“You can.” The thought of Erasmus moving out, moving away, disturbed her unaccountably. As he rummaged around the sideboard, she sat down again. “A sherry would be nice. But I didn’t rattle your cage just for a drink.”
“I didn’t imagine you would.” He found a bottle, splashed generous measures into two mismatched wineglasses, and brought one over to her. He seemed to be in high spirits, or at least energized. “Your health?” He sat down beside her and she raised her glass to bump against his. “Now, what motivated you to bring me to town?”
They were sitting knee-to-knee. It was distracting. “I had a visitor yesterday,” she said carefully. “One of the, the other family. The Lees. He had some disturbing news that I thought you needed to know about.”
“Could you have wired it?” He smiled to take the sting out of the question.
“I don’t think so. Um. Do you know a Commissioner Reynolds? In Internal Security?” Nothing in his facial expression changed, but the set of his shoulders told her all she needed to know. “James Lee came to me because, uh, he’s very concerned that his uncle, the Lee family’s elder, is cutting a deal with Reynolds.”
Now Burgeson’s expression changed: He was visibly struggling for calm. He placed a hand on her knee. “Please, do carry on.”
Miriam tried to gather her thoughts, scattered by the unexpected contact. “The Lees have had a defector, a renegade from our people. One with a price on his head, Dr. ven Hjalmar. Ven Hjalmar has stolen a list of—look, this is going to take a long time to explain, just take it from me, it’s bad. If the Lees can get the breeding program database out of him, they can potentially give Reynolds a couple of thousand young world-walkers within the next twenty years. There are only about a hundred of them right now. I don’t like the sound of Reynolds, he’s the successor to the old Polis, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Burgeson took a deep breath. “It’s a very good thing you didn’t wire me. Damn.” He took another breath, visibly rattled. “How much do the Lees know? About your people?”
“Too much for comfort.” Despite the summer humidity, Miriam shivered. “More to the point, ven Hjalmar is a murderous bastard who picked the losing side in an internal fight. I told you about what happened to, to me before I escaped—”
“He’s the doctor you mentioned. Yes?” She felt him go tense.
“Yes.”
“Well, that tells me all I need to know just now. You say he’s met Stephen Reynolds?”
“That’s what James Lee says. Listen, I’m not a reliable source; I don’t usually bear grudges but if I run into the doctor again … and then there’s the question of whether James was telling the—”
“Did he have any obvious reason to lie to you?” Burgeson looked her in the eye. “Or to betray confidences?”
Miriam took a sip from her glass. Now Erasmus knew, she felt unaccountably free. “I met him while I was being held prisoner. He was a hostage against his parents’ behavior after the truce—yes, that’s how the noble families in the Gruinmarkt do business. He helped me get away. I think he’s hoping I can save his people from what he sees as a big mistake.”
“Yes, well.” He took his hand away: She felt a momentary flash of disappointment. “I’m sorry. He was right to be afraid. Reynolds is not someone I would want to put any great faith in. Do you know what the Lee elders have in mind?”
“Spying. People who can vanish from one place and reappear in another.” Miriam shrugged. “They don’t have access to the United States, at least not yet, not without the doctor—they don’t have the technology transfer capability I can give you, and they don’t have the numbers yet. But they do have a track record as invisible assassins.” She shivered and put the glass down on the floor. “How afraid should I be?”
“Very.” He took her hand as she straightened up, leaning close; his expression was foreboding. “He’s having me followed, you know.”
“What, he—”
“Listen.” He leaned closer, pitching his voice low: “I’ve met men like Reynolds before. As long as he thinks I’m in town to see my mistress he’ll be happy—he thinks he’s got a hand on my neck. But you’re right, he’s dangerous, he’s an empire-builder. He’s got a power base in Justice and Prisons and he’s purging his own department and, hmm, the books you lent me—made me think of Felix Dzerzhinsky or Heinrich, um, Hitler? Himmler. Expert bureaucrats who build machineries of terror inside a revolutionary movement. But he doesn’t have absolute power yet. He may not even have realized how much power he has at his fingertips. Sir Adam doesn’t realize, either—but I’m in a position to tell him. Reynolds isn’t invulnerable but he is dangerous, and you have just given me a huge problem, because he is already watching me.”
“You think he’s going to use me as a lever against you?”
“It’s gone too far for that, I’m afraid. If he knows about your relatives and knows about our arrangement, he will see me as a direct threat. He’ll have to move fast, within the next hours or days. Your household is almost certainly under surveillance as an anomaly, possibly suspected of being a group of monarchists. Damn.” He looked at her. “I really should inform Sir Adam immediately—if Stephen has acquired a secret cell of world-walking assassins, he needs to know. I wouldn’t put a coup attempt beyond him. Normally we should stay here for two or three hours at least, as if we were having a liaison. If I leave too soon, that would cause alarm. But if he’s moving against your people right now—”
“Wait.” Miriam took his arm. “You’re forgetting we have radios.…”
* * *
The morning had dawned bright with a thin cloudy overcast, humid and warm with a threat of summer evening storms to follow. Brilliana, her morning check on the security points complete, placed the go-bag she’d prepared for Helge on the table in the front guard room; then she went in search of Huw.
She found him in one of the garden sheds behind a row of tomato vines, wiring up a row of instruments on a rough-topped table from which the plant pots had only just been removed. He didn’t notice her at first, and she stood in the doorway for a minute, watching his hands, content. “Good morning,” she said eventually.
He looked up then, smiling luminously. “My lady. What can I do for you?”
She looked at the row of electronics. “It’s a nice day for a walk into town. Will your equipment suffer if you leave it for a few hours?”
Obviously conflicted, Huw glanced at his makeshift workbench, then back at her. “I suppose—” He shook his head. Then he smiled again. “Yeah, I can leave it for a while.” He rummaged in one of the equipment boxes by the foot of the table, then pulled a plastic sheet out and began to unfold it. “If you wouldn’t mind taking that corner?”
They covered the electronics—Brilliana was fairly certain she recognized a regulated power supply and a radio transceiver—and weighted the sheet down with potsherds in case of rain and a leaky roof. Then Huw wiped his hands on a swatch of toweling. “This isn’t a casual stroll, is it?” he asked quietly.
“No, but it needs to look like one.” She eyed him up, evidently disapproving of his choice of jeans and a college sweatshirt. “You’ll need to get changed first. Background story: You’re a coachman, I’m a lady’s maid, and we’re on a morning off work. He’s courting her and she’s agreed to see the sights with him. I’ll meet you by the trades’ door in twenty minutes.”
“Are you expecting trouble?” He looked at her sharply.