The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross

Author:Charles Stross [Stross, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fiction, SciFi, Fantasy, Alternate History
ISBN: 9780230771734
Goodreads: 17348191
Publisher: Tor
Published: 2013-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

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. 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 Gruinmarkt 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 doppelgängered. 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—via the usual shell company—to let out one side of the doppelgänger facility to a secondary Clan-owned shipping company she was setting up. It was all above board 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 sublet 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 undoppelgängered.

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