The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(75)
“You’re a good sister.”
“I’m an adequate sister,” Nadashe said. “I mean, I was going to see you anyway. It wasn’t any extra effort.”
They both had a laugh at that.
Shortly thereafter Cardenia was back in her private wing, with Gell Deng. “I’d like you to keep me updated on the latest about the bombing today,” she said. “Not just from the news feeds.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Deng said.
“Also, I’ve agreed to tour a new ship with Amit Nohamapetan two days from now. Please contact his people and make the arrangements. Allow for two hours, plus travel. Late afternoon.”
Deng raised his eyebrows slightly at this but otherwise said nothing on it directly. Instead he said, “The Imperial Guard will want blueprints and a proposed tour path.”
“I don’t think there is a proposed tour path. It’s meant to be informal.”
“The Imperial Guard will be very unhappy about that.”
“Then have them inform Nohamapetan’s people that there needs to be a tour path, but don’t tell me. I want to be surprised.”
“Yes, ma’am. Also, you asked to be told if there was ever news from the Count of Claremont on End.”
“Yes?” In the first week of her reign, Cardenia had sent a letter to the count informing him of Attavio VI’s passing and requesting the latest on his research. It would still be far too early for the count to respond directly to that letter.
“It’s not the Count of Claremont himself, but his son, Lord Marce Claremont. He just now arrived on a Lagos fiver and will be at Imperial Station in roughly thirty hours. He requests an audience with you.”
“His son?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’re sure about that relationship?”
“The note came with the same security cipher the Count of Claremont used on all his correspondence. It’s legitimate.”
“Did something happen to the count?”
“The request doesn’t say. Would you like to schedule him, or should I shunt him off?” The Office of the Emperox had more than three dozen protocol officers to meet with low-level officials, apparatchiks, and flunkeys. If any of them were important enough to escalate, Deng would get a report and decide whether to bring it to the emperox’s attention.
“Schedule him.”
“I can give him fifteen minutes prior to your walkabout with Amit Nohamapetan, whatever time that is. That should be enough time for Lord Claremont to disembark and catch a shuttle to Xi’an.”
“Have someone meet him. It’s probably his first time off End. I don’t want him to get lost.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do I have anything else for the rest of the day?”
“Only a few minor things. Nothing that won’t keep.”
Cardenia nodded. “Then I’m going to speak to my ancestors for a while. About political marriages.”
“They would know all about those, ma’am.”
“Yes they would.” Cardenia nodded and headed off to the Memory Room.
Chapter
14
“We have two very real problems,” Kiva said to Countess Huma Lagos, her mother and the sitting matriarch of the House of Lagos. “One is bigger than the other.”
“Let’s start with the smaller one,” Huma suggested.
“The fucking Nohamapetans,” Kiva said.
Huma laughed.
The two were in the Hub offices for the House of Lagos in the Guild House, the single largest commercial building on Hub. The Guild House was seven hundred years old and populated by some of the oldest and most influential houses in the Interdependency, with smaller buildings holding lesser houses clustered around it like supplicants. The proximity of a house’s headquarters on Hub to the Guild House was a rough map of the political influence it wielded. Lagos was in the Guild House, on three low-level floors. The House of Nohamapetan was a few stories up but held only one floor and a half interest on another. The House of Wu, the imperial house, held the twelve stories at the top, including the roof, high up enough that one could practically reach up and touch the top of the Hubfall habitat dome the Guild House resided in.
Countess Lagos wasn’t typically at Guild House. She ran the house from the Lagos home system of Ikoyi, and let a cousin serve as the director at Hub and at Xi’an. But the countess had arrived at Hub a week earlier to sit in on the final negotiations for a cross-licensing agreement with the House of Jemisin. Count Jemisin was scheduled to arrive in two days; in the meantime Kiva preferred presenting her issues to her mother rather than Lord Pretar, the Lagos senior director at Hub, whom Kiva had always considered an officious cockwomble.
“What are our problems with the Nohamapetans?” Huma asked. “Aside from the usual ones?”
“One, I’m certain the Nohamapetans sabotaged our product on End by introducing a virus and causing the duke there to embargo us and escrow our money. Two, I’m also certain it was Ghreni Nohamapetan, their director on End, who convinced the duke to escrow our money and then use it to fund his current civil war against rebels. Third, pretty sure the Nohamapetans, and specifically Ghreni Nohamapetan, are actually behind the rebellion on End, but I can’t prove that. Fourth and most importantly, motherfucking Ghreni Nohamapetan tried to put a bomb on our ship and then sent fucking pirates after us.”