“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 progression 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.