Kiem wouldn’t have pinned Jainan as overly sensitive, but Jainan didn’t react to that either, apart from a movement of his throat as he swallowed. “You’ve been … very helpful,” Jainan said. He glanced at Kiem, and Kiem realized this was probably a signal that he didn’t want to talk about Taam anymore.
“We’ll leave you to the important military stuff,” Kiem said, getting to his feet. “Can’t have civilians underfoot all the time, right?” He leaned over the desk and pumped Aren’s hand.
Aren grinned. “Believe me, you’re not half as bad as the civil servants. And honestly, I’ve been worried about Jainan. Anything I can do—you only have to ask.” He held out his hand to Jainan, who took it gingerly. “You only ever had to ask.”
Kiem held himself back until they were outside and in the shadow of the Emperor’s Wing. “So,” he said. “That went … well?”
Jainan paused. “Taam found Colonel Lunver valuable,” he said abruptly. “Taam did not suffer fools. I think it would be a good idea if you got on well with her and Taam’s unit.”
“Right,” Kiem said, gathering certainty. “We’re liaising with the military. I’m a model liaison. Should we invite them to dinner? I cook a mean pancake. Only pancakes, though. I suppose we need to make sure we get on with everyone involved in the investigation.”
Jainan had half smiled, but it faded almost as soon as it appeared. Kiem still couldn’t quite read him. It sometimes felt like a song playing just out of earshot, or a step on a staircase in the dark. “Yes,” Jainan said. “We do.”
CHAPTER 9
As the winter deepened, the Resolution and the Empire paced toward Unification Day with the heavy, unswerving tread of two automatons converging. Jainan had listed the ceremonies that led up to the treaty signing; he checked them off as they passed. Most of them took place behind closed doors with the Emperor and her increasingly harried-looking team of aides, but one couldn’t be completed without the vassals: the formal handover of what the Resolution called proscribed material. The remnants. Jainan hadn’t paid much attention to them, but the ceremony must be crossed off the list. Kiem and Jainan were required to attend as the Thean representatives: they would surrender everything found on Thea since the last treaty.
Jainan spent the four days leading up to that ceremony obsessing over Taam’s crash data. He used to feel his time in the palace drag, but now it slipped through his hands like water. Fortunately Kiem seemed to get invited to every dinner and charity gala in Arlusk, so it wasn’t hard to keep Jainan’s preoccupation away from him. Things had always turned awkward with Taam whenever Jainan became obsessed with something like this; Taam had joked that Jainan should just join a monastery where they’d let him retreat into his own world for years on end.
Jainan knew on some level that this was displacement. His duty was to attend the ceremonies and represent Thea, not to fool around with log forensics for an investigation that Internal Security already had in hand. But the Auditor’s refusal to instate him and Kiem had shaken him—it must sort itself out, he told himself, nobody could genuinely want to break the treaty—and he needed something to focus on.
He found nothing in the crash data. Every line of the logs supported Internal Security’s conclusion of a natural compressor failure causing a catastrophic leak of fuel into an adjoining thermal chamber. Any attempt to artificially induce that failure would have stood out like a sore thumb. Jainan wasn’t an expert in landside craft, but he knew the basics; a badly maintained compressor was a common failure point. The data was almost textbook.
When the remnants ceremony came around, it should have been a relief to give up on the crash logs. Instead, Jainan stared into the mirror as he changed his outfit and felt like a ghost hovering outside his own body. He must look respectable. He and Kiem were to act like a happy couple. The Thean embassy had tried to invite them to a reception afterward; Jainan knew Bel would turn it down as not commensurate with Kiem’s status. Imperial Princes were expected to put the palace first.
Kiem was late—Kiem was often late; he seemed incapable of looking at the time—and he turned up in a flurry of apologies. Jainan smiled mechanically, the ghostlike feeling floating around him like a layer of film, and accompanied him to the event.
The remnants ceremony took place in the palace’s largest stateroom, the Chamber of the Hill Enduring. The Hill Enduring was Iskat’s crest, a sparse, instantly recognizable curve, but Jainan had never been told the history. The day before, he had absently asked Kiem about the original hill. “I don’t … know,” Kiem had said, as if just realizing this himself. “It must be on one of the planets the first terraformers came from, but we’ve been here for four hundred years. Probably eroded by now, wherever it is.”
The shape of the Iskaners’ long-abandoned horizon was emblazoned on two walls of the stateroom. Several hundred beads of light hung from the roof like the dense hearts of galaxies, shedding a soft light on the endless gold braid that adorned the military officers and royals in attendance. The stateroom was set up around a wide ceremonial dais at one end, which currently held an assembly of stands, glass cases, and incongruously heavy lockboxes. Remnants.
The remnants came in sizes from an obsidian-like stone that could fit on a coin up to an opaque lump of metal the size of a small dog, with compressed strata that seemed to bleed further into each other as you watched. Jainan had seen remnants before, of course. His university had a minor shard on loan in the xenotechnology department, but he had been deep in his own research and uninterested in something with no practical use and so many Resolution interdictions around working on it.
He was unprepared for the feeling of dozens of remnants clustered together, which was like walking into a garden thick with swarming bees.
The Auditor stood to the side of the dais, quietly conferring with the Emperor’s aides. His staff moved among the remnants, which Jainan realized were grouped by planet: the cases with the Thean remnants had clan insignia showing who was involved in the digs that found them.
The rest of the room was set up more informally. This was Iskat, so of course there was a meal: the salt course was set out but as yet untouched. Dozens of guests were milling around the tables. Jainan saw a couple of the other treaty representatives. Kiem was in his Imperial family uniform, which was not quite military but showy enough that he could hold his own, while Bel wore a flowing, gold-accented coat with her usual self-assurance. Jainan faded into the background in his blue-gray Thean ceremonials. They weren’t technically correct, but his green-and-gold clan formals were aggressively Thean and would have stuck out.
“How’s it going?” Kiem murmured as they entered side by side. “With the crash data, I mean.”
Jainan started. He hadn’t thought he’d been bothering Kiem. But of course Kiem was expecting a result after the fuss Jainan had made over the crash data, and of course Jainan had nothing. He didn’t want to admit he had wasted Kiem’s time. Jainan didn’t know if it was because of the persistent feeling he’d somehow made a mistake in his own analysis, or just an unwillingness to admit defeat. “I would like to do one more check.”