The door to the room opened again and four imperial guards came through and marched toward the executive committee table. Hibert Limbar followed behind them.

Nadashe looked at them, and then at the emperox. “Are those for me?”

“Yes, they are,” Grayland said.

“Let me give you a piece of advice, Cardenia,” Nadashe said, as the guards crowded around her. “Keep me alive and treat me very well. The end of the Interdependency is coming one way or another. However it comes, the House of Nohamapetan is going to be there, waiting for its tribute. It’s not going to look kindly on you if something happens to me.”

“We’ll keep it in mind,” Grayland said. “In the meantime, thank you for your service on the executive committee. You’re dismissed.”

Nadashe laughed, stood up from the table, and walked out, accompanied by the guards. The entire executive committee watched her go.

Then when she was gone, Upeksha Ranatunga cleared her throat. “I want to get back to this thing about the Flow streams collapsing in a decade.” She looked at Marce and Grayland. “Is it true?”

“It’s true,” Marce said.

“And you’re only telling us now?” Ranatunga said, disbelieving.

Marce heard Grayland sigh, saw her glance over at him for just a moment, and then turn to Korbijn, who was returning to the table.

“The Prophecies of Rachela is gone,” Korbijn said. “Through the Flow shoal. On the way to End.”

“It’s only ten thousand marines,” Marce said. “And there can’t be that many more at the imperial station there. You have hundreds of ships and hundreds of thousands of marines.”

“All of them have to go through the bottleneck of the Flow shoal,” Grayland said to him. “A few ships and weapons are all they need to defend it.”

“You seem sure about that.”

Grayland laughed, bitterly. “How do you think the House of Wu became the imperial house a thousand years ago, Lord Claremont? We did the very same thing here. In the space above Hub. Controlled the shoals and made everyone who wanted to come or go through them pay a price. We made them pay, Lord Claremont. Just like the Nohamapetans plan to make anyone going to End pay. And at the end of it, they’ll be the new emperoxs, or so they believe.”

“Then seal off End entirely,” Korbijn said. “If the Nohamapetans want to self-exile, let them.”

“It’s not that simple,” Marce said.

“Why not?”

“Because Nadashe was right,” Grayland said. “There’s only one system that will support human life on its own once the Flow collapses. And that’s End. We can prepare every system for the collapse. Give them everything we can to last as long as they can. But it’s End where humans will survive when everywhere else has gone dark. We need that planet. We need to get at least some people from every system in the Interdependency to it.”