Charles Stross: The Hidden Family

“Our runaway is my niece, Matthias,” the duke reminded his secretary. “A rather extraordinary woman.” His expression hardened. “I want tissue samples, photographs, anything you can come up with. For the hit squad. Get them processed on the other side, run them across the FBI most-wanted database, pull whatever strings you can find, but I want to know who they were and who they thought they were working for. And how they got there. The palace was supposed to be securely doppelgängered. Why wasn’t it?”

“Ah. I have already looked into that.” Matthias waited.

“Well then?” The duke clenched his hands.

“About three years ago, Baroness Hildegarde ordered our agents on the other side—via the usual shell company—to let out one side of the doppelgänger facility to a secondary Clan-owned shipping company she was setting up. It was all aboveboard and conducted in public at Beltaigne, approved in full committee, but the shipping company moved away a year later to more suitable purpose-built facilities, and they in turn sub-let the premises. It was walled off from the original bonded store and converted into short-lease storage, leaving it wide open. Purely coincidentally, it covered the New Tower, and parts of the west wing of the palace were left undoppelgängered. Helge wouldn’t have known enough to recognize this as unusual, but it left most of her suite wide open to attack by world-walkers from the other side.”

“And where was Oliver, Baron Hjorth while this was going on?” the duke asked, deceptively mildly. A failure to doppelgänger the palace correctly—to ensure that it was physically collated with secure territory in the other universe to which the world-walking and occasionally squabbling members of the Clan had access—was not a trivial oversight, not after the blood feud or civil war that had killed three out of every four members of the six families only a handful of decades ago.

“He was worrying about roofing costs, I imagine.” Matthias shrugged again, almost imperceptibly. “If he even knew about it. After all, what does security matter if the building caves in?”

“If.” The duke frowned. “That slime-weasel Oliver is in Baroness Hildegarde’s pocket, you mark my words. An unfortunate coincidence that they can both deny responsibility for, and Helge, Miriam as she calls herself, is left facing assassins? It’s almost insultingly convenient. She’s getting slack—we shall have to teach her a lesson in manners.”

“What are your orders regarding your niece, my lord? Since she appears to have run away, like her mother before her, she could be found in breach of the compact—”

“No, no need for that just yet.” The duke walked slowly back to his desk, his expression showing little sign of the stiffness is his joints. “Let her move freely for now.” He lowered himself into his chair and stared at Matthias. “I expect to hear about her movements by and by. Has she made any attempt to get in touch?”

“With us? I’ve heard no messages, my lord.” Matthias raised one hand, scratched an itch alongside his nose. “What do you think she’ll do?”

“What do I think?” The duke opened his mouth, as if about to laugh. “She’s not a trained security professional, boy. She might do anything! But she is a trained investigative journalist, and if she’s true to her instincts, she’ll start digging.” He began to smile. “I really want to see what she uncovers.”

Meanwhile, in a city called Boston in a country called the United States:

“You know something?” asked Paulette. “When I told you to buy guns and drive fast I wasn’t, like, expecting you to actually do that.” She put her coffee cup down, half-drained. There were dark hollows under her eyes, but apart from that she was as tidy as ever, not a hair out of place. Which, Miriam reflected, left her looking a bit like a legal secretary: short, dark, Italianate subtype.

Miriam shook her head. I wish I could keep it together the way she does, she thought. “You said, and I quote from memory, ‘As your attorney I am advising you to buy guns and drive fast.’ Right?” She smiled tiredly at Paulette. Her own coffee cup was untouched. When she’d arrived at the other woman’s house with Brilliana d’Ost in tow, the release of tension had her throwing up in the bathroom toilet. Paulette’s wisecrack was in poor taste—Miriam had actually killed a man less than twenty-four hours ago in self-defense, and now things were starting to look really messy.

“What’s an attorney?” asked Brill, sitting up on the sofa, prim and attentive: nineteen or twenty, blond, and otherworldly in the terrifyingly literal way that only a Clan member could be.

“Not me, I’m a paralegal. Just in case you’d forgotten, Miriam. I’d have to study for another two years before I can sit for the bar exams.”

“You signed up for the course like I asked? That’s good.”

“Yeah, well.” Paulette put her empty mug down. “Do you want to go through it all again? Just so I know where I stand?”

“Not really, but…” Miriam glanced at Brill. “Look, here’s the high points. This young lady is Brilliana d’Ost. She’s kind of an illegal immigrant, no papers, no birth certificate, no background. She needs somewhere to stay while we sort things out back where she comes from. She isn’t self-sufficient here—she met her very first elevator yesterday evening, and her first train this morning.”

Paulette raised an eyebrow. “R-i-i-ght,” she drawled. “I think I can see how this might pose some difficulties.”

“I can read and write,” Brill volunteered. “And I speak English. I’ve seen Dynasty and Rob Roy , too.” Brightly: “And The Godfather , that was the duke’s favorite! I’ve seen that one three times.”

“Hmm.” Paulette looked her up and down then glanced at Miriam. “This is a kind of what you see is what you get proposition, is it?”

“Yes,” Miriam said. “Oh, and her family wants her back. They might get violent if they find her, so she needs to be anonymous. All she’s got are the clothes on her back. And then there’s this.” She passed Paulette a piece of paper. Paulette glanced at it, then raised her other eyebrow and did a double take.

“This is valid?” She held up the check.

“No strings.” Miriam nodded. “At least, as long as Duke Angbard doesn’t cut off the line of credit he gave me. You’ve got the company paperwork together, ready to sign? Good. What we do is, we open a company bank account. I pay this into it and issue myself with shares to the tune of fifty grand. We write you up as an employee, you sign the contract, I issue you your first paycheck—eight thousand, covers your first month only—and a signing bonus of another ten thousand. You then write a check back to the company for that ten thousand, and I issue you the shares and make you company secretary. Got that?”

“You want me as a director?” Paulette watched her closely. “Are you sure about that?”

“I trust you,” Miriam said simply. “And I need someone on this side of the wall who’s got signing authority and can run things while I’m away. I wasn’t kidding when I told you to set this up, Paulie. It’s going to be big.”

Paulette stared at the banker’s draft for fifty thousand dollars dubiously. “Blood money.”

“Blood is thicker than water,” Brill commented. “Why don’t you want to take it?”

Paulette sighed. “Do I tell her?” she asked Miriam.

“Not yet.” Miriam looked thoughtful. “But I promised myself a few days back that anything I start up will be clean. That good enough for you?”