Kiem said. “You could have genuinely helped—even if this murder stuff is rubbish, it could have given you some closure—” He fumbled in his pocket for his seal, which, for a miracle, he hadn’t lost. The lump of gold, engraved with Iskat’s crest, hummed as he brought up a small screen on his wristband and tapped the seal against it. The seal bled a golden patch onto the screen, forming a miniature version of the royal crest. Kiem signed some text across it—a quick demand Internal Security find the data and hand it to Jainan—and sent it to Jainan to add to the message chain. “There. See if that helps.”

“Oh,” Jainan said. He sounded startled, as if Kiem had broken some sort of rule. Kiem admittedly didn’t pay a lot of attention to palace legislation, but he was fairly sure asking Internal Security for some information wasn’t against the law.

“The Auditor can’t be right about Taam,” Kiem said, dropping the seal back in his pocket. “Someone would have told us.”

“I would just like to know,” Jainan said. The lines around his eyes hadn’t disappeared. He glanced out the window toward the shining dome of the shrine where Taam’s Mournings had all been held, shook his head slightly, and pulled his messages off the wall in the manner of someone determined to be businesslike about things. “Perhaps we should get back.”

“Yes—we should brief Bel,” Kiem said, galvanized into action. He fell in beside Jainan as they started down the stairs. “She might have some ideas.

Honestly, this is absolute nonsense. A Galactic from the other side of the universe telling us we can’t speak for our own planets.” At the foot of the stairs, a glass door led outside. Kiem waved it aside and gestured Jainan ahead.

“Maybe Bel will find it funny. Taam might have found it funny.”

Jainan gave him an odd look as they passed through the door and into the cold sunlight outside. “No,” he said. “Taam would not have found this funny at all.”

CHAPTER 7

A week passed. Jainan felt suspended, like a fragment caught in the force between two fields. The idea that Taam’s death might have been murder was farcical, absurd, but the memory of the Auditor saying it circled around his head until he was banishing the thought dozens of times a day. He could do nothing about it. No Iskaner was obliged to tell him anything. Internal Security failed to reply to Kiem’s nudge; even Taam’s old colleagues were quiet. Nobody had a duty to interact with Jainan except Kiem.

Kiem was—in public and in private—friendly, considerate, and good-humored. This had nothing to do with Jainan: Kiem was friendly and good-humored to everyone Jainan ever saw him with. Kiem was the person everyone knew, and it showed wherever he went. He walked into a crowded room and three people would immediately greet him like an old friend. Jainan had trouble remembering people’s names; Kiem remembered their children’s names. Every time Jainan thought about how he must look to Kiem—with his awkwardness, his stiff speech, his painful inability to say the right thing in the right situation—