Bel waved him in ahead of her. “He’s gone out. Make yourself comfortable. I can get you a drink, unless you’d like to direct the unpacking?”
“I can unpack myself,” Jainan said. She must be busy with her own duties.
Bel gave him a swift, calculating look, as if trying to sum him up and not making much headway. “Of course,” she said after a moment. “Let me show you the rooms.”
The bedroom was spotless as well. A sudden rattle against the window made Jainan turn his head, and he caught the shadow of a raptorial bird as it bounced off in a flurry of pinions and claws. Jainan had learned to be wary of Iskat’s birds. Even the ones Iskaners called sparrows would attack a human; anything much larger had to be exterminated.
“Oh yes, keep the window shut or the doves will get in,” Bel said. “And don’t feed them, that’s what started the problem in the first place. Here.” She opened an entirely separate wardrobe. Two columns of drawers also stood open.
“I don’t need this much space,” Jainan said.
“We can clear more, if—excuse me?”
Jainan silently keyed open the lid of the hoverchest. It was only half filled.
Bel looked at the contents. “I see,” she said. Jainan tried not to read any disapproval into it. “But we’ve cleared it now, so you might as well claim it. His highness will just fill it with his rubbish if you don’t.”
Jainan felt his entire back knot up. “I don’t—I don’t need it,” he said. “I don’t want to argue with his highness.”
Bel gave him an odd look. Jainan couldn’t meet her eyes and instead focused on pulling his belongings out of the chest.
“Let me know if you need anything,” Bel said at last. “I’ll be in the study. Prince Kiem says don’t hesitate to ask for anything.”
“Thank you,” Jainan said.
“To be clear, that means ask me for anything,” Bel said. “Kiem doesn’t know how to work the requisition system and will just call up twenty people until someone gives him something to make him stop.”
“Thank you,” Jainan said again. He had the excuse of turning to the wardrobe, so he didn’t have to hide his expression as she left.
If Prince Kiem had said that, Jainan could guess why. Guilt about the rushed marriage and Jainan’s bereavement. That explained some of the things Kiem had said at the ceremony as well. Guilt about Jainan, which led to Kiem extending favors. And if Jainan took advantage of that, it would poison the well that much sooner. Jainan was familiar with how guilt turned into resentment. The only thing to do was to try and make Kiem happy, and Jainan was uniquely incapable of that.
His clothes fit into half the space in the wardrobe. The box from Thea went into the back of a drawer. He emptied the chest slowly, and when it was empty, he shut it down until it was a thin flat block floating at chest height. He pulled it out of the air and faltered. Jainan would have taken it to Taam’s aide normally, but he didn’t want to disturb Bel.
He felt a sudden, crushing desire to be back in familiar territory. At least he’d known the rules there. His head gave another stab of pain.
Bel put her head around the door. “Message from Prince Kiem,” she said. “He’s apparently made dinner arrangements. Would you go to the Room of Birds in twenty minutes? It’s in the Southern Tower by the Emperor’s Wing. I can show you the way.”
Jainan hesitated. Bel was intimidatingly brisk and efficient, and he had no desire to take up more of her time. “I know where it is,” he said. It wasn’t a dining room. He had a recollection of it from a palace tour when he’d first arrived, formal and empty, sometimes used for receptions. The palace had more reception rooms than it knew what to do with.
“I suggest formal wear,” Bel said. “Do you need anything else? No? I’ll be off for the evening, then. I’m on call—here, I’ll send you my contact data for your short list.” She spun her finger, and an image of a navigation wheel appeared just below her hand.
“No, I—I need mine recalibrated.” Jainan touched his own wristband, which had not worked properly since they’d shut off Taam’s account. Now it would need to be linked to Prince Kiem’s. But Bel was going off duty, and he didn’t want to keep her. “I’ll ask Prince Kiem tomorrow.” That didn’t in any way lessen the cold tension at the back of his neck.
When he reached the upper floor of the Southern Tower, he couldn’t remember exactly which of the gold-swirled doors he should open, but it didn’t matter: an attendant bowed to him and ushered him to the right one.
It opened onto a forbiddingly large reception room that looked out over a panorama of the city of Arlusk and the snow-covered mountains beyond. The smooth whiteness of the walls was broken up by circular tapestries depicting various Iskat birds, predatory and alien. The rest of the furniture was carefully crafted to fit in with these antique treasures: the chairs and side tables were made of polished wood, only lightly brushed with gilt. There was a table set for two by the window.
Prince Kiem was rising swiftly from it, so swiftly that he knocked the chair backward. Jainan stiffened. “Ah—oh, damn—excuse me—” Kiem somehow hooked his foot under the chair before it hit the floor and awkwardly flipped it up again. He turned back to Jainan and offered him a bow. “Sorry about that. Do you, er, want to sit down?”
Jainan was still frozen. The table was spread with snowy linen and glittered with twelve types of cutlery. Tiny dishes had been set out with geometric position, each holding a delicate morsel of food. There was a candlestick clawing its way up from the middle of the table. It was meant to be romantic.
Jainan couldn’t do this.
“I, er, I mean—maybe you don’t—” Kiem spread his hands helplessly. “I didn’t mean to ambush you. If you’re not feeling well, that’s fine. You can order in food to our rooms. I can go somewhere else. Or, or something.”
Whatever happened regarding dinner, they were going to be sleeping in the same bed tonight. Jainan forced himself not to step back. Running away now wouldn’t help anything. It was only a formal dinner; he had sat through hundreds of formal dinners.
“No, it’s fine,” he said. He took three steps forward and sat, stiffly, and remembered to add, “It’s lovely. I’m honored.”
Kiem gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. A joke, Jainan thought numbly as Kiem sat down. “Sorry it’s not exactly a big wedding banquet. Official mourning and all that. I did get us one of the bottles of Gireshian champagne from the cellars, though.” Kiem grabbed for the bottle by the candlestick and waved it hopefully. His bracelet, a square wooden bead threaded with a cord, clinked too loudly against Jainan’s empty glass. “Thirty years old and spent three years on the ship here. Can I—oh, wait.” He pulled the bottle away, looking stricken. “You don’t drink, do you?”
Giresh wasn’t in-system. Systems outside the Empire could only be accessed through a link, and Iskat’s nearest link was a year’s travel away, so trade and interchange with the wider universe was slow. Out-system goods were luxuries; Kiem was offering him something that would have cost him a chunk of his allowance to acquire from the cellars. Jainan pushed his glass an inch toward the bottle. “Please do.”
“Er, right,” Kiem said. He filled his own glass as well then held it up. “To Thea.”
Jainan blinked. Something in his chest ached. But it was just politeness—reputation in the press aside, Prince Kiem was a diplomat in a family of diplomats. Jainan held up his glass. “To the Empire.” The taste of alcohol burned at the back of his throat.
Iskat meals followed a rigid progression. They always started with the salt course: a collection of small, sharp-flavored bites of fish and meat and pickled vegetables. Then a tiny ceramic cup of tea, drunk piping hot to clear the palette—no Iskaner drank tea outside meals, and they looked askance at you for suggesting it—then the sweet course, with fish or seafood in sweet sauces and crisp wafer cakes on the side. The bulk of the food would come in the mild course, where at last rice and bread would appear on the table. Kiem made appreci
ative noises at the spread. Jainan was not hungry.
The last plate of the salt course appeared at his elbow from a hovering waiter, holding two silvery wafers of fish and a scattering of seagrass. Jainan automatically inclined his head and picked up the correct cutlery. He gripped it a little in preparation for speaking.
“Blizzards coming early this year,” Kiem said from across the table, at exactly the same time as Jainan said, “I would like leave to apologize.”
There was a dreadful silence. Jainan dropped his gaze to his food, his shoulders knotting up with the effort of keeping his back still and straight, and then Kiem said, “What for?”
Jainan paused. “The ceremony.”
Kiem put a hand across his face and groaned. “Oh hell, I’m sorry too. That was awful, wasn’t it, let’s never speak about it again.”
The relief sat in Jainan’s stomach like acid. “Yes.”
“They could have waited a week,” Kiem said, immediately disregarding his own request. “Would a week have killed them? Hundreds of civil servants in this palace and not one of them could figure out how to suspend a treaty for a week?”
Jainan looked down at his meal and carefully separated the fish from the seagrass with the tip of his knife. A faint citrus tang rose from it. “Mm.”
“Hey, so, a whole meter of snow this month. That’s a lot, huh? This is the time of year when my mother always started swearing about the weather and got herself posted spaceside.”
Jainan blinked. But before he had the time to respond, Kiem launched into a stream of consciousness that was apparently every thought he had ever had about early winter weather. Jainan scrambled to pull himself together enough to reply. When Kiem finished on the weather, there wasn’t even a break before he switched to the food (“Apparently hazelnuts are making a comeback—ever tried hazelnuts?”), the latest news on Sefalan raiders (“Bel’s from Sefala, you know, she gets her news from the Sefalan Guard over there.”) and the orbital shuttle gridlock the Resolution ship had caused (“Won’t be cleared within the week, I’ve got a bet on it with the deputy station controller.”).
The stream of chatter started to become soothing. Jainan fell thankfully into autopilot, dredging up opinions so bland they might as well have been written by the press office. Kiem was good at feigning interest: he managed to look like he was hanging on every dull word. Jainan knew it was a diplomatic front, but it made the conversation easier. Kiem took up more space than Taam had; he was constantly gesturing to make a point or nearly putting his elbow in the butter. Jainan tried not to look at his body, his deep brown skin and the smooth curve of his forearm. It felt wrong to let himself be distracted.
The sweet course came and went, with a rich savory soup leavened with honey and a cluster of sugared fancies on the side. Then more of the scalding tea. The sky through the windows had turned a deep, dusky blue, and Jainan’s eyes kept going back to the encroaching dark above and the way the palace lights flickered and glinted from a few errant snowflakes. Year after year, the heartland of the Empire seemed eager to tilt its orbit away from Iskat’s star; winter came on swiftly in this part of the planet, always.
Try as he might, Jainan was losing the thread of Kiem’s conversation. It had been a long day. In the lull between crises, tiredness crept up on him like paralyzing serum, making his spine ache and his mind slip. The clink of cutlery and the candlelight reflected on the dark window was too familiar; it could have been any of the hundreds of banquets he had attended with Taam since he came to Iskat. Kiem was a stranger on the other side of the table. His features didn’t really resemble Taam’s, but right now the two of them looked more similar than they should.
And then it wasn’t just resemblance. The room blurred, and Taam was sitting in Kiem’s place, handsome and charming, speaking to an indistinct dignitary on his right. The lump of soft bread in Jainan’s mouth turned to ash; he couldn’t swallow. Taam laughed at a joke and turned back. The moment he did, the smile was gone, wiped cleanly from his face.
Let’s go home, Jainan thought. Taam’s mood would only get worse if they stayed. As if he’d heard, Taam leaned toward him and reached out. Jainan kept his hand still on the table.
“Jainan?” A brisk tap on the back of his wrist made him jump. It was Kiem, leaning over with an anxious expression. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Jainan said, pulling his hand away. Grief worked in strange ways. He was supposed to make a fresh start with Kiem; he could not let him know why he’d spaced out. “Fine. Just tired.”
Kiem pulled his hand back immediately. “Yeah, it’s been a long day. We can skip the rest of the course—”
“No,” Jainan said desperately. He forced Taam entirely out of his mind. He couldn’t ruin this as well. “It won’t be a problem. Everything is fine.”
Kiem paused. “Right,” he said. He nodded to the footman who cleared away their teacups. “So, um. The little crest on your jacket—it’s some kind of Thean family crest, right?”
“This?” Jainan said, thrown by the change of direction. He touched the emblem sewn on the collar of his tunic.
“Heraldry and stuff is a bit of, uh, a hobby of mine,” Kiem said. “What’s the border mean?” He seemed to mistake Jainan’s hesitation for reluctance. “Or is it private?”
Jainan was so off-balance that he nearly said, Yes, that’s why my clan displays it on everything. But even if Kiem could come up with a witty remark every second sentence when he was on a roll, as he’d proved for the last hour, Jainan himself wasn’t socially adept enough to joke without causing offense. “It’s not private,” he said. “This is Feria’s emblem. The border alters depending on your position in the clan.” Kiem tilted his head, radiating interest. Jainan might have suspected him of flirting, except Jainan had watched him at the wedding, and Kiem had been like this with everyone from the journalists to the judge. Jainan kept close tabs on Kiem’s body language, waiting for signs of boredom—if Jainan had known heraldry was a hobby of his, he could have led with it.
At some point Jainan looked down at the remains of the mild course and realized he had been doing most of the talking for the last ten minutes.
Kiem followed his gaze. “Huh. We seem to have run out of food.” He propped an elbow on the table and raised his eyes back to Jainan’s. “Coffee? We could go somewhere and get coffee. Or you could come back to my rooms—uh—I mean, our rooms?” Jainan had the distinct sense that Kiem’s script hadn’t gone as planned. “I guess technically you could invite me. I mean, or we could go back and not have coffee!” He waved his hands in front of his face. “Or I could go somewhere else and you could go back—or you could, uh—”
A flicker of amusement leapt up in Jainan. “Would you like to come back to my rooms for coffee, Prince Kiem?” he said gravely.
It came out before he could think too much about it. He stopped, almost wanting to take it back, but then Kiem gave a surprised, delighted smile. Jainan hadn’t seen that smile before. He dropped his gaze back down to the table, but someone with a personality as intense as a laser cannon was focusing it all blindingly on him, and he wasn’t immune.
“Can’t think of anything I’d like better,” Kiem said, abandoning the last scraps on his plate. “Shall we?”
* * *
The euphoria from their brief accord couldn’t last. On the walk back to Kiem’s rooms, it drained away even as Kiem kept up his stream of chatter, leaving Jainan with only low-level dread. Even Kiem seemed more subdued and lost the thread of what he was saying as he opened the door, which was probably for the best, since Jainan hadn’t heard a word he’d said in the last five minutes.
The problem was hope. Against all the evidence, some part of Jainan wondered if there was a chance that he could be good enough for Kiem tonight, if they could lay the foundations for a happy, stable marriage that would hold the treaty together. It wasn’t even as if there was a logical reason for hope. Jainan knew from his grim foray into the gossip logs that Kiem had at least h
alf a dozen previous lovers. More women than men, and every one of them beautiful, confident, looking like an effortless match for Kiem even in passing paparazzi shots. People Kiem had picked, not had forced on him. Jainan couldn’t compete.
He let go of Kiem’s arm once they were inside. Every movement he made felt awkward. He sat on the edge of a couch to stop himself from hovering and then realized that he was making things even more awkward—what was this, a wedding night or a polite visit? He couldn’t work out what to do with his hands.
The images and vids accompanying the gossip log articles hadn’t captured Kiem well: in person he had a compelling vivacity, as if he contained fractionally too much energy for the confines of his body. He turned a wall screen off, made the lights brighter and then dimmer, flashed a distracted smile at Jainan, and ended up making a beeline for the samovar. “Right! What would you like? Bel hooked up the dispenser so you can mix any flavor—”
“Just coffee,” Jainan said abruptly. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. He hadn’t meant to interrupt.
He swallowed in the silence that followed and listened to the mechanical clicks of hot water pouring. Kiem turned with a coffee cup in either hand. They didn’t match, as if he’d inherited bits and pieces from different people; one was heavy and deep brown, the other was army issue from a division Jainan didn’t recognize. He glanced up, attempting to read Kiem’s face, then wished he hadn’t. The easy smile wasn’t there anymore.
Kiem put the larger cup down in front of Jainan. “Okay,” he said. “I think something needs to be said.”
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