“I would take it as a personal favor,” Rakal said, “if you could stop your aide from threatening Aren Saffer while he is in my custody.”
Jainan could not easily categorize his immediate reaction to hearing Rakal say Aren’s name. Aren had always been linked to Taam. Even everything Aren had done felt like something from Taam’s world, spinning on after Taam’s death. Jainan was almost surprised to find he had his own opinion of Aren, separate from Taam: something like cold aversion, as if he wasn’t important enough for Jainan to spend further time on.
Then he said, “Bel threatened him?”
“Saffer attempted to get a message out to his raider allies,” Rakal said tersely. Jainan noticed that despite their ferociously neat appearance, there were shadows of fatigue under their eyes. “We blocked it; I have no idea how she intercepted a copy. It makes it very difficult for me to overlook your aide’s past if she threatens my prisoners with her conglomerate connections.”
Jainan took a moment to arrange his face to reflect an appropriate degree of seriousness. “I can see that,” he said. “I’ll speak to her.”
Rakal didn’t move. “One more thing. I have drafted my resignation.”
“Have you,” Jainan said.
“I have not yet formally tendered it. If you wish to make a preference clear to the Emperor, please do so over the next couple of days.”
Jainan looked at them. “Why?”
There was an unpleasant struggle going on behind Rakal’s attempt at professional neutrality. “My agency failed to handle this as we would ideally have done. In hindsight I should have paid more attention to the … personal angle.”
Jainan felt a distant stab of discomfort. “The personal angle is often irrelevant.”
“You came to the Empire in good faith. Internal Security could have looked more closely, and earlier, at Prince Taam’s activities.” It would have sounded like equivocation except for the way it clearly caused Rakal some pain to get the words out. They seemed determined to do it anyway. “Matters were handled improperly.”
“I don’t think you should resign,” Jainan said.
“I do not require a polite fiction.”
“I think,” Jainan said slowly, “that it’s very possible to spend all your energy doing the right thing but still miss something obvious. I think that doesn’t make your effort meaningless. Does that make sense?”
Rakal’s eyes narrowed, as if this was another piece of an investigatory puzzle. “I will consider it.” They shook their head as if to clear it and moved aside. “I apologize for taking up your time.”
Jainan gave them a fractional nod and quickened his pace down the corridor. He was late.
“Jainan!” Gairad hurried to catch up with him outside the meeting chamber. Her work coveralls were gone, replaced by a semiformal outfit with a jacket in Feria green. “Wait for me. I barely know anyone in there.”
Jainan searched her face for signs she was looking at him differently now that she knew about Taam. He found nothing. She seemed to regard him as a handy clan member who would do as an ally in a pinch, the same as she had before the newslog coverage. It was an odd, refreshing feeling.
Gairad misread his scrutiny, and her expression turned defensive. “Ressid invited me because I know about Kingfisher, as long as I gave my word not to tell any of my friends. Don’t let me look bad in front of her,” she added, with a sudden flash of nerves, leading Jainan to wonder how Ressid overawed younger clan members so easily and how he had completely missed that gene.
Ressid opened the door herself. There were nearly a dozen people around a table in the room behind her; half diplomats who had come up in the same shuttle as her, half embassy staff. Ambassador Suleri was at the head of the table.
When Jainan walked in, Suleri rose. It was a gesture of formality he didn’t have to make; he and Jainan were roughly equal in rank. Jainan had no time for his nerves to return before the Ambassador inclined his head, one diplomat to another.
“Thank you for coming, both of you,” the Ambassador said gravely. “Please have a seat. Lady Ressid is standing in for the principal for Foreign Affairs until her shuttle arrives.
Ressid waited until Jainan and Gairad had both sat. “Citizens,” she said. “The treaty signing is in three hours. Any papers to be drawn up must be drawn up now. The Auditor has let us know he sees the possibility of reconciliation. I have promised the Thean press another story on our treaty with Iskat, and Jainan”—a nod to him—“has bought us an opening. My principal wants your agreement on our course of action.”
The Ambassador glanced at Jainan. “Iskat has broken our trust in many ways,” he said. “However, I encourage the meeting to consider the consequences of a large-scale conflict.”
“The Emperor is willing to give us a small reduction in trade tariffs,” the Deputy Ambassador said, indicating a document spread out on the table. Jainan realized this was also aimed at him. They had already been through this among themselves. They were nervous about obtaining his support.
“Taam wanted a war,” Jainan said. “I have no desire to continue his work. What are the other options?”
Ressid let out a small, satisfied hah, as if Jainan had proved her right. She swept aside the documents glowing on the table, spinning them into oblivion. “Citizens, I propose the Emperor has not offered us a small tariff reduction,” she said. Her smile was that of a shark. “I posit that what she has offered us is, in fact, a blank sheet for our demands.”
She glanced at Jainan, as if she felt his gaze on her. When he met her eyes, Jainan felt the solidity of his clan underneath him, of all the clans, as if his feet weren’t on the metal shell of a station but on the packed earth of Thea below.
“Yes,” Jainan said. “And, if you’ll allow me to suggest something, I think I know the person to deliver them.”
* * *
The Emperor sat in an upholstered chair the color of alabaster, almost exactly matching the heavy white of her full-formal tunic and skirts. Behind her head, filling the wall of the anteroom, was the gold-brushed curve of the Hill Enduring.
Her eyes were fixed on a wall screen. It showed a slow bustle in the vast space of the adjoining Observatory Hall as staff prepared it for the treaty signing with dozens of cameras, both fixed and aerial, and a covered table on the dais at the front. On the table was a row of handscribing quills but no papers. The Auditor stood in front of the table, turning his head slightly from side to side, as if he could hear something nobody else could. Some of the treaty representatives had started to file in, tiny on the screen.
Kiem paused in the doorway to the anteroom, a slim, gold-embossed case in his hand. Vaile broke away from a hushed conversation with a pair of aides and swiftly crossed to him. She was past stressed; instead she had gone distant and steely. “Kiem, what are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to her majesty,” Kiem said, tilting his head at the statue-like figure of the Emperor. “What’s the status of the treaty?”
“We don’t know what she’s signing,” Vaile said, brutally honest. “Things change every five minutes. The bloody Auditor doesn’t seem to mind that if we don’t sign it, we’ll be at war within the year.”