This was when he should start the recitation. Jainan realized with a jolt that he hadn’t made sure that Lunver had warned the priests. She’d be seated in the front row with General Fenrik, but he couldn’t turn around now to look at her, and if the priests weren’t expecting it, he would make this very awkward. But Taam had married into the Feria clan, however little that meant to Iskaners, and Jainan felt deep in his bones that it would be wrong to say nothing. He closed his eyes and spoke.
It was an old chant and a simple one: it listed the names of Feria’s core clan for the last few generations, spooling out one by one like a thread pulled from a tapestry. The first names dropped into dead silence. Jainan had to clear his throat several times as he recited. Even after that, his voice was still irritatingly quiet and hoarse. He had not spoken in public in a long time. He caught sight of a priest who had frozen while she collected Taam’s pictures—had she been told about this? Was Jainan ruining the ceremony? He felt prickles of mortification on his temples, but he couldn’t stop halfway through.
At last he came to the end of it. The final names—Jainan’s parents—fell into the hush. Jainan listened to the echoes die away. His mind had gone blank with relief; he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do next. There was an awkward pause. The priest in front of him coughed.
Pressure wrapped Jainan’s chest like an iron band. Iskat religious ceremonies ran on smooth rails with no pauses. The specta tors would think he was going to pieces. He hurriedly looked down and remembered what he was supposed to do; he picked up the stick of charcoal that lay beside the incense burner and smudged a line on the table in front of each of the white-framed photos. Taam’s image stared calmly at him, oblivious to Jainan’s mistakes.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” the priest said. Jainan tried not to hear the censure in it. “Please be seated.”
Jainan turned away from the central table. He had to get himself together. He couldn’t afford to let the palace think he was falling apart.
Before he could say the final blessing and move, there was a muted disturbance at the doors to the shrine. They opened halfway, letting in a sliver of pale light and a handful of people. Jainan felt cold; the press weren’t supposed to be let in yet. He had spoiled the timing of the ceremony.
But these weren’t reporters. Two of them had the oddly cut clothes and broad, folded collars of people from the wider galaxy. Each had a shimmer in front of their left eye, as if the light was diverting itself around an obstacle.
The last one must be the Auditor.
The Auditor was dressed unassumingly like his two staffers—Jainan couldn’t see any ornaments from here but knew his gender from reports—but the most startling thing was the shell of soft illumination that cut off his eyes and most of his face. It wrapped around his forehead and eyes like armor, a color that Jainan’s visual receptors refused to parse. Jainan thought he saw human features through it but couldn’t quite make them out; he felt nauseous when he looked at it.
Jainan couldn’t imagine why the Auditor had come to a religious ceremony that had nothing to do with politics. But the Auditor didn’t seem to be there to make a scene; he sat in the back, nonchalantly, with the air of an anthropologist making observations. As he sat down, he moved like a person, and his head turned on his neck like a person, though his face was an unsettling blank. It took Jainan a second to realize the Auditor was looking at him.
Jainan was used to spikes of panic. He knew nothing showed on his face. It was unfortunate that the Auditor had walked in to see one of the treaty representatives standing frozen, having just disrupted an Iskat ceremony by insisting on Thean customs, but it wasn’t a disaster. They would have a chance to show a better picture of unity later, when Jainan’s new partner was chosen. Jainan tried not to think of how his partner would view this morning’s events.
He brought himself back to the duties in front of him. He turned back to the offering tables, consciously keeping every movement under control, spoke the final blessing of Taam’s Iskat sect, and bowed his head correctly before he turned. He couldn’t think of the future; it was a terrifying void; but if he could only control the present, he would at least do that to the best of his ability. Thea could not afford for him to falter. Whoever his partner was, they would understand the need to keep the treaty stable must override everything else.
CHAPTER 2
Oh hell. Oh, hell. Kiem managed to reach his rooms before he collapsed facedown onto the sofa. Summoned out of the blue today, married—married!—by the end of tomorrow. He wondered if they’d told his unfortunate partner the schedule yet.
He’d always known he would marry at some point and probably not for love, though he’d had a vague notion that eloping might be fun. It was just that even in Kiem’s most realistic moments, he’d thought at least he and his partner would have a few months to get to know each other. But to convince a grieving stranger not to resent everything about the situation after being forced into a rushed marriage—that would take more than being persuasive. You’d need to be a bloody miracle worker.
Which meant he would end up shackled to someone who resented everything about him, and Kiem was going to be the lucky one in the arrangement. It would be worse on Count Jainan. This wasn’t an equal partnership: as Thea was the junior partner in the alliance, Jainan was the one who’d be expected to fit his life around Kiem’s. And he was probably reading through Kiem’s press record right now and wishing it had been Kiem instead of Taam in the flybug accident.
Kiem let his head sink into the cushions and groaned.
“Your Highness,” his aide said from the entrance, faintly disapproving. “The couch is for sitting, the bed is for lying, and the shuttleport bars are for whatever unholy combination of both you’re doing there.”
Kiem rolled over and half sat up. As usual, Bel looked like the model of a royal aide, with a freshly laundered coat and her hair in a mass of impeccable braids. When Bel had taken up her post she had told Kiem she would adapt to Iskat custom, and she didn’t do things by halves; she indicated her gender with flint-and-silver earrings, and had even switched from her Sefalan accent to an Iskat one.
The open door behind Bel let in the clatter of footsteps and background noise. Kiem had been given overflow rooms in Courtyard West, among two floors of residences in a refurbished palace wing that used to be a stable. It wasn’t strictly an Imperial residence, but at times like this Kiem would have gone mad in the hushed solemnity of the Emperor’s Wing. This was at least better than moping in silence. “What about sprawls of despair?” he said. “Do we have special furniture for that? Put that on the list: source despair furniture for living room. Did I tell you I’m getting married?”
“I am aware,” Bel said. She shut the door behind her, reactivating the silencing seal, and gestured with one hand above her opposite wrist. Her silver wristband picked up the gesture and projected a small, glowing screen in the air by her elbow. “I heard twenty minutes ago.”
Kiem caught the real disapproval in her voice this time. “Hey, I only heard ten minutes ago!” He made a face. “I can’t believe you knew I was getting married and didn’t tell me.”