“As many who can make it here alive, I expect,” Claremont said, and then clapped his hands together. “Now, Lord Ghreni. You’re a murderer and a usurper, and you tried to hurt my son. In a perfect world you’d be dead or rotting in jail for what you’ve been doing for the last few years. Either option would be fine by me. But right now, for better or worse, you’re the Duke of End. I suppose now that you’re duke you’ve magically found a way to end the rebellion, yes?”

Ghreni nodded.

“Which means you were actively involved in the rebellion in some horribly duplicitous way, yes?”

Ghreni gave a full-body shrug to this.

“That’s what I thought. Regardless, now we’re at peace, which we’re going to need for what comes next, and you, alas, are instrumental in keeping it. Which means that getting rid of you at this point would cause even more problems than it would solve. I could try arguing the point—I suppose I could contact Sir Ontain and make a fuss. But now that you know about the Flow stream collapse, you know we have bigger problems on our hands than rebellions and coups. So I’m going to offer you my support.”

“Really.” Ghreni blinked at this. “With all due respect, sir, I think you’re misjudging who needs whose support.”

“I’m not. You have some decisions to make that will decide whether humanity—the part of it here now, and the parts of it to come—survive the collapse. You’re ambitious and you’re greedy and you clearly were part of some larger plan by your house to take control of the Interdependency. Good.”

“Good?”

“That last part, yes. It means your ambition and greed are in service for something more than just yourself. It means that you might be something other than just a grasping sociopath. That you might actually care about the Interdependency, and the people in it, and what happens to them. If you do, or if at the very least you can learn to, then I’m here to help you. If you don’t, you might as well have those marines on the other side of the door shoot me now. At this point, it’s all the same to me. But if you are going to use me, and you should, I have some terms and requests. Some things I need from you, so I can trust that there is more to you than the shallow, self-centered hustler you’ve been up to this point. I need to believe you might actually be able to save the world.”

For the life of him, Ghreni had nothing to say to any of this. It was literally like his tongue and brain—his two advantages—had simply shriveled up and blown away.