Winter's Orbit

by Everina Maxwell

  “That’s virtuous of you,” Bel said. “Listen, I know how law enforcement works. Think about it. And if you really have to do it, keep a copy.”

  “A copy,” Jainan said. He looked down at his wristband. Every wheel in his mind was spinning wildly. A forensic copy. That would be a logical thing to do, though he could barely focus on any thought that wasn’t Taam and embezzlement and Kiem. He could not stop his mind spinning in panic. “You’re not going to tell Kiem yet?”

  “I’m not in the business of spreading around other people’s secrets,” Bel said. “I’m going to finish my paperwork.” She gave him an ironic salute and closed the study door behind her.

  Jainan spent some time remembering how to take a forensic image while his mind pounded with a drumbeat of panic, then sat frozen for a good thirty seconds before the final gesture that would send it to Internal Security. They already had the encrypted file—Jainan had sent it himself, what seemed like a lifetime ago—but the bio-key was Taam’s passphrase in Taam or Jainan’s voice. Jainan doubted Taam had kept a backup key. Internal Security hadn’t seen the contents.

  The suspicious activity had all come from Jainan’s device. Taam hadn’t risked his own account: he’d used his remote access to Jainan’s wristband. If Internal Security had been interested in Jainan before, this would be the final straw and would give them more than enough grounds to hold Jainan for questioning. Kiem would find out. The newslogs would get hold of it.

  He stood up. He retrieved Taam’s messages. He retrieved the Kingfisher files. He threw up more and more documents and scraps on the wall until the whole room was a frantic mess of projections and numbers. None of it made sense. Of course Internal Security was looking into Jainan himself: he had the skills to sabotage Taam’s flyer and, apparently, a motive to cover something up. The messages had come from his device. It looked like Jainan had been embezzling from his partner’s project.

  He stared at the stream of Taam’s encrypted messages. Why would Taam contact Sefalan raiders? There was no more reason for Taam to do that than for Jainan himself. Had Jainan had a psychotic break and committed a crime, or helped Taam commit one? His head certainly wasn’t quite right; he felt he had not been able to think for—for years, maybe. Since he came to Iskat. You’re always so paranoid.

  Was he mad? Had he done something to Taam?

  Jainan’s strained hearing caught the sound of the door sliding open in the main room. He didn’t even think before he killed all the files, wiped his notes, and pulled the data coin off his handheld. As the study door slid open, he turned toward it with the coin hidden in his pocket, as composed as he could make himself. He only just remembered to control his breathing.

  It wasn’t until he saw Kiem’s face that he realized he had been expecting Taam.

  “How’s it going? Sorry it got a bit late…” Kiem broke off, belatedly taking stock of the empty room and Jainan standing in front of him. “Uh. Were you just finishing, or did I interrupt?”

  Jainan knew enough to take hold of a lifeline when one presented itself. “I was just finishing,” he said. Could Kiem read his discovery on his face? “How was your…” He stopped. He had forgotten what Kiem had gone out to do.

  “Fete,” Kiem said helpfully. “Jakstad Prime School fete. It was good, thanks. I came in to ask you if you wanted to come on a trip to their sister school in Braska on fifth-day? They’re having a graduation festival. I’ve already booked to go, but I could add you. Not that exciting, I know, but I thought we could go over the mountains, it’s a nice flight—I’m talking too much again, aren’t I.”

  “Yes,” Jainan said, without even really hearing the question. “Thank you.”

  Kiem glanced at the table uneasily, and Jainan flinched as if he’d left his documents projected over it. That just made Kiem’s eyes snap back to him. “Are you all right?”

  It was a much slower, more hesitant inquiry than Bel’s—and more dangerous. Jainan’s fingers clenched convulsively around the data coin in his pocket, his mind still spinning, and he groped for an answer. “Fine.”

  “Okay,” Kiem said, still slowly. His eyes didn’t leave Jainan’s face.

  Jainan’s thoughts were a frantic whirl. Kiem would jump to the conclusion that Jainan had been involved. It was the only logical outcome. Jainan couldn’t trust his own memories. He didn’t know where his duty lay, and that was the most terrifying thing of all.

  “I know you don’t like asking for help,” Kiem said carefully, “but you could keep in mind that I’ve got a duty to you too. Think of it like … a credit account you haven’t drawn on yet. I’m just saying that if there’s something I can do—”

  “Stop,” Jainan said abruptly, unable to bear it any more. It was a timely reminder that the last contract he had signed bound him to Kiem, not Taam, and keeping this from his partner was also a betrayal. “Sit down.”

  His manners had deserted him, as they sometimes did when he was agitated enough. As usual Kiem didn’t seem to notice. He took the chair by the sofa and looked at Jainan expectantly, his hands resting on his knees. Jainan realized he was watching Kiem for signs of tension and deliberately turned to the desk. It wasn’t his business how Kiem took the information. “I may be incorrect about this,” he said. He brought up the documents again. “But I must tell you something.”

  It took time. Jainan was less able than usual to explain clearly. He used too much detail; he forgot Kiem was not a mathematician; he lost the thread and had to go over things twice or more. His voice was harsh in his own ears and broke on some words without warning.

  Kiem didn’t understand, and still didn’t understand—and then the frown faded from his face and was replaced by dawning horror. Jainan doggedly continued, laying out every piece of evidence he had found, until he ran out of things to explain.

  They sat in silence. Jainan didn’t try and add anything.

  “Well, shit,” Kiem said, finally. “Taam was committing a crime.”

  Jainan clenched his hands on his knees. “I could be mistaken about the finances. The only criminal activity is on my account.”

  “You said Taam had access to your account,” Kiem said.

  Jainan couldn’t bear to look at him. He rose to pace across the room and examined the encrypted projection. “Why would Taam bother to send messages through me? I thought the account was just a data backup.” His voice cracked in the middle of the sentence. “Of course Internal Security is interested in me. The simplest explanation is that it was me.” He turned back, tapping each projection compulsively. “I am going mad. You should alert the authorities.”

  Kiem raised a hand as Jainan passed his chair. “Jainan.”

  Jainan stopped dead, but all Kiem did was spread out his fingers in midair, level with Jainan’s chest. Jainan breathed out. “You must consider it logically.”

  “You’re not going mad,” Kiem said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve been living with you, and I’d be able to tell,” Kiem said. “I think you’re just really stressed. And you said money is missing from Operation Kingfisher, which you weren’t even involved in.” He frowned. “And didn’t Internal Security say someone tried to hack into Kingfisher recently? You didn’t do that. Neither did Taam.”

  Jainan sat down and pressed his hands against each other until he could feel the blood beating in them. The relief he felt was false: Kiem hadn’t yet thought it through. Kiem was not devious. Jainan wasn’t sure what it said about his own character that he could see the future very clearly.

  “Kiem,” he said. “Please think through the consequences of Taam being accused of embezzlement. Consider the damage it will do to you.”

  “Damage.” It was more a question than a statement.

  Jainan’s stomach was tying itself up in knots again. He was going to have to spell this out. “The backlash from the scandal will hit the whole royal family, especially this close to the treaty. I will be directly implicated in his actions, and yo
u will be dragged into it by association with me. You will be asked what you plan to do about your marriage and the treaty. There will be reporters trying to confront you for weeks. The Auditor will take it as further evidence of instability. We only have fifteen days to convince the Resolution to instate us and let us sign the treaty.”

  “Okay, obviously we don’t want to tell the Auditor just yet.” Kiem reached out distractedly and moved some of the files on the table, apparently at random. Jainan folded his hands in his lap and suppressed the fierce itch to move them back. “But you didn’t do anything. We just need to make Internal Security prove that and find out who did. Even if it was Taam—sorry, I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead—he must have had help. He couldn’t be doing all that on his own.”

  Jainan’s next argument died off in his throat. We. Kiem said it so casually, as if he weren’t positioning himself as an ally to a political deadweight, a foreigner under investigation. Kiem crossed his ankle over one knee, flicking aimlessly between projections on the table. Jainan watched him and felt oddly weightless.

  “What about Lunver’s people?” Kiem said suddenly.

  Jainan was taken off-balance. “What about them?”

  What was dawning on Kiem’s face was, incredibly, the start of a grin. It was impossible to depress him for any length of time. “They have all the data on Kingfisher, don’t they? They might know something about the hacking attempt. And your friend Aren seemed reasonable, even if Colonel Lunver isn’t.”

  A frisson went through Jainan like water down a pane of glass. “Aren’s stationed in the main Kingfisher offices now,” he said. “The remote one. Hvaren Base.”

  “Taam’s flybug was military issue, wasn’t it?” Kiem said thoughtfully. “Maybe they’ll have the real crash data. Taam’s former partner and General Tegnar’s son. I bet we can swing a visit.”

  The air tasted different. Jainan recognized it from when he’d been a practicing researcher: it felt like the moment before he flipped the switch on a combustion experiment. Kiem’s eyes were on him. “That would not be out of the question.”

  “Then that’s what we do,” Kiem said. “Let’s give Internal Security something to really investigate.”

  CHAPTER 14

  By the time they’d set everything up, Kiem was itching to get out of the palace. He had never been good at just sitting there waiting for the other shoe to drop, and Internal Security was presumably cobbling together some fairly hefty shoes. Better for him and Jainan to try and do some shoe-tossing of their own.

  He was so keen to get going, he had his bag packed and in his flybug before he realized he was ten minutes earlier than the time he’d told Jainan. He leaned against the side of the flybug in the dim confines of the docking hangar, surrounded by gleaming ranks of flyers, and killed some time by checking the dartcar results. It wasn’t easy to concentrate.

  Damn you, Taam, Kiem thought, not for the first time that day. Jainan really was a mess, as far as Jainan ever let himself be a mess. Half the time he didn’t hear you when you spoke to him and the other half he jumped. Kiem still hardly believed Taam had been reckless enough to embezzle money or get involved with raiders—Imperial Princes got a generous stipend—but involving Jainan’s account in it was unforgivable. Kiem couldn’t say that out loud, though, because Jainan wouldn’t hear it. The one time he’d mentioned that it was the act of a complete coward, Jainan had nearly snapped at him, so now Kiem made an effort to keep his feelings to himself. Something had been going on at Operation Kingfisher before Taam’s untimely death. Maybe they’d find some answers at Hvaren Base.

  “Ready for your holiday?” Bel appeared at the elevator by the walkway, carrying some sort of case.

  Kiem closed the dartcar rankings. “Packed my sunscreen,” he said. “What’s in there? Have we got the base security codes?”

  “Major Saffer sent them through last night. Don’t forget you’re going to Braska Prime School for their graduation straight afterward. This is the trophy you’re handing out to the kid with the best finger painting or whatever children do on Iskat.” She handed over the case. “It’s just back from the engravers, and I said you’d take it up, since you’re going. Don’t lose it.”

  “Right,” Kiem said. He took the case and snapped it open out of curiosity. The thing inside was golden but didn’t look much like a trophy. “Uh, this is a trowel.”

  “Traditional,” Bel said. “Farming area. Have you got everything you need? Message me if you need anything sent. You’ve got my contact.”

  “Bel, of course I’ve got your contact,” Kiem said. He stowed the box in the flybug’s hold. “You’re my aide. We’ve messaged each other a dozen times a day for the last year.”

  “All right,” Bel said, “I’m just checking. Have you got everything?”

  Kiem looked at her more closely and didn’t say, You already asked that. It was an automatic question, but Bel didn’t get distracted like that. She’d already shifted from one foot to another a few times. “Is something up?”

  Bel glanced at the walkways around them and grimaced. “Sort of,” she said. She cast another look at the elevator. “I just heard my grandmother’s ill.”

  “Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Kiem said. Bel’s family was all on Sefala, as far as he knew, which meant a journey of ten days to reach the planet without even adding however long it would take at the other end. “You’ll want personal leave, right?”

  “So I was going to ask—” Bel said, then caught herself as she heard what he’d said. It didn’t seem to make asking any easier, though; her mouth twisted. “Not just yet,” she said. “But I might need to make a sudden request later. I’m just letting you know in case.”

  “Take it now,” Kiem said. “You should go home. Don’t wait.”

  “Stop making this hard,” Bel said sharply. “You need someone to do this job.”

  Kiem raised a hand in apology but didn’t back down. “Yeah, but I can find cover from somewhere. They might not be as good, but this is kind of important!”

  Bel worried at the embroidered threads on her sleeve with a fingernail—something Kiem had only ever seen her do at three in the morning in a media emergency. “She’s not in immediate danger,” she said. “It could be that nothing happens for months.”

  “Then take months.”

  “I’ll tell you when I need to,” Bel said. She turned her head as the elevator opened for Jainan. When she stepped back, something in the set of her shoulders looked like relief that the conversation was over.

  Jainan’s eyes went to her as he drew nearer—he was observant enough to pick up when something was even slightly wrong—and his hand gripped his case a little more tightly. “I’m late,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nope, you’re early,” Kiem said easily, taking Jainan’s case off him. Kiem would have to ask Bel later if he could tell Jainan, but Bel was intensely private with her own life, and he wasn’t going to air anything without asking. “Let’s head off, and Bel will breathe a sigh of relief and get some work done without us interrupting.”

  “Don’t pretend Jainan’s as bad as you,” Bel said dryly. “Jainan, feel free to ditch him somewhere over the mountains if he’s a nuisance.”

  Jainan didn’t smile, just paled. Damn Taam. “Hey,” Kiem protested, “do I pay you to gang up on me? Jainan, mind if I fly?” Jainan nodded silently and got into the passenger seat.

  Bel waved from the walkway as if they were leaving at a shuttleport. “Have fun with the kids at Braska,” she said. “I can send you some thumbscrews if you need them for the military officers. See you in three days.”

  “You should be sending me armor for the kids!” Kiem called, while Jainan flinched at the thumbscrews joke. “Later!” He set the flybug to automatic to get out of the hangar and keyed up the tractor beam.

  The dome closed them into a pool of quiet. Jainan stared straight ahead while the tractor field inched them delicately out of their docking space. The sky was opening up abov
e them, icy and pale blue: a good day for flying. Kiem sighed and settled back into his seat, resting his hands in the mesh of filaments that controlled the flybug.

  “Right,” he said. “Tell you what, we’ll free-route the first bit overland. We can join the tunnels when they come up from the coast.”

  “The tunnels?” Jainan asked.

  Kiem had heard that tone before. He didn’t know if Jainan was tense because of the treaty or because of this bloody Taam thing, but he was helplessly out of answers for both. “The commercial routes,” he said. “You know. You’d have taken them any time you left Arlusk’s city limits.” Jainan looked blank. It must be a cultural thing. “Light-tunnels for high-speed freight. Like the city networks but bigger.”

  “Oh,” Jainan said. “Yes. We had something similar on Thea.”

  “We’ll just hop over the mountains for the first bit, then,” Kiem said hopefully. “I learned to fly around there. Peaceful. Dramatic crags, snow, that sort of thing.”

  “Snow,” Jainan said, leaning forward to survey the early winter city skyline as they rose into the air. “You do surprise me.”

  It took Kiem a moment to catch on, and then he grinned in relief. He pulled them into a vein of light that would bring them out of the city traffic network. “Feels good to get out, huh?”

  “Mm,” Jainan said. His voice had gone colorless again. He was watching the city recede under them, giving way to the foothills to the west, now covered in deep snow. True winter was setting in. The spine of the range loomed up in the distance. “I haven’t been this way before. Taam liked to go the other side of Arlusk for skiing.”

  “There’s an idea,” Kiem said. “We should have brought skis. Dammit. Think it’s too late to go back?”

  “I preferred the flying to the skiing,” Jainan said. His eyes were starting to gleam with curiosity as they skimmed closer to the first of the real mountains. “Can you go a little lower?”

  Kiem grinned. “Can do,” he said. “Tell me if you want me to veer off.” He switched the controls to a more sensitive setting and dived down.