“I—” Aren looked between them, but Kiem thought he’d got his measure, and he was right. Aren gave a fluid shrug, shot a mildly guilty look at Lunver’s office door, and gave another command. Jainan’s wristband buzzed. “All right, then. Jainan’s got a copy.” His voice lowered, semi-comically, as if he was letting them in on a secret. “Please don’t hand it to your friends back home.”

The line of tension hadn’t left Jainan’s face. “I wouldn’t.”

“Why shouldn’t he?” Kiem said.

For a brief moment Jainan and Aren both looked as if Kiem had grown a second head. “Oof,” Aren said. He traded glances with Jainan. “How to put this, eh? Kingfisher isn’t hugely popular on Thea.”

“Mm,” Jainan said.

“Sort of dead-cat-in-the-river levels of popular, in fact. Look.” Aren gestured another command and a screen sprang up vertically above the desk. After a moment’s browsing, he threw up a fringe-press article with the headline Iskat’s Mining Smash-and-Grab. And another, with a university logo: Activist Drones Sabotage Refinery. A third just said Sorry, Were You Using Those Minerals?

over a smiling picture of Taam.

Jainan had gone a shade sallower. “I hadn’t seen those.”

“Idiots,” Aren said cheerfully. “Students and fringe obsessives, mainly. But to answer your question, Prince Kiem, that’s why we’re running a lot of Kingfisher at high classification. I was assigned to the op as the strategic comms officer to try and fight this sort of bad press, but the positive spin just didn’t take. Hey, there’s a thought.” He threw himself back into a sprawl in the desk chair and eyed Kiem speculatively. “We’ve got a strategic comms post going spare.

Spinning Kingfisher to the Thean newslogs. You’d be a natural.”

“Uh,” Kiem said blankly.

“Oh, come on,” Aren said, half laughing. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Kiem took a stab. “Because I look great in a uniform?”

“You use that well, sure,” Aren said, grinning. “It’s more how you were the royal family’s biggest embarrassment a few years ago, and now you get asked to charity galas and interviewed for homemaker magazines and handed a

diplomatic marriage.” He folded his arms and leaned back. “Half the planet seems to have bought this ‘turned over a new leaf’ story. I’m serious—if you can pass the physical, I’ll swing you a major’s commission on Kingfisher. We need someone who can work the press.”

“I don’t—what—” Kiem scrabbled for what to say. He felt faintly sleazy, though it wasn’t as if it was a lie: he and Bel had positioned some stuff based on how the newslogs would take it. “I don’t do that on purpose.” He glanced at Jainan, who had linked his hands in his lap and was staring down at them. “I’m not the military type.”