They drifted past the crag at the slowest possible speed. Jainan leaned back and said, “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

“’Course,” Kiem said, distracted and fiddling with the map on the dash, which he should probably stop ignoring.

“Professor Audel’s project,” Jainan said. “How would you feel if I withdrew?”

Kiem stopped looking at the map and also stopped looking where he was going. “Withdrew from the project?” he said. The steering mesh vibrated a warning, and he had to yank the flybug up to avoid hitting a protruding rock.

“But … aren’t you kind of vital by now?” He pulled them up to drift at a slightly safer height. “If it’s this thing with Professor Audel, she basically gave us proof she wasn’t involved. Can’t you just do the engineering side and stay away from

the political and military bits?”

He had said the wrong thing. Jainan’s shoulders hunched. “I have made this whole situation worse by working on it,” Jainan said. His speech patterns had turned formal again, which was a bad sign. “It was a mistake for me to agree to it in the first place. Internal Security will see it as suspicious. I should not have taken part in something so political.”

“I thought you enjoyed it,” Kiem said. “Before the whole embezzlement thing, I mean.” He cast his mind back to the times he’d seen Jainan working on his diagrams—Jainan had been relaxed, engaged, willing to explain parts of it with very little prompting. He knew he wasn’t good at reading Jainan, but surely he couldn’t have gotten things that wrong.

“I have some alternatives,” Jainan said, “if you would be willing to consider them.”

Kiem didn’t see what he had to do with it. “Go ahead.”

“I know you need to keep your influence in the Imperial College,” Jainan said. “There are other ways I could be useful to you. The engineering department is also conducting vacuum tests I could consult on, which would gain you capital with higher-ranking academics. I could find out if the mathematics department has any relevant projects. I know this isn’t what you hoped for from it, but—

please.”

Kiem had taken the flybug off its most sensitive setting some time ago, so when the shock made both his hands clench in the steering they didn’t veer off course. If he hadn’t switched it back they probably would have crashed.

He realized the next instant and relaxed his grip again, but it was a struggle.

He felt as though someone had just taken a scene he was looking at and forcibly pulled it around to a new angle. “What I hoped for?” he said. “This is your project!” He hadn’t made Jainan take it on, had he? He tried frantically to remember the reception where Jainan had agreed to do it. Had he said something?

“Yes,” Jainan said uncertainly. “But these are your goals.”