The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(66)

“All those plans will mean nothing when they hit the real world.”

“Then improvise. Gain people’s confidence. Keep them in the dark about your true intentions. You’re good at that.”

“Yes,” Ghreni agreed. “But that’ll only get me so far.”

“You’ll figure out the rest.” Nadashe walked over and patted her brother on the cheek. “And when you don’t know what to do next, just come out firing. It couldn’t hurt.”

“Actually it could hurt a lot,” Amit said. He poured himself some more shiraz.

“Be bold,” Nadashe said, ignoring Amit. “Be bold, Ghreni. And then, be Duke of End.”

Nadashe didn’t convince either Amit or Ghreni that night. Too many questions and too many ways the three of them would end up in very small prison cells for the rest of their lives for treason, fraud, and terrorism. But the question was when, not if, Nadashe would bring them around, with her plans and her persuasions. Within a month she had her brothers agreeing in principle with the idea. A month after that Ghreni, still not entirely believing he was signing on to this harebrained scheme, was on the Nohamapetan fiver Some Nerve!, heading toward End.

In retrospect, his part of the scheme had gone surprisingly well. There was indeed an affronted group ready to take on the Duke of End that he could funnel money and weapons to, in exchange for their doing all the work of the rebellion. He’d quickly ingratiated himself into the inner circle of the Duke of End, who despite the proud title was a provincial rube whose own father came to power by overthrowing the former duke, and who was deeply impressed with Ghreni, whose family could trace its noble origins back to before the founding of the Interdependency.

In a few short months, the rebellion went into overdrive and he was the duke’s confidant and political hatchet man—and in a position to undermine his patron quietly while preparing the way for his own inevitable ascendance when the duke’s head rolled into the dust. Certainly he was doing better on his end of the plan than Nadashe was doing on hers, although that wasn’t entirely her fault. As far as Ghreni knew she had nothing to do with Rennered smashing into that wall. At least, if she had, she’d kept him out of it.

But now it was all crashing down, and Ghreni sensed he was within days if not hours of disgrace and discovery, which was not only a danger to him but to the entire House of Nohamapetan. It was one thing to fuck up on your own time. It was another to sideswipe the house while you did it.

Be bold, Nadashe had said to him. And then be Duke of End. Ghreni smiled at this memory and tried to imagine what his sister would do in his shoes. Then, with less than two hours left before he had to present himself to the Duke of End and the Count of Claremont, he set about doing that.

*

The duke and the count and Ghreni spent an hour having a high tea on Weatherfair’s eastern outside gallery, the one with a spectacular view of the city, talking about utterly inconsequential things. Ghreni could see this took some effort on the part of the count, because he clearly thought Ghreni had kidnapped, and intended to torture, his son. Then the three went into the duke’s private office to be alone while they talked about consequential things not relating to Ghreni kidnapping and intending to torture the count’s son, and that took another hour or so.

Then the duke signaled it was time to do the apology thing. Ghreni nodded, stood up, positioned himself between the count in his chair and the duke behind his desk. He took a deep breath that seemed to hint at the difficulty he was going to have saying the words that would follow. He then reached into his right interior jacket pocket, where he’d secreted a small bolt thrower, and shot the count with it, stunning him into unconsciousness.

“Ghreni, what the hell are you do—” the duke began, and then stopped because one of his lungs had a hole in it, put there by the small pistol that Ghreni had produced from his left interior jacket pocket and fired at him, after dropping the bolt thrower to the floor to free his hands for the new weapon. The duke barely had time to look at the entry wound and then back up at Ghreni in confusion before he died from the bullet Ghreni shot into his face. The bullet entered just below the duke’s right eye and then scored through his brain, settling, its velocity spent, into the rear interior of the duke’s skull.

Ghreni very quickly pulled out a handkerchief, rubbed his prints off the pistol, and placed it into the hand of the unconscious count. He made sure to get the count’s prints on the grip and trigger. Then he picked up the bolt thrower, rubbed it off as well, and got the duke’s prints on it, then let it drop to the floor where it naturally would have. He opened the drawer on the duke’s desk where it would be logical for the noble to have placed a bolt thrower for personal protection.

Then Ghreni ran for the door of the office and opened it just as the duke’s staff and security people, having heard the shots, reached the other side of it.

“They shot each other!” is all Ghreni said before the staff and security people barreled through the entrance. Ghreni collapsed by the door, feigning shock, and faked hyperventilating. It didn’t matter; no one was paying attention to him because there was the far more serious issue of a dead duke in the room.

Which was fine with Ghreni. He didn’t want anyone paying attention to him. He wanted all their attention on the duke and the count. He wanted everyone in the room to see the obvious: The count had pulled a small pistol, the duke had pulled the bolt thrower set to stun, and then someone shot first and everything went to hell, and now one was dead and the other was out like a light. The more others saw that—and by now the room was jammed with staff—the more that their eyes would allow their brains to believe the story Ghreni was going to tell.