Jainan felt a surge of something shockingly like anger. “That’s exactly what it means!” His hands had formed white-knuckled fists in the pockets of the coat. For a moment he felt almost warm, though it was a prickly, unpleasant heat. “I am here to maintain the treaty. I am a diplomat.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
Now this was near mockery. “I know what it is to do my duty by my people,” Jainan said sharply. “I have never shirked that.”
Kiem looked strange. It seemed to take him a while to form words, while Jainan waited and tasted metal in his mouth.
“I didn’t mean that,” Kiem said. “I’m sorry, I would never imply— I know you always do your duty.” He broke off. “Obviously.” He took a step forward, closing some of the distance. Jainan felt a strange anger course through his body. “But doing your duty doesn’t have to make you this unhappy, does it?” Kiem said. If Jainan hadn’t known better, it would have sounded like Kiem was pleading. He stopped half a pace away and lifted his hand in an empty gesture. “Come on. Not—pointlessly. Not like this.”
Jainan’s rock-solid certainty started to drain away. He could be intractably stubborn, when the issue was important—it was one of the things that made him a bad choice for a goodwill rep resentative. But this wasn’t anger. He didn’t know what it was, but in the face of it, his conviction was falling apart.
“It’s how it is,” he said instead. “You know that.”
“I don’t,” Kiem said. He shut his mouth deliberately, as if challenging Jainan to fill the gap.
Jainan was silent. Kiem stared at him, still waiting for an answer, and rubbed his arms against the cold. Jainan belatedly realized they’d been standing still for too long. The tension around Kiem’s arms and shoulders was turning into shivers. “Okay,” Kiem said. “I think we might be talking about different things here—what are you doing?”
Jainan had pulled off the coat and held it out. “You’re cold,” he said before he could stop himself. Too direct: that would hit an Iskaner’s pride. “It’s my fault.” Not much better.
Kiem stared at him and at the coat between them. He didn’t move to take it. His eyes went back to Jainan’s face, and that odd almost-anger furrowed his forehead again. “This is the same bloody thing.”
“Excuse me?” Jainan said.
“Now it’s your fault I can’t survive without a coat?” Kiem said. “Am I the only one seeing something weird about this? Why didn’t you tell me about the clearance issue before? Why don’t I understand anything that’s going on?”
Jainan’s hands tightened around the fur bundle. He had brought it closer to his chest without realizing; he forced himself to hold it casually down by his side.
Kiem shoved his hands into his pockets again: a solid, unhappy shape against the landscape. “I get what you’re saying about the duty thing,” he said. “No, really. I’m shit at it and not exactly the pride of the family, but I get it. We’re born into this, and we have to do something to be worthy of it. But everything you do is about you needing to be unhappy.”
The cold ate into him like acid. You’re wrong, Jainan wanted to say, but he couldn’t say that to an Imperial Prince. He said distantly, “I apologize, Your Highness.” He saw Kiem flinch at the title and hated himself for using formality as a weapon, but did it anyway. “I would rather not talk about this. I request.” These were underhanded measures. He was an underhanded person.
Kiem recoiled, his hunched, unhappy posture giving way like a loosened spring. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Oh hell, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I don’t have any right. Forgive me.”
He had every right. But Jainan stood there for a short eternity with his reply caught between his teeth, grateful for that small mercy even as he knew he shouldn’t take advantage of it.
Movement caught his eye: a pair of fur-wrapped figures climbing up from the other end of the bridge. Every sense of danger he had flared, like someone laying their finger on an exposed nerve—he and Kiem were confronting each other, both as tense as unhappy cats. It looked like a public argument.
“Jainan?” Kiem said.
The last of Jainan’s anger drained away into distant dread. “People.” He didn’t need to say anything else.
Kiem gave him a look of bafflement, then turned and realization dawned. Jainan had already closed the gap, and he slipped his hand into the crook of Kiem’s elbow. The unwieldy bundle of coat sat incongruously under his other arm. He couldn’t speak in case they were overheard, but he tried to convey by the careful lightness of his touch that he knew he had crossed a line. He kept his expressionless gaze to the front as they passed the other walkers.
Kiem glanced over at the pair. “What do you think,” he asked under his breath, “can we sell it as performance art?”
It took a split second for Jainan to realize he was joking. Something terrifyingly like laughter welled up in him, in spite of the situation, in spite of everything. His hand tightened on Kiem’s arm. That was a mistake, because it apparently encouraged him.
“Dammit,” Kiem said, “we shouldn’t have stopped, we could have charged them for tickets.”
They’d been recognized. One of the figures raised a hand, changing their path so they cut across to Kiem and Jainan. “Kiem!” Their companion followed. “I thought you were at the embassy.”
“Vaile!” Kiem said, with jollity that must be forced. “We left a bit early. We’re just taking a walk. Seeing the city. That sort of thing. Who’s your friend?”
Prince Vaile gave them both a graceful bow of acknowledgment and introduced the man beside her as a colleague from Rtul, but Jainan was struggling so hard to think of some sort of explanation other than arguing in public that he didn’t catch the name. Kiem was doing the honors anyway, since apparently nothing would throw him off enough that he couldn’t find some small talk.
“… both look perishing cold, though,” Vaile said on the back of something else. She gave their thin indoor clothes and the coat under Jainan’s arm a quizzical look.
Jainan tensed, but Kiem was already talking. “It was a … dare,” he said. There was a pause. Kiem carried on to fill it. “You see, we didn’t get a honeymoon, so we have to make up for the excitement somehow.” Jainan choked. “You know, dares, bets, extreme sports … We’re going skydiving tomorrow.”
Jainan fought against the rising tide of inappropriate laughter. This must be what they meant by hysteria. His squeezed Kiem’s arm silently.
“Skydiving,” Vaile said, in the tone of one who doesn’t believe what she’s just heard.
Jainan interrupted before Kiem could commit them irrevocably. “It’s still under discussion,” he said firmly. “Skydiving is very unfashionable on Thea at the moment.”
That was an impulse he should probably have quelled. “Oh?” Vaile said.
This had apparently caught the interest of her Rtulian colleague, who leaned in. “I didn’t realize you had fashions in extreme sports. How fascinating. So what is fashionable on Thea right now?”