Jainan sat down and pressed his hands against each other until he could feel the blood beating in them. The relief he felt was false: Kiem hadn’t yet thought it through. Kiem was not devious. Jainan wasn’t sure what it said about his own character that he could see the future very clearly.
“Kiem,” he said. “Please think through the consequences of Taam being accused of embezzlement. Consider the damage it will do to you.”
“Damage.” It was more a question than a statement.
Jainan’s stomach was tying itself up in knots again. He was going to have to spell this out. “The backlash from the scandal will hit the whole royal family, especially this close to the treaty. I will be directly implicated in his actions, and you will be dragged into it by association with me. You will be asked what you plan to do about your marriage and the treaty. There will be reporters trying to confront you for weeks. The Auditor will take it as further evidence of instability. We only have fifteen days to convince the Resolution to instate us and let us sign the treaty.”
“Okay, obviously we don’t want to tell the Auditor just yet.” Kiem reached out distractedly and moved some of the files on the table, apparently at random. Jainan folded his hands in his lap and suppressed the fierce itch to move them back. “But you didn’t do anything. We just need to make Internal Security prove that and find out who did. Even if it was Taam—sorry, I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead—he must have had help. He couldn’t be doing all that on his own.”
Jainan’s next argument died off in his throat. We. Kiem said it so casually, as if he weren’t positioning himself as an ally to a political deadweight, a foreigner under investigation. Kiem crossed his ankle over one knee, flicking aimlessly between projections on the table. Jainan watched him and felt oddly weightless.
“What about Lunver’s people?” Kiem said suddenly.
Jainan was taken off-balance. “What about them?”
What was dawning on Kiem’s face was, incredibly, the start of a grin. It was impossible to depress him for any length of time. “They have all the data on Kingfisher, don’t they? They might know something about the hacking attempt. And your friend Aren seemed reasonable, even if Colonel Lunver isn’t.”
A frisson went through Jainan like water down a pane of glass. “Aren’s stationed in the main Kingfisher offices now,” he said. “The remote one. Hvaren Base.”
“Taam’s flybug was military issue, wasn’t it?” Kiem said thoughtfully. “Maybe they’ll have the real crash data. Taam’s former partner and General Tegnar’s son. I bet we can swing a visit.”
The air tasted different. Jainan recognized it from when he’d been a practicing researcher: it felt like the moment before he flipped the switch on a combustion experiment. Kiem’s eyes were on him. “That would not be out of the question.”
“Then that’s what we do,” Kiem said. “Let’s give Internal Security something to really investigate.”
CHAPTER 14
By the time they’d set everything up, Kiem was itching to get out of the palace. He had never been good at just sitting there waiting for the other shoe to drop, and Internal Security was presumably cobbling together some fairly hefty shoes. Better for him and Jainan to try and do some shoe-tossing of their own.
He was so keen to get going, he had his bag packed and in his flybug before he realized he was ten minutes earlier than the time he’d told Jainan. He leaned against the side of the flybug in the dim confines of the docking hangar, surrounded by gleaming ranks of flyers, and killed some time by checking the dartcar results. It wasn’t easy to concentrate.
Damn you, Taam, Kiem thought, not for the first time that day. Jainan really was a mess, as far as Jainan ever let himself be a mess. Half the time he didn’t hear you when you spoke to him and the other half he jumped. Kiem still hardly believed Taam had been reckless enough to embezzle money or get involved with raiders—Imperial Princes got a generous stipend—but involving Jainan’s account in it was unforgivable. Kiem couldn’t say that out loud, though, because Jainan wouldn’t hear it. The one time he’d mentioned that it was the act of a complete coward, Jainan had nearly snapped at him, so now Kiem made an effort to keep his feelings to himself. Something had been going on at Operation Kingfisher before Taam’s untimely death. Maybe they’d find some answers at Hvaren Base.
“Ready for your holiday?” Bel appeared at the elevator by the walkway, carrying some sort of case.
Kiem closed the dartcar rankings. “Packed my sunscreen,” he said. “What’s in there? Have we got the base security codes?”
“Major Saffer sent them through last night. Don’t forget you’re going to Braska Prime School for their graduation straight afterward. This is the trophy you’re handing out to the kid with the best finger painting or whatever children do on Iskat.” She handed over the case. “It’s just back from the engravers, and I said you’d take it up, since you’re going. Don’t lose it.”
“Right,” Kiem said. He took the case and snapped it open out of curiosity. The thing inside was golden but didn’t look much like a trophy. “Uh, this is a trowel.”
“Traditional,” Bel said. “Farming area. Have you got everything you need? Message me if you need anything sent. You’ve got my contact.”
“Bel, of course I’ve got your contact,” Kiem said. He stowed the box in the flybug’s hold. “You’re my aide. We’ve messaged each other a dozen times a day for the last year.”
“All right,” Bel said, “I’m just checking. Have you got everything?”
Kiem looked at her more closely and didn’t say, You already asked that. It was an automatic question, but Bel didn’t get distracted like that. She’d already shifted from one foot to another a few times. “Is something up?”
Bel glanced at the walkways around them and grimaced. “Sort of,” she said. She cast another look at the elevator. “I just heard my grandmother’s ill.”
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Kiem said. Bel’s family was all on Sefala, as far as he knew, which meant a journey of ten days to reach the planet without even adding however long it would take at the other end. “You’ll want personal leave, right?”
“So I was going to ask—” Bel said, then caught herself as she heard what he’d said. It didn’t seem to make asking any easier, though; her mouth twisted. “Not just yet,” she said. “But I might need to make a sudden request later. I’m just letting you know in case.”
“Take it now,” Kiem said. “You should go home. Don’t wait.”
“Stop making this hard,” Bel said sharply. “You need someone to do this job.”
Kiem raised a hand in apology but didn’t back down. “Yeah, but I can find cover from somewhere. They might not be as good, but this is kind of important!”
Bel worried at the embroidered threads on her sleeve with a fingernail—something Kiem had only ever seen her do at three in the morning in a media emergency. “She’s not in immediate danger,” she said. “It could be that nothing happens for months.”