“You’re just looking to undermine me, aren’t you?” Taam said. “You’re always in my bloody accounts, you eavesdrop on my conversations—I think you’re trying to sabotage my operation.”

“What?” Jainan said. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t remember what, not with the pressure on his neck.

“Admit it!” Taam said. He gave Jainan a shake, not much, but enough to punctuate the demand. “You’ll do anything you can to get at me! You’re skimming money from my operation!”

Jainan felt a peculiar rush of anger. You never needed him, a voice in his head said. You hate him. You could get rid of him so easily.

A wave of abhorrence went through him a split second after the anger. That was wrong; he absolutely needed Taam—he was a treaty representative.

Something was wrong. “This isn’t real,” he found himself saying, but the minute he’d said the words, he couldn’t remember why he’d said them. He had thrown up a hand in front of his face. “I can’t—Taam, I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”

Taam gave him one last shove and released him. “What fucking use are you,”

he said, but it was more of a rhetorical question. He had lost the edge of his rage, as he often did. He backed off a couple of steps and turned away as if he felt the first hints of embarrassment. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Jainan pulled his jacket straight and didn’t rub his throat. It wasn’t real, but what was real? This room, Taam’s fury at Duke Tallie, Jainan’s failure at dinner: those were real. Whatever he had been trying to remember slipped away entirely. He felt himself settling into his surroundings like a wheel in a track it had traveled before. It was almost comfortable.

Taam threw himself down on the sofa. Jainan recognized this mood of grudging regret; he would be easier to deal with tomorrow. “I just wanted someone who could pull their weight,” Taam said. He stared up at the ceiling.

Jainan had been monitoring his drinks and he hadn’t even drunk that much, but clearly it had been enough to make him pensive. Jainan felt a stir of pity. He didn’t let it show. “I just wanted someone I liked.”

“I’m sorry,” Jainan said. There was nothing else he could really say. He turned away to make Taam some coffee.

The cup disappeared before he could pick it up. The walls turned gray and started to dissolve, and now the whole room seemed to be fading around him. He

felt himself lose a thought that had been very important. He could no longer remember what it was.

CHAPTER 26

“What do you think?” Kiem asked.