The Merchants' War Read Free

the darkness. It helped that she'd just stepped over, across a gap thinner than an atom-or greater than 101028 meters, depending how you measured it-from a lawn outside a burning palace, the night punctuated by the roar of cannon and the staccato cracking of the guards' pistols. Three of them, she realized, a sick tension in the pit of her stomach, one of them's on the ground, crouching, or...?
    The standing figure came closer and she saw that he was skinny and short, not much more than a boy, bow-legged, his clothing ragged. At five foot six Miriam didn't think of herself as tall, but she could almost look down on the top of his head. Unfortunately this also gave her a good view of the knife clutched in his right hand.
    Desperation and a silvery edge of suppressed rage broke her paralysis. "Fuck off!" She stepped forward, away from the wall, hands balling into fists in her black velvet gloves. "Right, that's it. I've had enough!"
    The evening had started badly. She was already under house arrest in Niejwein, with a suspended sentence of death hanging over her head, and Miriam's great-uncle had casually informed her that she was to be married off to the king's youngest son-damaged goods, braindamaged goods at that-and the betrothal would be announced that evening. Then, at the very court reception where she was due to be bought and sold like a prize heifer, something had gone so very badly off the rails that she still could barely believe it. There'd been blood flowing in rivers on the marble-floored corridors, brutal figures moving through the palace with guns in their hands: and she'd cut and run, only to find herself here: facing a back-alley mugging or worse on the streets of New London, shadowy ragmen lurching out of the muck and stench to menace her with their demands-
    The man with the knife looked surprised for a moment. Then he darted forward, as if to punch her. Miriam felt a light blow across her ribs as he danced back. "Oof!" He was skinny, and short, and she outreached him, and his face was a frozen picture of surprise as she grabbed his arm, yanked him closer, stomped down on his fool, and then jerked her knee up inside his thigh. Just like teacher said, she thought, remembering the self-defense class she'd taken-what, two years? three years?-ago. Her assailant made a short, whimpering gasp, then dropped like a log, rolling on the ground in pain. Miriam looked past him, hunting for his friends.
    The one standing behind him took one look at her as if he'd seen a ghost, then turned tail and fled. "Doan' leave me!" wailed the third in a thick accent, waving spidery arms at the ground: there was a rattling noise. Miriam stared. He's got no legs, she realized as he pawed at the ground with hands like oars, scooting away on a crude cart. Why did the other one run -she put a hand to her chest. There was a rip in her stolen coat. That's funny. She frowned, stuck a finger through the hole, and felt the matching rip in the outer fabric of her dress where the knife had slid across the boned front. "Damn!" She looked down. The little guy with the knife lay at her feet, twitching and gasping for breath. The knife lay beside him in the gutter: the blade was about three inches long and wickedly sharp. "You little shit!" She hauled up her skirts and kicked him in the ribs with all her might. Then she knelt down and took the knife.
    The red haze of fury began to clear. She looked at the moaning figure on the cobblestones and shuddered, then stepped round him and quickly walked to the end of the alleyway. Cold sweat slicked her spine, and her heart pounded so hard it seemed about to burst. I could have been killed, she thought dizzily, tugging her coat into place with jerky motions, her hands shaking with the adrenaline aftershock. It wasn't the first time, but it never failed to horrify her afterwards. She moved unconsciously towards the street lights, panicky-tense and alert for any sign that knife-boy's friends had stopped