Winter's Orbit

by Everina Maxwell

  “Mm,” Jainan said, gripping his other arm.

  “Oh shit, you’re freezing,” Kiem said, turning to him. He made to lift his arm as if to put it around Jainan’s shoulders, then seemed to think better of it. “I’m freezing, come to think of it. I’m standing here like an idiot, sorry. There are clothes in the flybug. Let’s kit up, then we can think about moving.”

  Clothes in the flybug. Of course there were. Their outdoor coats were packed in their luggage, for a start—how had Jainan not remembered that? He must be mildly concussed. Jainan moved mechanically back to the flybug, feeling his limbs loosen as the stim tab released into his blood, and watched Kiem wrench the hold open. Taam would have been in a towering rage by now. Kiem … wasn’t. Yet.

  “Hey! Jainan!” Kiem waved a bundle of fur above his head. “Found your coat!”

  The yet echoed oddly in his mind. Jainan put it aside and went over, holding out his hands.

  Kiem tossed the coat over. Jainan noticed him grimace after, because apparently even three stim tabs didn’t cover all his muscle pain. For some reason Kiem had pulled all the luggage out of the flybug and onto the ground, and now he half climbed into the hold through the bent hatch, so far that his feet dangled in midair. “Nearly got it,” he said, his voice slightly muffled. “Just a—ah, here we are.” There was a scraping noise, and Kiem drew back out of the hatch with a piece of hold casing in his hand.

  Jainan leaned over to peer in, his breaths coming short in the cold. “Why is there a hidden compartment in your flybug?” he said. It was filled with fluorescent fabric packs.

  “Huh?” Kiem gave him a puzzled look. “This is just the—wait. I forgot you didn’t grow up here.” He reached in again and pulled out a square orange pack. “You missed the survival modules back in prime five. I guess Thean schools don’t do them? All flycraft have this stuff built in by law.” He pulled a tab at the corner of the pack and orange fabric cascaded out, morphing into a padded, waterproof overjacket. He dropped it on top of the scattered luggage and dived in for the other packs. “Tent,” he called, throwing out another, larger pack. “Food—it’s going to taste like industrial waste, but it’s that or pine needles. Hey, a backpack! Only one, though.” He pulled himself half out and looked around. “Sorry, this is going to take a little while. Pick out the warmest jacket. Uh … you should probably change first.”

  “Change clothes?” Jainan said. It was below freezing, and though the breeze was slight, it was turning the cold from a blunt weapon into a lethal one. “But—” He clamped his mouth shut on the last word. Iskaners from this region were experts on winter weather. Kiem didn’t need questioning.

  “Your inner layer’s soaked from melting snow,” Kiem said. “That’s why you’re still shivering. We’ve got dry clothes, might as well use them.”

  “Oh.” Jainan looked down at his coat and realized that his clammy clothes were making the relentless cold even worse. He took a breath, pulled off his coat, and made himself strip off his shirt.

  Kiem turned his back, crouching down to inspect the pile of equipment. Jainan wondered if that was politeness or just a disinclination to look at his body.

  Jainan made short work of it, despite the trembling and fingers that fumbled catches. He had to double-layer some thin fabric; he had packed for short spells outside, not the winter night that was on its way. A few meters away, Kiem’s polite detachment had turned into a flurry of activity as he checked fabric for holes and tested straps. Jainan finished dressing and stepped away so as not to distract him.

  The breeze was numbing Jainan’s cheeks. He had found his outdoor gloves in his luggage; they made his hands too bulky for his pockets, so he clamped them under his arms as he crouched down to examine the remains of the engine.

  Several minutes later, Kiem popped his head over the hull. “I think we’re good,” he said. “This stuff hasn’t been checked in a while, but it looks okay. We’re still in the signal dead zone, so I suppose the emergency beacon’s useless. The dashboard map’s not still working, is it?”

  Jainan turned from the wreckage and opened his hand to show the glowing hemisphere of the flybug’s map resting in his palm. “I was just thinking that,” he said. “It has some charge, though no signal. I don’t know where we are.”

  “Untracked wilderness,” Kiem said, incongruously cheerful. “Kind of illegally, too, since you’re not supposed to land in landscape reservations. Some hikers would kill to be us.” He inspected the miniature map in Jainan’s hand more closely and tried a command sign, but its sensors had died. He poked it instead. “I didn’t know they disconnected.”

  “It was brute force,” Jainan said, gesturing at the bits of wreckage he’d used as makeshift tools. “I salvaged the pyro from the engine and melted the connectors. It doesn’t project anymore.”

  “Neat job,” Kiem said. He examined the tiny crystal screen. “Okay, I think I have a plan.” He pointed to a line across the map that Jainan had to look closely to see. “That has to be the rail line. It cuts east-west, so if we’re in the general area I think we are and we head south, we should hit it within two or three days. They strip out the tacime alongside it so passengers can have signal. Our wristbands should pick up the moment we get in range. Then we call for help.”

  Two or three days. They had ten days before Unification Day. The ceremonies were taking place on Carissi Station, a space habitat in orbit around Thea, and it would take seventy-two hours on a shuttle to get there from Iskat. They could still make it in time. Jainan didn’t want to think about the consequences if neither of the treaty representatives turned up to the ceremonies. “Yes,” he said. Kiem looked at him. After a moment, Jainan said, “Was there something else?”

  “Uh.” Kiem cleared his throat. “It’s just. I’m not sure if that meant ‘Yes, that sounds good,’ or ‘Yes, I suppose we could ignore the glaring holes in that plan.’”

  Despite the coat and overjacket, Jainan felt suddenly vulnerable. “Pardon?”

  Kiem seemed to find the toggles of his wrist cuffs very interesting. “You say yes like that a lot,” he said, not looking at him. “I. Uh. I think I might be missing some cues.”

  He thinks I’m lying to him, was Jainan’s first, panicked thought, but he clamped down on it. Kiem said what he meant, he knew that. But what he meant was bad enough.

  “Sorry,” Kiem added. “I’m kind of slow about some stuff.”

  Jainan couldn’t even make himself say anything to contradict that, though it wasn’t true: Kiem being too astute was how they had ended up here. “I think—” It was unexpectedly hard to continue. Jainan took a deep breath and said, “Should we really move?”

  Some part of him was still waiting for Kiem to blow up at him. But Kiem scratched the back of his head. “Normally I’d say no, but we’re in the signal dead zone. And if it wasn’t an accident … well, we’re sitting ducks, here.”

  Jainan had known Kiem would take the challenge calmly. He knew that, and his irritating subconscious had still not let him believe it. What was wrong with him? He had an odd moment where he felt he could see that part of him, dispassionately, like some kind of cowering animal behind glass. He hated it.

  Kiem looked at him expectantly. Jainan realized he was looking for an opinion—Jainan’s opinion. “Then let’s move,” he said. It was easier to sound decisive than he thought it would be. “No point waiting to run out of food. The sooner the better.”

  “Right!” Kiem said, shouldering the backpack before Jainan had a chance to question why he was the one carrying it. “We can’t die, anyway, we have to be at the press conference that kicks off the whole Unification Day circus. If we froze out here the Emperor would dig up our bodies in two big icicles and prop them up on the podiums.” Jainan choked. Kiem was unrepentantly cheerful. “Let’s get down to the valley floor. I’ll go first. Might be easier to follow my tracks when it’s deep.”

  Kiem sat on the edge of the ledge they’d crashed on and looked down at the tumbled prog
ression of boulders and slopes that formed a sort of natural path. “Doesn’t look too bad.” He slithered down to the next ledge, landed in the crust of snow up to his knees, and made a face. “I take that back.” He kicked his way through the drift.

  Jainan followed exactly where he’d gone. Kiem waded up front through the drifts, kicking lumps of snow aside to clear a route for Jainan as he slid down onto each ledge. “You know what they don’t put in that bloody survival kit?” he called behind him. “Snowshoes. You okay?”

  “Yes,” Jainan said. “You’re making it easy.”

  Kiem threw a grin over his shoulder. “I always wanted to drive a snowplow when I was a kid,” he said. “Careful, it gets a bit steeper from here.”

  The breeze had dropped completely. When Jainan paused to look behind him, the sky was a vast blue dome, clear and pristine, like some great hill reaching far above the jagged peaks. Jainan’s breath caught in his throat. He knew Iskat was beautiful on an intellectual level: there was a reason the first colony ship of Iskaners had established the capital here and protected it with national parks, but this was the first time he’d really understood why.

  The next ledges were acutely sloped and more difficult. They stopped talking. Kiem had the hiker’s knack of finding the easiest way down; he skirted drifts and found unexpected flat rocks where there shouldn’t be any, so Jainan could stop thinking and concentrate instead on where he put his feet. Kiem’s occasional clumsiness indoors translated into something much more graceful out here; his extra bursts of energy just helped him kick his way through the snow and land on a hidden foothold underneath. Jainan found himself watching him more than he really had to.

  Kiem looked around to check on him as Jainan slid down to land on the next patch of rock. Jainan felt a sudden intense gratitude for Kiem’s existence: for his easygoing manner, for his ability to take everything in his stride, for how he seemed to think Jainan’s opinion was important.

  This was hardly new, though: Jainan knew that Kiem was too charming for his own good. As Kiem turned back around to resume the trek, Jainan realized with dismay that it was having more of an effect on him than he’d thought. Kiem obviously couldn’t switch the charm off, because he had inadvertently pointed it at Jainan multiple times. Jainan was getting attached to someone who had only ever wanted the appearance of a marriage. Kiem had outright told him so the first time they’d met.

  Jainan gritted his teeth and slithered down the next drop. He clearly needed to watch his behavior, or he was going to end up being needy and embarrassing both of them. He had to keep a tighter hold on his emotions. They were already on a knife-edge with the treaty. There was no room for error.

  Up ahead, Kiem stopped and looked down at his feet. Jainan put aside his churning thoughts and increased his pace, slipping and sliding, until he caught up. He stood beside Kiem, slightly breathless in the cold, and looked at the sheer drop in front of them. “Oh.”

  “This one might be a bit tricky,” Kiem said.

  They had come down a long way already, but they were still about fifty meters above the valley floor, where the snow was patchy amid pines and clumps of stranger Iskat trees. There was possibly a way down, if you squinted. It would require climbing.

  “We can make it,” Kiem said. He pulled off the backpack and, before Jainan realized what he was doing, dropped it over the edge. It fell, rolling against the rock face for what seemed like a disturbingly long time until it hit the ground far below, where it bounced.

  “We’ll have to, now,” Jainan said. The backpack rolled to a halt. “I hope you wrapped up the family glassware in that.”

  “Like a baby,” Kiem assured him. He was moving with a nervous energy that Jainan suspected was the result of the three stim tabs. “Ready?” Kiem pulled his heavy-duty gloves off and stuck them in his pockets, leaving himself with only the thin, flexible inner ones. Jainan did the same.

  Kiem went first, by unspoken agreement, so Jainan could see what route to take. He spread himself like a spider over the rock face, clumsy in his boots but somehow balancing. Jainan crawled to the edge to watch, but Kiem was making such good progress that Jainan started to relax. Then Kiem reached a part near the base of the cliff—one that looked the same as all the other parts to Jainan’s unpracticed eye—and got stuck for several agonizing minutes.

  “Above your head to the right,” Jainan called, when he couldn’t stay quiet any longer. Kiem looked up, saw the ridge, and made a grab for it. It was just enough to get him onto the next shaky foothold. Then he went for one to the side of that—not even a ledge, more of a vertical groove—and his foot slipped.

  Jainan gripped the ground in front of him convulsively as Kiem slithered down the remaining distance. The base of the wall didn’t end cleanly but broke off into a shallower slope of fractured rock and tumbled boulders, and Kiem hit them hard. He fell off one and landed on the one next to it, catching himself with his hands. After a moment, though, he pushed himself up and held his thumbs up. Jainan sat back on his heels weakly and raised his hand in response.

  “Not too bad!” Kiem shouted. “Keep to the left-hand side and don’t worry about the last bit!”

  He was right, worrying wouldn’t help. Jainan was at least very good at doing what had to be done. He let himself down carefully over the side and felt for the first foothold.

  It was not easy. Jainan had never climbed seriously and wasn’t accustomed to testing footholds to see if they would hold his weight. His back and shoulder twinged in a way that told him he was starting to build up stim debt. The cold air tasted like metal in his mouth as he took his foot off one hold and slid his boot across the rock face, feeling for another foothold he couldn’t see. He had never been so grateful that he had kept up his quarterstaff training. Even as it was, his arms were shaking by the time he reached the part that had defeated Kiem.

  He looked down. If Kiem couldn’t make it, Jainan doubted that he could. The ground below offered no good landing place; Kiem had been lucky not to twist an ankle. And in any case, Kiem himself was standing in the way. Jainan clung tighter to the ridge through his gloves and tried to make himself think.

  “Jump!” Kiem called. He was holding his arms up. “Just let go!”

  “I…” Jainan said. The word got lost in the cracks of the rock in front of him. “What?”

  “I’ll catch you!” Kiem’s voice was going hoarse from shouting up advice. “It’ll be fine!”

  It was not going to be fine. Jainan made himself pry his fingers off the handholds anyway. He let go.

  He didn’t fall, just as Kiem hadn’t fallen—it was more of a slide, painfully scraping across the rock face and gathering speed. He only had time for a moment’s panic before he crashed down on top of Kiem. Kiem staggered, but his arms encircled Jainan, and his footing on the boulders held. Jainan had enough of his wits about him to jam his elbow into Kiem’s back so he stayed balanced over Kiem’s shoulder and they didn’t both fall.

  There was nowhere immediate for Jainan to get down. It was not easy for a grown man to carry another one; Kiem took a couple of wobbly steps across the boulders while Jainan held on and tried not to move. His face was buried in Kiem’s shoulder. Kiem’s hair pressed against his forehead, the smell and feel of it distracting in a way they really shouldn’t be. Kiem was holding him close—for balance, for balance—and Jainan could feel the press of his body even through all their layers.

  Kiem came to a halt on flat ground as the boulders petered out. It took Jainan a moment to react, then he realized Kiem was trying to put him down and he was still holding on. He rolled off Kiem’s shoulder and half fell, landing on his feet. Kiem stepped back very quickly.

  Jainan caught his breath. Kiem looked more shaken from the climb than Jainan had realized, and his hand appeared to be trembling as he lowered his arm. Was that the effect of the stim tabs Kiem had taken, or had Jainan’s thoughts shown on his face?

  Kiem rubbed his neck where Jainan’s hand had rested. Jainan g
athered his defenses and swallowed the whole incident down, burying it where it wouldn’t affect either of them. “I’m not sure climbing is a sport I’m going to take up any time soon,” Jainan said lightly. “It’s getting dark. How much farther do we go today?”

  “Right,” Kiem said, shaking his head a little and coming back to the logistics. The mountains had long twilights even by the standards of Iskat’s long evenings, but now the deep blue above their heads was turning into dusk, and clouds were creeping up from the farthest peaks. “We should camp. Maybe not here though—the snow’s pretty deep.” As he turned to scan the shadowed valley, his eyes skated past Jainan awkwardly. “We could probably reach that overhang in half an hour.” He shouldered the backpack again. Jainan fell in beside him, not too close.

  The boulders at the base of the mountain gave way to rock and earth in patches visible under the thin layer of snow. This part of the small valley was more sheltered than the higher reaches, though the snow lay in smothering drifts on the other side. They didn’t talk.

  The snow was still deep enough to crunch beneath their feet. Jainan’s breath crystallized in front of him in white clouds in the still air, which hung and then dissipated. He found himself sinking into a rhythm of walking, eventually warming up enough that he unfastened his coat and let it flap open. Every now and then, a breath of wind chilled his face.

  The stillness was the stillness of a shrine. None of the palace politics seemed important: even Internal Security and the Resolution felt toothless out here. Apart from the brush of their footsteps and their laboring breath, absolute silence reigned. The cold against Jainan’s face was clean and purifying; he felt detached, but in a strange way, as if he could see his tiny, insignificant form moving at the center of the huge spaces around them. Something in the space and silence was trickling into his bones, gradually filling them up with an itchiness like shoots of grass unfolding. It came with an aching feeling, and for some reason, the ache felt like loss.