The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) Read Online Free

titanium, and other stuff. We’re still trying to figure out the other stuff, but it’s a whole different ball
game. The building we found looked like it had been struck from above by some kind of directed energy weapon – ’
    ‘Some kind of – ’ Miriam stopped. On the opposite side of the clearing, the young blond woman who’d come with Huw was kneeling, her weapon trained on something invisible
through the trees.
    Brill was already moving. ‘Get ready to go.’
    ‘But it’s too early.’
    ‘What’s Elena spotted?’ Huw rose to his feet. The big guy at the far side of the clearing – the one Huw had called ‘bro’ – was crouching behind the
blonde, his shotgun raised: A moment later she turned and scrambled towards them, staying low.
    ‘Riders,’ she said quietly, addressing Brill. ‘At least three, maybe more. They’re trying to stay quiet. Milady, we await your instructions.’
    ‘I think’ – Brill’s eyes narrowed – ‘we’d better cross over. Right now. Huw, can you carry her grace?’
    ‘I think so.’ Huw knelt down. ‘Miriam, if you could climb on my shoulders?’
    Miriam swallowed. ‘Is this necessary? It’s too early – ’
    Brill cut her off. ‘It is necessary to move as fast as possible, unless you want another shoot-out. I generally try to limit them to no more than one before lunch on any given day. Huw,
get her across. We’ll be along momentarily.’
    Miriam stood up, wrapped her arms around Huw’s shoulders, and tried to haul her legs up. Huw rose into a half-crouch. She strained to clamp her knees around his waist. ‘Are you all
right?’ she asked anxiously.
    ‘Just a second,’ he gasped. ‘All right. Three. Two.’ Something flickered in the palm of his hand, just in the corner of her vision: a fiery knot that tried to turn her
eyes and her stomach inside out. ‘One.’
    The world around them flickered and Huw collapsed under her, dry-retching. Miriam fell sideways, landing heavily on one hip.
    They were in scrubland, and alone. Someone’s untended back lot, by the look of it: a few stunted trees straggling across a nearby hillside like hairs across a balding man’s pate, a
fence meandering drunkenly to one side. A windowless barn that had clearly seen better days slumped nearby.
    Miriam rose to her feet and dusted herself off. Her traveling clothes, unremarkable in New Britain, would look distinctly odd to American eyes: a dark woolen coat of unusual cut over the mutant
offspring of a shalwar kameez. It was a disguise that had outlived its usefulness, along with her temporarily blond, permed hair. ‘Where are you parked?’ she asked Huw as his retching
subsided.
    ‘Front of. Barn.’ He staggered to a crouch. ‘Need. Painkillers . . .’
    Something moved in the corner of her sight. Miriam’s head whipped round as she thrust a hand in her coat pocket, reaching for the small pistol Erasmus had given her before she recognized
Elena. A few seconds later Huw’s brother Hulius popped into view, followed almost immediately by Brilliana. ‘Come on, people!’ Brill sounded more annoyed than nauseous.
‘Cover! Check!’
    ‘Check,’ Huw echoed. ‘I think we’re still alone.’
    ‘Check!’ trilled Elena. ‘Did they see you, Yul? Ooh, you don’t look so good!’
    ‘
Guuuh
. . . Check. I don’t think so. Going. Be sick.’
    Brill clapped her hands. ‘Let’s get
going
, people.’ She was almost tapping her feet with impatience. ‘We’ve got a safe house to get to. You can throw up all
you like once we report in, but first we’ve got a job to do.’ She nodded at Miriam. ‘After you, milady.’
    *
    In a soot-stained industrial city nestling in the Appalachians, beneath a sky stained amber by the fires of half a million coal-burning stoves, there was a noble house defended
by the illusion of poverty.
    The Lee family and their clients did not like to draw attention to themselves. The long habit of secrecy was deeply ingrained in their