Winter's Orbit

by Everina Maxwell

  The door chimed. Jainan looked up, adrenaline surging through him until he realized that the door would have just opened for Kiem without announcement. He sank back. He was not going to receive company on Kiem’s behalf, not now.

  The chime sounded again. It cut off halfway through, with a harsh beep, and the door opened of its own accord. An arm slammed against it as it drew fully aside and someone slapped a manual lock on the frame to keep it open.

  Jainan was only halfway to his feet by the time the visitors entered. There were five of them: a corporal strode into the middle of the room, and his four soldiers fanned out into a loose semicircle. Their incapacitator guns were out. They weren’t pointed, but everyone’s attention was on Jainan.

  Jainan stopped his instinctive scramble to stand and rose the rest of the way slowly. He was in a place beyond emotion. “Ah. Good evening.”

  “Count Jainan.” The corporal didn’t even incline his head. “I would be obliged if you refrained from sudden movements.”

  “To what do I owe this visit?”

  “You are under arrest for the murder of Prince Taam,” the corporal said, “and the attempted murder of Prince Kiem.”

  Jainan breathed in slowly. Everything was suddenly very simple: the smallest of movements, like the wavering mouth of the capper nearest him, had a sharp, almost otherworldly clarity. A direct hit on the skull would be fatal; anywhere else would knock him out. “I see,” he said. “If this is legitimate, then you will not mind if I inform my partner.”

  He slammed his hand down toward his wristband to trigger an emergency command. Before he could finish the sequence, the mouth of the capper blazed with a shimmer of force. It hit Jainan’s chest; he fell back, his conscious thoughts ripping like wet tissue. He had failed in so many ways. It was almost a relief to black out.

  * * *

  The line between consciousness and sleep was very thin, and Jainan was still unsure he’d crossed it when he opened his eyes. His vision was hazy. He felt some sort of restraints around his wrists and padding under his back. He was lying down.

  What was terrifying was that the dizziness didn’t clear any further as he woke. The slightest movement of his head left him drained and sick. He forced himself to try and look around.

  At first he thought he was back on one of his student manufacturing placements. The space felt enormous, like a warehouse, though most of it was dark. The gravity was still weak. The only illumination came from a single, jury-rigged floodlight that formed a pool of brightness around a figure perched on the side of a crate, working from a wrist-screen.

  Aren.

  “Oh hell, already?” Aren said. He idly wiped away the screen. “I’m still waiting for the technician. You’ve got the constitution of a fucking elephant, anyone ever tell you that?”

  Jainan was battling his nausea too hard to answer immediately. The bed he was lying on felt like a hospital bed, with removable guardrails on each side and clips at the foot to hold machinery. He couldn’t tell if it was normal to feel this way; he had never been on the wrong end of an incapacitator gun before. He took a deep breath against the rising dizziness and concentrated hard. “We didn’t even suspect you,” he said. “Why move now?”

  Aren pulled his legs up and sat cross-legged on the crate, somehow balancing on the very edge. “Okay, well, here’s the thing,” he said. “When you send a meeting request to the Emperor’s aides and mention the fucking army, the first thing they do is get in touch with the supreme commander to find out what’s going on. And the first thing the supreme commander does is come down on me like a ton of fucking bricks for not maintaining a minimum level of operational secrecy around Kingfisher. So, thanks for that! Really made my day.”

  Jainan turned around the phrase operational secrecy in his head, where it felt jagged and painful. Kingfisher—not just Taam, but his whole operation—had something to hide, and the supreme commander knew about it. “General Fenrik knew what Taam was doing.”

  “Yes, well done, congratulations on catching up with the rest of us. All those years with Taam really did fry your brain, didn’t they? Mind you, I always felt my IQ dropping when I sat down to dinner with him—a boor in the grand tradition of all royal boors.” Aren moved again, dangling his legs off the crate. “No wonder Fenrik was so fond of him. Like to like.”

  Jainan tried to sit up. That was when he realized the cuffs and the guardrails were totally unnecessary; he could barely manage to make his muscles acknowledge him, let alone obey him. There were odd-shaped spikes around the bed, which Jainan would guess projected some sort of field, but they didn’t seem to be turned on. He let himself lie back, slowly cataloging his bruises. “Who killed him?”

  Aren raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t it you?”

  Jainan stayed silent. He finally identified a pinching sensation in his arm as an intravenous patch, which presumably had something to do with the dizziness. If he could roll onto the floor he might yank it out, but with his hands tied, that was a plan with a short shelf life.

  Aren broke the silence by laughing abruptly. “No. Our esteemed General Fenrik still doesn’t know who killed Taam. He gave me the authority to run a confidential investigation, isn’t that ironic? I’ve given him some perfect suspects. It doesn’t look like he’s going to buy Audel, though, and neither will Internal Security, so you’ll have to do instead.”

  Jainan tasted copper in his mouth. “Why?”

  “Why you? Well, you’ve reached the status of royal fucking pain.” That wasn’t what Jainan had meant, but he didn’t interrupt. Aren’s heels beat against the crate with a jagged, suppressed energy. “I didn’t even realize how much you’d pulled out of those files we released to the College. Taam redacted the shit out of them before he let them go, but apparently not well enough. That got Internal Security sniffing around and Internal Security is hard for even General Fenrik to squash. Then just when I had the perfect plan for you to take the fall for all of it, you got in the fucking flybug and ended up in the crash with Prince Kiem. It’s like you’re out to get me. I don’t get how you can be such a miserable bundle of wet atmosphere and still get in my way all the time. Holy fuck, it feels good to stop acting,” Aren added. “I always envied that in Taam, you know. He could just say what he thought to your face. I have to bite my tongue and smile because I’m not an Imperial bloody Prince and the rules aren’t the same.”

  Aren tapped his heels against the crate he was sitting on, confident and assured, the collar of his dress uniform loosened for comfort. There was something charismatic about him, Jainan thought distantly; that must be how he’d reached his current rank. Jainan hadn’t realized how much he was holding back before. Aren in full flow could have talked Kiem to a standstill.

  Jainan tried to sort through what he’d said. It sounded like an admission of guilt, but there was something Jainan was missing; some fundamental part of the equation. Aren seemed startlingly sure he could still blame Jainan for Taam’s death. Jainan squeezed his eyes shut to try and deal with the headache. “What are you hiding in the refinery?” He suddenly jerked his head around, trying to see farther in the dark. “I suppose that’s here, isn’t it? We’re in the refinery.”

  “Hah!” Aren said. “So you got that far. What gave that away? I caught your Sefalan comms specialist sniffing around one of our proxies. Was it her?”

  Jainan nearly struggled into sitting up through pure adrenaline. “Have you done something to Bel?”

  “She’s fine,” Aren said, smiling faintly. “Just making sure nobody interferes.”

  Jainan was holding on to his self-control with his fingernails. “Interferes in what?”

  Aren checked his wristband. “Hey, my technician’s here,” he said. Something beeped in the distance, swallowed by the dark. The echo made Jainan double his mental estimate of the size of the space. Aren gestured a command sign and a door clanked open in a distant wall. Light started to glow overhead with the whine of industrial floodlights. “Suppose you might as
well see.”

  White light flooded the space. Jainan squinted with suddenly painful eyes. The warehouse could have fit half of Carissi Station’s facilities. It was full, despite its vast size. At first Jainan didn’t recognize the shapes—metal and crystal and hydraulics—but once he understood one, the others fell into place like terrible dominoes, one after the other.

  Jainan stared around Kingfisher’s stockpile, his nausea forgotten. His body felt like a drone he could no longer control. He heard himself say, “You want a war.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The staterooms next to the Observation Hall were a wasteland of half-laid white carpet and cleaning supplies in the dim night-cycle lighting. They weren’t open to the public until the Unification ceremonies in four days’ time, which was why Kiem had ended up there. He couldn’t face anyone right now. He sat on a stack of carpet rolls in the dry, musty station air and wished for the clean cold of an Iskat winter night.

  Kiem spun through his wristband, his fingers clumsy and slow. He’d been sitting here for too long, and he still hadn’t worked out what to do next. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. He should go back to the residential modules.

  He didn’t. He spun compulsively between a short list of names projected from his wristband: Bel, Jainan’s sister Ressid, the Thean Ambassador. Bel was in the shuttleport and not answering. It wasn’t even fair to try and get hold of her when she was worried herself, but Kiem had been calling her anyway because he was desperate. He hadn’t yet brought himself to try the Theans. What could he even say? We’ve failed Jainan in every way, but I can’t tell you anything more than that?

  He dropped his wristband and let it jar against his leg while it was still scrolling. The display broke up and disappeared. The door of the Observation Hall yawned opposite, waiting to be decorated for the ceremonies, and starlight played across the floor.

  His wristband lit up again. Kiem glanced briefly at the caller—not Bel or Jainan—and didn’t activate it. This was the first time in his life he’d ignored this many calls in a row.

  “Is everything all right there, sir?”

  Kiem looked up as a security guard loomed out of the darkness with a flashlight, carefully picking his way through the decorating supplies. “Everything’s—fine. Just getting some air.”

  “In the dark, sir?” The security guard looked like a palace transplant, brought up for the ceremonies. He squinted at Kiem’s face. “Oh—Your Highness. Apologies. I’ll leave you to it.”

  A laugh rose up in Kiem’s throat that felt like he was choking. He should make an excuse. He didn’t.

  “Your band, sir,” the guard added helpfully as he moved off again.

  It wasn’t as if Kiem couldn’t see it flashing again, shockingly bright against the night-cycle glow. He glanced down, ready to ignore it again—but it wasn’t a call, it was a message. From Bel.

  He turned away, the security guard already forgotten, and jabbed again to call her. No reply. He groaned and flipped to the message.

  Can’t talk, it said, but are you ignoring the Emperor or something? Her Private Office called me four times.

  “Urgh, that’s not important! Answer your calls!” Kiem said to the screen. But he had a sudden vision of Bel’s face if she’d heard that, and he glanced at the message again, coming to his senses. The Emperor?

  When he looked properly at the call list, half of them were from someone in the Emperor’s Private Office. The last time those people had called him, he’d been summoned to an Imperial receiving room and told he was getting married. Nothing was a good enough excuse for ignoring the Emperor.

  He called them back. An aide’s face appeared on the display almost immediately. It was the middle of the night in Arlusk, but the office behind them was oddly busy. “Your Highness,” said the very proper aide in a voice that was pointedly not impatient. “We have been trying to reach you. The Emperor would like to see you. Please proceed to the remote meeting facilities in your station’s secured area.”

  “What? Why?” Kiem said. The aide’s head tilted, deflecting the question. If they were allowed to give out that information, they would have given it already. Kiem amended the question. “When?”

  “She expected to see you some time ago,” the aide said. Even now that caused a minor echo of panic in Kiem’s head. “Now would be a good time.”

  Four and a half minutes later, Kiem was ushered into the station’s armored core. Another guard opened a heavily shielded door to a small suite of comms rooms. Kiem lifted his hand to register his bios at the thinner door behind it, but the door opened before he’d even touched the pad. He pulled back reflexively, screwed up so tense everything came as a shock.

  The man who came through was tall and bony with white hair severely clipped in a military cut. The only signs of his rank were the six gold circles of the supreme commander on the breast of his uniform. Kiem stepped back to make room. He hadn’t realized Fenrik was on the station; it must have something to do with Kingfisher. His mother had brought him up to be polite to officers, so he gave a belated nod. “General.”

  General Fenrik turned his head stiffly as he passed. Like the Emperor, he had passed his century mark a while ago. It took him only a split second to place Kiem, and the expression on his face suggested the information he was pulling up on him was not favorable. “Oh hellfire, it’s you this is all about?” he said. “Tegnar’s boy. I’d forgotten you.”

  “Um,” Kiem said. “Sorry, I’m not up to speed here.”

  General Fenrik snorted. “Go in.” He turned away, his back military-straight. As he turned, Kiem caught sight of his wooden Imperial insignia, and was suddenly reminded of the same insignia on Aren’s uniform. Taam had had a circle of young officer friends, part of the backbone of the army. They had known Jainan. Why had nobody reported anything? What was wrong with the army this man ran?

  “General,” Kiem said.

  General Fenrik stopped and looked back, impatient and forbidding. “What?”

  Kiem stared at him. There was nothing he could say, he realized, unless he was planning to tell Fenrik everything. “No,” he said. “Never mind.” In the face of Fenrik’s renewed frown, he turned and pressed his hand to the entrance panel to start his bios checks.

  His eyes took a moment to adjust to the holos covering the comms room. The Emperor had apparently projected her entire inner study. Kiem had never seen her in these surroundings; whenever she talked to him, it was a stiff, formal occasion in her receiving rooms where he sat on an uncomfortable gilded chair to be grilled on his latest unsanctioned interview. But this room was different; this was the Emperor’s working room. It was severely plain, no gold at all, with unadorned walls that probably disguised some serious soundproofing back on Iskat. As Kiem crossed the threshold, his wristband went dark. A holo table overlapped awkwardly with the real one on the station, covered with neat squares of projected files. The chairs pulled up to the table weren’t even vidchairs, so the whole room must be bristling with sensors. Three projections sat around the table: the Emperor, an aide, and Chief Agent Rakal.

  “There you are, Kiem,” the Emperor said, cutting across something Rakal was saying. Rakal fell silent immediately. “Where have you been? Sit down.”

  Kiem bowed, muttered an apology, and pulled out a chair that he hoped was real. That wasn’t as bad as it could have been: the Emperor had once kept him standing outside for three hours after he’d been late to an appointment. But it wasn’t reassuring either. He sat on the edge of his seat, tense, and looked between them for clues. “May I ask why I was summoned, Your Majesty?”

  “I summoned you a good while ago,” the Emperor said, her tone crisp. “General Fenrik tells me the army has apprehended your Thean partner on suspicion of doing away with Taam.”

  Kiem looked at her blankly. The words lined up, but they didn’t make any sense. “I don’t understand.”

  “And attempting to do away with you, apparently.” The Emperor was always brusque; now ther
e was a note of arch impatience. “Did you notice?”

  “Your Majesty,” Rakal murmured, in what sounded like a protest.

  “Do—what? No! Nothing like that happened! Where the hell has this come from?” Shock poured over Kiem in waves. “You’ve arrested Jainan?”

  “The armed forces have arrested him,” the Emperor said. “How many times do you need it repeated? Compose yourself,” she added sharply, as Kiem half rose from his chair.

  Kiem dropped back into his seat, realizing he didn’t have the information he needed. “Where have you taken Jainan?”

  Rakal gave a discreet cough. The table was almost too high for them; they rested their hands on the edge of it as they leaned forward. “We have not taken him anywhere, Your Highness,” they said. “The military is not the civil authority.”

  Everything in Kiem’s head was protesting, but this rang a faint bell. “That’s why General Fenrik was here?” he said. “The military has got him?” He appealed directly to the Emperor. “Ma’am, you’re still the Emperor. You can order him to let Jainan go.”

  It was Rakal who answered again. “Do you recall Count Jainan’s behavior around the time of your flyer crash? I believe it was only a few days ago.”

  It took Kiem a moment to form words out of his shocked and furious bafflement. “Jainan was in the flybug!”

  Neither the Emperor nor Rakal responded. Kiem had the feeling he wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t know. There was a moment’s silence, and in it Rakal looked at the Emperor. “You see, ma’am,” they murmured. “If Count Jainan felt that much animosity toward him, Prince Kiem should have noticed something.”

  “So noted,” the Emperor said, “but not conclusive. I need something for the Resolution, even aside from these wretched remnants.”