“I officially made Vrenna my heir as soon as I knew about the collapse of the Flow,” Jamies said, to his son. “And now you have a public excuse to leave End because you won’t inherit. Even right now no one would question it.”

“I don’t want to be countess,” Vrenna protested. “And I sure as hell don’t want to be imperial auditor.”

“Relax,” Jamies said. “There will be nothing to audit soon.”

“That’s… not encouraging.”

Jamies smiled at his daughter and looked back to his son. “I sold some holdings recently. It should be enough to get you passage on a ship and get you set up at Hub when you get there.”

“How much is it?” Marce asked.

“About eighty million marks.”

“Good lord!”

“Yes,” agreed Jamies. “I may have lied to that Ghreni Nohamapetan character about my net worth. The point is, Marce, now you have means, motive, and opportunity to leave End. Leave. Do it now. Tell the emperox what we know. If we’re lucky, he may still have time to prepare.”

“Prepare for what?”

“The collapsing empire,” Jamies said. “And the darkness that follows.”

Chapter 5

Kiva Lagos didn’t get a miracle, but as far as she was concerned over the next week she got the next best thing: Sivouren Donher.

“He’s one of our franchisees,” Gazson Magnut said, speaking of the pompous-looking man currently loitering on the floor of the hold the Yes, Sir was operating out of in the imperial station. The franchisee was standing by a stack of haverfruit crates, the fruit inside of which had now come close to peak ripeness. The entire hold was saturated with a heavy floral scent that in the next few days would rapidly descend into rancidity. Magnut and Lagos were in a spare office given over by the station to the hold’s current occupants; they were staring down at the poor bastard.

“Okay,” Kiva said. “So fucking what?”

“He wants to buy passage for himself and his family. On the Yes, Sir.”

“Off of End? To where?”

“He said that he would figure that out later.”

Kiva snorted at this. “It’s not like there’s anywhere in the Interdependency that isn’t already maxed out in population. They haven’t built a new outpost or dug out a new city in decades.”

“I pointed that out to him. He said that would be his problem.”

Kiva looked at the man again. “We’re not running a cruise line here, Gazson.”

“No, ma’am,” Magnut agreed. “But if I may say so, it wouldn’t really do us any harm, either. We’re not running a full crew at this point, and we’re not recruiting as many new crew as I’d like here on End. If nothing else we can put him and his family on custodial detail and make them pay for the privilege.”

“Why are you having trouble hiring?”