“You were literally in a private audience with the Supreme Emperor when I heard,” Bel said. She tucked an escaped braid back into her strict hairdo, a sign she was mollified. “Your betrothed is Count Jainan nav Adessari of Thea, twenty-seven years of age, Feria clan. I have pulled all the files on him I can find, and you will find the folder first in the queue when you open your screen.”
“You are a miracle worker without peer,” Kiem said. He pulled his hand out from under a cushion and tapped his wristband to activate it. His earpiece gave a soft ping and a light-screen popped up in front of him: a glowing square that hovered at chest height. Text began to spill over it. “What am I supposed to know about Thea? What did you know about Thea before all this?”
Bel paused for a fraction of a second. “Not a lot,” she said. “I’m still reading up. Terraforming success, lots of farmland and stable seas—must be a nice place to grow up, I suppose? It used to be quiet, but I see it in the newslogs more frequently now. Clan-based culture.”
“What do the clans do?” Kiem said. “Keep track of your great-aunt’s birthday?”
“They govern,” Bel said. “Clans are vastly extended family groups linked to Thean prefectures. Members don’t even have to be from the same family. Feria would be one example.”
“Oh shit, right, I should have known that. I don’t know the first thing about this, Bel.” Kiem dragged a hand through his hair distractedly. “What am I going to do?”
“Oh, I’m glad you asked,” Bel said, in the voice that meant Kiem was about to do paperwork. “You’re going to go through your schedule, like I’ve been trying to pin you down to do all morning.”
Kiem threw up his hands in surrender. “Okay! Schedule.”
Kiem’s main room had picture windows opening out onto the courtyard gardens; he didn’t usually keep filters on the glass, so the diffuse light from the clouds outside was pale and clear. With a gesture, Bel turned one of the windows into an opaque display wall. She made his calendar appear on it with a swift flick of her fingers. “You’ll need to free up some time to read the contract papers before you sign them tomorrow,” she said. “You’ll need another block of time for the congratulatory calls, and the Emperor’s office has suggested you receive Jainan in the half hour before the ceremony.”
“Yes. Absolutely. Do we have drinks? Make sure we have drinks. Wait, we only get half an hour?”
“Can I cancel the lunch with the school outreach group that you have right before?”
“Cancel it, in the name of Heaven, cancel everything,” Kiem said. “What’s everyone going to think if I’m off having lunch when I’m about to get married? The Emperor will skin me.”
“You have Imperial immunity,” Bel said dryly.
“Count Jainan will skin me,” Kiem said. “And he’d be right. Don’t suppose we could get him to come in the morning as well—or tonight?”
“Do you want me to ask?”
Kiem angled his personal screen and stared down at it. “No,” he said. “No, actually, let’s not make any demands.”
Bel gave him a look that wasn’t quite sympathy and then went into the study to make the calls away from him, always a stickler for etiquette. Kiem waved his hand at the screen hovering in front of him. His wristband read the motion and opened Jainan’s file.
The man in the photo at the top was half-familiar, a face in the distance at Imperial engagements. He was solemn, his features fine, his brown skin a shade paler than Kiem’s. Something in his grave, dark eyes made the picture not unfriendly but intense, as if he were caught in the middle of a serious conversation. He wore a formal Thean uniform, which seemed to involve a lot of green and gold, and his long black hair was bound back. A wooden pendant was tucked discreetly into the cord that tied his hair, carved with some kind of Thean pattern that Kiem didn’t recognize.
Kiem stared. It was the first time he’d really looked at that face. You lucky devil, Taam, he nearly said out loud—but somewhere between his brain and his tongue he managed to censor it because what the hell was wrong with him, Jainan was in mourning. Kiem tore his eyes away from the picture and looked down at the history file. Jainan’s marriage to Taam had lasted five years. He was highly educated—
“He has a doctorate in deep-space engineering!” Kiem called to Bel in the study. “At twenty-seven! How the hell am I going to talk to someone with brains like that?”
“You have practice with me.” Bel’s voice came floating back, amused.
“You don’t count! You get paid to dumb things down for me!” Kiem scrolled farther down the page. “This says he got a planetary award for a new fuel-injection method when he was eighteen. Do you think he could marry you instead?”
“Depends. Are you going to be able to stop talking long enough to sign the contract?” Bel said, with a trace of exasperation that meant she was trying to get work done. Kiem took the hint and flopped back to lie on the couch and read. The light-screen floated over his head.
There was a short list of Jainan’s published work. He didn’t seem to have done much in the past few years, so perhaps after he’d married Taam he’d taken up something else. Maybe it was something Kiem could talk more easily about. Like dartcar racing.
It didn’t seem likely, somehow.
Kiem scrolled farther down. There wasn’t a hobbies section. Why wasn’t there a hobbies section? Who compiled these files and left out the important bits, like what the hell they could talk about? Kiem ran a quick historical search on Jainan, which turned out to be a mistake: everything public on Jainan showed his golden marriage with Taam, from wedding footage to a depressingly perfect article about their winter holiday cabin. Jainan looked young and happy in the engagement vids, starkly different from the recent picture, which Kiem now realized must have been taken after his bereavement. He and Taam had been perfect figureheads for the alliance with Thea. No wonder the Emperor was sore about losing that marriage.
Kiem let the screen disappear and stared up at the sky through the windows, watching the clouds move above the skeletal trees outside. Jainan wouldn’t hold automatic rights to accommodation, so he’d be moving in with Kiem, at least until Palace Estates found them larger quarters. But that could take months. They’d have to split Kiem’s living quarters for now. Jainan would probably want to have his own space as much as he could, to get away from Kiem. They’d have to figure out what to do with the bedroom. “Bel, can we put up a wall in here?” he called. “I can just make another room, right?”
The door chimed. Kiem waved it open, then saw who it was and slightly wished he hadn’t.
The chief press officer was a stout, short man with a bald head that reflected the light and a presence like a bear in a room full of nanotech. He wore a thick wooden bracelet on each wrist and gave the distinct impression he would have preferred brass knuckles. “‘Morning, Kiem.”
“‘Morning, Hren,” Kiem said, somewhat warily. Hren was the Emperor’s direct appointee, and he and Kiem didn’t have the best of working relationships. “Everything all right?”