By the time the two of them slipped through the door of the cargo hold, the vast expanse of which was clearly placed into their itinerary to give the two of them a few moments of alone time, Cardenia decided she’d had enough. “Lord Amit, if this tour was meant to show your warm personal side to me, I’m afraid you’re failing considerably,” she said, as they walked.
Amit smiled ruefully. “Yes, Your Majesty. Believe me, I am very well aware of that.”
“Is there a cause for this?”
“I received quite a lot of bad news today, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Was it something personal?”
“In a way. Mostly business, although as you know, business is often personal.”
“I understand that better than most, I have to say.”
“I have no doubt that you do,” Amit said, and they walked a bit more in the cavern of the hold, quietly.
When they got to what Cardenia expected was the dead center of the cargo bay, Amit stopped and turned to her. “You don’t want to marry me, do you, Your Majesty?”
Cardenia opened her mouth to say something placatingly but then “No, no, I really don’t,” popped out, and, well. There it was.
“All right, good,” Amit said.
“Wait, what?” Cardenia said, entirely surprised. “Begging your pardon, Lord Amit, but I was under the impression, from your sister most of all, that I was here to be charmed and wooed by you. You now being visibly relieved that I don’t wish to marry you is … unexpected, to say the least.”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty.”
“I’m not,” Cardenia said, and it was Amit’s turn to be surprised. “I’m relieved that this tedious bit of politicking is over with. It means we might actually enjoy our tea together.”
Amit laughed at this.
“But I don’t understand why, after more than a year of a full push by your family, and by you, that you’re now relieved to learn that I have no interest in marrying you.”
“It’s complicated,” Amit said.
Cardenia motioned around them as if to say, We are totally alone; this is the time.
“The short version is that we have been made aware that other houses believe we already exercise too much influence over you. At this point we run the risk of losing influence rather than gaining it, through close association with you.”
“Well, I don’t know quite what to make of that statement, Lord Amit.”
“I understand, Your Majesty. Suffice to say that guild and parliamentary politics are complicated enough now, and we have reason to believe they are about to become even more complicated in the future.”
A warning went off in Cardenia’s brain. “How so?”
“The matter of End, in the near term.”
“And in the longer term?”
“Well, who can say in the longer term,” Amit said, and started to walk again.
“No,” Cardenia said, and stayed where she was, obliging Amit to stop walking. “Excuse me, Lord Amit. I don’t believe you’d throw away your path to the throne because of the rebellion on End. I don’t believe your sister would do that, either. There’s something more to it, isn’t there?”
Amit Nohamapetan looked for all the world like a child caught raiding the cookie jar.
“And this calling off of the marriage attempt isn’t something that you want, is it?” Cardenia asked. “Which is to say, this isn’t your idea. You’re being made to do it. By your sister?”
“Not by her,” Amit said.
“But you wouldn’t abandon this on your own,” Cardenia said. “So whatever reason you have for it, she signed off on it. But she told me that she was willing to give up her seat on the executive committee for you if I chose to marry you. Because the House of Nohamapetan being on the executive committee is obviously trumped by the House of Nohamapetan marrying into the royal family and placing an heir on the throne. So something has happened between when I talked to her, and now. What is it, Lord Amit?”
Amit was silent.
“Is it about End?” Cardenia pressed.
“Your Majesty…”
“You’re involved in it in some way, aren’t you? The rebellion on End.”
Amit looked exasperated. “Your Majesty. Why would we do that?”
Cardenia ignored the condescension inherent in the exasperation, because her mind was focused on the larger question: How would the Nohamapetans benefit from a rebellion on End? If they were engaged in it in some way it would mean they were either trying to win the favor of the sitting duke, install a new one, or possibly have a family member ascend to the throne—Ghreni Nohamapetan, the younger brother, perhaps.
But why? If the sitting duke was deposed and the action could be traced to the Nohamapetans, then the duke (or more likely his heirs) could force a suit in the Interdependency courts, along with a request to escrow the house’s profits pending the resolution of the suit. That would be bad for business. If the Nohamapetans installed one of their own as duke of End, then they would ultimately have to give up their home base of Terhathum, where Amit’s mother Jedna was the sitting countess—
Terhathum.
The part of Cardenia’s brain in charge of gestalting slammed everything together and shoved it into her consciousness.
“Oh my God,” she said, looking at Amit. “You know. You know about the Flow.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Amit said, but his look of absolute surprise when Cardenia mentioned the Flow called him a liar.
“You know it’s about to collapse. You know that Terhathum is next. You’re abandoning it for End.” Cardenia stopped for a second, and then stared at Amit, not comprehending. “You know it’s going to collapse but you’ve done nothing to save your own people. Why?”
“It’s not collapsing, it’s shifting,” Amit started to say, and then clammed right the hell up.
Cardenia continued to stare, and then her brain kicked in and realized what he said. “No, Lord Amit. Oh, no. They’re not shifting, they’re closing entirely. Listen to me. You need to send a message to Terhathum today. Right now. They have to get ready. They have to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?”
“For the collapse, Amit. For the collapse.”
Alarms went off, and from behind and in front, guards came rushing at the two of them.
Amit looked around, shocked. “She wouldn’t,” he whispered. “She wouldn’t. Not to me. Not now.”
“What is it, Amit?” Cardenia asked.
He looked at her. “I’m sorry, Cardenia,” he said, and then they were both grabbed by guards and pulled away, Cardenia in the direction they came from, Amit in the direction they were going to go.
Both groups got nearly to their respective doors when the cargo hold was torn apart by something slamming into the skin of the ship and driving itself at an angle toward the cargo hold deck. Cardenia turned as she simultaneously ran and was dragged, and saw what looked like the remains of a shuttle barreling across the cargo hold, tip over tail, toward the far wall where Amit and his guards were running. She screamed his name but it was lost in the shearing, tearing noise of the disintegrating shuttle and in the sucking noise of the air vomiting out through the gigantic hole in the cargo hold roof. For a fraction of a second she saw the back of his head, pushed down by the imperial guards as they ran. Then they were all mowed down by the threshing wreckage of the shuttle.
The ship, sensing the loss of atmosphere, began to drop pressure doors. Cardenia and her guards ran as fast as they could toward the falling doors but the gale-force winds of the ship’s atmosphere sucking out the hole slowed them down. Cardenia screamed as the doors dropped lower, convinced they wouldn’t make it.