Charles Stross - The Family Trade

– And she was cold, and the lights were out, and her skull felt as if she’d run headfirst into a brick wall. Snowflakes fell on her as she doubled over, trying to prevent the intense nausea from turning into vomiting. I did that too fast, she thought vaguely between waves of pain. Even with the beta-blockers. The process of world-walking seemed to do horrible things to her blood pressure. Good thing I’m not on antidepressants, she thought grimly. She forced herself to stand up and saw that she was just in the garden behind the palace-outdoors. Anyone trying to invade the palace by way of the doppelganger warehouse on the other side would find themselves under the guns of the tower above-if the defences were manned. But it was snowing tonight, and someone obviously wanted as few witnesses around as possible…

An iron gate in the wall behind her was the mirror image of the door to the warehouse office. “Orangery,” she muttered through gritted teeth. She slid along the wall like a shadow, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the night. The orangery was a familiar hump in the snow, but something was wrong. The door was ajar, letting the precious heat (and how many servants did it take to keep that boiler fed?) escape into the winter air.

“Well, isn’t that just too cute,” she whispered, tightening her grip on her pistol.’ Welcome to my parlor said the spider to the fly, she thought. The style is all wrong. Assassin #1 breaks into my mom and shoots up the bedding. Twice. Assassin #2 tries to bounce Olga into shooting me for him, then sends an RSVP on an engraved card. Assassin #3 shows me an open door. Which of these things is not like the other? She shivered-and not from the cold: the hot rage she’d been holding back ever since she’d first been abducted was taking hold.

The wall at this end of the orangery was of brick, and the glassy arch of the ceiling was low, beginning only about ten feet up. Miriam gritted her teeth and fumbled for finger and toe holds. Then she realized there was a cast-iron drain pipe, half-buried under the snow where the wall of the orangery met the corner of the inner garden wall. Aha. She put the pistol in her pocket and began to climb, this time with more confidence.

On top of the wall she could look out across a corrugated sheet of whiteness-the snow was settling on the orangery faster than the heat from below could melt it. Leaning forward, she used her sleeve to rub a clear swathe in the glass. Paraffin lamps shed a thin glow through the orangery, helping with the warmth and providing enough light to see by. To Miriam’s night-adapted vision it was like a glimpse into a dim subterranean hell. She hunted around and saw, just behind the door, a hunched shadow. And after a minute of watching-during which time her hands began to grow numb-she saw the shadow move, shifting in position just like a man shuffling his feet in the cold draft from outside.

“Right,” she whispered tensely, feeling an intense, burning sense of hatred for the figure on the other side, just as the door opened further and someone else came in.

What happened then happened almost too fast to see-Miriam froze atop the window, unable to breathe in the cold air, her head throbbing until she wondered if she was coming down with a full-blown migraine. The shadow flowed forward behind the person who’d entered the orangery. There was a flurry of activity, then a body collapsed on the floor in a spreading pool of… of-Holy shit, thought Miriam, he’s killed him!

Shocked out of her angry reverie, she slid back down the drainpipe, scraping hands and cheek on the rough stonework, and landed in a snowdrift hard enough that it nearly knocked the breath out of her. Quick! Fumbling for her pistol, she skidded toward the door and yanked it open. She brought the gun up in time to see a man turning toward her. He was dressed all in black, his face covered by a ski mask or something similar: The long knife in his hand was red with blood as he straightened up from the body at his feet. “Stop-” Miriam called. He didn’t stop, and time telescoped in on her. Two shots in the torso, two more-then the dry click of a hammer on a spent cartridge. The killer collapsed toward her and Miriam shook her head and took a step back, wishing she hadn’t heard the sound of bullets striking flesh.

Time caught up with her again. “Shit!” She called out, heart lurching between her ribs like a frightened animal. A sense of gathering wrongness overcame her, as if what had just happened was impossible. Another old reflex caught up, and she stepped forward. “Gurney-” she bit her tongue. There were no gurneys here, no haemostats, no competent nurses to get the bleeding staunched and no defibrillators-and especially no packets of plasma and operating theatres in which to struggle for the victim’s life.

She found herself an indefinite time later-probably only seconds had passed, although it felt like hours-staring down at a spreading pool of blood around her feet. Blood, and the body of a man, dressed from head to foot in black. A long curve-bladed knife lay beside him. Behind him-“Mar-git!” It was Lady Margit, Olga’s chaperone. The fat lady had sung her last: There was nothing to be done. She still twitched, and maybe a modern ER room could have done something for her-but not here, not with a massive exsanguinating chest wound that had already stopped pumping. Probably the dorsal aorta or a ventricle, she realized. Oh hell. What was she doing here! For a moment, Miriam wished she believed in something-someone-who’d look after Margit. But there wasn’t time for that now.

She turned back to the assassin. He was alive-but no, that was just residual twitching, too. She’d actually nailed him through the heart with her first two shots, the second double-tap turning his chest into a bloody mess. There was already a stench of excrement in the air as his bowels relaxed. She pulled back his hood. The assassin was shaven-headed and flat-faced: He looks Chinese, she realized with a mixture of astonishment and regret. She’d just killed a man, but-there was a chain around his neck.

“What the fuck?” she asked through the haze of her headache and anxiety, then she pulled out a round sealed locket, utterly unadorned and plain. “Clan.” She put it in her pocket and glanced at Margit’s cooling body. “What on earth possessed you to come down here at midnight?” she asked aloud. “Was it a message for-” she trailed off.

They’re after Olga, too, she realized, and with that realization came both a sick fear. I have to warn Olga!

Miriam left the orangery and headed toward the palace, half-empty for the evening with its noble residents enjoying the king’s hospitality. She wouldn’t be able to world-walk from her own rooms any more, but if Brilliana was in, they’d have a little chat. She knows more than she’s saying, Miriam realized. Slowing. What a mess. The implication was just beginning to sink in. “Wheels within wheels,” she muttered. Her hands were shaking violently and the small of her back was icy cold with sweat from the adrenaline surge when she’d shot the assassin. She paused, leaning against the cold outside wall of the orangery while she tried to gather her composure. “He was here to kill me.” The chill from the wall was beginning to penetrate her jacket. She dug around in her pocket for spare cartridges, fumbling as she reloaded the revolver. Got to find Olga. And Brill.

And then she’d have to go undercover.

One way of looking at it was that there was a story to dig up, a story about her long-dead mother, blood feuds, and civil war, a tale of assassins who came in the night and drug-dealing aristocrats who would brook no rival. Just like any other undercover investigative exposé-not that Miriam was used to undercover jobs, but she’d be damned if she’d surrender to the editorial whims of family politics before she broke that story all over them-at the Clan gathering on Beltaigne night.