The Trade of Queens

“Oh.” After a moment, Huw unbuckled the fastener on his left glove. “Shit. More than thirty of them? Coming towards Niejwein?”

Brill nodded mutely.

“Oh.” He sat down heavily on the stool he’d been using while Yul helped him into the explorer’s pressure suit. “Oh shit.” He paused. “We’ll have to go back eventually.”

“Yes. But not in the middle of a firestorm.” Her shoulders slumped. “It was only a couple of hours ago.”

“There’s a firestorm?”

“What do you think?”

“We’re stranded here.”

“Full marks, my pretty one.”

Huw looked up at her. “My parents were going to evacuate; I should find out if they made it in time. What about your—”

She avoided his eyes. “What do you think?”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be.” She made a cutting gesture, but her eyes seemed to glisten in the afternoon light filtered through the hazy window glass. “I burned my bridges with my father years ago. And my mother would never think to stand up to him. He told her to stop writing to me. I’ve been dead to them for years.”

“But if they’re—”

“Shut up and think about your brother, Huw. At least you’ve got Yul. How do you think he feels?”

“He—” Huw worked at the chin strap of his helmet. “Shit. Where’s Elena? Is she—”

“Turn your head. This way.” She knelt and worked the strap loose, then unclipped it. Huw lifted the helmet off. “Better.” She straightened up. A moment later Huw rose to his feet. He stood uncertainly before her. “I last saw Elena half an hour ago.”

“Sky Father be praised.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” She watched him uncertainly. “Do you understand what’s happening to us?”

Huw took a breath. “No,” he admitted. “You’re sure they were hydrogen bombs—”

“Denial and half a shilling will get you a cup of coffee, Huw.”

“Then we’re all orphans. Even those of us whose parents came along.”

“Yes.” Brill choked back an ugly laugh. “Those of us who haven’t been orphaned all along.”

“But you haven’t been—” He stopped. “Uh. I was going to ask you to, uh, but this is the wrong time.”

“Huw.” She was, she realized, standing exactly the wrong distance away from him: not close enough, not far enough. “I didn’t hear that. If you were going to say what I think you meant to say. Yes, it’s the wrong time for that.”

He swallowed, then looked at her. A moment later she was in his arms, hugging him fiercely.

“If we’re orphans there’s nobody to force us together or hold us apart,” he whispered in her ear. “No braids, no arranged marriages, no pressure. We can do what we want.”

“Maybe,” she said, resting her chin on his shoulder. “But don’t underestimate the power of ghosts. And external threats.”

“There are no ghosts strong enough to scare me away from you.”

His sincerity scared her at the same time as it enthralled her. She twisted away from his embrace. “I need some time to myself,” she said. “Time to mourn. Time to grow.”

He nodded. A shadow crossed his face. “Yes.”

“We don’t know what we’re getting into,” she warned.

“True.” He nodded, then looked away and began to work at the fasteners on his pressure suit.

She paused, one hand on the doorknob. “You didn’t ask me your question,” she said, wondering if it was the right thing to do.

“I didn’t?” He looked up, confused, then closed his mouth. “Oh. But it’s the wrong time. Your parents—”

“They’re dead. Ask me anyway.” She forced a smile. “Assuming we’re not talking at cross-purposes.”

“Oh! All right.” He took a deep breath. “My lady. Will you marry me?” Not the normal turn of phrase, which was more along the lines of May I take your daughter’s hand in marriage?

“I thought you’d never ask,” she said lightly.

“But I thought you—” He shook his head. “Forgive me, I’m slow.”

“I’m an orphan, over the age of majority,” she reminded him. “No estates, no guardians, no braids, no dowry. You know I don’t come with so much as a clipped groat or a peasant’s plot?”

His smile was luminous. “Do I look like I care?”

She walked back towards him; they met halfway across the floor of the hut. “No. But I wasn’t certain.”

“For you, my lady”—they leaned together—“I’d willingly go over the wall.” To defect from the Clan, to voluntarily accept outlawry and exile: It was not a trivial offer.

“You don’t need to,” she murmured. She kissed him, hard, on the mouth: not for the first time, but for the first time on these new terms, with no thought of concealment. “Nobody now alive in this world will gainsay us.” Her knees felt weak at the thought. “Not my father, nor your mother.” Even if his mother had lived to enter this exile, she was unlikely to reject any Clan maid her son brought before her, however impoverished; they were, indeed, all orphans, all destitute. “No need to fear a blood feud anymore. All the Clan’s chains are rusted half away.”

“I wonder how long it’ll take the others to realize? And what will they all do when they work it out…?”

Epilogue

BEGIN RECORDING

“My fellow Americans, good evening.

“It is two months since the cowardly and evil attack on our great nation. Two months since the murder of the president along with eighteen thousand more of our fellow citizens. Two months since my predecessor and friend stood here with tears in his eyes and iron determination in his soul, to promise you that we would bring prompt and utter annihilation to the enemies who struck at us without warning.

“Many of you doubted WARBUCKS’s word when he spoke of other worlds. He spoke of things that have been unknown—indeed, of unknown unknowns—threats to the very existence of our nation that we knew absolutely nothing of, threats so serious that the instability of the Middle East, or the bellicosity of Russia, dwindle into insignificance in comparison. The horrific tragedy that unfolded between India and Pakistan last month—and our hearts go out to all the survivors of that extraordinary spasm of international madness—demonstrates what is at stake here; as long as hostile powers exist in other timelines that overlap our geographical borders, we face the gravest of existential threats.

“But I am speaking to you tonight to tell you that one such existential threat has been removed: WARBUCKS’s promise has been carried out, and we shall all sleep safer in our beds tonight.

“At half past two this afternoon, aircraft of the Fifth Bomb Wing overflew the land of the enemy who attacked us so savagely on July the sixteenth. And I assure you that our enemies have just reaped the crop that they sowed that day. Those that attacked us with stolen nuclear weapons have received, in return, a just and proportional measure of retribution. And they have learned what happens to assassins and murderers who attack this great nation. Gruinmarkt, the nest of world-walking thieves and narcoterrorists, is home to them no longer. We have taken the brand of cleansing fire and cauterized this lesion within our geographic borders. And they will not attack us again.

“This does not mean that the threat is over. We have learned that there exists a multiplicity of worlds in parallel to our own. Most of them are harmless, uninhabited and resource-rich. Some of them are inhabited; of these, a few may threaten our security. I have today issued an executive order to put in place institutions to seek out and monitor other worlds, to assess them for usefulness and threat—and to insure that never again does an unseen enemy take us by surprise in this way. Over the coming weeks and months, I will work with Congress to establish funding for these agencies and to create a legislative framework to defend us from these threats.