“It can wait.” Olga reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a pistol, held it out to Miriam. “I brought this along, by the way. Lady Brilliana is waiting on the other side.”
“She is, is she?” Miriam pulled a mirthless smile. “Good. Did she bring that cannon of hers?”
“Yes.” Olga nodded.
“You’d better put that away,” Miriam warned. “People don’t go armed here, except the police. You don’t want to attract attention.”
“Yes. I noticed that in your world, as well.” Olga found an inner pocket in her coat and slid the gun into it carefully. “Who’s to defend you?”
“The thief-takers and constables, in theory. Ordinary thief-takers are mostly safe, but the police constabulary are somewhat different here—their job is to defend the state against its own subjects.” Miriam picked up the dense velvet bag with both hands and carried it to the doorway, glanced either way, then ducked through into the next room.
“This is your bedroom?” asked Olga.
“Yes.” Miriam grunted. “Here, help me move the bed.” There was a loose panel in the skirting board behind the bed. Miriam worried it loose, to reveal a small safe which she unlocked. The bag of bullion was a tight fit because the safe was already nearly full, but she worked it closed eventually and put the wooden slat back before shoving the bed up against it. “That’s about ten thousand pounds,” Miriam commented—“enough to buy this house nine times over.”
Olga whistled appreciatively. “You’re doing it in style.”
“Yeah, well, as soon as I can liquidate it, I’m going to invest it.” Miriam shrugged. “You’re sure Brill is alright?” she asked.
“Brilliana is fine,” Olga said dismissively. “I don’t believe you have anything to worry about on her part.”
“I don’t believe she’s a threat.” Miriam shook her head. “A snoop planted by Angbard is another matter.”
“Hmm.” Olga looked skeptical. “I see.”
“Give me ten minutes? I need to get decent.”
“Certainly.” Olga retreated to the bathroom—opposite the guestroom—to play with the exotic fixtures. They weren’t as efficient as those in Miriam’s office or Fort Lofstrom, but they’d do.
Miriam met her on the landing, dressed for a walk in public and wearing a ridiculous-looking bonnet. “Let’s head to the tram stop,” she suggested. “I’ll take you by the office and introduce you to people. Then there’s a friend I want you to meet.”
Miriam couldn’t help but notice the way Olga kept turning her head like a yokel out in the big city for the first time. “Not like Boston, is it?” she said, as the tram whined around the corner of Broad Street and narrowly avoided a costermonger’s cart with a screech of brakes and an exchange of curses.
“It’s—” Olga took a deep breath: “smellier,” she declared. She glanced around. “Smaller. More people out and about. Colder. Everyone wears heavier clothing, like home, but well cut, machine-made. Dark fabrics.”
“Yes,” Miriam agreed. “Clothing here costs much more than in world two because the whole industrial mass-production thing hasn’t taken off. People wear hand-me-downs, insist on thicker, darker fabrics that wear harder, and fashion changes much more slowly. It used to be like that back home; in 1900 a pair of trousers would have cost me about four hundred bucks in 2000 money, but clothing factories were already changing that. One of the things on my to-do list is introducing new types of cloth-handling machines and new types of fabric. Once I’ve got a toe-hold chiseled out. But don’t assume this place is wholly primitive—it isn’t. I got some nasty surprises when I arrived.”
Something caught her eye. “Look.” She pointed up into the air, where a distant lozenge shape bearing post from exotic Europe was maneuvering toward an airfield on the far side of town.
“Wow. That must be huge! Why don’t your people have such things?”
Miriam pulled a wry face. “We tried them, long ago. They’re slow and they don’t carry much, but what really killed them was politics. Over here they’ve developed them properly—if you want to compare airships here with airships back home, they’ve got the U.S. beat hands-down. They sure look impressive, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
Miriam stood up and pulled on the bell cord, and the tram slid to a halt.
“Come on,” she urged. They stepped off the platform into shallow slush outside a street of warehouses with a few people bustling back and forth.
“This way.”
Olga followed Miriam—who waited for her to catch up—toward an open doorway. Miriam entered, and promptly turned right into a second doorway. “Behold, the office,” Miriam said. “Declan? This is Miss Hjorth. Olga, meet Declan McHugh.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Declan was a pale-faced draftsman somewhere in his late twenties, his face spotted badly by acne. He regarded Olga gravely from beside his board: Olga smiled prettily and batted her eyelashes, hamming it up. Behind Declan two other youths kept focused on their blueprints. “Will you be in later, ma’am?” he asked Miriam. “Had a call from O’Reilly’s works regarding the wood cement.”
“I’ll be in tomorrow,” Miriam replied thoughtfully. “I’m showing Olga around because she will be in and out over the next few months. She’s carrying documents for me and talking to people I need to see on my behalf. Is that clear?”
“Er, yes.” Declan bobbed his head. “You’ll be wanting the shoe-grip blueprints tomorrow?”
“Yes. If you could run off two copies and see that one gets to Mr. Soames, that would be good. We’ll need the first castings by Friday.”
“I will do that.” He turned back to his drawing board and Miriam withdrew.
“That,” she explained quietly, “is the office. There is the lab, where Roger and Martin work: They’re the chemistry team. Around that corner is going to be the metal shop. Soames and Oswald are putting it together right now, and the carpenter’s busy on the kitchen. But it’ll be a while before everything is in shape. The floor above us is still half derelict, and I’m going to convert a couple of rooms into paper storage and more drafting offices before we move the office work to new premises. Currently I’ve got eight men working here full-time. We’d better introduce you to all of them.”
She guided Olga into a variety of rooms, rooms full of furnaces, rows of glass jars, a lathe and drill press, gas burners. Men in suits, men in shirts and vests, red-faced or pale, whiskered or clean-shaven: men who stood when she entered, men who deferred to Miriam as if she was royalty or management or something of both.
Olga shook her head as they came out of the building. “I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said quietly. “You’ve done it. All of them, followers, all doing your bidding respectfully. How did you manage it?”
Miriam’s cheek twitched. “Money,” she murmured. “And being right, but mostly it was the money. As long as I can keep the money coming and seem to know what I’m talking about, they’re mine. I say, cab! Cab!” She waved an arm up and down and a cabbie reined his nag in and pulled over.
“Greek Street, if you please,” Miriam said, settling into the cab beside Olga.
Olga glanced at her, amused. “I remember the first time you met a carriage,” she said.
“So do I.” Miriam pulled a face. “These have a better suspension. And there are trains for long journeys, and steam cars if you can afford the expense and put up with the unreliability and noise.”
The cab dropped them off at Greek Street, busy with shoppers at this time of day. Miriam pulled her bonnet down on her head, hiding her hair. “Come on, my dear,” she said, in a higher voice than normal, tucking Olga’s hand under her arm. “Oh, cab! Cab, I say!” A second cab swooped in and picked them up. “To Holmes Alley, if you please.”