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?”