“You really just attempted to morally justify kidnapping me.”
Ghreni shrugged again. “It’s certainly an argument I can see the duke making to ease his conscience. Whether it holds water is not something I think he’ll trouble himself with. The duke is many things, but a great thinker is not one of them.”
“This isn’t going to work.”
“We’ll see. Either way, war excuses many lapses, especially if the duke gets his weapons and quashes the rebellion. In the meantime, Lord Marce, you get to find out how much you are worth to your father. If not for yourself, then for whatever reason he has for sending you off the planet. You don’t want to tell me what that is, do you?”
“It’s not any of your business.”
“I know you believe that. But you might be surprised at the scope of my business.”
“Since the scope of your business clearly involves kidnapping, I don’t think anything you’d do at this point would surprise me much.”
“Again, fair point. I’m willing to listen if you want to tell me why you’re really planning to leave End.”
Marce stayed silent, staring at Ghreni.
“That’s fine,” Ghreni said, after a minute. “If your father doesn’t move quickly enough, we’ll be torturing you a bit to motivate him. Video and all of that. While we’re doing that I’ll have them ask you about this again.”
“Torture doesn’t get truthful answers.”
“That’s what they say. Again, we’ll see.” Ghreni stood up and pointed to the far end of the container. “In the meantime, there’s a toilet in that far corner, and over here there’s a cooler with water and a few snacks.” He pointed toward the near end. “The door is here. If you get within five feet of it, an electric current goes through it. If you touch it, you probably won’t die, but you’ll wish you had. If you still somehow manage to open it anyway, my people on the other side will make you wish you hadn’t. You understand?”
Marce nodded.
“Good.” Ghreni considered Marce. “I do apologize about this. This wasn’t how I would have done it. And I realize this will make things awkward between us from here on out.”
“For starters,” Marce said, echoing Ghreni’s comments from earlier. Ghreni smiled and exited.
Marce went to the cooler, took out a bottle of water, and drank from it, looking at his surroundings again. Table lamp, chairs, toilet, cooler. No cot. A cold metal floor and cold metal walls. He walked to the front of the room, not too close to the wide doors, and heard voices on the other side, low, masculine. He couldn’t make out what they were saying.
This is lovely, he thought. The only good news in any of this was that Ghreni gave back his data crypt, which was rather more valuable than he knew. Otherwise, this was a mess. By now his father would probably have been contacted by Ghreni Nohamapetan. Marce didn’t know how his father would react. On one hand this was exactly the sort of thing he’d push back against. On the other hand, Ghreni was right that the only things Dad really cared about in this life were his children.
There was also the matter that somewhere between a week and a month from now, Interdependency marks were going to be worth less, pound for pound, than dirt. That being the case, Dad might hand the money over simply because it wouldn’t matter in the long run, or even the slightly-longer-than-short run.
But then this uprising, which was beginning to look like it might sort itself out, and not in the duke’s favor, might get a new burst of life from those additional weapons. More death, more destruction, more people displaced from their homes—at a time when everyone on End’s life was going to be turned upside down anyway, because of the Flow stream out from the planet closing up.
Marce took another swallow from his water. He was afraid, and deeply concerned for his individual well-being—Ghreni Nohamapetan struck him as just the sort of smug sociopath that would in fact have him tortured just for fun—but he also felt strangely detached. Whether that was shock at his current state of being, or just awareness that human civilization was close to the end, so relatively speaking this was nothing, or both, was something he couldn’t parse. He was scared, but he was also tired. At the moment, at least, being tired was something he could actually do something about.
So Marce Claremont went back to his chair, sat in it, put his feet up on the table, crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and tried to take a nap.
Some indefinite time later he felt himself being shaken awake. “Look who’s here to see you,” said a familiar voice.
Marce opened his eyes, blinking, and tried to focus on the thing directly in front of him. It was Giggy, his stuffed pig. The person behind Giggy, waving him in Marce’s face, was his sister Vrenna.
“You found me,” Marce said, groggy.
“That’s what I do,” Vrenna replied, handing Giggy over to her brother.
“Why weren’t you electrified?”
“What?” Vrenna looked puzzled.
“Never mind. How did you find me?”
“I had help. I’ll explain later. Are you okay to walk?”
“I’m fine.”
“Then let’s get moving before the two chunks I stunned wake up.”
Vrenna led Marce out of the room, which was, as suspected, a repurposed cargo container, located inside a tumbledown warehouse. Marce’s container was not the only one; two more, presumably currently unoccupied, were lined up next to his. One of them had a long streak of blood curving away from it, as if a body had been dragged away. Outside Marce’s container two men lay on the floor of the warehouse, the same two who had grabbed him and pulled him into the van. They were breathing, which was more than Marce really wanted for them at the moment.
“What is this place?”
“It looks like an extracurricular detention center,” Vrenna said.
“For the duke?”
“Maybe. Come on.” Vrenna led her brother out of the warehouse, and pushed him toward a nondescript groundcar. Marce got in and buckled up while Vrenna put the thing into manual drive.
“Where are the others?” Marce asked, looking around.
“What others?” Vrenna asked.
“You came to get me alone?”
“I didn’t have a lot of time to make a project out of it.” Vrenna checked her surroundings and began driving off.
“What if I had been injured? What if I hadn’t been able to walk? What if there had been more than two of them?”
“I would have figured something out.”
“I have notes on this rescue.”
“I can put you back if you like.”
Marce giggled and clutched his stuffed pig tighter. “Don’t mind me, sis,” he said. “I’m just having a little post-kidnapping freakout.”
Vrenna reached over and took her brother’s hand. “I know,” she said. “Go ahead and freak out a little. I don’t mind.”
After a couple of minutes of relatively restrained freakout, Marce held up Giggy and looked at him. “You brought Giggy with you.”
“I did. I thought it might distract you from thinking too much while I got you out of there.”
“It worked, but I’m wondering how you got him in the first place.”
“He was given to me. Along with the rest of the stuff you had in a rucksack when you were kidnapped.”
“Okay, but how did you get any of that?”
“It was given to me by the people who were watching you.”
“People were watching me?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Chapter
8
The call from Ghreni Nohamapetan after he lost Marce Claremont had to be one of the most satisfying calls Kiva had ever gotten in her life.
“Marce Claremont is gone,” he said.
“Who?” Kiva replied.
“Don’t fuck with me, Kiva. I want to know where he is.”
“I couldn’t tell you where he is. It’s not my job to keep track of him. My job, as I understood it, was to tell you
if he tried to book passage on my ship. He did, and I told you. You were supposed to wait until he was about to board to snatch him, if I remember correctly. You decided not to wait. So it looks like this one is on you.”
“The people I had with Claremont tell me they were attacked by a woman.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“It was Vrenna Claremont.”
“You mean the sister who had years of training to murder people for the state, and then became a cop? Yes, that would be my logical guess too.”
“I want to know how she came to find out we were targeting her brother.”
“So ask her.”
“Kiva.”
“I didn’t tell her, if that’s what you were asking. Why would I tell her? I had three million marks riding on you snatching him.”
“Someone in your crew told them.”
“Or, and here’s just a theory, when you tried to extort the Count of Claremont in front of his adult children and you didn’t immediately get what you wanted, maybe they figured an asshole like you would try to force his hand with something like kidnapping, so they made preparations, particularly the one of them who was a fucking soldier and is now a goddamned cop, Ghreni.”
There was silence on the other end of the call for a moment. Then, “I’d like to know how you heard about that.”
“Because Marce Claremont fucking told us,” Kiva said. “He told my chief purser about it when he was booking passage, and then my purser told me, because his job is to tell me things that will affect my ship’s bottom line. Are you really such a smug asshole that you didn’t think the Claremont kids wouldn’t talk about that? If there wasn’t a fucking war going on and the rule of law wasn’t basically suspended while the duke thrashes about for a few more days before the end, your ass would already be in jail for extortion, with the duke letting you be the fall guy. For fuck’s sake, Ghreni. You tried to extort an imperial official in front of a fucking cop. You have to be spectacularly dense to try to pull a stunt like that.”
There was another silence, and Kiva merrily counted off the seconds before Ghreni spoke again. She got to six.
“Have you heard from Marce or Vrenna Claremont?”
Kiva snorted. “Why the fuck would I hear from them? I’m not the one they were dealing with. It’s doubtful they have the first clue who I am. If they were going to contact anyone, it would be my chief purser. And before you ask, they haven’t contacted him since you pulled your stupid stunt. If I were going to guess, I’d suspect they’re probably trying to book passage on another ship leaving End.”
“Which ones are leaving in the same time frame as yours?”
“Do I look like a fucking traffic controller to you, Ghreni? I don’t know, and I don’t really care.”
“I’d like you to delay your departure.”
“Why would I do that? Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, our spot at Imperial Station is already scheduled to be taken over by another ship. We’ve got nowhere to stay.”
“Your ship could stay within system.”
“Or we could leave when we’re supposed to, because we’ve got a fucking schedule and you don’t make it.”
“I would owe you a favor,” Ghreni said.
Kiva laughed out loud at this. Then, “Say that again, Ghreni. I want to see if I’ll laugh as much a second time.”
“We used to be friends.”
“We used to fuck each other. It’s not the same thing. Which you of all people know.”
More silence. Then, “I’d like to talk about the three million marks.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“I don’t have Claremont. I’m not sure why you should have my three million marks.”
“I should have them because the deal was I let you know if he booked passage. He did. The rest was up to you. It’s not my fault you hire incompetents.”
“Kiva, if I find out that you were behind him escaping, you won’t like it.”
“Well, I have two responses to that. One, fuck you, you shitty little example of a human. Two, if I were behind it, what the fuck could you do to me? I’m leaving End, you asshole. I’ll be back home within the year and I’ll be taking a job at corporate. I’ve done my time on a ship. You, meanwhile, will still be here, a pimple on the ass end of space. So threaten all you want, you amoral fuck. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Ghreni sighed. “Kiva. Despite everything I still like you a little bit.”
“I’m touched, Ghreni. Really, I am.”
“This is why I’m telling you now that you have no idea what’s coming, and why in the end it wouldn’t be a bad thing to stay on my good side.”
“I’m perfectly happy to stay on your good side, Ghreni. What I’m not perfectly happy to do is give you back three fucking million marks because you didn’t think through the terms of the deal. Or to pretend to be intimidated by you huffing and puffing at me about how you’ll make me regret crossing you. Grow the fuck up, Ghreni.”
“I’d like you to tell me if the Claremonts contact you. And by ‘you,’ I mean any member of your crew.”
“I’ll be happy to do that for another half million marks.”
“Kiva.”
“‘Kiva’ what, Ghreni? We’re doing business here. You want information. You were willing to pay for that information before. I’m letting you have more information. At a substantial discount from before.”
“You know I’ll still have people at Imperial Station looking for him to board your ship.”
“Of course. I would too, in your shoes. But I don’t think you’re going to find him. If he has any brains at all he’ll find someone else to get him off this fucking rock. Which I will note is fine with me. I already have his half million marks for passage, nonrefundable. Which I will note was the amount that finally pushed this whole fucking shitbag of a trip into the black. Well, that and your three million marks.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“Where are you now? On the station or on the planet?”
“I’m on the planet having meetings with our people here before we head out. Tell your fucking duke we’ll expect our money back with interest. That is, if he manages to keep his head for the next week, which I’m officially doubting and which would not bother me at all.”
“Would you like to have dinner?”
“What?” Kiva said.
“Would you like to have dinner before you go?”
“You know of a restaurant that’s open during a civil war?”
“We could have it at my place.”
Kiva laughed. “You’re actually literally still trying to fuck me.”
“I’m not going to lie. I wouldn’t mind. We did it pretty well, before everything.”
“Yes, we did,” Kiva admitted. “The actual fucking was good, Ghreni. It’s the metaphorical fucking I’m not in the mood to forgive. Now or ever.”
“Fair enough. Let me know if the Claremonts contact you.”
“You know the fee.”
“Fine.”
“Good doing business with you, Ghreni.”
Ghreni snorted and broke the connection.
“You know that he would have tried to kill you if you went to dinner with him,” Vrenna Claremont said. She and Marce were sitting with Kiva in a conference room at the House of Lagos’s local offices.
“I would have broken his goddamned spine,” Kiva said. Vrenna smiled at this.
“I’d like to go back to the part where you told Ghreni Nohamapetan that I booked passage from you,” Marce said.
“What about it?”
“You told him?”
“You already know I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed the three million marks he offered for the information.”
“Yeah, but then he grabbed me and held me hostage and planned to torture and maybe kill me.”
Kiva shrugged. “We told your sister immediately after they grabbed you, because I had
people watching you. And then we gave her all the information she needed to find you and get you. Hell, we even gave her your rucksack with the adorable little stuffed pig in it as proof we weren’t fucking around.”
“I still could have been hurt. Or I could have died.”
“You weren’t and didn’t.”
“But—”
Kiva held up a hand. “Can I just wrap up this whole line of conversation by saying I really don’t give a shit whether you’re upset? If you were actually hurt, or dead, then I’d say sorry. But you’re not, so suck it up. The way I see it, if Ghreni wanted you bad enough to give me three million fucking marks for you, then sooner or later he would have just tried to grab you anyway, whether or not I told him anything. Since that was the case, I decided to get paid. This trip was in the red, now it’s not. And we did give your sister information to save your ass. Stop whining about it, for fuck’s sake.”
“I … I literally don’t know what to say to that,” Marce said.
“You could say ‘thank you,’” Kiva said, and noticed Vrenna smiling.
“I don’t think I will,” Marce said.
“Okay. But either way, let’s table this and move on, shall we?”
Marce lapsed into silence, next to his still grinning sister, and Kiva noted that both of them were attractive, Marce in a nerdy, probably attentive and considerate way, and Vrenna in a way that suggested that it was fifty/fifty whether your bedframe would be a pile of kindling at the end of a fuck date. Whether Kiva had wanted to admit it or not, Ghreni’s totally insincere attempt at a rendezvous had reminded her it’d been a week since her last attempt at an orgasm, with that assistant purser, and in the time since she was either too busy or too pissed off even to rock herself off.
This qualified as an absolute fucking tragedy, no pun intended, which Kiva would need to attend to one way or another. She idly wondered whether either of the Claremont twins would be the sort to assist her in this regard. She decided that Marce probably wouldn’t, at least not at the moment—he still seemed put out at the idea that Kiva was fine letting him be snatched for three million marks, and honestly, that was totally fair—but maybe Vrenna might. Kiva regretted that time, necessity, and circumstances made following up on that an impossibility.