“You’re bluffing,” Kiem said.
“Do you want to chance it, though?” Aren said. “I can see why Jainan thinks you’re an improvement on Taam, but let’s face it, once he’s adjusted, the shine’s going to wear off. What have you really got to offer? Even Taam managed to keep him from getting savaged by the press.”
It hurt too much to look at Jainan’s face. Kiem turned his capper around in his hand compulsively, fidgeting in the way that had made his instructors at cadet camp turn white. “Okay,” he said. “All right. Just … just step away from Jainan. Please.”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page,” Aren said, smiling. He lowered Jainan down to lie on the floor and freed his own legs, until he was kneeling beside Jainan. “Better?”
Kiem gripped the capper, flung up his hand, and shot him in the chest.
Aren didn’t have time to get out any words. He choked, his eyes wide, then slumped forward over Jainan.
Kiem dropped the capper. He had to press one hand over the other to stop them from shaking. He fell to his knees beside Jainan and shoved Aren off him. Jainan was unconscious, either because of the Tau field or the blood still coming from his scalp, but that was all Kiem could tell. He laid Jainan out on his side so he could breathe properly. When he touched a hand to his hair, a wave of helpless despair went through him.
He couldn’t fix this. It hurt more than anything had hurt in his life. He didn’t know when Jainan had gone from someone he just wanted to draw a smile from to someone he would rather die than lose, but it was true, and he was desperate.
A whine in the distance started and stopped. It took Kiem a moment to register it was an alarm.
When the soldiers burst in on them, accompanied by station security, Kiem was crouched beside Jainan watching his chest rise and fall. Aren and the technician lay slumped not far away. Kiem glanced up as the handful of guards and soldiers clattered down the aisles and surrounded them, pointing cappers at him and the unconscious forms on the floor, and said, “You could have gotten here faster.”
That seemed to stymie the two soldiers who had their cappers trained on Kiem. The one in front of him had sergeant markings. “Hands on your head!”
Kiem lifted them without taking his eyes off the sergeant. “This man needs a medic,” he said. “This is Count Jainan of Feria, the Thean treaty representative, and if you don’t get him to a medic right now, you’ll be answering to the Emperor for the diplomatic crisis that is going to ensue at any moment.”
“Quiet,” the sergeant said, but Kiem could hear a crack of doubt in it. The station security guards—the civilians—seemed to be at least as suspicious of the soldiers as they were of Kiem. “Everyone in this module is under arrest.”
“After you’ve answered to me,” Kiem said flatly, “the Emperor will seem like your nursery teacher.”
“You can’t—”
“Internal Security is already telling the Emperor you used a Tau field on a diplomat,” said a familiar voice. “They made using it a war crime for a reason.” At the back of the group, just coming through the door, a man in a station security uniform was guarding Bel. She had her wrists handcuffed in front of her. “Don’t think you can cover it up either. I called Chief Agent Rakal before I found you bunch. Even the Emperor wasn’t expecting you to go that far.” She raised her eyebrows at Kiem. “This is the first and last time I get voluntarily arrested. How’s Jainan?”
“Bad,” Kiem said. “But this sergeant here is about to get him medical attention. Right?”
The sergeant crouched beside Jainan to check his breathing. “He’s still under arrest,” he said. “Corporal, fetch the paramedic unit. Move!”
The corporal left at a run. “The other man is Major Saffer,” Kiem said. “He tried to kill me. The woman was his accomplice.”
The sergeant got to his feet again and had a short, intense argument with one of the station security guards. “Everyone is in custody until we sort this out,” the sergeant said. “Secure the other two on the floor. The … the diplomat will have all possible assistance. Prince Kiem, will you cooperate?”
“I’m waiting until the medics come,” Kiem said. “You can arrest me after that.” He took Jainan’s hand and didn’t move.
CHAPTER 29
Jainan could not establish a strong enough grip on his own mind to understand what was going on. There were wires attached to him again, and sometimes it was light, and sometimes it was dark, and terror was like a sea beneath his feet. Beyond that he knew very little.
People’s faces melted into other faces. They asked him about Aren, about Kiem, about himself. Jainan refused to answer. Mostly the words were indistinct, but sometimes he was nearly tricked into saying something and had to bite his tongue to stop himself. Once he bit it so hard he tasted blood, and then there was a commotion and figures leaning over him, and someone pressed something into his mouth to force his teeth apart. He swallowed, over and over again, and felt sick with the taste.
Sometimes he knew it was the skin on his head that hurt, and everything else was his imagination, but other times he forgot that. At one point he realized he’d cried out, and a voice said, “At least he’s talking,” and another, “Wouldn’t call that talking.”
Then there was a moment when he opened his eyes and all he saw was the white ceiling of a med room. A screen on the wall played a loop of ripples lapping at a riverbank.
He drew a cautious breath. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and had a dry, filtered feel he associated with nanocleaners. His head hurt fiercely, but there didn’t seem to be anything attached to it. A tube from a drip fed into his wrist. He felt—not like death, but like death had happened some time ago, and against all odds he had recovered.
He tried to pull himself forward, and to his relief found that his body responded enough for him to sit up.
An orderly he hadn’t seen in the corner of the room lifted his head from his reading, startled. “Awake?” He propelled himself up from his bench. “Here, let’s fix that bed for you.” He adjusted it so it rose with Jainan.
“I can sit up,” Jainan said.
“Sure you can,” the orderly said cheerfully. Jainan leaned back against the upright mattress and chose not to pick a fight.
“Am I on Carissi Station?” he said. His eyes went to the screen. The tiny yellow flowers on the bank looked like the ones that grew in the hills around Bita. Someone must have captured the vid on Thea.
“I’ll tell you, you wouldn’t have liked being put on a shuttle back to Iskat in the state you were in, Your Grace,” the orderly said. “You’re in the station’s med suite.” He was taking some form of reading from the diagnostic unit at the head of Jainan’s bed. “How’s the pain? Any blurriness of vision?”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Jainan said. “Does anyone know where I am?”
“Blurriness of vision?” the orderly said, and waited expectantly until Jainan shook his head, causing himself a stab of pain. “Well, I’d say there must be fewer people who don’t know you’re here. You’ve got two Internal Security guards out in the waiting room, another guarding the suite door, palace agencies harassing my manager, and a visitor list as long as your arm.”