Charles Stross - Merchant princes 02 - The Hidden Family

The Hidden Family

Charles Stross

PRAISE FOR THE MERCHANT PRINCES SERIES

The Family Trade

"Charles Stress's The Family Trade is an inventive, irreverent, and delightful

romp into an alternate world where business is simultaneously low and high tech,

and where romance, murder, marriage, and business are hopelessly intertwined—and

deadly." —L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

"Quirky, original, and entertaining. The Family Trade could

be The Godfather of all fantasy novels."

—Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of A Forest of Stars

"The Family Trade is one of those rare delights—a book that is fun,

intelligently written, and which leaves a reader breathlessly wondering what

will happen next. Readers Beware: Stross weaves a tale that continually builds

to an engrossing climax. Once you get into this, you'll find yourself hooked."

—David Farland

"The Family Trade shows that Charles Stross is no longer a beginner to watch,

but a star to watch." —Mike Resnick

"Stross not only creates an alternate world that is fascinating and original, he

even does the unheard of, for a fantasist: His depiction of our world is deep

and real. His characters behave in ways that make sense. They know all the

things they should know, and don't know the things they shouldn't. The result is

that we readers can trust this author completely, dive into this story and let

it carry us wherever the current flows. "Not to mention the fact that it's

simply a great adventure, full of danger, of plots within plots, of forbidden

love, and political murder." —Orson Scott Card

"The Hidden Family is a festival of ideas in action, fast moving and often very

funny, but underpinned by a rigorous logical strategy.... Stress's breezy,

almost Heinleinian mode of narration is on fine display."

—Locus

"Miriam Beckstein, aka Countess Helge Thorold-Hjorth of the Clan, finds her own

world to conquer in this fast-moving sequel to The Family Trade.... Stress

continues to mix high and low tech in amusing and surprising ways.... [He]

weaves a tale worthy of Robert Ludlum or Dan Brown."

—Publishers Weekly

"English writer Charles Stress, whose books burst with pop-science ideas,

intrigue, strong characters and even romance, continues his Merchant Princes

series.... Stress is an energetic writer.. . who creates page-turning reads....

Readers will be relieved to learn that there is a lot to look forward to in The

Hidden Family, including a finale that is all Gothic Romance: regrets, a ball

and a happy reunion." —Bookpage

"These days, finding a science fiction or fantasy novel that doesn't feature a

kick-ass babe who is either cybernetically enhanced, a martial arts master or a

trained ninja killer (or all three) can be hard work. The genres don't lack for

Buffyesque role models ... But there's something different about Miriam, the

heroine of Charles Stress' fantasy series 'The Merchant Princes'.... It is a

tribute to the budding powers of Stress, who works successfully in both the

science fiction and fantasy genres, that he pulls off this feat in a fashion

both amusing and gripping ... Miriam is a terrific character, turning the tables

on all who would attempt to manipulate her, and setting in motion events that

promise to transform the evolution of no less than three separate worlds. For

those of us who actually are journalists working on deadline, Stress gives us an

escape fantasy that is most seductive, indeed."

—Salon.com

"Stross effectively keeps all the the plates spinning that he launched into

motion in the first volume of this series.... Stross is having great fun with

these books, and it's contagious."

—Scifi.com

"The sequel to The Family Trade continues the adventures of Miriam, the high-

tech journalist flung into a fantasy world that really does recall the early

volumes of Roger Ze-lazny's Amber series.... Laugh your way to an ending that

clearly promises further enjoyable volumes." —Booklist

The Hidden Family

BOOK TWO OF THE MERCHANT PRINCES

charles stross

TOR®

fantasy

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

For my parents

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this

book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the

publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for

this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book

are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE HIDDEN FAMILY

thereof, in any form.

Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 0-765-35205-2 EAN 978-0-765-35205-7

First edition: June 2005 • First mass market edition: May 2006

Printed in the United States of America

098765432

PART 1

Business Plans

Learned Counsel

The committee meeting was entering its third hour when the king sneezed,

bringing matters to a head. His Excellency Sir Roderick was speaking at the time

of the royal spasm. Standing at the far end of the table, before the red velvet

curtains that sealed off the windows and the chill of the winter afternoon

beyond, Sir Roderick leaned forward slightly, clutching his papers to his bony

chest and wobbling back and forth as he recited. His colorless manners matched

his startling lack of skin and hair pigmentation: He kept his eyes downcast as

he regurgitated a seemingly endless stream of reports from the various heads of

police, correspondents of intelligence, and freelance informers who kept his

office abreast of news.

"I beg your pardon." A valet flourished a clean linen handkerchief before the

royal nose. John Frederick blinked, his expression pained. "Ah-choo!" Although

not yet in middle age, the king's florid complexion and burgeoning waistline

were already giving rise to worries among his physiopaths and apothecaries.

Sir Roderick paused, awaiting the royal nod. The air in the room was heavy with

the smell of beeswax furniture polish, and a faint oily overlay from the quietly

fizzing gas lamps. "Sire?"

"A moment." John Frederick, by grace of God king-emperor of New Britain and

ruler of the territories and dependencies thereof, took a fresh handkerchief and

waved off his equerry while anxious faces watched him from all sides. He

breathed deeply, clearly battling to control the itching in his sinuses. "Ah.

Where were we? Sir Roderick, you have held the floor long enough—take a seat, we

will return to you shortly. Lord Douglass, this matter of indiscipline among the

masses troubles me. If the effects of the poor grain harvest last year are not

mitigated in the summer, as your honorable colleague forecasts"—a nod at Lord

Scotia, minister for rural affairs—"then there will be fertile soil for the

ranters and ravers to till next autumn. Is there any risk of a domestic upset?"

Lord Douglass ran a wrinkled hand across his thinning hair as he considered his

reply. "As your majesty is doubtless aware—" He paused. "I had hoped to discuss

this matter after hearing from Sir Roderick. If I may beg your indulgence?" At

the royal nod, he leaned sideways. "Sir Roderick, may I ask you to rapidly

summarize the domestic situation?"

"By your leave. Your majesty?" Sir Roderick cleared his throat, then addressed

the room. "Your majesty, my right honorable friends, the domestic condition is

currently under control, but there are an increasing number of reports of

nonconformist ranters in the provinces. In the past month alone the royal police

have apprehended no less than two cells of Levelers, and uncovered three illicit

printers—one in Massachusetts, one in your majesty's western New Provinces, and

one in New London itself." A whisper ran around the table: It was an open secret

that the ceUar press in the capital could print whatever they liked with only

loose

control, except for the most blatantly slanderous rumors and Leveler sedition.

For there to be raids, the situation must be far worse than normal. "This

ignores the usual rumbling in the colonies and dominions. Finally, police

operations uncovered a plot to blow up the Western Summer Palace at Monterey—I

would prefer not to discuss this in open cabinet until we have resolved the

situation. Someone or something is stirring up Leveler activists, and there have

been rumors of French livres greasing the wheels of treason. Certainly it takes

money to run subversive presses or buy explosives, and it must be coming from

somewhere."

Sir Roderick sat down, and Lord Douglass rose. "Your majesty, I would say that

if adventures are contemplated overseas, and if this should coincide with a rise

in the price of bread, the introduction of new taxes and duties, and an outburst

of Leveler ranting, I should not like to face the consequences without the

continental reserves at Fort Victoria ready to entrain for either coast, not to

mention securing the loyalty of the local regiments in each parliamentary

district."

"Well, then." The king frowned, his forehead wrinkling as if to withstand

another fit of sneezing: "We shall have to see to such measures, shall we not?"

He leaned forward in his chair. "But I want to hear more on this matter of where

the homegrown thorns in our crown are obtaining their finances. It seems to me

that if we can snip this odious weed in the bud, as it were, and demonstrate to

the satisfaction of our peers the meddling of the dauphin at work in our garden,

then it will certainly serve our purposes. Lord Douglass?"

"By all means, your majesty." The prime minister glanced at his minister for

special affairs. "Sir Roderick, if you please, can you see to it?"

"Of course, my lord." The minister inclined his head toward his monarch. "As

soon as we have something more than rumor and suspicion I will place it before

your majesty."

"Now if we may return to the agenda?" The prime minister suggested.

"Certainly." The king nodded his assent, and Lord Douglass cleared his throat,

to continue with the next point on an afternoon-long agenda. The meeting

continued and m every way beside the sneezing fit it seemed a perfectly normal

session of the Imperial Intelligence Oversight Committee, held before his

imperial Majesty John the Fourth, king of New Britain and dominions, in the

Brunswick Palace on Long Island in the early years of the twenty-first century.

Time would show otherwise ...

On the other side of a flipped coin's fall, in an office two hundred miles away

in space and perhaps two thousand years away from the court of King John in

terms of historical divergence, another meeting was taking place.

"A shoot-out." The duke's tone of voice, normally icily deliberate, rose

slightly as he abandoned his chair and began to pace the confines of his office.

With close-cropped graying hair, and wearing an immaculately tailored dark suit,

he might have been mistaken for an investment banker or a high-class undertaker—

but appearances were very deceptive. The duke, as head of the Clan's security

apparat, was anything but harmless. He paused beneath a pair of steel

broadswords mounted on the wall above a battered circular shield. "In the summer

palace?" His tone hardened. "I find it hard to believe that this was allowed to

happen." He looked up at the swords. "Who was supposed to be in charge of her

guard?"

The duke's secretary—his keeper of secrets—cleared his throat. "Oliver, Baron

Hjorth is of course responsible for the well-being of all beneath his roof. In

accordance with your orders I requested that he see to Lady Helge's security." A

moment's pause to let the implication sink in. "Whether he complied with your

orders bears investigation."

The duke stopped pacing, standing in front of the broad picture windows that

looked out across the valley below the castle. Heavily forested and seemingly

empty of human habitation, the river valley ran all the way to the coast,

marking the northern border of the sprawling kingdom of Grainmarkt from the

Nordmarkt neighbors to the north. "And the lady Olga?"

"She protests in the strongest terms, my lord." The secretary shrugged slightly,

his face expressionless. "I sent Roland to attend to her personally, to ensure

she is adequately protected. For what it's worth, there were no identifying

marks on the bodies. No tattoos, no indications of who they were. Not Clan. But

they had weapons and equipment from the other side and I am—startled—that Lady

Olga, even with help from our runaway, survived the incident."

"Our runaway is my niece, Matthias," the duke reminded his secretary. "A rather

extraordinary woman." His expression hardened. "I want tissue samples,

photographs, anything you can come up with. For the hit squad. Get them

processed on the other side, run them across the FBI most-wanted database, pull

whatever strings you can find, but I want to know who they were and who they

thought they were working for. And how they got there. The palace was supposed

to be securely doppelgangered. Why wasn't it?"

"Ah. I have already looked into that." Matthias waited.

"Well then?" The duke clenched his hands.

"About three years ago, Baroness Hildegarde ordered our agents on the other

side—via the usual shell company—to let out-one side of the doppelganger

facility to a secondary Clan-owned shipping company she was setting up. It was

all aboveboard and conducted in public at Beltaigne, approved in full committee,

but the shipping company moved away a year later to more suitable purpose-built

facilities, and they in turn sub-let the premises. It was walled off from the

original bonded store and converted into short-lease storage, leaving it wide

open. Purely coincidentally, it covered the New Tower, and parts of the west

wing of the palace were left undoppelgangered. Helge wouldn't have known enough

to recognize this as unusual, but it left most of her suite wide open to attack

by world-walkers from the other side."

"And where was Oliver, Baron Hjorth while this was going on?" the duke asked,

deceptively mildly. A failure to doppelganger the palace correctly—to ensure

that it was

physically collated with secure territory in the other universe to which the

world-walking and occasionally squabbling members of the Clan had access—was not

a trivial oversight, not after the blood feud or civil war that had killed three

out of every four members of the six families only a handful of decades ago.

"He was worrying about roofing costs, I imagine." Matthias shrugged again,

almost imperceptibly. "If he even knew about it. After all, what does security

matter if the building caves in?"

"If." The duke frowned. "That slime-weasel Oliver is in Baroness Hildegarde's

pocket, you mark my words. An unfortunate coincidence that they can both deny

responsibility for, and Helge, Miriam as she calls herself, is left facing

assassins? It's almost insultingly convenient She's getting slack—we shall have

to teach her a lesson in manners."

"What are your orders regarding your niece, my lord? Since she appears to have

run away, like her mother before her, she could be found in breach of the

compact—"

"No, no need for that just yet." The duke walked slowly back to his desk, his

expression showing little sign of the stiffness is his joints. "Let her move

freely for now." He lowered himself into his chair and stared at Matthias. "I

expect to hear about her movements by and by. Has she made any attempt to get in

touch?"

"With us? I've heard no messages, my lord." Matthias raised one hand, scratched

an itch alongside his nose. "What do you think she'll do?"

"What do / think?" The duke opened his mouth, as if about to laugh. "She's not a

trained security professional, boy. She might do anything! But she is a trained

investigative journalist, and if she's true to her instincts, she'll start

digging." He began to smile. "I really want to see what she uncovers."

Meanwhile, in a city called Boston in a country called the United States: -

"You know something?" asked Paulette. "When I told you to buy guns and drive

fast I wasn't, like, expecting you to actually do that." She put her coffee cup

down, half-drained. There were dark hollows under her eyes, but apart from that

she was as tidy as ever, not a hair out of place. Which, Miriam reflected, left

her looking a bit like a legal secretary: short, dark, Italianate subtype.

Miriam shook her head. / wish I could keep it together the way she does, she

thought. "You said, and I quote from memory, 'As your attorney I am advising you

to buy guns and drive fast.' Right?" She smiled tiredly at Paulette. Her own

coffee cup was untouched. When she'd arrived at the other woman's house with

Brilliana d'Ost in tow, the release of tension had her throwing up in the

bathroom toilet. Paulette's wisecrack was in poor taste—Miriam had actually

killed a man less than twenty-four hours ago in self-defense, and now things

were starting to look really messy.

"What's an attorney?" asked Brill, sitting up on the sofa, prim and attentive:

nineteen or twenty, blond, and otherworldly in the terrifyingly literal way that

only a Clan member could be.

"Not me, I'm a paralegal. Just in case you'd forgotten, Miriam. I'd have to

study for another two years before I can sit for the bar exams."

"You signed up for the course like I asked? That's good."

"Yeah, well." Paulette put her empty mug down. "Do you want to go through it all

again? Just so I know where I stand?"

"Not really, but..." Miriam glanced at Brill. "Look, here's the high points.

This young lady is Brilliana d'Ost. She's kind of an illegal immigrant, no

papers, no birth certificate, no background. She needs somewhere to stay while

we sort things out back where she comes from. She isn't self-sufficient here—she

met her very first elevator yesterday evening, and her first train this

morning."

Paulette raised an eyebrow. "R-i-i-ght," she drawled. "I think I can see how

this might pose some difficulties."

"I can read and write," Brill volunteered. "And I speak

English. I've seen Dynasty and Rob Roy, too." Brightly: "And The Godfather, that

was the duke's favorite! I've seen that one three times."

"Hmm." Paulette looked her up and down then glanced at Miriam. "This is a kind

of what you see is what you get proposition, is it?"

"Yes," Miriam said. "Oh, and her family wants her back. They might get violent

if they find her, so she needs to be anonymous. All she's got are the clothes on

her back. And then there's this." She passed Paulette a piece of paper. Paulette

glanced at it, then raised her other eyebrow and did a double take.

"This is valid?" She held up the check.

"No strings." Miriam nodded. "At least, as long as Duke Angbard doesn't cut off

the line of credit he gave me. You've got the company paperwork together, ready

to sign? Good. What we do is, we open a company bank account. I pay this into it

and issue myself with shares to the tune of fifty grand. We write you up as an

employee, you sign the contract, I issue you your first paycheck—eight thousand,

covers your first month only—and a signing bonus of another ten thousand. You

then write a check back to the company for that ten thousand, and I issue you

the shares and make you company secretary. Got that?"

"You want me as a director?" Paulette watched her closely. "Are you sure about

that?"

"I trust you," Miriam said simply. "And I need someone on this side of the wall

who's got signing authority and can run things while I'm away. I wasn't kidding

when I told you to set this up, Paulie. It's going to be big."

Paulette stared at the banker's draft for fifty thousand dollars dubiously.

"Blood money."

"Blood is thicker than water," BrilK commented. "Why don't you want to take it?"

Paulette sighed. "Do I tell her?" she asked Miriam.

"Not yet." Miriam looked thoughtful. "But I promised myself a few days back that

anything / start up will be clean. That good enough for you?"

"Yeah." Paulette turned toward the kitchen doorway, then paused. "Brilliana? Is

it okay if I call you Brill?"

"Surely!" The younger woman beamed at her.

"Oh. Well, uh, this is the kitchen. I was going to make some fresh coffee, but I

figure if you're staying here for a while I ought to start by showing you where

things are and how not to—" She glanced at Miriam. "Do they have electricity?"

she asked. Miriam shook her head minutely. "Oh sweet Jesus! Okay, Brill, the

first thing you need to learn about the kitchen is how not to kill yourself.

See, everything works by electricity. That's kind of—"

Miriam picked up a bundle of official papers and a pen, and wandered out into

the front hall. It's going to be okay, she told herself. Paulie 's going to

mother-hen her. Two days and she '11 know how to cross the road safely, use a

flush toilet, and work the washing machine. Two weeks, and if Paulie didn't kill

her, she'd be coming home late from nightclubs with a hangover. If she didn't

just decide that the twenty-first century was too much for her, and hide under

the spare bed. Which, as she'd grown up in a world that hadn't got much past the

late medieval, was a distinct possibility. Wouldn't be a surprise; it's too much

for me at times, Miriam thought, contemplating the stack of forms for declaring

the tax status of a limited liability company in Massachusetts with a sinking

heart.

That evening, after Paulette and Miriam visited the bank to open a business

account and deposit the checks, they holed up around Paulie's kitchen table. A

couple of bottles of red wine and a chicken casserole went a long way toward

putting Brill at her ease. She even managed to get over the jittery fear of

electricity that Paulie had talked into her in the afternoon to the extent of

flipping light switches and fiddling with the heat on the electric stove. "It's

marvelous!" she told Miriam. "No need for coal, it stays just as hot as you want

it, and it doesn't get dirty! What do all the servants do for a living? Do they

just laze around all day?" "Um," said Paulette. One glance told Miriam that she

was

suffering a worse dose of culture shock than the young transportee—her shoulders

were shaking like jelly. "Like, that's the drawback, Brill. Where would you have

the servants sleep, in a house like this?"

"Why, if there were several in the bedchamber you so kindly loaned—oh. I'm to

drudge for my keep?"

"No," Miriam interrupted before Paulette could wind her upany further. "Brill,

ordinary people don't have servants in their homes here."

"Ordinary? But surely this isn't—" Brill's eyes widened.

Paulette nodded at her. "That's me, common as muck!" she said brightly. "Listen,

the way it works in this household is, if you make a mess, you tidy it up

yourself. You saw the dishwasher?" Brill nodded, enthused. "There are other

gadgets. A house this big doesn't need servants. Tomorrow we'll go get you some

more clothes—" She glanced at Miriam for approval."—then do next month's food

shopping, and I'll show you where everything's kept. Uh, Miriam, this is gonna

slow everything up—"

"Doesn't matter." Miriam put her knife and fork down. She was, she decided, not

only over-full but increasingly exhausted. "Take it easy. Brill needs to know

how to function over here because if it all comes together the way I hope, she's

going to be over here regularly on business. She'll be working with you, I

hope." She picked up her wineglass. "Tomorrow I'm going to go call on a

relative. Then I think I've got a serious road trip ahead of me."

"You're going away?" asked Brill, carefully putting her glass down.

"Probably." Miriam nodded. "But not immediately. Look, what I said earlier

holds—you can go home whenever you want to, if it's an emergency. All you have

to do is catch a cab around to the nearest Clan safe house and hammer on the

door. They'll have to take you back. If you tell them I abducted you, they'll

probably believe it—I seem to be the subject of some wild rumors." She smiled

tiredly. "I'll give you the address in the morning, alright?" The smile faded.

"One thing. Don't you dare bug out on Paulie without telling

her first. They don't know about her and they might do something about her if

they learn ... mightn't they?"

Brill swallowed, then nodded. "I understand," she said.

"I'm sure you do." Miriam realized Paulette was watcning her through narrowed

eyes. "Brill has seen me nearly get my sorry ass shot to pieces. She knows the

score."

"Yeah, well. I was meaning to talk to you about that, too." Paulette didn't look

pleased. "What the hell is happening over there?"

"It's a mess." Miriam shook her head. "First, Olga tried to kill me. Luckily she

gave me a chance to talk my way out of it first—someone tried to set me up while

I was visiting you, last time. Then the shit really hit the fan. Last night I

figured out that my accommodation was insecure, the hard way, then parties

unknown tried to rub out Olga and me, both. Multiple parties. There are at least

two factions involved, and I don't have a clue who this new bunch are, which is

why I'm here and brought Brill—she's seen too much."

"A second gang? Jesus, Miriam, you're sucking them up like a Hoover! What's

going on?"

"I wish I knew, believe me." She drained her wineglass. "Hmm. This glass is

defective. Better fix it." Before she could reach for the bottle, Paulette

picked it up and began to pour, her hand shaking slightly. "Had a devil of a

time getting here, I can tell you. Nearly put my back out carrying Brill, then

found some evil son of a bitch had booby-trapped the warehouse. Earlier I phoned

Roland to come tidy up—someone murdered the site watchman—but instead someone

put a bomb in it."

"I told you that smoothie would turn out to be a weasel," Paulette insisted.

"It's him, isn't it?"

"No, I don't think so." Miriam shook her head. "Things are messy, very messy. We

ran into one of Angbard's couriers on the train over, so I gave him a message

that should shake things loose if it's anyone on his staff. And now... well."

She pulled out the two lockets from her left pocket. "Spot the difference."

Paulette's breath hissed out as she leaned forward to study them. "Shit. That

one on the left, the tarnished one—that's yours, isn't it? But the other—"

"Have a cigar. I took it off the first hired gun last night. He won't be needing

it anymore."

"Mind if I? . ¦." Paulette picked the two lockets up and sprang the catch. She

frowned as she stared at the contents, then snapped them closed. "The designs

are different."

"I guessed they would be." Miriam closed her eyes.

Brill stared at the two small silver disks as if they were diamonds or jewels of

incalculable value. Finally she asked, timidly, "How can they be different? All

the Clan ones are the same, aren't they?"

"Who says it's a Clan one?" Miriam scooped them back into her pocket. "Look,

firstly I am going to get a good night's sleep. I suggest you guys do the same

thing. In the morning, I'm going to hire a car. I'd like to be able to go home,

just long enough to retrieve a disk, but—"

"No, don't do that," said Paulette.

Miriam looked at her. "I'm not stupid. I know they're probably watching the

house in case I show up. It's just frustrating." She shrugged.

"It's not that bad," Paulette volunteered pragmatically. "Either they got the

disk the first time they black-bagged you—or they didn't, in which case you know

precisely where it is. Why not leave it there?"

"I guess so," Miriam said tiredly. "Yeah, you're right. It's safe where it is."

She glanced at Brill, who mimed incomprehension Until she was forced to smile.

"Still. Tomorrow I'm going to spend some time in a museum. Then—" She glanced at

Paulette.

"Oh no, you're not going to do that again," Paulie began.

"Oh yes, I am." Miriam grinned humorlessly. "It's the only way to crack the

story wide open." Her eyes went wide. "Shit! I'd completely forgotten! I've got

a feature to file with Steve, for The Heraldl The deadline's got to be real

soon! If I miss it there's no way I'll get thecolumn—"

"Miriam."

"Yes, Paulie?"

"Why are you still bothering about that?"

"I—" Miriam froze for a moment. "I guess I'm still think-

ing of going back to my old life," she said slowly. "It's something to hang

onto."

"Right." Paulette nodded. "Now tell me. How much money is there on that platinum

card?"

Pause. "About one point nine million dollars left."

"Miriam?"

"Yes, Paulie?"

"As your legal advisor I am telling you to shut the fuck up and get a good

night's sleep. You can sort out whether you're going to write the article

tomorrow—but I'd advise you to drop it. Say you've got stomach flu or something.

Then you can take an extra day over your preparations for the journey. Got it?"

"Yes, Paulie."

"And another thing?"

"What's that?"

"Drink your wine and shut your mouth, dear, you look like a fish."

The next day, Miriam pulled out her notebook computer— which was now acquiring a

few scratches—and settled down to pound the keyboard while Paulette took Brill

shopping. It wasn't hard work, and she already knew what she was going to write,

and besides, it saved her having to think too hard about her future. The main

Charles Stross - Merchant princes 02 - The Hidden Family

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