Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

A cab was clattering along the nearly-empty high street. Miriam took a step forward and extended her right hand, trying to hold it steadily. The cabbie reined in his horse and peered down at her. "Yuss?"

Miriam drew herself up. "I want to go to Hogarth, Hogarth Villas," she said. "Immediately."

The cabby's reaction wasn't what she expected: a low chuckle. "Oh yuss indeedy, your ladyship. Hop right in and I'll take you right there in a jiffy, I will!" Huh? Miriam almost hesitated for a moment. But he obviously knew the place. What's so funny about it? She nodded, then grabbed hold of the rail and pulled herself up. The cabbie made no move to help her in, other than to look down at her incuriously. But if he had any opinion of her odd outfit he kept it to himself, for which she was grateful. As soon as she was on the foot plate, he twitched the reins.

I'm going to have to pay him, Miriam thought, furiously racking her brains for ideas as the cab rattled across the stone pavements. What with? She fumbled in her greatcoat's pockets. One of them disgorged a foul-smelling cheesecloth bag full of loose tobacco. The other contained nothing but a loose button. Oh, great. They were turning past Highgate now, down in what corresponded to the East Village in her world. Not an upmarket neighborhood in New London, but there were worse places to be-like inside a thief-taker's lockup for trying to cheat a cabbie of his fare. What was the woman's name, Bishop? Margaret Bishop? I'm going to have to ask her to pay for me. Miriam tensed up. Or I could world-walk hack to the other side, wait a couple of hours, and -but her headache was already telling her no. If she crossed back to the Gruinmarkt she'd be good for nothing for at least three hours, and knowing her luck she'd come out somewhere much worse than an alley full of muggers. For the time being, returning to the other side was unthinkable. Damn it, why did James have to give me the wrong locket?

The journey seemed interminable, divided into a million segments by the plodding clatter of hooves. Probably a yellow cab in her own familiar New York would have gotten across town no faster-there was less traffic here- but her growing sense of unease was driving her frantic, and the lack of acceleration made her grind her teeth. That's what's wrong with this world, she realized, there's no acceleration. You can go fast by train or airship, but you never get that surging sense of purpose-

The traffic thickened, steam cars rattling and chuffing past the cab. The lights were brighter, some of the street lights running on electricity now: and then there was a wide curving boulevard and a big row of town houses with iron railings out front, and a busy rank of cabs outside it, and people bustling around. "Hogarth Villas coming up, mam, Gin Lane on your left, Beer Alley to your right." The cabbie bent down and leered at her between his legs. "That'll be sixpence ha'penny."

"The doorman will pay," Miriam said tensely, mentally crossing her fingers. j

"Is that so?" The leer vanished, replaced by an expression of contempt. "Tell it to the rozzers!" He straightened up: "I know your type." A rattle of chain and a leather weather shield began to unroll over the front of the cab,

Blocking off escape. "I'll get me fee out of you one way or the other, it's up to you how you pays."

"Hey!" Miriam waved at a caped figure standing by the gate, pushing the side of the leather screen aside. "You! I need to see Lady Bishop! Now!"

The caped figure turned towards her and stepped up to-wards the cab. The cabbie up top swore: "Bugger off!"

"What did you say?" Miriam quailed. The man in the cape was about six feet six tall, built like a brick outhouse, and his eyes were warm as bullets.

"I need to see Lady Bishop," Miriam repeated, trying to keep a deadly quaver out of her voice. "I have no money and it's urgent," she hissed. "I was told she was here."

"I see." Bullet-eyes tracked upwards towards the cabbie. "How much?"

"Sixpence, guv, that's all I need," the cabbie whined.

Bullet- eyes considered for a moment. Then a hand with lingers as thick as a baby's forearm extended upwards. A flash of silver. "You. Come with me."

The weather screen was yanked upwards: Miriam lost no time clambering down hastily. Bullet-eyes gestured towards a set of steps leading down one side of the nearest town house. "That way."

"That- " Miriam was already halfway to the steps before several other details of the row of houses sank in. Lights on and laughter and music coming from the ground-floor windows: lights out and nothing audible coming from upstairs. The front doors gaped wide open. Men on the pavement outside, dressed for a good time by New London styles. Women visible through the open French doors in outfits that bared their knees- oh, she thought, feeling herself flush. So that's what's going on. Damn Erasmus for not telling me! Halfway down the steps, which led to a cellar window and a narrower, grubbier, doorway, another thought struck her: a brothel would be a good place for Erasmus's friends to meet up. Lots of people could come and go at all hours and nobody would think it strange if they took measures to avoid being identified.

Even her current fancy dress probably wasn't exceptional. Erasmus Burgcson, almost the first person she'd met on her arrival in New Britain, was connected to the Leveler underground, radical democrats in a country that had never had an American revolution, where the divine right of kings was still the unquestionable way the world was run. Which meant-

The door was snatched open in front of her. Miriam looked round. Bullet-eyes was right behind her, not threatening, but impossible to avoid. "I need to see-"

"Shut it." He was implacable. "Go in." It was a scullery, stone sinks full of dishwater and a couple of maids up to their elbows in it, a primitive clanking dishwasher hissing ominously and belching steam in the background: "through there, that way." He steered her towards a door at the back that opened onto a narrow, gloomy servant's corridor and a spiral staircase. "Upstairs."

Another passage. Miriam registered the distant sound of creaking bedsprings and groaning, chatter and laughter and a piano banging away on the other side of a thin plasterboard wall. Her chest was tight: it felt hard to breathe in here. "Is it much further?" she asked.

"Stop." Bullet-eyes grabbed a door handle and shoved, glanced inside. "You can wait here. Tell me again what you came for."

Miriam tensed and looked at him. She'd seen dozens of men like this before, hard men, self-disciplined, capable of just about anything-her heart sagged. "Erasmus Burgeson told me I should come here and talk to Lady Bishop next time I was in town," she managed to explain. "I wasn't planning on being here quite this early, without warning." She sagged against the door-frame, abruptly exhausted. "I'm in trouble."

"Has it followed you?" His voice was even, quiet, and it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end as if someone had stepped over her open grave.

"No," she managed, "not here. I lost it on the way."

"Inside. I'll be back." She stumbled into the room. He flicked a switch and a dim incandescent bulb glimmered into light. "I may be some time." The door closed behind her. The room was a servant's bedroom, barely longer than the narrow bed that occupied half of it. There was a window, but it opened onto a shaft of brickwork, another darkened window barely visible opposite. Click. Miriam spun round, a fraction of a second too late to see the lock mechanism latch home.

"Shit," she moaned quietly, "shit!" She sat down on the bed and rested her head in her hands, her energy and will to resist fading frighteningly fast. It had been a long and terrible day, and even standing up felt like a battle. What have I done? Erasmus was nuts, or playing a sick joke on her, sending her to a brothel to talk to the madam: although, on further thought, it didn't seem particularly strange compared to the rest of this eventful day. She'd been dragged out of her house arrest, shanghaied into a forced wedding, just missed being blown up by a bomb, seen the king and the prince she'd been engaged to gunned down (and who knew what the hell was going to happen in the Gruinmarkt now?) and run into an old heartthrob (and what the hell was he doing there, working for the DEA?). Then she'd lied for her life, been attacked by muggers, menaced by a cabbie who thought she was a prostitute, and finally locked up in another goddamned prison cell, this time in a brothel. I'm going to go mad, she thought dizzily, lying down on the lumpy mattress. I can't take much more of this. But instead, she fell asleep. And that was how they found her when they came for her, an hour after midnight.

It was shaping up to be a night to remember for all the wrong reasons, Mike decided. The flat metallic banging of musketry outside blended with the screams of wounded men and the sullen roar of the burning palace to form a hideous cacophony, punctuated by the occasional crack of modern smokeless-powder firearms and shouted orders. This is worse than that mess down in Colombia, that mountain village. What was it called?

He inched carefully out from behind the broken wall. The stench of burnt gunpowder and charred wood lent an acrid taste to the nighttime air. About four meters from the wall, the indistinct shapes of a row of trees loomed out of the darkness. He turned his head, looking around cautiously.

That nameless village on a forested mountainside in Colombia: he'd been there as part of a DEA training team, working with the Colombian army to weed out cocaine plantations in the hilly back country. What he hadn't realized at first was that the cocaine plantations belonged to the other government-the Maoist guerrillas working to overthrow the authorities controlled vast swathes of territory, had battalions of expressionless men in green with machine guns and rifles. It wasn't a police raid, it was more like an army spearhead advancing into hostile territory. And then the shooting started...

He twitched back into focus, scanning the area for threats. The palace behind him was burning merrily, flames reaching through holes in the steeply pitched roof. Doors and windows had been blown out: some were half-blocked by improvised barricades where the defenders were trying to hold out. It was full dark, and they were trying to fight a battle against attackers who were shooting from outside the circle of light. The noises were getting louder, Mike noted. More banging of muskets, the hollow shotgun-like thump of a blunderbuss, then yells and a distant drumming of hooves, the sound of many horses running. He turned to face the darkness, closed his eyes for ten long seconds to let them adjust, then rose to a crouch and dashed towards the tree line, zigzagging madly and praying he'd make it without putting a foot in a rabbit hole or catching a tree root.

At least I got Miriam out of there. He dived past a tree, ducked under a low branch, and crouched down again to scan for watchers. Wonder if she'll call. It was just too

weird; he'd known she'd be here, hell, that was the whole reason they'd inserted him, to see if he could make contact-but actually seeing her in the midst of all this weird medieval squalor, dolled up like an extra from a historical drama, brought it all home to him. She was part of the Clan: she was a world-walker, one of the narcoterrorist dynasty that was running drugs up and down the eastern seaboard. And she wanted out!