Winter's Orbit

by Everina Maxwell

  “Conclusive of what?” Kiem said. “None of this is true! Jainan killing Taam? Trying to kill me? This is—this is bullshit!”

  “Kiem, if you comport yourself like an adult who has been called in for a briefing, you will receive the briefing I summoned you for,” the Emperor said irritably. “If you insist on acting like a child in a tantrum, then you may leave.”

  Kiem’s mouth shaped itself around a response, but he knew she was fully capable of throwing him out. Getting himself cut out here wouldn’t help. Jainan would have been able to control himself. He shut his mouth and put his hands on his knees. “Of course, ma’am. I would very much like to know what’s going on.”

  The Emperor spared him a fraction of a nod. “This investigation has been dragged out for far too long. I have been given a complete array of half-baked theories, from ‘accident’ to ‘anarchist’ to ‘insider at the flybug manufacturer.’” Here she gave Rakal a censorious look. They winced. “However, Internal Security finally seems to have narrowed it down to either an academic with a grudge—dishonorably discharged, I understand—or your partner Jainan. General Fenrik tells me his investigators have proved it was Jainan from biological traces in the workings of your flybug—”

  “Which could have been planted,” Kiem said, controlling his voice with a supreme effort. “Ma’am.”

  “I have seen the case the Kingfisher investigation team put together,” the Emperor said. “It is … not unconvincing.”

  “Where is he?” Kiem said. “If Internal Security doesn’t have him, then where has Fenrik taken him?”

  “A secure site,” the Emperor said brusquely. “I fail to see why you need to know more than that. Rakal here has been petitioning me to transfer Jainan and his case to civil authority. General Fenrik is convinced it will come under a military tribunal, as the murder victim was a serving officer.”

  “I reiterate my opinion, ma’am,” Rakal said. “This is not legitimately a military matter.”

  “Would Internal Security be any better?” Kiem said, roused. “You didn’t even realize the security clearance flag came from—” He bit his tongue, suddenly realizing that wouldn’t help at all.

  “Prince Taam,” Rakal said, measured. “Yes, my people found out who it originated with. There may have been more bad blood between Prince Taam and Count Jainan than we realized.”

  Bad blood. Kiem had a crushing view of how much the rest of the story would bolster the case against Jainan if it came out. “Jainan wouldn’t kill anyone,” he said. Somehow stating it baldly like that didn’t seem to have the effect he wanted. “He’s innocent. He could at least come home, couldn’t he?” His mind filled with hiring lawyers, finding evidence, maybe cornering some army officers and shaking them until he found out what was going on.

  Rakal’s mouth tightened. Kiem saw the shared glance between them and the Emperor, and he knew he wasn’t going to like the answer even before Rakal said, “Not if he remains with the military. Her majesty has decided there may be advantages if they conduct an interrogation. If it could be proven that Count Jainan acted alone, the Resolution might accept a replacement treaty representative.” The Emperor appeared deep in thought and didn’t move to speak. “I am opposed to this,” Rakal added.

  “What advantages?” Kiem said. “The military can’t interrogate him!”

  “They can,” Rakal said quietly. “Effectively.”

  “And the civilian authorities legally cannot,” the Emperor said. Kiem took a breath, but he had no words. The Emperor shook her head slightly as if shedding her vacillation. “No, Rakal, I have made my decision. If Jainan is innocent, they will get nothing usable from an interrogation and you can have the academic instead. If otherwise—that will clear up this part of the mess, and we can work on finding the damned remnants.” Her mouth twitched down at the corner. “That lands us with a different mess, of course. But that is politics.” She nodded to her aide, who made some sort of note on her special-issue wristband. “I will allow them two days. Kiem, you will cooperate with Rakal and with the military authorities when they require it. You will speak of this to no one: everything is under top level classification. Do you understand?”

  “Ma’am,” Kiem said, his voice only a thread.

  “You will have to attend the run-up ceremonies by yourself,” the Emperor said. “The worst of all possible outcomes, but it cannot be helped. I expect you to rise to the challenge. Dismissed.”

  Kiem’s bow was even clumsier in comparison to Rakal’s punctilious one, but the Emperor was already dictating orders to her aide and didn’t notice. As they both left the room, Rakal’s projection faded out at the threshold of the door.

  Kiem’s wristband woke up and flared into life again as he strode past the guards without speaking. He raised his fingers in a call command, counting in his head the seconds it would take Rakal to walk through the Emperor’s outer office where her aides worked, all the way down the tower’s elevators, and into the main corridor. Then he called.

  He’d calculated accurately. When Rakal opened their screen, the corridor behind them was empty. They stopped, folded their arms, and tilted their chin up aggressively. “Say what you’re going to say, Your Highness.”

  “What can they do to interrogate him?” Kiem said.

  Rakal’s shoulders were tense. “They have arrested him under military law. There are very few legal limitations, though I’m sure they’re aware that if they don’t acquire damning evidence, there will be serious consequences if a Thean representative turns out to have been physically harmed. Nevertheless.”

  “And you’re okay with this?” Kiem demanded. “Everyone’s okay with this? Jainan lives for duty! He’s probably never done anything illegal in his life!”

  “The Emperor has given a direct order,” Rakal said. “The civilian legal process should be followed for civilians, but what is Internal Security against the old guard?” There was a note of bitterness in their voice that threw Kiem off for a moment. The Emperor had called him General Fenrik, Kiem remembered, when she barely gave anyone else their title. General Fenrik was the Emperor’s generation, back when the military had been vastly more powerful than the civil infrastructure. Rakal was young, could not be more than forty. “Count Jainan may not come to much harm.”

  “May not?”

  Rakal glanced around before they answered. “There are drugs.”

  Kiem took a deep breath. “I’m not going to let this happen.”

  “I will not be drawn into this line of conversation,” Rakal said. “We did not speak about this. However,” they added. “If Jainan were to somehow … walk out of military custody, I believe that would change matters.” They looked Kiem right in the eye. “The treaty situation is changing hour by hour. I believe if Jainan were to somehow leave, I would be able to keep his case under civil authority and stop him from going back in.”

  “Right,” Kiem said. He took another breath, and said again, “Right.”

  Rakal gave him a hint of a nod.

  Kiem canceled the call. Then he raised his wristband and spun up the Thean Ambassador. As he strode back to his and Jainan’s guest suite, he wrote out, Jainan falsely arrested. Petition for release, and added a précis of everything the Emperor had said. He finished just as the door of his rooms shut behind him.

  Then, and only then, he entered the high-urgency code that was only supposed to be used for a life-or-death situation, and called Bel.

  He waited so long he started counting the seconds. A minute. Ninety seconds. Eventually, though, the soft waiting pattern dissolved into Bel’s face. She was in what looked like a privacy capsule at the shuttleport, distracted and drawn with worry. “Kiem?” She looked at him and behind him and seemed to reassure herself he wasn’t in immediate danger. “I’m literally about to get on the shuttle, they’re calling the passengers now. I can’t talk.”

  “Jainan’s been arrested,” Kiem said. He could hear his voice crack. “They think he killed Taam and tried to kill
me. I need to get him out before they interrogate him. I need your help.”

  Bel’s eyes widened, but only for an instant before calculation spread across her face. “Let me guess,” she said. “Major Saffer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kiem said. “You can still go tonight. Just delay by half a day, I’ll book you on a new—What?”

  “Saffer’s somewhere behind this,” Bel said. “And if you’re worried about interrogation, that means the military have him. Hell fucking damn it.”

  “Right,” said Kiem, who had rarely heard Bel swear like that before, but at least someone was having the right reaction. He didn’t know where she’d gotten Aren’s name from, but that wasn’t the most important thing right now. “I need you. Just for half a day. A few hours.”

  She paused. Kiem realized he was gripping his wristband with his other hand, an old habit from when he was a child and thought you needed to keep holding it to make the other person’s image stay there. The edges pressed into his fingers. “Please.”

  “Kiem,” she said at last. “There’s not a lot I can do. It’s not going to help if you send me to talk to people. They’ll need to hear from you. I’m really sorry.”

  “I’m not going to talk to people,” Kiem said. “I’m going to find out where Jainan is and get him out.” He lowered his voice, even in the privacy of his own room. “I’ll cover you when it comes to the legalities, I swear, but I need you. I know you can get around entrance scanners. You did it for me when I lost my wristband last year. The Emperor’s only given them two days, and they can’t have gone down to Thea, so he has to be in the station or on one of the cluster modules. I’m going to find where they’re holding him, and I’m going to come back with Jainan.”

  Bel had already covered her face with her hand. “Oh fucking hell.”

  Kiem could feel his momentum crumbling away from under his feet. He barreled on anyway, desperate. “I have to do this before they hurt him. There’s stuff you don’t know about Taam and—please. I know you need to get to your grandmother soon—”

  “Stop,” Bel said. Her voice was muffled behind her hand. “Stop, shut up, for the love of everything, shut up. There is no sick grandmother!”

  Kiem stopped. “What?”

  “I’ve been lying to you!” Bel said. Her voice was lower and faster now, almost a whisper. “I don’t know where the hell my grandmother is, she was with the Black Shells last time I spoke to her. She’s probably fine. Stop—stop sympathizing!”

  That put a wrench even in Kiem’s current panic. “Black Shells? Is that a monastery?”

  “She’s a raider!” Bel said. “Do I have to spell this out for you? The Black Shells is a conglom! Like the one I came from!”

  “I don’t—you—conglom?”

  “Raider outfit!”

  “Right,” Kiem said and bit down on I knew that. His limited knowledge of Sefalan affairs wasn’t the issue here. He tried not to feel like he was talking to someone else, someone who wasn’t Bel at all. “Why did you need to lie to—” No. He found he didn’t care. Bel was still the same person she’d been for all the time he’d known her, and she hadn’t let him down in anything yet. She would have her reasons. “You know what, if you don’t want me to know, I don’t need to. But please, can it wait for just a few hours? I’ll rebook you on the next shuttle out.”

  Bel was now staring at him. “You’re an idiot. Don’t you want to know why I’m going?”

  “Did I do something?” Kiem said desperately. “Can I make up for it?”

  “No!” Bel leaned in closer. She was still whispering, apparently not trusting the privacy capsule. “Did you hear the part where I said my grandmother split off with the Black Shells? Do you know that kind of trade usually runs in families? I was born on a Red Alpha ship! I was one of our system breakers for ten years! It was my job to break into shuttle communications networks so they couldn’t use them when our ship attacked!”

  This called for thought. Thought that Kiem couldn’t really spare. “I’ve seen your resume,” he said. That hadn’t been on it.

  “I faked nearly everything I gave you!” Bel said, in a whisper so vicious, it was almost a hiss. “You’re not this slow on the uptake!”

  “Oh, right, obviously,” Kiem said. Every minute he couldn’t get Bel to come back was a minute Jainan was still under arrest. “So…? I thought you might have some friends that weren’t totally aboveboard. You don’t still do that stuff, do you? I know you.”

  Bel looked utterly taken aback for the first time since Kiem had known her. “So? I lied to get this job. I lied to that outfit you use to recommend people—charities are easy to fool. I used to be a raider, do you need this spelled out for you? I used you to get away and go straight!”

  Kiem rubbed his hand across his forehead. “Listen, you can break the security protection on any palace system you’ve accessed,” he said. “Or you take it to dodgy back-alley shops and it magically does what I’ve asked you to make it do. Of course you picked it up somewhere, I’ve always known you had some shortcuts. You’re not doing anything bad, so I don’t know why I should have cared.”

  “You will care when Saffer sends it to the media!”

  “You’re—wait, you’re being blackmailed?” Kiem said. “By Aren Saffer? That’s why you’re leaving?”

  Bel’s mouth pursed shut. Her nod was almost imperceptible.

  A wash of relief went over Kiem. “Oh, well, that’s fine then.” He knew he could outmaneuver Aren if it came to the media. “I’ll call a journalist. We’ll make up a story for you. Come back and help me get Jainan.”

  Bel looked at him, then something in her seemed to crack, and she covered her eyes with her hand. “You need help,” she said. “No, I know Jainan needs help, but so do you, because you’re clearly out of your mind. But I’m going to come back, and this is a conversation we’re going to have later. Okay?”

  “Okay! Yes!” Kiem said. “Come straight back. I’ll meet you at our room.”

  “And you’re still going to get me a replacement shuttle ticket even if Internal Security comes after me.”

  Please don’t go, Kiem wanted to say. “No problem.” He gave her a thumbs-up. “Anonymous and first class.” She nodded and cut the call.

  Raiders. Kiem let out a long breath. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to give him her real history. He couldn’t imagine Bel as part of a hijacker crew, but most of what Kiem knew about raiders came from vid dramas, so what did he know? And what did it matter? Since he’d offered Bel the aide post a year ago, she’d been in his corner every time he’d needed her. She was coming back now because he’d asked. He could at least keep her out of trouble afterward, even if it meant she was going to leave.

  An emergency ping came from outside the door. Kiem opened it.

  Gairad pulled herself from her slump against the corridor wall opposite, scrubbed the back of her hand over her swollen, watery eyes, and glared at him. “Where the hell were you? I couldn’t find you! The bastards have taken Jainan!”

  Kiem hadn’t previously supposed an ally might come in the form of a tearful teenager with anti-Iskat pins on her jacket, but right at this moment he was prepared to consider her Heaven-sent. “You saw them? Who was it?”

  Gairad’s combative air weakened, as if she’d expected him to argue. “I was coming here to talk to him, and I saw him get dragged out. He wasn’t conscious. What the fuck is going on? They looked military.”

  “Where did they go?” Kiem said urgently.

  “Shuttle docks,” Gairad said. She gave the long, ugly sniff of someone determined to be functional. “Unmarked short-range capsule. I tracked the first bit of its flight on the public system.”

  “You are a vision of staggering brilliance,” Kiem said fervently. “Come in. When Bel gets here we’re making a battle plan.” He passed her a handkerchief and set the door to admit Bel and no one else.

  By the time she arrived, Kiem and Gairad had trawled his room in the hope that Jainan had left
a message, then had a tense conversation with the Thean Ambassador, and now were obsessively poring over the flight clues Gairad had collected. “I’m back,” Bel said from the door, her luggage hovering behind her. She sounded tentative.

  Kiem didn’t even think before he shoved back his chair and hugged her. She obviously wasn’t expecting it, and it only occurred to him he probably shouldn’t have done it after he had, but Bel was already patting him cautiously on the back. “You are the only person right now apart from Jainan that could make me feel better,” Kiem said. “That wasn’t workplace-appropriate, was it. Sorry. I have some ideas about your blackmail thing—”

  “Later,” Bel said. She let down her capsule, neatened her tunic, and straightened up, gathering her confidence back with the movement. “Sorry I’m late. I stopped to pick some things up. What do you know about Jainan?”

  Gairad looked up as well, so Kiem told both of them. He started with the emergency conference with the Emperor and Rakal, adding what Rakal had said about interrogation, but his explanation was jagged and all over the place. He skipped back to Audel’s hacking attempts and the folder of blackmail material they’d found on Aren and the other senior officers. Then he stopped. “Sorry, Gairad, give us a minute,” he said, and pulled Bel aside to tell her about the video.

  As Bel listened, her expression grew flatter. “Explains a lot” was all she said.

  “You knew?”

  “No,” Bel said. “I felt something was wrong, but you can probably guess why I wasn’t going to push someone to give up their secrets. We all have something to hide. I think Saffer knew, though.”

  Saffer. Everything came back to Aren Saffer, Taam’s best friend. “And he was blackmailing you?”

  Bel glanced at Gairad, who was hunched over the flight plan and scowling as if she could intimidate it into giving her Jainan’s exact coordinates. “That shithead was in deep enough with Evn Afkeli and the Blue Star to pick up that I’m a raider. I thought he was just scared I’d figure him out. I should have realized he had a reason to make me leave just now—but I didn’t know he was going after Jainan.” She eyed Kiem. “Jury’s out, but I’m thinking he may have misjudged the blackmail.”