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?”