The Collapsing Empire Read online

  “One thing,” Finn said to Kiva as the page came to retrieve her. “The duke finds profanity a mark of a lesser intellect. Try to avoid it with him if you can.”

  What an asshole, she thought, as she stepped into the duke’s office, as vomitiously ornate as any other part of the palace. The family legend had it that Kiva Lagos’s very first word as an infant was “fuck,” a legend that was entirely liable to be true, given the swearing propensity of the Countess Huma Lagos, Kiva’s mother and head of the House of Lagos. It would have been more surprising if it wasn’t, frankly. Kiva couldn’t remember ever not swearing, and of course as the daughter of Countess Lagos, even as the sixth child with no shot at the title, no one was ever going to tell her to stop.

  And now this prick, who had a jabong up his ass about it.

  The prick in question, the one with the rectally stored jabong, was standing at his office bar, a tumbler of some amber liquid in his hand, tall with a beard that could hide birds in it, laughing. Standing next to him, also with a tumbler, also laughing, and in his family’s pretentiously simple black, was none other than Ghreni Nohamapetan.

  The page cleared his throat and the duke looked up. “The Lady Kiva Lagos,” the page said, and departed.

  “My dear Lady Kiva,” said the Duke of End, coming away from the bar. “Welcome. Welcome.”

  “Your Grace,” Kiva said, and gave a bare nod. As the daughter of a house head and ranking representative of the house on the planet, Lagos could have simply addressed him as “Duke” and gotten away with it. But she was here to kiss ass, so might as well get to the puckering early.

  “Allow me to introduce my advisor, Lord Ghreni, of the House of Nohamapetan.”

  “We’ve met,” Ghreni said, to the duke.

  “Have you now?”

  “We went to school together,” Ghreni said.

  “What a small world,” remarked the duke.

  “Isn’t it just,” Kiva replied.

  “Yes, well. Sit down, Lady Kiva,” the duke said, motioning to the left-hand chair in front of his desk. Lagos took it, an overstuffed monstrosity she nearly disappeared into, with Ghreni taking the chair on the right. The duke sat down in his own fucking parody of a chair, behind a desk a poor family could make a house out of. “I do regret that the circumstances of our meeting could not be better.”

  “I understand, sir. It is challenging when you have insurgents almost knocking on your door.”

  “What? No,” the duke said, and Kiva saw Ghreni twitch out the very smallest of smiles. “No, not that. I meant the difficulty with this virus your house brought to us.”

  “Truly,” Kiva said. “Are you sure that we brought it, sir?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean our investigators here did not find it in any of the samples in our warehouse, or on the No, Sir. It only showed up in the orchards.”

  “This is news to us,” Ghreni said.

  “Is it?” Kiva replied, looking at him directly. “Well, if it is, my representatives have made a report.” She looked over to the duke. “They’ve filed it with your secretary’s office, along with the notice of an appeal for the lifting of our trade ban.”

  “I don’t think lifting that ban would be wise,” Ghreni said. “With all due respect to your representatives and their investigators, Kiva, until that study can be thoroughly examined, the duke, for the safety of the citizens of End, has to assume that any other product you carry is likewise infected.”

  “I’m afraid your friend is correct about that,” the duke said, to Kiva. “You’ve heard about how the virus crossed over to our banu. Wiped out the crop in entire areas. We can’t risk another event like that. The banu failure is one of the reasons we have this rebellion in the first place.”

  “I understand your concern, sir, and that is why the House of Lagos is willing to assist you.”

  The duke squinted at Kiva. “How do you mean?”

  “I understand you have placed our accounts in escrow, pending resolution of a court case regarding the virus.”

  Kiva watched the duke’s eyes flicker, briefly, over to Ghreni’s before coming back to her own. “So I have. It was the prudent course of action.”

  “Allow me to formally offer those sums to you as a loan from the House of Lagos to assist you in resisting this rebellion. We would be happy to offer you excellent terms.”

  “That’s … generous of you,” the duke said.

  “It’s business,” Kiva replied. “It does the House of Lagos no good to have you out of power, sir. And this allows you access to funds that you would not otherwise have at your disposal. Why should that money sit and do you no good? Put it to use.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Ghreni said.

  “Actually it is that simple,” Kiva retorted. “We can write it into the loan that if the House of Lagos is found liable, the loan represents the damages and that any remainder plus interest on the loan constitutes penalties.”

  “It’s not a matter of legalities, it’s the matter of perception,” Ghreni said.

  “The perception of the duke robustly defending his people looks bad? Worse than the perception of a duke being overthrown because he’s too daintily concerned about looking bad?”

  Ghreni turned to the duke. “Sir, it looks like a bribe.”

  “A bribe for what?” Kiva exclaimed.

  “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” Ghreni said.

  “Lady Kiva, in exchange for this generosity by the House of Lagos, what would you expect?” asked the duke.

  “Again, and with respect, sir, it’s not generosity. If the suit fails, the House of Lagos would expect to get our loan back. That’s business.”

  “But you want something else, too, don’t you?” Ghreni asked.

  “Of course I do. I want to be able to sell my god—” Kiva caught herself at the last moment. “—blessed haverfruit, sir. And when I do, the money we make on the sale and licensing will not go with the Yes, Sir when we leave. It’ll stay here, with you, as part of the loan.”

  “Along with any additional viruses your crop might be carrying,” Ghreni said.

  Kiva looked over to the duke. “Sir, there are inspectors at Imperial Station. They do random sampling of our cargo anyway. I’m happy to have them do an in-depth inspection of the haverfruit to assure it’s clean and poses no threat to the End biome.”

  The Duke of End at least appeared to think about it, but then he stared over at Ghreni, who sat impassively, and shook his head. “Lady Kiva, you have been kind, both with your offer and your concern. But I don’t believe that such measures will be necessary. I believe this rebellion will be contained presently. As such your offer will be unneeded. As for your haverfruit, until we have time to thoroughly examine your report, I need to err on the side of caution. I’m afraid I’m unable to lift your trade ban until the conclusion of the trial. I know you understand.”

  “You bet your ass I do,” Kiva said, and stood.

  “Excuse me?” the duke said, standing. Ghreni stood as well.

  “Thank you for your time, sir. Will you call me a page so I can find my way out of this goddamned maze?”

  “Allow me to walk the Lady Kiva out, sir,” Ghreni said, to the duke, smoothly.

  “Yes, of course.” The duke nodded his good-bye to both of them and headed back over to his bar.

  “You motherfucker,” Kiva said, to Ghreni, as soon as they exited his office.

  “It’s nice to see you too,” Ghreni said.

  “You better hope I don’t find you or the House of Nohamapetan is behind this fucking virus. Because if I do, I will come all the way back to End to feast on your fucking heart.”

  “You’re always welcome to visit me, of course.”

  “So, are you?”

  “Behind the virus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Obviously I am not, but even if I were, I don’t think you’re foolish enough to believe I would tell you.”

 
; “You could save me a trip.”

  “Now, why would I want to do that?”

  “You haven’t changed, Ghreni.”

  “And you shouldn’t feel too bad, Kiva.” Ghreni motioned back toward the duke’s office. “You almost had him with that offer of a loan. That was smart, by the way. As a guild house any loan you make to a noble in the defense of the imperial system is backed by the empire itself. A fine way to cover your ass.”

  “Until you screwed me.”

  “I’d think you’d be used to that by now.”

  Kiva snorted at this. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that, Ghreni. ‘We went to school together,’ my ass.”

  “It was much more politic than how you would have put it. ‘I fucked his brains out whenever he went to visit his sister in her dormitory at university.’”

  “I wouldn’t have said it like that,” Kiva said. “I was told not to swear. How is your asshole sister, anyway?”

  “Not happy. She was going to be crown princess of the empire, but then Rennered Wu lost his head in a racing accident.”

  “A real tragedy for her.”

  “She thinks so. It was bad for Rennered as well, of course. I understand the emperox’s bastard daughter is now the heir. So my brother will take a run at her, I imagine.”

  “There’s the Nohamapetan family I remember. Full of romantics.”

  “You didn’t complain, once.”

  Kiva stopped and looked at Ghreni, who also stopped. “Well, once I was a fucking idiot. Now I’m not.”

  “That would be a first for a Lagos, then,” Ghreni said.

  “What scam do you have running on this dipshit duke?”

  “One, his name is Ferd, and not ‘dipshit.’ Two, I’m offended you think I’m running a scam on him.”

  “You got him to shake off a multimillion-mark bribe.”

  “See, I told you it was a bribe. I was right.”

  “No one passes up that much unless they’ve got something better on offer.”

  “I can’t possibly speak to that, Kiva. Certainly not to you.”

  “Come on, Ghreni. This isn’t about the virus. And we’re on fucking End. It’s going to take me nine months to get back to Hub and another three from there to Ikoyi. Anything you tell me now is going to be dead news then.”

  Ghreni looked around, and then started walking again. Kiva caught up. “Tell me. Tell me what you have planned for End.”

  “Your first error, Kiva, is assuming that anything I’m doing here has to do with just this planet.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I know you don’t. I didn’t intend for you to.” Ghreni stopped again, and then pointed. “Take this hall. Then the second left, and then the first right after that. You’ll be back to the same lobby you came in from.”

  Kiva nodded. “You were never one to go all the way to the end of things, were you, Ghreni?”

  “You might be surprised.” He leaned in and gave Kiva a peck on the cheek. “Good-bye, my dear Kiva. I wasn’t ever expecting to see you again, you know. No one important really ever comes to End. And I don’t expect to see you again after this. But I am fond of you, in spite of everything. So I’m glad we got a moment for this.”

  “Whatever this is.”

  Ghreni smiled. “You’ll have a name for it soon,” he said, and walked off.

  * * *

  “Hit me with it,” Kiva said, back on Yes, Sir, with Captain Blinnikka and Gazson Magnut.

  “We were supposed to take receipt of roughly sixty million marks’ worth of licensing fees and royalties here on End,” Magnut said. “We’re going to come away with zero, all in escrow, and we probably won’t get it back. We estimated that the haverfruit would generate twenty million marks for the product on hand and another ten million marks in initial license fees and stock sales. We’re coming away with another zero for that. We have another roughly ten million marks in miscellaneous cargo picked up at other stops that we’re not being allowed to unload and sell, so zero for that, too. There’s about a million marks’ worth of cargo being sent to End that we’re acting as shipping for, and that was allowed to be unloaded, but has been placed in quarantine for several weeks in a hold open to the vacuum of space. We’ll be gone when the delivery happens and the fees will be held for the next Lagos ship to arrive. Which is the I Think We’re Alone Now, which will be along in twenty standard months.”

  “So, a hundred-million-mark loss,” Kiva said.

  “We netted forty million marks on the last three stops, so it’s a net sixty-million-mark loss, more or less. And this is the last stop on the itinerary. Then back to Hub to transfer to Ikoyi.”

  Lagos nodded. Using the Flow there were several ways to get to End, but only one way to get back—the Flow stream from End to Hub. Sooner or later, all streams flowed into Hub. But what that meant was there was no other chance to recoup losses between End and Hub.

  “I’m open to ideas, here,” Kiva said. “Tomi?”

  “The whole point was to introduce haverfruit to End,” the captain said. “Everyone else in the Interdependency is already full up on it. We can harvest what we have—we’re going to have to, at this point—vacuum flash out the water and sell the concentrate at Hub. But your family already has licensees there. They could complain to the imperial trade commission if we came in and undersold them.”

  “The captain’s right,” Magnut said. “And even if we matched prices we’d create a glut. We’d pick up a few million marks at most, and piss off the licensees the House of Lagos needs for long-term profits.”

  “So what we’re saying is we’re fucked.”

  “That would be the gist of it, yes, ma’am.”

  Kiva put her head in her hands for a couple of moments, then looked over to Blinnikka. “When do we leave End?”

  “We have some ship maintenance we’re taking care of while we’re here at Imperial Station, and Gazson here is taking on some additional crew to make up for the ones we lost at Lankaran. We’re here for another week.”

  “Can we stretch that?”

  “Not really,” Blinnikka said. “Our current dock is claimed nine days from now. Imperial Station needs a full day for cargo clearance and reset. We have seven days and then we have to move.”

  “Then seven days it is.”

  “Seven days for what?” Magnut asked.

  “For a fucking miracle to happen and save our asses,” Kiva said. “That’s not too much to ask for, is it?”

  Chapter

  3

  Technically speaking, upon the moment of the death of Emperox Attavio IV, Cardenia became the new emperox. Realistically speaking, nothing is ever that simple.

  “You are going to have to officially declare a period of mourning,” Naffa Dolg said to her, in what had suddenly and officially become her office. It was now only moments after her father had died; his body was currently being removed from his bedroom—her bedroom—via a litter that had borne the bodies of nearly all the emperoxs who had been lucky enough to actually die at home. Cardenia had seen the litter, stored away in one of the other rooms in the private apartment, and thought it a ghastly bit of business, and realized that one day, it was very likely her bones would be carted out on it too. Tradition had its downsides.

  Cardenia laughed to herself.

  “Car?” Naffa said.

  “I’m having morbid thoughts,” Cardenia said.

  “I can give you a couple of minutes for yourself.”

  “But only a couple.”

  “The transition of emperoxs is a busy time,” Naffa said, as gently as possible.

  “How long is the official mourning period supposed to be?”

  “It’s traditionally five standard days.”

  Cardenia nodded. “The rest of the Interdependency gets five days. I get five minutes.”

  “I’m going to come back,” Naffa said, getting up.

  “No.” Cardenia shook her head. “Keep me busy, Naf.”

  Naffa kept her
busy.

  First: the official declaration of mourning. Cardenia went down the hall to the office of Gell Deng, her father’s (and now, unless she chose otherwise, her) personal secretary, who would transmit the order. Cardenia was worried that she would have to dictate something that sounded official, but Deng had the declaration already ready for her—which shouldn’t have surprised her. Many emperoxs had come and gone during the time of the Interdependency.

  Cardenia read over the declaration, its contents hallowed by time and consecrated by tradition, found the language ossified and musty, but was in no condition mentally to revise. So she nodded her assent, took a pen to sign, and then hesitated.

  “What is it, Your Majesty?” Deng said, and some part of Cardenia’s brain noted that this was the first time anyone had called her that officially.

  “I don’t know how to sign this,” Cardenia said. “I haven’t chosen my official name yet.”

  “If you prefer, you may simply sign it with the imperial seal for now.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Deng got out wax and seal, melted the wax, and gave the seal to Cardenia to press. She did, the seal lifting off the imperial green wax, revealing the crest of the Wu family with the imperial crown above it. Her crown.

  Cardenia handed the seal back to Deng and noticed he was crying. “This makes it official,” he said to her. “You are the emperox now, Your Majesty.”

  “How long did you serve my father?” Cardenia asked.

  “Thirty-nine years,” Deng said, and looked about to break down. Impulsively Cardenia reached over and hugged him, and after a moment broke the hug.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “You’re the emperox, ma’am,” Deng said. “You can do anything you want.”

  “Keep me from inappropriate familiarity from now on, please,” Cardenia said to Naffa, after they left the secretary’s office.

  “I thought it was sweet,” Naffa said. “That poor old man. He’s had a rough day.”

  “His boss died.”

  “Yes, but he also assumes he lost his job. Normally by this time the new emperox’s set of cronies are busy installing themselves into positions of power. His is a position of power, nominally.”