Chapter Text
An undeniable, unspoken routine had developed between them.
Jainan woke up alone each morning, and he changed his hair and style in some way every time. Every time, Kiem greeted this with delight.
Then they looked for new people to tell, new ways to try to break out. They spoke with the University, with Kiem's military contacts, with strange people Bel found in strange places. They only tried the Emperor twice, and they weren't eager to repeat the experience. Reaching the Auditor was their best option, but they couldn't get an audience with him.
Every day, Jainan got married. They didn't want to risk endangering the treaty, in case the loop ended just as suddenly as it began. (Jainan, in particular, didn't want to risk it, and Kiem was more than kind about it. Kiem was... happy to get married, as far as Jainan could tell.)
Every night, Kiem and Jainan got a new body mod. They kept it discreet: small tattoos, reversible bioluminescence, jewelry. They chose for each other, and it grew from a joke into a dare. Jainan found himself missing the tongue stud at times.
Bel had only joined them once, at the end of the first week, and she got a glittering, void-dark seashell that spiraled from her lips and down her neck. The tech hadn't been happy to let her configure the hardware herself; Bel had an ever-decreasing amount of patience for obstructions. Kiem slid in and smoothed the situation over with a joke at his own expense.
"Is everything all right?" Jainan asked the following afternoon, when they were alone on their couch and trying again to reach Kiem's mother. The seashell survived only in memory. "Is Bel okay?"
"She's got to be, right? She's Bel." The cagey lightness in Kiem's voice was troubling, so Jainan decided to pay more attention to the little signs of mounting tension in her. He'd stopped tracking those, he wasn't sure when.
Bel was unchangingly sharp, amused, unflappable even in the face of a furious Emperor. At the same time, there was a restlessness that Jainan was beginning to see didn't belong there. Kiem always moved like indoor spaces were too small for him, but Bel would start the day with a confident saunter, and then she'd lengthen her stride with every new dead end.
Now she was curled up on a too-large office chair, going over their scant list of facts. Jainan took the smaller chair, and handed her his non-famous mug of tea.
"This is ridiculous," she muttered. "We've been here, what, twelve weeks now? Jainan, do you know what'd happen if one of us…" The wrenching gesture she made was unpleasant and unmistakable. Jainan felt his eyebrow climb up.
"You realize Kiem would want to draw straws," he said. "Or whatever they use on Iskat instead."
"Icicles, probably," she offered. "Never mind, forget I asked."
"He truly would jump off a bridge for you, but I don't think that experimenting with our mortality —"
"Forget it," she snapped.
There was a part of Jainan that wanted to draw back, apologize, retreat into duty and frost even now. He viewed it with detachment. He tilted his head, and Bel's angular shoulders lowered.
"Which part of it is getting to you?" Jainan asked. None of them had ever talked about their feelings about the loop. It was strange being the one to start. "Is it the monotony?"
Bel took a long gulp of her tea. "It's being fucking trapped. I have no idea how you and Kiem bear it."
"I think Kiem will be fine as long as he has new people he can call. Although, he's starting to miss dartcar racing news." He was bearing it unusually well, Jainan thought. It was easy to adapt to that. "I don't think this is less restrictive, generally speaking, than palace life."
She shook her head. "But if I wanted to pack my bags and disappear —"
"Kiem would go with you. And I go where he does." Jainan spread his hands, and Bel held his gaze. He wasn't good at calming people down, nor cheering them up. But whatever she saw in him must have sufficed. "I've got a plan," she said. "It's only slightly less stupid than jumping off a bridge."
"You got these skills from your grandmother," Kiem said again.
"Of the Black Shells, yes, keep up." Bel was pacing in circles, not looking at either of them. Jainan, of course, wasn't going to touch her like Kiem sometimes did, to calm her down, but he started making more tea.
"And these are the opening steps toward assassinating the Auditor," Kiem continued, "because it's your grandmother's hobby to figure out how to do that to important figures."
"There is a template," Bel said. "It's not hard to fake some credentials, earn some trust, get in close. I did a version of that with you, you know."
Jainan felt the need to jump in — he knew what she was trying to achieve, and had thought of doing something similar a few times in the beginning — but Kiem's look of bafflement gave way to determination, and he hugged Bel close. Jainan exhaled when she did.
"Yeah, of course, your terrible evil raider plot to get me to represent literally every charity," he muttered into her shoulder. "I feel very assassinated."
"You're not important enough for grandmother's template," she told him, and Jainan caught her eye across Kiem's shoulder. Smiling at her was easy, and it was important.
Kiem sat down and dragged her along with him. Jainan handed them chamomile in mismatched mugs. "So what do you need for this to work?" he asked, guessing she'd appreciate a change of topic.
"For the plan to work within a day, we need a prestigious, detailed, actually legitimate recommendation vid," Bel said. "I'll need half a day to get the data ready, Kiem, I'll need your royal seal. But the recommendation is out of my hands."
"I'll call someone," offered Kiem. "I'll call everyone."
"Who's the highest-ranking person willing to lie for you?"
"Vaile. But probably not when it comes to the Auditor, she's — you know, she takes politics seriously now. I'll try my mother one more time, not that there's a chance she'll believe me even if I could reach her, and then I'll start working down the family tree —"
It wasn't something Jainan ever thought about. But with Bel's willingness to work outside of the law, and Kiem's casual acceptance, he found himself saying, "I could perhaps find a way to talk to my sister."
Kiem and Bel looked at him with unexpectedly similar expressions.
"Are you estranged?" Kiem asked hesitantly. "Is this a, a bridge-mending thing?"
"Not estranged." After Bel's confession, Jainan had no right to hesitate. "There have been logistic issues. Security concerns." Was there any reason, at this point, to lie? "Taam didn't like it when I called her."
"Fuck that," Kiem whispered, which was gratifying. "Call her right now. Forget about the non-assassination, she wants to talk to you, she's desperate, I've been telling her all kinds of nonsense because I thought you don't want to see her, thank Heavens she forgets it every time. It was terrible because the two of you are very related in a complementary kind of way, and I was wondering what she could've done for you to cut her off. So it was Taam. Fuck Taam, then."
Jainan raised a finger to his temple. "When have you been talking to Ressid?"
"Every day? I didn't know whether to tell you. I kept hoping you'd show up a minute early and see for yourself."
It was easy, almost, to laugh. Even in the loop, Jainan's habits ruled him. He needed to think about that; first, he needed to talk to his sister.
She was the first person to believe them beyond just entertaining a hypothetical. Or rather, as she told Jainan before she realized Kiem was present, she was kept away from him for years. She'd believe anything that meant she could have him back in her life.
Jainan didn't like feeling like a fantasist, his arguments relying on goodwill instead of reason. But Ressid was willing to risk her good name, and Thea's as well, to help him. Bel was risking more, and Kiem kept casually but insistently talking about how his royal immunity expanded to his household.
They were running late to their own wedding, and Jainan knew there was a narrative being spun around it. He didn't care. It wouldn't be irreparable if they skipped it; but, Jainan wanted to be a married man, again. He spoke his vows quickly and without wavering, and he and Kiem ran back to their rooms, chased half-heartedly by some journalists.
Breaking the loop hadn't been urgent for Jainan before, except on an abstract level. Now he hoped never to have to repeat his conversation with Ressid about Taam: he didn't like the thought of it becoming easy. And it wasn't right that he should know she still loved him while she didn't know he loved her.
Kiem had silenced his wristband, Bel had already taken off her shoes, and Jainan made sure the door was locked. Bel reported that the Auditor received Ressid's message, a long but direct plea for his time, less dishonest than anything they had planned initially. Bel's template had taken care of technological protections, however alien, and she'd persuaded some of his aides to help set-up a conference call from his ship. But in the end, only the Auditor could decide whether he wanted to address a plea from tiny Thea.
Projecting the Auditor over the wall had been a mistake. Even through the screen, it was difficult to watch his face shift its shape and texture. There was a reaction to their presence, and Jainan couldn't parse it. Kiem took it on himself to explain, with a surprising lack of digressions, the problem of their loop. It cost them nothing to be direct; they could try often approaches next time.
The Auditor listened, unknowable and ever-shifting. Jainan could feel a headache descending; he kept his gaze locked on a spot on the desk.
"Ah, Your Grace?" The Auditor's voice was startlingly normal in comparison to his appearance. "I apologize for any offense caused, but, I believe you should undo your hair."
Jainan hesitated for just a moment, and Kiem said, "Let me? If you like."
It was a moment of strange surrender, bowing his head forward in front of Bel, in front of the Auditor with his face projected across the wall.
Kiem undid the neat two-pronged braid Jainan had opted for that morning.
"Hmm, warm," he said, and he handed the pin over onto Jainan's outstretched palm. After a moment's pause, Bel touched it too.
It looked ordinary, but its temperature fluctuated just as the Auditor's face changed shape. Jainan looked at the screen, shrugged, and snapped the wooden pin in half.
There was a rush of sound and color, the name of the Auditor passing Jainan by without entering his comprehension. There had been, no, would be, no, could be a war. Iskat and Thea both losing their independence; Jainan and Bel both losing their lives. An image of Kiem and the Auditor, alone on a planet that was once covered in snow. Kiem begging for a second chance, the Auditor saying that temporal warping was imprecise and ‘sticky’. The Auditor offering some alien form of mercy. Kiem, reaching into this pocket for the hair pin.
This was a future they could avert. Now, they’d be free to do so.
Jainan awoke slowly on a familiar couch, and he heard a pair of familiar breaths in the room with him. His head was pillowed on Kiem’s lap.
For just a moment, Jainan allowed himself to imagine staying in this moment, looping just that into infinity. Then, he shook his head and woke his husband and his friend. It was time to get to work.