The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(87)

“Tell me, you who could be the very best the Interdependency has to offer, yet choose not to be: Who now is weak? Who has been naive? Who is cynical? And who is the emperox here?

“You have doubted me. Doubt me no longer. You have come to destroy me. I am not destroyed. You have come to burn me. I am the consuming fire. You will feel what it is to burn.

“That was my vision, and my prophecy. And now it is yours.”

Grayland let that entire fucking masterpiece of a sermon linger in the air until Kiva felt the goose bumps on her arms.

And then just as suddenly, she clapped her hands. “Well, okay then. Now I have a parliament to address, so—”

“I killed him!” the Countess Nohamapetan screamed at Grayland.

“Pardon?” Grayland said.

“Your brother! Rennered! I had his car doctored!” The countess stepped forward, toward Grayland, who didn’t move. “I am the reason he drove into that wall. I killed him. I am why you became emperox at all! You owe it to me!”

Grayland considered this as she came away from the lectern, walked to the countess and looked her in the eye.

“Lady, I don’t owe you shit.”

And then she walked out of the ballroom.

“Fucking best party ever,” Kiva said, to Marce.





EPILOGUE

“So you won,” Attavio VI said to his daughter, in the Memory Room. “The great houses are in disarray because so many of them signed on for treason. The church is fully under your control. The military is purging itself of its rogue elements. And you have declared martial law.”

“I have not declared martial law,” Cardenia said. “I told parliament it has six months to create a plan to prepare the Interdependency for the collapse of the Flow. If they can’t do it, then I will take it out of their hands. In six months another twenty Flow streams will have collapsed. It only gets worse from here.”

“You said your friend Lord Marce thinks you can use the evanescent streams to buy the systems more time.”

“Lord Marce can be optimistic in his thinking. I don’t get to be. I have to assume the worst-case scenario. And the worst-case scenario is the Interdependency is unprepared because parliament can’t figure itself out, and the one planet we have that can support life on its surface is blockaded by yet another Nohamapetan.”

“It’s still only the one ship sent to End,” Attavio VI said.

“It was a big ship, Dad,” Cardenia said. The Prophecies of Rachela featured a complement of ten thousand marines and more than enough firepower to blast anything it didn’t like coming out of a Flow shoal into metal shavings.

“But still only one.”

Cardenia shook her head. “Not anymore. A few smaller naval ships made a break to the Flow shoal when Admiral Emblad was arrested. They knew if they stayed they’d be arrested too. Four ships in all. Ghreni Nohamapetan just got reinforcements on End. And who knows? Now Nadashe may be there too.” Nadashe, who had bounced from the You Can Blame It All on Me before she could be captured, with a hundred million marks in a data vault. The only thing she’d left behind was a note that said Fuck you, Deran Wu. Apparently Nadashe had been surprised by Deran announcing she was still alive.

Deran, who was going to get out of all of this because he’d walked into the Ministry of Information with a data crypt filled with details on the conspiracy and asked for a deal, which the ministry gave him before Cardenia knew about it. She’d been annoyed because she didn’t need Deran’s information; everything he had she’d found with Jiyi. She’d have rather he be stuffed into the same jail cell as his cousin, because she knew he’d participated in contracting the ship that destroyed the Oliveer Bransid and nearly killed Marce. But she supposed it was better that she did not just magically appear with the data. Jiyi’s collection methods weren’t precisely legal. Deran’s evidence would hold up in court.

Anyway, Deran was a hero now, with a story that he’d been participating to collect information to unmask the wider conspiracy against the emperox. It was a bullshit story, but it was a bullshit story that was going to propel him into the senior directorship chair at the House of Wu. Deran was going to be in the office Jasin used to sit in. Which was apparently all that Deran ever really wanted.

At least you know where he is, Cardenia’s brain said to her. Nadashe, on the other hand, was still out there. She had no access to House of Nohamapetan funds—after the Countess Nohamapetan had completely lost it and admitted to assassinating Rennered, Cardenia had ordered every Nohamapetan account frozen and audited—but she could still do a lot of damage with a hundred million marks.

I hope you went to End, Cardenia thought. Then you’d be out of my hair for a while.

“I think I lost you,” Attavio VI said, to Cardenia.

“I was just thinking about problems, sorry.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” Attavio VI said.

“You don’t mind anything at all,” Cardenia pointed out, and then smiled. “Still, I very much like talking to you. I wish we had talked more like this when you were still alive. But this is still good.”

“Thank you,” Attavio VI said. “To the extent I can like anything, I like it too.”

Cardenia emerged from the Memory Room and found Marce reading a message off his tablet.