Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

His prognostications were correct. The train began to move as he settled down behind a newspaper, accelerating more like an electric streetcar than any locomotive he'd been on, and minutes later it was racing through the Massachusetts countryside as fast as an air packet.

Burgeson found the news depressing but compelling. Continental Assembly Dismissed!screamed the front page headline. Budget Deadlock Unresolved. The king had, it seemed, taken a right royal dislike to his Conservative enemies in the house, and their dastardly attempts to save their scrawny necks by raising tariffs to pay for the Poor Law rations at the expense of the Navy. Meanwhile, the rocketing price of Persian crude had triggered a run on oil futures and threatened to deepen the impending liquidity crisis further. Given a choice between a rock and a hard place-between the need to mobilize the cumbersome and expensive apparatus of continental defense in the face of French aggression, and the demands of an exhausted Treasury and the worries of bondholders-the king had gone for neither, but had instead dismissed the quarrelsome political mosquitoes who kept insisting that he make a choice between guns and butter. It would have struck Erasmus as funny if he wasn't fully aware that it meant thousands were going to starve to death in the streets come winter, in Boston alone-and that was ignoring the thousands who would die at sea and on foreign soil, because of the thrice-damned stupid assassination of the young prince.

There were some benefits to rule by royal edict, Erasmus decided. The movement was lying low, and the number of skulls being crushed by truncheons was consequently small right now, but with the dismissal of the congress, everyone now knew exactly who to blame whenever anything bad happened. There was no more room for false optimism, no more room for wishful thinking that the Crown might take the side of the people against his servants. The movement's cautious testing of the waters of public opinion (cautious because you never knew which affable drinking companion might be an agent provocateur sent to consign you to the timber camps, and in this time of gathering wartime hysteria any number of ordinarily reasonable folks had been caught up in the most bizarre excesses of anti-French and anti-Turkish hysteria) suggested that, while the king's popularity rose whenever he took decisive action, he could easily hemorrhage support by taking responsibility for the actions usually carried out by the home secretary in his name. No more lying democracy: no more hope that if you could just raise your thousand-pound landholder's bond you could take your place on the electoral register, merging your voice with the elite.

The journey went fast, and he'd only just started reading the small-print section near the back (proceedings of divorce and blasphemy trials; obituaries of public officials and nobility; church appointments; stock prices) when the train began to slow for the final haul into Queen Josephina Station. Erasmus shook his head, relieved that he hadn't finished the paper, and disembarked impatiently. He pushed through the turbulent bazaar of the station concourse as fast as he could, hailed a cab, and directed it straight to a perfectly decent hotel just around the corner from Hogarth Villas.

Half an hour later, after a tense walk-past to check for signs that all was in order, he was relaxing in a parlor at the back of the licensed brothel with a cup of tea and a plate of deep-fried whitebait, and reflecting that whatever else could be said about Lady Bishop's establishment, the kitchen was up to scratch. As he put the teacup down, the side door opened. He rose: "Margaret?"

"Sit down." There were bags under her eyes and her back was stooped, as if from too many hours spent cramped over a writing desk. She lowered herself into an overpadded armchair gratefully and pulled a wry smile from some hidden reservoir of affect: "How was your journey?"

"Mixed. I made good time." His eyes traveled around the pelmet rail taking in the decorative knick-knacks: cheap framed prints of music hall divas and dolly-mops, bone china pipe-stands, a pair of antique pistols. "The news is-well, you'd know better than I." He turned his head to look at her. "Is it urgent?"

"I don't know." Lady Bishop frowned. There was a discreet knock at the door, and a break in the conversation while one of the girls came in with a tea tray for her. When she left, Lady Bishop resumed: "You know Adam is coming back?"

Erasmus jolted upright. "He's what? That's stupid! If they catch him-" That didn't bear thinking about. He's coming back? The very idea of it filled his mind with the distant roar of remembered crowds. Inconceivable-

"He seems to think the risk is worth running, given the nature of the current crisis, and you know what he's like. He said he doesn't want to be away from the capital when the engine of history puts on steam. He's landing late next week, on a freighter from New Shetland that's putting into Fort Petrograd, and I want you to meet him and make sure he has a safe journey back here. Willie's putting together the paperwork, but I want someone who he knows to meet him, and you're the only one I could think of who isn't holding a ring or breaking rocks."

He nodded, thoughtfully. "I can see that. It's been a long time," he said, with a vertiginous sense of lost time. It must be close on twenty years since I last heard him speak. For a disturbing moment he felt the years fall away. "He really thinks it's time?" He asked, still not sure that it could be real.

"I'm not sure I agree with him... but, yes. Will you do it?"

"Try and stop me!" He meant it, he realized. Years in the camps, and everything that had gone with that... and he still meant it. Adam's coming back, at last. And the nations of men would tremble.

"We're setting up a safe house for him. And a meeting of the Central Executive Committee, a month from now. There will be presses to turn," she said warningly. "He'll need a staff. Are you going to be fit for it?"

"My health-it's miraculous. I can't say as how I'll ever have the energy of a sixteen-year-old again, but I'm not an invalid anymore, Margaret." He thumped his chest lightly. "And I've got lost time to make up for."

Lady Bishop nodded, then took a sip of her tea.

"There's another matter, I needed to speak with you about," She said. "It's about your friend Miss Beckstein."

"Yes?" Erasmus leaned forward. "I haven't heard anything from her for nearly two months-"

"A woman claiming to be her turned up on my doorstep three nights ago: we've spent the time since then questioning her. I have no way of identifying her positively, and if her story is correct she's in serious trouble."

"I can tell you-" Erasmus paused. "What kind of trouble?"

Margaret's frown deepened. "First, I want you to look at this portrait." She pulled a small photograph from the pocket of her shalwar suit. "Is this her?"

Erasmus stared at it for a moment. "Yes." It was slightly blurred but even though she was looking away from the camera, as if captured through the eye of a spy hole, he recognized her as Miriam. He looked more closely. Her costume was even more outlandish than when she'd first shown up on his doorstep, and either the lighting was poor or there was a bruise below one eye, but it was definitely her. "That's her, all right." "Good."

He glanced up sharply. "You were expecting a Polis agent?"

"No." She reached for the picture and he let her take it. "I was expecting a Clan agent."

"A- " Erasmus slopped. He picked up his teacup again to disguise his nervousness. "Please explain," he said carefully. "Whatever I am permitted to know."

"Don't worry, you're not under restriction." Lady Bishop's frown momentarily quirked into a smile. "Unfortunately, if Miss Beckstein is telling the truth, it's very bad news indeed. It appears she fell into disfavor with her family of the first estate-to the point where they imprisoned her, and then attempted to marry her off. But the arranged marriage provoked a violent backlash from the swain's elder brother, and it seems she is now destitute and in search of a safe harbor. Her family doesn't even know if she's still alive, and she believes many of them are dead. Which leaves me with a very pressing dilemma, Erasmus. If this was subterfuge or skulduggery, some kind of plot to pressure us by her relatives, it would be easy enough to address. But under the circumstances, what should I do with her?"