The trooper was doing something to a machine beside him. Jainan felt a coolness spreading from the patch in his arm and started to breathe faster as he realized it was a sedative. The woman picked up something and turned around; Jainan took a second to recognize it as a medical helmet. It was more complex than the ones he’d seen in hospitals.

He was closer to losing cognitive thought than he’d realized—the new sedative had started to work terrifyingly fast—but he finally put the pieces together with the odd spikes around the bed. “This is the Tau field.” No wonder Aren thought he could get Jainan to take the blame. If he had a genuine trained interrogator, a Tau field could make Jainan believe anything. He would implicate himself.

“Give the man a medal,” Aren said to the world at large, “he’s finally caught up.” Jainan tried to roll off the bed as the woman approached him with the helmet, but the new sedative on top of the incapacitator shot was too much. The guardrail jammed into his shoulder. At least they haven’t taken Kiem, he told himself. The last thing he heard was Aren in the distance, clear as a bell, say,

“Now, if you’ll both excuse me. I have to go and drink champagne with the fucking diplomats.”

The noise was like standing underneath a shuttle burner as it ignited. Jainan floated paralyzed in the sea of hammering sound, convinced every scrap of his consciousness was unravelling piece by piece. He tried to scream. He couldn’t tell if he’d succeeded or not, so he tried again. His throat was raw before he stopped. He shut his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was upright and standing in front of the palace.

The sky overhead was the bright, clear blue of summer. Of course it was summer, he thought uneasily, why would it be anything else? He rubbed his shoulder for warmth; a nervous tic he’d developed over his first Iskat winter.

A flyer was pulling into the driveway. Jainan’s head twitched up for the dozenth time. This time he was rewarded, because when it stopped in front of the palace, the first figure that emerged was Taam’s aide, who held the door and saluted as Taam disembarked.

Jainan pulled a smile onto his face as he went over and found to his relief it was genuine. They had argued before Taam left—Jainan could not seem to stop causing arguments—but Taam gave a characteristic half smile and beckoned him to hurry. When Jainan reached him, Taam slung an arm around him and clapped him on the back, then pushed him away, holding him at arm’s length. “All right, you don’t have to be all over me.”