Huma snorted. “Just because you’re trying to land the emperox for your spouse doesn’t mean you or your house is immune to justice, Lord Amit. How is that going, by the way? Rumor is she’s notably resistant to your charms. She might even be relieved to find out you and your whole fucking family are being investigated.”

“The attempted murder victim is the son of a very good friend of her father, the former emperox,” Kiva noted, helpfully.

“Oh, well, all the more reason for her not to want to be seen anywhere near your felonious ass,” Huma said, to Amit.

“As a matter of fact I’m seeing her later today,” Amit said, only a little peevishly. “She’s touring our new tenner with me.”

“That’s adorable,” Huma remarked, and clapped her hands together. “Maybe I’ll have one of our people at Xi’an run over a précis of our complaint to her. You know, give you two lovebirds something to talk about while you tour your pretty new toy.”

Kiva was now looking at her mother in open admiration. Huma Lagos had always been someone with whom one would not wish to fuck, and Kiva had years of watching her mother argue and negotiate to draw from for her own skills with both. But it was always a joy to watch her mother deftly and profanely shove assholes like Amit Nohamapetan up against a wall, then reach down and squeeze (or reach in and twist, as the case might be). It was nice when you could look up to your parent, even as an adult, and think, This is who I fucking want to be when I grow up.

Amit sighed, brought his hand to his face, and rubbed it. “All right, Countess Lagos. What do you want?”

“Why, Lord Amit, whatever do you mean?”

“I mean that if you really wanted to bring a suit to the Court of Grievances or to the Interdependency courts, you would have just done it and surprised us with it. The fact you’re here in my office means you want this resolved another way. Fine. Tell me what you want.”

“I want to give the House of Nohamapetan a haircut.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Amit said.

“It means that I have three things I want from you, and all of them are going to hurt.”

“What are they?”

“First, you fucked with our business. We can fight about it in the court, but you’re not going to like how it turns out.” Huma turned to Kiva. “How much revenue were we expecting from your trip?”

“A hundred million marks,” Kiva said.

“So you want a hundred million marks from us,” Amit said.

“I want two hundred million marks.”

“That’s ridiculous.”