“Is that a problem?” Jainan said.
“Not really,” Kiem said. “They’ll probably just want shots of us and the chancellor—or me and the chancellor, if you don’t want to be in it. You probably did all that with Taam.”
“Taam didn’t do many charity events,” Jainan said. He paused to pick his words, which seemed to be a habit of his. “His position made a lot of demands on his time.”
“Right, of course,” Kiem said. “He was a—a colonel, right? Not much time for fundraisers.” Taam had done something more useful with his life than Kiem and entered the military as an officer. Kiem didn’t think Taam had commanded a ship, but he’d been fairly high up the chain. Kiem had a vague idea that his unit was involved in mining operations.
Jainan didn’t answer the question. He was looking out the window as they went through the Imperial College’s sweeping, spired gates, which were gray against the shower of snow they’d had that morning and in need of recoating. “I’ve been here before,” he said. “I came to a public lecture a few years ago.”
“Wow, and you understood it?” Kiem said. “I studied here. Dropped out before exams came around.” It had been the climax of an inglorious school career and hadn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone, least of all his mother or the Emperor, but telling the newslogs had been uncomfortable. “Turns out being royal can only take you so far if you don’t have the brains.”
“I’m sure you do,” Jainan said, then stopped. “You must—well.”
Kiem realized that sounded like he was fishing for compliments and hastily tried to fix it. “No, honestly, thick as a brick. Ask any of my ex-professors. I got on with them all right, though, so last year they asked me to be one of the patrons anyway. Don’t need to be a good student for that.”
Jainan had his finger on his place in one of Kiem’s ex-professors’ biographies. “I’m sorry,” Jainan said, “I don’t think I can remember everything in this. Is there anything you want me to say to anyone in particular?”
“You don’t have to remember the briefing,” Kiem said, somewhat appalled. “You’d go mad if you tried to remember it. It’s just there in case you wanted to look something up. You’ll want to talk to the professors in your doctorate subject, won’t you? Sorry, I’m no good at science; you’ll have to remind me what it was in.”
“Nothing important,” Jainan said as the flyer came to a halt and settled to the ground. He closed the folder.
“Uh,” Kiem said. “Right.” He surreptitiously checked his wristband for his own briefing.
The reception was in a vast central hall, which had peeling paint on the walls and an echo that magnified the conversations of the hundred or so donors and staff members mingling there. The chairs were the same cheap ones Kiem remembered sitting on in lectures. The excuse for the reception was the artwork from graduating students temporarily lining the walls, and Kiem made vague appreciative noises at it as their student escort towed them toward the Imperial College chancellor.
“Ah! Your Highness! Glad you could make it!” the Chancellor boomed. She was a statuesque figure in tweed and pearls and smart braids, and she turned away from her conversation to bow to them. An ornate flint buckle winked from her belt. “And this must be Count Jainan. Honored by your presence, Your Grace. I do apologize for the journalists. We have to let them in, you know.” She waved a hand at a short, round girl in flowing fabrics that Kiem recognized as Hani Sereson’s partner, whom he’d last seen behind a cam lens just after he’d fallen into the central canal. She gave them a brilliant smile and started taking rapid-fire photos. Jainan, in the corner of Kiem’s vision, seemed to shift very subtly into the background. Kiem moved forward to cover him and gave the camera a wave.
“And congratulations, may I say?” the Chancellor continued, turning to Jainan. “Let me shake your hand.” Jainan’s eyebrows rose slightly as she crushed his hand in her grip. Kiem grinned at him and also accepted a bone-bruising handshake. “Always a delight to have palace support. A delight.”
“No, no, pleasure’s all mine,” Kiem said, extracting his hand, somewhat the worse for wear. “Especially since I know several professors are thinking something about bad pennies turning up. Have you met Jainan, by the way?” The photographer finished a last set of shots and moved on. “He came to one of your lectures a while ago. Has a doctorate in deep-space engineering—extraction of something I can’t pronounce from asteroids. I can now come to this sort of thing on his coattails.”
Jainan looked embarrassed. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “And it was nothing groundbreaking.”
“Oh come on, it’s still a doctorate,” Kiem said. This just succeeded in making Jainan freeze up.
“Can’t have been that long ago,” the Chancellor said. “Long ago is for us decrepit wrecks to use.” She caught the arm of a professor going past them in a black official gown. “Isn’t that right, Professor Audel?”
“Eh?” Professor Audel said, turning around. Her long, graying hair straggled down her back, held out of her face with clips. “Decrepit wrecks? You or me?”
“I think the Chancellor’s implying some of us are young and irresponsible,” Kiem said, holding out his hand again. “Pleased to meet you, Professor. What field do you work in?”
“Professor Audel is one of our foremost engineering experts,” the Chancellor said. “Audel, Count Jainan is an academic engineer from Thea. You three must have a lot to talk about.” She clapped both Jainan and Professor Audel on the shoulder and shook Kiem’s hand again, pulverizing the few bones that she’d left intact on the last round. “Do excuse me, sire. Must get to the old meeting-and-greeting. Look forward to talking to you later. I’m sure you’ll be asking all your normal questions about our outreach programs.”
Kiem had been deputized by two separate charities to do just that, and he shrugged good-humoredly. “You know me too well, Chancellor.”
“Regolith extraction, eh?” Professor Audel was saying. “Interesting, very interesting. We have four people on regolith rigs and solar shielding right now. There’s a lot of crossover with the military, who as usual have ninety-nine percent of all the available funding. And of course, the question is huge on Thea.”
“Yes,” Jainan said. “I think we have a good half of the Iskat military’s mining capability in our sector. I’m afraid I haven’t paid much attention to it in the last few years.”
“Of course,” Professor Audel said. “Politically fraught, though, isn’t it, with the revenue sharing agreement and the close-planet debris issue. Now, the equipment problem on the larger asteroids is the cracking issue in places like the Alethena Basin—”
“I don’t believe that’s actually the issue there,” Jainan said. It was diffident, but it was an actual interruption—the first real one Kiem had ever heard him make. Kiem paid closer attention. “I think it was shown that the stabilizer seeding there in fact failed owing to fluctuations in the environmental radiation.”