Charles Stross - MP 6 -The Trade of Queens

"Why can't we go to 'merca, Ma?"

Helena ven Wu gritted her teeth as one carriage wheel bounced across a stone in the road. Tess, her second-youngest, was four years old and bright by disposition, but the exodus was taking its toll after two days, and the question came out as a whine. "We can't go there, dear. I told you, it's not safe."

"But it's where Da goes when he travels?"

"That's different." Helena rested a hand lightly on the crib. Markus was asleep—had, in fact, cried himself to sleep after a wailing tantrum. He didn't travel well. "We can't go there."

"But why can't we—"

The other occupant of the carriage raised her eyes from the book she had been absorbed in. "For Sky Lady's love, leave your ma be, Tess. See you not, she was trying to sleep?"

Helena smiled gratefully at her. Kara, her sister-in-law, was traveling with them of necessity, for her husband Sir Leon was already busied with the residual duty of the postal corvée; his young wife, her pregnancy not yet showing, was just another parcel to be transferred between houses in this desperately busy time. Not that Sir Leon believed the most outlandish warnings of the radical faction, but there was little harm in sending Kara for a vacation with her eldest brother's family.

Now Kara shook her head and raised an eyebrow at Helena. The latter nodded, and Kara lifted Tess onto her lap, grunting slightly with the effort. "Once upon a time we could all travel freely to America, at least those of us the Postal Service would permit, and it was a wondrous place, full of magic and treasure. But that's not where we're going, Tess. There are bad men in America, and evil wizards; they are hunting our menfolk who travel there, and they want to hunt us all down and throw us in their deepest dungeons."

The child's eyes were growing wider with every sentence. Helena was about to suggest that Kara lighten up on the story, but she continued, gently bouncing Tess upon her knee: "But don't worry, we have a plan. We're going on a journey somewhere else, to a new world like America but different, one where the k—where the rulers don't hate and fear us. We're going to cross over there and we'll be safe. You'll have a new dress, and practice your Anglischprache, and it'll be a great adventure! And the bad men won't be able to find us."

Tess looked doubtful. "Will the bad men get Da?"

Helena's heart missed a beat. "Of course not!" she said hotly. Gyorg yen Wu would be deep underground, shuffling between doppelgangered bunkers with a full wheelbarrow as often as the blood-pressure monitor said was safe: a beast of burden, toiling to carry the vital necessities of life between a basement somewhere in Massachusetts and a dungeon or wine cellar beneath a castle or mansion in the Gruinmarkt. Ammunition, tools, medicine, gold, anything that Clan Security deemed necessary. The flow of luxuries had stopped cold, the personal allowance abolished in the wake of the wave of assassinations that had accompanied the horridness in the Anglischprache capital.

"Your da is safe," Kara reassured the child. "He'll come to see us soon enough. I expect he'll bring you chocolate."

Helena cast her a reproving look—chocolate was an expensive import to gift on a child—but Kara caught her eye and shook her head slightly. The effect of the work

chocolate

in Tess was remarkable. "Want chocolate!" she exclaimed.

"All

the chocolate!"

Kara smiled over Tess's head, then grimaced as one of the front wheels thumped over the edge of a rut and the carriage crashed down a few inches. Markus twitched, clenched a tiny fist close to his mouth uneasily as Helena leaned over him. "I wish we had a smoother road to travel," she said quietly. "Or that we could walk from nearer home."

"The queen's men have arranged a safely defended house," Kara observed. "They wouldn't force us to travel this way without good reason. She wouldn't let them."

"She?"

"Her Majesty." An odd look stole across her face, one part nostalgia to two parts regret. "I was one of her maids. She was very wise."

So

you

never tire of reminding us,

Helena thought, but held her tongue; with another ennervating day's drive ahead, there was nothing to gain from picking a fight. Then Tess chirped up again: "Tell me about the queen?"

"Surely." Kara ruffled her hair. "Queen Helge was the child of Duke Alfredo and his wife. One day when she was younger than your brother Markus, when her parents were traveling to their country estates, they were set upon by assassins sent by—"

Helena half-closed her eyes and leaned against the wall of the carriage, looking out through the open window at the tree line beyond the cleared roadside strip.

I wonder if this is what it was like for Helge's mother,

she wondered.

She escaped just ahead of her attackers, didn't she? I wonder if we'll be so lucky. . . .

Arranging a meeting was much easier the second time round. Miriam handed Sir Alasdair a hastily scribbled note for the telautograph office to dispatch: NEED TO TALK URGENTLY TOMORROW AGREED LOCATION STOP. One of Alasdair's men, and then the nearest post office, did the rest.

Not that imperiously demanding a conversation with the commissioner for propaganda was a trivial matter; receiving it in New London only two hours after it was transmitted, Erasmus swore under his breath and, before departing for his evening engagement—dinner with Victor McDougall, deputy commissioner for press approval—booked a compartment on the morning mail train to Boston, along with two adjacent compartments for his bodyguards and a communications clerk. By sheer good luck Miriam had picked the right day: He could see her and, provided he caught the following morning's train for the return journey, be back in the capital in time for the Thursday Central Committee meeting. "This had better be worth it," he muttered to himself as he clambered into the passenger compartment of his ministerial car for the journey to McDougall's home. However, it didn't occur to him to ignore Miriam's summons. In all the time he'd known her, she'd never struck him as being one to act impetuously; if she said something was urgent, it almost certainly was.

Attending the meeting was also easier, second time round. The morning after James Lee's visit, Miriam rose early and dressed for a public excursion. She took care to look as nondescript as possible; to be mistaken for a woman of particular wealth could be as dangerous here as to look impoverished, and the sartorial class indicators were much more sharply defined than back in the United States. "I'm ready to go whenever you've got cover for me," she told Sir Alasdair, as she entered the front parlor. "Two guards, one car, and a walkie-talkie."

"Emil and Klaus are waiting." Sir Alasdair didn't smile. "They'll park two streets away and remain on call." He gestured at the side table: "Lady d'Ost prepared a handbag for you before she went out."

"There's no—" Miriam paused. "You think I'll need this?" She lifted the bag, feeling the drag of its contents—a two-way radio and the dense metallic weight of a pistol.

"I hope you won't." He didn't smile. "Better safe than unsafe."

The steamer drove slowly through the streets and neighborhoods of a dense, urban Boston quite unlike the city Miriam had known; different architecture, different street names, different shops and businesses. There were a few more vehicles on the roads today, and fewer groups of men loitering on street corners; they passed two patrols of green-clad Freedom Rider militiamen, red armbands and shoulder-slung shotguns matching their arrogant stride. Policing and public order were beginning to return to the city, albeit in a very different shape. Posters had gone up on some of the high brick walls: the stern-jawed face of a balding, white-haired man. CITIZEN BURROUGHS SAYS: WE WORK FOR FREE