“Apologies, Your Highness,” Lunver said to Kiem, “but it should be someone less connected to Taam. The representative doesn’t have to be a prince. Upper nobility, or a general, perhaps. With the cooperation of the Theans, of course,”

she added, with a nod to Jainan.

“I fail to see how that will solve the problem,” Jainan said.

Kiem, who had been about to open his mouth to say he didn’t mind, stopped and rethought. This was how he screwed things up: he went along with what other people wanted and he didn’t think. “I’m with Jainan here,” he said. “Not sure that’s going to fix anything. The Auditor said the problem was Taam—

speaking of, how about that crash data?”

He looked around hopefully, as if they were having a friendly meeting rather than hearing a senior military official ask for his resignation.

“Your refusal has been noted,” Colonel Lunver said. She sighed. “Your Highness, I don’t want to have to take it up to the Emperor.”

“She’ll be so pleased. I think she misses me when I’m not in her inbox,”

Kiem said. He changed his tone to plaintive. “The crash data? I thought that was why you agreed to see us.”

Lunver glanced at Jainan as if she’d expected something more from him, then grimaced and rubbed a hand across her face. “Saffer.”

“I’ll get you that,” Aren said, hastily getting to his feet. “This way.”

As they followed him out, Aren frowned over a mini-screen hovering over his wrist. “I have all the personnel records for the unit,” he said as an aside to Kiem,

“so the colonel got me to track it down, but I’m not really senior officer material.

Too much management rubbish.” He leaned against an empty desk, spinning through some options, and then entered a command sign. “It has to go through Internal Security. There.” He finished the command with a flourish and grinned at Jainan. Even talking quietly, their voices echoed in the old room. Jainan kept glancing at the handful of soldiers within hearing. “That’s a fairly ghoulish souvenir you want, but it should be with you within a week or so.”

Kiem refrained from saying that apparently the officers hadn’t needed to see them in person to transfer the data after all, which was not making him feel any more well disposed toward Lunver. Jainan’s eyes went back to Aren’s face. “A week.”

Aren’s mouth took on a rueful twist. “’Fraid it’s an Internal Security issue,”

he said. “They put a block on all the investigation materials, so we have to go up the chain of command to get them released.”

“But you have the crash data,” Kiem said. “Come on. Jainan’s been trying to get it for weeks. I gave it a royal seal. I don’t want to start getting official about it—do us a favor.”