The open door behind Bel let in the clatter of footsteps and background noise. Kiem had been given overflow rooms in Courtyard West, among two floors of residences in a refurbished palace wing that used to be a stable. It wasn’t strictly an Imperial residence, but at times like this Kiem would have gone mad in the hushed solemnity of the Emperor’s Wing. This was at least better than moping in silence. “What about sprawls of despair?” he said. “Do we have special furniture for that? Put that on the list: source despair furniture for living room. Did I tell you I’m getting married?”
“I am aware,” Bel said. She shut the door behind her, reactivating the silencing seal, and gestured with one hand above her opposite wrist. Her silver wristband picked up the gesture and projected a small, glowing screen in the air by her elbow. “I heard twenty minutes ago.”
Kiem caught the real disapproval in her voice this time. “Hey, I only heard ten minutes ago!” He made a face. “I can’t believe you knew I was getting married and didn’t tell me.”
“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 ha
ve the best of working relationships. “Everything all right?”
“Yep,” Hren said. “Congratulations on getting hitched.”
At that moment, Bel came out from the study and said, “Another room? Oh—Hren Halesar. Good morning.”
“Let’s try that again,” Hren said, ignoring her. “Congrats on your marriage.”
“Thanks?” Kiem said.
Hren sat down on the chair opposite the couch and pushed up his shirtsleeves. “So you haven’t memorized your press statement.”
“I have a press statement?”
“I’m afraid we’ve only just received it from your department,” Bel said coolly. “I was coming now to inform his highness.”
“Get it on his damned wristband, then,” Hren said. “Five minutes ago. We’ve talked about this. First thing you do in any event is—”
“I know, get the lines to take, I know.” Kiem hated being given press statements. You weren’t only supposed to use them with the press but with everyone who asked you a related question, and it made him feel like a robot. But crossing Hren never went well. “Go on, Bel, what are they?”
“There are two pages of various statements,” Bel said. “Here it would be that you accept congratulations and are proud to continue the alliance in memory of your revered cousin Prince Taam.”
“What about Jainan? Shouldn’t it mention Jainan?” said Kiem. “Some kind of compliment, maybe?”
“Kiem,” Hren said patiently. “He’s a diplomatic representative, not one of your groupies.”
“I just thought—”
“Listen, Jainan knows this is a political arrangement and isn’t going to expect flattery. I’ve talked to him.”
Kiem winced at political arrangement. He probably shouldn’t be visualizing his oncoming marriage as a hostile council meeting, but once he had the image, it was hard to get it out of his head. “Right.”
“Your persona needs to change now that you’re married, you understand?”
“I’m reformed,” Kiem protested. “It’s not a persona thing.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” Hren said. “Heard it when you and your friends flooded your school with the ice machine.”
“I was fifteen,” Kiem said defensively.
“Then again when you lost six months’ allowance betting you could climb the dome on the shrine, and your friend told the press.”
“I was seventeen,” Kiem said, but realized it wasn’t helping his case. “I didn’t really understand money yet.” That sounded even worse. He’d been properly hauled over the coals for that one, both by the media and by the Emperor, which had been somehow more painful than his fractured ankle. “Look, I know I’ve screwed up, but those were all years ago.”
“Then you auditioned for that game show while you were at the College, and we had to force the media house to wipe the footage.”
Kiem didn’t have a defense for that. Hren jabbed his thumb in Kiem’s direction to emphasize his point. “No more tell-alls. No more blow-by-blows of your latest hangover. You’ve got just under a month to sell the public on this marriage before Unification Day. The bloody Resolution takes public sentiment into account when they audit the treaty. And on the same topic, you’re going to have to start taking more care over the charity groups you work with, understand? No politics.”
“That’s charity fundraising. Not politics.”
“I’ll tell you what it’s not, it’s not smiling at the bloody camera,” Hren said. “Even if the Thean logs felt warm and fuzzy about us—which they don’t—a death and a quick remarriage would still be a tough sell. I need something that doesn’t give the fringe outlets any traction. What’s this about another room?”
It took Kiem a moment to recall what he and Bel had been talking about. “Nothing important,” he said. “Jainan’s going to need his own room, but I know it’ll look bad if we don’t live together. We’ll just do some remodeling in here, add a bedroom—” He broke off at the look on Hren’s face.
“Add a bedroom?” Hren said. “Did you agree to this marriage or not? You want the Thean press to run stories about it falling apart before it’s a week old? They can get some nice mileage out of that, link it to the weaknesses in the Thean alliance, find some of those fucking teenagers who’ve decided unification protests are the new big thing. No construction work.”
“I—what? You can’t expect him to sleep with me.”
“Don’t like the look of him? Too bad. Suck it up.”
“That’s not it!” Kiem said. “He’s just lost his partner, I’m pretty damn sure he’s not going to want to! Marriage, fine, but not sleeping together.”
“You start putting in new bedrooms, some contractor’s going to tell the newslogs,” Hren said. “That’s out. Thanks to you, your friends, your old housemates, and everyone down to your College halls cleaner, I have detailed cuttings about every starstruck airhead you’ve ever jumped into bed with—”
“Hey,” Kiem said, “none of them were like that.”
“—which is the only part of my work-based knowledge I want to carve out of my head with an industrial laser, but you set yourself up for this. The newslogs expect to know about your sex life. You’re fair game. Do what you want once the bedroom door shuts, but you’re going to pretend to everyone else that you and the Thean are happily married.”
“Everything in my rooms is private,” Kiem said stubbornly. “Nothing’s going to leak. And this isn’t your business anyway.”
“This palace has more leaks than a sewer pipe on a junk ship.” Hren looked at Bel, just a glance.
Kiem’s eyes narrowed. “Bel’s more discreet than any of your press office staff.”
“I can always find you someone more reliable,” Hren said, and Kiem realized he was being blackmailed. Hren had enough of the Emperor’s ear to have some pull over hiring decisions and Bel was technically paid by the palace. Prince or not, Kiem didn’t have the leverage. He didn’t have to look at Bel to know that she knew it too. Hren had never gone this far before. Kiem hadn’t been worth blackmailing. Kiem felt, with some uneasiness, that he had stepped over an invisible line into a different political world from the one he’d occupied yesterday.
“No construction work,” Kiem echoed. “Right.”
“Right. I’ll release your press statement to the journalists.” Kiem considered protesting that he hadn’t even read it yet, but he could recognize when he didn’t have a leg to stand on. Hren got to his feet. “Have it memorized by tomorrow. I’ll see you at the signing ceremony.”
Kiem saw him out. It wasn’t until the door had shut that he turned to Bel, threw up his hands, and said, “How is everything somehow worse?”
* * *
It continued to get worse. The head steward came early the next morning with a program for the ceremony and a mind-numbing list of details for Kiem to sign off on. No sooner had Kiem dragged himself through that than the congratulatory calls started coming in.
Most of them were from people he barely knew. The people who cared about the Thean alliance were a world away from his life up until now: nobles outside the palace called, as did foreign parliament officials and high-ranking bureaucrats. The Thean president called. The secretary of Imperial Affairs called. Kiem took the calls in the formal vidchair in the study, where sensors would project a freestanding image of him, and prickled with discomfort when each new person’s projection appeared in front of him. The Advisory Council called from one of their meetings, his cousin Prince Vaile sitting demurely among them, and took turns congratulating him with depressing sincerity. Vaile just gave him a wry smile. Kiem tried deviating from his press statement, but midway through the call with the Eisafan consul he realized that I’m very happy wasn’t appropriate either, since Jainan almost certainly wasn’t.
By the twelfth call, he was desperate enough that he declined the next person, jabbed the dispenser into life and coaxed it into disgorging a comfort-food sandwich that wasn’t on its menu. He got Bel a coffee
and shoved it her way as she came into the room with a light-screen floating beside her. “I’m out,” he said. “No more calls. I’ve gone collecting for the Friends of Educationally Disadvantaged Puppies.”
“You didn’t really need to be on that last one anyway,” Bel said, shutting off her screen and taking the coffee. “Count Jainan is due in ten minutes. What is in that sandwich?”
“Chocolate,” Kiem said, just as Bel’s wristband beeped. He groaned. “Tell me that’s not another one,” he said, but Bel was already raising a finger to activate her earpiece.
She slipped back into the other room and held a short conversation. When she leaned out again, Kiem had gestured another sandwich out of the dispenser and was feeling mutinous. “I’m supposed to be getting ready to meet Jainan, I can’t spend the whole day—”
“Count Jainan’s sister,” Bel said. “Lady Ressid. Are you going to take it?”
Kiem swallowed, the food suddenly feeling like a solid lump in his throat. This was the first contact from anyone who actually knew Jainan. “Put it on the vid.” He sat on the edge of the vidchair, back straight, and tried to look like someone who was thoroughly in charge of all the political sensitivities of a rushed marriage. It would help if he had any idea how that sort of person looked.
A projection flickered into life: a Thean noble in rich cream silks and pearls, standing, her long hair swept up in an elaborate, feather-like confection anchored with a wooden comb. Kiem blinked and adjusted his perceptions just in time. Gender on Iskat was easy: anyone wearing flint ornaments was a woman, wooden ornaments signified a man, and glass—or nothing—meant nonbinary. It was a straightforward system that even Galactics used. But Bel had said sister, so Ressid must be female despite the comb. Jainan might have humored Iskat customs in his photo, but apparently that didn’t mean the rest of Thea adhered to them.
Winter's Orbit Page 3