‘The gene-scrying was,’ she snapped, ‘but every reading my clairvoyants have made over the last three years points to nothing but despair and ruin for my children should they marry yours.’

‘The Tarot can be misinterpreted,’ Sen Uru scoffed.

‘Not every reading for three years, conducted by four different readers,’ Chetta said witheringly. ‘I don’t know what has changed in your house, Lord of Dukarr, but Brobantis does not intend to be caught up in it.’

Sen Uru’s cheek twitched, his nostrils flared, and the lid of his warp eye parted, ever so slightly. Chetta stiffened, and sensed Luc Krane do the same. She could almost picture her security chief’s hand slipping to the haft of The Wolf, the mighty power axe he kept at his side. If Sen Uru Dukarr lost his head at this insult enough to attack her, here on this rooftop…

‘This agreement was made with Lord Azariel, the Novator of your house!’ Sen Uru roared.

Chetta pounded the butt of her cane on the rockcrete beneath her feet, then lifted it to point at her husband’s casket.

‘Then I suggest you take it up with him.’

Sen Uru’s eyes flashed, but he mastered himself. He drew himself up to his full height and glowered at her as regally as he could, although the fluttering of his moustaches betrayed the quickness of his breathing.

‘So be it,’ he bit out. ‘You wish to doom your house in this manner, and your children with it?’

‘Sen Uru, you have no idea what I will do to protect my children,’ Chetta spat.

‘Very well. If you wish to break a contract fifteen years in the making, I have no alternative. Such impudence cannot be borne. Henceforth, a trade war shall exist between our houses. My factors will contact yours in due course with the terms and conditions.’ He spun on his heel. ‘Come!’

His aides moved as one in his wake, each one silently staring at Chetta for a moment as they passed her. Ban Uru and Del Iri followed too, their eyes wide with shock. Chetta felt a momentary pang for them; they’d not harmed her, and they’d just been publicly shamed because their father was an arrogant fool. But the fact remained that so far as her seers could determine, both children of the Dukarr ruling family were going to be ensnared in pain and misery, and Chetta would die before she’d see her own children dragged down with them.

‘I will be prepared to reconsider, should anyone with sense wish to speak for House Brobantis!’ Sen Uru roared without looking back as he began to descend the stairs. Chetta kissed her teeth at the back of his head. Just let someone try to marry her children out from under her. She’d bury them before the planet had completed another turn on its axis.