contact. He’d had issues with his security clearance; his current Iskat obligations and his old Thean ties had proved difficult to balance. He didn’t like to think about it. Those were the sacrifices you had to make as a diplomat.

“Aha,” said Professor Audel, who had been rummaging in her desk drawer and clearly not paying attention. “Here’s our own model. Is that enough small talk? I think it is. Jainan, take a look at this.”

Jainan turned away from Gairad with relief that felt like a breath of air.

Professor Audel placed an abacus cube on the desk, each side about the length of her thumb. It lit up with a soft glow and started projecting its built-in programs: models and lines glowed in three dimensions in the air above it. Jainan recognized the outlines with a pang. He no longer remembered all the details of his own field.

“How much of the current thinking have you followed since your thesis?”

Professor Audel asked. “None at all? Oh. Well then, you may not be following Operation Kingfisher and how it’s been going. Or not going, I should say.”

“He should know,” Gairad said. “He was married to the man who ran it!

Prince Taam, Professor, I told you.”

“Oh, you’re that one,” the professor said. She regarded him for a second longer than was comfortable. “I did wonder how they got a new representative in so quickly. So you do know about Kingfisher, then.”

Jainan shook his head, his throat suddenly tight. “Prince Taam didn’t discuss his work,” he said. “I wasn’t following it.” His related field had been part of the reason he’d been put forward for the marriage, but that had led nowhere. Taam had never taken interference well, especially early on, when Jainan hadn’t realized his own academic explanations came across as patronizing. “I only had an idea it wasn’t going as well as it could.”

“Beset with problems,” the professor said. “One might say riddled with them.

Equipment failures, poor planning, workforce problems, supplies going missing

—and two rogue solar flare incidents, which were the only things nobody can be blamed for. Heaven knows how the military organizes its operations; it’s a miracle they managed to conquer anywhere.”

The two Theans in the room winced. Jainan saw Gairad scowl and suddenly wished he hadn’t shown any reaction himself; he was supposed to be a diplomat.

He distracted himself by staring at the colorful projection. If he was honest, he felt a vague prickle of disloyalty to Taam at even listening to criticism of his operation. “Deep-space mining has always had disasters.”

“Oh, I’m not casting aspersions,” Professor Audel said, without batting an

eyelid at this blatant lie. “I did a stint as a military engineer myself; it’s not a walk in the park. But this points to some spectacular incompetence.”

“And you’ve developed … a new extraction method?” Jainan said, pulling the conversation into a safer channel. “To mine trace elements?”