The Collapsing Empire Read online

  “You can’t fire me, ma’am,” Brennir said. “I’ve got tenure with the guild. Now, are you coming or not?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “I should go,” the assistant purser said. “I mean, I can go. Maybe I should go?”

  Kiva sighed and looked down at her conquest. “When are you on duty again?”

  “Three hours.”

  “Then you stay right here.” She untangled herself from the assistant purser, put on something acceptable for the outside world, and then followed Brennir out of her stateroom and through the ship.

  The Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby was a fiver, a ship whose size and design meant that theoretically it could support a full complement of crew from its own resources for roughly five standard years before everything began to go bad, internal biological and support systems began to fail, and the crew collapsed into a brief spasm of unspeakable horror toward each other before the end, as all crews marooned in the vast emptiness of space with no hope of rescue eventually did.

  As a practical matter, however, within the Flow streams of the Interdependency, no one human outpost was more than nine months from any other. Fivers and tenners, their larger siblings, typically dedicated enough of themselves to support their crews for a year—a three-month margin for error—and the rest of their space and systems were given over to cargo and, in the case of the Yes, Sir, astroponics, growing the agricultural products that the ship’s owners had a monopoly on and traveled from outpost to outpost to deliver.

  The House of Lagos, the owners of the Yes, Sir, had a monopoly on citrus. The entire genus, from root to fruit, from the heirloom species like lemons and oranges to more recent hybrids like gabins, zestfists, and haverfruit. It was the last of these that the Yes, Sir had come to End to do business in—to sell the fruit it had grown and harvested on the trip out to End directly, and to negotiate licensing for local agribusiness to grow it on End on behalf of the Lagos family.

  That was the plan, anyway. Except now some asshole customs official was trying to fuck them all.

  Kiva entered the Yes, Sir conference room where Captain Tomi Blinnikka, Chief Purser Gazson Magnut, and some miserable shitfuck of an imperial customs official waited. Kiva nodded to Blinnikka and Magnut and took a seat at the table they were at. Blinnikka dismissed Brennir, who slid the door closed behind him as he left.

  “All right, what’s the problem?” Kiva said, when Brennir was gone.

  “Lady Kiva, I am Inspector Pretan Vanosh, assistant head of imperial customs for End,” the miserable shitfuck began.

  “Charmed,” Kiva said, cutting him off. “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is a closterovirus,” Vanosh said. “That’s a type of virus—”

  “My family has had the monopoly on citrus fruits for eight hundred years, Mr. Vanosh,” Kiva said. “I know what a closterovirus is. I also know it’s been two hundred years since we’ve had a confirmed case of a citrus closterovirus affecting any of the crops we either sell or license. We genetically engineer our crops for resistance.”

  Vanosh smiled thinly and offered up a physical folder to Kiva, who took it. “That clock has been reset, Lady Kiva,” he said. “Nine months ago your sister ship, No, Sir, I Don’t Mean Maybe, arrived with a shipment of grapefruit graft stock that carried a new strain of virus. It spread through your licensed orchards and devastated your client’s crops.”

  “All right, but so what?” Kiva said. “If it did happen, and I’m not going to stipulate it did until we have our own people take a look, then we’ll compensate the clients and plow under the orchards. It doesn’t have anything to do with this shipment of haverfruit.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Vanosh said. “The virus is cross-compatible with some of End’s local crops, including banu, a staple down there. We’ve had to quarantine entire provinces to halt its spread. Food prices are through the roof. People are concerned about the possibility of famine. The Duke of End was already battling an insurgency. This has made it worse.” Vanosh leaned forward on the table, toward Lagos. “To put it bluntly, Lady Kiva, the House of Lagos has helped to destabilize this entire planet.”

  Kiva stared at this official fuckwit in disbelief. “You can’t think we intended—”

  Now it was Vanosh’s turn to cut off Lagos. “Lady Kiva, it doesn’t matter what your house intended, what matters is what it did. What it did in this case is pour oil onto a fire. Until this is resolved in a court of law, I’m afraid your trade rights for End are suspended.”

  “I don’t know about any of this,” Kiva said.

  “Everything about the virus is in the report.”

  “Not about the fucking virus. About the destabilization and the famine or any of the rest of that crap. You can’t pin it on us.”

  “It’s not all pinned onto your family, Lady Kiva, I assure you. But enough can be pinned to your family to have caused this suspension.”

  “Is this is a squeeze?” Kiva asked.

  Vanosh blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me. Is this a squeeze? Are you hitting us up for a bribe?”

  “A bribe?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure what part of this discussion suggested to you that I was fishing for a bribe, Lady Kiva.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t be coy,” Kiva said, irritably. “Let’s pretend we’re all adults here and we don’t have to get cute about a business transaction. Tell me what you want”—she jabbed a thumb at Magnut, whose expression suggested he couldn’t believe this particular conversation was actually happening—“and Magnut here will take care of the rest.”

  Vanosh turned to Magnut. “Do you bribe imperial customs officers often, Chief Purser Magnut?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Captain Blinnikka said, to Magnut. Magnut looked visibly relieved to be told to stay quiet. Blinnikka turned to Vanosh. “My apologies, Inspector. Our owner’s representative is understandably frustrated at the moment and chose her words foolishly. I assure you that it is not our policy to attempt to bribe imperial officials, nor should Lady Kiva’s outburst suggest that any of us believe you are bribable. Isn’t that correct, Lady Kiva?”

  Kiva gave her starship captain a long look of you have to be fucking kidding me, pal and then, having received an I am so not fucking kidding you, you asshole look back from the captain, turned her attention back to Vanosh. “Yes. I made a bad joke. Sorry about that.”

  “Perhaps you should stay out of the field of comedy, Lady Kiva,” Vanosh said.

  “That’s a hot tip, thanks for that.”

  “In any event, Lady Kiva, Captain Blinnikka, you appear to be under the impression that I’m the reason your goods are sequestered and your trade privileges suspended.”

  “Aren’t you?” Kiva asked.

  Vanosh smiled, again thinly, which made Lagos wonder if he could smile any other way. “If it were up to me, Lady Kiva, I would have taken the bribe and then threatened to have all three of you arrested, and then pocketed the even larger second bribe.”

  “I knew it,” Kiva said. “You shifty little fucker.”

  Vanosh nodded his head slightly in acknowledgment. “However, in this case, the directive comes from over my head. In point of fact, Lady Kiva, the ban on your haverfruit and any trade your ship and your family might conduct on End comes from the duke himself.” Vanosh handed over another document, this one a traditional folded letter on heavy parchment, sealed in wax with the ducal signet, which meant the Duke of End was very much not fucking around on this one. “You will have to take it up with him,” Vanosh continued.

  Kiva took it. “Well, this is just fucking perfect, isn’t it,” she said.

  “Indeed,” Vanosh said. “If I may offer a suggestion, Lady Kiva.”

  “Yes?”

  “The Duke of End owns most of the planet. Maybe don’t try to bribe him.”

  * * *

  Arranging a meeting with the Duke of End took a day. The Port of Endfall wasn’
t allowing direct shuttle flights from ships—“We had some shot at when they came in for a landing”—so Kiva had to shuttle to Imperial Station, the massive space station where the empire kept the majority of its business, and take the beanstalk, heavily fortified from insurgent attack, down to port. There she was met by a local family lackey, who welcomed her and led her to her car.

  “What the hell is this?” Kiva asked when she saw it. The car was less of a car than a small tank.

  “In order to reach the duke’s palace, we’re going to have to go through some rough neighborhoods, Lady Kiva,” the lackey said.

  “You don’t think this looks a little conspicuous? That it doesn’t have ‘shoot at me’ blinking over it in bright lights?”

  “Ma’am, at the moment, pretty much anything that moves is being shot at.” The lackey opened the passenger compartment door. “For that matter, anything that stays still for too long is shot at, too.” He motioned her inside. Kiva took the hint.

  The inside of the passenger compartment of the little tank was reasonably luxurious, at least. Kiva sat down and strapped in and acknowledged the other two people in the compartment with her, executives for the family here on End.

  One of them extended her hand to Lagos. “Lady Kiva, I’m Eiota Finn, your local executive vice president for the House of Lagos.” Kiva shook it, and Finn used her other hand to motion to the third occupant. “This is Jonan Rue, head of your legal department here.” Rue nodded.

  “Hi,” Kiva said, to both.

  “You won’t remember, but you and I have met before,” Finn said, to Kiva. “Before I was assigned to End, I worked in your mother’s office in Ikoyi. You were a child then, of course.”

  “Right. Well, that’s a great story, Finn, but at the moment you’ll forgive me if I don’t really give a shit if you met me when I was six. I want to know what the fuck is going on with this ban.”

  Finn smiled. “You’re definitely your mother’s child,” she said. “She was also blunt and to the point.”

  “Yes, we’re a family of assholes,” Kiva said, and the car lurched forward. “Now, explain.”

  Finn nodded to Rue. “We have two problems right now, Lady Kiva, and they’re related. The first is the ban. The second is the rebellion.”

  Kiva furrowed her brow at this. “What does the rebellion have to do with us?”

  “Politically, nothing. It’s just another rebellion.”

  “‘Just another’? How many rebellions does this goddamned planet have?”

  “One or two a decade,” Finn said. “The planet’s called ‘End’ for a reason, Lady Kiva. It’s the farthest human outpost in the Interdependency and the most difficult to get to, and the only one where the residents don’t have guaranteed travel privileges. It’s been the dumping ground for all the empire’s rebels and dissidents for centuries. They don’t all just start playing nice when they get here.”

  As if to accentuate the point, there was a loud thock from one of the side panels.

  “What was that?” Kiva asked the driver.

  “Exploratory shot, ma’am. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Being shot at is nothing to worry about?”

  “If they’d been serious, they would have hit us with a rocket.”

  Kiva looked back to Finn. “You people do this once a decade.”

  “Once or twice a decade, yes.”

  “You don’t have other things to take up your time? Sport teams? Board games?”

  “Usually the rebellions are confined to outer provinces,” Rue said. “They pop up, the reigning duke sends in the Home Guard, it’s over in a couple of months. This one is different.”

  “This one is organized,” Finn said. “It’s got some firepower behind it.”

  “Yeah, I figured that part out on my own,” Kiva said. “But I’m still not hearing what it has to do with us.”

  “As I said, politically, nothing,” Rue continued. “But this particular rebellion has been expensive to fight. Tax revenues are dropping because of business disruption. That money’s got to come from somewhere.”

  “From us?”

  “From us,” Rue agreed.

  “Not just us,” Finn amended. “He’s putting the squeeze on all guild interests here. Higher taxes and tariffs, for a start. The duke pushed them up to the imperial legal limit.”

  “But that wasn’t enough,” Rue said. “So at that point, the duke started getting creative.”

  “When the virus was reported on the grapefruit, the duke froze the banking accounts of the House of Lagos,” Finn said. “Theoretically they’re in escrow pending legal determination of damages to End in the spread of the virus to native crops.”

  “How are we responsible for that?” Kiva asked.

  “We might not be,” Rue said. “That’ll need to be decided in court. But if the duke can prove that the virus was introduced into the End ecosystem due to negligence on our part, he’s entitled by imperial law to compensation and penalties.”

  “And in the meantime, to keep us from repatriating profits to Ikoyi and potentially out of the reach of the duke, our accounts are in escrow here,” Finn said.

  “But they’re not really in escrow, are they?” Kiva said, and pointed out the small, thick, bulletproof window. “The duke is using them to fund the fight against these rebels.”

  Rue smiled, thinly. Everyone on End, apparently, smiled that way. “As it happens, when the duke declared the current state of emergency, he nationalized the banks. The official line is that it’s to tamp down on financial panics and speculations. But the executives at the guild banks tell us he’s raiding accounts.”

  Kiva snorted. “Well, that’s nice.”

  “It’s not a bad plan, at least as it relates to the House of Lagos,” Finn admitted. “If he beats the rebellion, he has all the time it will take for the litigation to run to replace the funds he’s stolen. That will be years.”

  “And if he loses then it won’t matter anyway, because he’ll probably be dead,” Rue said.

  Kiva grunted at this and looked out the window. End’s capital city of Inverness rolled by, run-down, unhappy, a few sooty fires in the distance. “Will he?”

  “Will he what?” Finn asked.

  “Will he lose?”

  Finn and Rue looked at each other. “It wouldn’t be the first time a Duke of End has been deposed,” Finn said.

  “Fine, but what about this one?” Kiva asked. “Are we wasting our fucking time going to talk to this asshole?”

  “It’s not looking great for the duke, no,” Rue said, after a minute. “We’ve heard rumors of desertions in the provinces, and of military commanders changing sides and taking their soldiers with them. We’ll probably know within the next week how things are going to shake out.”

  Kiva pointed upward. “And what about those assholes? The imperials? The duke is a goddamned noble, after all. They would probably see it as bad optics to have him dragged out in the street and shot.”

  “This is End, Lady Kiva,” Rue said. “As long as the Interdependency gets its percentage of trade, everything else is an internal matter.”

  “Including the death of a duke?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time a Duke of End has been deposed,” Finn repeated.

  “We’re about to arrive at the palace,” the driver said. “It’ll take a few minutes to get through the security checkpoints. Ma’am, may I have your invitation to the palace?”

  Kiva passed it forward and then turned her attention back to her underlings. “So basically what I do now is go in and beg this motherfucker to let me sell my haverfruit, and if he does, expect him to put any profit into this so-called escrow and never see it again.”

  “Not for years, no,” Finn said. “Best-case scenario.”

  “Why the fuck didn’t you see this coming?” Lagos asked Finn, and jabbed a finger toward the heavily fortified palace, visible through the front windshield. “We’re sitting here grabbing our own tits while this asshole
is using our cash to play whack-a-mole with insurgents.”

  “As it happens, I did see it coming,” Finn said. “Which is why the accounts that are escrowed were only about half as full as they were the minute the first reports of the virus started coming in.”

  “Where’s the rest of the money? Did you bury it in the backyard?”

  “In a manner of speaking. The House of Lagos has become, through a number of intermediaries, owners of quite a lot of property.”

  Kiva motioned around. “Not here, I hope. This fucking town is on fire.”

  “No. Mostly in the provinces of Tomnahurich and Claremont. Particularly Claremont. The local count there was keen on offloading a number of very nice properties. He wanted to achieve liquidity, fast.”

  “Of course he did. Nobles don’t tend to be popular during revolutions.”

  “No, they don’t, Lady Kiva.”

  The car started moving forward again. “There are two other things you should know going into this meeting with the duke,” Rue said, to Kiva.

  “Tell me.”

  Rue handed over a sheet. “One, we did as you asked and followed up on that virus. There was absolutely no evidence of viral infection on those grapefruit grafts until after they made it to orchards here on End. Nothing in the stock or fruit in the warehouses, and nothing on the samples that were tested on the No, Sir before she left.”

  Kiva took the sheet and looked at it. “So you think it’s sabotage.”

  “Pretty sure of that, yes. Whether we can prove that to the satisfaction of a court is another matter. Which brings us to the other thing. The duke has an advisor from one of the guild houses. You’re not going to like which house it is.”

  Kiva looked up. “Oh, don’t you even fucking say it.”

  “It’s the House of Nohamapetan.”

  * * *

  The name of the ducal castle was Kinmylies. It was overly plush in a manner that suggested that the residents had confused excess for elegance. Kiva, who came from a line of immensely wealthy people who didn’t give a shit whether their wealth impressed you or not, immediately felt twitchy within its walls. This place needs a cleansing fucking fire, she thought, as she was led down one interminable hallway after another, on her way to the Duke of End’s office.