The Merchant’s War

Miriam had given him the pills, three months ago, last time she'd visited. He'd barely dared believe her promises, but they seemed to be working. It was almost enough to shake his belief in the innate hostility of the universe. People caught the white death and they died coughing up their lungs in a bloody foam, and that was it. It happened less often these days, but it was still a terror that stalked the camps north of the Great Lakes-and there was no easy cure. Certainly nothing as simple as taking two tablets every morning for six months! And yet... I wonder where she is? Erasmus pondered, not for the first time: probably busying herself trying to make another world a better place.

The water was close to boiling. He spooned loose tea into the brewing chamber then wandered over to the window, squinting against the smog-diffused daylight in hope of glimpsing one of the neighborhood clock towers. He'd have to wind and reset the alarm once he'd worked out by how long it had betrayed him. Still, nobody had jangled the bell-pull tied to the shop door handle while he was sleeping like a log. Business had boomed over the springtime and early summer, but things had fallen ominously quiet lately-nobody seemed to have the money to buy their possessions back out of hock, and indeed, nobody seemed to be buying much of anything. Even the local takers were slacking off on enforcing the vagrancy laws. Things seemed alright in the capital whenever his other business took him there to visit- the rich man's cup spilleth over; the poor man gets to suck greedily on the hem of the tablecloth -and the munitions factories were humming murderously along, but wages were being cut left and center as the fiscal crisis deepened and (he banks called in their loans and the military buildup continued.

Finally the water began hissing and burbling up into the brewing chamber. Erasmus gave up on staring out the window and went in search of his favorite mug. A vague memory of having left it in the lounge drew him into the passage, between the bookcases stacked above head-height with tracts and treatises and rants, and as he passed the staircase he picked up the letter and carried it along. The mug he found sitting empty on top of a pyramid of anlinomianist-utilitarian propaganda tracts and a tottering pile of sheet music.

Back in the kitchen, he spooned rough sugar into the mug. The samovar was still hissing like a bad-natured old cat, so he slit open the electrograph's seal while he was waiting for it to finish brewing. The letter within had been cast off a Post Office embosser, but the words had been composed elsewhere. YOUR SISTER IN GOOD HANDS DURING CONFINEMENT STOP MIDWIFE OPTIMISTIC STOP WHY NOT VISIT STOP BISHOP ENDS.

His eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the slip of paper, his morning tea quite forgotten. Nobody in the movement would entrust overtly coded messages to the government's postal service; the trick was to use electrographs for signaling and the movement's own machinery for substantive communications. But this wasn't a prearranged signal, which made it odd. He'd had a sister once, but she'd died when he was six years old: what this was telling him was that Lady Bishop wanted him to visit her in New London. He stared at it some more. It didn't contain her double cross marker-if she'd signed her first name to a signal it would mean I've been captured- and it did contain her negative marker-if a message contained an odd number of words that meant I am at liberty. But it wasn't a scheduled meeting: however he racked his brains he couldn't think of anything that might warrant such an urgent summons, or the disruption to his other duties.

Does this mean we have a breach? He put the treacherous message down on the kitchen table and turned off the gas, then poured boiling hot tea into his mug. If Margaret's been taken, it's a catastrophe. And if she hasn't -gears spun inside his mind, grinding through the long list of possibilities. Whatever the message meant, he needed to be on a train to the capital as soon as possible.