The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(16)

Nadashe filed that away. “And how goes the delaying of the trial date?”

“Surprisingly well. The prosecution wants more time to lay out its own case. It wants to make this as open-and-shut as possible. I am encouraging them to take as much time as they like.”

“Good.”

“Is there a reason for the delay, other than possibly keeping you alive that much longer?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Nadashe asked.

“It is,” Dorick said. “But as your lawyer I would prefer to know if there is anything else that’s going on relevant to the case.”

“Why do you ask?”

Dorick opened up a physical folder and pulled out an actual piece of paper and slid it over to Nadashe. “I got a call the other night. You might find the substance of the call of interest.”

Nadashe read the paper silently. “Now, there’s nothing there that I found particularly relevant to your legal case, so I don’t feel obliged to share it with the prosecution as I might normally,” Dorick continued. “That is, unless you tell me it is relevant, in which case I will share it.”

Nadashe slid the paper back to Dorick. “I don’t think it’s relevant, no. Seems like someone might be trying to prank you or to get you to act in a certain way.”

“That’s a distinct possibility,” Dorick said, taking the paper back. “This is obviously a high-profile case, and I do get a lot of crank messages about it.”

“Do let me know if you get any similar messages.”

“Of course.”

On the way back to her cell Nadashe mused on the note Dorick had showed her, from Teran Assan, whom she knew socially. Assan was both a grasping social climber and a prick with a too-high opinion of himself, but he’d also been useful more than once with inside information about his own house and the House of Wu. The fact that he was taking up her seat on the executive committee and was now wanting to share information about the emperox and his contacts within the House of Wu was very interesting.

Nadashe knew this largesse would not come free and that at some point there would need to be payment of one sort or another. But that was for another time. For now, Nadashe’s brain was busy putting puzzle pieces together.

So busy, in fact, that she didn’t notice the assassin with the toothbrush shiv until she was roughly three steps in front of her and closing fast.

“Oh, shit,” Nadashe said, and then the assassin reached out, hooked Nadashe by the neck, pushed her down to the deck and drove the toothbrush shiv into the carotid artery of the woman behind Nadashe, who had been closing in on her with a different shiv entirely, this one sharpened from a spoon.

Spoon Shiv, clearly surprised by the sudden appearance both of the toothbrush shiv–wielding woman, and the toothbrush shiv now lodged in her neck, dropped her own shiv and pawed ineffectually at the toothbrush in her artery. Toothbrush lady slapped her hands aside, and with an open palm drove the toothbrush farther in, eliciting a strangulated gasp. Then she grabbed Spoon Shiv by the front of her prison shirt and hurled her over the side of the railing. Spoon Shiv dropped the four meters to the prison deck, made a wet thud, and died.

Toothbrush looked down, and then picked up Spoon Shiv’s weapon. She brandished it at Nadashe. “Don’t bring a spoon to a toothbrush fight,” she said. She tossed it into the nearest cell.

“What?” Nadashe said, confused.

Toothbrush motioned in the direction of Spoon Shiv. “You know who that was from?”

Nadashe collected herself. “I assume Grayland.”

“Close but no. That was from Jasin Wu.”

“Okay,” Nadashe said. “And who are you from?”

“I’m from Deran Wu. And I have a proposition, from him, to you.”

By now the guards and other inmates had crowded around Spoon Shiv’s corpse, looking up to see Nadashe there.

“Don’t worry about that,” Toothbrush said. “That’s fixable.”

“Good to know.”

“Do you want to hear the proposition?”

Nadashe looked back to Toothbrush.

And thought to herself, Well, this took longer than I expected, too.

“I’m listening,” she said to Toothbrush, and noticed the guards coming up the stairs to them. “Better make it quick.”





Chapter

4

Kiva Lagos looked around the empty warehouse that she stood in the middle of, and then turned to Gaye Patz. “You brought me down here to look at fucking nothing,” she said.

Gaye Patz, the House of Lagos’s top forensic accountant, nodded. “You are looking at nothing,” she agreed. “But what you are supposed to be looking at is a warehouse filled with several million marks of Nohamapetan grain and other merchandise, ready to be shipped.”

Kiva blinked at this. “So was it shipped?”

“It might have been,” Patz said. “But if it was, it wasn’t done legally, or to the legal buyers. And it’s more likely that none of it arrived here at all. Ten million marks’ worth of inventory, vanished.”

“But on the books,” Kiva said.

“Yes. On the books, it’s all here. Along with another forty million or so marks of inventory that’s supposed to be in other Nohamapetan warehouses across Hub, which is also not there.”