Ressid sized him up. “Hm,” she said. “Me too. We’ll have to catch up.” She eyed the crowd around them. “Go and find a room we can talk in, Jainan. I’ll hold them off. So sorry to keep you waiting,” she added loudly to the reporter edging up to her—that was Dak, the reporter from the wedding, who had apparently managed to avoid being blacklisted. “I’d be delighted to give you a statement on the treaty amendments.” She took Dak’s arm and bore him off firmly, leaving Kiem and Jainan to escape from the others. In the crowd beside her Hren Halesar was holding court with a group of other journalists, and he caught Jainan’s eye and flicked his fingers to his forehead in an ironic salute.

“’Scuse me,” Kiem said, engineering a path around the back of a particularly burly reporter. “No more questions, sorry, we have to change for dinner. Call me

tomorrow. Have a good day!”

After a few more moments of Kiem’s excuses and innocent-seeming shouldering, they found themselves near the exit, where they could make a polite escape. “I am never going to read a newslog again,” Jainan murmured as his elbow brushed Kiem’s.

“Are you kidding?” Kiem said. He was grinning at Jainan in a way that made it seem like he’d just discovered Jainan’s face and was delighted with it, which was unfair and exhilarating at the same time. “I’m going to laser tomorrow’s front page posts on our bedroom wall.”

“I will void the treaty, ” Jainan threatened. Kiem laughed and bowed him through the door.

CHAPTER 31

Jainan was outwardly sober and controlled again when he left Kiem—who was moving his belongings out of his cell and back into their guest suite—and made his way to the meeting chamber the Theans had secured. It felt like the gravity had been turned down; his feet came farther off the ground when he walked. He no longer even registered the people he passed in the corridors, until one of them blocked his way.

“Your Grace?”

Chief Agent Rakal, in a freshly pressed uniform. They dipped their head in a meticulously proper bow. Jainan stopped with a faint trace of unease. But he recognized that fear as part of an old pattern, one that he didn’t have to maintain.

He sketched a nod. “Agent Rakal. I’m afraid I have an appointment with the Thean delegation.”

“I would take it as a personal favor,” Rakal said, “if you could stop your aide from threatening Aren Saffer while he is in my custody.”

Jainan could not easily categorize his immediate reaction to hearing Rakal say Aren’s name. Aren had always been linked to Taam. Even everything Aren had done felt like something from Taam’s world, spinning on after Taam’s death.

Jainan was almost surprised to find he had his own opinion of Aren, separate from Taam: something like cold aversion, as if he wasn’t important enough for Jainan to spend further time on.