He skimmed through the newslog extracts in chronological order. Taam and the High Command had clearly managed to keep most of Operation Kingfisher secret. Even the extracts from Thean newslogs were mainly opinion pieces with no details, but there were snippets in technical journals that might mean something to Jainan.

Disappointingly, Audel’s name wasn’t mentioned at all. Kiem supposed that made sense, if she’d only been in the military for a short time and wasn’t a senior officer, but he’d hoped for something. Maybe something that would make him and Jainan feel better about Internal Security’s instructions.

There was a sudden flurry of material from two years ago, after the accident the adjunct at the College reception had mentioned. It was hard to cover up two deaths, though the military press liaison seemed to have done their best. Kiem started skimming faster, then stopped when he got to the faces of the two people who had died in the explosion.

They were both strangers: a young private in military uniform and a Thean civilian with long hair. The Thean had light eyes and a clan neckscarf tied in a way Kiem thought indicated a man; he was smiling for some kind of graduation photo. Kiem felt something in his chest twist. He didn’t have the knack of imagining disasters from reports. He hadn’t reckoned on being hit in the face with a real person.

Kiem summoned all the scraps of clan heraldry he’d picked up from Jainan and identified the scarf pattern as representing Deralli, one of the largest Thean clans. He scanned the attached text. The victims’ photos hadn’t been published at the time; Bel had dug them out of some archive. The young Thean man was listed as a civilian consultant, but it didn’t say anything about what he’d been doing on the mining probe or where the military had employed him from. Bel had managed to find some history from his name: his family, his clan lineage, his education. Kiem felt nauseous but kept reading. It felt like a duty.

When he’d finished, he pushed the chair back and stared at the corner of the ceiling. Two people had died. Two people not even connected to Taam, with lives ahead of them and families left behind to grieve them. Someone had let these disasters happen, if not engineered them outright. Someone had hacked into Kingfisher’s systems; someone had embezzled its funds. Someone had killed Taam.

It would be neat if it was all the same person. Kiem spun up a picture in his mind: an embittered saboteur, anti-military, anti-Iskat, looming in the shadows.

The whole picture fell apart when Kiem tried to put Professor Audel in it,

because he couldn’t believe Jainan was so wrong in his judgment of her character. Maybe it was someone else. Maybe someone Kiem didn’t know at all.

The thought came slowly, from some cold and distant part of his mind: Internal Security must want that cackling saboteur as well, especially now, four days before the treaty. It would be so simple to have an enemy.