The silence was like sudden pressure on Kiem’s hearing.

“Murdered?” he said. “No. Wait. That’s not—that’s not what happened.” He glanced over at Jainan, who had a strange, calm look in his eyes, as if his whole world had just cracked and there was nothing he could do about it.

“The aggregated data suggests otherwise,” the Auditor said, as precisely and unemotionally as if he were talking about the weather. His face shell was moving constantly now—Kiem had the feeling it would be changing color, if he could recognize any of the colors in it. “Thean news sources show discontent from multiple angles. Official communications have broken down. When the Thean representative requests sight of the investigation into the death of a politically bonded partner, and is denied…” He shrugged, an oddly human motion. “I cannot instate either of you at this point.”

“Denied what?” Kiem said. He’d missed something.

“No,” Jainan said, as if he understood.

The Auditor turned away. His shell had stopped moving, as if he had lost interest in further conversation, and the staffer smoothly stepped in front of him to prevent Kiem from following the Auditor behind the privacy screen.

“The instation process is not up for debate,” the staffer said. They sounded perfectly reasonable. Kiem might have felt less off-balance if they’d shouted.

“There must be an appeal,” Jainan said, something desperately controlled in his voice. “Or a process for—for replacement. We must have a treaty.”

He wasn’t wrong. Kiem started to realize how serious this was. The Resolution treated each comma of its interplanetary agreements like a law of nature. If Iskat and Thea couldn’t provide representatives that satisfied them, there wouldn’t be a treaty. And if there wasn’t a treaty, Iskat’s peace terms with the rest of the universe would have all the formal weight of something scrawled on the back of a napkin. Surely this was some sort of temporary setback, though.

Everyone wanted a treaty.

“The Auditor is still processing the political context,” the staffer said. In the first flash of personality they’d shown, they glanced at Kiem and said, “Your partner has apparently not been entirely honest with you.”

“Jainan?” Kiem said, nonplussed. Jainan just shook his head. Kiem filed that away as ask later. “Look,” he said to the staffer, “you have to do something. The Emperor isn’t going to be happy.”

“The Auditor will discuss it with your Emperor,” the staffer said politely.

“You are, of course, free to do the same.”

Kiem would have paid money to see the Emperor and the Auditor trying to out-stonewall each other under less important circumstances. “All right!” he said. “All right. You talk to the Emperor. We’ll ask the palace about Taam’s accident. And then we can fill in your form Thirty-Four B or whatever and get this sorted.”

“We appreciate your cooperation,” the staffer said. The data on the walls moved around, patternless and chaotic. The UNCONFIRMED tags beside Jainan’s and Kiem’s pictures didn’t change.