It was a press cuttings file; not fringe newslogs, but some of the biggest outlets on Iskat and Thea. The moment Kiem recognized it as news he nearly shut it off before it could spread over the desk. But he’d left it a moment too long to cancel. The pages fanned out and settled in front of him. Kiem’s stomach gave a lurch.

Jainan’s face stared back at him from every cutting, from every newslog. The

same photo: he was propped up in a hospital bed, looking directly, almost defiantly, at the camera. He had made no attempt to hide that the wrist lying across his lap was hooked up to a drip. The most shocking thing was what he was wearing—Jainan, who rarely let himself be photographed, and never in anything less than full formal dress, had let them take his photo in a hospital gown.

The first time Kiem tried to read the headlines, his brain rebelled, and he couldn’t take them in. His eyes kept going back to Jainan’s diamond-hard gaze.

The biggest picture, the one Bel had placed in the center, was under the familiar green-and-black header of the Consult. The words next to it read, “TREATY

REPRESENTATIVE ‘SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT’: ACCUSES PRINCE TAAM OF ABUSE.”

Kiem stopped breathing.

The Consult was a restrained, respectable outlet. Their headline was the least sensational of the bunch. The rest of the articles started at “FREED FROM HELL” and went downhill from there. At first Kiem wondered wildly who had leaked this—

who had done this to Jainan—but then he looked farther down the Consult article. A smaller candid shot showed Jainan and Hani Sereson talking in the same hospital room. Jainan had done this on purpose.

Kiem should be able to read the article. He didn’t understand why he was so afraid of it. It hadn’t happened to him.

He took a deep breath and made himself read it.

Jainan was very clear on who was to blame. He took apart Taam’s character

—and Aren’s—like a surgical strike. Every time they quoted him, he was dry and emotionless, but the details themselves were blunt weapons. Taam’s monitoring of his calls. His order to revoke Jainan’s security clearance. Incidents both in public and in private. Set out in black-and-white with dates and places, it looked surreal, grotesque, and yet whenever it was in Jainan’s words he made it sound very ordinary, while Hani’s careful arrangement of the article threw his descriptions into stark relief.

Kiem and the rest of Iskat came out better than they deserved. Jainan carved out Taam and Aren like pieces of rot, separating them from the rest of the Empire and creating a story that both the Iskat and Thean press could swallow.

He had decided to get the treaty signed and he had used his own past to do it.

Kiem was torn between feeling sick to his stomach and being overcome with desperate admiration.