“Your Grace,” Kiva said, and gave a bare nod. As the daughter of a house head and ranking representative of the house on the planet, Lagos could have simply addressed him as “Duke” and gotten away with it. But she was here to kiss ass, so might as well get to the puckering early.

“Allow me to introduce my advisor, Lord Ghreni, of the House of Nohamapetan.”

“We’ve met,” Ghreni said, to the duke.

“Have you now?”

“We went to school together,” Ghreni said.

“What a small world,” remarked the duke.

“Isn’t it just,” Kiva replied.

“Yes, well. Sit down, Lady Kiva,” the duke said, motioning to the left-hand chair in front of his desk. Lagos took it, an overstuffed monstrosity she nearly disappeared into, with Ghreni taking the chair on the right. The duke sat down in his own fucking parody of a chair, behind a desk a poor family could make a house out of. “I do regret that the circumstances of our meeting could not be better.”

“I understand, sir. It is challenging when you have insurgents almost knocking on your door.”

“What? No,” the duke said, and Kiva saw Ghreni twitch out the very smallest of smiles. “No, not that. I meant the difficulty with this virus your house brought to us.”

“Truly,” Kiva said. “Are you sure that we brought it, sir?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean our investigators here did not find it in any of the samples in our warehouse, or on the No, Sir. It only showed up in the orchards.”

“This is news to us,” Ghreni said.

“Is it?” Kiva replied, looking at him directly. “Well, if it is, my representatives have made a report.” She looked over to the duke. “They’ve filed it with your secretary’s office, along with the notice of an appeal for the lifting of our trade ban.”

“I don’t think lifting that ban would be wise,” Ghreni said. “With all due respect to your representatives and their investigators, Kiva, until that study can be thoroughly examined, the duke, for the safety of the citizens of End, has to assume that any other product you carry is likewise infected.”

“I’m afraid your friend is correct about that,” the duke said, to Kiva. “You’ve heard about how the virus crossed over to our banu. Wiped out the crop in entire areas. We can’t risk another event like that. The banu failure is one of the reasons we have this rebellion in the first place.”

“I understand your concern, sir, and that is why the House of Lagos is willing to assist you.”

The duke squinted at Kiva. “How do you mean?”

“I understand you have placed our accounts in escrow, pending resolution of a court case regarding the virus.”

Kiva watched the duke’s eyes flicker, briefly, over to Ghreni’s before coming back to her own. “So I have. It was the prudent course of action.”