The Trade of Queens

outgun us as heavily as we outgunned the Pervert’s men. And there will be thousands of them, tens of thousands. With tanks and helicopters. Sure, we’ll kill a few of them. And that will make it worse, it’ll make them angry. They’re not good at dealing with locals, not good at native tongues. They’ll kill and they’ll burn and they’ll raise every man’s hand against them and their occupation, and it will still take a bloody five years of pain and tears and death before they’ll even think about changing their approach. By which time—”

“Look.” Ven Arnesen raised his arm and pointed.

“Where?”

“Look up.” A ruler-straight white line was inching across the turquoise vault of the sky, etching it like a jeweler’s diamond on glass. A tiny speck crawled through the air, just ahead of the moving tip of the line. “Is that what, what I think it is?”

“A contrail.” Bentbranch’s cheeks paled. “It’s them.”

“Are you sure? Could it be something else? Something natural—”

“No. Their jets make those cloud-trails, when they move through the sky.”

“And they look down on us from above? Do you suppose they can see us now? Lightning Child strike them blind.”

“I very much fear that they’re anything but blind.” Bentbranch looked away as the aircraft’s course led it westwards, towards the sunset. “Though how much detail they can see from up there … well, that tears it, of course. They will be drawing up maps, my lord. And they care naught that we know their mind. I find that a singularly ominous sign. Do you differ, can I ask?”

“No.” Ven Arnesen shook his head as he stared after the aircraft. “No.” But Bentbranch was unable to discern whether he was answering the question or railing against the sign in the heavens.

Ahead of them, the main group of riders, Lord Ostlake and his men, had noticed the contrail; arms were pointing and there were raised voices. “We should warn them,” Bentbranch said, nudging his horse forward. Ven Arnesen paid him no attention, but stared at the sky with nerve-struck eyes.

Out over the ocean in the east, the U-2’s contrail was already falling apart, like the dreams of future tranquility that it had so carelessly scrawled across.

It would not take many more forty-thousand-foot overflights to update the air force’s terrain maps.

*   *   *

The old woman had been reading a book, and it still lay open on her lap, but her attention was elsewhere. There was a discreet knock at the door. She looked up as it opened, and adjusted her spectacles, unsurprised at the identity of her visitor. “Yes?”

“Your grace.” The door closed behind him. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

“No, no…” She slid a bookmark into place, then carefully closed the book and placed it on the table beside her. “I’ve got plenty of time. All the time in the world.”

“Ah, yes. Well, I’d like to apologize for leaving you to your own devices for so long. I trust you have been well-attended?”

“Young man, you know as well as I do that when one is in a jail cell, however well furnished, it does little good to grumble at the jailer.”

“It might, if you harbor some hope of release. And might reasonably expect to be in a position of authority over your captor, by and by.” He raised an eyebrow, and waited.

She stared at him grimly. “Release.” She raised her right hand. It shook, visibly. She let it fall atop the book. “Release from what?” The palsy was worse than it had been for some time. “What do you think I have to look forward to, even if you give me the freedom of the city outside these walls? Without imported medicines my quality of life will be poor. I can’t use that liberty you hint at.” She gestured at the wheelchair she sat in. “This is more of a jail than any dungeon you can put me in, Riordan.”

Rather than answering, the earl crossed the stone-flagged floor of the day room and, picking up the heavy armchair from beside the small dining table, turned it to face her. Then he sat, crossing one leg over the other, and waited.

After a while she sighed. “Credit me with being old enough to be a realist, kid.” She paused. “I’m not going to see the right side of sixty again, and I’ve got multiple sclerosis. It’s gaining on me. I’d like to go back home to Cambridge, where I hear they’ve got stuff like hot and cold running water and decent health care, but thanks to my dear departed mother and her fuckwitted reactionary idiots that’s not a terribly practical ambition, is it? I’m too old, too ill, and too tired to cast off and start up anew in another world, Riordan. I did it the once, in my youth, but it was a terrible strain even with Angbard’s connivance. Besides, you need me here in this gilded cage. Rule of law, and all that.”

“The rule of law.” Riordan leaned forward. “You’ve never been much for that, have you?”

Patricia’s cheek twitched in something that might have been the ghost of a smile. “I’ve never been much of one for bending the neck to authority.” She shook her head. “If I had been born to a lower estate I’d have been lucky to have made it to adulthood. As it is, the lack of highborn bloodlines taking precedence over mine—well. Easier to be rebellious when you’re the daughter of a duke, not a slave. What did you want to talk to me about?”

Her attempt to wrong-foot Riordan failed. “To ask you what I should do with you, your grace.”

Patricia smile widened. “Well, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it? I suppose it depends what you want to achieve.”

“I want to keep our people alive.” He crossed his arms. “What do you want?”

“Huh.” Her smile slipped away. “It’s come to that?”

“You know it has. I’m not going to charge you with petty treason, your grace; the only evidence against you is your own word, and besides, the victim had abducted you and was a conspirator at high treason. To hold her poisoning against you would be ungrateful, not to mention sending entirely the wrong message. But there is a question to which I would like some answers.”

“My brother?”

Riordan shook his head. “I know you didn’t kill him. But Dr. ven Hjalmar is missing. And so is a certain set of medical records.”

“A set of—” Patricia stopped dead. “What do you know about them?”

“I’ve been reading Angbard’s files.” Riordan’s tone was quiet but implacable. “I know about the fertility clinics and the substituted donor sperm. Five thousand unwitting outer-family members growing up in the United States. The plan to approach some of them and pay them to bear further children. I’m not stupid, Patricia. I know what that plan would mean to the old ladies and their matchmaking and braid alliances. The files are missing, your grace. Do you happen to know where they are?”

She shook her head. “Not exactly, no.”

“And inexactly?”

“I don’t think I should answer that question. For your own good.”

Riordan made a fist of his left hand and laid it quietly down on the table beside him. “Why? ”

“It’s an insurance policy, kid. I don’t know exactly where the records are, only where they’re going to surface. Griben ven Hjalmar—if you see him, shoot him on sight, I beg you. He may have made off with a copy of the breeding program records too.”

“Why?” repeated the earl. “I think you owe me at least an explanation.”

“Our numbers are low. If they dip lower, the trade—our old trade—may no longer be viable. But at the same time, Angbard’s plan was destabilizing in the extreme. If Clan Security suddenly acquired an influx of tractable, trained world-walkers with no loyalty to family or braid—it would overbalance the old order, would it not? We agree that much, yes?”

Riordan nodded reluctantly. “So?”

“So Hildegarde tried to smash the program, at least by seizing the infants and having them adopted. Griben was her cat’s-paw. It was a power play and countermove, nothing more. But her solution would give us other problems. There is a reason why we are six high families and their clients, why each group numbers less than three hundred. An extended family—a clan, not our great collective Clan, but a normal grouping—is of that order, you know? Anthropologists have theories to explain why humans form groups of that