The Trade of Queens Read Free Page B

ago; it would be gauche. “Marry her off and give her some children to keep her busy. Or, if she won’t back off, a childbed accident. Hmm, come to think of it, I know a possible husband.”
    Well, that hadn’t worked out for the best, either. Griben snorted again, angry and disquieted. He’d seen what the Pervert’s army had left of the pretty little country house he’d bought, kicked the blood and ashes of Oest Hjalmar from his heels for a final time after he’d made the surviving peasants build a cairn from the ruins. He’d done his bit for Henryk, insuring the rebellious cow got knocked up on schedule for the handfasting after she stuck her nose in one too many corners where it didn’t belong; how was he to know the Pervert would respond by committing regicide, fratricide, patricide, homicide, and generally going apeshit?
    But after that, things went even more askew. Somehow Angbard’s minions had conspired to put her on the fucking throne , the throne!—of all places—with a Praetorian guard of hardline progressivist thugs. And she knew . She’d dug and dug until she’d turned up the breeding program, figured out what it was for—almost as if she’d been pointed at it by someone. Figured out that Angbard had asked him to set up the liaison with the clinic, no doubt. Figured out that what was going on was a power struggle between the old bitches who arranged the marriage braids and the macho phalangist order of the Clan Security organization. Figured out that he was the fixer, the enabler, the Clan’s own medic and expert in reproductive technology who had given Angbard the idea, back when he was a young and foolish intern who didn’t know any better.…
    His idea. The power of it still filled his age-tempered heart with bitter awe: The power to raise an army of world-walkers, to breed them and train them to obedience could have made him the most powerful man in the six—now unhappily seven—families. If he’d waited longer, realized that he stood on the threshold of his own success, he’d never have sought Angbard’s patronage, much less learned to his dismay how thoroughly that put him under the thin white duke’s thumb.
    Stolen. Well he had, by god—by the Anglischprache’s dead god on a stick, or by Lightning Child, or whichever thrice-damned god really mattered (and who could tell)—he had stolen it back again. The bitch-queen Helge might have it in for him, and her thugs wouldn’t hesitate with the hot knives if they ever discovered his role in Hildegarde’s little gambit—but that was irrelevant now. He had the list. And he had a copy of the lost, hidden family’s knotwork emblem, a passport for travel to New Britain. And lastly, he had a piece of paper with a name and address on it.
    James Lee had done his job well, during his exile among the Clan.
    Finally satisfied with his appearance, Dr. ven Hjalmar walked to the door and opened it an inch. “I’m ready to go,” he said quietly.
    Of the two stout, silent types standing guard, one remained impassive. The other ducked his head, obsequious—or perhaps merely polite in this society; Griben was no judge of strange mores—and shuffled hastily towards the end of the corridor.
    The doctor retreated back to his room to wait. These were dangerous times, to be sure, and he had nearly fallen foul of muggers on his way here as it was; the distinction between prison guard and bodyguard might be drawn arbitrarily fine. In any case, the Lees had done him the courtesy of placing him in a ground-floor room with a window overlooking a walled garden; unless Clan Security was asleep at the switch and the Lees had been allowed to set up doppelganger installations, he was free to leave should he so choose. Of course, that might simply be yet another of their tests.…
    There was a knock; then the door opened. “Good afternoon,