“Once or twice a decade, yes.”

“You don’t have other things to take up your time? Sport teams? Board games?”

“Usually the rebellions are confined to outer provinces,” Rue said. “They pop up, the reigning duke sends in the Home Guard, it’s over in a couple of months. This one is different.”

“This one is organized,” Finn said. “It’s got some firepower behind it.”

“Yeah, I figured that part out on my own,” Kiva said. “But I’m still not hearing what it has to do with us.”

“As I said, politically, nothing,” Rue continued. “But this particular rebellion has been expensive to fight. Tax revenues are dropping because of business disruption. That money’s got to come from somewhere.”

“From us?”

“From us,” Rue agreed.

“Not just us,” Finn amended. “He’s putting the squeeze on all guild interests here. Higher taxes and tariffs, for a start. The duke pushed them up to the imperial legal limit.”

“But that wasn’t enough,” Rue said. “So at that point, the duke started getting creative.”

“When the virus was reported on the grapefruit, the duke froze the banking accounts of the House of Lagos,” Finn said. “Theoretically they’re in escrow pending legal determination of damages to End in the spread of the virus to native crops.”

“How are we responsible for that?” Kiva asked.

“We might not be,” Rue said. “That’ll need to be decided in court. But if the duke can prove that the virus was introduced into the End ecosystem due to negligence on our part, he’s entitled by imperial law to compensation and penalties.”

“And in the meantime, to keep us from repatriating profits to Ikoyi and potentially out of the reach of the duke, our accounts are in escrow here,” Finn said.

“But they’re not really in escrow, are they?” Kiva said, and pointed out the small, thick, bulletproof window. “The duke is using them to fund the fight against these rebels.”

Rue smiled, thinly. Everyone on End, apparently, smiled that way. “As it happens, when the duke declared the current state of emergency, he nationalized the banks. The official line is that it’s to tamp down on financial panics and speculations. But the executives at the guild banks tell us he’s raiding accounts.”

Kiva snorted. “Well, that’s nice.”

“It’s not a bad plan, at least as it relates to the House of Lagos,” Finn admitted. “If he beats the rebellion, he has all the time it will take for the litigation to run to replace the funds he’s stolen. That will be years.”

“And if he loses then it won’t matter anyway, because he’ll probably be dead,” Rue said.

Kiva grunted at this and looked out the window. End’s capital city of Inverness rolled by, run-down, unhappy, a few sooty fires in the distance. “Will he?”

“Will he what?” Finn asked.

“Will he lose?”