“Kiem?” Bel had slipped out of the crowd and stood between them and the balconies. Both of them stopped. She looked unsettled, less put-together than she normally did, and her eyes on Kiem were accusatory. “Did you have anything to do with the job I just got offered?”

“What?” Kiem said. “No! Wait. So she did offer you a job.” He realized he wasn’t helping his case. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. Why would you think I had something to do with it?”

“Because it’s exactly the kind of thing you’d do,” Bel said.

Kiem cast a glance of appeal at Jainan. “It is exactly the kind of thing you would do,” Jainan said.

“Hey,” Kiem protested. “It wasn’t me. That would be shooting myself in the foot.” That wasn’t the thing at stake, though. He shouldn’t influence Bel’s choice; he tried to make his voice more neutral. “The Emperor made you a job offer.”

“Her Private Office is offering me a pay raise,” Bel said. “If I can ‘handle the job.’”

“Might be good,” Kiem said. “Her aides go on to big things. I heard Rakal used to work for her. I mean, obviously you can handle it. You’ve been the brains of the outfit for the whole of the last year.”

“I could,” Bel said. There was a long pause, uncharacteristic for her. “On the other hand, I also heard you might be joining the diplomatic corps.”

“How did you know that?” Kiem said. “Okay, wait, first of all, I’m only taking over social duties for the Theans, and second, I can’t believe you knew I was joining the diplomatic corps and you didn’t tell me.” Bel sort of smiled.

Kiem knew he was putting off asking the question.

Jainan asked it instead. “What are you going to do?”

“I was thinking,” Bel said slowly, “it might be nice to see some more of the galaxy. There isn’t much chance of that, with the Emperor.”

Kiem found he was smiling again. “We could probably match the pay raise.

Since there’s two of us now and all. And you could always go and work for the Emperor later.”

“I could,” Bel said. “No promises about how long I’ll stay. But I do want to see how Jainan’s engineering thing works out.”

“How did you know about—”

“She asked the Emperor’s aide,” Jainan said, amusement running through his voice. “Keep up, Kiem.”

“And now I need to go and put them off for a bit,” Bel said. “I’ll leave you to it.” She gave them a quick flash of a grin, turned away, and disappeared into the crowd again.

“And now can we have some privacy?” Jainan murmured.

“Yes! Right. Of course.” Kiem opened the door with a flourish that he turned into a bow halfway through. “Your Grace?”