Rakal’s mouth tightened. Kiem saw the shared glance between them and the Emperor, and he knew he wasn’t going to like the answer even before Rakal said, “Not if he remains with the military. Her majesty has decided there may be advantages if they conduct an interrogation. If it could be proven that Count Jainan acted alone, the Resolution might accept a replacement treaty representative.” The Emperor appeared deep in thought and didn’t move to speak. “I am opposed to this,” Rakal added.
“What advantages?” Kiem said. “The military can’t interrogate him!”
“They can,” Rakal said quietly. “Effectively.”
“And the civilian authorities legally cannot,” the Emperor said. Kiem took a breath, but he had no words. The Emperor shook her head slightly as if shedding her vacillation. “No, Rakal, I have made my decision. If Jainan is innocent, they will get nothing usable from an interrogation and you can have the academic instead. If otherwise—that will clear up this part of the mess, and we can work on finding the damned remnants.” Her mouth twitched down at the corner. “That lands us with a different mess, of course. But that is politics.” She nodded to her aide, who made some sort of note on her special-issue wristband. “I will allow them two days. Kiem, you will cooperate with Rakal and with the military authorities when they require it. You will speak of this to no one: everything is under top level classification. Do you understand?”
“Ma’am,” Kiem said, his voice only a thread.
“You will have to attend the run-up ceremonies by yourself,” the Emperor said. “The worst of all possible outcomes, but it cannot be helped. I expect you to rise to the challenge. Dismissed.”
Kiem’s bow was even clumsier in comparison to Rakal’s punctilious one, but the Emperor was already dictating orders to her aide and didn’t notice. As they both left the room, Rakal’s projection faded out at the threshold of the door.
Kiem’s wristband woke up and flared into life again as he strode past the guards without speaking. He raised his fingers in a call command, counting in his head the seconds it would take Rakal to walk through the Emperor’s outer office where her aides worked, all the way down the tower’s elevators, and into the main corridor. Then he called.
He’d calculated accurately. When Rakal opened their screen, the corridor behind them was empty. They stopped, folded their arms, and tilted their chin up aggressively. “Say what you’re going to say, Your Highness.”
“What can they do to interrogate him?” Kiem said.
Rakal’s shoulders were tense. “They have arrested him under military law. There are very few legal limitations, though I’m sure they’re aware that if they don’t acquire damning evidence, there will be serious consequences if a Thean representative turns out to have been physically harmed. Nevertheless.”
“And you’re okay with this?” Kiem demanded. “Everyone’s okay with this? Jainan lives for duty! He’s probably never done anything illegal in his life!”
“The Emperor has given a direct order,” Rakal said. “The civilian legal process should be followed for civilians, but what is Internal Security against the old guard?” There was a note of bitterness in their voice that threw Kiem off for a moment. The Emperor had called him General Fenrik, Kiem remembered, when she barely gave anyone else their title. General Fenrik was the Emperor’s generation, back when the military had been vastly more powerful than the civil infrastructure. Rakal was young, could not be more than forty. “Count Jainan may not come to much harm.”
“May not?”
Rakal glanced around before they answered. “There are drugs.”
Kiem took a deep breath. “I’m not going to let this happen.”
“I will not be drawn into this line of conversation,” Rakal said. “We did not speak about this. However,” they added. “If Jainan were to somehow … walk out of military custody, I believe that would change matters.” They looked Kiem right in the eye. “The treaty situation is changing hour by hour. I believe if Jainan were to somehow leave, I would be able to keep his case under civil authority and stop him from going back in.”
“Right,” Kiem said. He took another breath, and said again, “Right.”
Rakal gave him a hint of a nod.
Kiem canceled the call. Then he raised his wristband and spun up the Thean Ambassador. As he strode back to his and Jainan’s guest suite, he wrote out, Jainan falsely arrested. Petition for release, and added a précis of everything the Emperor had said. He finished just as the door of his rooms shut behind him.
Then, and only then, he entered the high-urgency code that was only supposed to be used for a life-or-death situation, and called Bel.
He waited so long he started counting the seconds. A minute. Ninety seconds. Eventually, though, the soft waiting pattern dissolved into Bel’s face. She was in what looked like a privacy capsule at the shuttleport, distracted and drawn with worry. “Kiem?” She looked at him and behind him and seemed to reassure herself he wasn’t in immediate danger. “I’m literally about to get on the shuttle, they’re calling the passengers now. I can’t talk.”
“Jainan’s been arrested,” Kiem said. He could hear his voice crack. “They think he killed Taam and tried to kill me. I need to get him out before they interrogate him. I need your help.”
Bel’s eyes widened, but only for an instant before calculation spread across her face. “Let me guess,” she said. “Major Saffer.”
“I’m sorry,” Kiem said. “You can still go tonight. Just delay by half a day, I’ll book you on a new—What?”
“Saffer’s somewhere behind this,” Bel said. “And if you’re worried about interrogation, that means the military have him. Hell fucking damn it.”
“Right,” said Kiem, who had rarely heard Bel swear like that before, but at least someone was having the right reaction. He didn’t know where she’d gotten Aren’s name from, but that wasn’t the most important thing right now. “I need you. Just for half a day. A few hours.”
She paused. Kiem realized he was gripping his wristband with his other hand, an old habit from when he was a child and thought you needed to keep holding it to make the other person’s image stay there. The edges pressed into his fingers. “Please.”
“Kiem,” she said at last. “There’s not a lot I can do. It’s not going to help if you send me to talk to people. They’ll need to hear from you. I’m really sorry.”
“I’m not going to talk to people,” Kiem said. “I’m going to find out where Jainan is and get him out.” He lowered his voice, even in the privacy of his own room. “I’ll cover you when it comes to the legalities, I swear, but I need you. I know you can get around entrance scanners. You did it for me when I lost my wristband last year. The Emperor’s only given them two days, and they can’t have gone down to Thea, so he has to be in the station or on one of the cluster modules. I’m going to find where they’re holding him, and I’m going to come back with Jainan.”