“I was thinking—if the treaty goes smoothly. If we have twenty years until the next one. I was thinking about monasteries.”

“What about them?” Kiem said, startled by the sudden change in direction.

“Is this about the time I got sent on a retreat? I haven’t done anything recently.”

“No!” Jainan said. “No. That’s not—it’s quite normal for people here to go on long meditation retreats and, and contemplation and that sort of thing, isn’t it?”

“Well, it depends on your sect,” Kiem said dubiously. “I mean, the meditation stuff is pretty general, but some sects have strong ideas about gods. Does yours?

Uh. Sorry. That was kind of a personal question.”

“No. It’s fine,” Jainan said. “My faith group is quite generalist.” He looked up ahead. The wind gusted again; Kiem had to squint to see Jainan’s face through the sudden water in his eyes. “Once the investigation is over, I could give us both some space by going on a retreat. I could do it regularly. I’d be out of your way.”

It took Kiem a couple of moments to understand what he was saying. “Right,”

Kiem managed, not quite knowing how to form a coherent sentence. He should have expected this. Jainan wanted a space where Kiem wasn’t there—that was completely understandable. “Right.”

Jainan was still watching him in that sideways way he had. Kiem raised a hand to his face, not knowing what he was doing, and changed the aimless gesture into trying to rub some warmth back into his cheeks. He was supposed to be good with people, dammit. He shouldn’t be blindsided by things like this.

“It might not work,” Jainan said. “It was—it was just a thought. We can talk about it later.” He looked like he might have said something more, but at that

moment, his eyes narrowed. He jerked his head around to look behind them.

Kiem was slower to react, still stuck on the thought of Jainan leaving, but he heard the second sound. It wasn’t coming from the ridge Jainan was looking at but from a row of trees straggling along to the side.

“There,” Jainan said, turning his head again as he triangulated. “What—”

They both saw the black shape detaching itself from the shadow of the trees at the same time. It had its head down in a gesture you never wanted to see in a bear, one that meant it was speeding up to charge. Kiem’s mind seemed to move slowly and his body was sluggish. He heard himself shout “Bear!” then desperately backed into Jainan, grabbed him, and threw them both off the promontory.

They landed a few feet down the slope in a thick layer of snow and rolled.

The snow sheared off with them as they tumbled, clutching at each other. Snow.