Jainan glanced behind him automatically, clenching his fist to kill the screens. But though there were open paths behind him, he was socially trapped. It would be unforgivably rude to ignore her. Jainan rose to his feet instead and bowed stiffly. “A good afternoon to you.”
“And to you, Your Grace.” Jainan knew the staffer by sight—Lady Fadith of the Nasi clan. The Nasi clan was a close ally of Feria. “Are you leaving for the reception? I just had a meeting that overran, but we shouldn’t miss more than the first ten minutes. May I offer you a lift?”
A cold wash of dread slid down Jainan’s back. He realized he had automatically suppressed his wristband alerts as if he were still a university student with no responsibilities. There was a stream of messages from Kiem and Bel. He had been out here for—sweet God, half an hour—and they should have left for the reception twenty minutes ago. Kiem must be there already. “You received our acceptances?” he asked pointlessly, to stall.
Fadith took it in stride. “Prince Kiem accepted for both of you, Your Grace. Have your plans changed?”
He had effectively run off and hidden himself before a public appointment. His nonappearance would cause Kiem considerable embarrassment, all because Jainan couldn’t control himself or keep track of time. This would test the limits of even Kiem’s patience. It was not a pleasant prospect.
Lateness would also be embarrassing, but perhaps it could be smoothed over. He pulled himself together. Kiem would already have left in the official flyer, so this would be quicker than asking Bel for a backup vehicle. “No,” he said. “Our plans haven’t changed, but Prince Kiem is going straight there from another appointment.” The next words were hard to force out: he had been proud as a teenager, and a dislike of asking for things had been the one aspect of it that he had never managed to shake. “I would appreciate a lift.”
He caught a moment’s surprise from Fadith, but Jainan was detached, now, and any embarrassment was far away. “Of course, Your Grace. My flyer is at the gates. Do you … need a coat?”
His coat. It would be odd to go out without a coat, but they were already late. “No.”
Fadith paused, then shrugged it off with a smile. “You’re a fully adapted Iskaner, Your Grace. I freeze even in this.” She put her hands farther in the pockets of her greatcoat and strolled toward the palace entrance. Jainan said the right things in response to her small talk, mechanically, and shivered.
It wasn’t until they were in the flyer, the city spread out on the hill below them, that Fadith said, “So, I was meeting the Iskaners about the mining operation—”
Jainan held up a hand, the motion jerky. Fadith broke off. Jainan had to struggle for what to say, after being that rude, but he managed it. “Please,” he said. “I can’t talk about politics.”
“This is hardly politics, Your Grace,” Fadith said, a note of wariness in her voice. “And you have an interest.”
“I don’t,” Jainan said. There was a long, tense pause. “I have no interest.”
“I apologize,” Fadith said. She sounded more distant with every exchange, as if everything Jainan said was the wrong answer. “I didn’t mean any offense.”
They passed the rest of the journey in an awkward silence. Jainan messaged Bel with a stilted apology. Fadith offered up the occasional comment on the weather, but Jainan was too busy wrestling with his growing sense of nausea to give any more than short replies. A Thean reception. Dozens of Theans, including those he had defaulted on clan obligations to. And Kiem—who would not only be watching how he acted, but would be embarrassed and angry on top of it. It made Jainan’s dilemma over the crash data seem almost unimportant.
By the time they reached the reception, the wind had got up into what Iskaners called a needlepiercer: a relentless, icy wind that went straight through your clothes. The warmth of the embassy was a shock. The other shock was how Thean the hallway of the embassy felt, after such a long time on Iskat, with its tiled floor and walls covered with brightly colored flags. A square archway led into a crowded room where Jainan could see the colors of several other clans.
“Jainan! Hey!” Kiem emerged from the crowd the next moment as if he’d been watching for Jainan. Behind him was the person he’d been talking to, who looked taken aback. Kiem’s forehead was creased and he was more intent than Jainan had ever seen him. Jainan slammed down on the unhelpful instincts telling him to move and instead stayed motionless.
Kiem reached out to take his arm then seemed to think better of it and turned toward the cloakroom, now empty of latecomers. “Um, can we have a moment in private?”
In private. Of course. Jainan turned numbly to follow him and, as he did, the textbook logs faded into the back of his mind.
Kiem led them behind a rack of coats and cast a harried look at the back of the cloakroom to check for any attendants. “I couldn’t find you after lunch. Bel got your message—you didn’t have to come, you know. Are you feeling okay? You didn’t look well, and then you just disappeared.”
They were in for an argument. There was no point in spinning it out and increasing the risk that an outsider would overhear, so Jainan cut straight to the end. “I understand I have embarrassed both of us,” he said. If he could even manage to sound apologetic it might help, but his voice was its normal frustrating monotone. “I was extraordinarily rude. I apologize.”
Kiem grimaced. “Ouch, okay, I guess I deserved th—wait.” He broke off and looked more closely at Jainan. “You’re serious? You’re serious.” He looked almost lost. “You’re really serious,” he said again.
Jainan realized he’d pressed a finger to his temple. He took it away. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I don’t want you to say anything!” Kiem said. He was pressed against an incongruous row of fur coats behind him. It felt faintly absurd, like they were having an argument in a closet. Taam had never shown this much emotion outside their rooms. “Did I say something wrong at lunch, before you left? If it was anything I said about Thea, and if there’s any way I can fix it—”
“Will you please be clear,” Jainan said, his frustration making it come out louder than he meant it to. “I don’t. I can’t. I can’t read your mind. Will you please be clear what it is you want from me.”
There was a silence. Kiem said, “What?”
Kiem had hundreds of expressions. When he was focused on someone—the way he was focused on Jainan now—the tiny shifts around his eyes formed a new one every moment, handling dozens of inputs from his guesses and knowledge about the other person like a suite of algorithms executing, except he somehow ran it on pure instinct. It was obvious how he had no difficulty understanding most people. It was equally obvious he wasn’t coming up with any answers appropriate for Jainan.
It made Jainan feel even more unmoored from reality. He hesitated to even mention his amateur conclusions from the crash data. It was entirely possible he had imagined everything he had read in the last hour.
“Count Jainan? Your Highness?” Light flooded into the space as someone pushed the rack of coats aside. “Is there a problem?”