The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(65)

“You want to answer that one?” Nadashe asked Ghreni.

“Because whoever is running End will be in a good position to challenge the emperox for power,” Ghreni said, to his brother. “The whole reason the House of Wu is the imperial house is because they control the space around Hub. You can’t dip a toe into it without paying tolls and tariffs and taxes. If that all shifts to End, one of the emperox’s biggest revenue sources dries up.”

“We marry into the House of Wu to get power now,” Nadashe continued. “We secure End to stay in power when things shift. And if our families hold both Hub and End, we’ll keep the Interdependency from falling apart in a civil war.”

“Which would be bad for business,” Amit concluded. “Everyone’s, including ours.”

Ghreni looked at the monitor again. “You want to risk a lot on a doctoral thesis, sis.”

Nadashe shrugged. “Worse-case scenario, we’re wrong about the shift. The result is you’re Duke of End and I’m the imperial consort.”

“Actually the worst-case scenario is you don’t marry Rennered and Ghreni is arrested for treason, and the shift happens anyway,” Amit pointed out.

“You’re not helping,” Ghreni said, to his brother.

“I’m just making sure we’re clear on what the failure states are,” Amit replied. “I know you two think I’m not as smart as either of you, and you’re right. I’m not. But I’m smart enough to know this plan of yours, Nadashe, has a lot of risk and a more than minor chance of failure. If this is going to work, you’re going to need me to keep feathers unruffled with the house board.”

“Only if we tell them,” Nadashe said.

Amit snorted. “You want to run a planetary coup clandestinely, out of the House of Nohamapetan?”

“Why not? Use local funds. It’s End, we can keep the expenditures off the books for years if we have to. If we’re smart about it, we don’t have to tell the board until after it’s done.”

“Oh, dear,” Amit said, and got up from the chaise. “I actually am going to need a drink for this.” He went to the bar.

“We keep it quiet. Just between us.”

“Even with local funds we won’t be able to keep this quiet,” Ghreni said. “Especially if we are running the rebellion.”

“This is a place where some or another group revolts against the sitting duke a couple of times a decade,” Nadashe pointed out. “You don’t have to run it. You find one that’s already running.”

“And you think the current duke will somehow sit still for this.”

“Depends on whether he figures out you’re involved. If you make yourself useful to him, he might not.”

“Lots of moving parts on this one,” Amit said, from the bar.

“He’s not wrong,” Ghreni agreed. He pointed to the monitor, with the map still open. “And there’s no guarantee your physicist friend isn’t a complete fraud. Why isn’t this actual news, Nadashe? You’d think this would be something people might be concerned about. The fact I’ve never heard of this before suggests to me there’s less here than meets the eye.”

“She came to me with it exclusively,” Nadashe said.

“Why did she do that?”

“She needed money and she thought this would be something she could trade for it. I paid her way through the rest of her doctoral thesis—not on this—and she worked on this for me.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s a friend of mine from university. I told you this already.”

“Does she have a name?”

“Hatide Roynold.”

“Did I meet her?”

Nadashe snorted at this. “No. As difficult as it may be for you to accept this, Ghreni, you didn’t manage to meet and have sex with all of my university friends.”

“This data she has for you isn’t peer reviewed?” Amit asked. His glass was full of shiraz again.

“No. Obviously we didn’t want it leaked. I think she may have at some point tried to correspond with the tax collector whose work she was following up on, but I don’t think anything came of that.”

“So except for a minor imperial bureaucrat who may or may not know anything but clearly doesn’t care, literally no one else knows anything about this?” Nadashe nodded. “Well,” Amit said. “If nothing else, no one will see this coming.”

“So now you want to do this?” Ghreni asked his brother.

“I didn’t say I want to do this,” Amit said. “This is a high-risk, high-reward investment, which is the most polite way I can think of to describe this crackpot scheme. I don’t like risk. And we already have a monopoly franchise, so we already have a reward.” He motioned toward the monitor. “But if this has any chance of being true, then there’s also a risk of the Interdependency collapsing in on itself if we do nothing. And that’s a some-risk, high-penalty scenario. I have to decide whether I want that less than I want this.”

“We can make it work,” Nadashe said.

“By which you mean I will have to make it work,” Ghreni said. “I’ll be months away from you.”

“We can plan it out before you leave.”