The Family Trade

“What are we going to do?” asked Kara, looking frightened and younger than ever.

“What you are going to do—both of you—is tell the servants we’re going to have a quiet supper: cold cuts or a pie or something plain and simple. Then we’re going to dismiss the servants and go to bed early so we are well rested for the morrow. After they bring our meal up and stoke the fireplace, they can leave.” She stood up and paced. “What’s really going to happen, once the servants have left is that two of Lady Olga’s guards—the guards Baron Hjorth hasn’t assigned to me—are going to enter the near audience chamber through the side door.”

She gri

“And you, my lady?” asked Kara, searching her face. “You can’t spend the night alone here!”

“She doesn’t intend to,” Brill said tersely. “Do you?”

“Correct.” Miriam waited.

“You’re going to go over there,” Brilliana added. “How I’d like to follow you!”

“You can’t, yet,” Miriam said bluntly. “Someone is conspiring against me. I am going to have to move fast and be inconspicuous. On the other side, there is a teeming city with many people and strange customs. I can’t risk you attracting attention while I’m on the run.” She raised a finger to anticipate Brilliana’s objection. “I’ll take you along later, I promise. But not this time. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Brill muttered something under her breath. Miriam pretended not to notice.

“That’s it, then. If someone comes calling in the night, all they’ll find are beds stuffed with pillows: You’ll be elsewhere. On the other side, the fewer people who know where I’m going, the safer I’ll be. I’ll meet you back here tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll decide what to do then, depending on whether the opening of the court of winter sessions is going ahead or not. Any last questions?”

It was snowing in New York, too, but nothing like the blizzard that had dumped two feet of snow on Neijwein in a day. Miriam met nobody in the warehouse. At the top of the stairs she paused. What was that trick? she wondered, racking her brains. A flashback to the training course, years ago: It had been a giggle at the time, spy tradecraft stuff for journalists who were afraid of having their hotel rooms burgled in Krygistan or wherever. But now it came back to her. Kneeling, she tied a piece of black cotton sewing thread from the wall to the handrail, secured with a needle. It was invisible in the twilight. If it was gone when she returned, that would tell her something.

On this trip, she wore her hiking gear and towed her suitcase. With street map in hand, she wanted to give the impression of being a tourist from out of state who’d wandered into the wrong part of town. Maybe that was why a taxi pulled up almost as soon as she emerged from the back street, while her phone was still chirping its voice mail alert.

“The Marriott Marquis, Times Square,” she told the driver. Head pounding, she hit the “mail” button and clamped the phone to her ear.

“Marriott Marquis, room 2412, continuously booked for the whole week in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Roland Dorchester. Just ask at the front desk and they’ll give you a key.”

Thank you, she thought, pocketing the phone and blinking back tears of relief.

The taxi took her straight to the main entrance and a bellboy was on hand to help her with her suitcase. She headed straight to the front desk.

“Mrs. Dorchester? Yes, ma’am, I have your card-key here, [f you’d like to sign …”

Miriam did a little double-take, then scrawled something that she hoped she’d be able to replicate on demand. Then she took the keys and headed for the elevator bank.

She was inside the glass-walled express elevator, and it was surging up from the third floor in a long glide toward the top, when a horrible thought occurred to her. What if they’ve got to Roland? she wondered. After he booked the hotel. They could be waiting for me.

It was a frightening thought, and Miriam instinctively reached toward her pocket. How the hell do you do this? Suddenly it occurred to her that the little revolver was as much of a threat as an asset in this kind of situation. If she went through the door and some bad guy was just inside, he could grab her before she had a chance to use it. Or grab the gun. And she was more than twenty stories up, high enough that—she looked out and down through the glass wall of the lift and took a deep breath of relief. “Oh, that’s okay,” she muttered, as the obvious explanation occurred to her just before the lift bell dinged for attention: Skyscrapers didn’t need doppelgängering against attack from another world where concrete and structural steel were barely known.

Miriam stepped out into the thickly carpeted hallway and stopped. Pulling out her mobile phone, she dialled Roland’s number. It rang three times.

“Hello?”

“Roland, what happens if you’re on the twenty-fourth floor of a tall building, say a hotel, and—” quick glance in either direction—“you try to world-walk?”

“You don’t do that.” He chucked dryly. “That’s why I chose it. I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Come right on up?”

“Sure,” she said and rang off, abruptly dizzy with relief and anticipation.

I hope this works out, she thought, dry-swallowing as she walked down the corridor, hunting for room 2412. Hell, we hardly know each other—

She reached the door. All her other options had run out. She put the card in the slot and turned the handle.

Three hours later they came up for air. The bedding was a tangled mess, half the fluffy white towels were on the bathroom floor and the carpet was a wasteland of discarded clothing—but it had worked out.

“I have missed you so much,” she murmured in his ear, then leaned close to nibble at his lobe.

“That makes two of us.” He heaved up a little, bracing against the bed head, turning to look at her. “You’re beautiful.”

“I bet you say that to every naked woman you wake up in bed with,” she replied, laughing.

“No,” he said, in all seriousness, before he realized what he’d done. Then he turned bright red. “I mean—”

He was too late. Miriam pounced. “Got you,” she giggled, holding him down. Then she subsided on top of him. “Like that?” she asked. “Or this?”

“Oh.” He rolled his eyes. “Please. A few minutes?”

“Frail male reed!”

“Guilty, I’m afraid.” He wrapped an arm around her. “What’s with the early appearance? I thought there was supposed to be a reception this evening?”

“There was, past tense.” Miriam explained about the cancellation.

“So you came over early, just in case I was here?”

“No.” She felt very sober, all of a sudden, even though they hadn’t been drinking—and felt the need to remedy the condition, too.

“Why, then? I thought you were sticking with the program?”

“Not when people try to kill me twice in one day.”

“What?” His arms tensed and he began to sit up.

“No, no—lie down. Relax. They can’t come through here and I took steps to throw off the trail.” She kissed him, again, tasted the sweat of their lovemaking. “Wow. What did I do to deserve someone like you?”

“You were really, really wicked in a previous life?”

“Nonsense!”

“The killers.” She’d broken the magic, she realized with a sense of desolation.

“They won’t follow us here, but there’s a lot to tell,” she said. “How about we dig a bottle out of the minibar and have a bath or something while I tell you?”

“I think we can do better than that,” he said with a glint in his eye. He reached for the bedside phone. “Room service, please. Yes? It’s room 2412. Can you send up the item I ordered earlier? Leave it outside.”