Kiva was now looking at her mother in open admiration. Huma Lagos had always been someone with whom one would not wish to fuck, and Kiva had years of watching her mother argue and negotiate to draw from for her own skills with both. But it was always a joy to watch her mother deftly and profanely shove assholes like Amit Nohamapetan up against a wall, then reach down and squeeze (or reach in and twist, as the case might be). It was nice when you could look up to your parent, even as an adult, and think, This is who I fucking want to be when I grow up.
Amit sighed, brought his hand to his face, and rubbed it. “All right, Countess Lagos. What do you want?”
“Why, Lord Amit, whatever do you mean?”
“I mean that if you really wanted to bring a suit to the Court of Grievances or to the Interdependency courts, you would have just done it and surprised us with it. The fact you’re here in my office means you want this resolved another way. Fine. Tell me what you want.”
“I want to give the House of Nohamapetan a haircut.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Amit said.
“It means that I have three things I want from you, and all of them are going to hurt.”
“What are they?”
“First, you fucked with our business. We can fight about it in the court, but you’re not going to like how it turns out.” Huma turned to Kiva. “How much revenue were we expecting from your trip?”
“A hundred million marks,” Kiva said.
“So you want a hundred million marks from us,” Amit said.
“I want two hundred million marks.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You fucked with our product, which was bad enough. But you also fucked with our reputation. This is the cost of fucking with our reputation. So two hundred million marks, in our accounts, in three days.”
Amit looked like he was going to say something else but then thought better of it. “Number two,” he prompted.
“You might be aware we signed a letter protesting your sister’s seat on the executive committee,” Huma said.
“She mentioned something about that.”
“Then it won’t be a surprise that we want her to resign her seat.”
“To be replaced by a Lagos, no doubt.”
Huma shook her head. “No. But literally anyone else would be better than your sister.”
“I’ll tell her you said that.”
“Please do. Three, you tell Emperox Grayland you’ve had a change of heart about the marriage.”
“Come on,” Amit protested. “You’re already claiming my sister’s head. Let me keep mine.”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” Huma and Kiva said, simultaneously, and then looked at each other and grinned. Huma turned her attention back to Amit. “Let’s not pretend that once you’re the consort you won’t still be your sister’s hand puppet.”
“That’s right,” Amit said, sarcastically. “I have no will of my own.”
“No, you don’t,” Huma agreed, not sarcastic at all. “You can work that out with a therapist if you want. But in the meantime, you give up marrying into the imperial family.”
“What if Grayland wants to marry me?”
Huma laughed. “You poor dear. Just, no.”
Amit seemed to deflate a little at that. “And what do we get out of these demands?”
“Nothing,” Huma said. “As in, we say nothing about what you did at End. And we say nothing for what you have planned at End.”
“Really,” Amit said, and Kiva felt a rush of blood to her head. If she had any remaining doubts that the Nohamapetans were up to no good on End, they ended right there. She felt a hand on her hand and recognized her mother was warning her off the outburst she was about to have. She held it in.
“Really,” Huma said.
“And what assurance do we have of that?”
“You want a fucking written contract on that, Amit? Are you that stupid? Understand something here. You hold no cards. Thanks to your appallingly careless brother we have more than enough to bury you, your sister, and your entire fucking house. At the very least you’ll spend the next decade fighting off lawsuits and investigations. At worst, you’ll be in prison and your house will see its monopoly auctioned off. No matter what, it’ll be bad for your business, Amit. And your sister will lose her seat on the committee, and you won’t marry the emperox anyway. This way all you lose is money, and take a gut punch to your ego. And you’ll survive both, I’m sure.”
Amit considered this. “I’ll give you an answer tomorrow.”
“Or, you could give me an answer now,” Huma said.
“Countess Lagos, please,” Amit said. “As you’ve so humiliatingly pointed out to me more than once in this conversation, it’s not entirely my call to make. And I do have a meeting with the emperox on my schedule today. I can’t exactly put it off.”
“Then how about this. In exactly twenty-four hours and one minute from now, unless I hear from you, a sworn affidavit goes to the secretary of the executive committee and to the emperox herself. And I’ll let you and your sister sort it out from there. Fair enough?”
“‘Fair’ is not the word I would use, Countess.”
“You might have thought of that before you began all this nonsense, Lord Amit,” Huma Lagos said, rising. Kiva rose with her. “And before you decided to drag our house into it.” She nodded and left without otherwise saying good-bye. Kiva followed. Her last image of Amit Nohamapetan was of him reaching for his tablet and jabbing in a call code.
“I fucking love you,” Kiva said to her mother as they passed by the receptionist on their way out. The receptionist resolutely did not look their way as they walked by.
“Mm-hmm.” Huma said nothing more while they waited for the elevator.
“Do you think Nadashe will agree?” Kiva said, when they were in the elevator, alone.
“It doesn’t matter,” Huma said.
“Two hundred million marks seems like it would matter.”
“The point of the discussion wasn’t to blackmail the Nohamapetans. That was just a fringe benefit. The point of it was to find out what they’re up to, and to unsettle their plans. Now we know what they’re up to. They’re planning to take over End.”
“Right,” Kiva said. “But why?”
The elevator opened. “Because they know something they think everyone else doesn’t,” Huma said, stepping out.
Kiva processed this while they walked. “You think they know,” she said, to her mother. “About what’s going on with the Flow.”
“They know, or they think they know something else equally big,” Huma said. “They’re risking a lot to position themselves at the ass-end of space, and I think they’re willing to give up a lot to keep it quiet.”
“So you do think they’ll give us the money.”
Huma nodded. They reached the door of Lord Pretar’s office. As they went inside, Pretar stood up and started to welcome them.
“Get out,” Huma said. Pretar swallowed his welcome and marched himself out. Kiva closed the door. “The money is another confirmation,” she continued, to her daughter.
“What if they don’t give us the money?”
“Then I think you and I had better not step out anywhere there’s a direct line of sight between us and a tall roof. But no matter what, we’ve just thrown a spanner into their plans and schedule. It’s going to be interesting to see what they do in the next few days.” Huma settled herself at Pretar’s desk. “This friend of yours. The Flow physicist.”
“Marce Claremont,” Kiva said.
“You still have tolerable relations with him?”