Aren tapped his heels against the crate he was sitting on, confident and assured, the collar of his dress uniform loosened for comfort. There was something charismatic about him, Jainan thought distantly; that must be how he’d reached his current rank. Jainan hadn’t realized how much he was holding back before. Aren in full flow could have talked Kiem to a standstill.
Jainan tried to sort through what he’d said. It sounded like an admission of guilt, but there was something Jainan was missing; some fundamental part of the equation. Aren seemed startlingly sure he could still blame Jainan for Taam’s death. Jainan squeezed his eyes shut to try and deal with the headache. “What are you hiding in the refinery?” He suddenly jerked his head around, trying to see farther in the dark. “I suppose that’s here, isn’t it? We’re in the refinery.”
“Hah!” Aren said. “So you got that far. What gave that away? I caught your Sefalan comms specialist sniffing around one of our proxies. Was it her?”
Jainan nearly struggled into sitting up through pure adrenaline. “Have you done something to Bel?”
“She’s fine,” Aren said, smiling faintly. “Just making sure nobody interferes.”
Jainan was holding on to his self-control with his fingernails. “Interferes in what?”
Aren checked his wristband. “Hey, my technician’s here,” he said. Something beeped in the distance, swallowed by the dark. The echo made Jainan double his mental estimate of the size of the space. Aren gestured a command sign and a door clanked open in a distant wall. Light started to glow overhead with the whine of industrial floodlights. “Suppose you might as well see.”
White light flooded the space. Jainan squinted with suddenly painful eyes. The warehouse could have fit half of Carissi Station’s facilities. It was full, despite its vast size. At first Jainan didn’t recognize the shapes—metal and crystal and hydraulics—but once he understood one, the others fell into place like terrible dominoes, one after the other.
Jainan stared around Kingfisher’s stockpile, his nausea forgotten. His body felt like a drone he could no longer control. He heard himself say, “You want a war.”
CHAPTER 24
The staterooms next to the Observation Hall were a wasteland of half-laid white carpet and cleaning supplies in the dim night-cycle lighting. They weren’t open to the public until the Unification ceremonies in four days’ time, which was why Kiem had ended up there. He couldn’t face anyone right now. He sat on a stack of carpet rolls in the dry, musty station air and wished for the clean cold of an Iskat winter night.
Kiem spun through his wristband, his fingers clumsy and slow. He’d been sitting here for too long, and he still hadn’t worked out what to do next. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. He should go back to the residential modules.
He didn’t. He spun compulsively between a short list of names projected from his wristband: Bel, Jainan’s sister Ressid, the Thean Ambassador. Bel was in the shuttleport and not answering. It wasn’t even fair to try and get hold of her when she was worried herself, but Kiem had been calling her anyway because he was desperate. He hadn’t yet brought himself to try the Theans. What could he even say? We’ve failed Jainan in every way, but I can’t tell you anything more than that?
He dropped his wristband and let it jar against his leg while it was still scrolling. The display broke up and disappeared. The door of the Observation Hall yawned opposite, waiting to be decorated for the ceremonies, and starlight played across the floor.
His wristband lit up again. Kiem glanced briefly at the caller—not Bel or Jainan—and didn’t activate it. This was the first time in his life he’d ignored this many calls in a row.
“Is everything all right there, sir?”
Kiem looked up as a security guard loomed out of the darkness with a flashlight, carefully picking his way through the decorating supplies. “Everything’s—fine. Just getting some air.”
“In the dark, sir?” The security guard looked like a palace transplant, brought up for the ceremonies. He squinted at Kiem’s face. “Oh—Your Highness. Apologies. I’ll leave you to it.”
A laugh rose up in Kiem’s throat that felt like he was choking. He should make an excuse. He didn’t.
“Your band, sir,” the guard added helpfully as he moved off again.
It wasn’t as if Kiem couldn’t see it flashing again, shockingly bright against the night-cycle glow. He glanced down, ready to ignore it again—but it wasn’t a call, it was a message. From Bel.
He turned away, the security guard already forgotten, and jabbed again to call her. No reply. He groaned and flipped to the message.
Can’t talk, it said, but are you ignoring the Emperor or something? Her Private Office called me four times.
“Urgh, that’s not important! Answer your calls!” Kiem said to the screen. But he had a sudden vision of Bel’s face if she’d heard that, and he glanced at the message again, coming to his senses. The Emperor?
When he looked properly at the call list, half of them were from someone in the Emperor’s Private Office. The last time those people had called him, he’d been summoned to an Imperial receiving room and told he was getting married. Nothing was a good enough excuse for ignoring the Emperor.
He called them back. An aide’s face appeared on the display almost immediately. It was the middle of the night in Arlusk, but the office behind them was oddly busy. “Your Highness,” said the very proper aide in a voice that was pointedly not impatient. “We have been trying to reach you. The Emperor would like to see you. Please proceed to the remote meeting facilities in your station’s secured area.”
“What? Why?” Kiem said. The aide’s head tilted, deflecting the question. If they were allowed to give out that information, they would have given it already. Kiem amended the question. “When?”
“She expected to see you some time ago,” the aide said. Even now that caused a minor echo of panic in Kiem’s head. “Now would be a good time.”
Four and a half minutes later, Kiem was ushered into the station’s armored core. Another guard opened a heavily shielded door to a small suite of comms rooms. Kiem lifted his hand to register his bios at the thinner door behind it, but the door opened before he’d even touched the pad. He pulled back reflexively, screwed up so tense everything came as a shock.
The man who came through was tall and bony with white hair severely clipped in a military cut. The only signs of his rank were the six gold circles of the supreme commander on the breast of his uniform. Kiem stepped back to make room. He hadn’t realized Fenrik was on the station; it must have something to do with Kingfisher. His mother had brought him up to be polite to officers, so he gave a belated nod. “General.”
General Fenrik turned his head stiffly as he passed. Like the Emperor, he had passed his century mark a while ago. It took him only a split second to place Kiem, and the expression on his face suggested the information he was pulling up on him was not favorable. “Oh hellfire, it’s you this is all about?” he said. “Tegnar’s boy. I’d forgotten you.”