Chapter 247: The Red Lady
Kian asked: "So gentlemen, faced with such a remarkable woman, what brilliant strategies do you three have for winning her over?"
The corners of the Traffic Light Trio's mouths curved upward with smug confidence.
Yellow Hair spoke first: "I have spent days and nights studying the sacred texts and collected verse of the Imperium, and my efforts have borne fruit. I have composed a poem — a true masterwork of courtship.
Consider yourselves blessed, for I shall recite it for you now!"
He cleared his throat with a few ceremonial coughs, drew a deep breath, and delivered the following in a resonant baritone:
"A Recitation:
Era: The Imperium of Man, 40,000th Year of Our Lord.
Author: Bylar Noss.
From afar, the Lady is beautiful. Up close, a beautiful Lady. Truly, the Lady is beautiful. The Lady is truly beautiful."*
Bylar finished and looked around at the group with an expression of naked expectation, awaiting their verdict.
Kian's eye twitched. He replied with the flattest enthusiasm he could muster:
"Profound. It really captures the author's deep longing for... something. Right. Next. Red Hair — what's your genius plan? Going to volunteer as the Red Lady's pet again?"
Red Hair shook his head vigorously and jabbed a finger toward the Red Lady, who was currently singing in the middle of the dance floor.
"Look there — look at what's at her feet!"
Kian looked down. Tethered to the Red Lady's ankle by a jewelled lead was a small, suspiciously teddy-bear-shaped canine creature, sitting with perfect patience while its mistress performed.
Red Hair stared at the animal with the fury of a man who had been personally wronged.
"She already has a dog! I can't even get that position! So I've revised my strategy entirely.
I shall infiltrate the Red Lady's inner circle, deploy every tool at my disposal, systematically displace her affections from all rival claimants, and concentrate the totality of her devotion upon myself alone!"
Kian applauded slowly, extending multiple thumbs-up.
"Magnificent. You're competing with an actual dog for a woman's attention. I bow to you, brother. I genuinely, sincerely bow to you."
Red Hair waved this off as though it were obvious. Kian turned to Green Hair.
"And you? What unique and probably illegal technique are you about to unveil? Don't tell me you're going back to that whole 'trespassing with intent' approach you nearly got shot over."
Green Hair's face split into the expression of a man who had completely lost the plot.
"Shallow. Shallow, I say!
What I do isn't assault. It is passionate expression.
Even if you resist, I will force my way into your life — your space, your world, your very existence. I will use my violence, my obsession, my glorious filthy wrongness to show you the depths of my devotion! THAT is what love IS!"
He then produced a handkerchief from his belt pouch, uncorked a small vial of deeply suspicious liquid, dabbed several drops onto the cloth — and lunged toward the Red Lady on the dance floor.
Yellow Hair and Red Hair stared for a single horrified second, then tackled him to the ground.
"You absolute maniac, you cannot do that to the Red Lady, I WILL stop you!"
Yellow Hair bellowed.
"She will never like you if you do this, you deranged heretic!"
Red Hair howled.
"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND! My love can only be expressed through its most extreme form!"
"I'll show you extreme—"
All three collapsed into a brawling heap on the floor. Somewhere in the distance, the Red Lady's smooth, velvet vocals drifted across the bar, creating a scene of profound tonal dissonance.
They fought for a respectable interval before the bouncers peeled them apart. The three stumbled back to their barstools, bruised and swollen, and turned to look at Kian.
"Alright. We've shown our hands. Your turn. What are you going to do?"
Kian straightened up, ran a hand over his close-cropped hair with the theatrical confidence of a man adjusting immaculate locks that did not exist.
"Watch and learn."
He walked toward the Red Lady just as she concluded her song to a roar of appreciation from the bar's patrons.
She settled into an open chaise longue to rest, and a servant materialized instantly at her elbow bearing a long, slender, already-lit smoking pipe. She accepted it without looking, drew on it with the ease of long habit, and exhaled a curl of rose-coloured smoke.
Kian sat down beside her — thunk — close enough that their thighs were nearly touching.
The Red Lady blinked, momentarily caught off-guard. Then a slow, knowing smile spread across her face.
"A young man in his prime. Very flattering. But perhaps you should be directing your attentions toward women your own age, rather than flirting with an old grandmother like me."
Kian smiled pleasantly. "Young women have their energy, sure. But they also trip over their own feet and have nothing to say for themselves.
A friend of mine put it well: women are like fine amasec — the older the vintage, the richer the flavour."
He took her hand and pressed his lips to the back of it — smooth, impossibly soft skin, like something that had never known a hard day's work.
The Red Lady gave a delighted laugh.
"Charming boy. If I were fifty years younger, that would have worked beautifully.
But this body of mine has been through rather too many juvenat treatments and life-extension surgeries. The hormones don't move me the way they once did. If you want to capture my interest, you'll need to offer something a little more... substantial."
"But of course, my Lady."
Kian reached into his coat and produced a small card, which he held out to her.
"For a woman of your refinement, I've brought something far more interesting."
The Red Lady drew on her pipe and exhaled another plume of pink smoke, then took the card and examined it. Her beautiful crimson eyes narrowed.
"...So. You're the one who's been eating into my spirits market."
The card belonged to his distillery. The cover featured a tasteful illustration of Sister Teresa in white robes and white stockings, treading grapes in a sun-dappled vineyard.
The Red Lady turned the card over between slender fingers, those red eyes sharpening.
"Men," she said, with the fond weariness of someone who had been studying the species for a very long time. "Always chasing the new thing.
My foot-trodden vintage was once the jewel of the Spire's drinking culture. The best-selling spirits in the upper hive. Men wrote me love letters just for the chance of a bottle.
But since this young Sister waltzed into the market, I've become a forgotten old relic.
My prestige. My following. My coin. And my..."
Her fingers tightened suddenly, and she tore the card cleanly in two — the split running directly across Sister Teresa's fresh, bright face.
"...And my youth. All of it, gone with the wind."
She dropped the pieces into the ash-tray on the table and fixed Kian with a look of carefully restrained fury — the patient, coiled menace of a venomous creature deciding whether to strike.
Kian lit aho-stick, expression serene.
"And that's precisely why those three at the bar don't understand you, my Lady. They're shallow men who can only see the surface. True beauty lies within — and wealth, I would argue, is a form of inner beauty. Which is why I've brought some to share."
The Red Lady regarded him with open curiosity. "Now that is interesting. Go on."
Kian tapped the ash from his ho-stick into the tray.
"With respect, my Lady, the foot-trodden spirits market is brutally competitive — and you walked into it having already lost.
You are one person. Even if you spent every hour of every day standing in a vat treading grapes, how much could you actually produce?
The noble houses of the Spire consume wine by the thousands of cases. They're not fools. They know perfectly well that any bottle bearing your name almost certainly never felt your foot. The fantasy has an obvious ceiling.
My operation is different. My gimmick isn't one person — it's a chorus.
A chorus of innocent, devoted, pure-hearted Sisters of the Ministorum.
The Ecclesiarchy has hundreds of thousands of Sisters stationed across Hive Tenebris alone. They can tread the grapes. They can tread them in quantity sufficient to supply a real market.
And the Sisterhood renews itself constantly — old cohorts rotate out, new novices join, an endless succession of the devoted and the pure.
In other words, my Lady: my distillery corrected your original flaw from day one. It gives the nobility space to imagine. Space to believe.
Whether any particular lord is actually drinking wine trodden by a blushing young novice is almost beside the point. The possibility exists. And possibility is what the nobility pays for."
The Red Lady's expression shifted slightly as she listened.
He wasn't wrong.
When she had first entered the trade, she had understood exactly what she was selling — the peculiar fantasies of powerful, bored men — and the scarcity had made it work. Early on, a buyer genuinely might have a bottle she had personally produced. That exclusivity had driven the initial frenzy.
But as the years passed and her operation scaled up, the illusion had collapsed under its own weight. Thousands of cases a week could not plausibly come from one woman's feet. And as time did what time does, the men who had once written her letters had begun looking elsewhere.
The Red Lady sighed, giving Kian a look of weary reproach.
"So you've come to gloat."
Kian raised a hand. "Not at all. I said I was bringing you inner beauty, and I meant it.
My distillery produces a new batch every month, with volume growing steadily — but I have no distribution network. You, my Lady, have spent years building one of the finest distribution operations in the hive. Your channels reach every level of Hive Tenebris.
Together, we'd be unstoppable. Your reach, my product — a true partnership of equals."
The Red Lady's eyes lit up. She leaned forward.
"Split?"
Kian grinned. "Down the middle — fifty-fifty, fair and square. Anyone who tries to cheat the other gets the pox."
Meanwhile, across the bar, the Traffic Light Trio had pressed themselves against the counter like men conducting covert surveillance, eyes locked on Kian.
"You think he's actually pulling this off? I've heard the Red Lady is impossible to crack."
"No chance. The Red Lady is a completely different type from Lady Nightingale. He's out of his depth."
"Shut up, he's coming back—"
Kian walked back over, dropped into his seat, picked up the nearest drink, and drained it in one go. Then he reached into his coat and produced something white and silky, which he dangled in front of the three of them with an expression of transcendent smugness.
"Throne Almighty — those are the Red Lady's white silk gloves!"
"AND THERE'S A LIPSTICK PRINT ON THEM—"
They were correct on both counts. Kian was holding a pair of gloves that had, until very recently, been on the Red Lady's hands. After they had concluded their business arrangement, Kian had asked her for a small token — something to tease some idiots with.
The Red Lady had initially moved to remove her stockings.
Kian had declined on olfactory grounds, and requested the gloves instead.
She had obliged, and added a perfect crimson kiss-print for good measure.
Kian tossed the gloves into the scrum.
"There you go, lads. A gift from your betters. Don't say I never did anything for you."
All three let out a sound that no sanctioned human being should make and hurled themselves at the gloves, dissolving into chaos on the bar floor.
Kian located the Captain — currently several drinks deep and in good spirits — and rejoined him at his table. The Captain watched the brawl with detached amusement.
"Your companions have considerable... vitality. Their approach to courtship is, shall we say, distinctive."
Kian looked at the heap of tangled limbs with profound contempt.
"Those three have departed the God-Emperor's grace entirely. Let's move before the stupidity becomes airborne."
They left the bar, and Kian spent the next several hours walking the Captain through the breadth of his operations.
First the baron's estate in the Spire. Then the food processing facilities in the Mid-Hive. Then the chemical works down in the Underhive — and finally the private army.
Kian assembled all three thousand of his soldiers on the parade ground and brought the Captain to the observation rail above, looking down at the ranked formation below.
"They're rough," Kian said frankly. "Barely more than organised rabble at this stage. But organised rabble is more than sufficient to sweep the even-less-organised rabble holding Garden Isle.
Get them to the island, and they'll pacify it. Turn it into a functioning livestock operation. Give me enough time, and you sail home with a hold full of canned meat. I walk away with your industrial goods. Everyone profits."
The Captain studied the soldiers below, running the numbers in his head. Was this restless, ambitious young noble worth backing?
Kian caught Shiv's eye and made a small gesture. She understood immediately, and a moment later a crate of guana-beast ration tins was being carried up.
Kian pulled one out, cracked it open, and handed it to the Captain.
"I happen to have just over ten thousand tins on hand right now. Consider them yours — an advance payment for your transport services. A gesture of good faith."
The Captain went very still.
Ten years. He had spent ten years on this Emperor-forsaken agri-world without so much as a single tin to show for it. And this man he had met two days ago was offering ten thousand on the spot.
It was a fraction of what he needed — a drop against the ocean of his contract — but it was the difference between zero and something real. That mattered more than the numbers.
"You're serious."
"Completely. Ten thousand tins, available for immediate collection. There's a ventilation access point on the outer perimeter of the Hive — send one of your Aquila shuttles and I'll have my people move the shipment out to meet it."
The Captain took a slow breath and made his decision.
"Very well, Lord Voss. I've waited ten years for this contract to move. I'd rather not wait eleven.
I have six atmospheric cargo lifters — Devourer-class Transports — each capable of carrying two hundred personnel or five hundred tonnes per run.
Twenty Aquila-pattern shuttlecraft, rated at thirty passengers or one hundred tonnes at capacity.
All of it is at your disposal. Contact me through your personal vox-terminal to coordinate timing and deployment."
He extended his hand.
"Baron. I've been waiting a decade for this. Don't make me regret it. Good trading."
Kian shook it.
"Relax, Captain. You're holding the advance cargo. I can't exactly reach orbit and take it back. The tins you need will come — you have my word. Good trading."
The Captain wasted no time. He called down one of his Devourer transports on the spot — a vast, ugly, magnificently purposeful machine that looked like a flying ferrocrete slab, its underside dominated by a cavernous cargo bay. Slow, ungainly, atmospheric-capable, and able to haul entire shipments between planetary surface and low-orbit vessels in a single run.
Ten thousand tins.
One trip.
The cargo bay swallowed them without complaint, and the Devourer lumbered skyward.
[End of Chapter 247]
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