronts, a passing
streetcar grinding its wheels on the corner with a shower of sparks from the overhead pickups.
Whoa.
She slowed, eyebrows furrowed, shoulders tensing as if there was a target pasted right
above her spine at the base of her neck.
I can’t go anywhere like this . . . !

She stopped at the end of the side street, panting as she took stock.
I’ve got no money,
she realized. Which was not good, but there was worse:
I’m dressed like . . .
like what?
Clothing wasn’t cheap in New Britain; that had been a surprise for her the first time she came here. People didn’t wear fancy dress or strange countercultural outfits,
or rags – unless they could afford no better. If she’d had the right locket to reach New York, her own world, she might have passed for an opera buff or a refugee from a Goth nightclub;
but here in New London she’d stick out like a sore thumb. And she did not want to stick out.
I need somewhere to blend in quick, or get a change. Contact Erasmus
. But Erasmus was
what, two hundred miles away, in Boston?
What was that place he mentioned
? She racked her brains.
Woman called Bishop. Some place, satirist, Hogarth, that’s it. Hogarth House,
Hogarth
–