The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(32)

“Is that acceptable to you, Countess Nohamapetan?” Grayland asked.

Kiva watched the Countess Nohamapetan roll through several sets of emotion on her face, some so quickly that Kiva wasn’t sure she actually saw them. Then the countess looked directly at Grayland again, and gave that fucked-up curtsey-bow-whatever again.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” she said to the emperox. “Thank you.”

Grayland nodded and stood. “We have accomplished much today,” she said. “We are glad of it. And now you must excuse us, as we have another appointment which we will soon be late for. Countess Nohamapetan, Lady Kiva, Ms. Fundapellonan.” Grayland gave a small bow, which the three of them returned and held until the emperox had made it to the door behind the dais from which she had entered.

The door closed.

“What the fuck were you even doing here?” the Countess Nohamapetan lashed at Fundapellonan. Fundapellonan opened her mouth to reply, but the countess stormed off toward the entrance, looking like the world’s most pissed-off peacock.

Kiva watched her go. “I don’t know what she’s so upset about,” she said to Fundapellonan. “I thought that went very well.”

Fundapellonan looked at Kiva with narrowed eyes. “This was a setup,” she said.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kiva said. “Your boss walks in here with an obvious plan to insult Grayland, and when her ass is handed to her, you whine about a setup?” She nodded in the direction of the departed, furious countess. “This wasn’t a setup. It was a massacre, pure and simple. Your boss made the mistake of assuming the emperox was weak and got stuffed. She got stuffed so hard you never had a chance to make the argument that I should be out of a job.”

“And you didn’t speak to the emperox about this at all.”

“We’re not friends,” Kiva said. “We don’t have fucking sleepovers where we style each other’s hair and giggle about boys. This is the second time I’ve ever met her.”

“Hmmm.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Kiva said. “The way she crushed your boss just now was fucking spectacular. She didn’t get a chance to object to me. You didn’t get to bring in your sabotage gambit. The emperox made it clear that she was going to watch what happened to me and your local businesses very closely. Then she rubbed the countess’s nose in the fact her daughter was a murderer and a traitor, and made her thank her for telling her that her kid would spend the rest of her life in prison.”

Fundapellonan looked at Kiva strangely. “Is that what you thought just happened?”

“I was here for it, so yes, actually.”

Fundapellonan shook her head. “You don’t understand. When Grayland said that she would commute Nadashe’s death sentence and house her on Xi’an, she wasn’t being gracious. She wasn’t even rubbing the countess’s nose in the fact that Nadashe will be in prison all her life. She was telling the countess that she was making Nadashe a hostage. Right here on Xi’an. Where the emperox can get to her if the countess ever gets out of line again. How could you miss that, Kiva? How could you miss that the emperox made an enemy of the countess today? Countess Nadashe will never forget what Grayland did today. And she will never, ever forgive it.”





Chapter

8

Grayland II did have another appointment that she was about to be late for—truth to be told, she always had an appointment that she was about to be late for—but the appointment she was about to be late for was one where, at least, she would not have to be Grayland II. She was meant to be having a meeting with Marce Claremont, which meant she would get to be Cardenia Wu-Patrick for the thirty minutes or so they would have together.

The fact that the meeting was thirty minutes was in itself something of a luxury. To get thirty minutes with the emperox these days you had to be the minister of state or the archbishop of Xi’an, or some major human habitat had to be on fire. But Marce Claremont got thirty minutes because one, he was the linchpin to understanding the changes in the Flow that were currently affecting the Interdependency, and no other Flow scientists had caught up with him; and two, Cardenia had a crush on him and liked spending time looking at him.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” asked her assistant Obelees Atek, who was ferrying her to the next appointment.

“I’m fine,” Cardenia said. “Why?”

“You look a little flushed all of a sudden.”

This made Cardenia flush a little more. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I was thinking back on something the Countess Nohamapetan said.”

“That bad, ma’am?”

“It could have been worse,” Cardenia said, although at the moment she wasn’t sure how. Cardenia was aware the countess had been furious at the outcome of the meeting; she’d been sure she was going to roll the emperox and take back control of her local holdings.

This is the nice thing about being underestimated, Cardenia thought. It wasn’t the first time recently that she’d outmaneuvered someone because that other person thought she was slow, or naive, or simply too nice to be anything more than an obstacle to be maneuvered, or to be maneuvered around. Cardenia remembered that when she’d started as the emperox, she felt mildly offended that people thought she could be flattered or intellectually bullied into a position or decision.