It wasn’t as if Kiem couldn’t see it flashing again, shockingly bright against the night-cycle glow. He glanced down, ready to ignore it again—but it wasn’t a call, it was a message. From Bel.

He turned away, the security guard already forgotten, and jabbed again to call her. No reply. He groaned and flipped to the message.

Can’t talk, it said, but are you ignoring the Emperor or something? Her Private Office called me four times.

“Urgh, that’s not important! Answer your calls!” Kiem said to the screen. But he had a sudden vision of Bel’s face if she’d heard that, and he glanced at the message again, coming to his senses. The Emperor?

When he looked properly at the call list, half of them were from someone in the Emperor’s Private Office. The last time those people had called him, he’d been summoned to an Imperial receiving room and told he was getting married.

Nothing was a good enough excuse for ignoring the Emperor.

He called them back. An aide’s face appeared on the display almost immediately. It was the middle of the night in Arlusk, but the office behind them was oddly busy. “Your Highness,” said the very proper aide in a voice that was pointedly not impatient. “We have been trying to reach you. The Emperor would like to see you. Please proceed to the remote meeting facilities in your station’s secured area.”

“What? Why?” Kiem said. The aide’s head tilted, deflecting the question. If they were allowed to give out that information, they would have given it already.

Kiem amended the question. “When?”

“She expected to see you some time ago,” the aide said. Even now that caused a minor echo of panic in Kiem’s head. “Now would be a good time.”

Four and a half minutes later, Kiem was ushered into the station’s armored core. Another guard opened a heavily shielded door to a small suite of comms rooms. Kiem lifted his hand to register his bios at the thinner door behind it, but the door opened before he’d even touched the pad. He pulled back reflexively, screwed up so tense everything came as a shock.

The man who came through was tall and bony with white hair severely clipped in a military cut. The only signs of his rank were the six gold circles of the supreme commander on the breast of his uniform. Kiem stepped back to make room. He hadn’t realized Fenrik was on the station; it must have

something to do with Kingfisher. His mother had brought him up to be polite to officers, so he gave a belated nod. “General.”