Winter's Orbit

by Everina Maxwell

  “Yes, dear,” Professor Audel said, emerging from an inner part of the rooms. “Would you do me a favor and make the coffee. Count Jainan—do you go by ‘Count’?”

  “No,” Jainan said. The Thean student had mercifully stopped staring at him and gone to unearth a battered samovar from under a pile of old lab equipment. Disconcertingly, the pattern on her twisted scarf was one of Feria’s. “Just Jainan, please.”

  “Jainan, then—why don’t you sit down.” Professor Audel started sorting through more junk behind her desk. “I’m sure I had—where’s it gone?”

  Jainan looked around the room. There were only two obvious chairs. One of them was behind the professor’s desk, and the other was occupied by a glass aquarium. The water it held was so dark it must have had a photoagent in it, and it was probably contributing to the faintly chemical smell that permeated the room. A flipper broke the surface and disappeared again.

  “Oh, that’s just our goldfish,” Professor Audel said. “Move her.”

  “She’s in three hundred liters of water, and the hover assist broke,” the student pointed out. She kicked what looked like an old porcelain samovar, beautiful but chipped, and it emitted a faint chime. “Sit here, Count Jainan.” She met Jainan’s eyes and shoved out a crate. There was a challenge in there that Jainan didn’t understand. “Sorry it’s not the style you’re used to.”

  Taam would have intimidated her into politeness by now. Kiem would have already extracted her name and exactly what was bothering her. Jainan could only look away. “It’s fine,” he said. He sat on the edge.

  “Can’t find the abacus,” Professor Audel said, emerging with her hair clips askew. “I have your conclusions from the net, though. Oh dear, look at me jumping into work. One of my bad habits. Gairad, is that the coffee?”

  “Coming,” the student said, pouring from the samovar. She passed Jainan and Professor Audel cups of extraordinarily strong coffee then pulled up a beanbag and took the third cup for herself. Something about her profile was naggingly familiar.

  An illustration of the Iskat sector hung on the wall behind the professor’s desk. Unusually, it was drawn so Thea dominated the foreground, distinctive with its glittering ring and the cobalt-blue tint of its seas. The artist had delineated a network of ship journeys in gold. Thea had never been easy to reach: the asteroid fields were extensive and difficult to navigate, but there were lines to Rtul and the majestic bulk of Eisafan, and one desultory route to Kaan. But all of those were dwarfed by the gleaming web of trade routes that looped around Iskat and spiraled out to the sector’s one remaining galactic link. The threads were so dense that they came together in a golden river pouring through the known clear paths to Thea: in the picture, it looked like you could take a rowboat from Thea to Iskat’s shores.

  “Now then, dear,” Professor Audel said, “didn’t someone say you just got married? How are you finding it?”

  Jainan choked. “We’re very happy,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Well, to each their own,” the professor said. “I tried it twice, and the second time was no better than the first. Don’t let me spoil your optimism, though.”

  “It’s his second marriage, Professor,” said Gairad, with the long-suffering tone of an eighteen-year-old who is more intelligent than everyone around them. “I told you. He’s our treaty representative.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not up to date on politics,” the professor said to Jainan. “It’s been very helpful to have Gairad around. So much of this seems to be politics. Maybe you two know the same people?”

  Gairad was looking at him. Jainan could tell. He was tense even before she opened her mouth and said, “Know the same people? Professor, we’re related.”

  Cold dread went through Jainan. “Are we?” he said, trying to make it as neutral as possible.

  “My aunt’s cousin is Lady Ressid’s oath-sister,” Gairad said. Now the accusation in her voice was unconcealed. “I started at Bita Point University four years after you left. Lady Ressid came to my farewell ceremony on Thea when I switched to study here.”

  And that meant—though the connection was distant—Jainan had clan duties to her he hadn’t fulfilled. Another name on the list of people he had let down. “I,” he said, then stopped. He couldn’t explain to her why he hadn’t been in contact. He’d had issues with his security clearance; his current Iskat obligations and his old Thean ties had proved difficult to balance. He didn’t like to think about it. Those were the sacrifices you had to make as a diplomat.

  “Aha,” said Professor Audel, who had been rummaging in her desk drawer and clearly not paying attention. “Here’s our own model. Is that enough small talk? I think it is. Jainan, take a look at this.”

  Jainan turned away from Gairad with relief that felt like a breath of air. Professor Audel placed an abacus cube on the desk, each side about the length of her thumb. It lit up with a soft glow and started projecting its built-in programs: models and lines glowed in three dimensions in the air above it. Jainan recognized the outlines with a pang. He no longer remembered all the details of his own field.

  “How much of the current thinking have you followed since your thesis?” Professor Audel asked. “None at all? Oh. Well then, you may not be following Operation Kingfisher and how it’s been going. Or not going, I should say.”

  “He should know,” Gairad said. “He was married to the man who ran it! Prince Taam, Professor, I told you.”

  “Oh, you’re that one,” the professor said. She regarded him for a second longer than was comfortable. “I did wonder how they got a new representative in so quickly. So you do know about Kingfisher, then.”

  Jainan shook his head, his throat suddenly tight. “Prince Taam didn’t discuss his work,” he said. “I wasn’t following it.” His related field had been part of the reason he’d been put forward for the marriage, but that had led nowhere. Taam had never taken interference well, especially early on, when Jainan hadn’t realized his own academic explanations came across as patronizing. “I only had an idea it wasn’t going as well as it could.”

  “Beset with problems,” the professor said. “One might say riddled with them. Equipment failures, poor planning, workforce problems, supplies going missing—and two rogue solar flare incidents, which were the only things nobody can be blamed for. Heaven knows how the military organizes its operations; it’s a miracle they managed to conquer anywhere.”

  The two Theans in the room winced. Jainan saw Gairad scowl and suddenly wished he hadn’t shown any reaction himself; he was supposed to be a diplomat. He distracted himself by staring at the colorful projection. If he was honest, he felt a vague prickle of disloyalty to Taam at even listening to criticism of his operation. “Deep-space mining has always had disasters.”

  “Oh, I’m not casting aspersions,” Professor Audel said, without batting an eyelid at this blatant lie. “I did a stint as a military engineer myself; it’s not a walk in the park. But this points to some spectacular incompetence.”

  “And you’ve developed … a new extraction method?” Jainan said, pulling the conversation into a safer channel. “To mine trace elements?”

  “Yes,” Professor Audel said. “You see, planning failures aside, we—my students and I—think all the Thean sector extraction could be done at half the cost. We’ve started to reach out to the military, but you know what they’re like. The only way to get them to listen is to beat them over the head with something. So we need a regolith expert, and then here you came—ah!” She pushed herself up from her desk. “I just remembered where your thesis abacus might be.”

  She disappeared into the inner room. Jainan opened his mouth to disclaim any expertise, but she was gone before he could get it out. He was suddenly very aware of Gairad’s eyes on him.

  “So,” Gairad said conversationally. “Are you going to skip out on this like you’ve apparently skipped out on everything else?”

  Jainan placed his hands very carefully on his knees and said no
thing.

  “I only ask,” Gairad said, “because I should probably warn Professor Audel. I told her you’ve flaked out on everything you started since you came here, but you saw her. She doesn’t listen to anything that doesn’t involve pressure equations or reptiles.”

  Jainan only realized then how much the nausea in his stomach had faded in the last few days, because it was coming back now. Limit the damage. Kiem had trusted him with this and wouldn’t be pleased if he fell at the first hurdle. “Where did you get that from?”

  “It’s common knowledge in the expat circle,” Gairad said. “Which you’d know if you didn’t treat all Theans like we were radioactive.”

  Jainan swallowed. “It’s not that.”

  “Isn’t it? What is it, then? You’re too good for us since you became an Iskaner?” Gairad crossed her arms. “I thought you just didn’t have time for clan ties to a student, but everyone says you cut them off. Even Lady Ressid. She’s been pissed with you for three years now, by the way.”

  Jainan fought the urge to flinch. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There have been diplomatic considerations.”

  “The Ambassador didn’t believe you’d see Professor Audel either,” Gairad said. “He’ll be shocked.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jainan said again.

  Miraculously, that seemed to take some wind out of her sails. “You should tell Lady Ressid that.”

  Jainan just shook his head. He felt his hands were perilously close to shaking; he gripped the edge of the crate to stop them.

  “I don’t see why you’re so attached to the Iskaners,” Gairad said. “They’re technically our enemies. Were our enemies.”

  “We’ve been unified for decades now,” Jainan said. He knew the lines. He’d had this conversation before, mainly with friends of Taam who didn’t seem to understand the difference between unify and assimilate and why that might matter to Thea. “It was peaceful.”

  “Maybe it shouldn’t have been,” Gairad said. She’d picked up her cup again and was pretending to fiddle with it, but Jainan could see her glance at him. “Maybe we should have fought them off.”

  Jainan found himself at a loss. He’d thought it was common knowledge that they’d unified when the Resolution recognized Iskat’s control of the link, the gateway to the rest of civilized space. There had been no shots fired, but Iskat’s tariffs for foreign ships were prohibitive. Iskat was a generous trading partner with its vassals, its royalty was mainly pageantry, there was a parliamentary check on the Emperor—the clans had agreed unification was the best option. Nothing was ever perfect.

  “Would that have made things better?” he said.

  “If we’d taken over the link.”

  “That’s absurd,” Jainan said sharply. The sector had once boasted two links, but the nearby one had collapsed in on itself last century, as they sometimes did, leaving only the inconveniently far-flung one past the Outer Belt, and the resulting skirmishes for control of the remaining link had formed the Empire in the first place. Thea had stayed out of the conflict. It had little military capability; Theans were latecomers to the sector and had focused mainly on agriculture. Jainan could easily imagine the outcome of Thea pitted against the rest of the Empire. They would be blown off the face of their own planet. “Who are you getting these lines from?”

  “They’re not lines,” Gairad said, sounding offended. “I’ve got friends back in Bita. We have a right to our opinions. Did you know the Ambassador tried to make me attend Unification Day? He was trying to say it’s a condition of my scholarship. Hah.”

  Jainan had his share of younger relatives, and there were always pockets of radicalism at universities, but he hadn’t heard any of them talk like this before. It gave him a nebulous feeling of unease. Unification Day was barely a month away. “Unification Day is necessary. The Resolution won’t deal with us separately now that we’ve signed up to Iskat’s treaty. We need to maintain goodwill.”

  “Goodwill,” Gairad said derisively. “Iskat runs a Tau field for interrogating noncitizens.”

  “They don’t,” Jainan said. He could see he wasn’t getting through to her; his spike of frustration surprised him. You live on Iskat, he wanted to say. You can see they’re not all monsters. “The Tau field was never used on a Thean. It’s being surrendered to the Resolution with the rest of the remnants. War dramas are not documentaries.” This was the kind of misunderstanding his marriage had been meant to solve. He had done nothing to help, had he?

  “Why wasn’t it surrendered before?” Gairad said. “They renew that treaty every twenty years. The Iskaners have had the Tau field for way longer. Have you got a clever answer for that?” When Jainan said nothing—he was disturbed to find he didn’t know—she grimaced. “Whatever. You still abandoned your planet.” She got up and paced back over to the samovar to refill her coffee. “Now you’re going to get me in trouble for this.”

  Jainan let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “That isn’t something I’m in a position to do.”

  There were long seconds of silence. They could both hear Professor Audel clattering in the inner room. Gairad seemed to remember she was getting coffee, pressed the wrong hidden button, and cursed as a spray of hot water splashed her hand. At length, she said, “Why do you look over your shoulder when you laugh?”

  It took Jainan a moment to find any sort of answer to that. “I don’t,” he said. Did he?

  “Both times,” Gairad said. She dabbed her hand dry with a corner of the curtain. “Ugh. At least I can tell the Ambassador I’ve seen you.”

  “Don’t—” Jainan started, alarmed, but at that moment Professor Audel came back in, holding up a cube-shaped abacus.

  “Found it!” she said. “Good thing I never clear out, eh? Let’s have a look.” She shut down the first abacus and put the new one next to it. “Now, Jainan, why don’t you talk Gairad through the basics of this? And then we can discuss the consultation work you’ll be doing on the project.”

  Jainan pried his fingers away from their death grip on the edge of the crate. This, at least, was something he could do. He found himself more grateful for that than he would have thought possible. “Of course,” he said. “Happy to help.”

  * * *

  When Jainan returned Kiem was in, for once, frowning over a tablet with the expression he got whenever anyone made him do extended reading. It was midmorning on a bright, cold day, and the pale dawn sky had deepened to a porcelain blue. On Thea, birds might have been chirping outside the window, but this was Iskat, so instead there was the occasional sharp tapping as the skeletal predators Kiem and Bel called doves made another attempt on the glass. They made a rattling noise with their beaks whenever they were thwarted. It was starting to become familiar.

  Kiem looked up hopefully when the door opened. “Jainan!” he said, brightening up and casting the tablet aside. “You went to the College? How was it?”

  That was the helplessly compelling thing about Kiem, Jainan had found: he was always glad to have company, whoever you were. Jainan had to remind himself that it wasn’t him specifically Kiem was happy to see; Kiem still went out of his way to avoid touching Jainan when they were anywhere near each other. Kiem just preferred company over solitude. “It went … well,” Jainan said. It had, on balance. “Yes. Well.”

  “Do you like it? Are you going to do the project?”

  “Professor Audel has asked for further help. Yes.” Jainan knew this would help Kiem’s leverage in the College, so Jainan expected him to be pleased about that and he was; Kiem was almost transparent when he was pleased about something.

  “Let me know if you need anything, okay?” Kiem grabbed his tablet again, though he’d thrown it far enough that this involved an undignified lunge on the couch. “Also! I wanted to tell you. I was researching Thea.”

  It was oddly restful, the way Kiem would fill all the awkward spaces just by talking if you let him. Jainan let it wash over him as he sat down, momentarily banishing the ever-present doubts a
bout Taam and Thea. “Mm.”

  Kiem waved a hand. “Well, all right, I got Bel to research Thea and send me the important bits. But listen, I was reading up about clans. Your system is really complicated, you know that?”

  “Whereas the Imperial family system is very straightforward,” Jainan said.

  Kiem’s face cracked into that smile again. “Right! Right. Nothing complicated here. I heard someone once assassinated an Emperor by dropping a full printout of Who’s Who on her.” The corner of Jainan’s mouth quirked with amusement. Kiem was already away again. “But listen, I read in this thing that it’s traditional to have a clan flag on the wall at home. Is that something people actually do?”

  “Most people,” Jainan said. He wasn’t sure where this was going. “It’s not a requirement.”

  “I thought maybe … there?” Kiem gestured at the blank wall opposite the desk. “I was going to message your ambassador to get one, but I wanted to check with you. This is Feria’s design, right?” He turned his tablet around to show Jainan.

  Emblazoned gold on green filled the screen, bordered with white. Jainan reached out without thinking and took the tablet out of Kiem’s grip. The flag in the image was a standard replica from a big Thean chain, not one you could just buy here. They probably weren’t even exported to Iskat: of all the Empire’s vassal systems, Thea was the least integrated and had the smallest expat community, and besides, most people would bring their clan flags with them in their luggage.

  “It’s wrong, isn’t it,” Kiem said, breaking the silence that Jainan didn’t realize had fallen. “Argh. Sorry.”

  “No, that’s not—” He was aware he probably owed Kiem some sort of reaction, but it was hard to focus on anything outside the deep, disconcerting lurch he felt, like a foundation pile had cracked and was threatening to shift. “You don’t need to buy one. I have one.” He rose and went into the bedroom.