The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency) Page 12

  Marce grinned. “You did.” He motioned to the tumbler in Cardenia’s hand. “May I ask you to put that down, please?”

  “Why?”

  “Because if we’re about to have the conversation I think we’re going to have, I’d like to think it wasn’t the booze talking.”

  * * *

  “You could have said no, you know,” Cardenia said, after, as they lay in bed in a classic snuggling pose.

  “Why would I do that?” Marce said. “You’re the emperox. You could have me shot.”

  Cardenia swatted him lightly. “That’s my point. I didn’t want you to think this was some sort of command performance. That I was hitting you up because you couldn’t say no.”

  “Trust me, after tonight’s conversation, I would never think you were commanding me into your bed.”

  “Oh, God,” Cardenia said, and buried her face in Marce’s chest. “Don’t remind me. I will never live it down.”

  “I thought it was sweet.”

  “I swear to you I’m not actually the jealous type. That was something else entirely.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was the ‘he likes someone else and now I’m sad and want to go eat an entire pie’ thing.”

  “That’s a very specific thing.”

  “Well, pie is amazing.” Cardenia lifted up her head and kissed Marce. “But I like this better.”

  “I’m very happy to know I’m better than pie,” Marce said.

  “Don’t knock it.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You still want to go on that Dalasýsla expedition, don’t you,” Cardenia said, a minute later.

  “Yes, of course,” Marce said.

  “I could go with you.”

  “I think the Interdependency might notice if the emperox suddenly went missing.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Cardenia said. “Samuel III would disappear for entire months. Nobody much missed him.”

  “You may be more critical to the well-being to the Interdependency than Samuel III, whoever he was.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “And given the amount of controversy you’ve kicked up recently, people would definitely notice if you were gone.”

  Cardenia looked up at him again. “That’s a sly reference to the visions, isn’t it.”

  “I’m going to shut up now,” Marce said.

  “So? What do you think of them? Really?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah. To me it matters.”

  “What I think is that Emperox Grayland II is doing everything she can to make sure that civilization and all the humans in it survive past the next ten years. And because that’s what I think, if she’s having visions, and they help humanity survive, then I’m all for them.”

  Cardenia kissed Marce again. “Thank you.”

  “I mean, I would have been happier if you’d just leaned into the science more,” Marce said.

  “Maybe next time,” Cardenia said.

  Marce snorted at that.

  “How do you feel about the Imperial Navy?” Cardenia asked.

  “I’ve never really given them much thought,” Marce said. “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to requisition a ship, crew and scientists from them to get you to Dalasýsla and back. They can do it quickly and quietly, and no one asks any questions when the emperox has a mission for the navy. Well,” Cardenia amended, “people will ask. But they won’t ask them out of the chain of command.”

  “When will they be ready?”

  “I’m going to tell Admiral Emblad I want them ready in a week. Five days if he can manage it.”

  “That’s fast.”

  “Yes it is.” Cardenia hauled herself on top of Marce. “And that’s because you have to go on this expedition, and I want you back as quickly as you can get back. Because whatever this is, I want to get back to it as soon as possible.”

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter

  9

  Cal Dorick had managed to spring Nadashe Nohamapetan from prison, for exactly eight hours.

  “The judge finally agreed to give us a hearing on your mental state,” Dorick told her, at their weekly meeting. “I’m making the argument that your time here is an assault on your already fragile mental state, and that you need to be placed in a secure mental facility instead. The prosecution is fighting this, obviously, so the judge has asked for you to be present so he can evaluate you himself, because who needs an actual medical degree in psychiatry when you have a law degree and an oversized opinion of your own importance.”

  “And we think that being in a mental institution is going to be better than being here?” Nadashe asked.

  “It’s not optimal, no. But it beats being somewhere people are trying to stab you with spoons.”

  “I thought we were sticking to the story that the lady with the spoon and the lady with the toothbrush just happened to be stabbing each other as I was innocently walking by.”

  Nadashe could see how heroic Dorick was in his effort not to roll his eyes. “Fine. It beats being somewhere people are spontaneously trying to shiv each other whenever you just happen to be walking by. What became of the toothbrush lady, anyway?”

  “I believe she’s still in solitary. Apparently it was not her first toothbrushing.”

  “You meet such interesting people, Lady Nadashe.”

  “And yet here I am with you.”

  Dorick raised a finger as if to say, A touch, I do admit it. “To get back to business, we’re up in front of the judge in two days, so you know the drill. They’ll come and shackle you up, take you up the elevator to the surface level and chain you up in the overland wagon. I made noise about your security, so you’ll be happy to know you’ll be solo in your chariot, and by ‘solo’ I mean you’ll only have three armed guards with nonlethal but, I am promised, nevertheless extraordinarily painful stun sticks and shock guns. This is apparently a precaution for if you have a burst of adrenaline and burst your chains, or smuggle a lockpick into the wagon by some method I am not paid enough to imagine. Which reminds me that you’ll be searched on both ends of your journey, on both ends of your body. Sorry, that was a nonnegotiable.”

  Nadashe shrugged. “I was groped worse in college.”

  “I don’t know what to do with that information. I will say that if you do actually wish for the judge to seriously consider that your staying here is detrimental to your fragile mental state, it might help to evince a look of, say, detriment.”

  “You’re saying I don’t look sufficiently fragile.”

  “I’m saying that while I think your flat affect is generally a great look for you, for this particular audience this one particular time you might want to try a different tactic. Or don’t, it’s fine, you be you.”

  Nadashe considered her lawyer. “Remind me again why I hired you.”

  “I honestly don’t know, Lady Nadashe. But inasmuch as you’ve already paid me, in advance, for roughly the next forty years—thank you for that, by the way, my wife loves the new dining room set probably more than she loves me—you might as well keep me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Moving right along, assuming the hearing about your mental state does not take up the entire day, and it won’t, as your judge rarely spends more than fifteen minutes on anything if he can avoid it, I’ve arranged for you, along with your honor guards, to have use of my office conference room. I’ve arranged several meetings for you, including one with your mother, the Countess Nohamapetan.”

  Nadashe winced at this.

  “Is this not to your liking?” Dorick said. “I can have her moved off the schedule. I live in fear of her righteous fury when I do that, but you are my client, not her.”

  “No,” Nadashe said. “I’d rather meet her on what’s nominally my turf than on hers.”

  “If I don’t schedule you, you wouldn’t be meeting her at all.”

  “I think it’s nice that you believe that.”

/>   “Do you have any particular requests for when you’re meeting her?”

  “Have her searched for spoons and toothbrushes before she enters the room.”

  “I have no idea if you are actually joking, so I’m just going to make a note of that.” Dorick made a note.

  “If you actually try to have her searched you’ll probably be thrown out a window by her bodyguard.”

  “Good to know.” Dorick erased the note.

  “What about the other thing?”

  “What other thing?”

  “The other thing.”

  Dorick stared at Nadashe blankly for several seconds before realizing what she was saying. “Oh, that. Well, I regret to say that those endorsements you’ve asked for from your friends, relating to your character, have been hard to come by, and I think a few of your friends are actively avoiding me. So I’m still working on that. Unrelatedly, you may be interested to know that several news sources have been coming up with very intriguing information regarding your late and beloved brother Amit.”

  “Is that so.”

  “Yes, apparently your brother had been talking to several prominent underworld figures about the possibility of an insurance fraud on some of the house ships. It seems he had been embezzling from the house funds and needed to replace that money before it was noticed. Nothing a good ‘destruction of a multibillion-mark spaceship’ scam couldn’t solve.”

  Nadashe nodded. “What did I tell you?”

  “I can scarcely believe it myself,” Dorick said.

  Nadashe smiled at this. The little dance Dorick just had to do to make it look like he didn’t know about her agreement with Deran Wu, on the grounds it was a criminal scheme and he would be implicated in it up to his eyeballs, was sad and a little pathetic, but necessary. “Who else am I meeting with, aside from my mother?”

  “Lord Teran Assan has asked for a meeting.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “He said he wants your wisdom about certain members of the executive committee. He’s apparently finding a few of them difficult to reach a rapport with.”

  “It’s because he’s an asshole.”

  “That would have been my guess, too. Nevertheless, given his position on the committee he’s someone worth cultivating.” Dorick raised his eyebrows at this last part, to indicate to Nadashe that in fact Teran Assan was a useful tool, so maybe throw him a bone.

  Nadashe groaned. “Make the meeting as short as humanly possible.”

  “You got it. Also Lady Kiva Lagos’s office called and was curious if you might make time for her.”

  “Good lord, why?”

  Dorick looked at his notes. “She apparently has some questions about financials.”

  “The house’s financials were Amit’s job, not mine.”

  “Lady Kiva’s office anticipated this objection and says they suspect you might have some insight that would be useful to her.”

  What is that woman up to? Nadashe thought. She and Kiva were never close in college, even when they were in the same dormitory and Kiva was banging Ghreni. They both instinctively understood that the way to harmony was to stay out of each other’s business. Now Kiva was all up in Nadashe’s business and she didn’t like it one bit. “You haven’t already scheduled that.”

  “No, I was waiting on your approval.”

  “Then don’t bother. Whatever she’s doing with our financials, I don’t want to be part of it or anywhere near it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I will work hard to make sure you are untroubled by Lady Kiva’s look into your company’s finances,” Dorick said, blandly, which meant he understood that the order encompassed rather more than just not taking a meeting. Then he looked at his watch. “And that’s all our time for the day. I’ll see you in two days, Lady Nadashe. Avoid toothbrushes and spoons until then. And work on your sadness.”

  “It doesn’t take much work,” Nadashe assured him. And that much was true, at least. Gallows humor or not, flat affect or not, the prison life was getting to Nadashe. The prospect of this, all day, every day, for the rest of her life was not one Nadashe wished to entertain. If it meant faking a little mental breakdown in front of a judge, that was a thing she was willing to try.

  One way or another, she was getting out of here.

  * * *

  “What I’m saying is, it doesn’t taste like fish,” one of the guards was saying to another one as the transport bumped its way across the airless surface of Hub. The two guards had been talking about food for the last half hour; the third was slumped in a seat, snoring. Nadashe envied the third guard.

  “Of course it tastes like fish,” the other guard said. “Fish always tastes like fish. That’s why it’s called ‘fish.’”

  “Right, but what I’m saying is that it doesn’t taste fishy like most fish.”

  “So it’s not as fishy.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Then it still tastes fishy,” said the second guard. “Just in a different way.”

  “No, you’re not getting it,” the first guard said, and then turned to Nadashe to include her in the pressing debate about what constituted fishy fish.

  Don’t do it don’t you do it don’t you fucking dare, Nadashe thought furiously at the guard, willing the goon into silence.

  “So, let me ask you about this fish,” the guard began, and then there was a hideous bang and the transport launched itself into the air and tumbled violently to the side, and all Nadashe could think about was how grateful she was that her final words would not be some asinine discussion about aquaculture.

  A few seconds later she realized she wasn’t dying, but that she was now hanging off the ceiling of the truck, because what was now the ceiling used to be the side, and she was strapped in and chained up. Her restraints had held up admirably, so she wasn’t dead, and that was good, but the low, violent whistling she was hearing was telling her that the air was leaking out of the transport cabin, which meant she would soon be dead of asphyxiation, and that was not great.

  Nadashe looked down and saw the third guard crumpled in a heap, neck at an unsurvivable angle. Went sleeping, she thought. How nice. The other two were on the floor that used to be a side, dazed.

  “I need a mask!” Nadashe yelled at them. “Hey! Do you hear me? I need a mask!”

  One of them—the one who was convinced that the fish was not fishy, or what the fuck ever—looked up at her, confused, and then nodded and started looking on the wall for the emergency oxygen masks.

  “That’s not the wall!” Nadashe said. “They’re at your feet!”

  This took a few more seconds for Not Fishy to process, and then lo and behold, enlightenment came and the wall-mounted case that was now the floor-mounted case with the emergency oxygen masks was found. Not Fishy put one on, gave another to No Actually It Is Fishy, determined guard number three would not be needing one, and then handed one to Nadashe, who put it on with some difficulty, her hands being shackled.

  “You stay there,” the guard said, and Nadashe was incredulous, because what else was she going to do, shackled and strapped as she was. “We’re going to radio in.”

  There was another hideous bang, and the rear doors of the transport flew away and all the guards, living and dead, were sucked out into the airless surface of Hub. Nadashe grabbed desperately at her mask to keep it from flying off her face; just before the view fogged up she saw Not Fishy and No Actually Fishy had lost theirs and were simultaneously gasping and freezing to death.

  Speaking of which, the cold immediately began to bite into Nadashe’s skin. Theoretically the overland road to Hubfall was in the temperate twilight zone of the tidally locked planet, but “temperate” meant different things when there was a 500-degree temperature range. “Temperate” here meant “blisteringly cold.”

  There was a light in Nadashe’s face and then two people in space suits were all up on her, cutting through her shackle chains and restraining straps. Nadashe fell fro
m the ceiling into their arms and was immediately sealed into a clear, bulky full body suit that instantly flooded her with warmth and oxygen. Nadashe stood for a second, basking in warm, and then was hustled out of the shattered transport wagon. As she exited, she saw the bodies of the guards, all dead, and the wreck of the transport. This transport was manually driven. Given the shape of the transport, Nadashe assumed the driver was in the same shape as the guards, if not worse.

  Nadashe was drag-walked to what looked like a storage container with an airlock. She was pushed into the airlock and sealed in. When the airlock pressurized, the interior door opened and two more people pulled her out, replacing her in the airlock with a body missing a head, and sealing the door to allow it to cycle. That done, they returned their attention to Nadashe, peeled her out of the full body suit and took the oxygen mask off her face.

  The entire operation of cutting her down from the wrecked transport to unshucking her in whatever this was had taken less than sixty seconds.

  “Lady Nadashe,” someone said to her. She turned and saw it was Lord Teran Assan, kitted out in his own suit. “Lovely to see you.”

  “What are you doing here?” Nadashe asked.

  “Just managing your rescue,” Assan said. Nadashe opened her mouth to say more, but Assan held up a hand. “Hold that thought,” he said, and headed to the airlock, which by now had recycled. “Your mother sends her regards, by the way.”

  “Does she?”

  “You’ll be seeing her soon.” Assan gave a little salute at that and then disappeared out the door.

  * * *

  Lord Teran Assan was not going to lie: He was absolutely fucking delighted that his prison break scheme was working out as well as it was.

  And it was his plan; he was the one who had pitched it to the Countess Nohamapetan. “Look,” he had said, presenting the countess with a visualization on a tablet screen. “This section of the road to Hubfall is only lightly surveilled, and that surveillance is easily compromised. I’ve already had my pet hackers at it. I can make a five-minute window where all the ground surveillance is down.”