Emblazoned gold on green filled the screen, bordered with white. Jainan reached out without thinking and took the tablet out of Kiem’s grip. The flag in the image was a standard replica from a big Thean chain, not one you could just buy here. They probably weren’t even exported to Iskat: of all the Empire’s vassal systems, Thea was the least integrated and had the smallest expat community, and besides, most people would bring their clan flags with them in their luggage.
“It’s wrong, isn’t it,” Kiem said, breaking the silence that Jainan didn’t realize had fallen. “Argh. Sorry.”
“No, that’s not—” He was aware he probably owed Kiem some sort of reaction, but it was hard to focus on anything outside the deep, disconcerting lurch he felt, like a foundation pile had cracked and was threatening to shift. “You don’t need to buy one. I have one.” He rose and went into the bedroom.
Kiem followed him. “You do?” He hesitated on the threshold. Kiem always paused when he came into the bedroom to get something. Every time he did it, Jainan was sharply reminded that no matter how impersonally neat he kept the bed, he had driven Kiem out of his own bedroom.
This time, though, Jainan was focused enough on pulling the box out of the drawer that he just looked over his shoulder and said briskly, “Come in. Don’t hover.”
The moment he said it he wished he could take it back—that was appropriate for other students back in his lab on Thea, not the palace where he was a diplomat. But Kiem didn’t take offense, only grinned sheepishly. “Sorry.”
As Kiem came in, stopping a careful two paces away, Jainan lifted the lid of the box and took out a folded cloth. His fingers were oddly clumsy; it took two tries before he could get a proper grip. He held it up, and it tumbled open in a waterfall of stiff green silk.
Now that he looked at the flag, it would take up most of the wall. Whatever had propelled him to pull it out curdled into embarrassment. He had to say the obvious. “It’s too big.”
“It’s incredible,” Kiem said.
The embarrassment was slow to drain away, as if it took time for it to notice it was no longer needed. “Oh.”
“Isn’t it valuable, though? It should probably go under glass. It looks antique.”
“It doesn’t go under glass,” Jainan said. “But—are you sure? This will alter the look of your rooms significantly.”
He had said something wrong. Kiem was staring at him. “They’re your rooms too.”
“I know,” Jainan said. “But this might be a little much.”
“Jainan, there’s hardly any of your stuff here.”
Now he had upset Kiem, and Jainan hadn’t even seen it coming. He closed his eyes briefly and started folding up the flag. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Kiem said. Jainan couldn’t answer.
In the silence, Bel appeared at the door and saved him from having to come up with something. “Your Highness,” she said, “you are not only terrible at checking your messages, but you’re infecting Count Jainan with your bad habits.”
Jainan jumped and gestured his wristband awake, but Kiem just gave a disarming wave of his hand. “Was it important?”
“That depends,” Bel said. “It’s about the delicate political balance between your two planets, but you can carry on arguing about wall decorations if you like.”
Jainan tensed, but perversely that seemed to puncture all the tension in Kiem like a balloon, and he laughed. “No sense of aesthetics. Go on, Bel.”
“Colonel Lunver and her deputy, Major Saffer, want to see you,” Bel said. “I’ve been chasing the crash data you asked for. The colonel says they have it, but she wants to talk to you about your problem with the Auditor first. She’s the one who took over Taam’s role.”
“She’s got the flight logs from Taam’s crash?” Kiem said.
“She seems to think so,” Bel said. “You have to go in person, though.”
“Well, finally,” Kiem said. “My only other plan was walking into the Emperor’s office and throwing a tantrum.”
“That might have worked,” Bel said. “Either that or got you arrested. I’ll tell them you’re on your way.”
“Her aides would have shot me,” Kiem said. He grinned at Jainan, and for a moment Jainan was almost taken in by Kiem’s unfounded optimism. It made everything that had happened—the Auditor, Taam’s accident—seem like solvable problems, like Kiem thought he could make the world swing onto an easier path by sheer force of expecting that it would. Jainan knew this was absurd. And yet here Kiem was. “Let’s go and see what Colonel Lunver has for us.”
CHAPTER 8
The palace sprawled like a coral reef on a seabed, sprouting wings and structures that housed enough officials and advisors and soldiers and royals to populate a small town. One of the branches was Central One HQ, an imposing military building where Operation Kingfisher had its headquarters. It was on the opposite side of the palace from Kiem’s rooms, but he knew the way. He’d worn a path from the residential wing to General Tegnar’s office every time she was back on-planet, since she all but slept at her desk—though that had been years and years ago.
“So, Colonel Lunver took over Operation Kingfisher from Taam, huh?” Kiem said, as they walked through the gardens laid out between the inner and outer buildings of the palace. “Is she a friend of yours?”
Jainan hesitated. Kiem was getting used to Jainan’s hesitations. Not much came out of his mouth that hadn’t been thoroughly weighed and considered beforehand. “I knew her. She’s worked with Taam before. I don’t believe she would consider me a friend.” He ran one gloved hand along the edge of a low wall as they walked, clearing the snow in front of a flower bed full of bare woody stems. “Major Saffer is a different matter. Taam had a close friendship with him. He would frequently come over for dinner.”
Kiem’s gaze snagged on a tangle of stems in the flower bed and he forgot the conversation. He lunged to catch Jainan’s wrist. “Watch out—”
A small bird erupted from the thicket with a screech of fury, rocketing up into the sky and narrowly missing taking a slice out of Kiem’s ear with its razor-sharp wing pinions. Jainan had jerked back, away from Kiem’s lunge, and now looked up at it in incredulity.
“Ground nesting,” Kiem said apologetically. “They don’t like being disturbed.”
“I will never get used to your wildlife,” Jainan said.
“They don’t generally mean any harm,” Kiem said. He poked a careful finger into the nest it had left behind. “I think they use the creeper flowers to line their nests. There’s not a lot of greenery around at this time of year.”
“Ah,” Jainan said, sounding faintly startled. Kiem saw him examine the climbing creepers at the back of the flower bed and notice the pale, nearly transparent flowers unfolding under the few dark leaves that hung on through winter. “I didn’t realize anything was flowering.” He glanced up at the sky as if the bird might come back, but it had probably found somewhere else to shelter for the day. “It might be charming if that creature hadn’t just tried to kill you.”