The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency)

by John Scalzi

  “Come on,” Kiva muttered under her breath, “let’s just get to the address at parliament and go crack some fucking skulls.”

  As Grayland waited for the applause to die down, she acknowledged a few people in the room, waving or smiling or pointing. Grayland eventually found Kiva in the crowd and smiled, but as her eyes began to track away, she did something else.

  Wait, did she just fucking wink at me? Kiva thought, and looked around the room again, to see if there was anyone else the wink might have been directed to. There was no one near Kiva that she thought Grayland would give a single real shit about. So, no, it had definitely been directed at her.

  Kiva wished that she had gotten that drink earlier. Something was telling her she might be needing it soon.

  “Hello, my dear friends,” Grayland said, after the applause had died down. “So many of you here today. It is a delight to see you, you who represent what could be the very best the Interdependency has to offer, in leadership and in commitment to our union. I know you are all anxious to see how I will embarrass myself in front of parliament”—this line got dutiful chuckles—“but before I do that I have a few presentations to give. Please indulge me. First, will the Lady Kiva Lagos come up to the lectern?”

  The fuck? Kiva thought, as she walked to the lectern to very polite applause.

  “Lady Kiva, in a very short time you have shown yourself to be astute and extraordinarily competent in business,” Grayland said. “When I thrust you into a custodial directorship at the House of Nohamapetan, no one would have expected that you would have done so much to clean up the house’s finances and rebalance their books. You truly represent the best that the noble houses have to offer. As such, I am now appointing you to the vacant seat on the executive committee of the Interdependency. Congratulations, Lady Kiva.”

  There was applause to this, and then some woman walked up to Kiva with a fucking crystal thing, which Kiva took numbly in one arm, the other arm finding its way to Grayland, who stepped back from the lectern to shake Kiva’s hand. Kiva leaned in close.

  “I don’t want this fucking job, Your Majesty,” she said, quietly, in Grayland’s ear.

  “I know,” Grayland said. “I need you there anyway. Sorry.”

  Kiva smirked at this and turned to go back into the crowd, but Grayland caught her by the elbow. “No,” she said. “Stay up here, a little behind the lectern.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re not going to want to miss this,” Grayland said, and then stepped back to the lectern and called up Archbishop Korbijn.

  The archbishop arrived at the lectern, dressed in archbishopric finery, or so Kiva supposed, since she didn’t actually attend church with any regularity, although she had once had sex in a cathedral, which was great, if you like cold and echoey, which Kiva discovered she didn’t so much.

  “You said to me that you wanted to address an issue with me today, here,” Grayland said to the archbishop. “Here’s your chance, Archbishop.”

  Kiva watched the archbishop step up to the lectern and then noticed the look on a number of the faces in the crowd: uncertainty and confusion. A few were muttering to others. More just looked unhappy.

  “Your Majesty, in the last month there have been grave and important concerns about your conduct,” Archbishop Korbijn said. “Your visions of the future of the Interdependency, while comforting to many of our parishioners, have also generated legitimate apprehension among the powerful, in our church and outside of it, about your state of mind, and, yes, your sanity.”

  The muttering got suddenly louder—

  “With that in mind, let me be absolutely clear where the Interdependent Church stands on this matter.”

  —and just as quickly, silence, which lasted several seconds.

  For fuck’s sake, don’t drag it out, Kiva thought. Get on with it already.

  “The Interdependent Church confirms and celebrates the nature and manner of your visions as consistent with our doctrines and faith, and stands fully behind the power and majesty of their power of revelation,” the archbishop said, and the uproar returned. “I likewise affirm that you are and remain the head of our church. We follow where you lead.”

  And with that the archbishop stepped back from the lectern, kneeled in front of Grayland II, and kissed her right hand.

  The room erupted.

  Grayland II bade the archbishop to rise and had her stand next to Kiva. Kiva glanced over to the archbishop, who didn’t return the glance. Kiva noted she was sweating profusely.

  I really wish I had gotten that drink sooner, thought Kiva. Kiva then noticed that all the serving staff had disappeared from the room, along with whatever woman had given her the fucking crystal thing she still had cradled in her left arm. Kiva decided to put the thing down.

  By this time Grayland had returned to the lectern and was raising her hands to silence the room. Eventually she got her way.

  “I know that last part came as a surprise to many of you,” Grayland said. “As will this next part. Each of you who were invited today were told that your service to the Interdependency would be recognized. And now it will be. My dear friends, I will make this simple. In this room, right now, if you are standing in front of me, you are now under arrest for treason.”

  There was a bang as all the ballroom doors were kicked open and armed imperial guards flooded the perimeter of the room, and also formed a line directly in front of the lectern, just in case anyone was stupid enough to try to charge the emperox.

  No one was. After a few initial shrieks and yells, the crowd of very impressive traitors fell into stony and stunned silence.

  “Now, I know what you’re thinking. How dare I accuse you? But it’s not me who is accusing you, my friends.” Grayland nodded toward a side door, which opened and disgorged Deran Wu. There were shouts and a surge toward Deran, which was quickly stanched when the imperial guards leveled their weapons. Deran stood impassively.

  “Deran was good enough to detail the entire conspiracy for us,” Grayland said. “And I have to say I was impressed with the theatricality of it. To have Archbishop Korbijn denounce me in front of the parliament as she was saying the benediction and to announce a schism in the church. To have the Countess Nohamapetan rise and accuse me of arranging the assassination of her daughter Nadashe.”

  “You did!” the countess shrieked. “She’s dead because of you!”

  “She was alive this morning when I messaged her,” Deran Wu said, and there were gasps. “She’s on your ship right now.”

  “Admiral Emblad,” Grayland said. “You would stand and tell me that the Imperial Navy was no longer mine to command, and then, as the final blow”—Grayland shifted her gaze to the man standing next to the admiral—“you, Jasin Wu, would stand and announce that the House of Wu, my own house, could no longer support me as emperox, and that you were only one house among dozens. Those houses, as you can see, all represented here, now.”

  Holy shit, this is amazing, Kiva thought. The room fairly echoed with stunned silence.

  “Which reminds me,” Grayland said, and nodded to the side door again.

  “Oh God, what now,” Archbishop Korbijn said.

  A trim man came through, dressed in black, and stood in sight of the crowd.

  “Cousin, you might remember Captain Cav Ponsood. You contracted his ship, on behalf of the Countess Nohamapetan here, to chase down and destroy the ship carrying Lord Marce Claremont of End. You did so because the countess believed Lord Marce was important to me, and by killing him, she would hurt me.”

  Kiva looked at the Countess Nohamapetan, who despite her every effort against it was smiling at the idea of Marce Claremont blasted to bits in space.

  Fuck it, Kiva thought. I’m kicking her ass in.

  Another man walked out of the side door. Marce Claremont. He looked over at the countess.

  “You missed,” he said. “But you killed nearly every other member of my crew. That’s on you, Countess.” He st
epped back, behind Grayland. Kiva caught how he looked at her. Oh, yeah. They were definitely boning.

  “Now,” Grayland II said, from the lectern. “I know why I’m here today. Let’s talk about why you are here today. You are all here because of what you think of me. You think I am weak. You think I am a naive child. You think my concerns about the collapse of the Flow streams stand in the way of your businesses and your own plans for power. You think because I claim visions I am unstable, or delusional, or cynical. You think because I am an accidental emperox that I should not be emperox at all. You think these things, some or all of them. And because you think them, you conspired to cast me aside. To raise my cousin Jasin in my place. To carry on the status quo as long as the Flow streams allow, and leave to others to worry about what happens next.

  “Well, my friends, last night, I had a vision. A new vision. And in that vision, I saw all your plans. I saw all your schemes. I saw all your frauds, and your cheats, your secret affairs and your secret bank accounts. I saw every one of you as you are, not how you present yourself. And in that the vision, I saw you here, in front of me. Humbled. As you are, right now.

  “Tell me, you who could be the very best the Interdependency has to offer, yet choose not to be: Who now is weak? Who has been naive? Who is cynical? And who is the emperox here?

  “You have doubted me. Doubt me no longer. You have come to destroy me. I am not destroyed. You have come to burn me. I am the consuming fire. You will feel what it is to burn.

  “That was my vision, and my prophecy. And now it is yours.”

  Grayland let that entire fucking masterpiece of a sermon linger in the air until Kiva felt the goose bumps on her arms.

  And then just as suddenly, she clapped her hands. “Well, okay then. Now I have a parliament to address, so—”

  “I killed him!” the Countess Nohamapetan screamed at Grayland.

  “Pardon?” Grayland said.

  “Your brother! Rennered! I had his car doctored!” The countess stepped forward, toward Grayland, who didn’t move. “I am the reason he drove into that wall. I killed him. I am why you became emperox at all! You owe it to me!”

  Grayland considered this as she came away from the lectern, walked to the countess and looked her in the eye.

  “Lady, I don’t owe you shit.”

  And then she walked out of the ballroom.

  “Fucking best party ever,” Kiva said, to Marce.

  EPILOGUE

  “So you won,” Attavio VI said to his daughter, in the Memory Room. “The great houses are in disarray because so many of them signed on for treason. The church is fully under your control. The military is purging itself of its rogue elements. And you have declared martial law.”

  “I have not declared martial law,” Cardenia said. “I told parliament it has six months to create a plan to prepare the Interdependency for the collapse of the Flow. If they can’t do it, then I will take it out of their hands. In six months another twenty Flow streams will have collapsed. It only gets worse from here.”

  “You said your friend Lord Marce thinks you can use the evanescent streams to buy the systems more time.”

  “Lord Marce can be optimistic in his thinking. I don’t get to be. I have to assume the worst-case scenario. And the worst-case scenario is the Interdependency is unprepared because parliament can’t figure itself out, and the one planet we have that can support life on its surface is blockaded by yet another Nohamapetan.”

  “It’s still only the one ship sent to End,” Attavio VI said.

  “It was a big ship, Dad,” Cardenia said. The Prophecies of Rachela featured a complement of ten thousand marines and more than enough firepower to blast anything it didn’t like coming out of a Flow shoal into metal shavings.

  “But still only one.”

  Cardenia shook her head. “Not anymore. A few smaller naval ships made a break to the Flow shoal when Admiral Emblad was arrested. They knew if they stayed they’d be arrested too. Four ships in all. Ghreni Nohamapetan just got reinforcements on End. And who knows? Now Nadashe may be there too.” Nadashe, who had bounced from the You Can Blame It All on Me before she could be captured, with a hundred million marks in a data vault. The only thing she’d left behind was a note that said Fuck you, Deran Wu. Apparently Nadashe had been surprised by Deran announcing she was still alive.

  Deran, who was going to get out of all of this because he’d walked into the Ministry of Information with a data crypt filled with details on the conspiracy and asked for a deal, which the ministry gave him before Cardenia knew about it. She’d been annoyed because she didn’t need Deran’s information; everything he had she’d found with Jiyi. She’d have rather he be stuffed into the same jail cell as his cousin, because she knew he’d participated in contracting the ship that destroyed the Oliveer Bransid and nearly killed Marce. But she supposed it was better that she did not just magically appear with the data. Jiyi’s collection methods weren’t precisely legal. Deran’s evidence would hold up in court.

  Anyway, Deran was a hero now, with a story that he’d been participating to collect information to unmask the wider conspiracy against the emperox. It was a bullshit story, but it was a bullshit story that was going to propel him into the senior directorship chair at the House of Wu. Deran was going to be in the office Jasin used to sit in. Which was apparently all that Deran ever really wanted.

  At least you know where he is, Cardenia’s brain said to her. Nadashe, on the other hand, was still out there. She had no access to House of Nohamapetan funds—after the Countess Nohamapetan had completely lost it and admitted to assassinating Rennered, Cardenia had ordered every Nohamapetan account frozen and audited—but she could still do a lot of damage with a hundred million marks.

  I hope you went to End, Cardenia thought. Then you’d be out of my hair for a while.

  “I think I lost you,” Attavio VI said, to Cardenia.

  “I was just thinking about problems, sorry.”

  “I don’t mind waiting,” Attavio VI said.

  “You don’t mind anything at all,” Cardenia pointed out, and then smiled. “Still, I very much like talking to you. I wish we had talked more like this when you were still alive. But this is still good.”

  “Thank you,” Attavio VI said. “To the extent I can like anything, I like it too.”

  Cardenia emerged from the Memory Room and found Marce reading a message off his tablet.

  “I was just talking about you,” Cardenia said, coming up to him.

  “To your imaginary friends, I see.”

  “They’re not imaginary. They’re just not real.”

  “Very subtle distinction.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “What were you saying?”

  “That you can afford to be optimistic about Flow dynamics and I can’t.”

  “I don’t know that I’m optimistic about the Flow,” Marce said. “I can say I’m excited about it. We know so much more now than we did even a couple of months ago. I can tell you what I’m speculating about right now, if you want.”

  “Please,” Cardenia said, fondly. She enjoyed watching Marce geek out.

  “I have a pretty good feeling that the collapse of the Flow streams today is at least partially influenced by the Rupture,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘influenced’?”

  “I mean I think it did something to the stability of the Flow streams in local space. Rattled them. Shook them. I think the Rupture caused something like a pressure wave to course through the Flow, and we’re seeing destabilization as a result.”

  “A pressure wave.”

  “Well, not exactly a pressure wave,” Marce said. “It’s something else entirely, in fact. But I can’t really explain it in human languages. ‘Pressure wave’ is the closest I’m getting using words. If you could speak math I might be able to explain it to you.”

  “Hatide Roynold spoke math to you.”

  Marce nodded. “She did. Really well.”


  “I’m sorry she’s gone.”

  “So am I. Anyway, this is all wild speculation on my part, because fundamentally I don’t know how the Rupture worked. I can see the effect on the data Chenevert gave me from the time, but I don’t know the process. I’m trying to work backward from the effect, but that’s not really a great way to do things. Did you ever ask Jiyi if there was any record of the math behind the Rupture? Or what they made to make it happen?”

  “There weren’t any records,” Cardenia lied.

  “Well, that’s inconvenient,” Marce said, forging on. “But it makes the point that all along we’ve been thinking there’s nothing we could be doing that would affect the Flow. But maybe we can after all. We know we found a way to close it off.”

  “Is there a way to open it up?”

  “A Flow stream?”

  “Yes.”

  Marce shook his head. “Closing off a Flow stream is easy, relatively speaking. You just have to snap it off at the Flow shoal.”

  “‘Just.’”

  “I did say ‘relatively,’” Marce pointed out. “Opening a Flow shoal is a lot harder because it requires accessing and moving through the Flow medium. It’s like this: Closing off a Flow stream is like closing a door. Opening a Flow stream is like tunneling through a mountain.”

  “I like it when you use human languages,” Cardenia said.

  “They’re my second-favorite type of languages.”

  Cardenia pointed at the tablet. “Is this stuff about Flow streams what you’re looking at here?”

  “No, it’s something else entirely, from Sergeant Sherrill, who you met.”

  “I remember.”

  “She says that the retired fiver to Dalasýsla is on its way,” he said, holding up his tablet to show the message. “Stuffed with food and seeds and hydroponics and technology and art and entertainment that’s not eight hundred years old. It’s amazing how quickly a fiver can get filled when the emperox tells someone to get something done.”