As Kiem came in, stopping a careful two paces away, Jainan lifted the lid of the box and took out a folded cloth. His fingers were oddly clumsy; it took two tries before he could get a proper grip. He held it up, and it tumbled open in a waterfall of stiff green silk.

Now that he looked at the flag, it would take up most of the wall. Whatever

had propelled him to pull it out curdled into embarrassment. He had to say the obvious. “It’s too big.”

“It’s incredible, ” Kiem said.

The embarrassment was slow to drain away, as if it took time for it to notice it was no longer needed. “Oh.”

“Isn’t it valuable, though? It should probably go under glass. It looks antique.”

“It doesn’t go under glass,” Jainan said. “But—are you sure? This will alter the look of your rooms significantly.”

He had said something wrong. Kiem was staring at him. “They’re your rooms too.”

“I know,” Jainan said. “But this might be a little much.”

“Jainan, there’s hardly any of your stuff here.”

Now he had upset Kiem, and Jainan hadn’t even seen it coming. He closed his eyes briefly and started folding up the flag. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Kiem said. Jainan couldn’t answer.

In the silence, Bel appeared at the door and saved him from having to come up with something. “Your Highness,” she said, “you are not only terrible at checking your messages, but you’re infecting Count Jainan with your bad habits.”

Jainan jumped and gestured his wristband awake, but Kiem just gave a disarming wave of his hand. “Was it important?”

“That depends,” Bel said. “It’s about the delicate political balance between your two planets, but you can carry on arguing about wall decorations if you like.”

Jainan tensed, but perversely that seemed to puncture all the tension in Kiem like a balloon, and he laughed. “No sense of aesthetics. Go on, Bel.”

“Colonel Lunver and her deputy, Major Saffer, want to see you,” Bel said.

“I’ve been chasing the crash data you asked for. The colonel says they have it, but she wants to talk to you about your problem with the Auditor first. She’s the one who took over Taam’s role.”

“She’s got the flight logs from Taam’s crash?” Kiem said.

“She seems to think so,” Bel said. “You have to go in person, though.”

“Well, finally,” Kiem said. “My only other plan was walking into the Emperor’s office and throwing a tantrum.”

“That might have worked,” Bel said. “Either that or got you arrested. I’ll tell them you’re on your way.”

“Her aides would have shot me,” Kiem said. He grinned at Jainan, and for a moment Jainan was almost taken in by Kiem’s unfounded optimism. It made everything that had happened—the Auditor, Taam’s accident—seem like solvable problems, like Kiem thought he could make the world swing onto an easier path by sheer force of expecting that it would. Jainan knew this was absurd. And yet here Kiem was. “Let’s go and see what Colonel Lunver has for us.”