Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

Things in New Britain had clearly gone to hell in a hand-basket while she'd been away, but Miriam's first intimation that they might have more personal consequences for her came from the set of Erasmus's shoulders as the streetcar rumbled and clanked past the end of the street.

"What is it?" she asked, as he raised his newspaper to shield his face from the window.

"We're getting off at the next stop," he said, standing up to ring the bell. The streetcar turned a corner, wheels screeching on their track, and began to slow. "Come on."

Miriam followed him out onto the high street's sidewalk. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"The shop's under surveillance." His expression was grim.

"I see." They walked past a post box.

"I'm going back there, by the back alley." He reached into an inner pocket and passed her a small envelope. "You might want to wait in the tearoom up New Bridge Way. If I don't reappear within half an hour-"

"I've got a better idea," she interrupted. "I'm going first. If there's someone inside-"

"It's too-"

"No, Erasmus, going in on your own is the dumbest thing you can do. Come on, let's go."

He paused by the entrance to an alleyway. "You don't want to make my life easy, woman."

"I don't want to see you get yourself arrested or mugged, no."

"Hah. Remember last time?"

"Come on." She entered the alley.

Piles of rubbish subsided against damp-rotted brickwork: galvanized steel trash cans composting week-dead bones and fireplace ashes. Miriam stifled a gag reflex as Burgeson fumbled with a rusting latchkey set in a wooden gate. The gate creaked open on an overgrown yard piled with coal and metalwork. Erasmus headed for a flight of cellar steps opening opposite. Miriam swallowed, and squeezed past him. "What exactly are we picking up?" she asked.

He glanced over his shoulder: "Clothing, cash, and an antiquarian book."

"Must be some book." He nodded jerkily. "Who was watching the shop?"

"Two coves. Ah, you mean why? I'm not sure. They didn't look like Polis to me, as I said. I think they may be your friends."

"In which case-" She briefly considered a direct approach, but rejected it as too risky: if they weren't Clan Security, or if ClanSec had gotten the wrong idea about her, she could be sticking her head in a noose. "-we can just nip in and out without them seeing us. But what if there's someone in your apartment, waiting?"

"There'd better not be." They were at the foot of the steps now.

"I'm getting sick of this." She pushed the door open. "Follow me."

She duckwalked into a cellar, past a damp-stained mattress, then through a tangle of old and decrepit wooden furniture that blocked off the back wall. Erasmus followed her. There was a hole in the brickwork, and he bent down to retrieve a small electric lantern from the floor just inside it. As he stood up, he began to cough.

"You can't go in like that, they'll hear you." Miriam stared at him in the gloom. "Give me the lamp. I'll check out the shop." "But if you-"

She rested a hand lightly on his shoulder. "I'll be right back. Remember, I'm not the one with the cough." And besides, I'm sick of just waiting for shit to happen to me. At least this made it feel as if she was back in control of her destiny.

Erasmus nodded. He handed over the lantern without a word. She took it carefully and shone it along the tunnel. She'd been this way before, six months ago. Is this entirely sensible? She asked herself, and nearly burst into hysterical laughter: nothing in her life had been entirely sensible for about a year, now, since her mother had suggested she retrieve a shoe box full of memories from the attic of the old family house.

The smuggler's corridor zigzagged underground, new brick and plasterwork on one side showing where neighboring tenement cellars had been encroached on to create the rat run. A sweet-sick stink of black water told its own story of burst sewerage pipes. Miriam paused at a T-junction, then tiptoed to her left, where the corridor narrowed before coming to an end behind a ceiling-high rack of pigeonholes full of dusty bundles of rags. She reached out and grabbed one side of the rack. It slid sideways silently, on well-greased metal runners. The cellar of Erasmus's store was dusty and hot, the air undisturbed for days. Flicking the lamp off, Miriam tiptoed towards the central passage that led to the stairs up to the shop. Something rustled in the darkness and she froze, heart in mouth: but it was only a rat, and after a minute's breathless wait she pressed on.

At the top of the stairs, she paused and listened. It's empty, she told herself. Isn't it? It's empty and all I have to do is take two more steps and I can prove it. Visions paraded through her mind's eye, the last time she'd ventured into a seemingly unoccupied residence, a horror-filled flashback that nailed her to the spot. She swallowed convulsively, her hand tightening on the rough handrail nailed to the wall. She'd gone into Fort Lofstrom, ahead of the others, and Roland had died- This is crazy. Nothing's going to happen, is it?

She took a step forward, across inches that felt like miles: then another step, easier this time. The short passage at the top of the stairs ended in the back room. She crept round the door: everything was as empty as it should be. The archway leading to the main room-there was an observation mirror, tarnished and flyspecked. Relaxing, she stepped up to the archway and peered sidelong into the shop itself.

It was a bright day, and sunbeams slanted diagonally across the dusty window display shelves and the wooden floor boards. The shop was empty, but for a few letters and circulars piling up under the mail slot in the door. If it had been dark, she wouldn't have noticed anything out of the ordinary, and if she'd been coming in through the front door she wouldn't have seen it until it was too late. But coming out of the dimness of the shop... her breath caught as she saw the coppery gleam of the wire fastened to the door handle. The sense of d j vu was a choking imposition on her fragile self-confidence. She'd seen too many trip wires in the past year: Matt had made a bad habit of them, damn him, wherever he was. She turned and retraced her steps, gripping the banister rail tightly to keep her hands from shaking.

"The shop is empty, but someone's been inside it. There's a wire on the door handle." She shuddered, but Erasmus just smiled.

"This I must see for myself."

"It's too dangerous!"

"Obviously not," he replied mildly. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

"But I- " she stopped, unable to explain the dread that gripped her.

"You saw it in time. It won't be a petard, Miriam, not if it's the Polis, probably not if it's your relatives. Your b te noir, the mad bomber, is unlikely, isn't he? We'll take care not to trip over any other wires. I'll wager you it turns out to be a bell, wired to wake up a watcher next door. Someone wants to know when I return, that's all."

"That's all ?" She wanted to stamp her feet in frustration. "They broke into your shop and installed a trip wire and you say that's all? Come on, let's go-you can buy new clothes-"

"I need the book." He was adamant.

She took a deep breath. "I don't like it."

"Neither do I, but..." He shrugged.

Paradoxically, Miriam felt herself begin to relax once they returned to the back room. Trip wires and claymore mines were Matthias's stock in trade, a nasty trick from the days of the Clan-on-Clan civil war. But Matthias wasn't a world-walker, and he couldn't be over here, could he? He'd gone missing in the United States six months earlier, a week before the first series of targeted raids had shut down the Clan's postal service. While she waited patiently, Erasmus sniffed around his shelves, the writing desk and dusty ledgers, the battered sink with the tin teapot and oil burner beside it, the cracked frosted-glass window pane with the bars on the outside. "Nobody's touched these," he said after a few minutes. "I'm going to look in the shop."