“I’m perfectly happy to stay on your good side, Ghreni. What I’m not perfectly happy to do is give you back three fucking million marks because you didn’t think through the terms of the deal. Or to pretend to be intimidated by you huffing and puffing at me about how you’ll make me regret crossing you. Grow the fuck up, Ghreni.”

“I’d like you to tell me if the Claremonts contact you. And by ‘you,’ I mean any member of your crew.”

“I’ll be happy to do that for another half million marks.”

“Kiva.”

“ ‘Kiva’ what, Ghreni? We’re doing business here. You want information. You were willing to pay for that information before. I’m letting you have more information. At a substantial discount from before.”

“You know I’ll still have people at Imperial Station looking for him to board your ship.”

“Of course. I would too, in your shoes. But I don’t think you’re going to find him. If he has any brains at all he’ll find someone else to get him off this fucking rock. Which I will note is fine with me. I already have his half million marks for passage, nonrefundable. Which I will note was the amount that finally pushed this whole fucking shitbag of a trip into the black. Well, that and your three million marks.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“Where are you now? On the station or on the planet?”

“I’m on the planet having meetings with our people here before we head out. Tell your fucking duke we’ll expect our money back with interest. That is, if he manages to keep his head for the next week, which I’m officially doubting and which would not bother me at all.”

“Would you like to have dinner?”

“What?” Kiva said.

“Would you like to have dinner before you go?”

“You know of a restaurant that’s open during a civil war?”

“We could have it at my place.”

Kiva laughed. “You’re actually literally still trying to fuck me.”

“I’m not going to lie. I wouldn’t mind. We did it pretty well, before everything.”

“Yes, we did,” Kiva admitted. “The actual fucking was good, Ghreni. It’s the metaphorical fucking I’m not in the mood to forgive. Now or ever.”

“Fair enough. Let me know if the Claremonts contact you.”

“You know the fee.”

“Fine.”

“Good doing business with you, Ghreni.”

Ghreni snorted and broke the connection.

“You know that he would have tried to kill you if you went to dinner with him,” Vrenna Claremont said. She and Marce were sitting with Kiva in a conference room at the House of Lagos’s local offices.

“I would have broken his goddamned spine,” Kiva said. Vrenna smiled at this.

“I’d like to go back to the part where you told Ghreni Nohamapetan that I booked passage from you,” Marce said.

“What about it?”

“You told him?”