The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(17)

“Merchandise we’ve already accepted the fucking money for.”

Patz nodded. “Everything that was supposed to be in this warehouse was ordered and paid for. Everything in those other warehouses was also ordered and paid for. The House of Nohamapetan—and now you, because you’ve been given the responsibility for administering the Nohamapetans’ business—is on the hook for that forty million marks’ worth of merchandise. But there’s good news.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“The inventory was destined to go out of the system. The emperox says the Flow streams are collapsing, so it’s possible they’ll do so before you’re legally required to fulfill the order.”

Kiva snorted at this, and looked around again at the empty warehouse. “Why am I only finding out about this now?”

“About this warehouse?”

“Yes.”

Patz shrugged. “For as much money is involved in this little graft scheme, it’s less than one percent of the local inventory for the House of Nohamapetan and of course even less than that for the total amount of house merchandise. The inventory comes and goes, so these warehouses don’t stay empty for long.” She waved at the warehouse. “We caught these mostly because House of Lagos taking over for the Nohamapetans meant we had to do an audit. In a few more days this warehouse and several of the others would be full up again.”

“How the fuck were they hiding this?”

“That’s the magic of having your clients weeks or months away. When the shipments arrive, if there are any shortfalls, the orders are either adjusted to factor in the missing inventory or made good with a later shipment. In both cases the shrinkage is chalked up as business losses and deducted out of taxes. In order to see it as anything else, you’d have to do an audit of the entire business.”

“Which the Nohamapetans weren’t going to do because they were the ones skimming,” Kiva said.

“Well,” Patz’s voice held a note of caution. “We don’t have any concrete evidence of that yet.”

“Except for Nadashe Nohamapetan apparently funding an attempted fucking coup of the Interdependency out of petty cash.”

“There is that,” Patz murmured.

“Are we going to be able to cover these shortfalls?” Kiva asked. “Unlike the fucking Nohamapetans, we can’t actually pretend this inventory fell off the ship in the middle of the Flow.”

“That’s out of my department,” Patz said. “I imagine you can shift things around, but regardless you’re out the fifty million marks. I’m having my people go through the accounting for the last decade to find out how extensive this skimming operation actually was.”

“You think you’re going to find more.”

Patz looked at her boss levelly. “Lady Kiva, graft on this scale doesn’t just happen. We’re probably looking at hundreds of millions of marks’ worth. Possibly billions.”

“Coups don’t come cheap,” Kiva said.

“I suppose not, ma’am.”

“Do we know where the fucking money is, at least?”

“Not yet. We don’t have the authority to go looking, outside of the House of Nohamapetan’s local account. The personal accounts of the family members and any other unrelated accounts are outside our purview. I’m sharing information with the imperial Ministry of Revenue, of course. They’ll be able to do a more extensive investigation.”

“Any money they find, I want back.”

“I have to warn you that the Ministry of Revenue is very unlikely to honor that request.”

“Fuck them.”

“Yes,” agreed Patz. “But there’s the matter that the House of Nohamapetan probably owes back taxes and penalties. That will almost certainly be worth more than the amount of the actual missing money.”

Kiva grumped about this. Then, “So how much of this is going to be blamed on me?”

“I think that depends on who is assigning blame,” Patz said. “I don’t think Grayland or the Tax Ministry is going to hold it against you, if for no other reason than almost all of this”—Patz waved again—“predates your administration. The House of Nohamapetan itself may try to, however. Especially in light of some recent events.”

“What recent events?”

“Well, that’s the other thing we’ve found in the audit. Sabotage. Of inventory, of machines, of ships. All in the last month, since the House of Lagos took charge.”

“How much?”

Patz said nothing but gave Kiva a look that she interpreted as saying a whole fuckton.

“And I reiterate something I just said: And I’m only finding out about this now?”

“You’re the new boss. Some people don’t want to tell you.”

“And the others?”

“Well. They want to wreck you, ma’am.”

*

Three hours later Kiva was back at the Guild House, in her office. It was the former office of the equally former Amit Nohamapetan, who, courtesy of his sister, had recently found himself on the business end of a shuttlecraft, and then smeared across roughly an acre of cargo bay deck as the shuttlecraft rolled over and then in him like a dog in a manure pile.