The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(30)

“I don’t want to be countess,” Vrenna protested. “And I sure as hell don’t want to be imperial auditor.”

“Relax,” Jamies said. “There will be nothing to audit soon.”

“That’s … not encouraging.”

Jamies smiled at his daughter and looked back to his son. “I sold some holdings recently. It should be enough to get you passage on a ship and get you set up at Hub when you get there.”

“How much is it?” Marce asked.

“About eighty million marks.”

“Good lord!”

“Yes,” agreed Jamies. “I may have lied to that Ghreni Nohamapetan character about my net worth. The point is, Marce, now you have means, motive, and opportunity to leave End. Leave. Do it now. Tell the emperox what we know. If we’re lucky, he may still have time to prepare.”

“Prepare for what?”

“The collapsing empire,” Jamies said. “And the darkness that follows.”





Chapter

5

Kiva Lagos didn’t get a miracle, but as far as she was concerned over the next week she got the next best thing: Sivouren Donher.

“He’s one of our franchisees,” Gazson Magnut said, speaking of the pompous-looking man currently loitering on the floor of the hold the Yes, Sir was operating out of in the imperial station. The franchisee was standing by a stack of haverfruit crates, the fruit inside of which had now come close to peak ripeness. The entire hold was saturated with a heavy floral scent that in the next few days would rapidly descend into rancidity. Magnut and Lagos were in a spare office given over by the station to the hold’s current occupants; they were staring down at the poor bastard.

“Okay,” Kiva said. “So fucking what?”

“He wants to buy passage for himself and his family. On the Yes, Sir.”

“Off of End? To where?”

“He said that he would figure that out later.”

Kiva snorted at this. “It’s not like there’s anywhere in the Interdependency that isn’t already maxed out in population. They haven’t built a new outpost or dug out a new city in decades.”

“I pointed that out to him. He said that would be his problem.”

Kiva looked at the man again. “We’re not running a cruise line here, Gazson.”

“No, ma’am,” Magnut agreed. “But if I may say so, it wouldn’t really do us any harm, either. We’re not running a full crew at this point, and we’re not recruiting as many new crew as I’d like here on End. If nothing else we can put him and his family on custodial detail and make them pay for the privilege.”

“Why are you having trouble hiring?”

Gazson shrugged. “There’s a war on.”

Kiva pointed. “He wants to leave.”

“It’s not the same, ma’am. He wants to leave forever and take his family with him. Everyone who has family here wants to be with them right now. Down on the surface there are huge numbers of people moving away from the open war zones. There’s a refugee crisis down there. Honestly, even if we hadn’t been barred from selling the haverfruit we wouldn’t have sold much anyway. There’s almost no market right now.”

“We still would have had our license fees and profits,” Kiva noted. Then she stopped, looked again at the man in her hold. “What’s this dude’s name again?” she asked Gazson.

“Sivouren Donher.”

“Has he been a good franchisee for us?”

“One of our most successful. It’s one of the reasons why he’s asking. I think he thinks we owe him.”

“Does he,” Kiva said. “Then I guess you better bring him up.”

Gazson nodded and went to retrieve him.

Close up Sivouren Donher was middle-aged, a little puffy, and had a look on his face that twitched between arrogance and anxiety so quickly that Kiva was certain he wasn’t aware his head was doing that. It was a look of someone who until the last few days was pretty sure he could ride out whatever nonsense this rebellion was about, and then suddenly realized he couldn’t.

“Lady Kiva,” Donher said, bowing. He looked at the seat Gazson Magnut had recently vacated in order to retrieve him. He clearly expected that he would be offered a seat, this meeting being between equals and all.

“You want off End,” Kiva said, not offering the seat. Magnut, who stood in the corner of the room, also not taking the seat, raised his eyebrows ever so slightly at the intentional breach of courtesy.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kiva nodded in the direction of Magnut. “Gazson here tells me that you’re one of our most successful franchisees.”

Donher smiled and nodded. “I have done well for your family, Lady Kiva.”

“Define ‘well’ for me.”

“For this current payment period, House of Lagos received four million marks from my companies. Uh, will receive, once the current unpleasantness you are having with the Duke of End is resolved.”

“Four million marks,” Kiva said. “That’s not bad. That’s not bad at all.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“So why the fuck would I want to mess with that?”