Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell

Author:Everina Maxwell [Maxwell, Everina]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780356515878
Google: iqfyDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Kiem was already sitting up and taking stock when the dawn sky started to lighten.

He still hadn’t managed to come to terms with someone wanting him or Jainan dead. He could go over the facts as much as he liked—someone had swapped out Taam’s crash data, someone must want the treaty in trouble—but even though he kept listening out for the drone of a flybug coming after them, he couldn’t make himself believe it. Nobody had ever had a grudge against Kiem. He didn’t really make enemies.

They were doing as well as they could, given the circumstances. It wasn’t Kiem’s fault that Taam had been up to his ears in shady transactions, or that the Auditor wouldn’t instate them yet. It wasn’t his fault their flybug had crashed or that someone might have enough of a grudge to sabotage it. Maybe if Kiem hadn’t taken them off their scheduled flight path, they wouldn’t have to trek to find help, but they were doing all right at the trekking. The only problem that was really, indisputably his fault was Jainan.

It wasn’t fair to phrase it like that. The problem wasn’t with Jainan himself; it was all on Kiem’s side. If Kiem had managed to be less weird last night, they might still be almost friends, or whatever it was they had been recently.

Kiem absently dug up a handful of the snow beside him in his gloves and packed it into a ball. He needed to get a grip on himself. He and Jainan had managed to reach some kind of fragile stability, and if Kiem carried on like this, he was going to screw it up for both of them.

“Is this the prelude to a snowball fight?” a voice said from behind him. “I should warn you: unlike your usual school fete opponents, I am not five years old.”

Kiem grinned and tossed the snowball in his hand, banishing the introspection. “So much the better,” he said. “Have you ever faced twenty five-year-olds? They’re terrifying.” He tossed the snowball again, but it fell apart when he tried to catch it. “Dammit.”

“Structurally unsound,” Jainan said. “Blame the contractors.” One corner of his mouth was pulled up in a smile, but there was a tension underneath it. Kiem hoped he was hiding his own better. “How are we set for today?”

“Right.” Kiem scrambled to his feet and started compressing his sleeping bag. “If the terrain’s not too bad, I think we should get to the rail line today or tomorrow. We could get going and have breakfast later, if you’ve slept enough.”

“I’m not sleeping any more,” Jainan said. He sounded as resigned to it as Kiem had felt at four that morning. “Let’s start out.” He turned away to collapse the tent.

The shadow of the mountain bowl kept the snow around them dark even while the sky above lightened to powdery gray. On the far cliffs, the dawn light glinted on the flybug wreck, small by now in the distance. Kiem looked at it ruefully.

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