“And what did he say?”
“Nothing; he was researching privately for the emperox. The only person I think he ever shared the draft with was me, because I was working with him on his research. And publicly, at least, Hatide Roynold stopped researching on this topic. Her doctorate addresses another vector of research entirely. But the imperial guards have just spoken to her overnight. It turns out that like my father, Roynold had a private patron who allowed her to continue her research on the topic of the Flow streams shifting. Nadashe Nohamapetan.”
All eyes turned to Nadashe, who smiled. “I knew this was coming,” she said, and addressed Korbijn directly. “Hatide is a friend of mine from university. She came to me in financial straits and wouldn’t take charity. So I funded her research on this topic instead. I gave her a stipend to finish this and her other work, and she gave quarterly updates. Which I never read because that was never the point.”
“I’m sorry, Lady Nohamapetan, but there is reason to believe otherwise,” Marce said.
Nadashe turned to Marce and would have glared a hole in his chest if she could. “And what reason is that, Mr. Claremont?”
“It’s Lord Claremont, Lady Nadashe,” Marce said. “And because your brother suggested otherwise.”
“To whom?”
“To us,” said Emperox Grayland II, from the doorway. Everyone stood, except for Marce, who was already standing. He smiled at Grayland’s sudden appearance. They had not planned it when they had spoken earlier, but he could tell she had been agitated when he came to her and disclosed what Kiva Lagos had told him, along with his own personal information. When the emperox told him the things she knew, everything, appallingly, fell together. After she had made calls to follow up on loose ends, the two of them planned this presentation, which Marce was to deliver.
But she also made him wear a microphone so she could hear the entire exchange, which is why she had a response to Nadashe Nohamapetan when she was too far away to possibly have heard what she was saying as she walked through the door. Marce had to admit it made for a nice psychological effect.
Grayland walked slowly to the table and waved at everyone to sit. Archbishop Korbijn moved to sit elsewhere besides the head of the table, but Grayland signaled she should stay where she was. She reached Marce and leaned on him instead.
“Your brother, Lady Nadashe, revealed to us that your family knew about Dr. Roynold’s work,” Grayland said. “He told us that just before he died, torn apart by that shuttle that crashed into your new tenner. We didn’t know what he meant at the time. But then we had a conversation with Lord Claremont here, and he knew what your brother was talking about, because he’d seen her early work. He knew what it said, and he also knew it was wrong.”
“It is wrong,” Marce agreed. “The math was sloppy. I haven’t seen her latest work yet, but if she’s still suggesting a Flow shift, then she never corrected her initial errors.”
“But you wouldn’t know that,” Grayland continued, to Nadashe. “So you and your family worked from the assumption that End would become the new center of the Interdependency. You worked so that when it happened, you, and not the House of Wu, would be the ones to control Flow access. You promoted rebellion on End, sent your brother Ghreni there to administer it, developed an agricultural virus to exacerbate it, and blamed it on the House of Lagos to cover your tracks and to get back at an enemy house.”
“Here at Hub you pushed for military aid to End’s duke and then used pirates to take those weapons for your family, pushing the duke to more desperate action,” Marce said. “And you kept the pressure on for more military intervention by planning and executing terrorist attacks here and in the rest of the Interdependency.”
“That’s a lie,” Nadashe said.
“We have Che Isolt in Guard custody, Lady Nohamapetan,” Grayland said. “Your man at customs and immigration. He gave you up almost immediately. He told us how he identified and acted as a go-between between you and immigrants from End. How you would either use them or frame them for the terrorist events. He even told us about the attempt yesterday. How he gave an unwitting immigrant a transmitter that hacked into the shuttle through a maintenance program and sent it into your own ship. Do you know why he gave you up so easily?”
“Because he found out you intentionally killed your brother to make it look like an attack on the Nohamapetans,” Marce said.
Grayland nodded at this. “Apparently fratricide was too much even for him. Although he did approve of you attempting to frame the House of Lagos for all of this. He said it was a clever move.”
“The House of Lagos isn’t happy about it, however,” Marce noted.
“No,” Grayland agreed. “No, they are not. And neither are we, Lady Nadashe. About any of this.”
There was dead silence around the table as the entire executive committee stared at Nadashe Nohamapetan.
“I am grieved that you would believe any of this, Your Majesty,” Nadashe began.
“Oh, cut the shit, Nadashe,” Grayland said, irritated. “It’s over.”
“No, Cardenia,” Nadashe said, and there were several gasps as she used the emperox’s personal name, in a flagrant breach of protocol. “It’s not over. Perhaps for me. Not for the House of Nohamapetan.” She took her tablet, which she had kept in her hand this entire time, and tossed it onto the table. She pointed at it. “The minute your lackey here put Hatide’s report in my hand, I sent a message to the Prophecies of Rachela. The troopship with ten thousand marines and all their equipment and weaponry. By the time you showed up and started your tirade, the bridge crew had locked itself in and begun moving the ship toward the Flow shoal. It was already positioned for immediate transfer. In less than fifteen minutes the Rachela will be through and on its way to End. It’s too late to stop it.”
Grayland glanced over to Korbijn, who grabbed her own tablet, leapt up from the table, and started making calls. Then she turned her attention back to Nadashe. “Your bridge crew can’t stay there forever.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Nadashe said. “They’re not the only ones I have with us. I’ve been working on this for years. When the Rachela comes through to End, we’ll control the system. We’ll control its imperial station first, and if my brother doesn’t control the surface of the planet by then, we’ll control it soon enough. Then it’s simply a matter of waiting, isn’t it? Now we can defend the exit shoal to End easily enough. We’ve planned for that. And when the Flow streams shift, we’ll start negotiations.”
“You don’t understand,” Marce said. “Roynold was wrong. There’s no shift coming. There’s a collapse coming. Every single Flow stream is disappearing in the next decade.”