The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(16)

“Until you screwed me.”

“I’d think you’d be used to that by now.”

Kiva snorted at this. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that, Ghreni. ‘We went to school together,’ my ass.”

“It was much more politic than how you would have put it. ‘I fucked his brains out whenever he went to visit his sister in her dormitory at university.’”

“I wouldn’t have said it like that,” Kiva said. “I was told not to swear. How is your asshole sister, anyway?”

“Not happy. She was going to be crown princess of the empire, but then Rennered Wu lost his head in a racing accident.”

“A real tragedy for her.”

“She thinks so. It was bad for Rennered as well, of course. I understand the emperox’s bastard daughter is now the heir. So my brother will take a run at her, I imagine.”

“There’s the Nohamapetan family I remember. Full of romantics.”

“You didn’t complain, once.”

Kiva stopped and looked at Ghreni, who also stopped. “Well, once I was a fucking idiot. Now I’m not.”

“That would be a first for a Lagos, then,” Ghreni said.

“What scam do you have running on this dipshit duke?”

“One, his name is Ferd, and not ‘dipshit.’ Two, I’m offended you think I’m running a scam on him.”

“You got him to shake off a multimillion-mark bribe.”

“See, I told you it was a bribe. I was right.”

“No one passes up that much unless they’ve got something better on offer.”

“I can’t possibly speak to that, Kiva. Certainly not to you.”

“Come on, Ghreni. This isn’t about the virus. And we’re on fucking End. It’s going to take me nine months to get back to Hub and another three from there to Ikoyi. Anything you tell me now is going to be dead news then.”

Ghreni looked around, and then started walking again. Kiva caught up. “Tell me. Tell me what you have planned for End.”

“Your first error, Kiva, is assuming that anything I’m doing here has to do with just this planet.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I know you don’t. I didn’t intend for you to.” Ghreni stopped again, and then pointed. “Take this hall. Then the second left, and then the first right after that. You’ll be back to the same lobby you came in from.”

Kiva nodded. “You were never one to go all the way to the end of things, were you, Ghreni?”

“You might be surprised.” He leaned in and gave Kiva a peck on the cheek. “Good-bye, my dear Kiva. I wasn’t ever expecting to see you again, you know. No one important really ever comes to End. And I don’t expect to see you again after this. But I am fond of you, in spite of everything. So I’m glad we got a moment for this.”

“Whatever this is.”

Ghreni smiled. “You’ll have a name for it soon,” he said, and walked off.

*

“Hit me with it,” Kiva said, back on Yes, Sir, with Captain Blinnikka and Gazson Magnut.

“We were supposed to take receipt of roughly sixty million marks’ worth of licensing fees and royalties here on End,” Magnut said. “We’re going to come away with zero, all in escrow, and we probably won’t get it back. We estimated that the haverfruit would generate twenty million marks for the product on hand and another ten million marks in initial license fees and stock sales. We’re coming away with another zero for that. We have another roughly ten million marks in miscellaneous cargo picked up at other stops that we’re not being allowed to unload and sell, so zero for that, too. There’s about a million marks’ worth of cargo being sent to End that we’re acting as shipping for, and that was allowed to be unloaded, but has been placed in quarantine for several weeks in a hold open to the vacuum of space. We’ll be gone when the delivery happens and the fees will be held for the next Lagos ship to arrive. Which is the I Think We’re Alone Now, which will be along in twenty standard months.”

“So, a hundred-million-mark loss,” Kiva said.

“We netted forty million marks on the last three stops, so it’s a net sixty-million-mark loss, more or less. And this is the last stop on the itinerary. Then back to Hub to transfer to Ikoyi.”

Lagos nodded. Using the Flow there were several ways to get to End, but only one way to get back—the Flow stream from End to Hub. Sooner or later, all streams flowed into Hub. But what that meant was there was no other chance to recoup losses between End and Hub.

“I’m open to ideas, here,” Kiva said. “Tomi?”

“The whole point was to introduce haverfruit to End,” the captain said. “Everyone else in the Interdependency is already full up on it. We can harvest what we have—we’re going to have to, at this point—vacuum flash out the water and sell the concentrate at Hub. But your family already has licensees there. They could complain to the imperial trade commission if we came in and undersold them.”

“The captain’s right,” Magnut said. “And even if we matched prices we’d create a glut. We’d pick up a few million marks at most, and piss off the licensees the House of Lagos needs for long-term profits.”