Charles Stross - The Family Trade

“Get moving, girl,” she told herself as she pushed off the wall and headed back toward the palace. “There’s no time to lose…”

The snow was falling thickly when Miriam reached the wall of the orangery, and she was shivering despite her leather jacket. It was dark, too, in a way that no modern city ever was-No streetlights to reflect off the clouds, she realized, fumbling with her pocket torch. The gate was shut, and she had to tug hard to open it. Beyond the gate, the vast width of the palace loomed out of the snow, row upon row of shuttered windows at ground level.

“Shit,” Miriam muttered in the wind. No guards, she realized. Wasn’t this the east wing, under the Thorold tower, where Olga was living? She glanced up at the towering mass of stonework. The entrances were all round the front, but she’d attract unwelcome attention going in. Instead she trudged over to the nearest window casement. “Hey-”

It wasn’t a shuttered window: It was a doorway, designed to blend in with the building’s rear aspect. There was a handle and a discreet bell-pull beside it. Cursing the architectural pretensions of whoever had designed this pile, Miriam tugged the rope. Something clanged distantly, behind the door. She stepped sideways and steeled herself, raising her pistol with a sick sense of anticipation in her stomach.

Rattling and creaking. A slot in the door, near eye level, squeaked as it moved aside. “Wehr ish-” quavered a hoarse voice.

“Unlock the door and step back now,” Miriam said, aiming through the slot.

“Sisch!”

“Now.” A click. Two terrified eyes stared at her for a moment, then dropped from view. Miriam kicked the door hard, feeling the impact jar through her foot. For a miracle, the elderly caretaker had dropped the latch rather than shooting the bolt before he ran: Instead of falling flat on her ass with a sore ankle, Miriam found herself standing in a dark hallway facing a door opposite. Did he understand me? She wondered. No time for that now. She darted forward, pulling the door closed behind her as she headed for the other end of the short hall. Then she paused. There was a narrow staircase beside her, heading up into the recesses of the servants’ side of the wing, but the old guy who’d let her in-gardener or caretaker?-had vanished through the door into the reception room off to one side. Right. Miriam took the stairs two at a time, rushed past the shut doors on the first landing as lightly as she could and only paused on the second landing.

“Where is everybody?” she whispered aloud. There should be guards, bells ringing, whatever-she’d just barged in and instead of security all she’d encountered was a frightened groundskeeper. The butterflies in her stomach hadn’t gone away, if anything they were stronger. Either her imagination was working overtime or something was very wrong.

There were doors up here, doors onto cramped rooms used by the servants, but also a side door onto the main staircase that crawled around the walls of the tower’s core, linking the suites of the noble residents. It was chilly, and the oil lamp mounted in a wall bracket hardly lightened the shadows, but it was enough to show Miriam which way to go. She pushed the side door open and stepped out onto the staircase to get her bearings. It was no brighter in the main hall: The great chandelier was unlit and the oil lamps on each landing had been turned right down. Still, she was just one flight of stairs below the door to Olga’s chambers. She was halfway to the landing before she noticed something wrong with the shadows outside the entrance. The door was open. Which meant, if Brill had gotten through in time-

Miriam crept forward. The door was ajar, and something bulky lay motionless in the shadows behind it. The reception room it opened onto was completely dark, but something told her it wasn’t empty. She paused beside the entrance, her heart hammering as she waited for her eyes to adjust. If it’s another hit, that would explain the lack of guards, she thought. Memories of a stupid corporate junket-a “team building” paintball tournament in a deserted office building that someone in HR thought sounded like fun-welled up, threatening her with a sense of deja vu. Very slowly, she looked round the edge of the door frame.

Something or someone clad in light-absorbing clothes was kneeling in front of the door at the far end of the room. Another figure stood to one side, the unmistakable outline of some kind of submachine gun raised to cover the door. They had their backs to her. Sloppy, very sloppy, she thought tensely. Unless they knew there was nobody else in this wing because they’d all been sent away.

The inner door creaked and the kneeling figure stood up and flowed to one side. Now there was another gun. This is so not good, Miriam realized sickly. She was going to have to do something. Visions of the assassin in the orangery raising his knife and moving toward her-the two before her were completely focused on the door, preparing to make their move.

Then one of them looked around.

Afterward, Miriam wasn’t completely sure what had happened. Certainly she remembered squeezing the trigger repeatedly. The evil sewing-machine chatter of automatic fire wasn’t hers, as it stitched a neat line of holes across the ceiling. She’d flinched, dazzled and deafened by the sudden noise, and there’d been more hammering and she’d fallen over, rolling aside as fast as she could, then what sounded like a different gun. And silence, once she discounted the ringing in her ears.

“Miriam?” called Olga, “is that you?”

I’m still alive, she realized, wondering. Taking stock: If she was still alive, that meant the intruders weren’t. “Yes,” she called faintly. “I’m out here. Where are you?”

“Get in here. Quickly.”

She took no second warning. Brill crouched beside the splintered wreckage of the door, a brilliant electric lamp held in one hand, while Olga stood to the other side. Her face cast sharp shadows that flickered across the walls as she scanned the room, gun raised. “I am going to have harsh words with the Baron,” she said calmly as Miriam scuttled toward them. “The guards he assigned me appear to have taken their leave for the evening. Perhaps if I a flog a few until the ivory shows, it will convince him of my displeasure.”

“They’re not to blame,” Miriam said hoarsely, feeling her stomach rise. The smell of burned cordite and blood hung in the air. “Brill?”

“I bought Kara hither, my lady. I did as you told me.”

“She did.” Olga nodded. “To be truthful, we did not need your help with such as these.” She jerked a thumb at the darkened corner of the room. “There’s an alarm that Oliver does not know of, the duke insisted I bring it.” The red eye of an infrared motion sensor winked at Miriam. “But I am grateful for the warning,” she added graciously.

“I-” Miriam shuddered. “In the orangery. An assassin.”

“What?” Olga looked at her sharply. “Who-”

“They killed Margit. Sent a note to lure me there, but I was expecting trouble.”

“That’s terrible!” Brill looked appalled: The light swayed. “What are we going to-”

“Inside,” Olga commanded. Brill retreated, and after a moment Miriam followed her. “Close the door, damn you!” Olga called, and after a moment a timid serving maid scurried forward and began to yank on it. “When it’s shut, bar it. Then get that chest braced across it,” Olga added, pointing to a wardrobe that looked to Miriam’s eyes to be built from most of an oak tree. She stopped and turned to Miriam. “This was aimed at you, not me,” she said calmly, lowering her machine pistol to point at the floor. “They’re getting overconfident. Margit-” she shook her head-“Brilliana told me of the note, you are lucky to have escaped.”