Winter's Orbit

by Everina Maxwell

  Jainan took his wrist—Kiem didn’t resist—and attempted to help him to his feet. “Kiem,” he said. “You’re not in a state to wash. Go to bed.”

  “I’m showering,” Kiem said to the towels. “I’m getting in the shower.”

  “You don’t need—” Jainan broke off. It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand the feeling. He considered whether or not he could take a liberty and decided that he probably could. “Very well. In that case.” He pulled Kiem the rest of the way to his feet and let go of him—Kiem propped himself up against the towel rail—and stripped the rest of his own clothes off. He turned the shower on and the sensors lit up. “At least this way we don’t have to fight over who gets to go first.”

  “Right! Right.” Kiem caught on to what they were doing and yanked his shirt over his head, nearly losing his balance again. Jainan steadied him. “More tired than I thought,” Kiem said, in what might have been an apology. He stumbled into the shower, keeping himself stable with a hand on Jainan’s arm. The way his eyes tracked to Jainan’s exposed chest was gratifying even though neither of them were in much of a state to do anything about it.

  The sensors beeped in confusion when they registered two people. Showers were highly personalized things, and Jainan hadn’t been using this one long enough to get to know it, but he managed to wrestle one of the jets into manual mode. Kiem sighed when the water hit him, as if all his breath was running out of him. He dropped his face into the curve between Jainan’s neck and shoulder and stood there as the water coursed down his back, his weight against Jainan.

  “Kiem,” Jainan said. “Really.” It felt good in a low-key way, even through Jainan’s own fatigue, and though it was thoroughly inconvenient, he couldn’t quite bring himself to move Kiem’s head.

  “Mrh,” Kiem said. “You have so much hair.” He brought up one hand and ran it through Jainan’s rapidly soaking hair—or tried and stopped, because by this point Jainan’s hair was badly knotted. Kiem made another wordless noise and shook his head as water ran into his face.

  Jainan had to suppress the urge to laugh when it occurred to him that Kiem could very literally drown in his hair. He must be tired if he was finding that funny. He took hold of Kiem’s hand and disentangled it, inexplicably gratified. “Try not to fall over for two minutes, and I promise you can go to sleep.” Kiem made a noise that might have indicated cooperation.

  Jainan did a reasonable job of rinsing them down, given the circumstances, and managed to get Kiem dry afterward. Drying Jainan’s hair was a lost cause even with the heater, but he was too tired to care about it being damp. Kiem was now unapologetically leaning on him to stand.

  When they emerged from the bathroom, Jainan was tired, strangely content, and not expecting it when Kiem attempted to pull away.

  “What is it?” Jainan said.

  “Need to get out the bed,” Kiem said.

  Jainan stopped where he was. The folding bed. Kiem’s eyes had darted to his face as he’d said that, and though Jainan had once thought he would never be able to read Kiem, he could now take a confident guess.

  “Kiem,” he said deliberately. “You’re my partner. Come to bed.”

  Relief broke over Kiem’s face like sunlight. “You mean that? You mean that.”

  “Obviously,” Jainan said. “Apart from anything else, you’re going to be asleep before you can even turn over.” He guided Kiem to the bed, and Kiem half collapsed on it, tugging Jainan down with him.

  Jainan let himself fall. A bone-deep exhaustion rolled over him as he settled beside the weight of Kiem. They had to catch a shuttle tomorrow. They still weren’t confirmed by the Resolution, and the whole sector hung in the balance. He was so tired. He turned his face toward the warmth from Kiem’s skin and slipped into sleep.

  CHAPTER 21

  In the vast silence of deep space, Thea hung like the chime of a single pure note. Its ultramarine seas glittered and shifted under a delicate ring of silicate and ice, rotating imperceptibly behind the observation window of Carissi Station. Kiem had seen a couple of the Empire’s planets from space—Eisafan, Rtul—but he was prepared to award Thea the prize for first impressions, with a bonus entry for Planet He Might Consider Dating.

  “You’re humming,” Jainan said from beside him.

  “Am I?” Kiem hung over the observation railing. He must have picked up the habit somewhere. He couldn’t remember where; he was tone-deaf, but the urge was irresistible. “I’m in a good mood.” He leaned slightly too far and had to push himself back. Carissi Station kept eight-tenths of full gravity, which made every movement an adventure. They’d been stuck on a shuttle for three days—a budget shuttle Bel had picked for them, which didn’t even have real-time comms—and he should be worrying about the treaty, but with Jainan there he’d barely noticed the time pass. Of course, sleeping through the first twenty-four hours might have something to do with it.

  Jainan didn’t smile, but the line of tension between his eyes relaxed. He rested his hands on the rail to keep himself steady in the lighter gravity and lifted his eyes from his wrist-screen to the five-story-high viewing pane in front of them. The station’s Observation Hall was ringed with similar windows. Jainan wasn’t gawking like Kiem, since he must have seen this view before, but every time he glanced up his eyes went half-clouded, half-longing. His sister Ressid would be arriving with the Thean planetary delegation in another four days. Kiem got the impression Jainan was nervous.

  Congratulating himself on his sensitivity—what if he didn’t try to make Jainan talk when he obviously didn’t want to?—Kiem left him to catch up on his messages and moved around to the next window, where a cluster of blocky industrial habitats were rising into view in the wake of the main station. One of those must be the Kingfisher refinery Aren had mentioned, fed by minerals from asteroids farther out in the sector. Kiem winced at the reminder, and wondered if Professor Audel had made it to the station yet. He still had a fundamental hope things might all sort themselves out—maybe Taam’s crash really had been an accident—but even he was finding it harder and harder to hold on to that idea.

  The rest of the Observation Hall was surprisingly empty. Kiem was keeping half an eye out for the Auditor. Agent Rakal obviously thought they could still find a suspect to satisfy the Resolution, but Kiem was starting to get surer and surer that they didn’t have time. At least if they told the Auditor everything they knew, it would be obvious that Jainan hadn’t killed Taam. Maybe that would be enough to instate them.

  The Unification celebrations would kick off in the Hall later, after the Resolution signing, but most of the official contingents hadn’t arrived yet, and for now people moved through it in dribs and drabs. There weren’t many Theans among them. Jainan had mentioned on the shuttle that the habitat modules of Carissi Station were still considered an Iskaner vanity project, despite its position in orbit around Thea, and Theans themselves only tended to use the docks in the Transit Module where travelers caught connecting shuttles on and off the planet. Kiem still had a lot to learn about the subtleties of Thean current affairs.

  Jainan looked up from his wristband. “Your newslog articles came out while we were on the shuttle,” he said. “The ones about the crash.”

  “Oh yeah?” Kiem said. He leaned forward to catch sight of a wisp from a distant nebula. “Any angry messages from Hren?”

  “No,” Jainan said. Something seemed to be bothering him. “I didn’t realize you planned to blame your own bad flying. This paints you as incompetent.”

  “Well, it’s a narrative they know. Easy to get traction.”

  Jainan didn’t respond. He was frowning at the screen.

  “I didn’t mention you, did I?” Kiem said, suddenly worried. He had tried to give the impression he was the only one in the flybug.

  “No, you didn’t,” Jainan said. “I just—why do you talk about yourself like this?”

  That threw Kiem off-balance. Jainan seemed to be expecting a concrete answer. “Er. It seemed l
ike the best way to go.”

  “Oh,” Jainan said. He examined Kiem for a moment, then lifted his gaze to a scruffy figure striding her way across the Observation Hall.

  Kiem had approximately two seconds to wonder what Gairad was doing on Carissi Station before he recalled she was Thean, and this was technically her home orbit.

  “Are you still alive?” Gairad said to Jainan, by way of a greeting.

  “The evidence seems fairly conclusive,” Jainan said dryly. He seemed glad to see her as well, in his own quiet way. “Is Professor Audel on station?”

  “It isn’t as if you got in a flybug crash and then made me worry for two days straight or anything,” Gairad said. “No, she’s supposed to get here today. Why?”

  Jainan didn’t look at Kiem. “I need to see her. Are you here to work on her Kingfisher project?”

  “No,” Gairad said, suddenly morose. “My scholarship says I have to attend goodwill ceremonies with the Iskaners. I should be at a protest right now,” she added, as if Jainan would understand. “I just can’t afford to lose the scholarship.”

  Kiem saw the tiny shift in posture that meant Jainan’s focus had narrowed to Gairad to the exclusion of everything else. “What protest?”

  Gairad’s wristband buzzed and she opened and shut a personal screen, scowling at it. “There’s a big Unification Day protest back in Bita. All my friends are getting at me for being up here with the Iskaners instead.”

  “Gairad,” Jainan said, controlled enough to be a warning sign. “You can’t have connections with radicals.”

  “They’re not radicals,” Gairad said, as if they’d had the conversation before. “They’re my friends from university.”

  “Especially not during Unification Day,” Jainan said. “Please. Leave them to it. You have your project to focus on.”

  The edge of appeal in his voice apparently gave Gairad pause. “Ugh,” she said eventually. “I suppose. At least with you and the professor here, we might get some Kingfisher work done. Did you have a chance to look at my mass analysis of their refinery?” She threw up a screen right there, between her and Jainan, which showed a cross-section of a space habitat. After a moment, Kiem recognized the refinery they’d seen a model of at Hvaren Base. “Here. There’s something weird about the mass distribution that I can’t pin down. Can we go over it this evening?”

  There was a sudden shattering, grinding noise. Kiem turned and saw one of the huge bulkhead partitions was moving, folding itself back to reveal another part of the Hall. They must need the full space for the ceremonies. The new part of the Hall had already been set up with a cluster of waist-high stands covered with bubbles of force. Each bubble held a Galactic remnant. Kiem recognized a Resolution staffer adjusting one of the stands.

  Jainan only spared the noise a single glance over his shoulder. “Tomorrow,” he said to Gairad. “I am at a dinner this evening.”

  “Advisory Council banquet,” Kiem said helpfully. “But we don’t have anything tomorrow morning.” If he went by Bel’s meticulously color-coded schedule, it was easier to ignore that they only had four days to sort out the instation problem or none of the circus would matter. He touched Jainan’s elbow. “There’s a Resolution staffer over there. We should talk to them.”

  Jainan caught his meaning at once. If the Auditor wasn’t speaking to anyone, a staffer might be the only way in. “Yes. Gairad, I will see you tomorrow.”

  Gairad insisted on trailing behind him to point out some final things about the mass analysis, which Jainan listened to gravely before pulling himself away, but Kiem was already focused on the Resolution staffer. The bulkhead shuddered back against the wall, revealing another dozen remnants, each on its own stand.

  It also revealed the Auditor himself, striding in from a side door, and Prince Vaile, skirts clutched in one hand as she hurried to keep up with him, saying, “Auditor, if you would only explain—”

  Kiem fell in beside her and slid himself into the conversation. “Hey, Vaile. Explain what?”

  The Auditor wasn’t answering anyway. Vaile gave Kiem a harassed look. “Oh. Kiem. Of course, you were on a shuttle. Have you checked your confirmation status recently?”

  Kiem traded a glance with Jainan and spun up his correspondence with the Auditor’s staff. A miniature web of pictures appeared on a small screen above his wrist, with the faces of the treaty representatives displayed above their statuses.

  His and Jainan’s statuses no longer said UNCONFIRMED. They had been replaced by another tag, glowing red. REVOKED.

  Jainan’s voice was gray and brittle behind him, as he caught up in time to see Kiem’s wrist-screen. “That— I don’t understand. That can’t be right. Not all of them.”

  In his shock, Kiem hadn’t looked at the others. Now he saw there was red spotted all across the web: the Sefalan representative had also been labeled REVOKED, as had every Iskat half of the remaining couples.

  “Yes,” Vaile said grimly. “You see the problem. Auditor,” she said, raising her voice. “I understand you must work by Resolution protocols, but the Emperor needs to know your grounds so she can respond. If you would just stop for one moment and tell me—”

  “Here,” the Auditor said, stopping in front of one of the remnant stands. Two junior staffers flanked it. Kiem hadn’t noticed before, but the Auditor’s eye-covering took on a different aspect this close to remnants: a new element crept into the swirling field. It looked like a color, but Kiem’s brain interpreted it not as visible light but as a sharp taste in the back of his mouth. The Auditor turned to Vaile. There was no way of telling where he was looking, but Kiem was for some reason sure he had acknowledged him and Jainan. “Prince Vaile, if you would step forward.”

  Vaile let the hem of her skirts fall back to the floor and moved toward the stand. It was the largest remnant, big enough that Kiem couldn’t have fitted his arms around it, and seemed to be made of hundreds of metal sheets melting into each other. Kiem recognized the unpleasant prickling down his back from the ceremony back on Iskat, along with the horrible feeling there might be someone behind you. The stand was surrounded by a bubble of light.

  Vaile regarded the remnant like it had personally tried to sabotage her reputation with the Emperor. “I recognize this one,” she said. “General Fenrik provided it. The Tau field?”

  The Auditor laid a hand on the remnant, reaching through the force field as if it weren’t there. The remnant reacted immediately, sharp light running in waves over its surface and clustering hungrily around his hand. His face shield went pure black as he stood there for a long moment, light running around and over his fingers.

  “Auditor?” Vaile said, with what Kiem felt was commendable composure.

  The Auditor’s face turned to her, returning to its normal state. “This is the biggest find we have had from a system as small as yours in quite a while,” he said. “I’ve seen the designs you submitted for a therapy machine—a sorely misplaced idea, but even if you were running it continuously, it should barely have drained any of the remnant’s energy. I should not be able to touch a sample like this, even with assistive tech, and stay within the parameters of my own mind.”

  “But you are,” Jainan said evenly. “So?”

  “This is a fake,” the Auditor said.

  “That’s not possible,” Vaile said. “It’s been under guard the whole time.”

  The Auditor gestured to his junior staffers. One of them took out a tool that seemed to be a cutting wheel on a handle, spinning lazily. It looked too slow to do anything, but its rim glowed violet. As the staffer brought it down to touch the remnant, the remnant split, like wood beneath an axe. The two halves crumbled gently away from each other, falling off the stand, and froze in midair where they hit the force field.

  A small, dense shard clattered to the stand. It was the size of Kiem’s thumb.

  “That is the only legitimate remnant,” the Auditor said coolly. “A shard nestled in a clever fake, enough to simulate some of the
effects. We have discovered fourteen other fakes among the materials submitted to us.”

  “Why would anyone fake a remnant?” Kiem said.

  Vaile pinched the bridge of her nose. “I assume so they could remove the real ones without the Resolution noticing,” she said. “I cannot think why anyone would want multiple remnants.”

  “Some of the smaller ones have been carved up and used to fake the effect of larger remnants,” the Auditor said. “My staff have now tested all of them. Your Emperor wanted to speak to me, Prince Vaile. Tell her I will have the current location of the remnants, or there will not be a treaty.”

  Vaile stood like a statue, her expression suddenly opaque.

  “Hang on,” Kiem said. “There can’t just not be a treaty. I know you had concerns about Taam and Thea, but we have an answer. We were going to give you an answer.”

  The Auditor was no longer paying attention to any of them. He had turned back to the tiny remnant, holding it in his hand as his face shield turned black. It was like watching someone in religious communion.

  “Excuse me,” Vaile said.

  “The Auditor has laid down terms,” one of the junior staffers said, politely gesturing them to step away. “Please inform the Emperor, Prince Vaile. He will speak to you when you have an update.”

  “Wait a moment,” Kiem said helplessly, but there didn’t seem to be anything they could do. They had no way to persuade or bribe or blackmail the Auditor; it was like trying to persuade the weather.

  Vaile jerked her head to indicate they should leave. “I will deal with this,” she said, sounding uncannily like the Emperor. She eyed the glossy, closed group of Resolution staff, obviously discarded further argument as pointless, and strode off. Presumably she had a direct line to call the Emperor.

  Kiem and Jainan let the Resolution staffers shepherd them away from the Auditor. Kiem felt stunned, as if the floor under his feet had just opened onto hard vacuum.

  “Those remnants must be found,” Jainan said tensely. “The entire Taam investigation is pointless if the Resolution uses this to void the treaty.”