Tenth Race

Petunia

Petunia sat in the chair in Ms. Dewmeadow's office, her hands folded in her lap, palms up so that the sweat wouldn't smutch her skirt. The air quality in the P.R.A.N.C. headquarters was subterranean at the best of times, and summer had turned it particularly heavy and close. Petunia didn't try to kid herself that that was the only reason she could feel linen clinging to the small of her back, though. She kept her posture upright so that there was no risk of leaving a print on the chair-back.

The heat didn't seem to bother Ms. Dewmeadow much, but the explanation Petunia had just finished working through clearly did. Ms. Dewmeadow's – Cece's – face was furrowed, her lips pinched thin. "Run this by me again. You can summarise, I don't need all the details."

How was she going to explain this? She'd planned what she was going to say to put the proposal to Ms. Dewmeadow very carefully, to keep the lies to an absolute minimum. She was off the end of her script now, though.

"Tenebrae needs a bigger facility to use as our base of operations. The farm- the place we're using at the moment doesn't-"

"No, I understand that part," Ms. Dewmeadow interrupted. Her tone wasn't impatient – kindly, if anything – but Petunia still tensed at it. The CEO went on, "Tell me about this deal, this sponsor."

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Petunia took a deep breath. "We have a… they can't officially sponsor us because of how their business is classified. But they have a building that would meet our needs and they could trade that to us – to P.R.A.N.C., I mean – for us to then provide to the team as an expansion of our sponsorship." As she finished, Petunia tried to run what she'd just said through her head again. She was pretty sure that no part of it was technically a lie.

Provided you accepted 'illegal' as a business classification.

"And this company is called?"

"Uh, Federated Realtor Asset Unit Developments." Petunia paused, and then her nerve faltered, and her voice got away from her a bit, "They're not actually a realty firm, I know it sounds like that, especially with them offering us this building, but mostly they provide services to realtors, they just ended up accepting part of a property portfolio in a bankruptcy settlement, they're not even really using this place, um."

"So what's in it for them to give it to us?" Ms. Dewmeadow was stern in a way that suggested this was really what bothered her.

Another deep breath. This time Petunia squared her shoulders up carefully, too. "They want to open an auction account with us to cover some of the cost. The rest will be on credit, and Tenebrae will pay that off over the rest of the season."

"And what's in it for P.R.A.N.C.? You said something about sponsorship rights?"

Petunia relaxed, lacing her fingers gently together. Safer ground, and she thought Ms. Dewmeadow had probably already made her decision. "We can only offer sponsorship rewards and placement in proportion to the size of the sponsorship. Once we have the building properly valued it will make P.R.A.N.C. our second-biggest sponsor."