CHAPTER 19
The rescue flycraft descended on the peaceful mountain scene like an invader, its hover drivers filling the valley with an ear-splitting whine. Its orange bulk would have been easy to spot kilometers away even if it hadn’t been constantly sweeping its surroundings with a rotating white light.
Jainan watched it descend with mixed feelings. His emotions were raw in every way, singing with exultation and tension like taut wires—he could barely deal with Kiem’s presence next to him, let alone anyone else. He didn’t want to let the rest of the world in. Part of him perversely wanted to stay here with Kiem in the solitude of the snow and the mountains so he had the space to sort out his bubbling feelings. He wasn’t ready for them to be rescued.
“Urgh,” Kiem said beside him. “Do you think we’re going to have to stand up?”
Jainan turned. They’d been sitting on a rock shelf for the last hour, resting while they waited. Kiem had been unusually quiet after the first twenty minutes, but Jainan had just assumed he was tired from the trek. Now, though, he saw Kiem had let his head flop forward onto his knees, and Jainan realized this was more than muscle ache. “You’re stim-crashing.”
“Maybe,” Kiem said into his knees.
“How many tabs did you have?”
“Five? Uh. Six.” It sounded like it was taking him some effort to talk. “Should probably take another. Get through getting rescued.”
“No,” Jainan said. “Absolutely not.” His mixed feelings abruptly disappeared, replaced by sheer relief that Kiem’s stim-crash hadn’t happened any earlier. He raised his hand and waved needlessly at the descending flycraft.
The rescue craft had no need for a clear landing ground. Its whine was deafening as it finished its descent; Jainan clamped his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help much. Then the whine changed, and it came to a halt in midair, only a couple of meters from the snow. A hatch opened and a ramp extended from it. At the top, two figures looked like they were arguing, one in the same army uniform everyone on Hvaren Base had worn, and the other—that was Bel.
Jainan pulled Kiem’s arm around his shoulder and helped him stand. Bel jumped onto the ramp as it was still extending, and as the soldier flung out a cautionary hand, she ran headlong down it and leapt off. “Two days! You idiots!” she said and hugged both of them.
Jainan froze. Was she glad to see him as well? Kiem didn’t seem to have noticed Jainan’s reaction; he just gave Bel a weak grin and said, “Didn’t mean to worry you.”
Bel had already realized something was off about Jainan’s response; she drew back. Jainan couldn’t look away fast enough. Too late he realized that he was abnormal. He couldn’t even manage to gracefully accept a friendship.
But Bel said nothing and instead rounded on Kiem. “If you don’t want to worry me, try not crashing your flybug!” she said. “You fly like a pensioner! How the f— How in Heaven did you crash?”
“It was only a small crash,” Kiem said. Bel dipped her shoulder under his other arm, taking some of the weight off Jainan as they made their way up the ramp. “A crash-let. A microcrash. Can I sit down now?”
The soldier reached them with a stretcher hovering behind him. Jainan and Bel let Kiem down until he was sitting on it. Bel followed the stretcher to give Kiem facts about abuse of stimulants, which Jainan suspected was relieving her feelings.
“Is he conscious?” The person striding out from the mouth of the flyer was the upright form of Colonel Lunver. “Get him in the flyer.”
It shouldn’t have been unexpected. Of course Hvaren Base had scrambled its rescue flyers to find them, and of course their senior officer would join the search for a member of the royal family. Jainan was surprised at the unpleasant frisson that went up his back. He had always known he should be grateful for any help that Taam’s officer colleagues offered, but he hadn’t realized seeing one of them would jolt him out of his hard-won equanimity so quickly. He found himself remembering his conversation with Kiem: Did you see anyone near our flybug at the base?
“What happened?” Lunver said.
Colonel Lunver had not wanted them to see the Kingfisher files. Jainan, feeling unusually obstructionist, met her eyes with a blank look. “I don’t know. We crashed.”
“I see,” Lunver said. She didn’t challenge him. Of course she wouldn’t: Taam’s colleagues had never expected Jainan to have anything useful to add. “Stay with the medics.” She turned back to the cabin, presumably to report they’d been found.
The second medic was a civilian, which made Jainan slightly more relaxed. The palace had clearly flown out their own people—including Bel—to help with the search-and-rescue effort, which meant this wasn’t just Lunver’s operation. The medic handed Jainan a hydration sachet and ran through some questions, which Jainan apparently answered to her satisfaction. “We’ll be launching in a moment,” she said to Jainan. “You may be feeling reasonably fine, but I strongly recommend you lie down—”
“I told you, I’m fine, check Jainan!”
“—as we apparently can’t get his highness to do,” the medic finished, as they entered the small body of the craft. “Prince Kiem, please. Lie down.”
“Not until you check—”
“I am right here.” Jainan crossed to the shelflike bed, followed by Bel, and pressed two fingers against Kiem’s shoulder. “Lie down. You are being stubborn.”
He didn’t realize until the words had left his mouth that he was touching Kiem—easily, naturally—and all that happened was Kiem stopped talking and lay down. Kiem’s face was ashy with exhaustion by this point, which was probably the reason he said, “Mm,” and nothing else. But he caught Jainan’s hand, and Jainan didn’t even get around to wondering why before he squeezed it and let it go.
On an impulse, Jainan rested his hand on Kiem’s head. The hair was soft under his hand. Kiem’s breath caught, and then he relaxed all at once, like an animal stretching out before it went to sleep. Even the lines of tension on his forehead smoothed out.
The strange feeling that had settled around Jainan like a combat shield since this morning was still there, and he found he had no fear of anyone’s disapproval at all. He sat beside Kiem’s bed in one of the medic chairs and slipped the harness over his shoulders.
The military medic eyed both of them and apparently decided this wasn’t a fight worth picking. “Sleep and nutrients,” he said. “Don’t let Prince Kiem get up. Bel Siara, Colonel Lunver will have the coordinates you wanted to report to the palace.” He held the door to the front cabin open, and Bel gave them a wave and followed him through.
Jainan sat by Kiem in the suddenly quiet cabin and kept his hand resting by his head, idly touching his hair, as the flybug rose. The floor under his feet juddered as the hover engines fought with the wind. He could vaguely hear Bel’s “professional” voice replying to Colonel Lunver through the cabin wall. Jainan felt strangely at peace.
What did it mean, what had happened that morning? Had Kiem meant anything by it? Jainan reminded himself that Taam had seemed to enjoy some of the times they’d slept together, though they hadn’t been like that. He tried not to think too hard about where it left him and Kiem—it felt like something delicate, something he could damage if he examined it too closely. He should just be thankful Kiem had seemed to enjoy himself and not worry about whether it would happen again, or entertain pointless questions about the future.