The Merchant’s War полностью

"Yes." She nodded. "I've been thinking about it. Even if, if , I wanted to go back, I'd have to approach it really carefully. A random pickup could be disastrous. I need to get in touch with them or they'll think I've gone over the wall, and that's-I don't want to spend the rest of my life hiding from assassins. But I've got to get in touch with the right people there, see if I can cut some kind of deal. I've got information they need, so I might be able to work something out-but I don't trust that slimy shit Morgan who they put in charge of the Boston office."

Erasmus shrugged. "But they've lost us, haven't they? They can't possibly overtake us before-"

"You're wrong. They've got two-way radios better than anything the Royal Post can build. If it is Clan security, they'll have us in the Gruinmarkt before we get off the platform."

Erasmus nodded thoughtfully. "Then we won't be on this train when it arrives, will we?" He reached into his valise and pulled out a dog-eared gazetteer. "Let's sec. If we get off at Hartford, the next stopping train is forty-two minutes behind us. If we catch that one, we can get off at Framingham and take the milk train into Cambridge, then hail a cab. We'll be a couple of hours later getting home, but if we do our business fast we can make the express, and we won't be going through the city station. You know about the back route into the cellar. Do you think your stalkers know about it?"

Miriam blotted at her forehead. "Olga would. But she's not who I'm worried about. You're right, if we do it your way, we can probably get around them." She managed a strained smile. "I really don't need this. I don't like being chased."

"It won't be for long. Once we're on the transcontinental, there's no way they'll be able to trace us."

The shadows were lengthening and deepening, and the omnipresent creaking of cicadas provided an alien chorus as Huw sat in the folding chair on the back stoop, waiting for Hulius. Elena had installed her boom box in the kitchen, and it was pumping out plastic girl-band pop from the window ledge. But she'd gone upstairs to powder her nose, leaving Huw alone with the anxiety gnawing at his guts like a family of hungry rats. For the first hour or so he'd tried working on the laptop, chewing away at the report on research methodologies he was writing for his grace, but it was hard to concentrate while he couldn't stop imagining Yul out there in the chilly twilit pine forest, alone and in every imaginable permutation of jeopardy. You put him there, Huw's conscience kept reminding him: You ought to be there instead.

Well yes, he'd tell his conscience-which he liked to imagine was a loosely knit sock-puppet in grime-stained violet yarn, with webcams for eyes- hut you know what would happen. I don't have Yul's training. And Yul doesn't have the background to run this project if anything happened to me. It sounded weak to his ears, even though it was true. He'd known Yul back when he'd been a tow-headed blond streak of mischief, running wild through the forest back of Osthalle keep with a child's bow and a belt of rabbit scalps to show for it-and Huw had been a skinny, sickly, bookish boy, looked down on pityingly by his father and his hale, hunting-obsessed armsmen. The duke's visit changed all that, even though the intensive English tuition and the bewildering shift to a boarding school in the United States hadn't felt like much of an improvement at the time. It wasn't until years later, when he returned to his father's keep and went riding with Yul again, that he understood. Yul was a woodland creature, not in an elfin or fey sense, but like a wild boar: strong, dangerous, and shrewd within the limits of his vision. But not a dreamer or a thinker.

Yul had gone to school, too, and there'd even been talk of his enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps for a while-the duke's security apparatus had more than a little use for graduates of that particular finishing school-but in the end it came to naught. While Huw had been sweating over books or a hot soldering iron, Hulius had enlisted in Clan security, with time off to serve his corvee duty with the postal service. And now, by a strange turnaround of fate that Huw still didn't quite understand, he was sitting with a first-aid kit on the back stoop of a rented house at twilight, worrying his guts out about his kid brother, the tow-headed streak who'd grown up to be a bear of a man.