Winter's Orbit

by Everina Maxwell

  “They were never on the list in the first place,” Bel said. “They’re Thean outlets. You might as well invite the Sefalan gossip logs.”

  “But they can’t just make up—” Kiem started, then broke off when he saw Jainan try to say something. Jainan shut his mouth. “Go on.”

  It took Jainan a moment to apparently reformulate his sentence. “There is a great deal of detail here.”

  He’d gone back to Kiem’s post-wedding interviews. Kiem frowned, distracted from his indignation, and tried to remember what he’d said. “Is there?” He thought he’d been pretty impersonal, but he was used to the press. “Which bit?”

  “The—” Jainan paused, and his finger skated over several articles as if he didn’t want to touch them. “No, it’s not important.” He looked back at Kiem. “I was just going to shower.”

  “Right,” Kiem said. “We’ll—Bel will fix your wristband. We’re meeting the Auditor this afternoon, and I have to go to a reception at the College first. How do you feel about university visits?”

  “I can be ready in ten minutes,” Jainan said.

  That was heartening news and distracted Kiem from the whole press debacle. At least there was something they could do together that didn’t involve romantic dinners that bored Jainan to sleep. “Take your time; it doesn’t start until eleven. Is there anything you need?”

  “No,” Jainan said. It would have been abrupt, but he had an odd habit of leaving a pause afterward, as if it was open to negotiation. He waited for a moment, then disappeared into the bathroom. Bel pulled the messages off the wall and took Jainan’s wristband into the study, leaving Kiem by himself with the newslog articles.

  “Minor problems,” Kiem said to the accusing spread of press folders. The Thean one was currently showing a newslog image of a Thean politician who looked very much like Lady Ressid. “A few articles, one bad night, so what? Don’t look at me like that. I can fix this.” He shut the folder and stared at the wall.

  * * *

  Arlusk wasn’t even the biggest city on the planet—there were industrial settlements on other continents and a data-sink sprawl farther toward the ice-covered south—but it was the oldest. The Imperial College, Iskat’s principal state-affiliated university, was in the part of town built in the first flush of enthusiasm after the colony started to thrive. The grand granite facades and shabby modulus builds were as familiar to Kiem as his own living room.

  This was an official visit, though, so he and Jainan sat in the back of one of the palace’s official flyers as it crawled slowly downhill. Bel had booked a palace chauffeur and sent them off with a briefing pack in a folder, since Jainan’s wristband still wasn’t working, and an injunction to Kiem not to promise anyone funding under any circumstances.

  Now the briefing folder glowed gently on Jainan’s lap as he sat facing Kiem. Jainan seemed deeply immersed in the mundane details of the Imperial College, so with an enormous effort, Kiem had managed not to say anything for the last five minutes. The back seats had always seemed like more space than you really needed, but right now Kiem was acutely aware of where his feet were and had moved them several times to avoid touching Jainan’s.

  Kiem’s wristband pinged. “Oh, right,” he said, forgetting he was trying to be quiet. Jainan looked up, and since Kiem had already disturbed him, he decided to read the message off anyway. “Bel’s warning us that there’ll be a couple of photographers. I suppose there’s interest because of the wedding.”

  “Is that a problem?” Jainan said.

  “Not really,” Kiem said. “They’ll probably just want shots of us and the chancellor—or me and the chancellor, if you don’t want to be in it. You probably did all that with Taam.”

  “Taam didn’t do many charity events,” Jainan said. He paused to pick his words, which seemed to be a habit of his. “His position made a lot of demands on his time.”

  “Right, of course,” Kiem said. “He was a—a colonel, right? Not much time for fundraisers.” Taam had done something more useful with his life than Kiem and entered the military as an officer. Kiem didn’t think Taam had commanded a ship, but he’d been fairly high up the chain. Kiem had a vague idea that his unit was involved in mining operations.

  Jainan didn’t answer the question. He was looking out the window as they went through the Imperial College’s sweeping, spired gates, which were gray against the shower of snow they’d had that morning and in need of recoating. “I’ve been here before,” he said. “I came to a public lecture a few years ago.”

  “Wow, and you understood it?” Kiem said. “I studied here. Dropped out before exams came around.” It had been the climax of an inglorious school career and hadn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone, least of all his mother or the Emperor, but telling the newslogs had been uncomfortable. “Turns out being royal can only take you so far if you don’t have the brains.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Jainan said, then stopped. “You must—well.”

  Kiem realized that sounded like he was fishing for compliments and hastily tried to fix it. “No, honestly, thick as a brick. Ask any of my ex-professors. I got on with them all right, though, so last year they asked me to be one of the patrons anyway. Don’t need to be a good student for that.”

  Jainan had his finger on his place in one of Kiem’s ex-professors’ biographies. “I’m sorry,” Jainan said, “I don’t think I can remember everything in this. Is there anything you want me to say to anyone in particular?”

  “You don’t have to remember the briefing,” Kiem said, somewhat appalled. “You’d go mad if you tried to remember it. It’s just there in case you wanted to look something up. You’ll want to talk to the professors in your doctorate subject, won’t you? Sorry, I’m no good at science; you’ll have to remind me what it was in.”

  “Nothing important,” Jainan said as the flyer came to a halt and settled to the ground. He closed the folder.

  “Uh,” Kiem said. “Right.” He surreptitiously checked his wristband for his own briefing.

  The reception was in a vast central hall, which had peeling paint on the walls and an echo that magnified the conversations of the hundred or so donors and staff members mingling there. The chairs were the same cheap ones Kiem remembered sitting on in lectures. The excuse for the reception was the artwork from graduating students temporarily lining the walls, and Kiem made vague appreciative noises at it as their student escort towed them toward the Imperial College chancellor.

  “Ah! Your Highness! Glad you could make it!” the Chancellor boomed. She was a statuesque figure in tweed and pearls and smart braids, and she turned away from her conversation to bow to them. An ornate flint buckle winked from her belt. “And this must be Count Jainan. Honored by your presence, Your Grace. I do apologize for the journalists. We have to let them in, you know.” She waved a hand at a short, round girl in flowing fabrics that Kiem recognized as Hani Sereson’s partner, whom he’d last seen behind a cam lens just after he’d fallen into the central canal. She gave them a brilliant smile and started taking rapid-fire photos. Jainan, in the corner of Kiem’s vision, seemed to shift very subtly into the background. Kiem moved forward to cover him and gave the camera a wave.

  “And congratulations, may I say?” the Chancellor continued, turning to Jainan. “Let me shake your hand.” Jainan’s eyebrows rose slightly as she crushed his hand in her grip. Kiem grinned at him and also accepted a bone-bruising handshake. “Always a delight to have palace support. A delight.”

  “No, no, pleasure’s all mine,” Kiem said, extracting his hand, somewhat the worse for wear. “Especially since I know several professors are thinking something about bad pennies turning up. Have you met Jainan, by the way?” The photographer finished a last set of shots and moved on. “He came to one of your lectures a while ago. Has a doctorate in deep-space engineering—extraction of something I can’t pronounce from asteroids. I can now come to this sort of thing on his coattails.”

  Jainan looked embarrassed. “It
was a long time ago,” he said. “And it was nothing groundbreaking.”

  “Oh come on, it’s still a doctorate,” Kiem said. This just succeeded in making Jainan freeze up.

  “Can’t have been that long ago,” the Chancellor said. “Long ago is for us decrepit wrecks to use.” She caught the arm of a professor going past them in a black official gown. “Isn’t that right, Professor Audel?”

  “Eh?” Professor Audel said, turning around. Her long, graying hair straggled down her back, held out of her face with clips. “Decrepit wrecks? You or me?”

  “I think the Chancellor’s implying some of us are young and irresponsible,” Kiem said, holding out his hand again. “Pleased to meet you, Professor. What field do you work in?”

  “Professor Audel is one of our foremost engineering experts,” the Chancellor said. “Audel, Count Jainan is an academic engineer from Thea. You three must have a lot to talk about.” She clapped both Jainan and Professor Audel on the shoulder and shook Kiem’s hand again, pulverizing the few bones that she’d left intact on the last round. “Do excuse me, sire. Must get to the old meeting-and-greeting. Look forward to talking to you later. I’m sure you’ll be asking all your normal questions about our outreach programs.”

  Kiem had been deputized by two separate charities to do just that, and he shrugged good-humoredly. “You know me too well, Chancellor.”

  “Regolith extraction, eh?” Professor Audel was saying. “Interesting, very interesting. We have four people on regolith rigs and solar shielding right now. There’s a lot of crossover with the military, who as usual have ninety-nine percent of all the available funding. And of course, the question is huge on Thea.”

  “Yes,” Jainan said. “I think we have a good half of the Iskat military’s mining capability in our sector. I’m afraid I haven’t paid much attention to it in the last few years.”

  “Of course,” Professor Audel said. “Politically fraught, though, isn’t it, with the revenue sharing agreement and the close-planet debris issue. Now, the equipment problem on the larger asteroids is the cracking issue in places like the Alethena Basin—”

  “I don’t believe that’s actually the issue there,” Jainan said. It was diffident, but it was an actual interruption—the first real one Kiem had ever heard him make. Kiem paid closer attention. “I think it was shown that the stabilizer seeding there in fact failed owing to fluctuations in the environmental radiation.”

  “Well that’s—hm. Jainan.” Professor Audel peered at him, her eyes sharp in her wrinkled face. “You’re not J. Erenlith who published that thesis on regoliths, are you?”

  “I—” Jainan said, then stopped, flustered. Kiem suppressed his I-told-you-so grin. “I—that was a long time ago.”

  “Excellent!” Professor Audel said. “I suspected it was a nobility pseudonym. That explains why I never found the author. We must get you in for a consultation.”

  For some reason Jainan glanced sideways at Kiem. “I don’t know if I can commit to that.”

  “Have you moved into another field?” Professor Audel asked. “Surely you can still do a consultation.”

  “That—depends,” Jainan said. He looked at Kiem again. “Am I likely to have time?”

  “Time?” Kiem said, bemused. As far as he knew, Jainan’s schedule wasn’t packed, or surely they’d have had people chasing Bel already. On the other hand, if Jainan didn’t want to do it, the time excuse was a good one, but why ask him? “Well, depends what else you’re planning to pick up. Up to you, of course.” He couldn’t help adding, “For what it’s worth, I think it’s a good idea.”

  Jainan inclined his head. “I would be glad to consult, Professor,” he said. “Though I can’t promise I remember anything useful.”

  “You never forget how to calculate,” she said. “And fresh eyes will be invaluable. Now, about the solar radiation. Did you consider the knock-on impact of the inner system adjustment—”

  Kiem didn’t understand one sentence in three of the conversation that followed, but he watched, absorbed, as Jainan quietly but fluently rose to the professor’s challenges with answers Kiem couldn’t even begin to grasp. It was like watching a musician transform when they picked up a violin. After a few minutes, though, Kiem realized from Jainan’s sideways glances and derailing attempts that Jainan was concerned he was bored. As it would be completely inappropriate for Kiem to say, No, I could watch you do this all day, he murmured something instead about leaving them to it and went to find the Chancellor and badger her about outreach programs.

  That led to ten conversations with other people. Kiem enjoyed these events; he did have to accept several compliments on his marriage, but somehow that didn’t feel as awkward now as it might have been. “I see Audel’s cornered your partner,” one adjunct remarked, as they both stood in front of an artwork doing something thematic with coat hangers. “Does he want rescuing?”

  “He’s fine,” Kiem said. He considered name-dropping Jainan’s thesis but refrained because he wasn’t entirely sure how to pronounce some of the words in the title.

  “Audel must be over the moon,” the adjunct said knowingly. Kiem thought he might be in engineering as well. “She’s been waiting to get her hands on someone who worked on Kingfisher.”

  “Kingfisher?” Kiem said blankly.

  “The mining operation,” the adjunct said. He turned away from the coat hangers and tilted his head. “You know? Prince Taam ran Operation Kingfisher. The Thean mining venture—you must know, it was in the news when the extraction probe exploded. Two people died.”

  Kiem didn’t remember. He didn’t usually pay attention to news that didn’t involve him. “I don’t think Jainan’s working on that. He’s not military.” Surely if Jainan was working on an operation he’d have meetings in his schedule, deadlines, that sort of thing. Kiem honestly had no idea what a normal job involved. “Two people died?”

  “Deep-space mining is no joke, Your Highness,” the adjunct said. “That’s why the military runs it.”

  When Kiem went to find Jainan again, Professor Audel had roped in some of her graduate students to the discussion. Whatever it was that had brought Jainan’s dark eyes to life had intensified, and when he raised one slim hand to make a point, Kiem had to stop himself from staring again. Kiem slowed his steps, reluctant to interrupt. But when Jainan caught sight of him, he politely extracted himself from the conversation of his own accord and was by Kiem’s arm a few moments later. “Sorry. I got caught up.”

  “Me too,” Kiem said. “Lots of well-wishes to pass on to you. Consider them passed on. Someone mentioned Operation Kingfisher?”

  “Taam’s operation,” Jainan said at once. He frowned, puzzled. “Did they want to talk to me about it? Someone else is in charge now.”

  Kiem wasn’t going to bad-mouth Taam in front of his bereaved partner. “Just a mention,” he said hastily. “Complimentary!”

  “I wasn’t involved in it, really,” Jainan said, sounding almost regretful. “There was an obvious conflict of interest for a Thean. I’m sorry, I’m holding us up—did you want to leave?”

  “Well, unless Professor Audel wants to adopt you,” Kiem said. “She looked well on the way to it.”

  Jainan paused. “Does that cause any problems for you?”

  “Me?” Kiem said. “Oh, you mean with the charity links and stuff? No, no, it’s great for me, the more we do for the Chancellor, the more I can push her to put resources into outreach. And that gets three separate education execs off my back.”

  “I’m glad,” Jainan said, and he did actually—for the first time since Kiem had met him—sound pleased.

  Kiem grinned. “Roaring success,” he said. “Let’s get lunch. We both need a break. Ready for the Auditor?” He didn’t realize he’d offered Jainan his arm until Jainan took it. Then it was too late, but Jainan seemed as relaxed as Kiem had ever seen him.

  “Of course,” Jainan said. As they emerged from the hall into the courtyard, a light dusting of sn
ow started to fall.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Auditor’s temporary office, deep in the palace, had once been an innocent reception chamber before the Galactic delegation turned it into a cave for Resolution business. The walls were now covered with screens, though the screens didn’t act the way Kiem was used to; they unrolled like tapestries and had a solidity that a light-screen lacked. They showed lists of data and images, seemingly unconnected to each other, and the junior staff moving around the covered walls somehow manipulated the images without obviously gesturing at them.

  Some of the displays Kiem expected, like the prominent web of faces and names that showed the treaty representatives. The Emperor was at the top. Connected to her by a web of lines were a handful of faces Kiem didn’t know, but their clothing styles suggested they were the vassal representatives. Next to each one was an Iskaner prince. CONFIRMED glowed in pale letters beside each face. There were two gaps: he and Jainan must be the last two to be instated.

  It wasn’t only the screens that were weird. Parts of the room were sectioned off by curtain-like shimmers. Some of them were slate gray, hiding whatever was beyond them, but some were transparent: two staffers stood behind one in a corner, obviously talking, but no sound made it through the shimmer.

  Another slate-gray curtain fuzzed and parted like water as the Auditor stepped through it. Kiem took a sharp breath. He was never going to get used to the Auditor’s face, like a cloud of luminous gas had swallowed half of it. He didn’t know where to look.

  “Count Jainan,” the Auditor said. His voice sounded jarringly like a normal human’s. “Prince Kiem. Please be seated, and we’ll run you through the process.”

  “Sounds painful,” Kiem said, then exchanged a glance with Jainan—who didn’t smile—and regretted joking. They followed the Auditor through the curtain. There was a table set up with a gel hand-sensor in the middle and a few chairs that were mercifully free of Resolution weirdness.