Winter's Orbit

by Everina Maxwell

  “Cut it short,” Rakal said. “Return to the palace.”

  Kiem cast a glance beside him at Jainan, out of the visuals. Jainan’s head was bowed, his hands clenched into fists on the table. “You’ll have to wait a couple of days. We’re busy.”

  “Prince Kiem,” Rakal said, not shifting their expression by as much as a millimeter. “I am loath to do this, but this is a command in the Imperial Voice.”

  Jainan took a quick breath. “A what?”

  Kiem took his feet off the stool in front of him and sat up. He wouldn’t put it past Rakal to bluff. “Prove it.”

  Rakal picked a metal lump out of a case on their desk and touched it to their wristband. A blob of something gold and wax-like started in the middle of Kiem’s screen and expanded like liquid. Kiem’s wristband started to buzz. The gold reached the edge and, through some hypnotic effect, seemed to bleed onto the stool below the screen. It coagulated into an intricate woven pattern.

  When it was done, an Imperial crest sat over the screen like a spider. A smaller version had crept over Kiem’s wristband itself. Kiem groaned.

  “What is that?” Jainan muttered.

  “The Emperor,” Kiem said. “She’s given them a seal to carry out things in her voice. I wonder when she started to take an interest? Either way, we don’t have a bloody choice now.”

  Rakal’s face appeared again as the golden crest faded. “I trust that makes things clear,” they said. “I will send details of the interview to your aide. Report as soon as you return to the palace.”

  The screens flickered out of view. Jainan let out a long breath and unfurled his clenched hands finger by finger, flexing them as if to check they still worked. “I am sorry.”

  “They were obviously going to do that anyway,” Kiem said, though he had the uneasy feeling things were getting out of control. He and Jainan would have to cross that bridge when they came to it. “Let’s tell the Kingfisher lot that we’re leaving.”

  Aren took it in his stride when they found him in the main office. “Nothing to hide and nothing to fear, eh?” he said. “At least let Jainan stay to talk to the Systems team.”

  “I must go,” Jainan said. He had the odd, choppy rhythm that meant most of his mind was on something else. “We must both go.”

  “Can’t disobey the Imperial Voice, you know?” Kiem said. He tried to make it casual, because it was that or admit to a growing frustration with the whole palace establishment that his mother would have dubbed sulking. “Thanks for your help. If the Auditor asks you, tell him we’re trying to get him some answers.”

  The first five minutes after leaving the base, Kiem and Jainan sat in the flybug in total silence. The buildings grew smaller in the tundra underneath them. Kiem bit his tongue every few seconds, aware that being annoyed at Internal Security wouldn’t help and that Jainan probably wanted space to prepare for the interview. He took one hand out of the steering mesh to file their new flight plan.

  “How long will it take us to fly back?” Jainan said abruptly.

  “We’ll be back by midafternoon,” Kiem said. “If we take the fastest route, that is.”

  Jainan’s profile was very sharp in the pale, snow-reflected light. He stared straight ahead, expressionless. “Do we have to take the fastest route?”

  So this was what Jainan looked like when he was angry. Kiem, caught off guard, made a thoughtful noise. Taking their time would at least tell Internal Security that Kiem and Jainan weren’t their subordinates to order around. They could stay within the letter of the law and still make a point. “The freight routes are pretty dull, really. Didn’t you want to see more of the mountains? It takes longer, but I’m sure Rakal has time in their schedule.”

  “I could see some mountains,” Jainan said.

  Kiem adjusted the steering mesh settings to give them more sensitivity, his bad mood fading, and veered their direction setting to the east. A spine of mountains marched between them and Arlusk, pure and clean and a long way away from bloody Internal Security and their bloody interviews. “Course changed!” he said. “Let them wait.”

  The atmosphere in the flybug shifted. Jainan’s shoulders relaxed. Kiem leaned forward, gleeful over their small rebellion, and scanned the foothills ahead. It would do Internal Security good to remember they couldn’t just snap their fingers and summon them.

  The flight turned into a long, aimless meander deep into the mountains, dipping into valleys and investigating anywhere that looked interesting. Jainan had never done proper mountain flying, so Kiem handed over the helm and showed him how to use the updrafts and wind patterns that snaked around the crags. They found a frozen waterfall; Kiem was at the controls, and he brought them close enough that they could have opened the dome and touched it.

  “Gonna take us down a bit,” Kiem said. “This thing wasn’t built for hovering.”

  They drifted past the crag at the slowest possible speed. Jainan leaned back and said, “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “’Course,” Kiem said, distracted and fiddling with the map on the dash, which he should probably stop ignoring.

  “Professor Audel’s project,” Jainan said. “How would you feel if I withdrew?”

  Kiem stopped looking at the map and also stopped looking where he was going. “Withdrew from the project?” he said. The steering mesh vibrated a warning, and he had to yank the flybug up to avoid hitting a protruding rock. “But … aren’t you kind of vital by now?” He pulled them up to drift at a slightly safer height. “If it’s this thing with Professor Audel, she basically gave us proof she wasn’t involved. Can’t you just do the engineering side and stay away from the political and military bits?”

  He had said the wrong thing. Jainan’s shoulders hunched. “I have made this whole situation worse by working on it,” Jainan said. His speech patterns had turned formal again, which was a bad sign. “It was a mistake for me to agree to it in the first place. Internal Security will see it as suspicious. I should not have taken part in something so political.”

  “I thought you enjoyed it,” Kiem said. “Before the whole embezzlement thing, I mean.” He cast his mind back to the times he’d seen Jainan working on his diagrams—Jainan had been relaxed, engaged, willing to explain parts of it with very little prompting. He knew he wasn’t good at reading Jainan, but surely he couldn’t have gotten things that wrong.

  “I have some alternatives,” Jainan said, “if you would be willing to consider them.”

  Kiem didn’t see what he had to do with it. “Go ahead.”

  “I know you need to keep your influence in the Imperial College,” Jainan said. “There are other ways I could be useful to you. The engineering department is also conducting vacuum tests I could consult on, which would gain you capital with higher-ranking academics. I could find out if the mathematics department has any relevant projects. I know this isn’t what you hoped for from it, but—please.”

  Kiem had taken the flybug off its most sensitive setting some time ago, so when the shock made both his hands clench in the steering they didn’t veer off course. If he hadn’t switched it back they probably would have crashed.

  He realized the next instant and relaxed his grip again, but it was a struggle. He felt as though someone had just taken a scene he was looking at and forcibly pulled it around to a new angle. “What I hoped for?” he said. “This is your project!” He hadn’t made Jainan take it on, had he? He tried frantically to remember the reception where Jainan had agreed to do it. Had he said something?

  “Yes,” Jainan said uncertainly. “But these are your goals.”

  Again, Kiem felt that lurch, as if everything were shifting around him. He took both of his hands out of the mesh and set the controls to autofly, clumsier than he should have been. “They aren’t,” he said, trying to make his voice level. “I mean, I’ve got interests in the College, yes, but that doesn’t affect you. I didn’t want you to help out Professor Audel for my sake, and you don’t bloo
dy need to—to make up for it or whatever you’re offering!”

  Jainan drew back from him. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he said, in a thin, blank voice that made Kiem realize he’d been raising his. “I’m sorry.”

  “I—what? I don’t want anything,” Kiem said, keeping his voice down with some effort. “That’s the point.”

  The flybug beeped a warning, coming up to a sharp rise that the autofly couldn’t deal with. Kiem lunged for the controls again.

  “You’re angry.”

  “I’m not,” Kiem said, concentrating on the steering. It was true—at least it was true he wasn’t angry at Jainan. He wasn’t entirely sure who he was angry with.

  Jainan said nothing, but the quality of his silence was as good as a formally countersigned memo of disbelief.

  “I’m not,” Kiem said again. “I’m—upset.” That felt accurate. “I’m upset that you’d think I’d—I’d use you like that.”

  “It isn’t unreasonable,” Jainan said sharply. “I represent the junior partner in the treaty. I have caused you nothing but trouble so far. It is reasonable to expect my help.”

  “No, it’s not reasonable!” Kiem said. “That’s messed up! We’re married—even if it’s a political marriage, that doesn’t mean one of us is in charge!”

  “I—of course not,” Jainan said. “No.”

  Kiem raked a hand through his hair. “Expect you to do my work for me?” he said. “Where the hell did that come from? Taam?”

  “No,” Jainan said, his voice suddenly harsh.

  Kiem raised a hand in apology. “No, I didn’t mean that,” he said. “Sorry. Tactless.” He tried not to let himself be hurt that it wasn’t okay to imply it of Taam, but apparently it was okay to imply it of Kiem himself. Jainan had been close to Taam; Kiem was the one he had been forced into a rushed remarriage with. It was different. It was understandable.

  Jainan cast him a wary glance, “I would still like permission to withdraw from the project.”

  “You don’t need my bloody per—” Kiem started to say, but was stopped by a muffled bang that shook the whole flybug.

  Both of them broke off. “What was that?” Jainan said.

  “No idea.” A beeping noise started to blare: an alarm Kiem didn’t recognize. He grabbed for the steering with one hand and keyed up the display with the other. “It’s not—shit, it’s not responding.” The filaments were dead and inert around his hand. And both of them felt it at the same time—the slow curve of the flybug as it lost its forward momentum and started to point inexorably downward.

  “Hell!” Kiem yanked at all the backup controls, trying to get some sort of response.

  “That patch of snow,” Jainan said, leaning forward intently. “Can you land—”

  “We’re too far up,” Kiem said grimly, as the sickening feeling of an uncontrolled drop took hold. “I’ll aim for it, and maybe if the landing brakes are still—”

  He didn’t even make it to the end of the sentence. Another shattering blow flung his head forward. The snowy ground spiraled up in front of him, but he wasn’t aiming, he couldn’t make his arms move. He didn’t feel the crash.

  CHAPTER 16

  Pain had its uses, Jainan thought. It put things in perspective. There was something clean about the way it cut through the emotional tangles and reminded you that things could be worse.

  He hurt quite a lot. It took him some effort to ignore it, but eventually he noticed something clammy pressing into his shoulder. He stared at the short expanse of snow in front of him—which was inexplicably sideways—and at the icy-blue sky beyond it. It took him a while to realize that the wetness pressing against his shoulder was also snow.

  Once he had realized that, everything else rushed in. The flybug was a mangled wreck around him. He was still strapped to a seat that lay among a crystal pile of safety glass shards, and his security harness was a line of pain across his chest. He drew in a breath of freezing air and attempted to release the harness; he was shaking so much he couldn’t press the button. His shoulder ached fiercely.

  On the second try, he managed to release the catch and tumbled the last couple of inches into the snow. The last of his breath went. He rested his forehead in the snow and reminded his lungs how to expand.

  The cold wasn’t making it any easier, but it did him a favor in making the discomfort of his rapidly soaking clothes so unendurable that he had to push himself up. He was already starting to shiver. He turned and looked for Kiem.

  He wasn’t there.

  Jainan stared at the wreckage of the flybug’s dome and empty seat for a full three seconds before he looked farther and saw a dark form lying at the end of a track gouged in the snow. It was suddenly very hard to breathe again. His head must still be hazy, because there didn’t seem to be any time at all between spotting Kiem and kneeling down next to him, shaking so badly he had to stop with his hand an inch from Kiem’s face. Kiem’s eyes were shut. It wouldn’t help to touch him. What would help? Jainan was useless.

  As if he felt the heat from Jainan’s hand, Kiem stirred. His eyes opened and he raised his head, pushing himself up on one elbow. “Ouch.”

  Jainan crouched back so suddenly out of relief that he sat down in the snow, saving himself with his hands. “Kiem.”

  “Urgh. Here,” Kiem said. “At least, I think I am. Ow.” He sat up, in spite of an involuntary noise of protest from Jainan, who was thinking about broken ribs and internal injuries. But the movement didn’t seem to cause Kiem any more pain. He rubbed his head, looked around and said, “What h— Oh. Shit.” He jerked forward, drawing another half-formed protest that Jainan hadn’t meant to make, and grabbed Jainan’s arm. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” Jainan said, and Kiem released his grip. Jainan looked Kiem over closely. He raised his hand to a red graze on Kiem’s temple, not touching it. “You went through the dome.”

  Kiem started to say something but seemed to stutter. His eyes went to Jainan’s hand, and Jainan became aware he had brushed the hair away from Kiem’s forehead as if he had some sort of right to. He drew his hand back.

  Kiem cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that wasn’t in the plan. It’s just a graze. Could do with a stim tab, maybe.” He pushed himself to his feet, and dismay wrote itself across his face as he looked at the flybug. “Tell me this wasn’t because of the stunt we pulled with the river.”

  Jainan stood as well, finding his limbs unexpectedly clumsy. It was hard to balance. “No,” he said. Planetside craft weren’t his specialty, but he knew the basics. “Nothing the stabilizers are linked to would have that effect.”

  They both looked in silence at the remains of the flybug. The bulk of the shell was intact, but the front had been comprehensively smashed by the sheet of rock below. Much of the crumpling would have been intentional, built into the structure, but it was still only chance that they had survived.

  “We got lucky,” Kiem said. “We were flying very low.”

  He was right. If they’d been at a normal flying height, or in the tunnels, they would have had no chance. “Yes,” Jainan said. He didn’t want to think of the implications. The cold wind felt like it was boring into his bones.

  “It was … an accident?” Kiem said. He sounded as if he would like that to be true but wasn’t holding out a lot of hope.

  Jainan jerked his head around to look at Kiem. Of course, Kiem wasn’t an engineer, and he wouldn’t have understood the sound and location of the explosion. “It was a compressor failure.”

  “Is that what took out—”

  “—Taam’s flybug?” Jainan said emotionlessly. “Yes.”

  Kiem winced. “I’m starting to hate flybugs.” He leaned over it and thumped one of the crumpled panels, which broke off. “We’ve clearly pissed someone off. Shame we have no idea who.”

  Jainan shook his head mutely. If someone had set the explosion on a timer, the explosion could have been caused by anyone at Hvaren Base or anyone in the palac
e. The garages at the palace were secured, but only from the public, not from the palace’s own residents. Jainan tried to shake off the feeling that it was his fault. He had been the one to stir up the hornet’s nest by going into Taam’s private files.

  Kiem gave a crooked smile. “I suppose there’s not a lot we can do about it from here, anyway,” he said. He pulled aside a twisted panel and dislodged the first aid box, a bright red stain against the snow. He made an aha noise, pried out the sleeve of stim tabs, and shoved three on his tongue. He held them out to Jainan. “Probably don’t take three.”

  The tabs would give him a slow-releasing drip of artificial energy and reduce the pain in his shoulder. Jainan took the sleeve and detached one. One might not have a great effect, but he was wary of anything that interfered with his perceptions, and he disliked stim hangover. It dissolved into bitterness on his tongue.

  Kiem tramped over to the flybug and rested a hand on the intact part of the curved hull, looking into the interior. He shook his head, shot Jainan a rueful glance, and looked up ahead. “Well.”

  Jainan came up beside him and followed his gaze. His heart sank.

  It was a stunning view, objectively. The patch of snow they had crashed on was halfway up a mountainside. The ledge dropped away ten meters or so from the crash site, and beyond it lay a tumbled progression of black rock ledges half-covered in snow drifts—and beyond that, a panorama of towering peaks and pine-clad valleys. They’d left Hvaren Base at least a hundred kilometers behind them, and it must be double that again to Arlusk. This was untouched wilderness.

  It wasn’t hopeless. Jainan rubbed his upper arm convulsively, hoarding the sliver of warmth. Bel and Internal Security were both expecting them. Even if they’d changed their flight plan, it would be fairly easy to guess where they’d gone, and the crash was visible from the air. There would be shelter in the flybug.

  Kiem still hadn’t said anything. Jainan risked a glance at him.

  Kiem was staring at the expanse of wilderness with a thoughtful frown. He caught Jainan’s glance and shook himself. “Well,” he said again, “we definitely bought ourselves time to appreciate the scenery.”