The Trade of Queens

“Nobody is going to leave this house who cannot keep his or her mouth shut, at least until it no longer matters.”

“Until what matters?” Yul asked, head swiveling between Brilliana and Huw with ever-increasing perplexity.

“Was it spontaneous?” Huw demanded.

Brill nodded reluctantly. “The day of the putsch.”

“Let me see her?” demanded Elena. “My mother was midwife to the district nobility when I was young and she taught me—”

Yul stood by, crestfallen and lost for words. “Give me your locket,” Brill said to Elena. “And you too,” she added to Yul. She spared Huw but a brief narrow-eyed glance that seemed to say, If I can’t trust you, then who? “You’re not to tire her out, mind,” she added for Elena’s benefit. “If she’s sleeping, leave her be.” Then she turned towards the door to the owner’s rooms. “Leave the cases for now, Huw. Let me fill you in on what’s been going wrong here.…”

*   *   *

In the end, there was no siege: The house surrendered without a shot being fired, doors and windows flung wide, a white flag running up the pole that rose from the apex of the steeply pitched roof.

That wouldn’t have been enough to save the occupants, of course. Riordan was not inclined towards mercy: In the wake of a hard-fought civil war against the old nobility, it was quite obvious to one and all that the Clan divided must fall, and this rebellion could be seen as nothing but the blackest treachery. But by the same token, the families were weak, their numbers perilously low—and acts of gratuitous revenge would only weaken them further, and risk sowing the seeds of blood feud to boot. “Arrest everyone,” he’d instructed his captain on the ground, Sir Helmut: “You may hang Oliver Hjorth, Griben ven Hjalmar, or”—a lengthy list of confirmed conspirators—“out of hand, and you may deal as you wish with anyone who resists, but we must avoid the appearance of revenge at all costs. We can afford to spare those who did not raise arms against us, and who are guilty only of following their sworn liege—and their dependents.”

Helmut’s mustache quivered. “Is this wise, sir?” he asked.

“It may not be wise, but it is necessary,” Riordan retorted. “Unless you think we should undertake our enemies’ work for them by cutting each other’s throats to the last?”

And so: This was the third great holding of a rebel family that Sir Helmut had ridden into in two days. And they were getting the message. At the last, the house of Freyn-Hankl, a minor outer family connected with the Hjorth lineage, the servants had risen up and locked their upstart landowners in the wine cellars, and sued for mercy. Sir Helmut, mindful of his commanding officer’s advice, had rewarded them accordingly, then sent them packing to spread the word (before he discreetly executed his prisoners—who had, to be fair, poisoned the entire staff of the local Security post by treachery). Facing the open windows and doors of the summer house at Judtford, with his soldiers going in and coming out at will, he was pleased with the outcome of this tactic. Whether or not it was wise or necessary, it was certainly proving to be effective.

“Sir! If you please, to the drawing room.” A startled-looking messenger boy, barely in his teens, darted from the front door.

Sir Helmut stared at him. “In whose name?” he demanded.

“Sir! Two duchesses! One of them’s the queen’s mum, an’ the other is hers! What should we do with them, Jan wants to know?”

Sir Helmut stared some more, until the lad’s bravado collapsed with a shudder. Then he nodded and glanced over his shoulder. “Sammel, Karl, accompany me,” he snapped. The two soldiers nodded and moved in, rifles at the ready. “Lead me to the ladies,” he told the messenger. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

The withdrawing room was dark, and cramped with too much overstuffed furniture, and it smelled of face powder and death. Flies buzzed near the ceiling above the occupants, a pair whom Sir Helmut could not help but recognize. One of them was sleeping. “What happened here?” he demanded.

The younger of the pair—the one who was mother to the queen-widow—looked at him from beneath drooping eyelids. “Was ’fraid you wouldn’t get here,” she slurred.

“What—”

“Poison. In tha’ wine. Sh-she started it.” A shaking hand rose slowly, pointed at the mounded fabric, the shriveled, doll-like body within. “Tha’ coup. ’S’hers. Did it for Helge, she said.”

“But—” Helmut’s eyes took in the empty decanter, the lack of motion. “Are you drunk, or—”

“Dying, prob’ly.” She wheezed for a second or two; it might have been laughter. “Poisoned the wine with pure heroin. The trade of queens.”

“I see.” Helmut turned to the wide-eyed messenger lad: “You. Run along and fetch a medic, fast.” To the duchess: “There’s an antidote. We’ll get you—”

“No.” Patricia closed her eyes for a long moment. “Ma, Hilde-Hildegarde. Started this all. Leave her. No trial. As for me…” She subsided, slurring. A rattling snort emanated from the other chair and Helmut glanced at the door, before leaning to listen to the old woman’s chest.

Helmut rose and, turning on his heel, strode towards the door. Crone save me, he subvocalized. The messenger was coming, a corpsman following behind. “I have two heroin overdoses for you,” Helmut told him. “Forget triage; save the younger one first if at all possible.”

“Heroin overdose?” The paramedic looked startled. “But I don’t have—are you sure—”

“Deliberate poisoning. Get to it.” Helmut stepped aside as the medic nodded and went inside. Helmut breathed deeply, then turned to the messenger. “Here.” He pulled out his notepad and scribbled a brief memo. “Tell comms to radio this to Earl-Major Riordan in day code purple, stat.” The lad took the note and fled. Helmut stared after him for a moment then shook his head. What a mess. Poisoning and attempted matricide versus kidnapping: petty treason versus high treason. How to weigh the balance? “Jester’s balls, if only I’d been delayed an hour on the road.…”

*   *   *

Miriam lay in bed, propped up on a small mountain of pillows, staring blankly at the floral-patterned wallpaper behind the water jug on the dresser and thinking about death.

I never wanted it. So why am I feeling so bad? she wondered. What the hell is wrong with me?

It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to have a baby: Griben ven Hjalmar’s artificial insemination was, if not actual rape, then certainly morally equivalent. He—his sponsors (she shied away from thinking about them)—had wanted an heir to the throne. They’d specifically wanted her to bear the heir, and not trusting her to willingly have intercourse with the man they were forcing her to marry—a man who was so badly damaged by a poisoning incident in his childhood that he could barely talk—they had held her captive and committed a most unspeakable act upon her person. The irony of which was that her thirty-something womb was still fertile, but the marriage had been a most signal failure, disrupted by Prince Creon’s elder brother in a spectacularly bloody putsch that ignited an all-out civil war in the Gruinmarkt. By the time the dust settled, Miriam had been three weeks pregnant, the entire royal family was dead … and she was carrying the heir to the throne, acknowledged by all who had survived the lethal betrothal ceremony.

She had not taken the news well; only Huw’s cunning offer to help her obtain a termination—if that was what she willed—had kept her from running, and not stopping until she arrived at the nearest available abortion clinic. As the immediate rage and humiliation and dread faded, she began to reevaluate the situation: not from an American woman’s perspective, but with the eyes of a Clan noblewoman catapulted headlong into the middle of a fraught political dilemma. I don’t have to love it. I don’t have to raise it. I just have to put up with eight months of back pain and morning sickness and get it out of my body. And in return … they’d promised her the moon on a stick: a seat at the highest table, as much power and wealth as anyone in that godforsaken mediaeval nightmare of a country could have, and most important of all, security. Security for herself, for her mother, for her friends. A chance to fix some of the things that were wrong with the Clan, from the inside, working with allies. Even a chance to try and do something about the bigger picture: to jump-start the process of dragging the Gruinmarkt towards modernity.

She’d signed a fraught compromise with her conscience. Perhaps she was just rationalizing her situation, even succumbing to Stockholm syndrome—the tendency of the abducted to empathize with their kidnappers—and while she hated what had been done to her, she was no longer eager to dispose of the unwanted pregnancy. She’d